Antony and Cleopatra (13 page)

“Is a nephew not a quarter Julian?” she ventured boldly.

“
Great
-nephew, the little poseur! One-eighth Julian. The rest is abominable!” barked Nero, getting worked up. “Whatever possessed the great Caesar to choose a low-born boy as his heir escapes me, but of one thing you may be sure, Livia Drusilla—I will never tie myself to the likes of Octavianus!”

Well, well, thought Livia Drusilla, saying no more. That is why so many of Rome’s aristocrats abhor Octavianus! As a person of the finest blood, I should abhor him too, but he intrigues me. He’s risen so far! I admire that in him because I understand it. Perhaps every so often Rome must create new aristocrats; it might even be that the great Caesar realized that when he made his will.

Livia Drusilla’s interpretation of Nero’s reasons for hewing to Mark Antony was a gross oversimplification—but then, so was Nero’s reasoning. His narrow intellect was undeveloped; no number of additional years could make him any more than he had been when a young man serving under Caesar. Indeed, he was so dense that he had no idea Caesar had disliked him. Water off a duck’s back, as the Gauls said. When your blood is the very best, what possible fault could a fellow nobleman find in you?

To Mark Antony, it seemed as if his first month in Athens was littered with women, none of whom was worth his valuable time. Though was his time truly valuable, when nothing he did bore fruit? The only good news came from Apollonia with Quintus Dellius, who informed him that his legions had arrived on the west coast of Macedonia, and were happy to bivouack in a kinder climate.

Hard on Dellius’s heels came Lucius Scribonius Libo, escorting the woman surest to blight Antony’s mood: his mother.

She rushed into his study strewing hairpins, stray seed for the bird her servant girl carried in a cage, and strands from a long fringe some insane seamstress had attached to the edges of her stole. Her hair was coming adrift in wisps more grey than gold these days, but her eyes were exactly as her son remembered them: eternally cascading tears.

“Marcus, Marcus!” she cried, throwing herself at his chest. “Oh, my dearest boy, I thought I’d never see you again! Such a dreadful time of it I’ve had! A paltry little room in a villa that rang night and day with the sounds of unmentionable acts, streets slimed with spittle and the contents of chamber pots, a bed crawling with bugs, nowhere to have a proper bath—”

With many shushes and other soothing noises, Antony finally managed to put her in a chair and settle her down as much as anyone could ever settle Julia Antonia down. Only when the tears had diminished to something like their usual rate did he have the opportunity to see who had entered behind Julia Antonia. Ah! The sycophant to end all sycophants, Lucius Scribonius Libo. Not glued to Sextus Pompey—grafted to him to make a sour rootstock produce sweet grapes.

Short in height and meager in build, Libo had a face that reinforced the inadequacies of his size and betrayed the nature of the beast within: grasping, timid, ambitious, uncertain, selfish. His moment had come when Pompey the Great’s elder son had fallen in love with his daughter, divorced a Claudia Pulchra to marry her, and obliged Pompey the Great to elevate him as befitted his son’s father-in-law. Then when Gnaeus Pompey followed his father into death, Sextus, the younger son, had married his widow. With the result that Libo had commanded naval fleets and now acted as an unofficial ambassador for his master, Sextus. The Scribonian women had done well by their family; Libo’s sister had married two rich, influential men, one a patrician Cornelius by whom she had borne a daughter. Though Scribonia the sister was now in her early thirties and deemed ill omened—twice widowed was once too often—Libo did not despair of finding her a third husband. Comely to look at, proven fertile, a two-hundred-talent dowry—yes, Scribonia the sister would marry again.

However, Antony wasn’t interested in Libo’s women; it was his own bothering him. “Why on earth bring her to me?” he asked.

Libo opened his fawn-colored eyes wide, spread his hands. “My dear Antonius, where else could I bring her?”

“You could have sent her to her own
domus
in Rome.”

