That isn’t going to happen, Antonius, Maecenas thought to himself. I’ve whetted your appetite by producing sums that a glutton like you can’t resist. By the time you come to Tarentum, you will have realized how enormous the carcass is, and you’ll want the lion’s share. Born in the month of Sextilis, the Lion. Whereas Caesar is a cusp child, half the cool, meticulous Virgin, half the balance of the Scales. Your Mars is in the Lion too, but Caesar’s Mars is in a far stronger constellation, the Scorpion. And his Jupiter is in the Sea Goat together with his ascendant. Riches and success. Yes, I chose the right master. But then, I have the Scorpion’s shrewdness and the ambivalence of the Fishes.
“Is that agreeable?” Antony rapped, apparently a repetition.
Jerked out of his astrological analysis, Maecenas started, then nodded. “Yes. Tarentum on the Nones of April.”
“He took the bait,” Maecenas informed Octavian, Livia Drusilla, and Agrippa when he arrived back in Rome just in time for the New Year and Agrippa’s inauguration as senior consul.
“I knew he would,” Octavian said smugly.
“How long have you had that bait tucked in the sinus of your toga, Caesar?” Agrippa asked.
“From the very beginning, before I was Triumvir. It is just a matter of adding each year to the earlier ones.”
“Atticus, Oppius, and the Balbi have indicated that they’ll be willing to lend again to buy the next harvest,” Livia Drusilla said, smiling rather venomously. “While you were away, Maecenas, Agrippa took them to see Portus Julius. They are beginning at last to believe that we will defeat Sextus.”
“Well, they can tot up figures better than Caesar,” Maecenas said. “They know now their money is safe.”
Agrippa’s inauguration went smoothly. Octavian watched the night skies with him during his vigil, and his perfect white bull accepted the hammer and the knife of popa and cultrarius so calmly that the watching senators suppressed twinges of apprehension—a year of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa was a year too many. Since Gaius Caninius Gallus’s white bull eluded the hammer and almost bolted before the stunning blow was finally administered, it didn’t seem likely that Caninius would have the mettle to deal with this low-born, vulgar fellow.
Rome still rioted, but it was a hard winter; the Tiber froze, snow fell and didn’t melt, a perishing north wind blew incessantly. None of which encouraged huge crowds in the Forum and squares, all of which permitted Octavian to venture from behind his walls, though Agrippa forbade him to tear them down. In the end state grain sold for forty sesterces the modius—thanks to the plutocrat loans and a shocking interest bill—and Agrippa’s increased activity on Portus Julius meant work was available for any man willing to quit Rome for Campania. The crisis wasn’t over, but it had lessened.
Octavian’s agents began to talk about the conference to be held at Tarentum on the Nones of April, and to predict that Sextus’s days were numbered. The good times would return, they hymned.
This time Octavian wouldn’t be late; he and his wife arrived in Tarentum well before the Nones, together with Maecenas and his brother-in-law, Varro Murena. Wanting the conference to have the air of a fete, Octavian decorated the port city with wreaths and garlands, hired every mummer, magician, acrobat, musician, freak, and specialty act Italy could produce, and erected a wooden theater for the staging of mimes and farces, the favorite fare of ordinary people. The great Marcus Antonius was coming to revel with Caesar Divi Filius! Even had Tarentum suffered at Antony’s hands in the past—it had not—all resentments would have been forgotten. A festival of spring and prosperity, that was how the people saw it.
When Antony sailed in the day before the Nones, all Tarentum was lined up along the waterfront, cheering wildly, especially when the people realized that he had brought the hundred and twenty warships of his Athenian fleet with him.
“Wonderful, aren’t they?” Octavian asked Agrippa as they stood at the harbor mouth looking for the flagship, which hadn’t come in first. “I count four admirals so far, but no Antonius. He must be wagging his tail in the rear. That’s Ahenobarbus’s standard—a black boar.”
“Apt,” said Agrippa, more interested in the ships. “Every one of them is a decked five, Caesar. Bronze beaks, many double, plenty of room for artillery and marines. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a fleet like this!”
