ANTONY AND OCTAVIAN, 44–42

It is very hard to reconstruct the events that followed Caesar’s death. We know in outline the most important developments, but the details, and the order in which things happened, which is crucial to know if we are to understand how the struggle for power was won and lost, are very different in the different sources. There are few letters of Cicero from immediately after the murder; many sources are late and they are wildly inconsistent in their dates, figures and other factual information. Plutarch tells us (Caesar 67) that, once Caesar was dead, Brutus stepped

forward, intending to make a speech to the Senate to explain why they had killed Caesar, but the senators ran out and fled to their homes. As well as panic there may also have been horror from those not involved in the conspiracy. All places where the Senate met had to be consecrated, and this chamber was in the same building as a temple of Venus. Caesar had been awarded tribunician sacrosanctity, offering him the same god-given protection from attack that the tribunes enjoyed, earlier that year. As Appian puts it (2.118), ‘the murderers had perpetrated their gloomy crime in a sacred place, on one whose person was sacred and inviolable’. This is obviously a pro-Caesar view, but it is likely to reflect the feelings of many people at the time. Antony, the surviving consul, hid in someone else’s house, slipping off

his toga before leaving Pompey’s Theatre and going through the streets in disguise, as an ordinary man, according to Plutarch in Brutus 18; as a slave, the same writer says in Antony 13. Lepidus, the Master of the Horse, had a legion in Rome under his command; at night he occupied the Forum (Dio 44.22). Lepidus was in an unusual position, because, as Caesar’s deputy in the dictatorship, he had command of troops in Rome, unlike Antony, but the position of Master of the Horse ceased to exist when the dictatorship ended. With Julius Caesar dead, Lepidus had no official power, while Antony continued to have the legal imperium of a consul. Lepidus was also due to leave Rome before long for his provinces of Nearer Spain and Gallia

Narbonensis (the part of Transalpine Gaul that already belonged to Rome before Caesar’s conquests of the 50s1). Dio (44.34) claims that Lepidus, with troops behind him, wanted revolution, while Antony, who had no soldiers to call upon, was forced over the next few days to take a more moderate line and do deals with the conspirators. The claim that Lepidus was plotting violent disorder may come from propaganda against him after he later clashed with the future emperor Augustus, but it is true that there was an odd and unstable balance of power between the two men who were closest in political power to Caesar: Antony had the position, Lepidus had the soldiers. The conspirators, or ‘Liberators’ as they claimed to be, made their way

from Pompey’s Theatre to the Capitol, protected by gladiators and waving their daggers. As the bewildered people of Rome were running about, bolting themselves into their homes, climbing on to the roofs ready to fight, or taking the opportunity to do some looting, the conspirators shouted at them that liberty had been restored. They tried to remind the People of Brutus’ ancestor, who had driven out the last king of Rome. Some responded to the conspirators’ invitation to join them. One was Dolabella, the tribune of 47, who had fought on Caesar’s side in the Civil War and had been chosen by Caesar himself to take a suffect consulship when Caesar left Rome for Parthia. However, Dolabella had quarrelled with Antony, and Antony had used his authority as an augur to declare that he could not become consul because of bad omens. Dolabella needed support against Antony, and saw a chance to get it from the conspirators. Whatever Antony was expecting when he hid himself, he need not have

worried. Brutus had persuaded the conspirators not to kill Antony. He has been accused of being naive, but his policy was practical: with Caesarians in the most important magistracies and in charge of many provinces, and with all the troops and veterans who followed Caesar, the conspirators were in danger of instant destruction if they took on not just Caesar but all his supporters. The conspirators sent people to negotiate with Antony and Lepidus straight away. They do not seem to have had any plans: Plutarch (Brutus 18) says only

