Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [68]
Another lady paid Antony a visit: his mother, Julia, who had left Italy for her safety and taken refuge with Sextus Pompeius in Sicily. She conveyed a message from Sextus, offering an alliance against Octavian. Antony replied cautiously; if he went to war with Octavian he would regard Sextus as an ally; if not, he would try to reconcile them.
Meanwhile, the political situation was darkening. Antony’s ally Quintus Fufius Calenus, the governor of all Gaul beyond the Alps, unexpectedly died. As soon as he heard the news, Octavian rushed off to take control of Calenus’ eleven legions, which the dead man’s terrified son handed over to him without offering any resistance.
This was a clear breach of the agreement among the triumvirs and, so far as Antony was concerned, tantamount to a declaration of war. He laid plans for the invasion of Italy. Civil strife was set to resume, and everyone knew who would win. After Philippi, Antony was regarded as the greatest general of the day; he would make short work of his junior partner in power.
Somehow or other Octavian had to prevent Sextus and Antony from entering into an alliance against him. The depth of his anxiety can be gauged by his next step. He put aside his untouched wife, Fulvia’s daughter Claudia, sent Sextus’ mother, Mucia, to Sicily to convey a friendly message from him to her son; and wed Scribonia, Sextus’ aunt-in-law. Married twice before, she was considerably older than her new husband, perhaps in her early to mid-thirties. Scribonia was not a life partner of personal choice, but this did not prevent him from quickly consummating the union and making Scribonia pregnant.
Antony set off for Italy from Sicyon hurriedly, giving Fulvia the further grievance that he was leaving her on her sickbed. He did not even say goodbye before his departure. Estrangement from her husband seems to have been the final blow for this Lady Macbeth of the ancient world, for she soon died. It would appear that her steely determination to advance her husband’s cause concealed a fragile psyche. Antony was greatly upset by her death, and blamed himself for it.
The triumvir set a course for Brundisium with only a small number of troops, but with two hundred ships. En route he joined forces with Ahenobarbus’ powerful republican fleet. The two men had come to a secret agreement that they would work together as partners.
This was an important moment, for it marked a change of opinion among republicans about the victor of Philippi. A number of leading personalities had escaped the proscription by fleeing to Sextus Pompeius in Sicily, but he was a young and untried leader. Now surviving optimates, recalling his readiness to come to terms with the Senate and freedom fighters in 44 B.C., increasingly placed their hopes in Antony and joined his following.
The understandings with Ahenobarbus and Sextus strongly suggest that Antony was ready to succeed where his brother Lucius had failed, and bring about the destruction of his tiresome young colleague. He had had his fill of him, not merely from personal irritation but because the triumvirs’ dysfunctional relationship was destabilizing Roman politics and needlessly delaying the invasion of Parthia. The ancient sources are studiously vague about Antony’s exact intentions; it may be that a renewed civil war was meant to be a last resort if Octavian proved uncooperative and undependable. More probably, Antony actively sought a showdown.
Supported by Ahenobarbus, he made his way to Brundisium. The port, garrisoned by five of Octavian’s cohorts, closed its gates to them, and Antony immediately laid siege to it. He sent to Macedonia for immediate