“My agents assure me he has more at Thasos, Ambracia, and Lesbos. Still in good condition, but in five years they won’t be. Ah, here comes Antonius!”
Octavian pointed at a magnificent galley with a high poop to allow a roomy cabin beneath it, its deck bristling with catapults. His standard was a gold lion on a scarlet background, mouth open in a roar, black mane, a black-tipped tail. “Apt,” Octavian said.
They began to walk back in the direction of the jetty chosen to receive the flagship, which the pilot was directing in a rowboat. No hurry; they would beat it easily.
“You must have your own standard, Agrippa,” Octavian said as he inspected the town spread around the shores, its houses white, its public buildings painted in bright colors, the umbrella pines and poplars in its squares strung with lanterns and bunting.
“I suppose I should,” Agrippa said, taken aback. “What do you recommend, Caesar?”
“A pale blue background with the word FIDES written large in crimson,” Octavian said immediately.
“And your naval standard, Caesar?”
“I won’t have one. I’ll fly SPQR in a laurel wreath.”
“What about admirals like Taurus and Cornificius?”
“They’ll fly Rome’s SPQR, like me. Yours will be the only personal standard, Agrippa. A mark of distinction. It’s you will win for us against Sextus, I know it in my bones.”
“At least his ships can’t be mistaken, flying crossed bones.”
“Distinctive” was Octavian’s reply. “Oh, what wretch did that? Shameful!”
He referred to the red carpet that some official belonging to the duumviri had laid down the full length of the jetty, a sign of kingliness that horrified Octavian. But no one else seemed perturbed; it was the scarlet of a general, not the purple of a king. And there he was, jumping from the ship to the red matting, looking as fit and healthy as ever. Octavian and Agrippa waited together under the awning at the base of the jetty, with Caninius, the junior consul, one pace behind, and behind him, seven hundred senators, all Mark Antony’s men. The duumviri and other officials of the city had to be content with a position farther back still.
Of course Antony wore his gold dress armor; a toga didn’t sit well on his bulk, made him look overweight. An equally muscular man, though more slender, Agrippa didn’t care how he looked, so wore his purple-bordered toga. He and Octavian came forward to greet Antony, Octavian seeming a frail and delicate child between those two splendid warriors. Yet it was Octavian who dominated, perhaps because of that, perhaps because of his beauty, his thick thatch of bright golden hair. In this southern Italian town where Greeks had settled centuries before the first Romans penetrated the peninsula, bright gold hair was a rarity, and much admired.
It is done! Octavian thought. I’ve managed to get Antonius onto Italian soil, and he’s not leaving it until he gives me what I want, what Rome must have.
Amid showers of spring petals thrown by little girls they paraded to the complex of buildings set aside for them, smiling and waving at the ecstatic crowds.
“An afternoon and night to settle in,” said Octavian at the door of Antony’s residence. “Shall we get straight down to our business—I understand you’re in a hurry—or shall we gratify the people of Tarentum by going to the theater tomorrow? They’re playing an Atellan mime.”
“Not Sophocles, but more to everybody’s taste,” Antony said, looking relaxed. “Yes, why not? I’ve brought Octavia and the children with me—she was desperate to see her little brother.”
“No more desperate than I to see her. She hasn’t met my wife—yes, I brought mine too,” said Octavian. “Then shall we say the th
eater tomorrow morning, and a banquet tomorrow afternoon? After that—definitely down to business.”
When he walked into his own residence, Octavian found Maecenas in fits of laughter.
“You’ll never guess!” Maecenas managed to gasp, wiping his eyes, then broke into a fresh paroxysm. “Oh, it’s funny!”
“What?” Octavian asked, allowing a servant to divest him of the toga. “And where are the poets?”
“That’s just it, Caesar! The poets!” Maecenas managed to command himself, occasionally swallowing, eyes still streaming. “Horatius, Virgilius, Virgilius’s shield companion Plotius Tucca, Varius Rufus, and a few more minor luminaries set off from Rome a nundinum ago to elevate the intellectual tone of this Tarentum festivity, but”—he choked, giggled, composed himself—“they went to Brundisium instead! And Brundisium won’t let them go, determined to have its own festival!” He howled with laughter.
