I From his own funds, and without recourse to the public treasury, Marcus Agrippa will have repaired and restored all public buildings that have fallen into neglect, and will have cleaned and repaired the public sewers that carry the waste of Rome into the Tiber.
II From his own funds Marcus Agrippa will make available to all free-born inhabitants of Rome sufficient olive oil and salt to suffice their needs for one year.
III For both men and women, free-born and slave, the public baths will for the period of one year be open for use without fee.
IV To protect the gullible and ignorant and poor, and to halt the spread of alien superstition, all astrologers and Eastern soothsayers and magicians are forbidden within the city walls, and those who now practice their vicious trades are ordered to quit the city of Rome, upon pain of death and forfeiture of all monies and properties.
V. In that Temple known as Serapis and Isis, the trinkets of Egyptian superstition shall no longer be sold or purchased, upon pain of exile for both purchaser and seller; and the Temple itself, built to commemorate the conquest of Egypt by Julius Caesar, is declared to be a monument of history, and not a recognition of the false gods of the East by the Roman people and the Roman Senate.
X. Petition: the Centurion Quintus Appius to Munatius Plancus, Commander of the Asian Legions of the Imperator Marcus Antonius, from Ephesus (32 B. c.)
I, Appius, son of Lucius Appius, am of the Cornelian tribe and of Campanian origin. My father was a farmer, who left me a few acres of land near Velletri, which from the age of eighteen to twenty-three I tilled for a humble livelihood. My cottage is there yet, overseen by the wife I married in my youth, who, though a freedwoman, is chaste and faithful; and the land is tended by the three of my sons who remain alive. Two sons I lost-one to disease, and the eldest to the Spanish campaign against Sextus Pompeius, under Julius Caesar, these many years ago.
For the sake of Italy and my posterity, I became a soldier in the twenty-third year of my life, in the consulship of Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius, who was uncle to the Marcus Antonius who is now my master. For two years I was a common soldier in that army under Gaius Antonius which defeated in honorable battle the conspirator Catiline; in my third year as a soldier I was with Julius Caesar in his first Spanish campaign, and though I was a young man, in reward for my bravery in battle, Julius Caesar made me a lesser centurion of the IV Macedonian legion. I have been a soldier for thirty years; I have fought in eighteen campaigns, in fourteen of which I was centurion and in one of which I was acting military tribune; I have fought under the command of six duly elected consuls of the Senate; I have served in Spain, Gaul, Africa, Greece, Egypt, Macedonia, Britain, and Germany; I have marched in three triumphs, I have five times received the laurel crown for saving the life of a fellow soldier; and I have twenty times been decorated for bravery in battle.
The oath I took as a young soldier bound me to the authority of the magistrates, the consuls, and the Senate for the defense of my country. To that oath I have been faithful, and have served Rome with that honor of which I am capable. I am now in my fifty-third year, and I ask release from military service, so that I may return to Velletri and spend my remaining years in privacy and peace.
I know that, in the law, you may refuse this release, despite my age and service, since I volunteered freely for another campaign; and I know, too, that what I shall now say may put me in jeopardy. If it is to do so, I shall accept my fate.
When I was detached from the army of Marcus Agrippa and sent to Athens and thence to Alexandria and finally here to Ephesus and the army of Marcus Antonius, I did not protest; that is the soldier's lot, and I have grown accustomed to it. I had fought the Parthians before, and had no fear of them. But the events of the past few weeks have put me into a deep doubt; and I must turn to you, with whom I fought in Gaul under Julius Caesar, and whose honorable behavior toward me gives me some hope that you may hear me before you judge me too harshly.
It is clear that we shall not fight the Parthians, or the Medians, or anyone else to the East. And yet we arm, and we train, and we build the engines of war.
I have given my oath to the consuls and the Senate of the Roman people; it is an oath that I have not broken.
And yet where is the Senate now? And where is my oath to find its fulfillment?
We know that three hundred senators and the two consuls of the year have quit Rome, and are now here in Ephesus, where the Imperator Marcus Antonius has convened them against the seven hundred senators who have remained in Rome; and new consuls in Rome have replaced those who have come here.
To whom do I owe my oath? Where is the Roman people, whom the Senate must represent?
I do not hate Octavius Caesar, though I would fight him, were that my duty; I do not love Marcus Antonius, though I would die for him were that my duty. It is not the place of the soldier to think of politics, and it is not the business of the soldier to hate or love. It is his duty to fulfill his oath.
A Roman, I have fought against Romans before, though I have done so with sorrow. But I have not fought against Romans under the banner of a foreign queen, and I have not marched against my nation and my countrymen as if they were the painted barbarians of a foreign province, to be plundered and subdued.
I am an old man, and tired, and I ask release to return quietly to my home. But you are my commander, and I shall not move against your authority. If it is your decision that I may not be released, I shall acquit myself with that honor in which I trust I have lived.
XI Letter: Munatius Planem, Commander of the Asian Legions, to Octavius Caesar, from Ephesus (32 B. c.)
Though we have differed, I have not been your enemy so much as I have been friend to Marcus Antonius, whom I have known since those days when we were both the trusted generals of your late and divine father, Julius Caesar. Through all the years, I have tried to be loyal to Rome, and yet be loyal to the man whom I have had for friend.
It is no longer possible for me to remain loyal to both. As if in an enchantment, Marcus Antonius follows blindly wherever Cleopatra will lead; and she will lead where her ambition takes her, and that is simply the conquest of the world, the succession of her progeny m kingship over that world, and the establishment of Alexandria as the capital ofthat world. I have been unable to dissuade Marcus Antonius from this disastrous course. Even now, troops from all the Asian provinces gather at Ephesus to join the sad Roman legions which Antonius will hurl against Rome; the doors of Cleopatra's treasury are open to prosecute the war against Italy; and she will not leave Marcus Antonius ‘s side, but goads him bitterly toward your destruction and the fulfillment of her ambition. It is said that henceforward she will march at his side and command, even in battle. Not only myself, but all of his friends have urged him to send Cleopatra back to Alexandria, where her presence might not provoke the hatred of the Roman troops, but he will not, or cannot, move.
Thus I have been forced to choose between a waning friendship for a man and a steady love for my country. I return to Italy, and I renounce the Eastern adventure. And I will not be alone. I have spent my life with the Roman soldier, and I think I know his heart; many will not fight under the banner of a foreign queen, and those who in their confusion will fight, will do so with sorrow and reluctance, so that their strength and soldierly determination will be lessened.
I come to you in friendship, and I offer you my services; if you cannot accept the former, perhaps you will find use for the latter.
XII. The Memoirs of Marcus Agrippa: Fragments (13 B. c.)
I come now to the account of those events which led to the battle of Actium and at last to the peace of which Rome had long despaired.
Marcus Antonius and the Queen Cleopatra gathered their strength in the East, and moved their armies from Ephesus to the Island of Samos, and thence to Athens, where they poised in threat to Italy and peace. In the second consulship of Caesar Augustus, I was aedile of Rome; and when the year of those duties was over, we turned ourselves to the task of rebuilding the armies of Italy that would repel the threat of Eastern treason, a task which necessitated our absence from Rome for many months. We returned to discover the Senate subverted by the friends of Antonius who were the enemies of the Roman people; we opposed those enemies, and when it became clear to them that they would not prevail in their designs against the order of Italy, the two consuls of the year, and behind them three hundred senators without faith or love for their homeland, quit Rome and made their way out of Italy to join Antonius; and went without hindrance or threat from Caesar Augustus, who saw them depart with
