War Drums Part One

Pamphlets and letters were published and envoys travelled to an from Rome and Alexandria firing off volleys of accusations against the other side. Mark Antony was standing up for himself. He protested that he had been prevented from raising troops in Italy (true), as had been agreed on in the Treaty of Brundisium. He said that his veterans had not been given their fair share of lands upon demobilization; that, after defeating Sextus Pompeius, Octavian had taken over Sicily without even consulting him and that Lepidus had been deposed by Octavian in the fashion of an autocrat.

In fact, Antony's case for grievances was far stronger than Octavians. Octavian had shown himself to be a consistently untrustworthy and opportunistic partner. Whereever a compromise or concessions were needed it was always the older and more reasonable Mark Antony who caved in. However, some of the complaints Antony raised were no more than debating points. As an example, Sicily was in the western half of the empire, and once it had fallen it would have gone to Octavian anway as that was the half he ruled. The accusations grew more and more personal and heated in nature.

Octavian took issue with Antony's drinking. He also made fun of Antony's overelaborate use of Latin saying that Antony interjected "our tongue the verbose and unmeaning fluency of the Asiatic orators." For his part, Antony fought back hard. He ridiculed Octavians provincial ancestry and also accused him of sexual avarice, cruelty-and most important to the Roman mind-cowardice. Antony brought up the way Octavian had behaved when he had dressed up as the god Apollo at the scandalous fancy dress party. Antony also brought up Octavian's odd behavior when he hid in the marshes during the Battle of Philippi. He also made the accusation (seemingly with very good reason) the charge of sexual hypocrisy against Octavian: "What's come over you? Is it that I am screwing the Queen? But she isn't my wife, is she? It isn't as if it's something new is it? Or has it actually been going on for nine years now? What about you then? Is Livia the only woman you fuck? Good luck to you if, when you read this letter, you haven't also fucked Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia, or all of them. Does it really matter where and in whome you insert your stiff prick?"

Who knows what truths lay behind these highly personal and bitter personal exchanges? Insults such as these-especially grabbing onto an opponent's sexual misfortunes and peccadilloes were standard operating procedure during any kind of political debate in Rome. Even high distinguished Romans often debated this way. Quite often the charges made in these debates were exaggerated. But these allegations did need to have at least an element of poetic truth if nothing else, for any audience the disputants had to take them seriously.

Both Octavian and Antony insisted he planned to restore the Republic, and the other stood for a dictatorhship by one man. Here neither were telling the truth. Ten years had passed since the murder of Cicero, and the Republic was already dead and buried, indeed the idea of restoring the Republic at this point was simply unworkable. There were two realistic choices remaining for the Roman citizenry-an orderly and efficient autocratic empire represented by Octavian or a rambunctious and easygoing one represented by Mark Antony.

Octavian was coming up on perhaps the most dangerous and risky move of his political career-in a career that had been full of them. For the time being, he needed to set some limited goals, and he needed to be cautious. Octavian was trying to bring on a war with Mark Antony without receiving the blame for it. First he had to make his stand crystal clear and announce the inevitability of a showdown, and force the political forces in Rome to choose sides. While doing this he had to maximize his support throughout Italy, because Antony could very well stage an invasion of the mainland. Mark Antony was at the Armenian border with Media, preparing to renew his Parthian war when he received Octavian's final letter in the war of words in October 33 BC.

When Antony had digested the contents of the letter that his brother-in-law had written, he knew he had to call off the Parthian struggle for the time being. In this letter, Octavian had rejected all of the charges Antony had made against him and concluded with blatant mockery: "Your soldiers have no claim upon any lands in Italy. Their rewards lie in Media and Parthia which they have added to the Roman Empire by their gallant campaigns under their imperator." Now Antony knew and accepted that war with Octavian was inevitable, so he sailed off with a small advance force on the long journey back to the Aegean, ordering one of his generals, Publius Canidius Crassus, a loyal and able supporter who had campaigned efficiently in Armenia, to follow him with an army of sixteen legions.

OK-I am going to post this one-and do a small follow up. This was all supposed to be one post-but I need to take a small break because of my back. I just wanted to say something as the next post may be quite small. The image is marble bust of Octavia-Octavain (Augustus Caesar's sister-who we will hear more about shortly).