Cicero - Anthony Everitt [169]
The future for Republicans lay in splitting the partisans of Caesar. Moderates grouped around Hirtius and Pansa, the following year’s Consuls, were likely to align themselves with Cicero and the constitutionalist majority in the Senate. In theory that would isolate Antony, increasingly desperate to find himself a safe provincial base, and Octavian, with his magical name. However, they both commanded the loyalty of the legions. Together they would be irresistible and it was essential that nothing be done to persuade them to overcome their differences and join forces.
Cooperation with Octavian would raise two difficult issues. If Cicero wanted to play this dangerous and delicate game, he would have to work with people who operated outside the constitution; he might even have to act unconstitutionally himself. However much he told himself that this would be for the greater good, dubious means might subvert virtuous ends. This was certainly the view of some of the conspirators, who were deeply suspicious of any accommodation with the new Caesar. The more immediate question was how far the young man was to be trusted. If his short-term interest was to align himself with Cicero and the Senate, what were his long-term aims? It seemed that the people around him, like Balbus and Oppius, shared the dead Dictator’s belief that the Republican oligarchy was incompetent to run an empire and would have to give way to some kind of autocracy.
For the time being Cicero kept his distance. For some days he wondered nervously whether or not to join Octavian in Rome. He did not want to miss some great event; but then it might not be safe to leave the coast: Antony was approaching and Cicero could be cut off and at the Consul’s mercy. On balance he felt that Octavian’s project of taking his new troops to Rome was daring but ill considered. Nevertheless, he acknowledged Octavian’s growing popularity and decided that he might, after all, go to the capital before January 1, as he had originally intended.
The march on Rome turned out to be the fiasco Cicero had feared. Undeterred by the absence of Senators, Octavian met the General Assembly and delivered an uncompromisingly anti-Republican speech. He gestured towards a statue of Caesar and swore under oath his determination to win his father’s honors and status. But Antony was fast approaching and Octavian’s troops made it clear they would not fight against him. Many deserted. His hopes dashed, he withdrew north to Arretium.
The setback was only temporary. Antony arrived in the city “in battle array” and, just as Octavian had done a few days earlier, illegally introduced troops inside the pomoerium. He called a Senate meeting for November 24, with the intention of charging Octavian with treason. However, for some reason the session was postponed. According to Cicero, Antony was drunk: “He was detained by a drinking bout and a feast—if you can call a blowout in a public house a feast.” A more plausible explanation was that one of his legions had mutinied and transferred its allegiance to Octavian. AS soon as he heard the news, the Consul rushed from Rome to confront the mutineers at a town named Alba Fucens; they would not listen to him and shot at him from the walls. Doubtless drawing on Caesar’s hijacked fortune, Antony arranged a donation of 2,000 sesterces for every soldier to calm his remaining legions. He then returned to the city and reconvened the Senate, which met (against convention) by night at the Capitol.
A former Consul had been primed with a motion declaring Octavian a public enemy, but now Antony faced another disaster. The Fourth Legion also changed sides. The balance of power was shifting and Antony could no longer depend on a favorable vote in the Senate; even if he could win a majority, a Tribune would probably veto the bill. Some hurried business was pushed through: Brutus and Cassius had their latest provinces withdrawn