War and Peace ...and War (35 to 32 B.C.E.)

The year was 35 B. C. E., and with the defeat of Sextus Pompeius, Octavian was finally unrivaled as the first man in Rome. As a reward for saving Rome from the son of Pompey, the Roman Senate bestowed a lifetime honour upon Octavian by declaring his body sacrosanct under Roman law and Roman religion as if he were a Tribune of the Plebs. This meant that physically harming Octavian in any way was a religious violation and a death penalty offense. Realheads will remember that Octavian’s adoptive father Julius Caesar had received the same honour, and well, in that case it didn’t really work out, but it was supposed to be a vote of confidence from the Senate. Octavian did not spend much time savoring his victory over Sextus. The province of Illyricum was on fire, and the situation was getting so bad that it now required Octavian’s personal attention. Caesar should have intervened in Illyricum 20 years ago - it had been his province back in the day - but he completely neglected the administration of the province in favour of his 10 year crusade against the Gauls. He had always intended to deal with Illyricum after Gaul, but then the Civil War happened, and then he had to go to Egypt, and then North Africa, and then Spain, and then he was killed. Illyricum was always next on the list, but Caesar never got around to it. Under 20 years of neglect, a lot had happened. By this time, the northern border was basically nonexistent, just a line on the map. Invaders came and went as they pleased. The locals had more in common with the invaders than they did with the Romans, and so they routinely rose up in rebellion alongside the invasions. Apart from a handful of isolated Roman garrisons, Rome really lost the ability to impose their will upon the province. And again, this was all Caesar’s fault. Things had deteriorated on his watch, and not only did he not do anything to help, but during their time of need, he actually pulled legions from Illyricum for the Gallic Campaigns. So in 35 B. C. E., Octavian finally got around to addressing these problems. Just like with the campaign against the Boat King Sextus Pompeius, his friend Agrippa was at his side, and would do most of the work. Agrippa’s Illyricum campaign began with a three pronged offensive. An army that had gathered along Illyricum’s Italian border would be split, one half under Octavian would strike northeast into the mountainous interior, and the other half under Agrippa would attack southeast along the coast. Simultaneously, the Roman fleet would support Agrippa’s advance by systematically attacking naval ports up and down the coast, which with the recent instability had mostly become the home to pirates. It is my belief that Agrippa assigned for himself the most important job. If Octavian faced setbacks in the north, that was fine, he could slow down, pull back, or wait for reinforcements. But the coast had to be made secure so that supplies could get in. Future success depended upon projecting power inland from the coast. If anything, Octavian’s northern invasion was mostly a distraction to buy Agrippa some time. Agrippa’s plan for the Illyricum campaign is what we would call today a combined land-sea assault, and what’s special about it is that the Romans ordinarily did not think like this. Think about Antony’s campaign against Parthia. His plan was to march into Parthia and win a battle. Literally a one dimensional strategy. Agrippa was different. His plan called for 3 separate but simultaneous operations across both land and sea, with each operation being broken up into smaller component parts that all supported each other. This is a good representation of how Agrippa thought. He conceived of military campaigns as being living systems that were constantly changing due to outside stimuli. These systems were too big and too complex to be controlled or even understood by one person. Under Agrippa, each part of a campaign independently had its own limited objectives that were designed to complement the rest of the system. Limited success in one area was never truly limited, because the benefits would ripple throughout the rest of the campaign. This was not how men of Agrippa’s generation thought. Agrippa had a modern military mind. Octavian operated in the north, and immediately faced some setbacks. It’s possible that Octavian’s initial objective was to make it as far as the river Danube

but the fighting was so tough that he never made it further than the river Sava. The good news was that due to Agrippa’s careful planning, none of these setbacks were catastrophic. Once Agrippa secured the coast, he quickly marched north to Octavian’s aid. The problem that both Octavian and Agrippa he ran into was that once you get a little bit inland, Illyricum turns into a maze of mountains and hills and valleys. The Romans had never bothered to properly map this area. It was not uncommon for the Romans to march into a valley, only to find every known mountain pass held by the enemy. Of course there were hidden mountain passes, but the Romans didn’t know where these were, only the enemy did. Meaning that the Romans couldn’t keep their supply lines open, but the enemy could. Each time this happened, Octavian or Agrippa were forced into a costly engagement in order to fight their way free. Agrippa’s innovation was that he started to send large scouting parties to the left and right of the army as it advanced. The scouts would leapfrog