By Addison Hart

"The first law of the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice." - Cicero

Introduction
Early in the first century BC, a Roman teenager from a minor patrician family visited Nicomedes, King of Bithynia. On his return trip to the city of Rome, the historian Plutarch tells us that “he was captured by pirates near the island of Pharmacusa. At that time there were large fleets of pirates, with ships large and small, infesting the seas everywhere.” When the boy was first captured, the pirates demanded that the family pay twenty gold talents for his safe return, but it was soon upped to a good fifty talents when the boy told them that they did not understand the importance of their new prisoner. The boy sent most of his companions away to earn the money, and he was left alone with the pirates. The boy was not at all intimidated by the villainous pirates, and for thirty-eight days he lived with them, and they grew to respect the boy, and they even began to grow a sort of bond with him. The boy once, in a jovial manner, said to them that he would one day have them crucified. They laughed with him then.

The boy was released when the pirates received their ransom money, and he made his way to the city of Miletus, governed by one Junius. There he demanded that the pirates be pursued, and they were surprised on their island and captured by the Romans. The boy then ordered Junius, governor of Asia, that the pirates “be brought forth and crucified.” So says Plutarch, “Thus he carried out the threat which he had often made to the pirates when he was their prisoner. They had never imagined that the boy should be taken seriously.” That boy was Julius Caesar.

In the year 23 BC, the great Republic of Rome died. The symptoms had long been present, and the malady had been lingering. For nearly a hundred years since the time of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Rome had teetered on the balance between Republic and Empire, the man Octavian being the buffer separating the two, and now Rome had finally fallen headlong into despotism, and it had itself an emperor, Octavian, the divine Augustus. Octavian, the nephew of the late Julius Caesar had become an imperator, and he was now princeps, the first citizen. The Republic, diseased and dying from the living tumors of Sulla, Marius, Crassus, Pompey, Caesar, and Antonius, failing slowly for so long, had finally up and croaked. In the year 23 BC, the Senate of Rome granted Octavian, now Augustus, the titles and powers of Imperium proconsulare maius and tribunicia potestas for life. In short, this not only turned over to him the state of Rome, and all of it’s foreign provinces, but it set him up as Emperor, abolishing the great Republic which had stood strong for over four hundred years.

How this had come about was a long story that unfolded in a span of less than thirty years. The story is one of triumph, tragedy, violence, decadence, betrayal, and war. The story is full of figures, major and minor, many of which had less than noble characters. The majority of them would come to tragic ends. Perhaps the most important and most noble figure in the story is the Roman Republic itself, and its end is no less tragic than that of many other figures in this story.

The First Triumvirate
General Gaius Marius, the man who had saved Rome from the Germanic tribes at Aquae Sextiae in 102 BC, the man who had reformed the army of Rome, and the uncle of Gaius Iulius Caesar, was under attack. As soon as the great Social War of 90-89 BC ended in victory for the Senate of Rome, the great general Lucius Cornelius ‘Felix’ Sulla, one of Rome’s Consuls, had left for Pontus to fight the upstart King Mithradates after being given command of the forces of the army of Asia. When Sulla returned, he found to his horror that all of his legions had been given, literally, to General Gaius Marius. Rallying his men, Sulla turned his aggression on Rome itself, and it’s ancient and glorious Republic. He marched on Rome. This was treason. When Sulla burst into Rome, his men were sent out to execute hundreds of the “enemies of the state”, slaughtering huge numbers of civilians. It was a free for all. Luckily for Marius, he’d missed the whole bloody thing, but many of his followers had not. This done, Sulla and his army left to defeat Mithradates and to march on Greece, to expand the Empire of the Republic of Rome. Marius, furious at what Sulla had done, marched his own army on Rome, seizing the city, murdering most of the followers of Sulla. The anti-aristocratic Marius and his Populare followers then declared Sulla public enemy number one. At this time, while Marius had his own reign of terror in the city of Rome and Sulla attempted to fight Mithradates, the Grecians, and the Populares at the same time, three young men started to gain notice, and power. These men were Marcus Licinius Crassus, Gnaeus Pompeius, and Gaius Julius Caesar.

The youngest of the three men was the lanky, long-nosed, hairless Gaius Iulius Caesar, Julius Caesar. Caesar was born on the 12th of July 100 BC, the son of Gaius Lucius Caesar and his wife Aurelia. The family that he was born into was from an old, minor aristocratic line. Caesar’s political connections started in his lineage. His uncle by marriage was none other than Marius himself, the newest conqueror of Rome. In 84 BC, Caesar added another political connection when he married Cornelia, the daughter of Marius’ right-hand man Cinna. Before Marius’ death of natural causes in 86 BC, he made Caesar a minor priest in the city of Rome. Caesar’s power was already beginning to grow. Four years after Marius died, Sulla returned with a vengeance. Mithradates was defeated, but still alive. He would die on his own sword in 63 BC. Mithradates’ fall was not the only victory Sulla had won, either. Greece was now totally Rome’s. This time, as he was proclaimed dictator, not simply hundreds of the Populares were put to death, but thousands. Young Julius Caesar was one of the lucky ones. After being initially arrested he was released with the orders to divorce Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna. Caesar refused. He soon found it prudent to leave Rome until Sulla resigned from office in 78 BC, and the Republic was restored. “Say what you like,” said Sulla of him, “in that young fellow is many a Gaius Marius.”

While Caesar hid himself from Sulla’s vengeance, the stars of two other young men began to rise. Born in 106 BC, short, piggy-eyed Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Gnaeus Pompey the Great, was already famed by the time of Sulla. He, unlike Caesar, was an Optimate, a supporter of Sulla, and one of Sulla’s best generals. Also unlike Caesar, he was hardly bald. The mop of hair that covered his head was nearly legendary. Despite his family connections to Cinna, Pompey “held the fort” for Sulla as he came up from Pontus. Defeating Sulla’s enemies in Sicily, Spain, and later in Africa, Pompey earned two titles: Magnus, or great, and then ‘teenage butcher’.

At this same time, the third of the young men, the eldest and the richest of the lot, entered the spotlight for the first time. Marcus Licinius Crassus was the son of a Consul, and he became a multimillionaire by buying the homes and villas of the “traitors” who had been either butchered or exiled by Sulla. Sulla sold off the properties for cheap prices, and because of the cheap prices, Crassus began to accumulate them quite easily. He then made his fortune by selling them off for whatever price they were actually worth. With this money, Crassus began buying real estate in the city, selling it off, or keeping it for the produce. It was said that at one time in his life, Marcus L. Crassus owned most of Rome. With his money he not only created monopolies, but he created armies. He also created careers. When Caesar returned to Rome in 73 BC after attending a school of rhetoric, Crassus began building his career on the off chance that he might well have great potential. Of the three men, none were as decadent as Crassus was.

Over the course of the next twenty-some years, the three men became famous for their civic and militaristic work. Pompey would become famed for his African Campaign, his Spanish campaign, the Black Sea Campaign, the Judean Campaign. Crassus, though he was never as great as such contemporaries as Caesar, Cicero, or Pompey, put down Spartacus’ rebellion in 71 BC, and shared the Consulship with Pompey in 70. Caesar, the greatest of the three generals, was a relative unknown on the other hand. He was seen to break down in tears in front of a statue of Alexander the Great during his service in Spain, lamenting that the Macedonian had conquered most of the World by age thirty, while he, Caesar, had not conquered anything. He was still powerful, however. He was, after all, the Pontifex Maximus, the Chief Priest of Rome. Both Pompey and Crassus respected him. Pompey was a relative of Caesar’s first wife, and Crassus had spent wads of denarii building up Caesar’s career.

A Triumvirate, the rule of three, was always a nasty thing for the Romans. Most Triumvirates, or any occasion when Rome was controlled by multiple dictators at all for that matter, always seemed to break up in a very bloody Civil War in which most of the triumvirs were done in at the end. In the year 59 BC, Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar set up their own Triumvirate, tempting fate. As much as it may have damaged the glorious Republic, it was what was definitely in. What those three fellows wanted was to be done. Caesar had just come back from Spain after putting down a rebellion of Celtic tribes there. Now he was back in Rome, and Pompey and Crassus were out of a Consulship. The idea of the First Triumvirate was cemented into reality, and the three triumvirs were, as you guessed it, the bald Caesar, the decadent Crassus, and the piggy-eyed Pompey. Caesar would be the living buffer that held together the bunch for so long, as Crassus and Pompey were always political foes. He managed to keep them off each other’s backs.

To cement the relationship, and to assure that no triumvir would meet with a tragic accident, Caesar gave his daughter Julia in marriage to Pompey. Oddly enough, there seems to have been genuine love here, a factor unusual in most political marriages. Julia, the forth wife of the great general, was not the first wife he’d married for political reason, nor the first wife he’d actually managed to fall in love with, but the love between the two was incredibly strong, so much so that it brought ridicule from his fellow Romans. Had the once strong Pompey suddenly melted down into a softy? Whatever the other Romans thought of him, Pompey had found true love with young Julia. While the former ‘teenage butcher’ was spending all of his time with his new wife, his influence and the influence of Crassus put the powerful Julius Caesar in control of the Senate as one of the two Consuls of Rome for the new year. The second Consul, Calpurnius Bibulus, served simply as a figurehead for the government. He held no real power; power was in the hands of the triumvirs alone. As Suetonius wrote, people did not see it as much as the joint Consulship of ‘Bibulus and Caesar’ as much as of ‘Julius and Caesar’. Though opposed by the conservative Senators known as Optimates (who always supported Pompey), there was no doubt as to whom was in charge. Caesar’s first action was to push a land bill for the veterans of the armies of the Republic. He then proposed a bill designed to stem the misconduct of the provincial governors set up by the Republic. At the same time, Caesar’s allies ensured that as soon as his term ended he would become the Pro-Consul of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum. Soon, with the sudden death of its present governor, Transalpine Gaul was added to his list. This was exactly what the wily old devil wanted.

Caesar left for his new territory, Roman Gallia (mainly the area south of the Alps and to the east of the Apennines, abruptly ending at the little river Rubicon). There he would become embroiled in one of the greatest military campaigns in history. With a large army of Italians and Spaniards, Caesar came to the assistance of an ally of Rome, the Celtic tribe known as the Aedui, in independent Northern Gaul. What had initially started as an operation to protect the Aedui from the Swiss tribe known as the Helvetti soon became a ten-year campaign for domination of all of Gaul, and parts of Germania. While Caesar fought Celtic tribes such as the Helvetti, Ariovistos, and the Nervii, trouble brewed in Rome. In 58 BC, the new Consul of Rome was declared. His name was Publius Clodius Pulcher. Clodius would have felt right at home alongside such men as Al Capone or Lucky Luciano, as a more monstrous fellow would have been hard to find. While he sat as a Consul, his mobs terrorized the streets of Rome, checked only by the mobs of Titus Annius Milo. Those who spoke out against Clodius were in very serious danger. The great orator and barrister Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of the lucky ones. He was only banished from Rome after denouncing the Borgia-like Clodius. As one can imagine, it was quite a relief to everyone when Clodius’ term was up. He would still manage to make life hell for just about anyone in Rome, however, whether he was Consul or not.

In 55 BC, Julius Caesar bridged the Rhine, invaded Germany, and then turned about and crossed the English Channel. His men leapt from their boats, the standard of the 10th Legion moving forward onto the shores of Brittania. Within a short while, the Celts were routed from the beaches. The Romans did not stick around that long however, a large army of Britons could easily be raised against the Romans, and Caesar barely had a toehold on the isle. While Caesar expanded the territories of Republican Rome, Pompey and Crassus sat in the city, sharing the Consulship. The following year, Pompey was made Pro-Consul of Hispania, which he would rule from Rome via legates. It was in this year that tragedy struck. Not only was Pompey devastated by the events, but also the relationship between Pompey and Caesar was permanently shattered. Julia had died giving birth; the child had died shortly afterwards. Gnaeus Pompey was distraught.