that after the death of Julius Caesar ‘it had been firmly decided … to summon all to the enjoyment of liberty’. The conspirators apparently did not understand it when the people did not immediately cheer their actions. This response can be viewed as showing a poor grasp of the political realities. While Caesar may not have been regarded by all the people as their hero and champion, a return to collective government by the Senate is likely to have had very little appeal to them. ‘Freedom’ for the Senators to compete for power meant pressure on the poor to vote for their patrons, and might well result in a return to the terrible violence of the 50s when Clodius and Milo’s gangs had roamed the streets. The senatorial government could not keep order, and it did not have the money to pay for the

running of the city, public buildings, or wages and pensions for those who became soldiers. Only the principes like Caesar had the resources and the power to do these things for the people. Brutus and his friends could or would not offer them any freedom that was meaningful to them. On the next day, 16 March, Brutus, encouraged by his supporters, came

down with other conspirators from the Capitol into the Forum. Brutus made a speech and the people listened in silence which, in Plutarch’s view ‘showed … that while they pitied Caesar, they respected Brutus’ (Caesar 67), but they may simply have been in shock. Or they may have been bored: Brutus had a cold and intellectual style of public speaking. Brutus later wrote the speech up and sent it to Cicero, who commented to Atticus (15.1a.2): ‘The speech is a most elegant composition … But if I had been handling the material I should have put more fire into it.’ The praetor Cinna, who was not a conspirator, also spoke at this meeting; he surprised the crowd by throwing off his toga praetexta, the symbol of his power, shouting that his praetorship was the gift of a tyrant (Appian 2.121). For this naked abuse of Caesar he was heckled angrily, and the conspirators were forced to run back to the Capitol. During the night, Caesar’s widow Calpurnia sent Caesar’s money and

papers over to Antony, and Antony issued an edict summoning the Senate to meet before dawn on the 17th. The conspirators themselves stayed away; Cinna came, but had to be saved from the anger of the citizens by Lepidus’ soldiers. The supporters of the conspirators, known as Republicans because

of their determination to avoid a monarchy, wanted Caesar declared a tyrant. This would result in his being denied public burial, his body being dragged to the Tiber, his will being declared invalid, his property confiscated and his laws being declared null and void. Antony reminded the senators that many of them owed their current positions, and some appointments already made for the future, to Caesar, and if his rule was going to be declared unconstitutional and his decisions invalid, they would have to resign their magistracies, provinces and army commands. Dolabella, who was probably older than twenty-five (as Appian claims in 2.129) but had certainly not reached forty-two, the legal minimum age for the consulship, was one of many who realised that they would lose office and had no chance of being re-elected to it because their appointments were irregular or because they did not have support in the assemblies. Antony had wisely decided to drop his objection to Dolabella’s consulship. Dolabella quickly changed his position, arguing against the Republicans. Antony then warned the Senators that to declare Caesar a tyrant and

annul his decisions would cause a breakdown of order throughout the Empire and lead to violence from the veterans. He proposed that all of Caesar’s laws should remain in force and that any measures which might be found among his papers which, it could be assumed, he had intended to

bring before the Senate, would also be made into law. However, Antony also proposed an amnesty: the conspirators’ lives should be spared and those who held magistracies should continue in office. Cicero spoke in this debate. The conspirators had not invited him to join

them, according to Plutarch (Cicero 42) because they did not trust him to have enough courage; however, Dio (44.20, 46.22) says that as they went through the Forum after the murder they were calling Cicero’s name. At any rate, he was known to support the conspirators; he now proposed to put Antony’s compromise to the vote, and it was carried. The resolutions of the Senate were read out to the people in the Forum.

