who he is… Today I was in my first battle; and I must tell you at once that at the first moment of serious danger to myself I dropped my shield and sword, and I ran.
Why I ever embarked upon this venture, I do not know; and surely you are too intelligent to know either. When, out ofthat kindness of yours to which I have grown so used that I sometimes do not think of it, you sent me to study in Athens year before last, I had no thought of engaging myself in anything so foolish as politics. Did I align myself with Brutus and accept a tribuneship in his army in a contemptible effort to rise above my station into the aristocracy? Was Horace ashamed of being the son of a mere freedman? I cannot believe that that is true; even in my youth and arrogance, I have known that you are the best of men, and I could not wish for a more noble and generous and loving father.
It was, I believe, because in my studies I had forgotten the world, and had begun almost to believe that philosophy was true. Liberty. I joined the cause of Brutus for a word; and I do not know what the word means. A man may live like a fool for a year, and become wise in a day.
I must tell you now that I did not drop my shield and run from the battle out of mere cowardice-though that was no doubt part of it. But when I suddenly saw one of Octavius Caesar's soldiers (or maybe Antonius's, I do not know) advancing toward me with naked steel flashing in his hands and in his eyes, it was as if time suddenly stood still; and I remembered you, and all the hopes you had of my future. I remembered that you had been born a slave, and had managed to buy your freedom; that your labor and your life were early turned to your son, so that he might live in an ease and comfort and security that you never had. And I saw that son uselessly slaughtered on an earth he had no love for, for a cause he did not understand- and I had a sense of what your years might have been with the knowledge of your son's discarded life-and I ran. I ran over bodies of fallen soldiers, and saw their empty eyes staring at the sky which they would never see again; and it did not matter to me whether they were friend or foe. I ran.
If the fates are kind to me, I shall return to you in Italy. I shall fight no more. Tomorrow, I shall post this letter to you and make my preparations. If we are not attacked, I shall be in no danger; if we are, I shall run again. In any event, I shall not linger at this massacre that leads to an end I cannot see.
I do not know who will be victorious-the Party of Caesar or the Party of the Republic. I do not know the future of our country, or my own future. Perhaps I shall have to disappoint you, and become a tax collector like yourself. It is a position, however lowly in your eyes, to which you lend dignity and honor by your presence. I am your son, Horace, and proud to be so.
V. The Memoirs of Marcus Agrippa: Fragments (13 B. c.)
And Brutus withdrew once more to the high ground and entrenchments at Philippi, whence, it became clear, he did not propose to retreat. We knew, perhaps better than Brutus, that each day of waiting cost us dearly, for our supplies were running low; nothing could be transported over the sea controlled by Brutus's navy; behind us were the flat and barren plains of Macedonia, and before us the hostile and barren hills of Greece. Thus we made to be copied sheets of reproaches to the officers of Brutus's army, taunting them with their timidity and cowardice; and at night we shouted challenges across the campfires, so that the soldiers could not even sleep in honor, but dozed fitfully in their shame.
For three weeks Brutus waited, until at last his men, chafing beneath the burden of their inaction, would wait no longer; and Brutus, fearful that his army would be depleted by desertions, ordered his men to descend from the entrenchments that might have saved them, and to attack our camp.
In the late afternoon they came down from the hill like a northern storm; no cries or shouts escaped their lips, and we heard only the clump of hooves and the pad of feet in the dust that came with them like a cloud. I ordered our line to give way before the initial attack; and as the enemy streamed into us, we closed the lines on either side, so that he had to fight on two flanks at once. And we broke the army in two, and each of those parts into two again, so that he could not re-form himself to withstand our attacks. By nightfall, the battle was over; and the stars heard the moans of the wounded, and watched impassively the bodies that did not move.
Brutus escaped with what remained of his legions, and made his way to the wilderness beyond the entrenchments at Philippi, which we had invested. He would have attacked again with what remained of his army, but his officers refused to risk themselves; and in the early dawn, the day after the Ides of November, on a lonely hillock overlooking the carnage of his will and resolve, with a few of his faithful officers, he fell upon his sword; and the army of the Republic was no more.