While Pompey mourned his wife, Caesar launched a second attack on Brittania, but it was cut short when Caesar received the news of the Celtic rebellion in northeast Gaul. As Caesar slogged back across the Channel, the eldest triumvir, old Marcus L. Crassus, was preparing his own military campaign. Parthia (Persia) had long been a source of agitation for Rome, a thorn in it’s side, so to speak. Now Crassus decided that it was finally time to make a strike at King Orodes II and his men, led by the capable Surenas. In 53 BC, while the mobs of Clodius and Milo ran amuck in Rome Crassus invaded Parthia. His seven thousand-man army managed to get itself in very grave danger, however, when the huge army of the brilliant Surenas attacked. In the midst of a long battle at Carrhae, Crassus asked for terms of surrender. There were no terms given. Parthia didn’t want his surrender; it simply wanted his head. Crassus was killed near the end of the fight, his son Publius falling as well. There were 5,500 Roman casualties that day, and most of them were fatalities. While Publius’ severed head was stuck onto a spear on the battlefield, the triumvir’s head and right hand were sent to King Orodes himself. In his palace, Orodes poured molten gold into the mouth of the late Crassus, exclaiming, “Satisfy yourself with the metal for which you were so greedy in life.” Marcus Licinius Crassus was dead.

The following year, a lone Pompey assumed the Consulship, watching over Rome as, in succession, Caesar put down a rebellion of Gauls under Vercingetorix in the siege of Alesia (fighting a Celtic army that had actually surrounded him at the same time), and then Milo himself personally slew Clodius in the streets of Rome. Milo was exiled after a long trial. His skillful defender was none other than Marcus T. Cicero himself, a long enemy of the dead Clodius, freshly back from exile. Soon after, however, the riots grew so bad that a mob actually burned the Senate House to the ground. It was, of course, quickly rebuilt, and bigger and swankier than ever. With this year, Rome was no longer simply a great Mediterranean power, it was a European empire. Now, with Caesar wrapping up things in Gaul, with Crassus dead in Parthia, and Pompey gaining power in Rome, the stage was set for the fall of the Republic of Rome.

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was jealous of his young rival, who was, at the time, sending back to Rome his Commentarii de bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War) to promote himself in the political arena. While Pompey sat running things alone in Rome, Caesar was gaining fame in his province, expanding the empire, and defeating the barbarians who opposed Rome’s rule. Even a man so influential as Pompey was no where as popular as the younger general who had conquered the Gauls. Pompey was far too busy running things in the city to be able to go about accomplishing such similar acts of conquest. That sort of thing had been left to Crassus and just look where it had gotten him. Pompey was certain of one thing: Caesar would definitely have to go. Though there were still plenty of supporters of Caesar in Rome, Pompey was the real power in the city. As Pompey slowly weakened Caesar’s army by relocating his legions to other areas of the empire, he moved in for the kill politically. At the start of the year of 51 BC, an attempt was made by the Consul of Rome to have Caesar removed, but it failed. Caesar now knew what was up, and he sent a suggestion to the Senate that both he and Pompey resign simultaneously. The Senate rejected the idea, much to the delight of the rotund General Pompey. The next idea of Caesar’s was to resign as Pro-Consul for Gaul and Illyricum, and make his way directly to Rome to become Consul, but that idea quickly dissipated. Caesar had served as Consul in 59 BC, he could only run again after an interval of ten years. He had to think quickly. He was in terrible danger of receiving punishment through the courts for his actions in Gaul (which had been done for the most part without the approval of the Senate). If Pompey should act quickly, Caesar would be done for.

Finally, Pompey made his move. On January 1st and 7th, 49 BC, the Senate met in the Curia (the Senate House) to discuss what they should do regarding the conqueror of Gaul. Pompey’s supporters called for Caesar’s immediate recall, alone and unarmed, over the little Rubicon just below Ravenna to return to Rome as a private citizen. His political enemy, General Lucius Domitus Ahenobarbus (like Marcus Brutus, a son-in-law to Cato the Younger) would henceforth command his Gallic legions. After Caesar’s recall, the Senate, with the full powers granted by senatusconsultum ultimum (in other words, a free hand in all decisions) would do what to him what was best. In other words, Caesar would probably end up being dredged out of the Tiber a few days after his return. No questions, of course, would be asked.

A few men rejected the idea. Among these men was Marcus Antonius (the famed Marc Antony), a trusted friend and general under Caesar, and one of the government’s plebeian tribunes. Another of these was the future Master of the Horse, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, another one of Caesar’s generals. Even the Consul, Lucius Lentulus, was not pleased by the idea. Lentulus announced that he would support the decisions of the Senate, even if it were not in favor of Caesar. “If on the other hand,” he said, “as has happened on previous occasions, you are going to let your thoughts turn toward Caesar and the prospects of making yourselves popular in that direction, then I, Lentulus, am going to make my own decisions without reference to you. I too can, if I like, make myself safe by accepting Caesar’s favor and Caesar’s friendship.” It was decided that Caesar would be recalled from Gaul alone.

RUBICON
On January 12th, 49 BC, Gaius Iulius Caesar committed treason against the Republic of Rome. In the early morning hours of January the 12th, makeshift bridges were thrown across the little Rubicon River, and soon after they were put down, hundreds of armored human killing machines trod across them. Jogging across the river was Caesar’s single legion. As Caesar watched his men come over the river, he uttered the famous words “The die is cast.” More troops from other areas of Gaul and Germania were quickly advancing in support. There was no turning back now. By bringing his troops into Italy, Caesar had committed high treason. No one was to bring troops into Rome, or most of Italy, unless the city of Rome was in danger. Caesar was back in Italia, and he was here to stay. Pompey was literally unable to do anything but desperately try to recruit troops in Italy, and call up his own men from Hispania. There were no Pompeian soldiers already in Italia, and so with his single legion, Caesar could do enough damage. It was obvious what was going to happen, Caesar would take Italy, and Rome. Pompey would have to flee and recruit his own troops in Spain and in the East, as Sulla had done against Marius. There would be Civil War. Within a week of the invasion, Caesar had conquered much of Umbria and Picenum, Ariminum and Ancona falling almost immediately. Unlike Marius and Sulla, Caesar was actually clement to the captured Pompeians, which was something of a pleasant surprise to those conquered. It was one of the great reasons that Caesar became so popular in such a short period of time.

Caesar soon found his way blocked by the makeshift army of L. Domitus Ahenobarbus, Caesar’s old enemy. At Corfinium, Caesar came up against Ahenobarbus’ troops, and the walls of the city that protected them. His walls were guarded also by large, missile tossing weapons known as ballistas. After a short skirmish, Marcus Antonius’ 13th Legion came up against the walls, joining Caesar in the siege. Many of Pompey’s own legions, such as those of Ahenobarbus, were leaving Pompey for Caesar. He had, after all, lead most of these same men to victory in Gaul and Germania. In a short amount of time, the town surrendered. It had been an almost bloodless victory. However, Ahenobarbus and many of his thirty cohorts of men had slipped away. Ahenobarbus himself had tried a botched attempt at suicide, but he was still on his feet and able to command. The ease of Caesar’s conquests unnerved the plump Pompey, and he decided that the only thing to do was to abandon Rome for Greece. Despite being a great general, Pompey had no men to fight against Caesar with. Pompey immediately left for Canossa, and from there he made his way to the great port city of Brundisium in the south of Italia. Unable even to rely on the loyalty of his own remaining soldiers, even those in Spain, Pompey stepped into a boat for Greece. Perhaps the Grecians would support him against this rebel. Looking back upon Italy, Pompey, in an optimistic way, said, “Sulla did it, why not I?” Now that Pompey was gone, there was no one to fight in Italia. In less than three months after crossing the Rubicon, Caesar marched his troops right into Rome unopposed. There he secured the treasury. He soon began making his plans for the attack on the remaining Pompeian forces in Europe, namely the defenders of the port city of Massilia (Marseilles) and the legions of Hispania. Despite the fact that the Senate gave him no support, he was the one with the troops, and the popularity. The Republicans were still strong, but only abroad, in such provinces as Hispania and North Africa.

When Caesar began his march to Massilia, he found that his enemy, Ahenobarbus was occupying the city with his cohorts, and that Pompey had sent another of his lieutenants, Vibullius Rufus, off to Hispania. While stopping to try and gain the support of an independent Gallic tribe in the region to assist him in his attack on Massilia, Caesar allowed, much to his regret, Ahenobarbus to slip through his fingers and enter Massilia, becoming the city’s governor and protector. Angered and frustrated by Ahenobarbus’ sudden move, and the refusal of the barbarian tribes to assist him, Caesar ordered that three of his legions advance to the city, and that warships be built at neighboring ports to assist in the attack. Within thirty days they were completed, and Caesar put them under the charge of Decimus Brutus. Caesar then “entrusted the task of besieging the city to Gaius Trebonius.”

While Caesar prepared to advance on Massilia, he sent on three more legions of his men under General Gaius Fabius to open the campaign in Hispania. Lucius Vibullius Rufus was present with, as Suetonius wrote “very strong forces” under Marcus Petreius, Lucius Afranius (a legate), and Marcus Varro (the second legate, a writer). Afranius’ three legions held eastern Spain. Four legions were in western Spain under Petreius and Varro. Petreius took his two legions to the east where Afranius held an impressive strategic position. Fabius was moving his men forward towards his enemies while they maneuvered. Caesar arrived a short while later, nine hundred cavalrymen with him. While Massilia was assaulted by land and by sea, Caesar would personally take over in Hispania. As Caesar and Fabius advanced with six legions, 5000 auxiliaries, and 3000 cavalry, Afranius dug into his position.

When Afranius and Petreius realized, much to their dismay, that the last thing Caesar was going to do was retreat, and that they would not be able to withdraw, as hoped, they decided to frighten Caesar’s men somewhat, sending several of their own legions down towards Caesar’s entrenchments. However, Afranius called off the feint before the legions could reach Caesar’s lines. Afranius soon began to slowly pull his men away, hoping to escape from Caesar’s forces in the night. Before all of Afranius’ men withdrew, Caesar sent forward one legion to seize the hillock. However, Afranius saw what Caesar was up to and brought in his own troops. Here, at the hills near Lerida, Caesar and Afranius would fight. As Caesar’s legion fell back, he brought up the 9th Legion in support. Unfortunately, these men were trapped in a bad position. As Afranius’ men charged down on them from the heights, rushing down the rocky slopes, hundreds of pila (javelins) were tossed down at Caesar’s men. As Caesar wrote, “every weapon directed at them found its mark.” While Afranius and Caesar put fresh cohorts into the battle, the two legions on the hill fought valiantly, suffering horrendous casualties. Unable to move forward, they didn’t want to lose the day by moving backward. After five hours of long and bloody fighting, as the plains below the hills began to flood in a heavy rainstorm, Caesar finally ordered an all-out attack. He was heavily outnumbered, but every one of his men unsheathed his own gladius (sword) and plowed up the hill, catching the Pompeians quite by surprise. The Pompeians stood no chance as Caesar’s men broke through the enemy works and swarmed into the enemy’s lines. “Some [Pompeians] they [Caesar’s men] cut to pieces, others they forced to turn and run.” With Afranius’ men frantically running into the town below the hill, or dying in their positions behind the wall, Caesar’s beleaguered legions could withdraw to a safer position. In the aftermath, Caesar recorded that he had lost seventy men killed, including one centurion. Afranius had lost two hundred dead; four centurions had perished among them. The senior Centurion was also dead.

Several days later, in the midst of the rain, Afranius attacked in the midst of the night. With three of his legions he had his entire cavalry force. In the darkness, the Gallic Cavalry of Caesar rode into the midst of the battle. The cavalry and several cohorts of archers held out in the darkness while Afranius hurled his forces at them. Caesar’s troops only withdrew once the legions of Afranius advanced. Afranius soon called off the assault further; it was too dark to do much more. Caesar then began to outflank his enemy, moving across the swollen rivers. Caesar would have to outmaneuver his enemy. While Caesar made this movement, he received good news from Massilia. Ahenobarbus’ fleet had been destroyed outside the port by Caesar’s newly built warships. Nine Massilian ships had been sunk or captured. The rest were now bottled up with Ahenobarbus in the city.

