The Rest Is History - 305: The Fall of the Roman Republic

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

In this second episode on perhaps the most notorious assasination in world history, Tom and Dominic look at the bloody and chaotic aftermath of the death of Julius Caesar. They discuss the fate of the senators turned assassins, their failure to restore the institutions of the republic, and the ensuing civil war that brought about the first emperor of Rome. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. When Brutus was about to take his army across from Asia, it was very late at night. His tent was dimly lit and all the camp was wrapped in silence. And then, as he was meditating and reflecting, he thought he heard someone coming into the tent. He turned his eyes towards the entrance, and he beheld a strange and dreadful apparition, a monstrous and fearful shape standing silently by his side.

He plucked up courage to question it. Who art thou, said he, of gods or men, and what is thine errand with me? And then the phantom answered, I am thy evil genius brutus and thou shalt see me at philippi and brutus undisturbed said i shall see thee so that was dan brown uh his account of the life of marcus juniusutus, assassin of Julius Caesar. Tom, that's a tremendous scene, isn't it? That's foreshadowing Brutus's eventual defeat. Do you think that actually happened? Well, rewritten and, dare I say,

improved by Shakespeare, who makes it the ghost of Caesar himself. He does make it the ghost of Caesar, doesn't he? Yes, so the phantom is just a mysterious phantom, isn't it? It's his genius. Right. So it's kind of the idea that is just a mysterious phantom isn't it it's his genius right so it's the kind

of the idea that there is a supernatural yeah dimension to his character um and reflective of the kind of the um the lurid and dramatic shadows that all the figures in this great drama cast um because they are operating on the the greatest stage of all well this is one of the great this is one of the great tales in all history, as we were saying last time. So last time, for those of you, I was about to say, for those of you who missed it, why would you have missed it?

Tom took us brilliantly through the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar. The reasons that Caesar was seen as a threat to the Republic, the motives of the conspirators and so on and so forth.

And Tom, you ended on this fantastic scene. Caesar is lying there, his toga over his face, pool of blood beneath the statue of Pompey, and then he's bundled into a litter by three slave boys and carried away with his, I can't remember, his arm or his leg dangling out of the litter.

And the liberators, you said last time, they haven't really thought through what they're going to do next. What do they do next? Well, so we've cast Brutus in these deep and supernatural shadows, they haven't really thought through what they're going to do next. What do they do next? Well, so we've cast Brutus in these deep and supernatural shadows, but there's actually something faintly kind of pathetic about his behaviour in the wake of the assassination because he keeps trying to give a speech and he keeps being unable to do so. So his aim when the murder has happened is that he's going to hold the floor and give a speech.

But there's all this panic and he kind of gets swept out. And then he goes out into the forum and he wants to give a speech to the great mass of the Roman people. And he does give a speech, but there's nobody there because everyone's running panic. This mood of terror grips the city. People start boarding up shops. Antony, you know, who is consul with Caesar, is terrified that he's next. And so he disguises himself as a slave and runs off to his house and hunkers down there. And a very eerie sound can be heard over the streets of Rome,

which is the mourning of the Jews of Rome. Caesar had always been their great patron. And so they're kind of mourning him. And the liberators basically don't know what to do. So, so they retreat to the capital, which is, um, one of the hills that kind of frames the forum, the great kind of central space in Rome. And, um, and they hunker down there and they really mess it up because what they should have done is reconvene the Senate, declared Caesar a tyrant, you know, seized control of the functioning of the Republic. But instead they barricaded themselves up in the Capitol and they leave it to Antony to take the initiative. He realises that the assassins are not doing what he had expected to do. You know, he gets off his disguise as a slave, dresses himself up as a consul again, and he convenes the meeting of the Senate himself. And in the meantime, there's been rioting in the streets of Rome, looting and burning and whatnot. And is that because the crowd are angry that Caesar, their great pal, is dead?

