Reading the Roman Revolution 8: Caesar’s Heir

Chapter 7 in Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolutionleft us with a cliff hanger. Antonius was out of Rome settling Caesar’s veterans when Caesar’s heir, C. Julius Caesar Octavianus, arrived in the city. He was the grandson of Caesar’s sister and from a wealthy, but undistinguished family from the town of Velitrae. At the time of Caesar’s death, Octavianus was in Apollonia preparing to participate in the dictator’s Balkan campaigns. He deliberately and cautiously returned to Italy after Caesar’s death and after consulting with various members of Caesar’s party. He was 18.

Syme’s description of Octavianus is reserved, and this created a sense of the ominous. He observed (with more than a hint of irony): “The custom of prefixing or appending to historical narratives an estimate of the character and personality of the principal agent is of doubtful advantage at the best of times it either imparts a specious unity to the action or permits apology or condemnation on moral and emotional grounds. All conventions are baffled and defied by Caesar’s heir.” He goes on to observe that his signet ring was a sphinx. This creature defined the first moves of his public career leaving Syme to rely on truisms to construct Octavianus’s character: “The personality of Octavianus will best be left to emerge from his actions. One thing at least is clear. From the beginning, his sense for realities was unerring, his ambition implacable.”

Perhaps the ambiguity surrounding Caesar’s heir prevented Antonius for taking him seriously. Octavianus, for his part, did what he could to associate himself strongly with Caesar’s memory and status which Antonius rebuffed in an effort to preserve the balance between the Caeareans and Republicans. When a split between the two men appeared immanent, Antonius publicly recognized Octavianus’s status as heir and sought formal reconciliation. Despite this, tension simmered between the expectations of Caesar’s veterans and those of the Senate. Octavianus curried the favor of both. He was know among the legions from his time at Apollonia and among the veterans from his travel up the Italian peninsula prior to his arrival in Rome. He was also a more appealing figure among members of the Senate who were loyal to Caesar’s memory and feared Antonius’s ambition.

Octavianus’s strategy was, however, grounded in a conceptual understanding of how the Roman state worked. For Octavianus, “Legitimate primacy… could only be attained at Rome through many extra-constitutional resources, bribery, intrigue, and even violence; for the short and perilous path that Octavianus intended to tread, such resources would have to be doubled and redoubled.” And “With his years, his name and his ambition, Octavianus had nothing to gain from concord in the State, everything from disorder.”

The final paragraph of the chapter makes the situation clear: “To assert himself against Antonius, the young revolutionary needed an army in the first place, after that, Republican allies and constitutional backing.”

oOo 

The short essay is part of my Reading The Roman Revolution at 80 project. It’s so awesome that I have two hashtags: #ReadingRomanRevolution and #ReadingRonaldat80. I explain the project here. You can read the rest of the entries here.