Augustus

that silence for weakness and in the hysteria of what he must have conceived to be an invincible power afforded him by his sudden acquisition of the twenty-two rested and well-fed legions under his command, peremptorily ordered his colleague, to whom he spoke in contemptuous and threatening tones, to quit Sicily; and said that if he wished to remain a triumvir, he must be content with only Africa, which he (Lepidus) was willing to relinquish to him. It was an extraordinary speech…

Poor Lepidus, I have said. It was a strange delusion he had. Our Emperor did not speak in reply to Lepidus's preposterous claim.

The next day, accompanied only by Agrippa and six bodyguards, he came into the city, and went to the small Forum, and spoke to the soldiers of Lepidus and the surrendered troops of Sextus Pompeius, and told them that the promises of Lepidus were empty without his assent, and that they were in danger of putting themselves beyond the protection of Rome if they persisted in following a false leader. He had the name of Caesar, and that probably would have been enough to lead the soldiers to reason, even without Lepidus's fatal error. For Lepidus's own guard, in Lepidus's presence, made to attack the person of our Emperor, who might indeed have been gravely wounded or even killed, had not one of his guards interposed himself between the Emperor and a hurled javelin, giving his life.

Agrippa told me that as the guard fell at our Emperor's feet, a strange hush fell upon the crowd, and that even the bodyguards of Lepidus remained still and did not pursue their advantage. Octavius looked with sorrow upon the body of his fallen guard, and then lifted his eyes to the multitude before him.

He said quietly, but in a voice that carried to all the soldiers: 'Thus by leave of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, another brave and loyal Roman soldier, who offered harm to none of his comrades, is dead in a foreign land.'

He had his other guards pick up the body and bear it aloft; and in front of the guard, unprotected, as if at a funeral, he walked through the crowd; and the soldiers parted before him like stalks of grain before the wind.

And one by one the legions of Sextus Pompeius deserted Lepidus, and joined our forces outside the city; and then the legions of Lepidus, despising the sluggishness and ineptness of their leader, came to our side; until Lepidus, with only a few who remained loyal to him, was helpless inside the city walls.

Lepidus must have expected to be captured and executed, yet Octavius did not move. One would have thought that in such a position he would have chosen suicide, but Lepidus did not. Rather, he sent a messenger to Octavius, and asked pardon, and asked that his life be spared. Octavius agreed, and set a condition.

Thus, on a bright chill morning in the early fall, Octavius ordered an assembly of all the officers and centurions of the legions of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Sextus Pompeius, and the officers and centurions of his own legions, in the Forum of Messina. And Lepidus made a public plea for mercy.

With his sparse gray hair blowing in the wind, in a plain toga with none of the colors of office, without attendants, he walked slowly the length of the Forum and mounted the platform where Octavius stood. There he knelt and asked forgiveness for his crimes, and made public relinquishment of all his powers. Agrippa has said that his face was without color or expression, and that his voice was like the voice of one in a trance.

Octavius said: 'This man is pardoned, and he will walk with safety among you. No harm is to come to him. He will be exiled from Rome, but he is under the protection of Rome; and he is stripped of all his titles save that of Pontifex Maximus, which is a title that only the gods can take from him.'

Without saying more, Lepidus rose and went to his quarters. And Agrippa told me a curious thing. As he was walking away, Agrippa said to Octavius: 'You have given him worse than death.'

And Octavius smiled. 'Perhaps,' he said. 'But perhaps I have given him a kind of happiness.'

… I wonder what his last years were like, in his exile at Circeii. Was he happy? When one has had power in his grasp, and has failed to hold it, and has remained alive-what does one become?

X. The Memoirs of Marcus A?rippa: Fragments (13 B. c.)

And we returned to Rome and the gratitude of the Roman people, whom we had saved from starvation. In the temples of the cities of Italy, from Arezzo in the north to Vibo in the south, statues of Octavius Caesar were raised, and he was worshiped by the people as a god of the hearth. And the Senate and the people of Rome made to be erected in the Forum a statue of gold, in commemoration of the order that had been restored to sea and land.

