[42 BC] – Not long into the year of Decimus Brutus and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, the policy of settling the veterans of the victorious Roman armies onto Italian land was proving to be an enormous challenge. While the reform of the previous year promised, on paper, to provide a fair amount of available land by breaking up the large estates of the senators, this process was proving to be slow going; the senators were powerful, after all, and plenty of lawmakers (Cicero included) were openly predicting that the policy would not stick. So new land was needed; eighteen towns saw their lands confiscated, with the bulk of reclamations coming not from the rich, but from small and middle farmers who lacked the powerful friends to slow down the confiscations.
This, predictably, led to a large number of disconted and now landless men across the Italian countryside; the very raw materials of revolution. On top of this, the bulk of the the survivors of Antonius' defeated legions had somehow made their way back into Italia, and were now organizing these angry men into fresh legions. Where might they get such a notion? Well, it is at this point that the Antonine faction once again enters the fray, led by the brother of the late Marcus Antonius, Lucius, and his widow, the far better known and infamous Fulvia. The details of their conspiracy are fuzzy, but what is known is that in the later part of Spring, reports were coming into Rome of Fulvia speaking before these gathered legions, by all appearances commanding them, with Lucius "under her command" and the children of Marcus Antonius at her side.
It has been a matter of some historical contention whether the young Caesar, at the time settling into his position as Governor of Gallia Narbonesis and Hispania Citerior, was party to this growing conspiracy; his close allies of the time, Agrippa and Maecenas, would later claim that he only learned of the rebellion after it had happened, and was earnestly seeking to put it down when he marched into Italia. The lack of Senate authroization for this, they claimed, was seen as a technicality by the young man, who fully expected the Senate to legitimize his decisions after the fact, much as they had done when he raised legions against Marcus Antonius. As evidence against this claim, critics of Ocatavian would point to his marriage mere months before of Fulvia's daughter, Clodia Pulchra.
But these would be concerns for later; at this point in the year, the most pressing concern for the city of Rome were the rebellious Antonine legions. If Octavian's proactive reaction to the crisis was suspicious to those opposed to the Caesarians, the responses of Lepidus was infuriating in their lacklusterness. First, the consul who held fasces at the time, Lepidus, tried to convince the Senate that a policy of non-aggression and reconcilation was still possible; the Senate's reaction to this was so furious that when they gathered the next day, he refused to leave his house. Decimus now presiding as Consul, the brother and widow of Antonius were declared public enemies; an army was to be raised to confront them.
Cicero could plainly see that Italia was on the verge of another crisis; even though he was not as politically dominant as he had been in the early months of the previous year, he threw himself into a finally slate of oratorical showmanship, seeking to prod the Senate into a series of measures which would prove incredibly consequential in how the crisis of that year was resolved, and arguably for the fate of the Republic. The first measure, passed before the simply sent an envoy to Sextus Pompey, offering good terms for cooperating in returning his legions to Senate control; when the news from this offer was positive, the second measure formally requested him to bring his troops into Italia proper to put down the revolt of the Antonines.
This is where things became tricky, because to this senatorial command Sextus responded that he would need a series of conditions to be met to assure the loyalty of his men, including general amnesty for his forces, land for his veterans, freedom for the escaped slaves under his protection, and the consulship to be awarded to him for the next year. It took several days of not only vigorous debate in the Senate, but relentless manuvering behind the scenes -- including, as Cicero would later recount, hours of convincing Lepidus not to veto the measure -- before the Senate finally agreed to affirming these requests. One of Cicero's supporters would later boast that this was “
the last time he saved the Republic”.
The elder statesman's sense of timing must have been impeccable, because days after this final measure was passed, the legions loyal to Antonius' brother and widow began to march on Rome. The leaders of this new rebel army were not subtle about what they had planned for those they considered to be their poltical enemies; to start with, Fulvia boldly proclaimed that the assassins of Caesar remaining in the city when it fell would be executed when her army took it. Interestingly, she went so far as to publish a list of those who would be targeted by this decree... and it included only the optimate liberators, who remained allied to Cicero; those, like the Consul Decimus, who were part of the moderate populist camp and worked with their government seemed to be forgotten about entirely. It is details like this that remind us that political actors of the time were more likely motivated by political expediancy and greed than any kind of pure loyalty or thirst for vengence.
Whatever the motives of this list, those senators who were on it took the message and fled the city; this is how, in the next year, just about all the so-called “unredeemed assassins” found themselves in the company or legions of Marcus Brutus. But that is for another update; suffice to say, for now, that as soon as word of this rebellion reached his provinces (or indeed, as some have claimed, before then) Octavian ordered his legions to march southward into Northern Italia, formerly Cisalpine Gaul. The penultimate phase of the civil war was starting.
Meanwhile in the east, Hirtius arrived in Syria with his legions. Within days of his ships coming to port, ambassadors arrived from the kingdoms of Judea and Cappadocia, full of complaints against the abrasive army of Cassius. Cappadocia had seen their king executed by Cassius' orders for resisting Roman intrusion into their affairs, while Judea had seen towns taxed dry, while others were sacked and enslaved. Speaking on the behalf of the latter was the king's chief advisor and military leader, one called Antipater the Idumean; he now commanded a legion's worth of men, from his own kingdom and others, and offered to join this force to the army of the Republic gathered there.
To this, Hirtius readily agreed; as his army was beginning its march north to confront Cassius, yet another ambassador arrived, this one from Egypt. Queen Cleopatra made a formal request for protection against Cassisus Longinus, who she had by now come to learn, or guess, was planning on marching against her kingdom. The ambassador explained that, if given time, the queen might raise forces and send them to join the Republic's own; Hirtius however, who determined that he could not delay his expedition any longer, politely declined, asking instead for an additional tribute to be paid to him and his soldiers upon their victory (on top of Egypt's usual tax payments to Rome). The ambassador declared these terms to be acceptable, and with that, the legions of the Republic departed.
Before continuing, it should be noted that it was around this time that Hirtius sent an ambassador to the Parthians; when this fellow arrived at the eastern capital, he discovered that one Quintus Labienus, son of Caesar's former right hand man and latter ally of Pompey, was already there, sent there as an emissary from Cassius. Even though the men had been sent by opposing generals in the civil war, and the Parthians sought to play one against the other, they would, in time, come to work together as joint ambassadors to Rome, securing the border between the empires, assuring the eastern king that the Senate had no intention of following Caesar's call for a campaign in his empire. (Likely they managed this after hearing of the results of the confrontation between their commanders.) While the name Hirtius' ambassador is an asterix to history, the son of Labienus would use this accomplishment to bolster his own political career upon returning to Rome, even as the circumstances of his intial deployment would haunt his prospects.