The greatest story in the world, period 1 (of 3)

by Horace G. Hutchinson

Therefore, when Cæsar was killed, and his power to dictate and to make the laws obeyed went, at once there was terrible lawlessness, several parties in the city trying to get the power into their hands. Cæsar had been appointed dictator for life, but no arrangement had been made about what should happen at his death. So it went for the space of two years or so, and out of all the troubles of these two years we find a state of things coming about very like that which happened before, when Pompey and Cæsar were the two most powerful men—powerful, because each had legions willing to obey him. There was a third at that time, Crassus, powerful in his wealth. Two men now again came to the front, each with military forces at his back—Octavius and Antony. There was a third, of less power, Lepidus. Pompey and Cæsar had been friends at first, and were joined together to rule the affairs of Rome. Afterwards they fell fighting, with the result that you know—the complete victory of Cæsar. Crassus had been killed, fighting in the East; and that was the end of that which was called the first Triumvirate.

Antony, the nephew and the friend of Cæsar, had designs of succeeding to his power, but almost at the outset he found Octavius, who was Cæsar's grand-nephew, opposing him. Antony had been Consul, with Cæsar, in 44 B.C. Now he had command of legions in the north of Italy, and when he went to take up that command he found Brutus, Cæsar's assassin, holding possession of a town called Mutina, which he refused to give up. Antony attacked him. The Senate took the side of Brutus and sent Octavius up in command of some of the legions to oppose Antony. Antony was defeated before the town that he was besieging, and fled.

He fled, but he still had his army. He was joined by Lepidus, who brought with him a strong army from the south. Octavius may have thought this combined force too formidable for him, but whatever his reason was he made friends with Antony, whom he had lately been fighting, and with Lepidus, and the Senate seems to have approved of their combination. Perhaps they were so strong that they had no choice, but were obliged to seem to approve. And so what is called the second Triumvirate came into existence.

Brutus and Cassius, who were trying to bring back the old republican ways of Government, still held out; but they were defeated at the famous battle of Philippi, and the Triumvirate had all power in the Roman world.

They proceeded to map out that world in pieces, so that each should take his portion. To Lepidus, as perhaps the least important, was given Africa; to Antony went Egypt and the East. Octavius seems to have had the best of the bargain from the start, with the home legions and Italy, Greece and Spain, together with Gaul that Cæsar had conquered, for his own. Antony married Octavia, who was sister of Octavius; so it all looked a very good arrangement.

But just as trouble had crept in between the chief men of the first Triumvirate, so too with this second.

Antony was not a very prudent man, and Octavius was. Antony had the most troublesome frontier to defend, for to the east was that country of the Parthians who had come upon Judæa. Herod's appeal for help was heard by the Triumvirate. It was Antony's special task to deal with them; and, for the time being, he dealt with them successfully, though he did not march against them himself. But one of his generals took the field and drove them back over the Euphrates, whence they had come.

That was not by any means the end of these Parthians, however. We have seen how they fought—charging down on the legions, shooting a flight of arrows, then off again, and again coming back to perform the same manœuvres. Just as they did in each particular battle of a war, so they did in the war itself, as a whole. If the war went against them, away they went, over the Euphrates and as far east as the Romans cared to pursue. They must have known that the Romans would not go on pursuing for ever, farther and farther from their base. And the Parthians had all Asia to retreat into.

So they retreated, and left Judæa and Herod in peace, but a very few years later they were making trouble again, and this time Antony himself led an army against them, into Parthia itself, and met with a disastrous defeat. And now Octavius, who had been making his own power very firm in Rome and Italy all this while, thought the time was come when he might declare war against Antony—his brother-in-law, and until lately his friend.