following year as consul.
But hardly had the treaty been signed before Sextus Pompeius began conspiring with Antonius, and soon the treaty was broken, and Sextus resumed his piracy and plunder. Caesar Augustus recalled me to Rome before the year was out; for the sake of starving Rome, we had no choice but to prepare for war.
The genius of Rome is in its land, its soil; it has never felt at home upon the sea. And yet we knew that if we were to overcome Sextus Pompeius, we must do so upon the sea; for like all unnatural creatures, that was his habitat, and there he would lurk, even if we drove him off the land he held. Caesar Augustus and the Senate appointed me admiral of the Roman navy, and gave to me the charge of establishing for the first time in our history a formidable Roman fleet. I commissioned to be built some three hundred vessels, to augment those few already under the command of Caesar Augustus; and to man these vessels, Augustus gave freedom to twenty thousand slaves in exchange for their faithful service. And since we could not train upon the open sea-for sometimes the vessels of the pirate Pompeius sailed within easy sight of the Italian shore-I made to be cut a deep channel between the lakes of Lucrine and Avernus at Naples, so that they became one body of water; and by reinforcing the Via Herculeana (said to have been built by Hercules himself) with concrete, and opening it at either end to the sea, I caused to be formed that which is now called the Bay of Julius, in honor of my commander and my friend.
And in that bay, protected by land on all sides from the weather and from unfriendly ships, for the year of my consulship, and into the year beyond, I trained the navy that was to confront the seasoned veterans of the pirate Pompeius. And in the summer we were ready.
On the first day of that month which had recently been named in honor of the Divine Julius, we set sail southward for Sicily, where we were to be joined by the auxiliary fleets of Antonius from the east and those of Lepidus from the north. Unseasonable and violent storms met us, and we suffered losses; and though the fleets of Antonius and Lepidus sought shelter, the Roman fleets of Augustus, under his command and my own, sailed through the storms; and though we were delayed, we met the enemy ships at Mylae, on the northern shore of Sicily, and so severely punished them that they were forced to withdraw to the shallow waters where we could not follow; and we invested the town of Mylae, whence the pirate forces had drawn many of their supplies.
Unprepared for our strength, the ships of Pompeius broke before our assault; with the aid of a grappling hook that I had devised, we were able to board many of the ships, and we captured more than we sank, adding them to our growing fleet. And we captured the coastal fortresses of Hier a and Tyndarus, and it seemed to Pompeius that unless he could conclude a decisive victory, and destroy our ships, all the coastal strongholds from which he drew his supplies would fall into our hands; and he would be lost.
Thus he hazarded his fleet in all its strength, in waters favorable to his own ships, to defend the port city of Naulochus, which we would have to take before we could secure Mylae, a few miles to the south, the first stronghold we had captured.
Skilled as he was, Pompeius was unable to prevail against our heavier ships; though he could outmaneuver us, he was reduced at last to attempting to sweep away the banks of oars by which we were moved, though by this effort he lost more ships than he disabled. Twenty-eight Pompeian vessels were sunk with all their crews; the rest were captured, or suffered such damage as to make them inoperable. Only seventeen ships of the entire fleet escaped our assault, and they sailed eastward, with Sextus Pompeius aboard and in pitiful command.
It is said by some that Pompeius sailed eastward in the hope of joining the absent triumvir Antonius, whom he wished to incite anew against Caesar Augustus; it is said by others that he wished to join with Phraates, the barbarian king of Parthia, who warred against our Eastern provinces. In any event, he made his way to the province of Asia, and resumed his occupation of robbery and pillage. There he was captured by the centurion Titius, whose life Pompeius himself once had spared, and was put to death like a common bandit. Thus was the devastation of piracy at last put down in the seas that surrounded the Italy of Rome.
