The campaign began in the early spring of 40. Labienus - now styling himself Q. LABIENUS PARTHICUS IMPERATOR45 - and Pacorus swiftly overran Syria: it had fallen before Antony could even reach Tyre, then he anyway found it necessary to sail west to Italy. The Parthian successes continued. Pacorus took Palestine, and installed the pretender Antigonus on the throne; Phasael was taken captive, then contrived to kill himself; Herod fled to Rome. Meanwhile Labienus swept through Cilicia and onward to the Ionian coast. The Carian cities of Alabanda and Mylasa fell to him, and Stratoniceia and Aphrodisias clearly suffered terribly;46 so perhaps did Miletus;47 Lydia too was overrun.48 Labienus met no effective resistance till 39, and by then northern Asia Minor had also felt his power; his agents were raising money even from Bithynia.49
And Antony could do nothing about it; for by now the news from Italy was even more alarming.
iv. perusia, 4i-4o b.c.
Even before Philippi, eighteen Italian cities had been marked down to provide land for the triumvirs' veterans; and it fell to Octavian to organize the settlement. It was a hateful task, involving widespread confiscation and intense misery for the dispossessed, who received no compensation: a hideous climax to a half-century of rural violence and horror. Virgil's Eclogues, especially the first and ninth, leave a moving imprint of a small farmer's suffering. But the tiniest holdings were eventually exempted, and so, often, were the largest: in particular, senators' estates were excluded; and, as in most of the cities some veteres possessores managed to hold on to their property, one may assume that the most influential local citizens often secured exemption. That left a great range of the middling well-off who were dispossessed, some who farmed at not much more than subsistence level, others who were quite wealthy people with slaves and fine villas. Their holdings were replaced by the standardized chequer-boards of the new allotments, usually it seems of up to 50 iugera for an ordinary soldier and perhaps 100 iugera or more for an officer. Eighteen cities turned out to be too few, and perhaps as many as forty were eventually involved. The most usual method was to extend the confiscations into the territory of a neighbouring town, as, famously, into Virgil's Mantua when nearby Cremona could offer too little land: 'Mantua, vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae'.[20]
It all came at a time when Italy was anyway torn by famine, as Sextus grew stronger and his fleet prevented the vital corn-ships from coming to port. (Ahenobarbus' and Murcus' ships were doing the same, though still acting independently of Sextus.) Unsurprisingly there were violent protests, from landowners, from the magnates in the country-towns, from the urban plebs, even from the veterans themselves: they were becoming anxious at the slow pace of the settlement, and also concerned to protect the holdings of their own families and those of their dead comrades. There was soon rioting throughout Italy, with clashes between the new colonists and those they threatened; armed bands were roving the countryside. It was to take years for the disorder to settle.51 Antony's brother L. Antonius was consul in 41, and far from helping Octavian he served as a rallying-point for the discontented. Initially he was perhaps opposed by Antony's wife Fulvia,[21] but she soon lent her full support. To the dispossessed they urged resistance in the name of liberty and the established laws.[22] Perhaps we need not take their own commitment to freedom too seriously,[23] but it is interesting that they thought the slogans worth airing; and, indeed, old republicans were regularly to find Antony's cause more appealing than Octavian's.55 The veterans were encouraged to believe that all would be well once Antony returned: their debt of duty to the great man became another slogan. L. Antonius even, rather absurdly, took the cognomen Pietas.[24] There were charges, too, that Octavian was favouring his own veterans above Antony's in the distributions, and demands that the Antonian settlements should be supervised by Antony's own partisans.[25] The charges seem to have been conspicuously untrue: the Antonian colonies turned out to be the more numerous and the more strategically based.[26] But Octavian still felt it best to accede to the demand for Antonian commissioners, whatever might have been said at Philippi about his freedom to organize the settlement as he chose. That agreement of Philippi was indeed looking increasingly frail. The other Antonian marshals were less blatant than the consul Antonius, but they too were adding to the tension. Calenus never gave the promised two legions; Pollio blocked the route of Salvidienus Rufus as he tried to march with six legions to Spain.
At first Antony, far off in the East, thought it best to send no clear response, though he certainly knew what was going on. Everyone made sure of that, with Octavian sending confidential messengers and the colonies too taking care that their plight was known.[27] He had probably not planned or encouraged the troubles himself: it was a nice judgment whether he really stood to gain more than lose by the exchanges. Now he might naturally relish Octavian's embarrassment, but he could hardly come out openly against him; Octavian after all was merely pursuing his part of a shared bargain. Besides, Antony could not let his own veterans down, or allow Octavian to win more of their gratitude. He might need them again soon. A studied vagueness about his own views would indeed make sense, allowing him to exploit the outcome whichever way it went: there were times in antiquity when the slowness and unreliability of communications could be useful. But the consequences were very unfortunate. Unsure of his wishes, confused by various reports and missives,60 his supporters in Italy were bewildered. Just as on several occasions in 44 and 4 j, army officers and the veterans themselves pressed for a compromise,61 and so did two senatorial embassies to L. Antonius; but in the summer of 41 it came to war.
L. Antonius occupied Rome with an army, then marched north, hoping to link with Pollio and Ventidius. Operations in Etruria were complex and confused, but in the autumn L. Antonius was forced into Perusia and besieged by Octavian, Agrippa and Salvidienus Rufus. Still unsure of Antony's wishes, Pollio and Ventidius decided not to intervene. Plancus, arriving from the south, made the same choice. That made thirteen Antonian legions which stood by, inactive; L. Antonius himself had no more than eight.62 The siege wore on, bitterly. Both sides occupied idle moments by adding obscene graffiti to their sling-bullets, musing on Antonius' baldness, Octavian's backside, and Fulvia's private parts; Octavian himself wrote some peculiarly rude elegiacs at Fulvia's expense.63 The city eventually fell, amid scenes of dreadful bloodshed, in the early spring of 40. L. Antonius' veterans were spared: interestingly, their old comrades on Octavian's side interceded for them.64 Antonius himself was received honourably by Octavian, and indeed was sent to govern Spain (he died soon afterwards). Fulvia was allowed to flee to Athens. The ordinary dwellers of Perusia were not so fortunate. All the town-councillors except one were killed. Octavian's enemies soon elaborated the story, with talk of a human sacrifice of 300 senators and knights at the altar of Divus lulius\bb but the unembroidered truth was horrifying enough. The city itself was given over to Octavian's troops to plunder, and it burnt to the ground. A few years later the Umbrian Propertius chose to conclude his first book of witty love elegies with a disquieting and unexpected coda, two short stark poems on the suffering of the Perusine war (1.21, 22).