Octavian managed a smile, Agrippa rumbled a chuckle, but neither of them could appreciate the situation as Maecenas did, lacking his knowledge of the woolly-mindedness of poets.
When he found out, Antony roared quite as loudly as Maecenas, then sent a courier to Brundisium with a bag of gold for them.
Not expecting Octavia and the children, Octavian hadn’t put Antony in a house big enough to accommodate everyone without the noise of the nursery disturbing him, but Livia Drusilla came up with a novel solution.
“I have heard of a house nearby whose owner is willing to donate it for the duration of the conference,” she said. “Why don’t I move into it together with Octavia and the children? If I am there as well, then Antonius can’t complain of second-class treatment for his wife.”
Octavian kissed her hand, smiled into those wonderful stripey eyes. “Brilliant, my love! Do so, immediately.”
“And, if you don’t mind, we won’t attend the play tomorrow. Not even Triumvirs can have their wives sit with them, I can never hear from the women’s rows at the back, and besides, I don’t think Octavia is more enamored of farces than I am.”
“Ask Burgundinus for a purse, and shop your way around the town. I know you have a weakness for pretty clothes, and you may find something you like. As I remember, Octavia likes to shop.”
“Don’t worry about us,” said Livia Drusilla, very pleased. “We may not find anything to wear, but it will be a chance to get to know each other.”
Octavia was curious about Livia Drusilla; like all of Rome’s upper stratum, she had heard the story of her brother’s peculiar passion for another man’s wife, pregnant with his second child, that divorce on religious grounds, the sheer mystery surrounding him, her, the passion. Was it mutual? Did it exist at all?
The Livia Drusilla whom Octavia met was very different from the girl she had still been when she married Octavian. No demure, mouse-like wife, this! thought Octavia, remembering reports. She beheld an elegantly dressed young matron whose hair was piled up in the latest fashion and who wore the correct amount of plain (but solid) gold jewelry. Compared to her, Octavia felt a nicely dressed frump—not surprising after a relatively long time in Athens, where women didn’t mix in general society. Of course, Roman wives insisted upon attending dinners given by Roman men, but those given by Greek men were closed to them: husbands only. So the center of feminine fashion was Rome, and never had Octavia realized that more than she did now, looking at her new sister-in-law.
“A very clever idea to put us both in the same house,” said Octavia when they were settled over sweet watered wine and honey cakes still warm from the clay oven, a delicacy of the region.
“Well, it gives our husbands latitude,” said Livia Drusilla, smiling. “I imagine Antonius would rather have come without you.”
“Your imagination is absolutely right,” Octavia said wryly. She leaned forward impulsively. “But I don’t matter! Tell me all about you and—” it was on the tip of her tongue to say “Little Gaius,” but something stopped her, warned her that that would be a mistake. Whatever she was, Livia Drusilla was neither sentimental nor feminine, so much was plain. “You and Gaius,” she amended. “One hears such idiotic tales, and I would like to know the truth.”
“We met in the ruins of Fregellae, and fell in love,” said Livia Drusilla in ordinary tones. “That was our only meeting until we married confarreatio. I was eight months gone by then with my second son, Tiberius Claudius Nero Drusus, whom Caesar sent to his father to be reared.”
“Oh, you poor thing!” Octavia cried. “It must have broken your heart.”
“Not at all.” Octavian’s wife nibbled at a cake daintily. “I dislike my children because I dislike their father.”
“You dislike a child?”
“Why not? They grow into the selfsame adults we dislike.”
“Have you seen them? Especially your second one—what do you call him for short?”
“His father chose Drusus. And no, I haven’t seen him. He’s thirteen months old now.”
“Surely you miss him!”
“Only when I got the milk sickness.”
“I—I—” Octavia floundered, and stammered into silence. She knew what people said of Little Gaius—that he was a cold fish. Well, he had married another cold fish. Yet both of them burned, just not for the things she, Octavia, held important. “Are you happy?” she asked, trying to find some common ground.
“Yes, very. My life is so interesting these days. Caesar is a genius, the quality of his mind fascinates me. Such a privilege, to be his wife! And his helpmate. He listens to my advice.”