over each other and hold open mountain passes so that the Romans could always retreat if necessary. This almost mathematical caution forced the pace of the campaign to slow to a crawl. What was supposed to be a one year campaign dragged into its second year, and then its third. Many of the details of the Illyrican campaign are lost, perhaps deliberately by people who didn’t want us to know how bad it really got, but two incidents really stand out. The first was during an assault on a city. We’re told that during the final assault, the bridge that Octavian was standing on collapsed. He ended up in a heap of rubble just outside the enemy wall, and had to be rescued by his soldiers. One leg and both arms were badly injured. The second happened a year later, when a stone slung by a sling hit Octavian directly in the knee, rendering him unable to walk for a time. It was so bad that he could not be moved, not even in a wagon. The entire army just had to sit there and wait for him to recover. These wounds probably stayed with Octavian for the rest of his life, and they provide clues as to what is missing from the official story. In both accounts, Octavian is painted in a sympathetic light, but it’s noteworthy that the only good things they had to say about him is that he had two near death experiences. It hints at a troubled campaign. Perhaps the whole damn thing was a near death experience. The campaign was only supposed to last for one year, but it dragged on for three. It involved way more bloodshed than anybody was expecting, and in the end it involved negotiating more than 30 separate peaces with groups, each of whom had unique grievances and unique demands that Octavian had to accommodate. In 33 B. C. E, Octavian and Agrippa declared victory and returned to Rome. The Senate awarded Octavian with a Triumph for the campaign in Illyricum, but for political reasons he decided to defer it to a later date. Another hint that it was a troubled campaign. Per a pre-arranged deal with Antony, that year Octavian was also elected consul for the second time. He resigned after one day, which may seem like an unusual decision, but it was the beginning of a trend that was slowly poisoning Roman politics. Octavian was what’s known as a Consul Ordinarius, an Ordinary Consul, a consul who had been elected through the normal process. Upon his resignation, a special election was called in order to select a replacement consul known as a Consul Suffectus, a Suffect Consul. Elections for Suffect Consuls were only supposed to be called upon the untimely death of the Ordinary Consul, but now, just like everything else, that power was being abused. Not only were the Ordinary Consuls resigning early, but so were their replacements, and even the replacements of the replacements. In a normal year, there were only supposed to be two consuls. In the year 33, there were eight. And this wasn’t just a one-off, this was a trend. There were two benefits to appointing extra consuls. The first was that it was an easy way to reward political loyalists. The prestige that came with being elected consul was immense, people who had served as consul were treated differently for the rest of

their lives. If a young upcoming politician was closely related to a former consul, that fact alone was often enough to get them elected to a lower office. The second benefit was that former consuls got to speak first during debates in the Senate. If it was a lively debate, former consuls were often the only people who got to speak which meant that the nature of the debate between former consuls could determine votes. By having a bunch of loyalists elected, Octavian was “stacking the bench” so to speak, making it so that his people could dominate Senate debates and drown out any dissent. The trend of passing around consulships like they were nothing would continue for hundreds of years. Make no mistake, the Roman political system had been crumbling for a long time, but this finally broke it beyond repair. The Consul would become a mostly toothless administrative role, and the real power within the Roman political system would flow elsewhere. With the conclusion of the war in Illyricum, Octavian and Agrippa turned their focus to the situation in Rome. By 33 B. C. E, the vibes in Rome were abysmal. There had just been a recession, a famine, and civil unrest. People were miserable. The two agreed that Agrippa should run for Aedile for the year 33, the officer responsible for public works and festivals. He ran on a platform of cleaning up the city, both literally and metaphorically, and naturally, with Octavian’s backing, he won. The problem facing the city was that for at least 30 years, Rome had been dominated by charismatic politicians who liked to run on big flashy promises at the expense of all the boring stuff. Now, Agrippa was going to inject some life into the city by tackling the boring stuff. The first on the list was the construction of a new aqueduct to bring additional water into the city, which he named the Aqua Julia in honour of his boss. Remember, Octavian officially went by the name of his adoptive father, Julius Caesar. The new aqueduct ran 22 kilometers up into the mountains. What did he do with all this water? First, he flushed Rome’s sewer system, which was not functioning properly and leaking and making the whole city stink. Disgusting. Once it was empty, he began some long needed structural repairs. He then had the whole thing scrubbed clean, and