Brutus, Cassius and the others on the Capitol were invited down, and the sons of Antony and Lepidus were sent up as hostages. The crowd demanded that the consuls Antony and Dolabella shake hands with the conspirators; Antony invited Cassius to his house. Lepidus invited Brutus: although the two men were now on opposite political sides there was a family friendship between them from the time when their fathers had revolted together against the Sullan settlement, and Lepidus’ wife, Junia, was Brutus’ half-sister. The dating of the reconciliation to 17 March comes from Plutarch

(Brutus 19). Appian (2.142) dates it to the morning of the reading of Caesar’s will in the Forum, but he has probably moved the events to make a dramatic contrast between this happy scene and the anger and violence that followed the reading of the will. On 18 March the Senate met again; this time, Brutus, Cassius and other

conspirators were present. The Senate gave thanks to Antony for preventing the outbreak of civil war, but also praised the conspirators. Antony and Piso, Caesar’s father-in-law, demanded a public reading of Caesar’s will and a public funeral. On 20 March the consuls summoned a meeting of the Assembly.

A number of foreigners were also in the Forum that morning. However, it would be naive to view what happened next as a spontaneous outpouring of love for Caesar from the people of Rome and the Empire. The Forum was filled with Caesar’s veterans, who were certainly upset by the murder of their old commander but who also wanted their needs to be met and were determined to make a show of strength. Caesar’s will was opened and read. He had left a great deal of money to

the people (300 sesterces to every adult male citizen in Rome), and his gardens were also given to the public. There was anger when people heard that Decimus Brutus, a supporter of Caesar in the civil war but later one of his murderers, had been named as an heir. Next, Caesar’s body was carried through the Forum, with the twenty-

three stab wounds visible, and laid upon the Rostra, and Antony started delivering the eulogy. According to Suetonius (84) he had a herald read out the oath that the whole Senate had sworn to keep Caesar safe, then added

‘a very few words’; even Cicero in his great attack on Antony in Philippics 2 (90-1), although he complains about Antony being overemotional, does not imply that the speech was very long. However, according to Plutarch (Antony 14), Appian (2.144-5) and Dio (44.36-49), he made an increasingly impassioned speech, then held up Caesar’s tunic, ripped and covered with blood, driving the crowd wild. We should treat this dramatic account of events from these later writers which, of course, inspired Shakespeare, with some caution: Antony probably did not yet feel secure enough of his support to risk such a grand gesture. Emotions, however, were clearly running high, and the people in the Forum snatched anything wooden that they could find and started a fire, cremating Caesar’s body on the spot. There was an unlucky man, a poetry-writing tribune and supporter of Caesar, who happened to be called Cinna; he went to see Caesar’s funeral to pay his respects and was mistaken for the praetor Cinna and killed by the crowd. Then people rushed to the conspirators’ houses with torches, to burn them, and tried without success to find and kill the conspirators themselves. The Senate later arrested the men who had attacked the conspirators’ houses, but they let those who had killed poor Cinna go free. Responding to the violence, they gave Antony a bodyguard, and he generously allowed the conspirators to have bodyguards too. In late March or early April provinces were assigned to the consuls.

Dolabella was given Syria, and with it the command of the war against Parthia that Caesar had planned. Antony got Macedonia, which gave him six crack legions that Caesar had gathered there for the war. Lepidus and Antony showed that they intended to work together: Antony married his daughter to Lepidus’ son and arranged to have Lepidus made pontifex maximus, giving the election to the colleges of priests instead of the People. Lepidus left Rome and went to his provinces. The conspirators did not give up trying to win support. They promised

that Caesar’s veterans would get the plots of land assigned to them, and that they would even allow them to sell the land, which Caesar had forbidden. At the same time they promised to pay compensation to anyone who was thrown off his land to make way for the veterans. They promised the soldiers and the people that they would not abolish any of Caesar’s laws or confiscate any property. But Cicero wrote on 11 April that they were ‘prisoners in their houses’ (ad Att. 14.5). A few days later, Brutus and Cassius and the other conspirators went to southern Latium; since Brutus and Cassius were praetors and magistrates were not normally allowed to be absent from the city, Antony arranged for the Senate to give them special permission to leave. Decimus Brutus also left, to be governor of Cisalpine Gaul with its three legions, an appointment made by Caesar. The conspirators were not the only ones to flee Rome: Cleopatra also decided that life was too uncertain in the city and had gone back to Egypt by the middle of April.