Road to Pharsalus
The reports coming in from Hispania were disturbing. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus was horrified. It seemed that all of eastern Spain was lost. General Petreius had watched in horror as his men simply betrayed Great Pompey at Lerida. They had sworn an oath to Caesar! Not only this, but they joined his ranks, fighting Afranius’ own Pompeian forces…their own brothers in arms! Petreius, in tears, himself felt compelled to swear the oath. It was the only way to ensure his survival. Afranius’ men soon followed Petrieus’ men, leaving for Caesar’s camps. Within a remarkably short period, most of Pompey’s troops in Hispania had deserted for Caesar’s forces. The Senate mourned. Pompey mourned. All along the river Var, Afranius’ men fell away from the fighting, surrendering to Caesar, and perhaps hoping to find a place in his legions. Afranius himself had finally been forced to swear the oath. What could General Varro do now against these numbers when fighting in eastern Hispania? Surely, Pompey felt disheartened.

While he waited in Illyricum, building up his legions in Greece and in the east, Pompey must have felt that there weren’t too many chances of his final victory now. The only loyalists in Rome now were the Republicans, the Senate, and men like Marcus Cicero. Even Cicero wasn’t sure of him. The great barrister despaired that both Pompey and Caesar wanted to control Rome themselves. Now, while Pompey visited Ptolemaic Pharaoh Cleopatra of Egypt for help in his war on Caesar, the rebel was taking over most of Europe. Pompey arrived in late 49 BC at the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. The city, built by Alexander the Great, whom Pompey always sought to emulate, had become one of the greatest cities in the world. As well as becoming the capital of Egypt, it was a center of learning and the arts. The city was not only home to the Grecian Royal Family of Egypt, it was home to the Great Pharos Lighthouse, one of the World’s Seven Wonders. It was also the site of the Great Library. It was truly a magnificent city. Pompey met the daughter of the late Pharaoh Ptolemy XII, Neos Dionysos, Auletes upon his arrival in the city. This daughter was, of course, Cleopatra VII, Thea Philopator. Pompey knew her from years before when he had brought down the Seleucid armies in the area. She was, of course, much younger then, hardly a teenager. He now met her at the palace of Alexandria, right on the waterfront. Pompey had been on good terms with the recently departed Auletes, who had assisted him in his campaigns against the Seleucids some years before. The Ptolemies were in Pompey’s debt; after all, it was one of Pompey’s generals who had assured Auletes’ rule in the first place. The troops of General Gabinus, and fifty of Egypt’s best warships were given to Pompey, along with cartloads of grain for Pompey’s troops. Before Pompey left Alexandria, he received more bad news. A short time after the destruction of the Pompeian Spanish legions at Ilerda, Massilia surrendered after a long siege and many bloody assaults on the earthworks. Caesar states that in some areas, the walls of the city were eighty feet tall. Despite the apparent impregnability of the position, the city had been taken. Domitus Ahenobarbus himself had fled in one of the few surviving ships, running Caesar’s blockade and slipping away into the Mediterranean, where he was protected from Caesar’s vengeance. More bad news came in; it seemed that Caesar had invaded North Africa. If the African campaigns of Caesar were to succeed, Pompey would be surrounded, boxed in. His only avenues of escape would be either Egypt, or the Far East, to the far cities of India and China where few Romans ever stepped foot.

The news was slightly inaccurate. Caesar hadn’t actually invaded North Africa. Caesar had sent General Gaius S. Curio and four legions and five hundred cavalrymen to Africa. For one reason or another, Curio only took two of the four legions into Africa, but it seemed to be enough at first. As Caesar fell upon Massilia, and Pompey paid a visit to Cleopatra, Curio boldly attacked Pompey’s legions in Mauritania under General Publius Varus. Backing up Varus, much to the horror of Curio, was King Juba I of Mauritania and the Numidian cavalry. Six hundred Numidian horsemen and four hundred infantrymen were struck at Utica by a headlong assault led by Curio himself. After routing the Numidians, Curio declared victory, his troops hailing him as ‘Imperator’. Now, in the midst of this victory, the unexpected happened. Caesar writes, “…a great cloud of dust appeared in the distance and very soon the vanguard came into sight.” Juba had arrived. Curio met Juba head on, defeating him in a violent battle. Juba’s cavalry escaped but much of his infantry did not. Juba withdrew to regroup. In the meantime, Curio pressed on, but was soon surrounded by his enemies, Under constant attack; Curio began to fall into the doldrums. Finally, Curio marched on Juba’s newest armies, assembled from Leptis Magna. Backing up Juba was Varus and his legions. Leaving his camp, Curio took most of his army forward, leading the infantry himself, leaving the cavalry command to Gnaeus Domitus. In the pitched battle that followed, Curio’s army was systematically cut to pieces and destroyed by the Pompeians. Exposing himself to the enemy, Curio cried to Domitus, “I have lost the army which Caesar entrusted to me. I can never face him again.” In the heat of battle the enemy swooped down on him. Curio himself was literally cut to pieces. Few horsemen survived the fight, and as Caesar wrote, “the soldiers in the legion were killed to the man.” Pompey had been saved from having Caesar roll up both his flanks.

As Caesar made plans for an invasion of Illyricum and a landing at the city of Dyrrachium in Greece, directly across the Adriatic from Italy, Pompey built himself an army with the assistance of Publius Scipio, his lieutenant and new father-in-law. Domitus Ahenobarbus had arrived from Massilia as well, assuming command of a legion of Pompey’s. The great Marcus Porcius Cato, Cato the Younger, was also present. Pompey might well have now outnumbered Caesar, but he knew that against Caesar he could not win in battle. Whereas Caesar’s men were veterans, Pompey’s men were all green. Pompey’s greatest asset was his navy. Romans did not easily take to the sea, but Pompey’s navy was the finest in the world at the time. He controlled the whole of the Mare Internum (Mediterranean Sea), and made things increasingly hard for Caesar to get his troops across the water. By November of 49 BC, Caesar had finally managed to get his troops across the sea, landing at Epirus in northern Greece. Though Pompey’s troops in the region boxed him in, he expected reinforcements. While receiving news of his election to Consul for the year of 48 BC, Caesar barely avoided a pitched battle with his conservative enemy as Marcus Antonius attempted, with great difficulty, to join Caesar with the rest of the army. Finally, in early 48 BC, after a long wait, the tall, curly-haired, square-faced Antonius brought his army to Dyrrachium, much to Caesar’s relief.

Caesar had been fighting his own demons in Rome. Most of the Senators opposed the liberal Caesar, and many, such as Cato the Younger, had simply left Rome for Pompey’s lines. A Praetor (a legal eagle of Rome), Marcus Caelius Rufus, had actually led an open rebellion in Rome after his removal from his post. Summoning up the mob leader Milo, exiled after the murder of Clodius, he purchased the services of a group of armed gladiators, marching them on to Casilinum in the Thurii district. On the day of his arrival, the real trouble started. The Consul, Servillus, seized the arms and standards of Milo’s makeshift “army” at Capua. Meanwhile, in nearby Neapolis (Naples), the gladiatorial bands were seeing slogging about the countryside. Soon, Caelius’ plan was revealed, and he was denounced and thrown out of Capua. Caelius then developed a new plan. Milo, claiming to act under the orders of one of Pompey’s lieutenants, Vibullius Rufus, marched on to Cosca, freeing slaves and gladiators alike, recruiting men for his “army”, capturing more weapons to replace the old ones. Soon, Milo attacked the town of Cosca. Much to his horror, the Praetor Quintus Pedius was there with an entire legion. In a very short time, the little fight was over; Milo’s men were quickly defeated. Milo had been one of the first to fall. He’d been struck in the skull by a stone, dying instantly. Caelius fled to Thurii where some of Caesar’s cavalrymen caught up with him in the night. With him died the rebellion.

Caesar was now ready to move onward, Antonius by his side. He left the little port city of Palaeokastro in the charge of three veteran cohorts. As Caesar moved on, Gnaeus Pompeius, a son of Pompey the Great, attacked. The Egyptian Fleet, as young Gnaeus’ force was called, had some initial success in the operation, but the attack was soon called off. With the abortive naval assault finished, Caesar marched forward, Pompey withdrawing before him, hoping to avoid a full-scale battle. Caesar cut a bloody swath into Thessaly, taking first the city of Dyrrachium, and pushing back Pompey’s vanguard. However, Pompey struck at a fraction of Caesar’s force as the rebel marched on to Thessaly, and won a minor victory over his enemy. Despite these victories on Pompey’s part, Caesar was doing extremely well. Of course, in this seesaw Civil War, one could never be too sure as to what on earth would happen next. What did happen next was the battle of Pharsalus.

Pharsalus
The night sky late on August 8th, 48 BC, was suddenly host to a literal ball of fire, some said a fiery torch, flung into the air, twisting about in the sky, slamming down somewhere off in the darkness. The object had come, it seemed, from the direction of the camps of Julius Caesar, and had been heading straight for the camps of Gnaeus Pompeius. Obviously, within seconds of the appearance of the fiery body, the Pompeians began to scramble about under the stars. They were preparing for an attack that they knew would sooner or later come. It seemed that Caesar was finally going to end this civil war once and for all. The very next day, August the 9th, the Consul/Dictator of Rome did just that.

When Pompey awoke the next morning (assuming he even managed sleep on that rather hectic night), he knew that this was the day old Caesar would come, and he knew that he would definitely be defeated by this veteran army, despite the words of General Titus Labienus, a veteran of the Gallic Wars, who felt that Caesar was just as unprepared as Pompey. All the same, Pompey had 40,000 men with him, Caesar only sported 22,000. Pompey’s army was flung out around this mountainous region of the very mountainous province of Greece. None other than Ahenobarbus commanded the left wing of the army. Labienus’ cavalry and all of Pompey’s archers were positioned nearby. Pompey himself was at this part of the field in his observation post. Two legions of Italians and Syrians formed the center. Publius Scipio commanded this portion of the army. To the right, along the river Enipeus, sat the remains of Afranius’ troops, under the command of L. Lentulus Crus.

Caesar launched the attack in the sunlight, a Centurion, Crastinus, lead the shock troops forward, slamming into Pompey’s green troops. The brave Centurion gave a final cry to Caesar before leading his century on into his enemy, apparently cutting several of his enemies down before he fell with a sword swing to the mouth. With a toss of the old javelin, Caesar invited Pompey’s cavalry onward. The horsemen struck Caesar’s right. Under a hail of pila, Pompey’s brave men stopped in their tracks, and Caesar’s Gallic veterans came forward. “Face to face and even able to speak to each other, they recognized their adversaries and called to them by name,” reports Dio Cassius. In the midst of the slaughter that began, there were soon shouted messages from the wounded to the unhurt, last minute messages to the family, and last minute insults to the enemy. “The cries of the foreigners were unintelligible and caused a deep terror.” Within a short time, Pompey’s right wing had been destroyed, most of his archers and slingers slaughtered where they stood. As Plutarch wrote, “They were the flower of Roman and Italian youth.” Ahenobarbus, Caesar’s old foe, had fallen in the midst of the battle. Labienus had managed an escape with his cavalry, however. Caesar, upon seeing the dead men in Pompey’s camp, gave a groan. “This is what they wanted!” Now, with the right wing of Pompey’s army literally crushed, the left wing began to crumble. In a short time, it too was gone. The center, bravely holding on in the phalanx formation, finally had to break under the pressure of Caesar’s relentless attacks on all sides. Pharsalus was over. Caesar had won. Scipio and Cato would be pursued with their troops on further, though ultimately both would perish violently, Cato taking his own life with a knife to the chest, much to the regret of the dictator. Pompey, however, had escaped.

