048 - The Second Triumvirate

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 48, the Second Triumvirate. On January the 1st, 43 BC, the annual rollover of officeholders took place in Rome. Praetors, aediles, and quaestors stepped down from their position, and new men took their place. In keeping with the long-established custom, the men on their way out stepped laterally into prorogued offices in the provinces. Praetors became propraetors, consuls became proconsuls. But what had in the past been a relatively boring reshuffling of the imperial bureaucracy was now a flashpoint for confrontation. Marc Antony, newly minted proconsul, had been slated to take over Macedonia, but in the last days of his consulship, he decided that he didn't want Macedonia, he wanted the rich and strategically important province of Cisalpine Gaul. So he had the tribunes propose and ratify a change in assignments, except that the term of the current governor, Decimus Brutus, had not yet expired and he refused to recognize the new orders. This being a new age of Roman politics, an age defined by force rather than persuasion, Antony simply gathered an army and marched for the Po Valley to force Brutus out. Obviously there were special circumstances surrounding Antony's desire to take Cisalpine Gaul and dislodge Brutus in the process, namely that the latter had been a central figure in the liberator conspiracy to kill Julius Caesar, but it is nonetheless unsettling how easy it had become for legion to fight legion. A hundred years ago, two Roman armies lined up against one another would have been an unthinkable shame. Now it was as regular as clockwork.

By the time January rolled around, Antony was, in fact, already in the Po Valley with his three legions besieging Brutus in the town of Mutina. The new consuls for the year, Aulus Hyrtius and Gaius Vibius Pansa, had both been strong supporters of Caesar and had fought alongside him during the civil wars. Indeed, their turn in the consulship had been arranged by the dictator prior to his death. But with Caesar dead, both men reverted back to moderate republicanism. For them, Caesar was a singular figure and with him gone, it was time for the natural order of things to be restored. So despite their longtime fellow traveling with Antony, neither of them had much stomach for his continuation of the extreme Caesarian agenda he was pursuing. When the Senate decided that Antony had gone too far in claiming Cisalpine Gaul for himself and declared him an enemy of the state, both consuls were ready to lead armies north and put down their erstwhile friend.

Octavian welcomed the new year with relish. Thus far in his brief and meteoric rise up the political ladder, he had not actually stepped foot on the ladder. His prominence was due entirely to his name. The armies he led and the support he enjoyed was all private and he badly needed some official cover to make himself legitimate. But he was at this point not yet twenty years old and barely qualified to be a military tribune let alone the general of an army. But he was determined to not let a little thing like the rules hold him back and he engineered a rather odd point of entry into the government, skipping the formal offices themselves and jumping directly to an appointment as proprietor. No doubt the legions Octavian controlled played an important role in the Senate throwing out the book for the young man. He was asked to merge his legions with the consular armies headed to face Antony and soon after taking office he was on his way north to battle in defense of, get this, the Republic.

Herodotus was already in the Po Valley when Octavian and the two defecting Macedonian legions arrived. Still years away from becoming Augustus, undisputed master of the Roman Empire, Octavian was immediately put in his place by Herodotus who treated the junior officer like the junior officer he was. Herodotus took control of the Macedonian legions and made sure Octavian understood that whatever his name, a consul's word, was still the law in camp. Brutus was in dire straits and desperately needed relief but Herodotus did not press Antony right away. He wanted to make sure that when he attacked Antony would have no hope of victory. Julius Caesar may have been the luckiest general alive but he was dead now and overwhelming force might actually count for something again. So he waited while his colleague Panza finished raising three new legions. Antony would stand no chance against their combined armies.

