Roman Empire: New Wars Old Enemies Part Eight

I will always wonder-especially as he suffered from ill health and escaped death from this and other causes numerous times-if Octavian believed he was not only a divi filius, son of a god-but that he was also especially favored in his destiny by the gods? Octavian showed a very methodical and patient approach to political matters. Two important things should be restated about the way he practiced politics: 1) He was cautious by nature and temperment and avoided acting impulsively. 2) He showed an unrelenting hatred to anyone who crossed him, not necessarily those that were in his way but those who had intentionally set out to do him harm out of their own hatred or ambition. Octavian was no boy-child who would have his fifteen minutes of fame and be swept from the gaming board. At the tender age of twenty-three he had earned his right to sit at the table with older, tougher, more experienced men, but we must ask once again-were these men wiser than Octavian? Unfortunately there is not much information about Octavian's personal life, especially in his youth. The historical facts we do have about this area fall into two groups: 1) Dynastic marriages. 2) Stories and propaganda circulated by his enemies.

The heir to Julius Caesar was considered the greatest catch in Rome. Because of the way Roman society was structured, both in republican and imperial times, it was important for Octavian to marry into as high a noble family as he could, in spite of the fact that he was connected with the very ancient Julii clan. This is because Octavian himself came only from a provincial family that was well to do, but only of equestrian status. The equites or knights were the affluent middle class. They occupied a level below that of the nobility and members of the Senate. This class would, however, often overlap socially with the others. Sometime in 43 BC, Octavian married the daughter of Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus, a member of Rome's most ancient nobility. This marriage only lasted a few months because Mark Antony and Octavian didn't trust each other and agreed it would be better to seal their alliance with a familial bond. Antony's wife Fulvia had a daughter by her first husband. This girl was just barely of marriageable age and too young for intercourse, but girls in ancient Rome were considered old enough to be married at about twelve and boys at fourteen. Husband and wife had to have reached puberty. Children could be betrothed in marriage as long as they understood what it was about, Roman thinking on the being at age seven-although we might disagree these days!

More about Octavian's sexual life (outside of marriage) was bandied about by his enemies. In those times Romans often went on about the sexual idiosyncrasies of their opponents, to the point of being expected to produce bawdy verse. Octavian was well up to this task as these lines attributed to him (very likely authentic) about the reasons for Fulvia's political subversion: "Because Antony fucks Glaphyra (a current mistress), Fulvia is determined to punish me by making me fuck her in turn. I fuck Fulvia? What if Manius [a freedman of Fulvia] begged me to sodomize him, would I do it? I think not, if I were in my right mind, "Either fuck me or fight," says she. Ah but my cock is dearer to me than life itself. Let the trumpets sound." Accusations of homosexuality were probably inspired by his attractive but rather boyish appearance. Sextus Pompeius was one who accused Octavian of being an effeminate homosexual-a "queen." Lucius Antonius (another enemy obviously) said that Octavian sold himself to Aulus Hirtius, the consul who died at Mutina in 43 BC, during the last campaign of the civil war. The same campaign that led to Julius Caesar's victory at Munda. This wouldn't have been very long before Caesar returned to Italy and wrote his will. Perhaps to add that little detail that always seems to help lend truth to some accusations; Lucius claimed that Octavian used to soften the hair on his legs by singeing it with hot walnut shells! Octavian, perhaps because of his pretty boy looks rather than any actual history; for he truly seems to have only slept with women or preferred women greatly over men, had a reputation for sleeping with men. Even though he was likely one-hundred percent heterosexual the following incident will show how wide his reputation had spread.

This incident happened during a theater performance. An actor came onstage during a play, representing Cybele, the Great Mother. As he played a tambourine, another actor exclaimed, "Look how the queen's finger beats the drum!" In Latin the same phrase can also mean, "Look how the queen's finger sways the world!" The audience assumed this was a reference to Octavian, who was sitting with them in the theater, and they happily burst into applause. Antony was preparing to go to war against the Parthians in the spring of 40 BC. At this time he learned that Perusia had fallen and that Fulvia had been forced to flee Italy. Subsequently Fulvia met Antony in Athens. Here he gave her a severe dressing down and blamed her for the situation at Perusia. It is not known what Fulvia said in reply, but she became very ill after the couple traveled to Sicyon, a port on the Gulf of Corinth. Also not known is from what illness she suffered from but Appian believes she harmed herself and made her condition worse. Antony's mother Julia had fled Italy and went to Sicily due to concerns for her own safety. She visited her son in Sicyon and told him that Sextus Pompeius was willing to ally himself with Mark Antony against Octavian. Antony's reply to Sextus was discrete. He would regard Sextus as an ally if he went to war with Octavian, if not he would try to repair relations between them. Then with all of these events going on in the background, Octavian did something that was a violation of the terms of agreement between the triumvirs.

I hope to have the next article here soon. I have been working a lot on this information lately but have no idea how many posts it will translate into. The image is a Roman mosaic picturing dogs. After I get all of the information I have down -perhaps on some of these articles I will try to come up with an image better pertaining to the post. I spend a ridiculous amount of time looking for just the right image and still can't usually seem to find what I want, so for awhile all I promise is that the images will have some relation to Rome:-)Thanks for your thoughtful and intelligent comments and be well to anyone stopping by!

