Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [51]
The negotiators found it easier to agree on the principle of having a proscription than on the actual names of those to die. The choice of victims took a good deal of private haggling. To begin with, Octavian was of two minds about the project; but, Suetonius writes, once the proscription had been decided on, “he carried it out more ruthlessly than either of the others.”
The triumvirs marked down not only their political opponents whom they saw as public enemies (hostes), but also personal foes (inimici). They exchanged relatives and friends with one another. Lepidus abandoned his brother Paullus. Octavian allowed onto the list his onetime guardian, Gaius Toranius, who had been aedile in the year of his blood father’s praetorship. He also deserted Cicero—but only, if we can believe the sources, after resisting Antony, who so much wanted revenge for the Philippics that he let his own uncle be proscribed as payment for the superannuated orator.
Having concluded their island discussions, Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian arrived in Rome and posted the proscription decree on white boards in the Forum. Everyone named in the decree automatically forfeited his citizenship and protection from the law. The list was not final and new victims were added later, as the triumvirs decided. Informers who betrayed a proscribed man to the authorities were rewarded, and any person who killed one was also entitled to keep a share of his wealth. (The remainder went to the state.)
From a modern viewpoint, a proscription is a strange device. With the examples of the French and Russian revolutions before us, we expect the state to undertake mass liquidations if it deems them necessary; but, as has already been pointed out, the Roman state was remarkably nonbureaucratic; with no police force, no tradition of incarcerating offenders, and no professional judiciary, it was simply not equipped to execute large numbers of its citizens. The task had to be privatized.
The triumvirs betrayed signs of unease, of the need not to alienate public opinion. According to Appian, the proscription decree stated: “No one should consider this action unjust, or savage, or excessive, in the light of what happened to Gaius [Caesar] and ourselves.” The triumvirs promised not to punish “any member of the masses,” a guarantee they wisely honored. The decree closed with an assurance that “the names of none of those who receive rewards will be noted in our records.” What was to be done was shameful and it called for concealment.
The proscription brought out the best and worst in human nature. Appian records many terrible stories of those times:
Many people were murdered in all kinds of ways, and decapitated to furnish evidence for the reward. They fled in undignified fashion, and abandoned their former conspicuous dress for strange disguises. Some went down wells, some descended into the filth of the sewers, and others climbed up into smoky rafters or sat in total silence under close-packed roofs. To some, just as terrifying as the executioners were wives or children with whom they were not on good terms, or ex-slaves and slaves, or creditors, or neighbouring landowners who coveted their estates.
One tragic tale may evoke the selfishness and despair of the time. It concerns a teenager, whom we only know as Atilius; he probably belonged to an old noble plebeian family that originated in Campania. His father was dead, and he had inherited a rich estate. He had just celebrated his coming of age at Rome and was proceeding with his friends, as the custom was, to sacrifice in various temples in or around the Forum. Adulthood rendered him liable to legal penalty. Suddenly his name was added to the proscription list displayed on the speakers’ platform, presumably because of his wealth, and when this was noticed all his friends and slaves ran off. The boy went, deserted and alone, to his mother, but she was too frightened to shelter him. After this betrayal, Atilius saw no point in asking anyone else for help;