put on a little publicity stunt where he took a row boat through the sewers of Rome to prove how clean it now was. What else did he do with the water? He built 700 cisterns and 150 water towers to further improve water security, because, you know, even aqueducts were susceptible to droughts and whatnot. He also built 500 public fountains that were unnecessarily beautiful, decorated in a unique way with bronze and marble, so that everybody knew who was responsible for building them. When this project was done, virtually every household in Rome was only a short walk away from clean drinking water, which is a benchmark that most big industrial cities were still struggling to hit up into the 20th century. Agrippa expanded upon this theme of “cleaning up the city” by beginning construction of a massive public bath complex, and announced that all public baths would be free to use on basically every other day during his term as Aedile. He even introduced a thing where the government would provide citizens with a free shave on public holidays. His whole program was aimed at pulling Rome out of its funk and making the city more beautiful, and we are told that he was remarkably successful. Agrippa’s term as Aedile was considered the greatest in living memory, possibly the greatest ever. In one year as a lowly Aedile, he accomplished more than many of the consuls had over the preceding 30 years. And the people never forgot it. While all of this was going on, Octavian was turning his eye to the east. He set about deliberately and publicly worsening relations with Antony. He criticized Antony over the Donations of Alexandria business, which was Antony’s plan for a re-structured Roman east, claiming that Antony had gone a little too Egyptian living over there with Cleopatra. Octavian publicly teased Antony over his failed campaign against Parthia, which was a little close to home. Antony publicly mused about Octavian’s betrayal of their “partner” Lepidus, which was also a little close to home. Octavian then commissioned and distributed a pamphlet that claimed to prove with 100% certainty that Caesarian, Caesar’s child by Cleopatra, was not his true son. Antony responded

by saying that he had seen Caesar acknowledge the boy as his son with his own eyes. Then things got personal. Octavian called Antony a drunk. Antony called Octavian a gambling addict. Both accusations were true, by the way. Octavian shot back that the only reason Antony didn’t like gambling was that he was cursed with an unlucky spirit, which honestly is a hilarious way to insult somebody. It was also a little more subtle than it might seem. One of the stories that Julius Caesar liked to tell about himself was that he was almost supernaturally lucky. Octavian was saying “I have my father’s luck, and you don’t. ” Antony shot back making fun of Octaian for marrying his wife Livia when she was pregnant with another man’s child. Okay that one’s just straight up mean. At this point, Antony wrote to Octavian privately. In a miraculous turn of events, this letter was preserved in the Roman archives, and later Roman historians were able to reference it and pass its contents along to us. Disclaimer: I looked into it, and Antony’s letter is written using the vulgar and low class version of certain words, and so any faithful translation should also be vulgar and low class. A lot of translations don’t do this, they use poetic or flowery language, but those translations are misleading, and the reason that they are misleading is that academics are a bunch of prudes. In the interest of accuracy I’m going to use a few naughty words, and then in the interest of my own prudishness I’m going to bleep them. This is Antony writing to Octavian. “What’s come over you? Is it that I am *ing the Queen? But she isn’t my wife, is she? It isn’t as if it’s something new, is it? Or has it actually been going on for nine years now? What about you then? Is Livia the only woman you *? Good luck to you if, when you read this letter, you haven’t also *ed Tertulla or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titsenia, or all of them. Does it really matter where and in whom you stick your *? ” I don’t recall that part being included in the movie. By the end of the year 33 B. C. E, the well had been sufficiently poisoned. Octavian and Antony were no longer on speaking terms. They were in uncharted waters now. In 32 B. C. E, as part of a pre-arranged agreement, the two new consuls were to be Antony’s men. But this deal had been worked out in a much happier time. By 32, people were after each other’s throats. One of the first things introduced by the new consuls was legislation censuring Octavian for trying to provoke a war. A friendly Tribune of the Plebs vetoed the bill, but the message was sent. Antony’s political allies were coming for Octavian. At the next Senate meeting, Octavian showed up flanked by veterans from the Illyricum campaign, who, observers noted, were doing a poor job at concealing the daggers hidden in their clothing. The assassination of Julius Caesar was still fresh in the minds of Rome’s political elite, even after all these years. That evening, the two newly elected consuls fled the city of Rome, and joined Antony out east. Approximately 1/3rd of the Senate went with them. This was probably an unexpected setback for Octavian. Many have guessed that he would not have made such an open threat if he had known that he would split the Senate. Perhaps he was not