Roman Empire: New Wars Old Enemies Part Sixteen

Instead Octavian paid part of the promised donatives, distributed honors, and pardoned Sextus' officers. The soldiers didn't take this well-especially Octavian's own men who mutinied, demanding full payment of all that was owed to them and immediate discharge. Acting quickly, Octavian countered this by announcing a campaign against the Illyrians (in modern Albania), for which he would need legions, and increased the number of awards to officers and men. Added to this he also made some pacific moves, discharging those who had fought at Mutina and Philippi and also offering an additional donation of two thousand sesterces. Peace returned among the soldiers. Sextus Pompeius moving eastward, disembarked at Mytilene in another eerie echo of his father's dash for freedom in 48 BC. There are only small details of his next moves. Sextus appeared to have large amounts of money still because he crossed over to the province of Asia and managed to raise three legions. Mark Antony didn't want much to do with Sextus, he was angered that Sextus had offered his services to the king of Parthia. Gaius Furnius, the governor of Asia, marched against Sextus with a large number of men. Outmanned, the judicious thing for Sextus to do was surrender. He had been promised fair and honorable treatment if he did so.

Again we can wonder if he was subconsciously 'wanting' to share his father's fate, for he apparently first tried to fight, then tried to escape but was caught. Sextus had thrown away his last chance for survival and was executed in 35 BC. He would have been about twenty-six years old. He had lived a short but exciting life. Also, it seems, especially going to earlier days, that Sextus should by rights have won the conflict. In fact for a long time he achieved a string of victories. It is fascinating to think that if he had taken Menodorus's advice and refused reconciliation with the Triumvirate, Sextus could have literally starved Italy into submission. The greatest part of this blog series so far might have had Sextus as its subject instead of Octavian. There is a vastly different view of Sextus between his own contemporaries and the later ancient historians who saw him as a pirate. The people of Sextus' own time saw him as a great and honorable nobleman fighting to claim what was legally his. Appian's view seems to be that Sextus had no grand strategic design and a marked tendency not to pursue his many successes until victory was achieved. As we have seen these descriptions of Sextus' actions do have truth in them. Another failure of Sextus was that he didn't put the relatively small amount of resources he had control over into an equation that counted the enormous resources available to the triumvirs.

Sextus was definitely not in a strategic position to wait and see how events would unfold. On the face of it, it would seem that Sextus didn't lose due to a lack of intelligence or military ability, but because he didn't take a broad overview of events into consideration and didn't follow up on the aimes he did achieve. I also wonder if ther were two psychological components to his failure. One being a strong subconscious bond with his father's life which had also ended in failure-but had made many glorious achievements to his name also. The other being that he simply lacked the psychological ruthlessness of his opponents. The Senate had voted Octavian many honors and also let him decide to accept them all or only those he approved before he got back to Rome in 36 BC. Octavian would be twenty-seven years old on the twenty-third of September and may have delayed his entry into Rome to coincide with his birthday. He accepted three honors. The first was an annual festival to celebrate his victory over Sextus at Naulochus, the second was a gold-plated statue of himself in the Forum, dressed like he was on entering Rome and standing atop a column decorated with ships' rams. The third honor carried the most weight by far: tribunicia sacrosanctus. This meant that his person was sacer (sacred), consecrated and inviolable on pain of stiff penalties-even death. This protection had always been given to tribunes of the plebs, but Octavian didn't need to hold the office of tribune, although he was also given the right to sit on the tribune's benches at meetings.

Octavian did a number of nice things for the citizens of Rome upon his return. He forgave unpaid installments of special taxes, as well as debts owed to collectors. He announced that documents relating to the civil wars would be burned. State administative duties were given back to the regular magistrates. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly in some people's eyes was that Octavian said he would give up all of his extraordinary triumviral powers when Antony returned from Parthia. The young man owed an enormous debt to his friends and supporters; starting with Agrippa he began to make sure they were well taken care of. As Agrippa was really the man who stepped in and saved Octavian's bacon-so to speak-Octavian rewarded him with a perhaps unique and prestigious honor-a corona rostrata, which was a golden crown decorated with ships' prows. Priesthoods were also given out quite freely. Land and treasure were also gifts that the friends of the new regime received. Agrippa came into even more wealth when he was rewarded large estates in Sicily and married Caecilia, who was the daughter of Cicero's extremely wealthy friend Atticus. With Octavian's two opponents for control of the west (Sextus and Lepidus) gone, his status had increased to the point the he no longer insisted on using the title divi filius.

He had now carved out his own name and place in the world. There was a remnant of a republican faction not necessarily under one umbrella of beliefs, but obdurate in their refusal to accept that the Republic was gone forever. These people now began to gravitate to Mark Antony now that Sextus was gone. Antony had several personal attributes that made him the 'last hope' of the republicans. He was anything but a natural autocrat like Octavian and people could see that he liked an easy life in some respects. Some felt that as long as Antony could hang onto his dignitas (dignity, honor) and auctoritas (influence, authority), he might not mind the idea of going back to the Republic.

The image is a statue of Bacchus and Ariadne. I still have more information ready to go-and it is once again my typing skills that have prevented more from being posted. Soon, after the showdown between Antony, Cleopatra and Octavian that led to the Battle of Actium I would like to start moving a bit faster as far as leaving out some of the less important details so I can get to some other subjects also. Thanks again to anyone following or commenting on this blog!