Weary from battle, our forces yet had to invest the other coastal cities of Sicily which had supplied Pompeius, the chief of which was Messina, where most of Pompeius's land armies were stationed. According to the orders of Caesar Augustus, we were to blockade this city, and await his arrival to meet the battle, if there were to be one. But at this time, and at last, the vessels commanded by the triumvir Lepidus, who had joined in none of the battles at sea, met our ships at Messina; and despite my deliverance to him of the orders of Caesar Augustus, he entered into negotiations with the local commander; and refreshed by his peaceful cruise from Africa, he informed me that by his own authority he relieved me of my command; and he received the surrender of all the Pompeian legions in Messina, requiring pledges of fealty to his own authority, and added those legions to those that he already commanded. In our weariness and pain, we awaited the arrival of Caesar Augustus.
VIII. Military Order (September, 36 B. c.)
To: L. Plinius Rufus, Military Commander of the Pompeian Legions at Messina
From: Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Imperator and Triumvir of Rome, Ruler of Africa and Commander in Chief of the African Legions, Consular and Pontifex Maximus of the Senate of Rome Subject: The Surrender of the Pompeian Legions in Sicily
Having this day surrendered to my sole authority the legions of the defeated Sextus Pompeius, you are to inform the officers and soldiers formerly under your command of the following:
(1) That they are granted amnesty for all crimes committed before this day against the legitimate authority of Rome, and will suffer no punishment either from my hands or from the hands of any other.
(2) That they are to have neither negotiation nor converse with the officers or men of any legion not under my command.
(3) That their safety and well-being is assured under my responsibility, and that they are to obey no commands from any other than myself or my appointed officers.
(4) That they are to mingle freely with the legions under my command, and are to consider themselves as brothers-in-arms, not as enemies.
(5) That the city of Messina, as a conquered city, is open to them for their enrichment as equally as it is to my own soldiers.
IX. Letter: Gains Cilnius Maecenas to Titus Livius (13 B. c.)
My dear Livy, I got the news just this morning-Marcus Aemilius Lepidus is dead at Circeii, where he has been living in his retirement and, I suppose, shame, for the past twenty-four years. He was our enemy-yet after so long, the death of an old enemy is curiously like the death of an old friend. I am saddened, as was our Emperor, who informed me of the death and told me that he will allow a public funeral in Rome, a funeral in the old style, if his descendants wish it. And so, after all these years, Lepidus returns to Rome and to the honor that he forsook that day in Sicily, nearly a quarter of a century ago…
It occurs to me that that is one of the things that I have not written to you about. Had I done so a week ago, I would no doubt have gone about it rather lightly; it would have seemed to me one of those half-humorous memories out of the past. But this death has cast a different light upon that memory, and it seems to me now oddly sad.
After a long and disheartening and bloody struggle, the pirate Sextus Pompeius was defeated-by the fleet and legions under the command of Marcus Agrippa and Octavius, and supposedly with the aid of Lepidus. Lepidus and Agrippa were to blockade the city of Messina on the Sicilian coast, so that the scattered fleet of Sextus Pompeius would have no safe harbor to repair the damages done by Agrippa and Octavius. But the commander of the city, one Plinius, having heard of the defeat suffered by Sextus, and at the behest of Lepidus, surrendered the city and eight Pompeian legions without a fight. Lepidus accepted the surrender, and, despite Agrippa's remonstrances, put the legions under his own command; and he allowed the Pompeian as well as his own fourteen legions to plunder and sack the city which, by its surrender, had put itself under his protection.
You understand, my dear Livy, that war is never pretty, and that one must expect a certain brutality from soldiers. But Agrippa came with Octavius into the city after the night of the plunder; and Agrippa has told me a little, though our Emperor would never speak of it.
The houses of the rich and poor were burned without discrimination or reason; hundreds of innocent townspeople, who had been guilty of nothing save the misfortune of having their town occupied by the Pompeian legions-old men, and women, and even children-were slaughtered and tortured by the troops. Agrippa told me that even in the late morning after the carnage, when he and our Emperor rode into the city, they could hear like a single sound the moan and cry of the wounded and dying.
And when our Emperor confronted Lepidus at last, after having dispatched many of his men to care for the suffering townspeople, he was so moved by sorrow that he could not speak; and poor, ignorant Lepidus, mistaking