“She refused with such hysteria that I was forced to push Sextus Pompeius out of the room—otherwise he would have killed her. Believe me, she wouldn’t go to Rome, kept screeching that Octavianus would execute her for treason.”

“Execute Caesar’s cousin?” Antony asked incredulously.

“Why not?” Libo asked, all innocence. “He proscribed Caesar’s cousin Lucius, your mother’s brother.”

“Octavianus and I
both
proscribed Lucius!” Antony snapped, goaded. “However, we did not execute him! We needed his money, that simple. My mother is penniless, she stands in no danger.”

“Then you tell her that!” said Libo with a snarl; it was he, after all, who had had to suffer Julia Antonia on a fairly long sea voyage.

Had either man thought to look her way—he did not—he might have seen that the drowned blue eyes held a certain cunning and that the profusely ornamented ears were picking up every word uttered. Monumentally silly Julia Antonia might be, but she had a healthy regard for her own well-being and was convinced that she would be much better off with her senior son than stranded in Rome without an income.

By this time the steward and several female servants had arrived, their faces displaying some trepidation. Unmoved by this evidence of servile fear that they were about to be burdened with a problem, Antony thankfully passed his mother over to them, all the while assuring her that he wasn’t going to send her to Rome. Finally the deed was done and peace descended on the study; Antony sat back in his chair with a sigh of relief.

“Wine! I need wine!” he cried, suddenly erupting out of the chair. “Red or white, Libo?”

“A good strong red, I thank you. No water. I’ve seen enough water in the last three
nundinae
to last me half a lifetime.”

Antony grinned. “I fully understand. Chaperoning my mama is no picnic.” He poured a large goblet almost to its brim. “Here, this should numb the pain—Chian, ten years old.”

Silence reigned for some time as the two bibbers buried their snouts in their goblets with appropriate sounds of content.

“So what brings you to Athens, Libo?” Antony asked, breaking the silence. “And don’t say, my mother.”

“You’re right. Your mother was convenient.”

“Not for me,” Antony growled.

“I’d love to know how you can do that,” Libo said brightly. “Your speaking voice is light and high, but in a trice you can turn it into a deep-throated growl or roar.”

“Or bellow. You forgot the bellow. And don’t ask me how. I don’t know. It just happens. If you want to hear me bellow, keep on evading the subject, by all means.”

“Er—no, that won’t be necessary. Though if I may continue about your mother for a moment longer, I suggest that you give her plenty of money and the run of the best shops in Athens. Do that, and you’ll never see or hear her.” Libo smiled down at the bubbles beading the rim of his wine. “Once she learned that your brother Lucius was pardoned and sent to Further Spain with a proconsular imperium, she was easier to deal with.”

“Why are you here?” Antony said again.

“Sextus Pompeius thought it a good idea for me to see you.”

“Really? With a view to what end?”

“Forming an alliance against Octavianus. The two of you united would crush Octavianus to pulp.”

The small full mouth pursed; Antony looked sideways. “An alliance against Octavianus…Pray tell me, Libo, why I, one of the three men appointed by the Senate and People of Rome to reconstitute the Republic, should form an alliance with a man who is no better than a pirate?”

Libo winced. “Sextus Pompeius is the governor of Sicilia in full accordance with the
mos maiorum
! He does not regard the Triumvirate as legal or proper, and he deplores the proscription edict that falsely outlawed him, not to mention stripped him of his property and inheritance! His activities on the high seas are purely to convince the Senate and People of Rome that he has been unjustly condemned. Lift the sentence of
hostis,
lift all the bans, embargoes, and interdictions, and Sextus Pompeius will cease to be—er—a pirate.”

“And he thinks I’ll move in the House that his status as a public enemy and all the bans, embargoes, and interdictions be lifted if he aids me in ridding Rome of Octavianus?”

“Quite so, yes.”

“I take it he’s proposing outright war, tomorrow if possible?”