Roman Empire: New Wars Old Enemies Part Seven

Cassius Dio explains that Antony "had earnestly devoted himself to his duties so long as he had been in a subordinate situation and had been aiming for the highest prizes; but now that he had got into power, he no longer paid strict attention to these things." Bad news has a way of coming in twos and threes as Antony was soon to find out. A consul of 41 BC was Lucius Antonius, Mark Antony's brother. Together with Antony's forceful wife they conspired to form a military attack against Octavian. Antony's wife, Fulvia, played such an active role in the anti-Octavian conspiracy that her powers seemed to equal those of a consul. Their plan was simple. Sympathize with the dispossessed Italian farmers and at the same time tell the legionaires that Octavian was plotting against the absent Mark Antony whom they were claiming to speak for. When Antony returned to Italy things would be set right. Lucius raised eight legions and backed an anti-Octavian protest in Rome. Then he marched north in hopes of joining with two of Antony's generals. Wisely, as the generals were unsure of Antony's true desires they didn't join the plot. Fulvia, in a fantastic show of the strength of her personality actually raised troops-and incredibly for a woman of her time issued orders directly.

Dio writes of her efforts: "And why should anyone be surprised at this, when she would wear a sword at her side, give out the watchword to the soldiers, and on many occasions give speeches directly to them?" Octavian wisely relied on his boyhood friend, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who had a natural gift for military strategy and generalship to get him out of this mess. Agrippa and Salvidienus were able to outmaneuver Lucius, who sought refuge in the strongly fortified hilltown of Perusia (modern Perugia in Umbria, Italy). He waited in vain for the two Antonian generals to come to his aid. However, without instructions from Antony they didn't go all the way to Perusia and pulled back-much to the fury of Fulvia. Octavian then sealed off the town with a ditch and rampart seven miles long. Once again Octavian had a close brush with death being surprised by an enemy sortie while performing a sacrifice for victory outside the town's walls. Both sides exchanged stone and lead sligshots at each other. Archaeologists have found some of these lead balls and many have rude messages scratched on them: "I seek Fulvia's clitoris"; "I seek Octavian's arse"; "Hi, Octavius, you suck dick"; and much more lamely, "Lucius is bald." Lucius was defeated and the defeated legions were pardoned.

Lucius was sent to be the governor of Spain, a situation that wouldn't have happened without him being Antony's brother who was still far too powerful for Octavian to take on directly. Octavian must have been enraged by the plotters, however, for Perusia was given to the troops to plunder and accidentally burned to the ground. According to Suetonius other prisoners of war were far less fortunate than Lucius and his higher-ups: " [Octavian] took vengeance on crowds of prisoners and returned the same answer to all who sued for pardon or tried to explain their prescence among the rebels. It was simply: "You must die!" According to some historians he chose 300 prisoners of equestrian or senatorial rank, and offered them on the Ides of March at the altar of the god Julius, as human sacrifices." This scenario is repeated by Cassius Dio and very likely true-we know all too well how Octavian would behave to those that crossed him. Senatorial decree forbid human sacrifice in 97 BC but it appears through Roman history as a recurrent practice. Roman religious ceremonies show traces of the ritual. It is known that on three occasions during times of great crisis for the Republic during the third and second centuries BC that two pairs of Gauls and Greeks, each a man and a woman, were buried alive in the cattle market (forum boarium). Lucius Sergius Catiline (of the Catiline conspiracy) was said to have sacrificed a boy and eaten his entrails in the 60s BC.

The most recent verified instance of human sacrifice took place during Julius Caesar's triumph in 46 BC, when enraged he had two rioting soldiers sacrificed to the war god Mars. Lucius surrendered in January or February 40 BC, only a matter of weeks before the anniversary of the Ides of March. Octavian performed the mass sacrifice on a commemorative altar placed at the site of Caesar's cremation in the Forum. The sacrifice rocked Rome to the very heart of its being, both because of the number and status of the victims. For Octavian, this marked the end of his blood-letting in honor of his deified adoptive father. The Roman citizenry long remembered the extravagant savagery as these lines show...our fatherland's Perusian graves, The Italian massacre in a callous time. Mark Antony claimed ignorance of what Lucius and Fulvia were doing. But Octavian wrote him many letters about the debacle, so it should be said he had to have known about it. Also, it would have been very strange for Fulvia to do this without her husband's knowledge. In all probablility he knew exactly what was happening, although it may not have been his idea. Step by step, Octavian was gaining immensely valuable political experience and showing good judgment also in letting other men in his entourage perform tasks he wasn't as good at; such as letting Agrippa take the lead in military conflicts.

The Perusian war showed the ineptness of Antony and his crowd-tending to make mistakes in both organization and execution. The twenty-three year old Octavian by contrast was now stronger than ever. It had been a year and a half since Philppi. The times since then must have been horribly vexing for the young man-he had come close to dying several times now. But the bad times seemed to bring out the best in his steely and calculating judgment and character. Never good at things military anyway; Octavian's reputation for physical cowardice on the battlefield may have been deserved. But there were also times when he showed great courage in other matters. Octavian showed an unwavering moral courage in his duties to pursue the unpopular but necessary policy of land confiscation that had come close to costing him his life on the Campus Martius. He had also been extremely brutal and bloodthirsty at times. After Philippi, could it have been the combination of sickness, nervous exhaustion and knowing how much better Antony's command was than his? After Perusia was he showing that you dare not cross him, but also showing that he knew he had to deal with certain people later? As much as Octavian brought to the table that was new, by his faithful treatment of Julius Caesar's memory and priestly duties, he was also showing a side to him that sympathized with the old values of the Republic (although only in certain areas and hypocritical about some as we will see later).

Thanks again to anyone following or commenting on this blog! I am still just slightly ahead of having material ready to be posted. I may not be online tomorrow-not sure yet. Best to anyone stopping by and have a beautiful weekend! The image is a marble bust of Mark Antony.