At the beginning of spring Panza was ready and began to march north. Antony was fully aware that he would soon be outnumbered so he broke off his focus on Brutus and headed down to ambush Panza before he could link up with Herodotus and Octavian. At the small village of Forum Galorum, Antony's veteran legions surprised the raw recruits led by Panza and crushed them with relative ease. Panza himself was injured in the fighting. The only drawback though to easy victory is that it breeds complacency and while Antony's men strolled merrily back to camp, they were surprised by Herodotus' army who had marched south when the consul realized what Antony was up to. The only thing that saved Antony's legions was the onset of night which forced an end to what was shaping up to be a slaughter.

Missing all the fun was Octavian who was apparently left behind to guard the camp, a fact that Antony would use to needle his rival for years. Remember Forum Galorum when you, oh no wait, you weren't there were you? But six days later Octavian would be present for the assault on Antony's camp. Herodotus may have lost the edge of overwhelming force but Antony's men were in bad shape and looked ready for a finishing off. The consular army stormed Antony's camp and broke through the gates. Octavian for the first time found himself in the thick of battle. Legend has it that when Herodotus was killed near Antony's tent that it was Octavian who dragged his body out of harm's way. Though a later equally repeated rumor has Octavian secretly killing Herodotus in the den of battle so he could seize control of the army from a general who had disrespected him. Both stories are likely fabrications. Octavian's career will be filled with these kinds of contradictory myths and slanders. Put simply though we know that he was there, we know that he fought, and we know that in his first real battle he was on the winning side.

Antony was forced to retreat and the siege of Brutus was lifted. Fueling the later slanderous rumor that Octavian somehow managed to murder a consul in broad delay while surrounded by literally hundreds of men, the other consul Pansa died of his wounds a few days after the battle of Mutina. Allegedly, he was poisoned by a Greek doctor on Octavian's orders. Why would Octavian secretly order the death of a consul? Because with Heretius dead, Pansa was the only thing standing between Octavian and control of eight full legions. Whatever part Octavian did or did not play, the deaths of Heretius and Pansa would be two of the more fateful deaths in Roman history. Because once control of the legions fell into his lap, Octavian never looked back.

Brutus tried briefly to assert command in his role as governor of the province, but Octavian would have none of it. Brutus wasn't even allowed into camp. Lucky for him, he had been rescued by a man who probably wanted his head even more than the man he had been saved from. Brutus though was undaunted and led his legions through the Alps in pursuit of Antony, who was making for Gaul. Technically, he and Octavian were on the same side, but Octavian declined to move an inch and remained camped in Cisalpine Gaul, leaving Brutus hanging in the mountains alone and unsupported. Meanwhile, Antony arrived in Gaul and hooked up with the eleven legions stationed there under the command of Marcus Lepidus. Brutus had no hope of defeating Antony now, but when he turned around, he realized he was staring down the barrel of Octavian and his eight legions. Fencing disaster, his troops deserted, getting out of the mountains any way they could. Brutus himself fell into the hands of a Gallic tribe looking to make nice with Antony, who received a head in a box a few days later.

Back in Rome, the Republicans initially cheered the defeat of Antony, but the savvy could see that this was no victory at all. Caesar's son and Caesar's best friend now controlled between them some twenty legions, and unfortunately the interests of the two men were no longer at odds. In the east, Marcus Brutus and Cassius were raising armies to destroy the Caesarian menace before it strangled the Republic forever. Divided, it was possible Antony and Octavian might each be beaten by the liberator armies, but combined they would be unstoppable. So what at first looked like a victory for Republicans turned out to be another crucial step towards their demise.

Octavian wasted no time after the death of the consuls to raise himself into their vacated seats. He sent a contingent of centurions to the Senate demanding that they name him consul. The Senate, trying to maintain some hold on the situation, refused. Octavian was unperturbed by the rebuke, though, and simply packed up his army and headed to Rome. He camped outside the walls and asked again. This time his request was granted. Satisfied, the newly minted consul Octavian headed back to Cisalpine Gaul to make the final arrangements for his anticipated meeting with Antony.

