WITH THE DONATIONS Antony and Cleopatra had sent Octavian one unmistakable message. Whatever they intended for the East, their plans did not include him. The two men were still in touch, closely and more or less cordially. Envoys and informers frequently sailed between them. They continued to correspond with mutual friends. They were joined in the triumvirate through the end of 33. (They were free now of both Lepidus and the intractable Sextus Pompey, with whom they had dispensed. Defeated by Octavian, Sextus was executed, most likely on Antony’s orders.) Antony had reason to feel invulnerable, and sent another message to Octavian at about this time. He would relinquish his powers and restore a republic in Rome if Octavian would agree to do the same. Antony may have been bluffing. He may have been expending cheap political capital; Roman titles, and the composition of the Roman government, were of little concern to him in the East, where he seemed inclined to remain. He got a straightforward reply, which may even have been the one he expected. For some time it had been clear where the long Alexandrian sojourn, the repudiation of Octavia, the recognition of Caesarion, were leading; friends had surely kept Antony and Cleopatra apprised of the mood in Rome. Early in the year, Octavian rose in the Senate to deliver a virulent, direct assault on his colleague. From that point on it is impossible to say which was greater: Alexandria’s royal extravagances, or Rome’s version of them; Cleopatra’s ambition, or Rome’s version of it; Antony’s affections for Cleopatra, or Rome’s version of his affection. Cleopatra’s palace was certainly the most luxurious building in the Mediterranean world in 33, but it never looked as magnificent as it did from Rome that winter.
Antony and Octavian had years of bad blood on which to trade. When finally the floodgates opened, they unleashed a torrent. Each accused the other of misappropriating lands. Octavian demanded his share of the Armenian spoils. Antony sputtered that his men had received no part of Octavian’s distributions in Italy. (Octavian replied that if Antony wanted land he was free to carve up Parthia, an accusation that must have stung.) Octavian condemned Antony for the murder of Sextus Pompey, a murder that Octavian had himself celebrated in Rome, and that had followed Sextus’s defeat at Octavian’s hands.* Antony denounced Octavian for having unlawfully forced aside Lepidus. And what had happened to his right to raise troops in Italy? Octavian had long obstructed those efforts, to which he had agreed by treaty. He left Antony to assemble an army of Greeks and Asiatics. For that matter, where was the remainder of the fleet Antony had lent Octavian four years earlier? And the 18,000 men Octavian had promised in exchange? Antony had been scrupulously faithful to their agreements. Octavian had not, repeatedly summoning Antony to meetings at which Octavian failed to appear. As ever, nothing worked as effectively as personal invective, the more scurrilous the better. Antony taunted Octavian with accounts of his humble origins. He was descended on his father’s side from rope makers and money changers, on his mother’s from bakers and keepers of perfume shops. For good measure Antony threw in an African grandfather. Worse, Octavian the parvenu harbored divine pretensions. When grain shortages plagued Rome, he and his wife, Livia, had thrown a lavish banquet. Their guests arrived in costume, as gods and goddesses. They ate obscenely well, with Octavian presiding over the table in the guise of Apollo. Octavian was moreover a coward. He had disappeared for days on end at Philippi. His gifted lieutenant, Marcus Agrippa, fought his battles for him. Possibly to deflect attention from Cleopatra and certainly overlooking his Median arrangements, Antony ridiculed Octavian for attempting to marry off his daughter to a barbarian, for the sake of a political alliance. Not all of the accusations were false or even vaguely fresh. Some were neatly repackaged from 44, when Cicero’s account of Antony’s misdeeds had been so extensive that, it was conceded, no one man could ever suffer adequate punishment for them all.
Where Antony alleged that Octavian was disabled by fear, Octavian asserted that Antony was undone by drink. On that front Octavian had several advantages: He was a modest drinker, or at least advertised himself as one. Alexandria threw a better party than did Rome. And Octavian had history on his side. It was fairly easy to claim that Antony had disappeared into a bacchanal, the more so as Octavian was in Rome while Antony was not. In his defense Antony countered with a satiric pamphlet, “On His Drunkenness.” Generally 33 was a heyday for poets, lampoonists, apologists, graffitists, as for all lovers of idle talk and outlandish fictions. Intrigue came more naturally to Octavian than to Antony, but both men displayed a pitiless talent for defamation. Octavian resorted to indecent verse. Antony distributed slanderous handbills. Each man engaged propagandists. Many practices once acceptable were suddenly objectionable. Antony took charge of the gymnasium in Alexandria, which was unspeakable—whereas his having done so five years earlier, with Octavia, in Athens, had elicited no comment. Similarly, Antony’s affair with Cleopatra had once afforded an endless source of ribald dinner jokes. Such had been the case over the summer of 39, in the celebration near Naples; Cleopatra was where the conversation wound up as the evening reached full tilt, when the lusty “good fellowship was at its height.” She was a laughing matter no longer.
The pummeling continued both above and below the belt. Between them Antony and Octavian covered the usual schoolyard litany: effeminacy, sodomy, cowardice, unrefined—or overly refined—practices of personal hygiene. Octavian was “a veritable weakling.” Antony had passed his prime. He could no longer win any contest save those in exotic dancing or the erotic arts. Antony sneered that Octavian had slept with his illustrious granduncle. How else to account for his unexpected adoption? Octavian countered with something sturdier and more pertinent, if equally untrue: Cleopatra had not slept with his granduncle. Caesarion was hardly the divine Caesar’s son, news Octavian enlisted a pamphleteer to disseminate. Antony condemned Octavian’s hasty marriage to Livia, hugely pregnant with another man’s child on her wedding day. He decried Octavian’s habit of making off with the wives of his banquet guests and returning them, disheveled, to the table. He advertised Octavian’s well-known (and in all probability invented) habit of procuring and deflowering virgins. (According to Suetonius, Octavian seduced scientifically. He targeted the wives of his enemies, to learn what the husbands were saying and doing.) In the depravity department Octavian had no need to resort to fictions. He had his weapon close at hand. In defiance of Roman custom and his impeccable Roman wife, Octavian’s fellow triumvir disported himself in a foreign capital with a rapacious queen, on whose account he had lost his head, forsaken his illustrious country, and shed all remnant of his manly Roman virtues. What self-respecting Roman would, as Cicero had put it, foolishly prefer “invidious wealth, the lust for despotism” to “stable and solid glory”? In many ways the contest boiled down to one of magnificence versus machismo.