Soon there was civil war. Octavian, as we may now call him, was on one side, Mark Antony on the other. In two battles the latter was defeated. He barely escaped with his life; and so Octavian now attained unto the superior authority, imposing his will upon the government and securing his proclamation as consul on the 22d of September, forty-three years before Christ.
Having reached this stage of success, Octavian began to plan the securing of the humiliation of Brutus and Cassius, who had taken part in the assassination of Julius Cæsar, and who, with their comrades, called themselves “liberators,” in view of their opposition to the concentration of power in one man. To rid himself of annoyance by them, Octavian needed all the help he could get. He now, therefore, took a most amazing step and one that betrayed his utter lack (at that time) of moral principle. He changed his attitude toward Mark Antony, conciliated his friendship, and actually succeeded in forming an agreement with him and with another ambitious competitor named Lepidus, who had also been a prominent military officer.
These three met together for three days on a small island in the river Rhenus, and there agreed to be a “triumvirate,” as they called it, for the reconstitution of the commonwealth. This triumvirate, which was to last for five years, was a most high-handed conspiracy,—an insult to the dignity of the Roman senate, a violation of many previous professions and alliances, and a tyranny over the rights of private citizens. Three hundred senators and two thousand knights were arbitrarily proscribed by the three usurpers of power. The estates of these victims were plundered and many of them were hunted to their deaths.
Each one of the triumvirate in this arrangement sacrificed some one of his friends to please the others. Thus, Octavian himself outraged all feelings of honor and justice by allowing Marcus Tullius Cicero, whose influence and advocacy had done great things in his behalf, to be put to death. This was a concession to Mark Antony,—or rather, to Mark Antony’s wife Fulvia, who, it is said, had cherished a bitter grudge against Cicero and now triumphantly and dramatically thrust a needle into the once eloquent tongue of the murdered man, when his bleeding head was exposed to view in the Forum. It was a horrible satisfaction of cruel spite!
The combined forces of Octavian and Antony soon met those of Brutus and Cassius in the famous battle of Philippi in Macedonia, a city far away from Rome, but made more memorable later by the imprisonment and deliverance there of the Christian missionaries Paul and Silas. As the result of their humiliating defeat in that battle, both Brutus and Cassius committed suicide. This was in November, forty-two years before Christ.
MARK ANTONY
Octavian returned to Italy to receive great honors at Rome, and Mark Antony remained to be the ostentatious ruler of the East. But the latter soon became infatuated with the notorious Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt.
This woman played a large part in the case. She had come to Mark Antony at Tarsus in Cilicia to win him back from the wrath he had manifested because she had not sent aid to him and Octavian in their war against Brutus and Cassius. She made her appearance before him in the most sensational manner. In the summer of the year 41 B. C. she sailed up the river Cydnus in Asia Minor, on which the city of Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, was situated. She was reclining upon a gilded couch, under a stately canopy, upon the deck of her galley, which was propelled by silver oars and purple sails. She was personating the goddess Venus, attended by the Graces and fanned by Cupids. Pipes and lutes discoursed delightful music and the air was perfumed with sweet odors. The Apostle Paul, when he was a youth at Tarsus, doubtless heard related this strange incident that had taken place in his native city two generations before his time. Mark Antony disgracefully became Cleopatra’s complete slave and, carried away by her insidious allurements, he yielded to her capricious dictation in many atrocious acts of oppression and cruelty.
There followed a period of disagreement and bloody conflict between Octavian and Mark Antony. It was connected with the appropriation of private lands in Italy in order to reward Octavian’s soldiers. The principal event in that short civil war was the siege and capture of the strong hill-town of Perusia (the modern Perugia), where an old Roman gateway still bears the name of the Arch of Augustus. I strayed out of that gate, I remember, on my visit to Perugia and looked up at the massive stones that frowned upon the modern intruder. At the period of history of which we are speaking Mark Antony was still in the East, but his brother, Lucius Antonius, leading an army in his behalf, occupied this famous old hill-town. Octavian encamped around it, and finally subdued it by siege and famine. It was only saved from plunder by his soldiers, after his capture of it, because it was set on fire by one of its own citizens, although many of these were put to death by the relentless victor.