Lepidus, Plancus and Pollio respectively. I don't know how many legions they have of course – I'm sure Agrippa can enlighten us – but I do know the real question: whose side are they on? Don't you think we should discover how they stand? My own uninformed guess is that they will drift, willy-nilly, to Antony… and, if they do, he will surely outnumber us. Moreover while we should make conditions, they won't. Can you imagine poor Lepidus making conditions stick? Now if I can guess this – so can Antony. Therefore the fruit that represents the alliance with Antony, which must – I agree of course – eventually come, is not ripe for plucking. We must have more to offer than we do now.'
I nodded gravely. Maecenas had delivered with persuasive perfection the speech we had rehearsed in the small hours of the previous night.
Agrippa stood up. 'Too many bloody words,' he said. 'Too much damned subtlety from the lot of you. Look at the boys out there. I may not know much about fine bloody politics, but I know them. They'll have your guts for garters if you follow Philippus' course. That's sure to begin with. And it'll bloody well serve you right. As for Antony, let's twist his tail a bit tighter first…'
We marched on Rome. I stayed with the army, though I sent Maecenas and Marcellus posting ahead. Naturally I was tempted to go with them, for there was work to be done, there were arms to be twisted and ears to be soothed with honey; but I had listened to the undercurrent of Agrippa's words. I stayed therefore with the legions as we swung down the great road to Rome, through olive groves and vineyards, past grazing cattle and flocks of sheep, by heavy-flanked oxen bearing sweet-smelling hay on lumbering wains. There was a surge and exhilaration to that march. Italy's maidens emerged from doorways to deck us with roses. The elders of each community presented me with an address. It held us up dreadfully, to Agrippa's irritation, but I told him to open his eyes: Italy, I said, was acclaiming us, pledging her loyalty, acknowledging that we alone could restore peace and fruitfulness to the land. The moral effect of the reports of our reception which the Senate will receive compensates for any delay; besides,' I said, 'it boosts the morale of our troops. Soldiers, good ones anyway, like to be loved; it's only the degenerates who are pleased to inspire fear.'
Then I sent Agrippa on ahead. 'There are three legions,' I said, 'two from Africa blocking the Flaminian Way. We do not want a battle. To fight within earshot of the walls of Rome would change everything. I would arrive as a conqueror to a scene of terror.'
Agrippa galloped into the dawn. Two days later a messenger returned. Agrippa would meet me at the cross- roads ten miles north of Tivoli. I was to bring only a handful as escort. Philippus, twittering into my tent with another letter in his hand, picked up Agrippa's. I suppose he turned pale. At any rate when he spoke he twittered worse. I was being tricked, he said; Agrippa had defected; he had been bribed; how could I have thought it safe to trust a man of neither birth nor breeding; I was going to walk into a trap; much more in the same womanish vein. (No, that is unjust, my sons; one should not talk so of women; Livia has never given me weak advice in our many years of marriage.)
I said to Philippus: 'Stepfather, I understand of course that you are afraid of my mother, and that you have promised her to see that no harm will come to me, and I realize also that as an old Pompeian you are a snob who doesn't understand democratic politics; but have you no nose that functions? Can't you feel the direction of the wind? I don't ask you to share my opinion of Agrippa, which is (by the way) that he is the most trustworthy man I know, but I do ask you to realize that he is a chap of some intelligence, even if his vowel-sounds are long and provincial. So, even if I agreed with you concerning his character, I would still tell you your fears were groundless. I mean, have you ever heard of a rat leaving a ship in full sail? What's that you have in your hand now?'
'This? Oh this is another worry, which may destroy that complacency you now show. Listen to what my correspondent tells me. Cicero has been in touch with Lepidus. He has offered him the dictatorship. What do you say to that?'
'How generous of him to offer what he has no means of delivering.'
I took Maco and half a dozen men and we rode into the sun. We rode some two hours and saw no soldiers, nothing but quiet villages and farmers working in their fields. Then Maco touched my sleeve: 'There's a glint of metal in that oak grove there. Shall I ride on to check?' 'No,' I said, 'it will be Agrippa.' 'Can't be sure.'
'It will be Agrippa. Have no fear, Maco. I'm not being rash, you know. There's no chance in the business to- day. The dice have fallen. All we have to do is pick up our winnings.'
(How much of this, you ask, was acting? How much conviction? Such a question would have been almost meaningless even then. I had to behave as I did. My men must know that I never questioned my destiny; nor, on this occasion, did I. I don't say that it was always so, for I have known nights of doubt when the blankets seem to shroud me, as I am denied restoring sleep; nights when I felt that the Gods had abandoned me and when I walked in empty wind-swept passages. But on this occasion I had all the certainty of the great artist who finds a long- projected and much brooded-on work slowly assuming the perfect, hardly-understood, shape before his eyes; a moment of magic, as Virgil once described it to me, 'When everything you have ever known or dreamed assumes an unknown and undreamed-of reality and lightness.' So it was with me in those August days.)
Agrippa was drinking wine and eating pecorino cheese and apples in the midst of some dozen men. They had tied their horses under the oak trees, in the shade. 'You see,' I had said to Maco as we drew near, 'no sentries even. That's a measure of our victory, our self-confidence and relaxation.' 'Nevertheless', he said, and proceeded straightaway to do what Agrippa had thought unnecessary. That 'nevertheless' was why Maco was such a fine sergeant-major – he never took things at face value; and why he stayed a sergeant-major – there are times when face value is true value. 'Well?' I said. 'Well. Have you eaten?' 'No, I don't think so.'
'Well, you bloody should. I've told you that often. You'll wear yourself out, shrimp, if you don't eat. You'll get ulcers. Told you that too bloody often, you don't bloody listen, do you? You feed your horse, don't you? Wouldn't let him go without food, eh? Well, then, don't be such a bloody fool. This is good cheese. Here, you!' he called, 'Bring the general bread and cheese and wine. Look sharp about it.'
'All right, all right,' I said, 'you don't need to go on. I've nothing against food, you know.'
'I should hope not. It's only the bloody rich can afford to despise food.' 'Well, I'm rich,' I said. 'Bloody rich, if you like. So what's the news?' Agrippa began to laugh.
'All right,' I said, 'I concede. You've forced me to ask this time.'
I picked up a piece of bread. 'Look,' I said, 'I'm eating. So what's the news?'
'They'll all desert, bar a few of the stuffier officers. But on one condition. You yourself must advance to them, ahead of your army, with no bigger escort than you have here. They want to make it seem spontaneous, not as if they've been coerced.'
He paused, gave me a crooked smile. 'Do you buy that?' he said.
'Why not? It's not that proposal I'm buying, it's your judgement. And I bought that a long time ago, and see no reason to go back on the deal. You obviously think it's fine, or you wouldn't be eating this bread – which is on the stale side by the way, and the wine's sour – sitting here on your backside. You would have been posting back to camp, fairly sharply I should say.'
'Too bloody right I would,' he said. 'It's OK, they're yours. There are no hostile troops between here and Rome.'
It was very hot the next few days. Agrippa drank great draughts of beer and sweated it out almost as fast as he engulfed them. As for me I contented myself with sucking at lemons and pomegranates and sipping white wine in which a block of snow brought down by mule train from the high Apennines had been allowed to dissolve. We were lucky, they said, to get snow to cool our wine so late in the year.
There was a constant coming and going of secretaries. Letters were flooding in from the municipalities, from the priestly colleges, from individual senators, from the trade guilds and the equestrian corporations. 'If we'd realized you were this loved, my dear, we wouldn't have delayed all these dreary months,' Maecenas said. 'I can't