“Come, come, Marcus Antonius, all the world can see that you and Octavianus must eventually come to blows! Since between you—I discount Lepidus—you have
imperium maius
over nine-tenths of the Roman world and you control its legions as well as its incomes, what else can happen when you collide other than full-scale war? For over fifty years the history of the Roman Republic has been one civil war after another—do you honestly believe that Philippi was the end of the final civil war?” Libo kept his tone gentle, his face serene. “Sextus Pompeius is tired of outlawry. He wants what is due to him—restoration of his citizenship, permission to inherit his father Magnus’s property, the restitution of said property, the consulship, and a proconsular imperium in Sicilia in perpetuity.” Libo shrugged. “There is more, but that will do to go on with, I think.”

“And in return for all this?”

“He will control and sweep the seas as your ally. Include a pardon for Murcus and you will have his fleets too. Ahenobarbus says he’s independent, though as big a—pirate. Sextus Pompeius will also guarantee you free grain for your legions.”

“He’s holding me to ransom.”

“Is that a yea or a nay?”

“I will not treat with pirates,” Antony said in his usual light voice. “However, you can tell your master that if he and I should meet upon the water, I expect him to let me go wherever it is I’m going. If he does that, we shall see.”

“More yea than nay.”

“More nothing than anything—for the time being. I do not
need
Sextus Pompeius to squash Octavianus, Libo. If Sextus thinks I do, he’s mistaken.”

“If you should decide to ship your troops across the Adriatic from Macedonia to Italia, Antonius, you won’t welcome fleets in the plural preventing you.”

“The Adriatic is Ahenobarbus’s patch, and he’ll not hamper me. I am unimpressed.”

“So Sextus Pompeius cannot call himself your ally? You will not undertake to speak for him in the House?”

“Absolutely not, Libo. The most I’ll agree to do is not to hunt him down. If I did hunt him down, he’d be the one crushed to pulp. Tell him he can keep his free grain, but that I expect him to sell me grain for my legions at the usual wholesale price of five sesterces the
modius
, not a penny more.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“I’m in a position to do so. Sextus Pompeius is not.”

And how much of this obduracy, wondered Libo, is because he now has his mother around his neck? I
told
Sextus it was not a good idea, but he wouldn’t listen.

Quintus Dellius entered the room, arm in arm with yet another sycophant, Sentius Saturninus.

“Look who’s just arrived from Agrigentum with Libo!” Dellius cried delightedly. “Antonius, have you any of that Chian red?”

“Pah!” spat Antony. “Where’s Plancus?”

“Here, Antonius!” said Plancus, going to embrace Libo and Sentius Saturninus. “Isn’t this nice?”

Very nice, thought Antony sourly. Four servings of syrup.

Moving his army to the Adriatic coast of Macedonia hadn’t begun as anything more than an exercise designed to frighten Octavian; having abandoned all thought of contending with the Parthians until his income improved, Antony at first had wanted to leave his legions in Ephesus, but his visit to Ephesus had changed his mind. Caninius was too weak to control so many senior legates unless cousin Antony was nearby. Besides, the idea of frightening Octavian was too delicious to resist. But somehow everyone assumed that the war they expected to erupt between the two Triumvirs was finally going to push ahead, and Antony found himself in a dilemma. Ought he to crush Octavian now? As campaigns went, it would be a cheap one, and he had plenty of transports to ferry his legions across a little sea to home territory, where he could pick up Octavian’s legions to supplement his own, and free up Pollio and Ventidius—fourteen extra legions from them alone! Ten more once Octavian was defeated. And whatever was in the Treasury to put in his war chest.

Still, he wasn’t sure…. When Libo’s advice about Julia Antonia proved correct and he never saw her, Antony relaxed a little. His Athenian couch was comfortable and the army content in Apollonia—time would tell him what to do. It didn’t occur to him that in postponing this decision, he was telling his world that he lacked resolution about his future course of action.