as popular as he thought. New elections were called to replace the consuls that had fled, and surprise surprise, Octavian’s candidates won. The new consuls and the remaining Senators then agreed to strip Antony of all of his formal powers, including his scheduled term as consul that was to begin next year. Somewhere around this time, Antony divorced Octavian’s sister Octavia. It’s unclear whether this was direct retaliation against Octavian or simply something that was a long time coming, but either way the divorce came as a shock to Octavia. Antony apparently ordered her and their two children removed from their home with no warning. Octavia was pretty upset by this, and rightfully so. She moved in with her brother, where she assumed responsibility for raising her two children from the marriage with Antony, and also, somehow, two of Antony’s children from previous marriages. Octavian was pleased by the divorce. It suited his purposes. He made it known to the public that Antony had abandoned his wife and

four of his children. In his eyes, the divorce meant that his plan was working. It meant that relations with Antony were destabilizing. It was time to take things to the next level. In the summer of 32, Octavian got a tip from one of Antony’s former allies that he might find the contents of Antony’s will interesting. The man claimed to have served as witness the last time Antony had it updated. Wealthy Romans kept their wills in the Temple to Vesta in the center of Rome. Vesta was the goddess of the hearth, and the priestesses sworn to Vesta, known as the Vestal Virgins, were entrusted with tending to the sacred fire in the center of Rome, which could never be allowed to go out. The Vestal Virgins were considered some of the highest status and most trustworthy religious figures in Rome. Simply laying eyes on a Vestal Virgins was considered good luck. Harming one meant instant death This reputation was enough for wealthy Romans to entrust them with their wills, which were to be kept closely guarded, and only opened upon that wealthy Roman’s death. When Octavian learned that there was something interesting in Antony’s will, he marched into the Temple of Vesta and demanded to see it. The Vestal Virgins were honourbound to protect the will, and so they refused. Octavian responded by ordering his goons into the temple, who overpowered the Vestal Virgins, and took Antony’s will by force. This was sacreligious in the extreme, and if the Roman legal system was functioning properly at all, Octavian would have been put to death. Under the Roman religion, the sacred fire was the heart of the city. The mystical essence of the city. And now Octavian was in there roughing people up for political gain. The symbolism is so strong that I don’t even know what to do with it. People were appropriately outraged, but that outrage quickly evaporated when Octavian read Antony’s will aloud at the next Senate meeting. According to Octavian, Antony left instructions for his body to be taken to Alexandria after his death, so that he could be buried alongside Cleopatra. This was considered a shocking revelation, a betrayal of Antony’s ancestors and a symbolic renouncement of his Roman citizenship. Antony also recognized Caesarian as the son of Julius Caesar, and recognized his children by Cleopatra as his legitimate heirs. Antony had just thrown his own Roman children out onto the street, and now he was disinheriting them in favour of a bunch of foreigners. This was not only a betrayal, but it was strictly illegal to do under Roman law. Octavian summarized the contents of the will by saying that Antony had basically betrayed Rome. He framed Antony as an other, as a foreigner, as an existential threat to Rome. He also played up the idea that Cleopatra had ambitions to conquer Rome, and was using Antony as a tool to realize these ambitions. We know that Cleopatra had no such ambitions, and Octavian knew this too, but he said it anyway. Octavian could not go to the Roman people and ask them to support another Civil War. There had been too much of that already, people were exhausted. He had to frame Cleopatra as an existential threat that endangered the survival of the Roman state. Octavian’s little bit of propaganda, with truth and lies all mixed together, was remarkably effective at winning over public opinion. In time, the Senate got behind Octavian and formally declared war. But they didn’t declare war on Antony, and Egypt. They declared war on Cleopatra, personally. The irony of course was that they would have to go through Antony and his Roman legions to get to her. If you count Caesar, and then Caesar’s assassins, and then the thing with the Boat King, this was the fourth major civil war in only 17 years. Many in the legions could not remember a time when Rome was not at war with itself. And what did they have to show for it? The average standard of living was lower than it had been 17 years ago. Roman politics were a shadow of what they had once been. The capital city of the most powerful Empire in the Mediterranean could not reliably keep its citizens fed or housed. To the average person, it felt like Rome was on the decline, and that the entire system was just one wrong step away from complete collapse. Octavian was reckless to provoke this conflict with Antony. If things tipped

a certain direction, it could have been the end of the whole experiment. But things didn’t tip in that direction, and we’ll see why in a future video.