Cicero - Anthony Everitt [177]
I reaped the richest of rewards for my many days of labor and sleepless nights—if there is any reward in true, genuine glory. The whole population of Rome thronged to my house and escorted me up to the Capitol, then set me on the Speakers’ Platform amid tumultuous applause. I am not a vain man, I do not need to be; but the unison of all classes in thanks and congratulations does move me, for to be popular in serving the People’s welfare is a fine thing.
Cicero had every reason to be proud of himself. The Caesarian faction was broken. Antony was out of the game and time-servers like Lepidus and Plancus would quickly come to heel. Brutus and Cassius controlled the eastern half of the empire. All that needed to be done now was some mopping up: Cicero wrote to Plancus on May 5, asking him to make sure that “not a spark of this abominable war is left alive.”
The only hostile, or potentially hostile, piece left on the board was Octavian, who was locked into the Republican cause. Cicero expected trouble from him but felt he could handle it. He told Brutus: “AS for the boy Caesar, his natural worth and manliness is extraordinary. I only pray that I may succeed in guiding and holding him in the fullness of honors and favor as easily as I have done hitherto. That will be more difficult, it is true, but still I do not despair.”
It had been a close-run thing, but Cicero’s strategy had worked: the Republic was saved.
16
DEATH AT THE SEASIDE
The End of the Republic: April–November 43 BC
As so often happens in human affairs, fate intervened at the moment of victory and destroyed the best-laid plans. It soon emerged that Hirtius had been killed in the second battle at Mutina, and Pansa died of the wound incurred in the first. This created a power vacuum at the worst possible moment. The absence of Consuls left Rome in disarray. There would have to be elections and in the meantime the Republic was without an effective executive authority. In the field Pansa’s troops went over to Octavian. He stayed where he was and refused to have anything to do with Decimus Brutus, the ally for whom he had fought at Mutina and, as he had not forgotten, one of his adoptive father’s assassins. He left Decimus Brutus and his forces to chase after the fleeing Antony on their own.
To Cicero’s annoyance and disappointment, Decimus Brutus made little progress. He wrote in extenuation that his “apology for an army” had hardly recovered from the privations of a siege. He had no cavalry and no pack animals. He was short of money. Also, although he did not admit this to Cicero, he was alarmed by the growing strength of Octavian’s military position and may not have wanted to see the young man’s only effective military rival in the west destroyed for good. Soon Antony joined forces with a supporter of his who had been raising troops in central Italy on his behalf: he was now back in charge of a powerful force and made his way north with greater confidence towards Lepidus. If he could win Lepidus (and Plancus in Long-haired Gaul) to his side, the defeat of Mutina would be reversed.
It took some time for the Senate to take in the significance of the loss of its Consuls. One of Cicero’s correspondents, surveying the scene at a distance, wrote wisely that those who were rejoicing at the moment “will soon be sorry when they contemplate the ruin of Italy.” However, for the moment the constitutionalists could think only of victory. In his fourteenth and last Philippic, Cicero called for an official Thanksgiving to last for an unprecedented period of fifty days. Antony was finally declared a public enemy. Decimus Brutus was voted a Triumph. There were to be ceremonies and a monument to honor the fallen. Cassius was confirmed in place in Asia Minor and Sextus Pompey, still in Spain with his guerrilla forces, was given a naval command.
Careful thought should have been given to Octavian’s position, but it was not. He