As Caesar’s men mopped up Pompeian resistance and searched for the body of the former triumvir and general that they were sure lay slain on the field, Pompey ripped off his uniform, dressing as a common waif, and with his friends hijacked a small boat, sneaking away as the battle came to a close. When Caesar finally realized that his enemy had eluded him, Pompey was off for Egypt. Caesar was quick to pursue with a body of his men, but it seemed that they’d lost him. Unfortunately, though Pompey had eluded old Caesar, he hadn’t made it to safety yet. His former Egyptian ally, Cleopatra VII, was out it seemed. Her much younger (and more impressionable) brother Ptolemy had, with the assistance of his henchmen, booted the young queen off the throne, and had set himself up as Pharaoh, though his advisors, men such as General Achillas, Theodotus, and Pothinus the eunuch, were the real power behind the boy’s throne. Ptolemy XIII soon had to make the decision of bringing in old Pompey (as well as bringing in the wrath of Caesar), or, quite literally, to kill him. He chose, regretfully, the latter.

After arriving at the port of Alexandria in his small boat, Pompey sent out a messenger to Ptolemy asking if he might be allowed in to claim sanctuary from Caesar’s armies. Though Pompey must have felt that he was now far from the madding crowd, the advisors of the king simply decided that the best way to please Caesar and to keep out of a Roman war would be, quite simply, to go kill the fugitive before Caesar even got anywhere near Egypt. The advisors sent a group of men down to greet him. Among that group were two of Pompey’s old comrades. Seeing them from the boat, Pompey brought the boat closer to the shore. A group of men jumped aboard to greet him. As Pompey stooped over to look at one of his speeches that he intended to give to the Pharaoh, one of these men suddenly sheathed his dagger in Pompey’s back. Within seconds of the first attack on his person, more men rushed into the boat, bearing down on him with sword and dagger. In a rather short period of time, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, Pompey the Great was dead. Slicing off the general’s head, the men left the boat, Pompey’s body stripped naked, lying in the center of the rickety old thing. After a few hours, the boat and the body were cremated together. The head (preserved in brine) was sent off to Caesar, the ‘delivery-man’ who handed him the pate, along with a signet ring of Pompey’s, made the quite foolish remark, “Dead men don’t bite”. After one look, Caesar buried his face in his hands, bursting into tears.

The Little War
Even though Pompey was dead, his sons weren’t. Gnaeus Jr., Quintus, and Sextus each had their own armies and navies, and indeed, ruled the Mediterranean Sea. Kings like Pharnaces of Pontus, Juba I, and generals like Titus Labienus were still on the loose, and were fighting for the Pompeians, dominating North Africa. Caesar’s work, it seemed, was far from finished. As his troops took on Pharnaces, Juba, and the bunch, Caesar himself was called to settle a political dispute in Egypt. Pompey’s one-time ally, Cleopatra VII, was back in Egypt, and stirring up trouble for Ptolemy XIII and the rest of the Pharonic family. However, the relatively uninterested Caesar so irritated the young king that he blockaded his small force within the very palace of Alexandria. Caesar, it seemed, was now a virtual prisoner to this little brat. So began the Alexandrian War and a short war it would be. During the winter, Caesar met with Cleopatra, smuggled into the palace it seemed, some early historians claiming that she had been rolled up in a carpet for old Caesar. Whether Cleopatra was a knock-dead gorgeous gal as she has been depicted in film and painting, Caesar was obviously enchanted by her and, despite the fact that he was already married to Calpurnia, in a short period of time the young queen was pregnant with Caesar’s one and only (known) natural son. Caesar, it seemed, had melted down (due to the queen’s affections) from a tough, Mars-like general into a warm, cuddly little buck, and Cleopatra was going to take full advantage of it. Caesar and Cleopatra, having now created their infamous alliance, had gained the total hatred of Achillas and Pothinus (who plotted Caesar’s murder) and the royal tyke, and their own troops were soon literally skirmishing with Caesar’s 3,000 in the streets of Alexandria. In one fight, the Great Library itself was destroyed. These tough street fights were wearing down Caesar’s small force in Egypt, and things were becoming increasingly jeopardous for him. Though such lieutenants as Marcus Antonius and Marcus Lepidus were out there defeating the enemy, this blasted blockade of Ptolemy’s was being assisted by the Pompeians, who eagerly rammed all Caesarian ships they could locate. In these circumstances, nothing could get through. Pothinus at least was dead, executed by Cleopatra. Caesar, however, was in grave danger; an attempt on his life had already been made at the Pharos Lighthouse. Was Caesar, the conqueror of Gaul and Pompey, doomed to die in a street fight at the hand of the subject of a spoiled little brat?

Amazingly, within a very short amount of time, the Alexandrian War came to a very quick and violent end. A wealthy little Syrian named Mithridates of Pergamum, and Antipater, a member of the government of Judaea, had slipped through the Egyptian blockade in a daring run. Amazingly, the Oriental army landed itself in Alexandria, fighting it’s way through the streets, past Ptolemy’s bodyguard and the Alexandrian mob towards the palace. Joined by Caesar’s troops, the armies became one, and, under Caesar’s direction, they set out after Ptolemy and Achillas, whom were building their own army. Catching members of the royal family such as Cleopatra’s youngest brother, and her sister Arsinoe, they turned onward down the Nile to vanquish Ptolemy XIII. The Nile Delta, Egypt’s source of life, was soon the spot of the showdown that ended the war. Achillas and Ptolemy were woefully undermanned when compared to Caesar, and to boot none of these troops had received half as much training as the men of the great dictator had. The King of Egypt, Ptolemy XIII, didn’t stand a chance. In a short battle, the Egyptians were mowed down, the waters turning red with the blood of hundreds of Egyptian troops. Achillas was caught near the end of the action, and was executed on the spot, a single swing of a Roman sword separating his head from his neck. The battle had become an abysmal slaughter. Near the end of the action the boy king himself was found face down in the Nile. No sword or dagger had finished him. He’d simply drowned.

After the confrontation, the crown passed from the drowned Ptolemy XIII to his youngest brother, who would become Ptolemy XIV, and who would also become Cleopatra’s new husband, despite the great difference in age. Young Ptolemy wasn’t the true ruler of Egypt. The co-regent, Caesar’s favorite, Cleopatra, was the real power behind the throne. Caesar spent the next two months on Cleopatra’s golden barge, on a tour of the Nile itself. While he sat with the queen in her large beds, or ran about the barge’s five fine restaurants, Caesar watched as many of his old enemies were simply annihilated by his lieutenants. After Cleopatra bore Caesar a son, Ptolemy Caesarion, on June 23rd, 47 BC, Caesar was off again to defeat his enemy. After a brief stay in Judaea, Caesar joined his armies, marching on Pharnaces of Pontus. In a very short amount of time, with the assistance of Asander, Caesar completely defeated old Pharnaces, who was murdered before he could get to safety. Caesar remarked after the final battle at Zela, “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Over the next two years, Caesar spent all of his time wrecking the remainder of the Pompeian force, taking back North Africa and Numidia (much to the chagrin of Juba, who ordered his slaves to do him in when he was informed of his defeat), and then Spain. Gnaeus and Sextus Pompey had arrived there in 46 BC, raising an army with the assistance of Titus Labienus. In 45 BC, Caesar won the final battle. Scipio was dead, as well as Cato, dead at Thapsus in the year 46, the latter’s end coming unmercifully slow after a botched attempt at falling on his sword. Gnaeus Pompeius the Younger was caught, and then, on Caesar’s orders, he was beheaded. The city of Munda, garrisoned by Labienus, had fallen, Labienus himself falling in the thick of the combat. Caesar, it seemed, had won the final victory.

The Great Dictator
Politically this was also the case. By the end of 45 BC, Caesar had been dictator thrice, and Consul four times. As 44 BC came about, Caesar would become Consul for the fifth time, and, much to the horror of many conservative senators, dictator for life. The dictator’s word, it seemed was law. Even the Roman calendar was not above him. Long in need of a change, the ancient, though inaccurate Roman calendar was toppled by Caesar, and in it’s place he instituted his own calendar, ‘the Julian Calendar’. He even added a whole new month to the old calendar, naming it July, after, well, who else but himself? He also decided, for heaven knows what reason, to be lenient on his conquered enemies. Perhaps he thought that the supporters of the Senate would flock to him, seeing him as by far a more kind and compassionate overlord. Whatever the case, he let his enemies be, and became, well, careless, running about the city itself without so much as a bodyguard. That, you might say, is simply inviting trouble.

Of course, Caesar was no fool. His public service works seemed to be gaining some admiration for him. Perhaps even crusty old Cicero, that old champion of citizen’s rights, was somewhat pleased with the new calendar. Caesar was quickly gaining support in Italia through his plans (never carried out) to build dikes to keep the sea from washing over Ostia, the port of Rome, or clearing the shipping routes of hidden reefs, and to construct more ports and roads for transportation and trade. “All these things he had in preparation,” writes Plutarch. In celebration of his victories, he held lavish gladiatorial shows, including huge “sham battles of ships, cavalry, infantry, elephants, and with public banquets extending over many days,” as Paterculus records. “He celebrated five triumphs [victory parades]. The furnishings for his Gallic triumph were of citrus, for his Ponthic of acanthus, for his African of ivory, and for his Spanish of polished silver.” He brought home more than six hundred million sesterces worth of spoils.

Of course, at the same time he severely tested the people at home. Firstly, he brought home with him the Egyptian royals, Cleopatra, her brother Ptolemy, and, of course, her child (and Caesar’s), Caesarion. This not only disgusted a good number of Romans, but it showed to them that Caesar had betrayed his wife, the long-suffering Calpurnia. If this wasn’t bad enough, he put up a golden statue of Cleopatra in the Temple of Venus Genetrix, right in the Forum of Caesar itself! To rub salt in the wounds of the conservatives, it was painfully obvious that Caesar was fixing to go one step beyond dictator, to become, of all things, a king of Rome. Rome had tossed away the monarchy in the early 400s, and was not about to simply give Caesar the crown. While many still supported Caesar, a good number were wary of him, especially when he tried the rigged-up ‘turning down the crown’ routine. After the Senate grudgingly gave him the position as dictator for life, a position only given to someone in the most hopeless emergency, Caesar proved that he wanted the laurel wreath to be planted about his cranium once and for all. This new imperator, wearing the purple robes, the laurel crown, and carrying the scepter of the victorious general, was approached on the feast of the Lupercalia (February 15th, 44 BC) by Marcus Antonius, the second consul, bearing the diadem, offering it to Caesar. It was, of course, a set-up, but one that Caesar himself had come up with, in order to see how the citizenry would react to him actually taking the diadem and becoming king. When only the several plants in the crowd clapped, Caesar shook his head dramatically in refusal. He was, of course, very reluctant to do so.

Strangely enough, along the boot of Italia, support began to grow for Caesar to actually become king, and no doubt the idea of becoming Gaius Iulius Caesar Rex was attractive to the dictator. However, the more the liberal citizenry began to push for Caesar’s acceptance, the more the Senate became wary of the old, bald general. Slowly, the idea of simply killing old Caesar became slightly more attractive to several members of the Senate. In particular, it became attractive to General C. Cassius Longinus, Servillus Casca, and Tullius Cimber. Longinus hated Caesar for blocking his path to becoming Consul; Cimber had a better reason. Caesar had exiled his brother for being a Pompeian. Slowly, another man was recruited, Marcus Junius Brutus, the speaker, and a member of the late Cato’s family. He and Cassius had fought Caesar on the side of the Pompeians, and all were afraid of Caesar becoming a king. It simply wouldn’t do. As the now fifty-six year old Caesar planned an invasion of Parthia, slotted for mid 44 BC, which he promised would avenge Crassus and take back the banners of the destroyed legions, the Senators planned to assassinate the dictator. As more and more Senators joined in the plot (including friends of Caesar, men such as Decimus Brutus and Gaius Trebonius) Caesar, for the first time began to worry. When rumors reached him that Antonius and General Dolabella might be planning a rebellion, Caesar responded “I am not much afraid of these fat, long-haired fellows, but more of those pale lean ones,” meaning, of course, Cassius and Brutus.

