Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [87]
The later ancient literary sources depict Sextus as a pirate, but he and his contemporaries saw him as a great Roman nobleman in pursuit of his rights. Appian claims that Sextus had no discernible strategic purpose and a pronounced tendency to avoid following up successes. There is some merit in the charge that Sextus failed to prosecute a long-term aim with adequate vigor.
He also did not take into account the disproportion in the relatively limited resources over which he had control and those at the disposal of the triumvirs, even when taken singly. This meant that he could not afford to wait on events, for sooner or later he would be outnumbered.
The youthful challenger to the post-republican regime lost, not so much through lack of intelligence or military and naval ability, but because he failed to think things through.
XI
PARTHIAN SHOTS
36–35 B.C.
* * *
Octavian accepted three honors from those that had been voted to him. The first was an annual festival to mark the victory at Naulochus, the second a gold-plated statue of himself in the Forum, dressed as he was when he entered Rome and standing on top of a column decorated with ships’ rams.
The third honor was by far the most important: tribunicia sacrosanctitas. This meant that his person was sacer, consecrated and inviolable on pain of outlawry. This protection was given to tribunes of the plebs, but Octavian did not have to hold the office of tribune, although he was additionally awarded the right to sit on the tribunes’ benches at meetings.
Of greater practical benefit to citizens, Octavian forgave unpaid installments of special taxes as well as debts owed by tax collectors. It was announced that documents relating to the civil wars would be burned. The administration of the state was returned to the regular magistrates, and Octavian agreed to hand back all his extraordinary triumviral powers when Antony returned from Parthia.
Octavian owed a great deal to his friends and supporters, and he made sure they were well rewarded. Agrippa, who had masterminded the Sicilian victory, was given a probably unprecedented honor—a corona rostrata, or golden crown decorated with ships’ beaks, which he was entitled to wear whenever a triumph was celebrated. Priesthoods were liberally distributed. Booty and land flowed into the hands of the triumvir’s friends; thus, Agrippa was granted large estates in Sicily and married one of Rome’s greatest heiresses, Caecilia, daughter of Cicero’s friend the multi-millionaire Titus Pomponius Atticus.
Some men did not know how to handle success with the expected decorum. Cornificius, awarded the consulship in 33, so prided himself on his Sicilian exploits that he had himself conveyed on the back of an elephant whenever he dined out.
It is hard to exaggerate the importance of the Sicilian victory. In his early years of struggle, Octavian had boasted of his connection to Julius Caesar; but from now on he no longer insisted on his rank as divi filius. He was who he was in his own right.
And what of Mark Antony? Octavian’s victory over Pompeius and his acquisition of Sicily and Africa (taken from the dismissed Lepidus) marked an important shift in the triumvirs’ respective positions. His two rivals for control of the west were now gone.
This simplification of the political scene had an important consequence. Despite the years of bloodshed, there was still a republican faction, an assorted group of diehards who were unwilling to accept what looked increasingly like the settled verdict of history.
With the end of Sextus Pompeius, the only remaining refuge was Mark Antony. In part, this was because, compared with Octavian, Antony was the lesser of two evils. But they could also detect in him a more relaxed approach to autocracy. In the last resort, he liked an easy life. He was no revolutionary and, provided