Page 14 of Agrippa

She said that if we did not leave, she would have us thrown out.

Octavius shrugged.

– Throw us out if you like, but we shall be back tomorrow, and again the day after that, and again and again for as many days as it takes, until the consul has the good manners to see Caesar.

She roared with laughter.

– Caesar? You?

Octavius stared her out. After glaring at him for a long while, she muttered under her breath, turned and stamped back into the interior of the house.

An hour later, the steward reappeared and said that Antony would grant Octavius an audience.

He received us in his pillared tablinum. It was the first time I had seen him at close quarters. As he was to loom so large in our lives over the next few years, it might be as well if I describe him.

He was in the prime of manhood – tall and broad, with thick dark hair and beard, and the red face and bloodshot eyes of a heavy drinker. Imagine, if you will, a statue of Hercules with a club in one hand, a wineskin in the other. He had been Caesar’s master of horse and his fellow consul at the time of the assassination. It was he who had delivered the eulogy at Caesar’s funeral, rousing the crowd to a murderous fury against the conspirators.

Octavius knew him slightly from the previous year, when they had both accompanied Caesar back to Rome after his victory in Spain. He tried at first in his polite greeting to be respectful to the famous soldier. But it was clear from the start that Antony regarded him as a mere nothing – a feeble well-connected neophyte who by some freakish whim of Caesar’s had emerged as a rival, and who needed to be crushed underfoot like a cockroach.

– You are very persistent, young man. Some would say rude.

When Octavius said that he preferred to be addressed as Caesar, Antony, like his wife, burst out laughing.

– There will only ever be one Caesar, boy! You are no replacement!

After that, the atmosphere worsened.

In a quiet voice, Octavius said what he had come to say. Antony was welcome to take a few trinkets from Caesar’s estate as keepsakes, but the rest must be handed over in accordance with the dictator’s will. He wanted a loan from the public treasury to enable him to fulfil Caesar’s promise to give every citizen a cash legacy. He wanted to see proof of the various edicts Antony claimed to have discovered in Caesar’s papers. In fact, he wanted the papers themselves. And he wanted his support to stand for the vacant tribunate.

Antony’s face as he listened to all this grew redder and darker. When Octavius had finished, he shouted that Caesar had not been a king who could bequeath control of the state to his heir, therefore he as consul was not obliged to account for his actions to some pipsqueak who had never even fought in a battle. Official papers were the property of the Republic and would remain in his safe keeping. There was no money – Caesar had left an empty treasury, and he had no knowledge of what had become of his personal estate. As for the tribunate, that was out of the question – it would be more than a decade before Octavius would be eligible to stand for even the most junior magistracy.

He picked up some documents.

– And now I have work to do. In any case, it must surely be past your bedtime.

Octavius replied politely that he too had much work to do and wished him a pleasant evening. Antony, his head bent, pretending to read, did not reply.

As we walked away from the house, Octavius was silent. I assumed he must be downcast and anxious. But when he spoke, his tone was thoughtful.

– You know, Agrippa, if I were him, I would have seen me promptly and shown me some respect. What would that have cost him? He thought he was demonstrating strength. Instead, he revealed his weakness. Beneath his bluster, he is uncertain.

I had discovered in the schoolyard that it was a mistake to offend Octavius’s sense of dignity. He never forgot a slight. By his behaviour that day, Antony had made a dangerous enemy, and from that moment, the road to war was open.

VI

All power depends on force. All force depends on money.

That was the basic equation we learned like schoolboys in those early weeks in Rome.

We had two cohorts at our disposal, encamped outside the city. But these men needed to be paid. And if Octavius was to prevail, he would have to recruit many thousands more.

With the help of Balbus the Spaniard, Octavius convened a meeting of Caesar’s old financiers who were still loyal to his memory. Chief among these were Caius Matius, known as Calvena on account of his baldness, in whose villa we had stayed before our final journey into Rome; Caius Oppius, who came from a family of bankers, and who had served as Caesar’s secretary; and Gaius Rabirius Postumus, the famous moneylender, so rich his debtors had included the King of Egypt. Octavius also summoned his kinsmen Pedius and Pinarius, Caesar’s nephews, to whom had been bequeathed most of the quarter of Caesar’s estate that had not been left to him.

They each brought along an adviser or two. The meeting lasted an entire day. Before they arrived, Octavius ordered me to fill the house and the street outside with our legionaries, both for protection and to impress his visitors.

He opened proceedings with an eloquent account of his interview with Antony. He warned them that the consul plainly intended to raise an army and make himself dictator, and that his next step would be to come after them for their money. Only he, Octavius, could stop him. He requested their support in locating Caesar’s hidden wealth, which was rightfully his, and asked for loans, which he promised would be repaid. He also asked them to use their influence to shut off all lines of credit to Antony. Finally he demanded that Pedius and Pinarius should hand over their share of the family fortune: it would be returned with interest.

The bankers were polite. They were sympathetic. But they were sceptical. Men do not acquire great riches by rushing to give money to ambitious adolescents with risky prospects, however distinguished their names.