Odd events occurred in the early days of March, 44 BC. As the poet Horace recorded: “the sheeted dead/ did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.” Horace would know. He was there. Plutarch tells us of loud cries that were heard in the night, flaming men “moving in”, a soldier’s slave “who threw a mass of flame off his hand and seemed to onlookers to be burning himself…yet when the flame went, there was nothing wrong with the man”. Caesar himself must have felt a little uneasy when he offered sacrifice at the temple and discovered, to the horror of the priests and onlookers, that the animal had no heart. Indeed, a soothsayer is said to have warned Caesar of the Ides of March, March the 15th, 44 BC. When that day dawned, Caesar noticed the man, and cried at him happily that the Ides had come. “Yes, they are here,” the man responded, “but they have not yet gone.” Caesar, much to the sorrow of Calpurnia, who had apparently been that night visited by strange omens, left that morning to address the Senate, which met, oddly enough, at the Theater of Pompey instead of the Curia.

Outside the Theater, loyal Antonius was detained in conversation with Caesar’s heir (and one of his secret enemies) Decimus ‘Albinus’ Brutus, while inside, in the Pompeian Assembly Room, preparations were made to kill the entering Caesar. Cassius, looking up at the statue Pompey had erected to himself, silently invoked the help of the late triumvir to help them save the Republic. Caesar took a seat underneath that statue, and began to listen to one of the plotters, Senator Cimber, asking him to revoke the sentence on his brother. Brutus, Cassius, and sixteen others came round to speak to him, and Caesar rose to his feet. Caesar, of course, rejected Cimber’s pleas, and Cimber grabbed at his own toga and tore it down from his throat. This was not simply a sign of frustration; it was a sign of ‘let’s go, boys’.

As Caesar watched Cimber tear down his toga, Casca unsheathed his sica, and promptly attempted to sheath it in Caesar’s neck. The wound, though not very deep at all, was still rather painful to Caesar. Immediately, Casca fell back in pain, Caesar having given his attacker a nasty jab in the arm with his trusty stylus. As Casca dropped, his dagger flying out of his hand, Caesar cried “You damned Casca, what are you doing?” Simultaneously, Casca called his brother for assistance. Immediately, knives flew at Caesar’s face, cutting through the air, and cutting into the dictator’s body. Pushed against the statue of Pompey, Caesar could barely resist his attackers. After being stabbed numerous times, Caesar staggered forward, trying desperately to break away from this crew. However, as he did so, Marcus Junius Brutus lunged forward, his dagger pointing right for Caesar’s chest. It was instead embedded deep in his groin. In horror, staring Brutus right in the eyes, Caesar spat up some blood, and managed to spit out along with it the words, “Kai su technon?” This is the Greek for, “You too, my child?” (It is actually quite possible that Brutus really was Caesar’s son.) It was then that Caesar fell backward, slamming against the blood-soaked pedestal of the Pompeian statue, his toga falling over his face. His lifeblood quickly drained from his butchered trunk. He was dead. There were twenty-three stab wounds covering his body, puncturing his toga. The Senators, some of them wounded accidentally by each other in the rush to stab Caesar, quickly filed out of the Theater, waving their bloodied weapons in triumph. Caesar was left alone in the Assembly Room; his pierced bloody lying against the statue, surrounded by pools of his own blood. The eyes of marble Pompey stared unseeing down at the dictator’s corpse. Caesar was dead; the Republic was, so it seemed, saved. Now what?

Cleaning Up the Mess
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar,” says Antony in Act III, Scene II of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The noble Brutus hath told you that Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men—Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful, and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; and Brutus is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransom did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?”

The scene is, of course, the Forum, the date is March 20th, 44 BC. Marcus Antonius, delivering his funeral speech to the hundreds of thousands of mourners, the plebeians and patricians alike, begins in criticism against Caesar, as his old commander’s body lies on the pyre, covered in purple and gold cloth, slowly burning away in the flames. Slowly, however, Marc Antony changes the whole gist of the speech from criticism of Caesar to downright Caesarian passion. “When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; and Brutus is an honorable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honorable man.”

Of course C. Cassius Longinus, Marcus Brutus, and Servillus Casca, along with the throng of other Senators who had taken part in the assassination of Caesar, must be, at this point, beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable, as they undoubtedly try to take their eyes off the crowd, which is quickly growing incredibly angry with the murderers. Of course, Antonius doesn’t let the killers off easily. He continues with, “I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bare with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.”

Antonius soon continues, on and on, and soon, the crowd is turned in fury against the murderers. Shakespeare may well have simply been nothing more than a playwright trying to build up the drama of the scene with this speech, which was certainly concocted by old Billy solely for the play. However, despite the apparent invention of the words, Shakespeare was more correct than one would at first believe. Antonius most certainly did give a speech at the cremation of Caesar; the crowd most certainly was turned against Caesar’s assassins, in all probability because of Antonius’ words. Unfortunately for us, and perhaps fortunately for Shakespeare, we don’t really know what all Antonius actually said at the cremation, but Plutarch certainly gives us an idea of the gist of it, and Shakespeare certainly would have been influenced by his description. “He [Antonius] saw that the people were deeply stirred and fascinated by his words, and proceeded to mingle with his praises of Caesar compassion and horror at the woeful deed,” writes Plutarch. “As he ended his speech, he waved above them the clothing of the dead man, blood-stained and torn by swords, and called the perpetrators of the deed villains and assassins. He got the people in such a state of frenzy that they piled up benches and tables and burned Caesar’s body in the forum, and then snatching up flaming faggots from the pyre, ran to the houses of the murderers to attack them.” Brutus, Cassius, and the lot would most certainly have been a little worried by now, and would have begun to wonder, “Should we have done this?” What had placed them in this sort of jeopardy? Saving the Republic, it seemed, had.

Of course, when the assassins (all twenty-some of them) plunged their knives into Caesar, they would have expected a little more enthusiasm for what they’d done from the people of Rome, but surprisingly, that enthusiasm hadn’t come. The discontent had all started lightly, of course, a few crying individuals, a few shouts of rage, some old woman breaking down in the street, that sort of thing, but then it became a little more worrying. Several rich citizens seem to have actually commissioned busts of the dead general based on his own exanimate face, leading to a large group of busts with the sunken cheeks and a face that looked so different in contrast to those of the animate Caesar. Next, of course, came the cremation. Brutus’ little eulogy was laconic and pithy, and basically said that Caesar had simply gotten what was coming to him for being overly ambitious. However, Antonius’ eulogy ensured that the crowd would take retribution on the killers. Antonius and Octavius (Caesar’s nephew, adopted son, and heir) were the heroes of the hour. Snatching up pieces of burning wood, the mob rushed off to go find as many of the killers as possible. The crowd saw among them a praetor for that year, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, a relative of Caesar’s first wife and, of course, one of the murderers. Within a few minutes the crowd was upon him, tearing him to shreds. Unfortunately, they’d gotten the wrong Cinna; this one was a tribune, Gaius Helvius Cinna, and one of Caesar’s best friends. Ah well, we all make mistakes. Interestingly enough, Cinna reported of a strange omen that he’d seen in a dream that morning, before the funeral. In the dream, Caesar invited him to dinner. Cinna turned down the offer, but Caesar still dragged him along anyway, in spite of his protests.

Strangely enough, it wasn’t simply Caesar’s enemies that the mob wanted to bump off. Cleopatra, the Ptolemaic Queen of Egypt (and a bosom chum of Caesar’s, so much so that she’d born him his only positively identified child, Caesarion) was nearly killed in her villa across the Tiber from the city. The reason was that, of course, she had corrupted poor old Caesar with her sinful ways, and had, through this, made poor Calpurnia the wreck she was these days. Had it not been for an early warning from a maidservant, Cleopatra probably wouldn’t have survived the night. Luckily for her, she managed to get out of Rome on the 15th of April. “I hate the Queen,” writes Cicero, “Her arrogance, when she was living across the Tiber in the gardens…I cannot recall without profound bitterness.” Clearing out also were Brutus, Cassius, and the lot, heading out for a much safer place to stay. Things were getting increasingly nasty in Rome, especially when one was an enemy of the late lamented Caesar. Five days after Caesar died, Marcus Cicero, the barrister, wrote to his friend Atticus, “Ah, friend, I fear that the Ides of March have given us nothing beyond the pleasure and satisfaction of our hatred and indignation. What news I receive, what sights I see! ‘Lofty was that deed, aye, but bootless!’”

A Second Trio
Of course, another three men were now slowly emerging from all this chaos, as Crassus, Caesar, and Pompey had done in the last generation of Civil War. The three men were strikingly different, and they all seemed to hate each other tremendously to boot. The first was, of course, the thirty-eight year old Marcus Antonius, alias Marc Antony. Art depicting Antonius shows him in various different appearances, and so it’s hard to pin down exactly what he looked like. He was a handsome individual, tall, square-faced, curly-haired, Plutarch tells us that at one time he had a fine Herculean beard. He had a rather large nose, turning down at the tip, and a strong, projecting chin. He had rather fleshy features. Indeed, in his later years he seems to have gotten a little on the chubby side. Despite that, he was built like a gladiator, as befitted someone who claimed to be a descendant of Herakles (Hercules) himself. Antonius was born in 82 BC into a fine political family, and he married into an even finer one, that of Julius Caesar. Young Antonius always had a taste for strong drink, and so by 60 BC, the man was a hopeless, drunken, denarii-less individual. It was only through the mob leader Clodius Pulcher that Antonius was saved from a nasty fate, and he soon set out to Syria as a commander of cavalry. Of course, in the military old Antonius excelled, so much so in fact that he wound up as the second most powerful man in Caesar’s army next to, well, Caesar himself. Now, of course, he was one of the most powerful men in Rome, period. He was beloved by his troops, as well. He was seen to go into the tents of the wounded to speak with them, and on occasion he would burst into tears when he saw the hopelessly wounded. He was also known for his rather puerile tricks on, well, just about anybody, especially his wives. He was known to be quite vulgar on occasions, and he was also famous for his numerous affairs.

The second of the three men was the bearded Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Lepidus seems to have fitted into the mold of a rather tragic figure. Though an important man, the Master of the Horse in Caesar’s army, a praetor of Rome, and the man who would succeed Caesar as Pontifex Maximus, Lepidus never gained the power, or indeed the respect, he always wanted and no doubt felt he richly deserved. The offer of becoming a triumvir in the 2nd Triumvirate was even given to poor old Lepidus almost as an afterthought. The treatment given him was not something that made his superiors endearing to him. However, Lepidus seems to have coped with this treatment fairly well and was actually strangely unambitious, and he was somehow content to just living in his villa off in North Africa.

The third of these men, and seemingly the brightest of the three, was an eighteen-year old, sickly little chap by name of Gaius Octavius Thurinus, Octavian. Octavian, born in 63 BC, was the grandnephew and adoptive son of Julius Caesar himself. In fact, as the aghast Marcus Antonius found out (only after laying claim to Caesar’s fortune), he was his sole heir. Young Octavius was a short fellow, but that’s not to say ugly. Indeed, as all the surviving portraits show, that was hardly the case. He was rather bookish, an intelligent, scholarly fellow, very moralistic. The behaviors of the highly immoral Marcus Antonius disgusted him. Also unlike Marcus Antonius, Gaius Octavius was not the sort to go boldly into battle at the spur of the movement, wildly swinging his sword around, sending heads flying in every direction. That’s not to say he was a coward (though the rather judgmental Antonius certainly thought that this was the case), indeed, he performed valiantly in the few battles he fought personally. Suetonius says that Octavius had “clear, bright eyes in which he liked to have it thought that there was a kind of divine power.” Elsewhere, Suetonius writes that Octavius was “unusually handsome and exceedingly graceful at all periods of his life, though he cared nothing for personal adornment…as for his beard he now had it clipped and now shaved, while at the same time he would either be reading or writing something.” Though his face was handsome for the most part, his teeth were abysmal, “wide apart, small, and ill-kept”. He was manbrowed; his golden eyebrows met just above his long, typically Roman nose.

