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Upon Philippi’s field

When I dumped my poor shield,

And courage cracked, and the strong men who frowned

Fiercest were felled, chins to the miry ground….

…In my laurel’s shade

Stretch out the bones that long campaigns have made

Weary. Your wine’s been waiting

For years: no hesitating.

VIII

DIVIDED WORLD

42–40 B.C.

* * *

The great families that had controlled the Senate and the consulship had been bloodily culled and many now disappear from the historical record. Most of the senior politicians active before the civil wars had joined their ancestors. New men from the provinces with unfamiliar names entered the Senate and commanded armies. Aristocracy gave way to meritocracy, and Rome became a city of opportunity for men with energy and talent.

Before going their separate ways after Philippi, Antony and Octavian signed an agreement and reconfirmed the division they had made of Rome’s provinces, with a few changes. The loser was Lepidus, who had commanded the triumviral forces in Italy during the Philippi campaign. He was not only idle but was suspected of treasonable communication with the republican leader, Sextus Pompeius, master of Sicily. He was made to disgorge Spain to Octavian and Narbonese Gaul to Antony. If Lepidus could clear his name, Octavian might be persuaded to give him a province or two from his allocation. Antony retained Long-haired Gaul, but gave up Cisalpine Gaul, which the triumvirs decided should be incorporated into Italy instead of continuing as a province. Originally an idea of Julius Caesar, this had the great advantage that it removed the risk of an overmighty provincial governor in command of an army only a few days’ march from Rome—in short, the risk of another Julius Caesar.

Octavian and Antony liked each other no more than they had in the past, but they were now bound together as permanent partners. They agreed that each should automatically approve the political decisions of the other. However, the two men were not on an equal footing. The victor of Philippi was a world-bestriding colossus. Little wonder then that, as before, when it came to a division of tasks, the junior colleague came off worse.

Antony was to reorganize the east, raise money there, and restore the state’s solvency; in due course, he would pick up the baton let drop by the murdered dictator and launch the much delayed expedition against the Parthian empire. By contrast, Octavian’s thankless duty was to demobilize a large number of troops and settle them on smallholdings in Italy.

About fourteen thousand survivors from the legions of Brutus and Cassius were incorporated into the victorious army. Old Caesarian veterans and soldiers who had been recruited in 49 and 48 B.C., some forty thousand in all, were sent to Italy and civilian life. That left enough men to make up eleven legions, eight of which Antony took to the east; the remaining three came home with Octavian.

Unfortunately, there was insufficient state-owned land to accommodate the veterans. The exchequer was empty, so compulsory purchase was out of the question. Eighteen cities in Italy were marked down for land confiscation and freeholders were summarily dispossessed. Public opinion was outraged. Those threatened flooded into Rome. Appian writes: “People came in groups…young men, old men, women with their children, and gathered in the Forum and the temples, lamenting and declaring that they had done no wrong.”

Octavian explained to the towns that he had no choice. “From what other source, then, are we to pay the veterans their prize money?” he asked complainants. This was nothing less than the truth. There was no countervailing force with which to gainsay the soldiers. Worse, the allocated land was still not enough and some men used violence to expropriate farms they had not been granted, often with more fertile fields. In many parts of Italy, law and order were breaking down. Relations between the soldiers and their commander also deteriorated, as an unnerving incident