This, of course, was precisely the kind of indiscreet witticism that had landed Cicero in hot water in the past. The joke spread like wildfire, and, inevitably, Octavian got to hear of it too. Cicero, however, could afford to shrug off the embarrassment. After all, Octavian was only one part of the coalition that he had patched together, nor even the most significant part of it. In April 43 BC the two consuls of the Roman people, Aulus Hirtius and Vibius Pansa, finally advanced against Antony. Octavian, with two legions, marched as their lieutenant. In two successive battles Antony was defeated and forced to withdraw across the Alps. News of the double victory, when it was brought to a waiting Rome, appeared the ultimate vindication of Cicero’s high-risk, high-stakes policy. Cicero himself, as he had been in the year of his consulship, was hailed as the saviour of his country. Antony was officially pronounced a public enemy. The Republic appeared to have been saved.
Then fresh messengers arrived in Rome bringing cruel and bitter news. The two consuls were both dead, one in battle, the other of wounds. Octavian, unsurprisingly, was refusing any form of rapprochement with Decimus Brutus. Antony, in the confusion, had got clean away. He was now marching along the coast beyond the Alps, into the province of another of Caesar’s lieutenants, Marcus Lepidus. The army of the ‘Master of Horse’, seven legions strong, was formidable, and its loyalties, as Antony drew ever nearer to it, had suddenly become an issue of desperate, even decisive, concern. In letters to the Senate, Lepidus reassured its leaders of his continued allegiance – but his men, seasoned Caesarians all, were already making up his mind for him the other way. On 30 May, days of fraternisation between the armies of Antony and Lepidus climaxed in a formal compact between their two generals and the union of their forces. Decimus Brutus, hopelessly outnumbered, attempted to flee but was betrayed by a Gallic chieftain and killed. The armies of the Senate, with baffling speed, had melted away utterly. Antony, on the run only a few weeks previously, had emerged stronger than ever. Now, it was only the young Caesar who stood between him and a march on Rome.
Which way would Octavian turn? The capital swarmed with rumours, and sweated on the answer. It would not be long in coming. In late July a centurion from Octavian’s army suddenly appeared in the Senate House. From the assembled gathering he demanded the consulship, still vacant, for his general. The Senate refused. The centurion brushed back his cloak and laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘If you do not make him consul,’ he warned, ‘then this will.’14 And so it happened. Once again a Caesar crossed the Rubicon. By now Octavian’s army numbered eight legions, and there was no one to oppose him. Cicero, sick at the ruinous end of all his hopes, trudged out with the rest of the Senate to welcome the conqueror. Desperately, he spun new proposals to Octavian, new plans. ‘Octavian, however, made no answer, save for the mocking reply that Cicero had been the last of his friends to come and greet him.’15
Permitted – or ordered – to leave Rome, the orator retreated to his favourite country villa. The building work on it had been completed, but there could be no more repairs to its owner’s ruined career. It was over – and with it, much else besides. Cicero followed his protégé’s progress with mute despair. On 19 August Octavian, still not yet twenty, was formally elected consul. Then, having secured the condemnation of Caesar’s assassins as traitors, he left Rome and marched northwards, straight towards the advancing army of Antony and Lepidus. Between the rival Caesarian leaders, unchallenged masters now of the entire Western empire, there was to be no war. Instead, on an island in a river near Medina, with their armies lined up on either bank, Antony and Octavian met, embraced and kissed each other’s cheek. Then, along with Lepidus, they settled down to carve up the world and pronounce the Republic dead.
Naturally, they disguised their purpose with specious and familiar words. They claimed not to be pronouncing the obituary of the Republic but setting it back in order. In truth, they were executing it. As a result of the island conference it was agreed that a triumvirate should be established, but not a loose and shifting alliance as had been established between Pompey, Caesar and Crassus. This time it would be formally constituted and endowed with ferocious powers. For five years the triumvirs were to exercise proconsular authority over the entire empire. They were to have the right to pass or annul laws as they pleased, without reference to the Senate or the Roman people. Martial law was extended into the sacred space of Rome herself. This, after more than four hundred years of Roman freedom, was effectively the end.
And the Republic’s quietus, fittingly, was sealed and signed with blood. The triumvirs, pronouncing their dead leader’s policy of clemency a failure, looked back instead to an earlier dictator for inspiration. The return of proscription lists was foreshadowed in Rome by grim and unmistakable portents: dogs howled like wolves, and wolves were seen running through the Forum; in the sky loud shouts were heard, along with the clash of weapons and the pounding of unseen hooves. The lists went up within days of the triumvirs’ entry into the city. Ruthless bargaining among the three men had determined whose names would appear on them. One factor more than any other had influenced their decisions: with more than sixty legions needing to be paid, the triumvirate was in desperate need of funds. As a result, the fruit of riches, as it had been under Sulla, became death. Even an exile such as Verres, enjoying his ill-gotten gains in sun-soaked exile, was proscribed – killed, it was said, for his ‘Corinthian bronzes’.16 Some were murdered for factional reasons – to remove potential adversaries of the new regime – and others were victims of personal enmities and feuds. Most chillingly of all, as proof of their commitment to the triumvirate, Antony, Lepidus and Octavian had each sacrificed a man they might otherwise have felt obliged to save. So it was that Antony had agreed to the proscription of his uncle and Lepidus his brother. Octavian, meanwhile, had put down the name of the man he had once called ‘Father’.
Even so, Cicero could have escaped. News of his proscription reached him well in advance of the bounty-hunters. Typically, however, he panicked and vacillated over what to do. Rather than setting sail to join Brutus and Cassius, who were even then recruiting a massive army of liberation in the East, he instead flitted despairingly from villa to villa, haunted, as he had been for so long, by the shadow of exile. After all, as Cato had taught him, there were nightmares worse than death. Trapped by his executioners at last, Cicero leaned out from his litter and bared his throat to the sword. This was the gesture of a gladiator, and one he had always admired. Defeated in the greatest and deadliest of all games, he unflinchingly accepted his fate. He died as he would surely have wished: bravely, a martyr to freedom and to freedom of speech.
Even his enemies knew that. When his severed head and hands were delivered by the bounty-hunters, Fulvia, Clodius’ widow and now Antony’s wife, hurried to gloat. Picking up the grisly souvenirs, she spat on Cicero’s head, then yanked out his tongue and stabbed it with a hairpin. Only when she had finished mutilating it was she willing to have the head exposed to the public. The hand that had written the great speeches against Antony was nailed up too. Silenced and pin-pricked as it was, exposed to the gaze of the Roman people, the tongue was eloquent still. Cicero had been the incomparable political orator of the Republic – and now the age of oratory and free politics was dead.