John Fredrick Parker
Donor
[44 BC] – … and thus was Caesar killed and mourned. With the assassins fled from the city, and the dictator's other critics cowed, Marcus Antonius was not only Consul, but the successor to Caesar's absolute power in all but official name. And yet, in only about a year, he would fall in battle [1] to an army largely composed of Caesar's men, fighting him on the behest of the Senate he had managed to cow. What had happened?
Some might say he was too merciful to his enemies; others would say he was too cruel; most would say he was too greedy and unpolitic; and most that don't take issue with how he would fail to give his rivals, whether potential or inevitable, the respect and attention they deserved. Whatever mistakes Antonius can be said to have made, far too often it is claimed he started making them in the immediate aftermath of Caesar's death, when, from the persepctive of his faction, he hardly could have done otherwise -- showing clemency to Caesar's killers was necessary to avert a civil war; his passionate speech at the funeral was necessary to make sure the optimates did not use the peace as an opportunity to seize power; and even his reading of the will was necessary if he wanted to claim power as its executor, even as it had the misfortune of bringing Octavian to attention.
No, the mistakes of Marcus Antonius would come in force during the summer. The arrival of Caesar's named heir, Octavian, is arguably what set everything off, though in the weeks before the boy's arrival the consul had already seized control of Caesar's estate and the treasury. Worse, he was already skimping on the payments to the citizens of Rome the will had promised, meaning the crowd was already sore at him; when this boy arrived demanding his inheritence, it was no great challenge for him to win these disaffected over to him, using his own resoruces to pay his fahter's promises, or to put together games to win the city's hearts. It also opened up a smear campaign, as both men claiming to be Caesar's successor attacked the other, damaging their faction on the whole.
This fiasco turned many other Caesarions against Antonius, among them the two men who were to be consul for the next year. They began reaching out to former republicans in the Senate, looking to ally with them in reigning in a man who they believed to be embarassing the memory of their former commander with his clumsy moves at power consolidation. As we shall see later, these negotiations would be a crucial turning point in the one of the most important careers in Roman history. And these were fellow moderate Caesarions, who supported Antonius in putting peace before vengence; Octavian himself was in communication with the optimates as well, sending flattering letters to the renowned Cicero.
Marcus Antonius meanwhile only seemed to be antagonising the opposition, without effectively curtailing it; he had offered insulting procunsular posts to Brutus and Cassius in an attempt to get them to leave Rome, before upgrading them to governorships of Crete and Cyrencia. The consul probably should have guessed that these two aristocrats, with many connections in the eastern provinces, would not simply slink away to their obscure posts after executing the man whose shadow still loomed over Roman politics.
Another assassin, Decimus Brutus, went on his way to Cispline Gaul, in anticipation of his position as governor of the province to begin the following year; despite this, Antonius decided that his own promised province of Macedonia would not suit him, and that he would be taking Cispline Gaul when his consulship was at an end. Did he expect his former comrade, who had participated in the execution of the dictator only months earlier, to hand over the province now? Especially when he made no secret as to his reason -- that he would be in a better position to threaten Rome, as Caesar had, should the Senate cross him.
And so summer gave way to autum, and Marcus Antonius began to reap the harvest of his poor decisions. Cicero began to criticize the current consuls in September; it was a mild start to what would be a blistering series of attacks on Antonius, initially merely saying that some of the legislation proposed ran counter to the wishes of the late Caesar and the good of the Roman people. Meanwhile, Octavian had left the city of Rome, and was now raising legions of his own with which to challenge the other person claiming to be his father's heir.
In October, the Consul left Rome for the city of Brundisium, where his legions were already gathering; Decimus, predictably, had not turned over his province, so Antonius was now determined to take it by force. Cicero now began attacking Antonius in earnest, listing his atrocities in full, claiming that his ambition surpasses that of even the despised Catilina and Clodius. In a matter of months, new consuls would be assuming office, and the Senate would have forces of it needed to wage war in its own name. Towards the end of the year, the Senate started taking heed of the young Caesar raising troops in Italy; the boy was inducted into the esteemed chamber as a propraetor and given imperium, to serve under the new consuls in the event of a war with Marcus Antonius.
It was in this context that the consulship of Aulus Hirtius began...
OOC: [1] hinting at the PoD to come; everything else in this post is as OTL
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