The career of Marcus Tullius Cicero had been a brilliant failure. A new man, he had risen to the consulship in 63 solely by virtue of his abilities as an administrator and (above all) as a public speaker. Following his exposure of Catilina’s conspiracy, he had been hailed as “father of the country” (pater patriae).
Justifiably proud of his achievement, Cicero could not stop telling everyone about it, even writing a bombastic epic about the rebirth of Rome during his year as consul.
This was not merely vanity. In the aristocratic cockpit that was Roman politics, Cicero could not boast a long line of noble ancestors, as his colleagues and competitors constantly did, and so had little choice but to bore on about his own astonishing career.
Although he could be tedious and long-winded, the orator was also famous as a wit; Julius Caesar made a point of collecting his bons mots. On one occasion, an ambassador from Laodicea in Cilicia (the southeastern coast of modern Turkey) told him that he would be asking Caesar for freedom for his city. Cicero replied: “If you are successful, put in a word for us at Rome too.”
His politics were moderate and conservative. A resolute civilian in a militaristic society where politicians doubled as generals, he promoted the rule of law. In his eyes, the Roman constitution was unimprovable, and he opposed risky radicals like Julius Caesar, though admiring his prose style and enjoying his company. He was dismayed by Caesar’s rise to power. The republican values for which he had campaigned all his life had been overthrown, and he was obliged to retire from active politics.
Cicero was too much of a gossip for the freedom fighters to trust him to hold his tongue, and so he was not let into the conspiracy against Caesar. However, he applauded the event. His only regret was that Mark Antony, whom he had long distrusted and disliked, had not been put to death as well as his master. “The Ides of March was a fine deed, but half done,” he commented ruefully.
Now in his sixty-third year, Cicero watched with dismay the unspooling of events during the spring and summer of 44. When he saw Antony shift position and come out against the Senate, he returned to frontline politics and delivered the first of a series of great oratorical attacks on Antony, which were soon nicknamed the Philippics after the speeches the Athenian orator Demosthenes made against Philip, king of Macedon in the fourth century B.C. Cicero soon dominated the Senate and became so influential that he was, in effect, the unofficial ruler of Rome.
At a meeting of the Senate on December 20, Cicero delivered his third Philippic, in which, to universal surprise, he went out of his way to shower Octavian with praise. He told the house:
Gaius Caesar is a young man, or almost a boy, but one of incredible and, so to speak, godlike intelligence and courage…. He recruited a very powerful force of invincible veterans and lavished his inheritance—no, lavished is not the right word, he invested it in the survival of the Republic.
There was no hesitation now to address Octavian as Caesar; even more remarkably, the great constitutionalist was complimenting a private citizen on his creation of a completely unauthorized army.
Addressing the Senate on January 1, 43 B.C., he returned to the theme of Octavian, “this heaven-sent youth.” Cicero put forward and carried a motion that Octavian be made a propraetor (a post usually held by a man who had already served as a praetor) and a member of the Senate.
The orator went on to claim that he had a unique insight into Octavian’s motives. “I promise, I undertake, I solemnly engage, that Gaius Caesar will always be such a citizen as he is today, and as we should especially wish and pray he should be.” In a word, he guaranteed the young man’s good behavior as a sincere supporter of the restored Republic.
What was going on? The dictator’s heir, who had sworn vengeance on his adoptive father’s murderers, is revealed as entering into an alliance with a man who rejoiced at the Ides of March.
It must have cost Octavian and his advisers, the financiers and political agents who had once worked for Julius Caesar and were now devoted to his adopted son’s cause, a great deal emotionally to discard their deepest ideals and join forces with republicans. But the discarding was only apparent; they were acting from necessity, not conviction.
Octavian’s position, after his failed coup in November, was perilously weak. How long, he must have asked himself, would his demoralized veterans stay with him? Mark Antony had already briskly outmaneuvered Decimus Brutus and bottled him up in the old Roman colony of Mutina (today’s Modena) in northern Italy. The new consuls, backed by the Senate, were raising legions with a view to relieving Decimus and putting an end to Antony’s ambitions.
From Cicero’s point of view, Octavian would reinforce the Senate’s new military strength by placing himself and his army at the Senate’s disposal, and thus would hasten the day when Antony could be challenged and eliminated. This was important, for dispatches from Decimus Brutus suggested that he was hanging on at Mutina only with difficulty. In the longer run, Cicero and his followers feared that at some stage Octavian would reconcile with Antony. The new entente made that a less likely prospect.
As for Octavian, he was no longer outside the law, for at one leap he had acquired a senior constitutional position. Above all, he had bought time. His soldiers will have been mystified, even perturbed, by the volte-face, but could see the advantage of their army being legitimized.
Neither side had any illusions about its sincerity; there was a good deal of playacting. Octavian used to call Cicero father, and was much too discreet to betray his real motives. The gossipy Cicero, on the other hand, could not keep his mouth shut. He joked about Octavian: “Laudandum adolescentem, ornandum, tollendum.” That is, the boy must be “praised, honoured—and raised up.” But tollendum was a pun, with the second meaning of “must be removed.” Someone was kind enough to pass the witticism to Octavian, who was unamused and almost certainly unsurprised.
In February, Octavian marched off to join forces with the new consul Hirtius, while the other consul, Pansa, stayed behind to recruit four new legions. The young propraetor probably commanded about two legions. In the last few months, he had had to learn fast the duties of a military commander. He had never witnessed a battle and had had little time for the military training that upper-class Romans were expected to undertake in their teens.
The legion, the standard army unit, was usually led by the commanding general’s deputy, a legatus, or legate. The legate also had at his disposal a number of military tribunes, staff officers recruited from upper-class families (unlike the civilian tribunes of the people).
Officially, a legion had a strength of between four thousand and six thousand men, although in practice it could be smaller (this was almost certainly the case with Octavian at Arretium). It was divided into ten cohorts, which were in turn subdivided into six centuries commanded by centurions; these junior officers were a legion’s backbone. The first cohort always stood in the front row at the right end of the line (the most honorable position) and was sometimes larger than the others.
Men signed up for at least six years’ service. Each legionary carried on his back a large quantity of equipment, weighing at least sixty-five pounds. This included sixteen days’ worth of rations, a cooking pot, tools for digging, two stakes for the camp palisade, two javelins to throw in battle, clothes, and any personal possessions. On the march, Roman soldiers resembled not the smart upright legionaries of Hollywood movies, but beasts of burden.