A long-term strategy for the Caesarians was not feasible; what was needed was a series of improvised tactics that made the most of any opportunity that presented itself. Consistency was irrelevant. The first tasks were to detach Antony from the Senate, discredit him in any way possible, and then replace him with Octavian as the leader of the Caesarian faction.
The weather had been terrible since the Ides of March. For much of 44, there was continuous gloom and a persistent rusty dry fog, and the sun was often invisible. This was probably the consequence of a major eruption of Mount Etna in Sicily; today’s scientists have identified acid snow from the period in the ice cores of Greenland. Years later, the poet Virgil recalled this time as one of “wars that grow in the dark like cancer.”
On the day in early May when Octavian entered Rome, stars could be seen in the daytime around a dim sun, looking like wreaths made from ears of wheat and rings of changing color. This was widely seen as a favorable omen, a prophecy of royalty.
Octavian’s most urgent task was to make his position official. The adoption had to be legally authorized by a lex curiata and he wanted to collect his legacy. He went straight to Antony to ask for the money. He found him in his garden house (hortus) on the edge of the Campus Martius.
After going to ground for some hours on the Ides of March, Antony in his capacity as Caesar’s fellow consul had persuaded Calpurnia to hand over to him all Caesar’s papers. He had also won control of Caesar’s financial resources. It was very likely that he had improperly salted away substantial sums of cash; the word was that, having been forty million sesterces in debt, he had suddenly become solvent.
From Antony’s point of view, the arrival of Caesar’s heir was an annoying distraction. He was an inexperienced teenager, “a boy,” Antony gibed, “who owes everything to his name.” Octavian was kept waiting in an anteroom and was admitted only after a long delay. Pleasantries were exchanged, and then he asked for Caesar’s money so that he could pay his legacies to the people.
Octavian’s request was awkward, and Antony angrily refused it. He said that he had found the state treasury empty and needed funds for the conduct of public business. He also made the technical point that the adoption was not yet official (later, he did his best to delay confirmation).
Octavian was furious, but there was little he could do to change the consul’s mind. However, even without access to Caesar’s estate, Octavian had large sums of money at his disposal. He is reported to have expropriated Caesar’s war chest for the Parthian expedition; while at Brundisium he may also have received, or seized, tax receipts from Asia on their way to the Roman treasury. Octavian decided to trump the consul. He announced that he would pay his adoptive father’s legacies out of his own pocket, even if Antony held back the moneys due. He also put up for sale all Caesar’s properties and estates.
A highly effective campaign of words was launched to discredit the consul further in the public mind. The aim was clever and twofold—first, to smear Antony before the people and the legions and, second, to break Antony’s concordat with the Senate by forcing him into a popularity contest for Caesarian support.
In accordance with a senatorial decree, Octavian planned to display at some games held in mid-May Caesar’s golden chair and a diadem (a white cloth strip worn around the head to denote royalty), which he had been offered and refused a few weeks before his death. The consul lost his temper and forbade it.
Octavian wandered around the city center, with a crowd of followers like a bodyguard, making speeches about the disgraceful treatment he was enduring. “Heap as many insults on me as you like, Antony, but stop plundering Caesar’s property until the citizens have received their legacy. Then you can take all the rest.” Antony was furious and responded with threats.
At this point the consul’s officers intervened and forced a reconciliation. They loved Caesar’s memory and, equally loyal to his trusted friend and his adopted son, refused to fight for either against the other.
Antony was compelled to reassess his situation; although he still saw the “boy” as little more than a nuisance, Octavian had destabilized the situation. In order to stay on terms with his soldiers, Antony abandoned his statesmanlike compromise with the Senate, with which his relations had deteriorated sadly. Cicero, who thought him an unreliable drunkard and a political gambler (aleator, “dice thrower”), suspected his good faith and was stirring up opinion against him among republicans. Antony needed to secure his personal safety and to continue to dominate the political scene in Rome.
When his consulship came to an end in December, he was due to become governor of Macedonia—a little far away if trouble were to threaten him in the capital. So he exchanged the post for a five-year term in Cisalpine Gaul. From that vantage point he could overawe the capital, and if need be intervene directly, as Caesar had done in 49. It did not matter that a governor had been selected who was already in possession of the province. This was Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, a distant relative of Marcus Brutus. A onetime follower of Julius Caesar, he had lost confidence in the dictator and taken part in the assassination on the Ides of March. Antony planned to transfer the army in Macedonia to Italy and lead it northward. He would make short work of the interloper.
In an attempt to weaken the republican cause, Antony initiated measures to persuade Brutus and Cassius to get out of Italy. To begin with, they were offered insulting proconsular posts: responsibility for the collection of grain in Sicily and Asia. “Could anything be more humiliating?” complained Cicero. The appointments were later upgraded, to the governorships of the politically and militarily harmless provinces of Crete and Cyrenaica. Brutus settled in Athens to wait on events, and in the meantime he pursued philosophical studies. Cassius eventually went to the east, whence little was heard of him for a while.
Now that Antony’s position was secure, Octavian was the odd man out in the great political game. He held no official post and controlled no army. If he was not careful he would be finessed into insignificance. In the first place, he had to keep open his lines of communication with the Senate. He spent a lot of energy flattering Cicero, whose suspicions of him were partially alleviated. The elder statesman wrote to a friend on June 10:
Octavian…does not lack intelligence or spirit, and he gave the impression that his attitude towards our heroes [the freedom fighters] were such as we would wish. But how much faith to put in one of his years and heredity and education—that’s a great question…still he is to be encouraged and, if nothing else, kept apart from Antony.
Octavian staged Caesar’s annual Victory Games in July, the month that had been renamed in the dictator’s honor. Determined to make his presence felt at Rome, he spared no expense, and the festival was a splendid affair.
The skies produced another auspicious omen to match that on Octavian’s arrival in Rome. He recalled the occasion in his autobiography:
On the very day of my games a comet was visible for seven days in the northern part of the sky…. The common people believed that this star signified the soul of Caesarreceived among the spirits of the immortal gods, and for this reason the emblem of a star was fixed to the bust of Caesar that we shortly afterwards dedicated in the Forum.