Born on September 23rd, 63 BC in the city of Rome itself, Gaius Octavius was related to Caesar through his mother, Julius Caesar’s niece. His father, a Senator, died when he was young, but old Caesar became something of a foster-father to him while he fought with Caesar in Spain against the remaining Pompeians. When Caesar was slain on the Ides of March in the Theater of Pompey, Octavius was with his friend Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa in Apollonia in Epirus, studying and preparing for the Parthian Campaign that old Julius had been planning. Octavius, it seemed, had been promised a command. Octavius rushed back to Rome, finding that Antonius and Lepidus were scurrying about burning old Caesar and wondering what to do concerning the assassins. Octavius knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to kill every last one of them. The first thing old Octavius did once he reached Rome was to seize his inheritance, and then, much to the horror of his relatives (and his enemies), he changed his name to Gaius Iulius Caesar. Of course, he should have used the cognomen ‘Octavianus’ at the end of that, as was customary, but he did nothing of the sort. The name of Octavius was now permanently discarded in favor of the name Caesar. The next thing on the agenda was to take back from Antonius all of Caesar’s assets, but Antonius, in a snit, refused at once (in reality, Antonius had already used a lot of the money on wine and women). Grudgingly, Octavius relied on the city treasury (and his own pocket) to distribute the money that Caesar had left in his will to each citizen of the city. Antonius wasn’t exactly making things easy for poor old Octavius.

Things rapidly went downhill and never recovered. Soon after his arrival, Octavius met Antonius at his villa in Rome, and the two soon started quarreling, Antonius crying something to the effect of “You, boy, owe everything to your name”. Octavius, Gaius Julius Caesar as he called himself now, accused Antonius of thieving from Caesar’s fortune and estate and wasting the money, while doing nothing to avenge the dead dictator. Of course, Octavius was right. Antonius flew into a rage, calling Octavius an effeminate coward, and ordering him from his house. The meeting in itself must have been rather odd. Octavius, that fountain of moral virtue which Rome so valued, coming face to face with Antonius, a man who was known for being drunk half the day, and losing all of his money in a rather short amount of time. He also enjoyed, so it was said, running about Rome spiffed, wearing a sword, a tunic, and nothing else at all.

In Rome, the usually well-liked Antonius was being abandoned by all, even his own beloved legions. Everyone, it seemed, much preferred Octavius, even Caesar’s own legions. Oddly enough, even crusty old Cicero liked him enough to make a cry for him to be made a Senator, and then a Consul (despite the fact that he was too young to legally hold either position). The Senate quickly agreed. Whether or not the Senate gave him these positions was simply because they felt they could use him as a puppet leader, or simply due to the fact that he was less a danger to them than nasty old Marc Antony is still rather debatable, but both suggestions are probably close to the truth. As Cicero said “the young man must be flattered, used, and pushed aside.”

Political Blood
Brutus and Cassius were back in town now, it seemed, and they were making the usual threats against Octavian and Antonius, and Octavius responded by simply driving them out of town under the threat of execution. The fact that Octavian had a large number of legionaries to support his actions obviously helped keep them away as well. Finally, it seemed as if Rome could get back to business. Unfortunately, things weren’t really that simple. The assassins, yesterday’s liberators, were stirring up trouble. Decimus Brutus, old ‘Albinus’, the ablest general of the lot, had invaded, and quickly seized the province of Cisalpine Gaul, cutting old Lepidus (governor of Transalpine Gaul) off from his usual quick route to Rome. Marcus Brutus and Cassius Longinus had left for their respective provinces, Macedon and Syria. All three men were quickly raising armies, and minting propaganda in the form of coins bearing the cap of liberty, flanked by two daggers, with the words Eid Mar (Ides of March) written at the bottom.

Marcus Antonius quickly made the march to northern Italy to go take on Decimus Brutus in battle, and while he was away, Cicero made his move. He delivered to the Senate the first of his great speeches against Antonius, known as the Philippics. In them he attacked the power hungry Antonius in any way possible. Antonius, he knew, was a threat to the Republic, and he had to be destroyed through one way or another. Antonius, he warned, wanted nothing more than to be a dictator. He couldn’t be tolerated. As Antonius was defeated in battle against Decimus, he angrily sent an order to Cicero to apologize for his words, or else. Of course, Cicero didn’t do so. He gave a conciliatory speech on September the 2nd, but it offended Antonius also as much as had the original speech. On September 19th, Antonius launched a vicious attack on Cicero, not through violence, but through words, and Cicero responded with the 2nd Philippic, perhaps even nastier towards Antonius than the first. “To what strange fatality in my life, my lords, am I to ascribe the fact that no traitor has for these twenty years molested my country who has not immediately declared war upon me?” begins Cicero. Of course, by the end of it, one can only imagine that Antonius’ opinion of Cicero, already at an all-time low, had suddenly hit rock bottom. Before Antonius could take action against the barrister and senator, Octavian declared war on his old political foe, and the man who had dared to call him a coward. Despite a public reconciliation between the two, the animosity was stronger than ever, and with Antonius away, Octavian had his chance, and he took it. By early 43 BC, Octavian’s troops were slowly advancing into the Alpine regions of northern Italy, searching for the enemy, Antonius, now public enemy number one. With Octavian, the Senate’s champion it seemed, were the two Consuls, Aulus Hurtius and Gaius Vibius Pansa Caetronianus. The Senate was finally behind a Caesar.

The two rivals finally clashed in the Alps that April, fighting a series of short, bloody skirmishes such as Forum Gallorum on April 14th, 43 BC, in which one of the Consuls, Pansa, wound up dead. The real fight came on the 21st at a spot known as Mutina. In a quick, decisive battle, Octavian actually seized the day, defeating Antonius, his military superior. The only drawback was the loss of the other Consul, Hurtius, mortally wounded in the thick of the fighting. Of course, now Antonius was scrambling for a way to get out of this bloody mess, somehow managing to get away from Octavian, crawling over the Alps, and with the remnants of his troops seeking refuge in Gallia. Waiting for him there was the governor, Lepidus. Of course, Lepidus decided to help his old friend, allying with him, and immediately starting to raise a new army with which to defend himself from the wrath of Octavian. Octavian would have to postpone his eagerly sought after revenge, however, when he received the news that the ‘liberators’, Brutus and Cassius, were raising their armies in the east, and that they had been joined by such monstrous little murderers as Casca and Domitus Brutus. They were forming an empire themselves, their latest conquest was the great independent city of Rhodes. Things suddenly looked very nasty indeed. Octavian, using his brain again, decided to make his peace with Antonius and Lepidus, asking for a combination of forces to go after, of course, Caesar’s assassins. Antonius, seeing the trouble he was in, complied. Then something totally unexpected, but totally Roman occurred.

Return of the Triumvirate
Octavian marched his army on Rome itself, declaring himself the Consul for the coming year, 42 BC. This act shocked the Senate, and not least of all, Cicero. They had, it seemed, underestimated young Octavian. What could be coming next? Well, Triumvirate was next, of course. Meeting on November 23rd, 43 BC, at Boii, or Bononia (Bologna), Octavian, Antonius, and Lepidus came to an agreement. Octavian, inspired by the triumvirate of Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey, proposed that the three men divide up the territories of the Republic and that they each rule a third of the territory in their own new triumvirate. Antonius seemed to be fine with it. He might have had the money and power to rule, but Octavian had the blood of Caesar in him. Lepidus didn’t mind it either, after all, the idea of being stuck as a governor in the rather uncivilized province of Gaul didn’t thrill him much at all. Things might work out well this way.

The Senate agreed to it, having really no choice in the matter, the Republic was on its last legs now anyway, and besides, they didn’t have the thirty-three legions that the triumvirs controlled. “For the reconstruction of the state” the Triumvirate, always renewable, would exist for the next five years, and, as long as the triumvirs managed to stay alive, it could perhaps exist even longer. “As soon as the triumvirs were together alone,” wrote Appian, “they wrote the names of those to be killed, listing men suspected because they were powerful and also personal enemies…The number of senators condemned to death was about 300, and of the equestrians about 2000.” These triumvirs, it seemed, were trying to outdo Sulla. The proscriptions would last for the next month, or so, and a large body of “enemies of the state” would be “liquidated”. Who else would Antonius want dead than his number one enemy (next to Octavian, of course), Marcus Tullius Cicero?

Cicero fled with his brother Quintus and his nephew to Astura, his villa at Formiae. Being a senator, Cicero, of course, would have known about these proposed proscriptions before they started up. Antonius, he knew, would go at any length to kill him now that they had the chance. On December 7th, 43 BC, a group of assassins in the hire of Marcus Antonius, lead by a centurion, one Herennius, and a tribune, one Popilius (whom Cicero had ably defended when the tribune was accused of committing parricide) arrived outside the villa, bursting through the doors, killing Quintus and his son. But, asked the assassins, where was Cicero? He was on the beach, came the reply from one of the treacherous slaves, making good his escape. Or was he? Cicero was on the beach, but he was not trying to escape. When the assassins caught up with him, he was sitting in a litter, his head resting in his hand, watching sadly as his murderers approached. He knew what he was going to do now. He was going to become a martyr for the Republic, and like Demosthenes, a hero for the ages. Antonius was pleased. Cicero had been killed instantly, a single swing of the sword removing his head. To set an example to any ‘wannabe’ “enemies of the state”, Cicero’s hands and head were nailed to the prow of the speaking platform, the rostrum, from where the great man had delivered his Philippics. What the Senators and the populae shuddered at when they entered the building was not Cicero’s decapitated head, but, as Plutarch wrote, “an image of Antony’s soul”. However, Antonius had a sense of fairness to him, despite his heavy-handedness, turning over to Quintus Cicero’s wife, Pomponia, a slave named Philologus, who had betrayed his master to his murderers. Apparently, Pomponia, in her rage, made him eat his own flesh.

What came next was something totally new. In 42 BC, Octavian ordered the Senate (what remained of it, anyway) to declare the murdered dictator Julius Caesar “Iulius Divus”, Julius the Divine, the dictator deified. Whether the Senate liked it or not, Julius Caesar was now a god of the state. Of course, it also meant that Octavian, or Caesar as he would have himself called now, was now “Divi Filius”, son of the god. And after this, Caesar set up a temple for his dead, deified adoptive father. Marcus Junius Brutus and C. Cassius Longinus were now more than mere assassins, they were god killers, and they were going down. Raising their armies, the triumvirs joined forces, plowing across the Adriatic with huge armies, landing in Macedonia, and looking for the god killers. They found them outside Philippi. Unfortunately for Octavian and Antonius, the attack on the nineteen legions of Brutus and Cassius didn’t go well at all. The attacks were beaten back; the Republicans actually gained the momentum, driving into the camps, breaking the tide of the triumvirs. Octavian himself was nearly caught in the fighting. Antonius couldn’t take the sting, and he immediately took command, halting the Republican attack, bringing the battle to a draw, and hoping for better luck next time. Antonius wanted Brutus dead. Brutus had already killed Antonius’ brother Gaius in Macedonia in revenge for the assassination of Cicero. The one major loss for the Republicans was C. Cassius Longinus himself. “When he saw a force of men moving in his direction he sent a veteran to identify them for him,” wrote Paterculus, “The man was slow in reporting. The column was advancing at a run and now very close, but dust prevented recognition of their personnel and standards, and Cassius supposed they were the enemy charging. He covered his head with his cloak and calmly extended his neck for his freedman to strike. The head had fallen when the veteran return to report that Brutus had won. When he saw his general lying dead, he said, ‘My slowness killed him, I must follow,’ and so fell upon his sword.”

Three weeks later, on October 23rd, 43 BC, Antonius attacked once again. Octavian was ill, it seems, perhaps of diarrhea, his sudden gallivants off to a shady, marshy spot at odd periods in the day certainly suggest that. He watched from a distance as Antonius led the armies himself, riding at the head of his old cavalry units. A lonely Marcus Junius Brutus led the defense personally, Plutarch says that the apparition of dead Caesar (“You will see me at Philippi”) had been plaguing him. Commanding a force in the battle was Decimus Brutus, and he knew his time had come also. Fat little Casca was also present, though perhaps not taking as much a part in the fighting as his co-conspirators. By the end of the long, hard fight, Decimus was dead, slain in battle. Casca had also died, plunging his dagger into his rather corpulent belly. Marcus J. Brutus, however, had actually managed to survive thus far, and had fallen back. Antonius, of course, was pursuing at the head of his cavalry, running over many of the fleeing Republicans. Like Cicero before him, Brutus stopped his retreat, facing his approaching enemy to become yet another martyr. Urged to flee, he responded, “Yes, we must fly, but with our hands—not our feet!” “At nightfall,” says Paterculus, “he withdrew to a hill and prevailed upon his intimate Strato of Aegaeae to lend a hand for his death. He raised his left arm above his head and with his right hand held the point of Strato’s sword near the left nipple where the heart throbs; then he lunged to open a wound, was transfixed by the stroke, and died at once.” While expecting the human debris, Antonius came across poor dead Brutus and covered him with his purple cloak in respect. Those Republicans who were not killed outright, committed suicide, or were caught, made for the last remaining Republican leader: Sextus Pompeius, great Pompey’s sixth son. The enemy was scattered. Finally, it seemed, Julius Caesar had been avenged.

