Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [67]
A girl was considered ready for wedlock at about twelve, a boy at fourteen. Husband and wife must both have reached puberty. Children could be betrothed provided that they were old enough to understand what was being put to them—say, from seven upward.
We are told rather more about Octavian’s sex life away from the marriage bed, by his opponents. Politicians often publicized the sexual peccadilloes of those with whom they disagreed, and were expected to be capable of producing scabrous lampoons. Octavian was no laggard in this regard; and a scabrous verse attributed to him survives, which is very probably authentic. It broadcasts a cheerfully indecent explanation of the motives that underlay Fulvia’s political activity. One can imagine the guffaws in the Forum and among the soldiery.
Because Antony fucks Glaphyra [a current mistress], Fulvia is determined to punish me by making me fuck her in turn. I fuck Fulvia? What if Manius [a freedman of Fulvia] begged me to sodomize him, would I do it? I think not, if I were in my right mind. “Either fuck me or let us fight,” says she. Ah, but my cock is dearer to me than life itself. Let the trumpets sound.
Octavian was accused of loose living. His girlishly attractive appearance doubtless inspired Sextus Pompeius to accuse him of effeminate homosexuality, of being a “queen.”
Lucius Antonius asserted that Octavian had sold his favors to Aulus Hirtius, the consul who lost his life at Mutina in 43 B.C., for the princely sum of 300,000 sesterces. The incident supposedly took place in Spain in 45 B.C., during the last campaign of the civil war, which culminated in Caesar’s victory at Munda. This was not long before Caesar returned to Italy and wrote his will. Lucius added, perhaps to lend verisimilitude to his claims, that Octavian used to soften the hair on his legs by singeing it with red-hot walnut shells.
With their circumstantial detail, these allegations just might be true, though that is unlikely. It does appear that the young triumvir won a reputation with the Roman mob for sleeping with men, whether or not it was deserved. One day at the theater an actor came onstage representing a eunuch priest of Cybele, the Great Mother. As he played a tambourine, another performer exclaimed, “Look how the queen’s finger beats the drum!” Since the Latin phrase can also mean “Look how this queen’s finger sways the world!” the audience delightedly applied the line to Octavian, who was watching the show, and burst into enthusiastic applause.
Most evidence suggests that Octavian, in fact, preferred sleeping with women, and he was widely credited with multiple adultery. It was probably during his early years of power that a private banquet he gave caused a public scandal. The event became known as the Feast of the Divine Twelve. It was a costume party with a difference; guests were invited to dress up as one or other of the gods and goddesses of Olympus. Octavian came as Apollo (always his favorite deity), god of the sun and of healing, and patron of musicians and poets. Suetonius notes that Antony mentioned the affair in a “spiteful letter,” but adds that an anonymous popular ballad confirmed it.
Apollo’s part was lewdly played
By impious Caesar; he
Made merry at a table laid
For gross debauchery.
What made the scandal worse was that the feast allegedly took place at a time of food shortage (caused, presumably, by Sextus Pompeius’ blockade). On the next day people were shouting “The gods have gobbled all the grain!” and “Caesar is Apollo, true, but he’s Apollo of the Torments”—this being the god’s aspect in one city district at Rome.
In the spring of 40 B.C., Antony was on his way to arrange his Parthian expedition when he learned that Perusia had fallen and that Fulvia had been forced to flee Italy. Antony met her at Athens and spoke very sharply to her, blaming her for the debacle. What she replied