All summer, envoys had crossed back and forth across the Alps to work out the details of the summit. Antony detested Octavian, and Octavian in turn despised Antony, but for now it was clear that it was in both their interests to join forces. The future? Well, we'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

In October of 43 B.C., with Lepidus acting as broker, Antony and Octavian met on a small island in the River Livinius and for two straight days hashed out the fate of the Roman Empire. The upshot of the meeting was the creation of the innocuous-sounding Commission of Three for the Ordering of the State, which has become known to us, though, as the Second Triumvirate. The Triumvirate included Antony, Octavian, and Marcus Lepidus, whose inclusion seems to have been to act as a rubber-stamp for Antony's decisions, but the old general was trusted by both men to be a silent partner. This was between Octavian and Antony. It was agreed that the first order of business would be crushing Brutus and Cassius. But though the two triumvirs led now a combined army of some hundred thousand troops, more than enough for any war with Brutus and Cassius, they were light on cash. No money for paychecks. No troops. No troops. No army. No army. No war.

So the Triumvirate decided to revive prescription, a practice Julius Caesar had steadfastly refused to engage in to raise the necessary funds. So where Caesar had played for greatness, eschewing prescriptions to demonstrate what a wonderful guy he was, Antony and Octavian played for keeps. The process would be the same as during the reign of Sulla. A list of 2,500 names would be drawn up. The names would be posted in the forum. The property and lives of those named would be forfeit. The enemies of the Caesarians would be eliminated, and the necessary funds for their campaigns against Brutus and Cassius would be secured. The coming terror would eradicate the last of the real defenders of the Republic, defenders, for example, like Cicero.

In the negotiations, Octavian was unable to persuade Antony to spare Cicero's life. For Antony, leaving the pompous old order alive was a dealbreaker, and in the end, Octavian was forced to relent. A new order was coming, and there was no place in it for eloquent defenders of Republican virtue. In December of 43 BC, soldiers caught up with Cicero, and he stoically offered them his neck, asking only that they get it right the first time.

Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus now ruled the Roman Empire as a three-headed dictator. Unlike the previous triumvirate, this new incarnation was legally ratified by the assemblies for a term of five years. The word of the triumvirs was law. They posted the prescription list and let their bloody reign begin. Heads rolled, property was seized, men of high standing were reduced to hiding in attics and basements. Antony and Octavian observed it all without compassion. It is said that Antony demanded to review every prescribed head himself, even if it interrupted dinner.

The only problem with the plan, though, besides the gross inhumanity of it all, was that by flooding the market with the newly prescribed homes, the real estate market bottomed out, and the triumvirs raised far less money than they originally anticipated. They were forced to post more names on the prescribed lists. When that didn't work, they were forced to outright steal from safe deposit boxes held in the Temple of the Vestas, and when that wasn't enough, they did the really unthinkable. They instituted a tax on the people of Italy, who had, from time immemorial, been exempt from taxation. Even during the days of Rome's initial rise to power over the peninsula, conquered tribes were usually asked for soldiers rather than cash as the price of their servitude. The new tax, in fact, would prove to be far more unpopular than the prescriptions. But the triumvirate, unpopular as they were making themselves, finally scraped together enough to fund their war. It was time to head east and deal with the murderers of Caesar.

Leaving Lepidus in control of Italy, Antony and Octavian ferried nineteen legions across the Adriatic, landing near Dyrrhachium. It was not an easy crossing. Despite controlling all the lands of the Western Empire, the triumvirate had virtually no presence on the seas, a fact that would come back to haunt them time and again. But they managed to get across before a Republican naval blockade could be firmly established.

Once they disembarked, Antony sent eight legions ahead on a scouting mission. The triumvirs knew that Brutus and Cassius were out there somewhere, but they didn't know where exactly. Where exactly turned out to be the town of Philippi in Thrace, about halfway down the road to the Hellespont. Brutus and Cassius had set up strong defensive positions, building camps atop two hills and then building a north-south wall between their camps. Further north of their position was steep rocky hills, and further south was marshlands. If the triumvirs marching east were going to attack, it was going to be head-on.

