The march on Rome turned out to be the fiasco Cicero had feared. Undeterred by the absence of Senators, Octavian met the General Assembly and delivered an uncompromisingly anti-Republican speech. He gestured towards a statue of Caesar and swore under oath his determination to win his father’s honors and status. But Antony was fast approaching and Octavian’s troops made it clear they would not fight against him. Many deserted. His hopes dashed, he withdrew north to Arretium.
The setback was only temporary. Antony arrived in the city “in battle array” and, just as Octavian had done a few days earlier, illegally introduced troops inside the pomoerium. He called a Senate meeting for November 24, with the intention of charging Octavian with treason. However, for some reason the session was postponed. According to Cicero, Antony was drunk: “He was detained by a drinking bout and a feast—if you can call a blowout in a public house a feast.” A more plausible explanation was that one of his legions had mutinied and transferred its allegiance to Octavian. AS soon as he heard the news, the Consul rushed from Rome to confront the mutineers at a town named Alba Fucens; they would not listen to him and shot at him from the walls. Doubtless drawing on Caesar’s hijacked fortune, Antony arranged a donation of 2,000 sesterces for every soldier to calm his remaining legions. He then returned to the city and reconvened the Senate, which met (against convention) by night at the Capitol.
A former Consul had been primed with a motion declaring Octavian a public enemy, but now Antony faced another disaster. The Fourth Legion also changed sides. The balance of power was shifting and Antony could no longer depend on a favorable vote in the Senate; even if he could win a majority, a Tribune would probably veto the bill. Some hurried business was pushed through: Brutus and Cassius had their latest provinces withdrawn again; a vote was passed to compliment Antony’s ally Lepidus for coming to terms with Sextus Pompey, the Republic’s standard-bearer in Spain; and Macedonia was allotted to Antony’s brother, Caius.
After a military review the following day the Consul, who had been given a bad fright, left Rome and marched north. He still had four legions at his disposal. If he could have had his way, he would doubtless have preferred to finish off Octavian and encamped at Arretium, but he knew that his men would not have followed him. However, they were more than happy to fight any of Julius Caesar’s assassins, so Antony led them to Mutina and Decimus Brutus. With the onset of winter no immediate developments were expected.
On December 9 Cicero at last made his way back to Rome from the country. Before setting off, he gave Atticus a summary of the political situation as he saw it. He was still cautious about Octavian, especially after receiving a copy of the speech he had given to the General Assembly on November 12.
The boy is taking the steam out of Antony neatly enough for the moment, but we had best wait and see the issue. But what a speech—a copy was sent to me. Swears “by his hopes of rising to his father’s honors,” stretching his hand out towards the statue! Sooner destruction than this kind of a rescuer! But, as you say, the clearest test will be our friend Casca’s Tribuneship. [Casca, one of the conspirators, was due to take up office on December 10 and Octavian’s behavior towards him would be a test of his sincerity.] I told Oppius on that very subject, when he was pressing me to embrace the young man, not to mention his whole movement and band of veterans, that I could do nothing of the kind unless I was sure that he would be not only no enemy but a friend to the tyrannicides.
At this point the correspondence with Atticus closes. We do not know why. Atticus may have been in Rome for the rest or most of the rest of Cicero’s life and so there would have been no need to write; alternatively the correspondence may in fact have continued but have been judged to be too controversial for publication and thus suppressed. AS Emperor years later, Octavian may not have relished his maneuverings as Julius Caesar’s heir being exposed to the public gaze.
In the absence of both Consuls (Dolabella had already left Rome for Asia, his province) a Tribune called a meeting of the Senate for December 20 to approve the appointment of an armed guard for the new Consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, when they took up office on January 1. At first Cicero had not intended to be present, but, having read an edict by Decimus Brutus warning Antony to stay away from his province and announcing his allegiance to the Senate, he let it be known he would be there. He had encouraged Decimus Brutus to make a stand and, now that he was doing so, was determined to help him in any way he could.
There was no time to be lost. The Consul was moving as fast as he could to take over Italian Gaul before his successors could repudiate the legality of the law that had given him the province. He does not appear to have been acting unconstitutionally. After all, Decimus Brutus was soon due to hand over his powers to his successor. It should also be remembered that Antony (with his ally Dolabella) was head of the government with supreme executive powers. By the admittedly loose standards of the time he was within his rights to act as he did.
Cicero opened the debate at an unusually well-attended meeting with a powerful address, his third Philippic. He sought to demonstrate that Antony was an enemy of the state (arguably a treasonable assertion, bearing in mind that he was still Consul, if only for a few more days). He also argued that Octavian’s position as the leader of a private army should be regularized. For the first time he referred to the young man not as Octavian but by his new patronymic. “Caesar on his own initiative—he had no alternative—has liberated the Republic.” It sounded very much as if Cicero, despite all his misgivings, had at last decided to yield to the young man’s advances and strike a deal.
The Senate accepted most of Cicero’s advice but not all. It agreed that Antony was engaging in civil war but refused to outlaw him. It recognized Caesar and his army and confirmed all provincial governors in their posts until further notice, thereby overriding the following year’s appointments.
In his speech Cicero made a passing reference to young Quintus. He had definitively broken with Antony, who accused him of plotting his father’s and uncle’s deaths. Cicero commented: “What amazing impudence, presumption and bravado! To dare to write this about a young man whose sweetness and excellence of character make my brother and me rivals in our love for him.” The charge was routine slander and not to be taken seriously—but those who were aware of the dissensions inside the Cicero family will have smiled at this description of the orator’s unreliable nephew.
Aware of the need to secure public opinion for the Republican side, Cicero made a point throughout this period of guiding the People through complex and confusing developments. Once the Senate meeting was over, he went on to give a rousing address (the fourth Philippic) to a packed General Assembly in the Forum, in which he said: “We have for the first time and after a long interval, on my advice and by my initiative, been fired by the hope of freedom.” He compared Antony to Spartacus and, interestingly, to Catilina. AS Consul in 63, Cicero had had Catilina condemned for raising a private army, but now he was using all his powers of persuasion to have a legally appointed Consul declared a public enemy and a freebooting young privateer its savior. The lifelong conservative was standing his convictions on their head. He did not notice the contradiction, or if he did thought it a matter of no consequence.
To the conspirator Trebonius, now in Asia as its governor, he wrote: “I did not mince my words, and, more by willpower than by oratorical skill, I recalled the weak and weary Senate to its old, traditional vigor. That day, my energy and the course I took, brought to the Roman People the first hope of recovering their freedom.”