Thus was the murder of Julius Caesar avenged, and thus did the chaos of treason and faction give way to the years of order and peace, under the Emperor of our state, Gaius Octavius Caesar, now the August.
VI. Letter: Gains Cilnius Maecenas to Titus Livius (13 B. c.)
After Philippi, slowly, with many stops along the way, more dead than alive, he came back to Rome; he had saved Italy from its enemies abroad, and it remained for him to heal the nation that was shattered within.
My dear Livy, I cannot tell you the shock I had upon seeing him for the first time after those many months, when they carried him in secret to his house on the Palatine. I, of course, had remained in Rome during the fighting, according to Octavius's orders, so that I could keep an eye on things and do what I could to prevent Lepidus, either out of conspiracy or incompetence, from wholly disrupting the internal government of Italy.
He was not quite twenty-two years old that winter when he returned from the fighting, but I swear to you he looked double -treble-that age. His face was waxen, and, slight though he always was, he had lost so much weight that his skin sagged upon his bones. He had the strength to speak only in a hoarse whisper. I looked at him, and I despaired of his life.
'Do not let them know,' he said, and paused a long time, as if the uttering of that phrase had exhausted him. 'Do not let them know of my illness. Neither the people nor Lepidus.'
'I will not, my friend,' I told him.
The illness had, in fact, begun the year before, during the time of the proscriptions, and had grown steadily worse; and though the physicians who attended him had been paid handsomely and threatened with their livelihood, if not their lives, for any breach of secrecy, rumors of the illness had crept out. The doctors (a dreadful lot, then as now) might as well not have been called in; they were able to do nothing except prescribe noxious herbs and treatments of heat and cold. He was able to eat almost nothing, and upon more than one occasion he had vomited blood. Yet as his body had weakened, it seemed that his will had hardened, so that he drove himself even more fiercely in his illness than he had in his health.
'Antonius,' he said in that terrible voice, 'will not return yet to Rome. He has gone into the East to gather booty and to strengthen his position. I agreed to it-I would prefer to have him steal from the Asians and the Egyptians than from the Romans:… I believe he expects me to die; and though he hopes for it, I suspect he doesn't want to be in Italy when it happens.'
He lay back on his bed, breathing shallowly, his eyes closed. At length he regained his strength, and said:
'Give me the news of the city.'
'Rest,' I said. 'We shall have time when you are stronger.'
'The news,' he said. 'Though my body cannot move, my mind can.'
There were bitter things I had to tell him, but I knew that he would not have forgiven me had I sweetened them. I said:
'Lepidus negotiates secretly with the pirate, Sextus Pompeius; he has some notion, I believe, of allying himself with Pompeius against either you or Antonius, whichever proves weaker. I have the evidence; but if we confront him with it, he will swear that he negotiates only to bring peace to Rome… Out of Philippi, Antonius is the hero and you are the coward. Antonius's pig of a wife and his vulture of a brother have spread the stories- while you cowered and quaked in fear in the salt marsh, Antonius bravely punished the enemies of Caesar. Fulvia makes speeches to the soldiers, warning that you will not pay them the bounties that Antonius promised; while Lucius goes about the countryside stirring up the landowner and the farmer with rumors that you will confiscate their properties to settle the veterans. Do you want to hear more?'
He even smiled a little. 'If I must,' he said.
'The state is very near to being bankrupt. Of the few taxes that Lepidus can collect, a trickle goes into the treasury; the rest goes to Lepidus himself and, it is said, to Fulvia, who, it is also said, is preparing to raise independent legions, in addition to those that rightfully belong to Antonius. I have no proof of this, but I imagine it is true… So it would seem that you got the lesser bargain in Rome.'
'I would prefer the weakness of Rome to all the power of the East,' he said, 'though I am sure this is not