But battle was not what Cassius, the senior general and tactical mastermind of the liberators, was after. He fully expected to sit tight and wait for a naval blockade to take its toll. Macedonia is notoriously hard country, and could in no way support the hundred thousand some men of the triumvir army for long. As Brutus and Cassius waited for Antony and Octavian to arrive, a hundred and fifty ships filled the Adriatic, cutting them off from their supply line in Italy. All Brutus and Cassius had to do was repel whatever assault the triumvirs attempted and then wait for them to starve.

But unfortunately for the liberators, while the blockade worked like a charm, the whole repelling whatever assault the triumvirs attempted thing didn't work out exactly as planned. When the liberator position was discovered, Antony immediately led the triumvir legions to confront Brutus and Cassius. Octavian, however, once again debilitated by sickness, was forced to remain behind in Dyrrhachium, adding fuel to the persistent rumor of cowardice.

Antony arrived outside the liberator camps in late September 42 BC, and quickly assessed the situation. The north side was indeed no good for an approach, and a frontal assault would be suicidal. The southern swamp, though, ugly or rude as it was, showed some promise. Cassius, in the southernmost camp, obviously did not believe he had to worry about an approach through the bog and had set up no defensive line. So taking a page from the playbook of Hannibal, Antony decided his best bet was to lead a force through the muck and appear suddenly where no one expected him to be. With luck, he would be able to surprise Cassius and get at the underbelly of the liberator army before they knew what hit him. Keeping the bulk of his army skirmishing around as a distraction, Antony sent his engineers into the swamp and had them begin constructing a causeway.

A few days into the work, Octavian arrived from Dyrrhachium. He was still in bad shape, but had no intention of letting Antony hog all the glory. Plus, more importantly, he could not allow Antony to seize the opportunity a great victory would provide to turn on his young colleague. Overall command of the operation was firmly in Antony's hands, but Octavian planned to be standing right next to him the whole time. They would rise or fall together. The engineers worked for days in the swamp, slowly cutting and building a plank road through the muck.

On October 3, though, just as they reached the other side, their cover was blown. Antony's finally noticed something was going on in the impassable swamp and alerted Cassius. The liberator general acted fast, ordering that fortifications be built into the swamp, bisecting the causeway, and trapping the lead insertion force in enemy territory. Recognizing that the jig was up, Antony ordered a full-on attack, targeting the place where Cassius's main defensive wall met the swamp. Taken off guard by the sudden frontal assault, Cassius's men were unable to prevent Antony from breaking through.

At the same time, Brutus saw that the camps of Octavian and Antony now were totally unprotected. Rather than send his men to reinforce Cassius, Brutus ordered them to seize the Triumvir camps. At worst, any success Antony achieved would be offset by the loss of his bases, and at best, he would be beaten and then have nowhere to retreat to. Octavian was supposed to be leading the camp forces, but when Brutus's legions stormed the wall, he was nowhere to be found. There was no accounting for him at this point, though it was rumored that, recognizing Brutus would easily overrun the reserve forces, that Octavian hid out in the swamp until the battle was over.

Antony, on the other hand, was in the middle of intense fighting near Cassius's camp. Eventually he was able to storm the walls and take the base, which left the battle at a peculiar draw, Antony in control of Cassius's camp, Brutus in control of Antony's. But for Cassius, it was all a loss. He had retreated with a small force to another nearby hill and watched the battle wind down. There are two accounts of what happened next. In the first, dust from the battle so obscured everyone's vision that Cassius did not realize Brutus had seized the Triumvir camps, knowing only that his own army had been defeated. Assuming the worst, he ordered a slave to take his life, knowing that he was dead one way or the other. In the other account, Cassius had gotten word of Brutus's victory, but was ashamed that Brutus, a lesser general, had succeeded while he had failed, and in his shame he took his own life. Whatever the reason, in the aftermath of the battle Cassius's beheaded body was discovered.

