Cicero - Anthony Everitt [161]
Marcus was getting on reasonably well in Athens. Atticus, presumably in Greece, was helping out with his cash flow. The boy was poor at keeping in touch, but when in June he did eventually write home his father was pleased to see that his literary style showed signs of improvement. Meanwhile, Quintus fell out with his son and was having difficulty repaying Pomponia’s dowry. Young Quintus was as politically unsatisfactory as ever, having now attached himself to Antony.
Balbus and Hirtius took care to keep in touch with Cicero. He received a very civil letter from Antony asking him to agree to the recall of one of Clodius’s followers from exile; this unpleasant reminder of the past annoyed him, but he made no objection. He was delighted when “my wonderful Dolabella” put down some pro-Caesar riots and demolished a commemorative pillar and altar where the Dictator had been cremated in the Forum. An agitator, falsely claiming to be Marius’s grandson, was arrested and executed.
Cicero noted the hurried departure of Cleopatra from Rome. “The Queen’s flight does not distress me,” he wrote coolly. Well endowed with regal ways, Cleopatra appears not to have been a popular figure in Rome, and the death of her protector meant that there was nothing left to keep her in Italy. She may have hoped that Caesar would have recognized their son, but there had been no mention of Caesarion in his will. This may have been a disappointment, but at least she was able to leave with a renewed treaty of friendship between Rome and Egypt.
A month later, on May 11 Cicero noted cryptically: “I hope it’s true about the Queen and that Caesar of hers.” A week or so later, he made further references to some rumor about her. It is hard to know what to make of this, but it has been conjectured that Cleopatra had become pregnant a second time and that she had been reported to have miscarried on the journey home. “That Caesar” would have been a dismissive reference to the dead fetus.
Towards the end of April Caesar’s youthful heir arrived in Italy. Octavian had been born during Cicero’s Consulship in 63 and came from a respectable provincial family in the country town of Velitrae in the Alban Hills south of Rome. His ambitious father had married Atia, Caesar’s niece, but he had died when Octavian was four. The widowed Atia had married again, choosing Lucius Marcius Philippus, who was Consul in 56.
Octavian grew up to be a short, slight, attractive young man with curly yellowish hair and clear, bright eyes. A weakness in his left leg sometimes gave him the appearance of having a limp. His health was delicate, but he was an industrious student. Although he had a gift for speaking extempore, he worked hard at improving his rhetorical technique.
In 45, despite being in a state of semiconvalescence after a serious illness, Octavian had followed Caesar to Spain, where he was fighting the last campaign of the civil war. After surviving a shipwreck, he had traveled with a small escort along roads held by the enemy. His great-uncle had been delighted and impressed by his energy and formed a high estimation of his character. Doubtless this was why he had decided to make the boy his heir.
After the battle of Munda, Octavian had been sent to the coastal town of Apollonia, across the Adriatic Sea in Macedonia. Caesar wanted him on the Parthian campaign and told him to wait there with the assembled legions until he joined them. In the meantime he was to pursue his education and receive military training.
When the terrible news arrived in Apollonia, Octavian’s first nervous instinct was to stay with the army, whose senior officers offered to look after him. But his mother and stepfather suggested that it would be safer if he came quietly and without fuss to Rome. Shortly afterwards Octavian was informed of his dangerous inheritance. His family thought he should renounce