As a new man, Octavius knew that his dubious ancestry would damage his career. A commodious dowry would be of value in a wife, but what he really needed was entrée into the Roman nobility. As a niece of Julius Caesar, Balbus’ daughter Atia was well placed to make that possible. Because the Balbi lived not far from Octavius’ home base of Velitrae, they may well have traveled in the same social circles. In that case, Atia formed an ambitious man’s bridge from provincial life to Rome.
Sometime before 70 B.C., the couple married and, in due course, Atia became pregnant. Disappointingly, the outcome was a second daughter. Five or six years passed before another child arrived: a son, this time, Gaius. He was born just before sunrise on September 23, 63 B.C., at Ox Heads, a small property on the slopes of the fashionable Palatine Hill, a few minutes’ walk from Rome’s main square, the Forum, and the Senate House.
By tradition, the paterfamilias held the power of life and death over his household, both his relatives and his slaves. When a child was born, the midwife took the infant and placed it on the floor in front of the father. Should the father wish to acknowledge his paternity, he would lift the baby into his arms if it was a boy; if a girl, he would simply instruct that she be fed. Only after this ritual had taken place did the child receive his or her first nourishment.
Apparently, Gaius was lucky to survive this procedure, for an astrologer had given him a bad prognosis and he narrowly escaped infanticide. If Gaius had been rejected, he would have been abandoned in the open air and left to die; this was a fate to which illegitimate children and girls were especially liable, as were (one may surmise) sickly or disabled babies. Rejected infants were left on dunghills, or near cisterns. They were often picked up there by slave traders (although the family might reclaim the child later, if it so wished) or, more rarely, rescued by a kindly passerby. Otherwise, they would starve, unless eaten by stray dogs.
Rome, with about a million inhabitants, was an unhygienic, noisy, crowded megalopolis, no place for rearing a child, and there is evidence that Gaius spent much of his infancy at his grandfather’s country house near Velitrae. More than a century later, Suetonius reported that the house still existed and was open to the public: “a small room, not unlike a butler’s pantry, is still shown and described as [his] nursery.”
Helped by the link, through Atia, to Julius Caesar, Octavius’ political career was advancing rapidly. After serving as quaestor, he could move up to the next rung, as one of the four aediles. The aedileship being optional, it is not known whether Octavius held this office, but he could probably have afforded it.
At the age of thirty-nine, Octavius was eligible to run for praetor. According to Velleius Paterculus, he was regarded as “a dignified person, of upright and blameless life, and [was] extremely rich.” In the praetorian election for 61 B.C., he came in first even though he was running against a number of aristocratic competitors.
The two-year-old Gaius would have seen little of his father, who spent a year in Rome discharging his judicial duties as praetor. Then, as was usual for senior government officials after their period of office, at the end of 61 B.C. Octavius went overseas for a twelve-month stint as governor, or propraetor, of the province of Macedonia.
Octavius was due to sail from Brundisium, a major port on the heel of Italy, but before he did so, the Senate asked him to make a detour to the town of Thurii on the toe and disperse a group of outlawed slaves.
More than ten years previously, these men had joined the great slave revolt of Spartacus, following him during the years when he won one victory after another over incompetently led Roman legions. They managed to avoid the terrible penalty exacted on the survivors of Spartacus’ final defeat: thousands were crucified along the length of the road from Rome to Capua, where the rebellion had started at a school for slave gladiators.
Somehow the escapees managed to keep going as a group, reemerging briefly to join the forces of Lucius Sergius Catilina. In the year of Gaius’ birth, this dissident aristocrat had plotted the violent overthrow of the Republic and its replacement by a regime of radicals which he would lead. The alert consul, Marcus Tullius Cicero, was a new man like Octavius; a fine public speaker and an able and honest administrator, he outwitted the conspirator and finessed him into a botched military insurrection.
The Romans depended on, but also feared, the hundreds of thousands of slaves who in large part ran their economy, providing labor for agricultural estates and manufacturing businesses. Slaves could also be found in every reasonably well-off home, cooking, cleaning, acting as secretaries and managers. If they were young and good-looking, slaves of either sex could well find themselves providing sexual services.
A slave was something one could own, like a horse or a table. In the Roman view, he or she was “a talking instrument.” Slaves could not marry, although they could make and save money and could receive legacies. If a master was murdered by a slave, all the slaves in his ownership were killed. It was believed that a slave could give true evidence only under torture. Perhaps a third of the population of Italy were slaves in the late Republic—as many as three million people.
For Octavius, dealing with the surviving Spartacans was an important task. They did not pose a great threat in themselves; it was the principle that counted. No rebellious runaway should be allowed to enjoy the fruits of his illicit freedom.
As a victorious general, Octavius could acquire an honorific and hereditary title and it seems that he added Thurinus to his name to mark his defeat of the slaves, passing it on to his infant son. Suetonius, writing in the first century B.C., asserted:
I can prove pretty conclusively that as a child [Gaius] was called Thurinus, perhaps…because his father had defeated the slaves in that neighborhood soon after he was born; my evidence is a bronze statuette which I once owned. It shows him as a boy, and a rusty, almost illegible inscription in iron letters gives him this name.
The truth is that Octavius was making himself slightly ridiculous, for the defeat of slaves conferred no great honor on the victor. In adult life his son was often insultingly referred to as the Thurian.
The new governor of Macedonia administered his province “justly and courageously” and won a high reputation in leading circles in Rome. It was clear to all that, despite his provincial origins, Octavius was well qualified for the top job in Roman politics, the consulship. But in 58 B.C., when he must have been only in his mid-forties, he died unexpectedly en route from Brundisium to Rome, before he had a chance to launch his candidacy.
It is not known what killed Octavius. An accident of some kind is a possibility, although one would suppose that the ancient sources would have mentioned that. He died in his bedroom at a country villa belonging to the family that stood on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius—a fact that suggests illness.
Most probably, he fell victim to one of the many health hazards in the Roman world. One of these was food poisoning; stomach upset was among the most common recorded complaints, and analysis of Roman sewage deposits suggests that certain intestinal parasites were often endemic, borne by bad fish and meat, among other sources. Despite the growing availability of fresh water brought in through aqueducts, standards of sanitation for most people were low, although the rich were able to afford separate kitchens, underfloor heating, domestic bathhouses, and private latrines. Few understood that human waste matter could spread disease. Oil lamps and open hearths or braziers generated irritant smoke, which caused and spread respiratory infections. Epidemics of all kinds regularly swept through Rome as a result of overcrowding and the fact that the capital of a great empire witnessed a continual influx of visitors, traders, and returning government officials and soldiers.