All right, that done, the triumvirs got down to business dividing up the territories of the Republic. The western territories would be controlled by, naturally enough, Octavius, while Antonius would be shipped off to control the East, his headquarters in Alexandria. Poor old Lepidus was left with the African provinces (excepting, of course, Egypt). There were two factors that needed to be eliminated now it seemed. Sextus Pompeius, son of the late Pompey, was in control of the entire Mediterranean with his large privateer navy, composed of huge flotillas of ships that were used in a piratical fashion. Yes, Pompey would definitely have to go. The other problem, of course, was Parthia, still a danger to the East, being more powerful than ever after its astounding victory over Crassus at Carrhae. Well, Parthia was Antonius’ problem now.
 
The Enemy in the East
Though Antonius had hard work ahead of him, Octavian’s task of holding Italy together was rather tough going. The problem was land grants to veterans. Eighteen cities had been confiscated by the government for land for the veterans of the army, but the inhabitants of the city were, understandably, rather ticked off by the idea of simply being shoved out of their dwellings so as some cut-up, battle-weary soldier could move in. With the support of both Antonius and, unsurprisingly, Sextus Pompey, the ancient Etruscan city of Perusia arose in full revolt, rallying some small army to attempt to gain it’s own independence, or at least to show this upstart Octavian some sense. Despite the total destruction of Perusia itself, the Perusian Wars seemed to last longer than they should have, thanks to Antonius. The Eastern triumvir actually dared to sail towards Italy. Was this to be the start of some nasty little political coup?

Of course, it was all stopped before it could get out of hand. Antonius, Octavian, and Lepidus met at Brundisium in 40 BC, signing a treaty that set the borders of the triumvirs. Poor Lepidus was surely not pleased with his meager portions, but no one really cared all that much about what he felt. The treaty of Brundisium, which carved up the Republican ‘empire’, was really the second-to-last nail in the coffin of the aging, senile Republic, which could barely thrash back at the triumvirs who seemed so keen on the idea of finally killing it. Octavian then assured peace with Antonius (or so he hoped) by offering his dear twenty-four year old sister, poor, soft-spoken Octavia, in marriage to the forty-two year old triumvir of the East. The marriage was a disaster from the start. Rather than spend his time with poor little Octavia, Antonius preferred the company of the Queen of Egypt, the infamous Cleopatra.

Cleopatra of Egypt had a big nose and an even bigger ambition. She doesn’t seem to have been knock-dead gorgeous, but she wasn’t ugly as sin either. She certainly had the stuff to attract such men as Caesar and Antonius, who both ended up giving her children in the end. Whether or not she really loved Antonius, or just saw in him the means to keeping Egypt forever free is debatable, but she obviously wasn’t stupid. She’d already taken over the throne herself, with the help of Caesar defeating her brother Ptolemy XIII, and then herself ordering the murder of her younger brother and husband, little Ptolemy XIV, and was now the Queen, paving the way for her son, Ptolemy, a.k.a. Caesarion, the son of Caesar. She’d lost her three best Roman protectors already. Pompey and Caesar had all been assassinated, and Dolabella, her latest chum, had committed suicide when he was defeated in battle by Cassius during the war with the assassins. When she met Antonius in one of his visits to Alexandria, she put on all the charm she could to win him over, and her tactics worked, Antonius soon became her lover, much to the chagrin of Octavia, poor dear. She somehow got him to take a cruise with her on her infamous royal barge. She, dressed as Aphrodite, was being as horrifically vulgar as possible in order to win over this rather vulgar man.

Octavian had married recently as well. His new wife was the beautiful, intelligent Livia Drusilla, whose husband (Tiberius Claudius Nero) had grudgingly divorced her so that she could marry this new Caesar, despite the fact that she was heavily pregnant with Tiberius’ son, also Tiberius, and the future emperor of Rome. Livia Drusilla was soon more than Octavian’s beloved wife, she was his propaganda machine. What he had was something that Antonius didn’t, namely a happy marriage. The other things he had that Antonius did not have, were morals. Octavian was creating a good public image while Antonius did not. While he and Livia were faithful to each other, he would suggest, Antonius was unfaithful to Octavia. Octavian and Livia had a high moral code; Antonius had no moral code. While Octavia sat at home, being the faithful wife, Antonius ran through the streets of the Eastern cities, drunk as a skunk, and carousing with many other women, that sinful temptress Cleopatra and that actress Volumnia Cytheris among them.

Of course, Antonius was slightly busy as well. The Parthians, under King Pacorus (Orodes having long since passed on), had invaded. Quintus Labienus had betrayed Antonius, leaving the legions and flying to Pacorus. Now Pacorus was on the move, in the year 40 BC he invaded Syria at the head of his men, crashing through Antonius’ defenders, and heading straight for the coast. Luckily, Antonius was able to stem the Parthian tide, and in the year 39 BC his general Ventidius Bassus defeated a Parthian army on Mount Amanus. Quintus Labienus had been caught and beheaded in the aftermath. Despite this victory, the war was hardly over, and Sextus Pompeius’ pirates were picking off Rome’s sea forces. Finally, in 39 BC, the Triumvirate was changed in it’s entirety at Misenum. Poor Lepidus was accused of treason and sent into exile (no one cared what he thought anyway), and in his place was none other than Sextus Pompeius, who was given Achaea, Sardinia, and Sicily. Antonius’ brother Lucius, a Consul, was leading a new rebellion against Octavian, easily crushed by Octavian’s right-hand-man Marcus V. Agrippa, and things were looking increasingly bad for Antonius. The city of Rome was behind Octavian; everyone was sick and tired of this foolishness, what with the rebellions and all. Antonius’ relationship with Cleopatra was viewed as a disgrace, something not to be tolerated. When he (“whom ne’er the word of ‘No’ woman heard speak”) married Cleopatra at Antioch in 37 BC, committing bigamy, Octavian came very close to finally hauling off and giving Antonius the chop, but the one thing that saved him was the fact that he was expanding the borders, crossing the Euphrates, his general Bassus scoring a major victory over the Parthians at Gindarus, taking the city of Samosata, and killing King Pacorus himself. The victory had been won due to the use of the famous testudo (tortoise) formation, which had literally caught the Parthians off guard, their arrows simply bouncing off the tough Roman shields.

Things didn’t stop there, of course. Cleopatra soon bore Antonius twins: Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios. Antonius remained in Athens, controlling his bit of the Empire, Octavia the ignored by his side. In reality, he was eating out of the Queen’s hand, and doing for her whatever she asked, including arranging the assassination of Cleopatra’s own sister Arsinoe. After the Triumvirate was renewed at Tarentum in 38 BC (in which Sextus Pompeius, that growing embarrassment, was totally axed out of the treaty), Antonius went down to Syria, leaving Octavia once again, marrying Cleopatra, and taking her with him on to glorious defeat at the hands of the Parthians, managing to get himself thoroughly whipped by the enemy (he was, some said, drunk at the time), and barely escaping back through Armenia. It wasn’t anything to be proud of, but Antonius didn’t mind all that much. At least he had Armenia under his thumb now, and he celebrated it in the triumph at Alexandria in 34 BC. While Antonius became more and more dependent on Cleopatra, Octavian became dependent on men who you could actually depend on: namely Agrippa and the chief minister, Cilinus Maecenas. While Antonius got himself thrashed, Octavian actually scored victories. Sextus Pompeius was finally drawn to battle, the tremendous sea fight at Naulochus ending in a decisive Agrippan victory. Sextus got the axe, quite literally this time, shortly thereafter. Next, of course, came in Marcus A. Lepidus, again, hoping to re-enter this triumvirate, and bringing along an army just to make sure that he did. He didn’t of course, the ever-busy Agrippa thrashing him, most of Lepidus’s boys deserting before the enemy. Lepidus conceded defeat, and instead of losing his head, he regained the office of Pontifex Maximus. Perhaps he was finally contented, but no historian of antiquity ever writes if he was or if he wasn’t, but they probably didn’t care too much about it one way or the other.

In 34 BC, Antonius had finally left Octavia for the last time, though, at that point, no one would know that for sure. It was to be expected however. The Queen had seduced Antonius for the last time, and he finally left Octavia in Athens, never to return to her. Octavian was hoping for this sort of thing, no doubt, he was always looking for a good reason to finally vanquish his old and hated rival Antonius, and to take back the East for the final time. It was in the bag, it seemed there would be no way out of it now. If Antonius dared divorce Octavia, Octavian would lunge out against him with all his power, and with the mighty fist of Republican Rome (or was that now an oxymoron?) he’d reduce Antonius to something resembling a little squashed bug. While Octavian was slowly bubbling over with rage, Antonius was busy setting up the ‘Association of Inimitable Livers’ with Cleopatra, or as Plutarch would have called them, the ‘Inimitable Lovers’. Of course, this association gained notably scorn from, well, most everybody. Things were getting from bad to worse, it seemed. In Alexandria, a statue was set up in an old district of the city that depicted ‘Antonius, the Great, lover without peer’. The inscription, of course, was a sly Alexandrian pun on the name of Antonius’ rather detestable association. Now Antonius was not simply the target of Octavian’s propaganda assaults, but he was the butt of some rather bad jokes (that were carved into the city’s venues), as well. This stuff never ends, he must have thought. He was trying his hand at propaganda himself now, but it wasn’t much of an attempt. The idea was to assume the roles of Dionysus and Aphrodite and their Egyptian counterparts Isis and Osiris. The idea didn’t really catch on.

When 33 BC came, it was evident that the storm was about to break and that sooner or later, Egypt would be showered with blood. It was coming on fast, no one doubted that. But what exactly was “it”? The year 33 BC started out with an election for the post of Consul, and that election was easily won by, of course, Octavian himself. There was no use in trying to project the idea that he was still nothing more than the benevolent military controller, he was really the top dog in Rome. Soon after this, Antonius made a return trip from Armenia. The triumvirate was up for renewal as well, this year, but oddly enough, there was no renewal. There was no trip to Tarentum, there was no document signed, there was nothing. It was almost as if there had never been such a thing as the 2nd Triumvirate. The old year ended as Antonius and Cleopatra wintered at Ephesus, and the new year, 32 BC, began with a divorce. Antonius, as usual, was being tactless. Was it not Cicero who had said "Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error"?

The Storm Breaks
By the time Octavia, the poor, long-suffering tragic heroine, was finally divorced by Antonius, Octavian had everything on his side. Twelve years had given him the time to entrench himself in Roman politics, gain support, and friends, and gain the love of the legions. What did Antonius have? He had a few tired, defeated troops, a navy, and a universally hated wife, Cleopatra (“Queen of Kings”), of course. If it wasn’t stupid enough to divorce Octavia, what Antonius did next took the first prize for stupid actions. He declared that all of the eastern provinces of the Republic’s Empire were now the property of Cleopatra, her four children (another had been brought into the world since the twins), and the Royal House of Egypt. Heavens, he also wrote that, of all things, if he were killed in his “campaign in Italy” his body was to be brought back to Cleopatra. This man could be no Roman; he had to be a fool. Octavian was enraged by this betrayal, and he called upon the Senate for assistance, assistance that they were only too pleased to provide. Octavian declared war.