To celebrate the occasion, Octavius Caesar remitted the debts and taxes of all the people, and gave them assurance of final peace and freedom when Marcus Antonius had subdued the Parthians in the East. And upon my own head, after giving thanks to Rome for its steadfastness, he placed the crown of gold adorned with images of our ships. It was an honor given to no one before and to no one since.

Thus while Antonius in the distant East hunted the barbarian Parthian tribes, in Italy Caesar Augustus devoted himself to securing the borders of his homeland, neglected by the many years of dissension in which it had suffered. We conquered the Pannonian tribes and drove the tribal invaders from the coast of Dalmatia, so that Italy was secure from any threat from the north. In these campaigns, Octavius Caesar himself led his troops, and received honorable wounds in the battles.

CHAPTER SIX

I. Letters: Nicolaus of Damascus to Strabo of Amasia, from Antioch and Alexandria (36 B. c.)

My dear Strabo, I have witnessed an event, the significance of which only you, the dearest of all my friends, will apprehend. For on this day Marcus Antonius, triumvir of Rome, has become Imperator of Egypt-a king in fact, though he does not call himself such. He has taken in marriage that Cleopatra who is the Incarnate Isis, Queen of Egypt, and Empress of all the lands of the Nile.

I give you news that, I suspect, none of Rome has heard yet, possibly not even that young ruler of the Roman world of whom you have so often written and whom you so admire; for the marriage was sudden, and known even to this Eastern world only a few days before the actual event. Oh, my old friend, I would almost relinquish some part of that wisdom toward which we both have so laboriously striven, if I could but see the look upon your face at this moment! It must be one of surprise-and a little chagrin? You will forgive one who chides and teases you; I cannot resist provoking what I hope is a friendly envy in one whose good fortune in the world has provoked the same in me. For you must have known that your letters from Rome have raised that envy in me. How often in Damascus did I wish that I was with you there, in the 'center of the world,' as you have called it, conversing with the great men you mention with such frequency and such intimacy. Now I, too, have come into the world; and by a stroke of good fortune, which I still cannot quite believe, I have secured a most remarkable position. I am tutor to the children of Cleopatra, master of the Royal library, and principal of the schools of the Royal household.

All of this has happened so quickly that I can hardly believe it, and I still do not fully understand the reasons for the appointment. Perhaps it is because I am nominally a Jew yet a philosopher and no fanatic, and because my father has had some small business connection with the court of King Herod, whom Marcus Antonius has recently legitimatized as King of all Judaea and with whom he wants to live in peace. Could politics touch one so unpolitical as myself? I hope that I am being too modest; I would like to think that my reputation as a scholar has had the final weight in the matter.

In any event, I was approached by an emissary of the Queen at Alexandria, where I had gone on some business for my father, in the course of which I took the time to make use of the Royal library; I was approached, and I accepted at once. Aside from the material advantages of the position (which are considerable), the Royal Library is the most remarkable I have ever seen; and I will have continual access to books that few men have used or even seen before.

And now that I am a member of the Royal household, I travel wherever the Queen goes; thus, I arrived in Antioch three days ago, though her children remain in the palace at Alexandria. I do not fully understand why the ceremonies were held here, rather than in the Royal palace at Alexandria; perhaps Antonius does not wish to flout Roman law too openly, even though he seems to have cast his fortunes in the East (what is the Roman legality of this matter, I wonder, since, it is said, he has not bothered to obtain a legal divorce from his former wife?); or perhaps he merely wants to make clear to the Egyptians that he does not usurp the authority of their Queen. Perhaps there is no meaning.

However that may be, the ceremonies have been held; and to all the Eastern world, the Queen and Marcus Antonius are man and wife; and whatever Rome may think, they are the joint rulers of this world. Marcus Antonius