When news reached Brutus, he mourned for his brother-in-law. He was, said Brutus, the last of the Romans. Brutus regrouped and re-fortified his position in the aftermath of the first battle, having looted anything serviceable from the Triumvir camps, but with Cassius, the far more respected commander gone, discipline began to break down in the liberator army. Brutus attempted to revert to the original strategy of holding out long enough to let the naval blockade take its toll, but he was pressed by his officers to attack. They may have listened to Cassius, but they were not convinced that Brutus wasn't simply afraid of another battle. Like Pompey before him, Brutus was goaded into battle against his better judgment.

On October the 23rd, the final confrontation came. No trick maneuvers or fancy tactics were employed. The two armies charged at each other and fought in close quarters for hours, until finally the Triumvirs pushed Brutus back. The liberator army broke down and scattered. Brutus managed to keep four undersized legions in coherent enough order to lead them up a hill where he could plan his next move, but assessing the damage, it was obvious what his next move would be. His troops were surrounded and already talking openly of surrender. So Brutus mingled with his men, bidding them goodbye and embracing his officers. He then walked away from them all, picked out an ice spot, and fell on his sword.

The battles at Philippi not only marked the effective death of the Republic, it also marked the pinnacle of Mark Antony's career. Though Octavian was, well, present, sort of, there was no doubt who had earned the victory. At this moment, Mark Antony was the most powerful man in Rome. His ambitions, of course, reached for even greater heights, but he would never reach those summits. Philippi would be his crowning glory. Though no one would have believed it at the time, from here on out, Antony's career will slowly but surely unravel. Finally, outmaneuvered politically and defeated militarily by Octavian, Antony would himself commit suicide. But ignorant of his fate, Antony reveled in his victory.

Brutus' body was brought to him, and knowing that there was much to be said for graceful victory, he honored his old comrade, draping the body with his general's cloak. But when Antony moved on to other concerns, the corpse passed into the hands of Octavian, who allowed Brutus' memory no further dignity. He ordered that the head be chopped off, sent back to Rome, and thrown at the foot of a statue to Julius Caesar, thus always to those who stand in the way of tyrants.

But of course, as with the last round of civil wars, the end is not always the end. Though Philippi was effectively the end of resistance to Antony and Octavian, in practice there were still battles to be fought. Sextus Pompey, the son of Pompey the Great, had re-emerged following his defeat in Spain and was now in control of the liberator navy. Depending on who you were talking to, Sextus was either the noble admiral of the republican fleet or a dread pirate, but everyone agreed that he was a massive thorn in the side of the triumvirs. Whatever climax had allegedly played out at Philippi, Sextus was not going to be giving up any time soon. If the triumvirs couldn't be defeated on the battlefield, Sextus decided the next best thing would be to literally starve them of support. Let's see the triumvirs try to control a capital that is about to have its food supply cut off completely. Hungry citizens are never complacent citizens.

Breaking Sextus' naval blockade of Italy would be the overarching concern of Octavian for years as he tried to solidify his hold on the Western Empire. Antony, as the senior triumvir, remained in the East where he planned to follow up his victory at Philippi with an even greater victory over the Parthian Empire. Once the Parthians were defeated, he would be in a strong enough position to break the triumvirate and knock troublesome Octavian out of the picture for good. That was the plan anyway.

Next week there will be no episode. I know I just skipped a week like a month ago, but I'm going to have to do it again. The soon-to-be Mrs. History of Rome is graduating on Friday and we are hosting out-of-town dignitaries throughout the week, so I'm going to be a good host and not hole up with my laptop. I hope you understand. But we will return in two weeks and trace Octavian's attempt to maintain order in the West and Antony's disastrous attempts to conquer the East.

Finally, I would like to wish a happy birthday to faithful listener George in Los Angeles. I hope you like the book.