Quickly, the two men began to build their armies. Octavian had the most money, and he was the best loved of the two, and so, naturally enough, he attracted the larger numbers of troops. While his legions were trained, he began to amass a tremendous armada of ships, which he would put under the command of his old friend, the iron-fisted Marcus V. Agrippa, and send right for Antonius in order to block off any sea movements. Octavian opted not to take the field himself; he’d leave the fighting to the more experienced officers, like Agrippa and Gaius Cornelius Gallus. Antonius, on the other hand, would lead his men himself, and Cleopatra would be coming with him. Other than his legions and Cleopatra’s Egyptian troops (ships included), Antonius had relatively few men, and was having an incredibly hard time trying to muster too many troops. However, he was already optimistic, planning a sweeping movement from Greece up Italy’s boot.

Octavian’s best weapon was, as always, propaganda. He said that he was fighting for Roman morality, while Antonius was fighting for Egyptian decadence and immorality. Furthermore, he’d handed over Rome’s lands to this immoral, adulterous wretch of a Queen. Cleopatra wasn’t the Queen of Egypt, but she was the Queen of Sin. Antonius wasn’t any good at propaganda at all, as he evidenced in a foolish letter sent off to Octavian in response to his declarations. The message was crude, stupid, and hastily executed and sent. No doubt he deeply regretted sending it after Octavian began to show it off as another example of Antonius’ crass immorality. One couldn’t abide someone so stupid, decadent, lecherous, and treacherous, Octavian reminded his people and his huge armies. Late in the year, Octavian landed his troops in Epirus, not far from Antonius’ own forces, but wisely held off from making a full-scale attack. Instead, he played the waiting game, and when the winter came, Antonius began to suffer. When the next year came, Octavian still avoided a full battle, and watched over much of the year as Antonius’ army slowly began to dwindle. Many of Antonius’ troops were untrustworthy anyway, and a good number simply deserted while they sat waiting for a movement. Instead of simply deciding to sit and wait for Octavian to come attack (not that he’d actually do such a thing while Antonius was still around), he boarded his ships that summer at the Gulf of Ambracia, setting up camp at a city known as Actium, the site of a temple to Apollo.

Actium, placed on a promontory on the western coast of Greece, on the mouth of the Ambracian Gulf, would hence become the site of Antonius’ positions for the rest of the year. Unfortunately for him, Octavian soon set up camp on the northern promontory, five miles away. Then, across the mouth of the Gulf, he threw out Agrippa’s huge armada, which formed a blockade, keeping the navy of Antonius trapped in the waters of the Gulf. Then, with Antonius in this potentially nasty situation, Octavian decided to wait out the rest of summer. As Antonius’ troops dwindled further, and the summer heat took it’s toll on the rest of his men, Antonius and Cleopatra tried desperately to find an avenue of escape, even trying to cut a canal through the promontory. It was a failure, of course.

Actium
Finally, by the end of August 31 BC, Antonius decided to abandon his army, and to break through Agrippa’s blockade. It was a doomed fleet, he knew that, but perhaps some of his ships could break through, and he’d be able to get back to Egypt to build a reliable army with which he could finally destroy his nemesis. It was not to be, Agrippa swiftly noticed Antonius, and on September 2nd, 41 BC, came the battle of Actium. As Antonius’ large navy came forward, in an organized battle formation, Agrippa’s men moved forward, rows of oars splashing through the waves, the curled prows, some with figureheads, such as heads of Athena or Roma on their fronts, came forward, approaching the enemy. As the ships, some with eyes painted on their sides, rolled forward, the orders to attack were given. Immediately there came the crunching sounds, ships tearing into ships, cries of “Ramming speed” cut through the air. As prows slammed into the ship’s sides, it was evident that Antonius was going to be, quite literally, sunk. Agrippa was ordering that his men set the enemy ships aflame, and soon the Egyptian ships began to disappear into the roaring flames. The sea, it seemed, was alight. Nothing, of course, could have saved the Egyptian fleet. Firstly, the Egyptian sailors were suffering due to a plague that had broken out in camp. To add to that, the oversized, bulky Egyptian ships were hard to maneuver in this water, and the smaller Roman ships were, of course, not hard to move at all. As the legionnaires bunkered down to protect themselves from the hails of arrows, the cries of the dying and the wounded became deafening.

All over the water, prows tore through the enemy vessels, and the Roman fleet began to send in their boarding parties, who, once aboard the ships, immediately proceeded to kill everyone aboard, crewmen, swordsmen, and archers alike. “When things were in this situation,” writes Plutarch, “and nothing decisive was yet effected, Cleopatra’s ships suddenly took to flight through the midst of the combatants, throwing their own fleet into confusion.” Cleopatra, it seemed, was on the lam, her own large flagship, surrounded by sixty warships from her squadron, slipping past the enemy vessels. However, through his act, Cleopatra had ruined any chance of victory. In the rush to follow Cleopatra, many ships simply stopped attacking in order to slip through the hole, and were quickly destroyed. All organization was lost. “No sooner did Antony see her ships hoisting sail then, forgetting everything else, he took a small galley and followed her,” writes Plutarch. Indeed, now both leaders had abandoned their ships and armies to utter destruction at the hands of Marcus Agrippa. Antonius had fled the coup, boarded Cleopatra’s galley, and sat in the bows in despair, speaking to no one for a good two days. Agrippa soon punched the remaining enemy ships to oblivion, capturing a good number of enemies. Abandoned and tired, the remainder of Antonius’ troops in Greece surrendered to Octavian without a fight. Antonius was now to be pursued and killed. He was not to be allowed to slip through Octavian’s fingers again. Almost immediately after dealing with the remnants of Antonius’ force, Agrippa and Octavian’s troops left Greece for Alexandria.

Immediately, the immense propaganda machine of Octavian, alias Caesar, started rolling into action yet again. Antonius and Cleopatra were (as usual) denounced, and their defeat at Actium was praised as a great victory of Roman morals over the despicable morals displayed by those two. Octavian proclaimed the victory the work of great Apollo, the sun god, and all about the provinces, Apollo was praised. Coins were soon minted in honor of the great battle of Actium, displaying the fact that the crocodile, the Grecian and Roman symbol of Egypt, had been overcome. Octavian, ob cives servatos (having saved his fellow citizens), was a true hero. Even now, with the people of Rome rejoicing over Actium, Octavian and his lieutenants were setting out for the last battle, and no doubt, the greatest victory. In July 30 BC, Octavian, personally leading his military forces, with men like Agrippa and Gallus at his side, landed with his large and well-prepared army at Pelusium. Antonius was unprepared, with only a small group of men. There was little at all he could actually do in the situation, and so he sent Octavian a challenge to single combat. The idea must have seemed to Octavian to be rather ridiculous, he was in his very early thirties, Antonius was in his late forties, Octavian was a rather small man, and really no good at anything physical, whereas Antonius, well, he was exactly the opposite. Octavian turned down the offer (not that there was any chance that he’d accept), writing to him “There are many ways to die.”

Apparently, Antonius knew that. By the time that Octavian entered Alexandria, capturing Cleopatra, her family, and her palace, Antonius was already dead. Apparently, he’d somehow been separated from her as the forces of Octavian moved inland, and he’d received a false rumor that she’d been killed. Immediately, he ordered his slave to hold out his sword so that he could run on it. Despite being stabbed through the belly, Antonius still survived it long enough to be taken to Alexandria by his slaves and to the arms of Cleopatra, who he was most pleased to find alive. Plutarch says he died in her arms as the result of those same self-inflicted stab wounds. Whatever the case, Marcus Antonius was long dead by the time Octavian marched into Alexandria.

First things come first. Octavian arranged for the nice, quiet execution of Caesarion. It was, of course, necessary in old Octavian’s opinion, as Caesarion was, firstly, the son of Caesar, indeed, a closer relation to Caesar than Octavian himself, and thus a great threat to Octavian’s claim to Caesar’s title, fortune and power. Secondly, he was the rightful king of Egypt, and if he were allowed to live he might just still become a major pain in the future, which passed all too quickly for guys like Octavian, who seems to have destroyed all of his enemies before he was thirty-three. And so, on a hot August day in 30 BC, a swing of the sword separated young Caesarion’s head from his neck. Now, of course, came the matter of how to deal with Cleopatra.

Cleopatra was immediately shocked to learn, much to her horror, that Octavian had arranged for her to be playing a major part in his upcoming triumph. She’d be displayed in a cage, in chains, the conquered beast, much like her own equally clever and ambitious sister Arsinoe during the time of Julius Caesar. This was really too much to bear, she’d seen Arsinoe in the triumph parade after the Alexandrian War. The jeering of the crowd, the obscene comments, the hurled objects, it was not something she’d like to go through. She soon made an attempt to seduce the morally firm Octavian himself, which was a mistake indeed. Unlike the late general Antonius, Octavian was not the sort to given into that sort of thing. There was now only one avenue of escape open, and that was, regrettably, suicide. The rumors were that she and her slaves had been found dead in her bedroom. A deadly asp, the royal symbol of the kings of Egypt, was rumored to have been found in her room along with the bodies. Cleopatra had apparently smuggled the snake in with a basket of figs, and allowed it to take a nip at her bosom, and she soon died as a result of it’s poison. Actually, in all probability, despite what the old romantic diehards would like to say, if there was a snake that killed old Cleopatra, it probably wasn’t an asp at all, but a cobra. Asps don’t give you a bite that quickly kills, the poison instead takes a good amount of time and usually the victim is subject to a loss of the control of the bowels, as well. Any Egyptian would have known that, and besides, who wants to die slowly and painfully when a cobra kills you almost instantly?

Cleopatra and Antonius were buried together in Alexandria on Octavian’s orders (as Antonius had allegedly asked for in his will), and poor old Caesarion was buried nearby. The remaining three children, all children of Antonius, were allowed to live. Alexander, for example, was sent off to Armenia as a ruler, and Cleopatra Selene was married off to the new King of Mauritania, Juba II, a Roman ally. The two lived out the rest of their days happily in exile on the Canary Islands. The royal fortune was to be divided up, and given as pay to Octavian’s brave and noble Roman veterans. All over the city statues of Antonius, Cleopatra, and Caesarion were removed, or defaced. In their places were statues and portraits of noble Octavian. Indeed, there was one colossal statue made of him from solid marble.

Dreams of Empire
Cassius Dio wrote: “Cleopatra’s brazen desire for passion and wealth was insatiable. By love she had made herself queen of Egypt. But she failed in her goal to become queen of the Romans.” Horace wrote a poem soon afterward, portraying the great victory over the Egyptians and their seductress queen. “Drink we now, and dancing round, Press with footsteps free the ground; Pour we now the rosy wine, And, in honor of the gods, Comrades in their own abodes Pile we the banquet on each holy shrine. Sin it were ere now to pour Forth the cellar’s generous store; While the haughty queen of the Nile, With her base and scurvy crew, Dared unbridled to pursue Wild hopes, and drunk with Fortune’s favoring smile, Madly dreamed the Capitol Soon should totter to it’s fall, And the Empire’s self should die; When all of the ships of the Nile From Rome’s avenging fires scarce one could fly…”

And here was Octavian. At the age of thirty-two, he’d literally seen over the ultimate destruction of each and every one of his enemies, and when he arrived from Epirus in 44 BC after the death of Caesar, he certainly had many of those. It’s definitely not something most could boast of, but Octavian had done it, and survived. The people loved him, and the Senate loved him. From then on, his path to greatness was quick, and by 23 BC, he was imperator, in other words, conqueror, dictator, emperor. More than that, he would become the majestic one, Caesar Augustus himself. Octavian’s ultimate victory was over the Republic itself. He would rule for nearly thirty years, Livia always his beloved and devoted wife, Agrippa always his friend and advisor. He was not simply the first emperor of Rome: he was the greatest.

And what of the Republic? The Republic was finished in 23 BC, the Empire replaced it. When the Social War came to a close, the Republic was left mortally wounded, but the Republic would take on nearly ninety years and many more wounds to die. That venerable Republic, always beloved by it’s citizens and protected by it’s Senators, was now becoming too old for it’s own good, and had to finally be put down. The Republic, which had held firm for about four hundred years, was finally scrapped. It was, it seems, now obsolete, out of date, much like the old Roman calendar itself. And also much like the old Roman calendar, it had been a Caesar that had done it in.

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© 2025 Addison Hart

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