“Does he really?”
“All the time. We look forward to our bedtime talks.”
“Bedtime talks?”
“Yes. He saves all the day’s headaches to discuss with me in privacy.”
Pictures of this bizarre union danced before Octavia’s eyes: two young and extremely attractive people cuddled together in their bed talking. Did they…did they…? Perhaps after their conversation was finished, she concluded, then came out of her reverie with a start when Livia Drusilla laughed, bells tinkling.
“The moment he’s thrashed his problems out, he falls asleep,” she said tenderly. “He says he’s never slept so well in all his life. Isn’t that splendid?”
Oh, you’re still a child! thought Octavia, understanding. A fishlet caught in my brother’s net. He’s molding you into what he needs, and conjugality isn’t one of his needs. Has he even consummated your confarreatio marriage? You’re so proud of that, when the truth is it binds you to him irrefutably. If it has been consummated, that’s not what you yearn for either, you poor little fishlet. How perceptive he must be, to have met you once and seen what I see now—a hunger for power equal only to his own. Livia Drusilla, Livia Drusilla! You will lose your childishness, but never know the true happiness of a woman as I have known it, know it now…. Rome’s first couple, presenting an iron face to the world, fighting side by side to control every person and every situation you meet. Of course you’ve gulled Agrippa. He’s as smitten with you as my brother is, I imagine.
“What of Scribonia?” she asked, changing the subject.
“She’s well, though not happy,” said Livia Drusilla, sighing. “I visit her once a week now that the city has settled down a bit—it’s difficult to get out when the street gangs are rioting. Caesar put guards at her house too.”
“And Julia?”
For a moment Livia Drusilla looked blank, then her face cleared. “Oh, that Julia! Funny, I always think of Divus Julius’s daughter whenever I hear that name. She’s very pretty.”
“She’s two, so she must be walking and talking. Is she bright?”
“I really wouldn’t know. Scribonia dotes on her.”
Suddenly Octavia felt tears close at hand, and rose. “I am so tired, my dear. Do you mind if I have a nap? There’s plenty of time to see the children—we’ll be here for days.”
“Nundinae, more like,” said Livia Drusilla, obviously not enthralled at the prospect of meeting a tribe of small
children.
Maecenas’s private prediction was right; having spent the winter in Athens assimilating the size of the sum in Sextus Pompey’s vaults, Antony wanted the lion’s share.
“Eighty percent of it to me,” he announced.
“In return for what?” Octavian asked, face impassive.
“The fleet I’ve brought to Tarentum and the services of three experienced admirals—Bibulus, Oppius Capito, and Atratinus. Sixty of the ships are commanded by Oppius, the other sixty by Atratinus, while Bibulus acts as overall admiral.”
“And for twenty percent, I am to provide another three hundred ships at least, plus a land army for the invasion of Sicilia.”
“Correct,” said Antony, looking at his nails.
“You don’t feel that’s a rather disproportionate split?”
Grinning, Antony leaned forward with an air of subtle menace. “Put it this way, Octavianus—without me, you can’t beat Sextus. Therefore I’m the one who dictates the terms.”
“Negotiating from a position of power. Yes, I understand that. But I don’t agree, on two grounds. The first, that we will act in concert to eliminate a burr under Rome’s saddle, not yours or mine. The second, that I need more than twenty percent to repair Sextus’s ravages and pay off Rome’s debts.”
“I don’t give a turd in a cesspit what you want or need! If I am to participate, I get eighty percent.”
“Does that mean you’ll be present in Agrigentum when we open Sextus’s vaults?” asked Lepidus.
His arrival had come as a shock to Antony and Octavian, secure in the knowledge that the third Triumvir and his sixteen legions were safely tucked out of the way in Africa. How he had heard of the conference soon enough to make himself a part of it Antony did not know, whereas Octavian suspected Lepidus’s eldest son, Marcus, who was in Rome to marry Octavian’s untouched first bride, Servilia Vatia. Someone had tattled, and Marcus had contacted Lepidus at once. If great spoils were in the offing, the Aemilii Lepidi must have their fair share.