Colleen McCullough - Antony and Cleopatra (Masters of Rome 07)

Anthony and Cleopatra

Colleen McCullough

For the unsinkable Anthony Cheetham
with love and enormous respect

Quintus Dellius was not a warlike man, nor a warrior when in battle. Whenever possible he concentrated upon what he did best, namely to advise his superiors so subtly that they came to believe the ideas were genuinely theirs.

So after Philippi, in which conflict he had neither distinguished himself nor displeased his commanders, Dellius decided to attach his meager person to Mark Antony and go east.

It was never possible, Dellius reflected, to choose Rome; it always boiled down to choosing sides in the massive, convulsive struggles between men determined to controlno, be honest, Quintus Dellius!determined to rule Rome. With the murder of Caesar by Brutus, Cassius, and the rest, everyone had assumed that Caesars close cousin Mark Antony would inherit his name, his fortune, and his literal millions of clients. But what had Caesar done? Made a last will and testament that left everything to his eighteen-year-old great-nephew, Gaius Octavius! He hadnt even mentioned Antony in that document, a blow from which Antony had never really recovered, so sure had he been that he would step into Caesars high red boots. And, typical Antony, he had made no plans to take second place. At first the youth everyone now called Octavian hadnt worried him; Antony was a man in his prime, a famous general of troops and owner of a large faction in the Senate, whereas Octavian was a sickly adolescent as easy to crush as the carapace of a beetle. Only it hadnt worked out that way, and Antony hadnt known how to deal with a crafty, sweet-faced boy owning the intellect and wisdom of a seventy-year-old. Most of Rome had assumed that Antony, a notorious spendthrift in desperate need of Caesars fortune to pay his debts, had been a part of the conspiracy to eliminate Caesar, and his conduct following the deed had only reinforced that. He made no attempt to punish the assassins; rather, he had virtually given them the full protection of the law. But Octavian, passionately attached to Caesar, had gradually eroded Antonys authority and forced him to outlaw them. How had he done that? By suborning a good percentage of Antonys legions to his own cause, winning over the people of Rome, and stealing the thirty thousand talents of Caesars war chest so brilliantly that no one, even Antony, had managed to prove that Octavian was the thief. Once Octavian had soldiers and money, he gave Antony no choice but to admit him into power as a full equal. After that, Brutus and Cassius made their own bid for power; uneasy allies, Antony and Octavian had taken their legions to Macedonia and met the forces of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi. A great victory for Antony and Octavian that hadnt solved the vexed question of who would end in ruling as the First Man in Rome, an uncrowned king paying lip service to the hallowed illusion that Rome was a republic, governed by an upper house, the Senate, and several Assemblies of the People. Together, the Senate and People of Rome: senatus populusque Romanus, SPQR.

Typically, Delliuss thoughts meandered on, victory at Philippi had found Mark Antony without a viable strategy to put Octavian out of the power equation, for Antony was a force of Nature, lusty, impulsive, hot-tempered, and quite lacking foresight. His personal magnetism was great, of that kind which draws men by virtue of the most masculine qualities: courage, an Herculean physique, a well-deserved reputation as a lover of women, and enough brain to make him a formidable orator in the House. His weaknesses tended to be excused, for they were equally masculine: the pleasures of the flesh, and heedless generosity.

His answer to the problem of Octavian was to divide the Roman world between them, with a sop thrown to Marcus Lepidus, high priest and owner of a large senatorial faction. Sixty years of on-again, off-again civil war had finally bankrupted Rome, whose peopleand the people of Italiagroaned under poor incomes, shortages of wheat for bread, and a growing conviction that the betters who ruled them were as incompetent as venal. Unwilling to see his status as a popular hero undermined, Antony resolved that he would take the lions share, leave the rotting carcass to that jackal Octavian.

So after Philippi the victors had carved up the provinces to suit Antony, not Octavian, who inherited the least enviable parts: Rome, Italia, and the big islands of Sicilia, Sardinia, and Corsica, where the wheat was grown to feed the peoples of Italia, long since incapable of feeding themselves. It was a tactic in keeping with Antonys character, ensuring that the only face Rome and Italia saw would belong to Octavian, while his own glorious deeds elsewhere were assiduously circulated throughout Rome and Italia. Octavian to collect the odium, himself the stout-hearted winner of laurels far from the center of government. As for Lepidus, he had charge of the other wheat province, Africa, a genuine backwater.

Ah, but Marcus Antonius did indeed have the lions share! Not only of the provinces, but of the legions. All he lacked was money, which he expected to squeeze out of that perennial golden fowl, the East. Of course he had taken all three of the Gauls for himself; though in the West, they were thoroughly pacified by Caesar, and rich enough to contribute funds for his coming campaigns. His trusted marshals commanded Gauls legions, of which there were many; Gaul could live without his presence.

Caesar had been killed within three days of setting out for the East, where he had intended to conquer the fabulously rich and formidable Kingdom of the Parthians, using its plunder to set Rome on her feet again. He had planned to be away for five years, and had planned his campaign with all his legendary genius. So now, with Caesar dead, it would be Marcus AntoniusMark Antonywho conquered the Parthians and set Rome upon her feet again. Antony had conned Caesars plans and decided that they showed all the old boys brilliance, but that he himself could improve on them. One of the reasons why he had come to this conclusion lay in the nature of the group of men who went east with him; every last one of them was a crawler, a sucker-up, and knew exactly how to play that biggest of fish, Mark Antony, so susceptible to praise and flattery.

Unfortunately, Quintus Dellius did not yet have Antonys ear, though his advice would have been equally flattering, balm to Antonys ego. So, riding down the Via Egnatia on a galled and grumpy pony, his balls bruised and his unsupported legs aching, Quintus Dellius waited his chance, which still hadnt come when Antony crossed into Asia and stopped in Nicomedia, the capital of his province of Bithynia.

Somehow every potentate and client-king Rome owned in the East had sensed that the great Marcus Antonius would head for Nicomedia, and scuttled there in dozens, commandeering the best inns or setting up camp in style on the citys outskirts. A beautiful place on its dreamy placid inlet, a place that most people had forgotten lay very close to dead Caesars heart. But because it had, Nicomedia still looked prosperous, for Caesar had exempted it from taxes, and Brutus and Cassius, hurrying west to Macedonia, had not ventured north enough to rape it the way they had raped a hundred cities from Judaea to Thrace. Thus the pink and purple marble palace in which Antony took up residence was able to offer legates like Dellius a tiny room in which to stow his luggage and the senior among his servants, his freedman Icarus. That done, Dellius sallied forth to see what was going on, and work out how he was going to snaffle a place on a couch close enough to Antony to participate in the Great Mans conversation during dinner.