Or is it because they're merely seizing the opportunity to have a bit of a barney, as it were? I think there's a feeling that no one is in control in rome uh and so of course people will always take advantage of that but most people are just hunkering down and waiting to see what's going to happen right and what happens is that on the 17th of march so two days after the murder anthony convenes a meeting of the senate in a temple that is very close to his house so in his shadow yeah and also uh dolla bella who i mentioned in the first part who is cicero's son-in-law a caesarean very very thuggish greedy unpleasant figure not popular can be very charming when he wants to be but but is is really a very menacing

presence and so his place by the side of anthony is, you know, I mean, it's not encouraging for people who imagine that the liberty of the Republic is going to be restored. Cicero is at this meeting and he proposes an amnesty, which is accepted. So the assassins, the liberators, whatever you want to call them, that they will not be, you know, they will not be prosecuted for Caesar's death. They also, it's passed that the dictatorship will be abolished forever so that's the end of that institution and in the best tradition of the republic they start allocating provinces to various figures and provinces mean that you can go out and throw your weight around and make money by kind of you know looting them or whatever bullying the locals yeah yes and so

you know various figures pile in so decimus brut, who we mentioned in the first part, had escorted Caesar to the Senate House, loyal friend of his, perhaps even son, but he was one of the conspirators. He is appointed consul in 42. So he will get the consulship in two years time. But he's in the meanwhile, he is given Cisalpine Gaul. And Cisalpine Ga the, it's Gaul on the Italian side of the Alps. So the part of Gaul that borders the Rubicon. Yeah. And that of course is incredibly geographically significant because it comes with, with legions. So Decimus Brutus can imagine, well,

you know, I can put the Republic in my shadow going there. Trebonius, who it is said kept Antony from going into the Senate House, he gets Asia and Dolabella. He's confirmed as consul for 44 and he's given Syria as a province. And so all of this looks like business as normal, Republic, you know, the grandees of the Republic dividing it up. However, the assassins make one fatal mistake and shrewd analysts at the time recognise it immediately as a mistake. And that is that they allow Caesar to have a public funeral.

This is a famous and catastrophic moment for them, isn't it? Because it's such a schoolboy era. It's a bit like having a coup and not seizing the TV station. Well, I think it's because Brutus and Cassius think that there has to be compromise, that they have to compromise with supporters of Caesar. And so symbolically, what happens is that Antony and Lepidus send their children as hostages to the conspirators on the Capitol, and then they have dinner. So Cassius has dinner with Antony, Brutus has dinner with Lepidus, and it looks as though, you know, all pals together. I mean, that that must have been those must have been quite awkward um awkward dinner parties you would imagine or maybe not i mean you know these are people who know each other very well and this is what's so extraordinary is that the conspirators

seem to have assumed that everything has gone back to normal and so they are kind of playing by the conventional rules yeah but anthony you know's a very, very shrewd and ambitious man, as you would expect a lieutenant of Caesar to be. And he recognises the opportunity. And so on the 20th of March, Caesar's funeral, his body is displayed in the forum together with his blood-stained toga. An effigy of Caesar in wax is slowly turning. So, you know,

they got it on a kind of revolving pole. And the, the, the wounds inflicted on him by the assassins is, are marked out. The names of the assassins are recited as the body turns. And, you know,

this is not getting the crowd in a good mood. And this is, you know, this is the famous friends romans countryman lend me your ears speech in shakespeare and anthony reads out caesar's will so there's one detail in caesar's will that he's not tremendously keen on which is that caesar has adopted as his main heir uh his sister's grandson a young lad called Octavius, who we will come to in due course. So Antony slightly kind of passes over that. But one of Caesar's secondary heirs is Decimus Brutus,

the very man who has just killed him. And so when Antony reads this out, there are kind of boos and catcalls. And then Antony comes to the gifts that Caesar has left to the Roman people. And these include gardens that he owns that are to be public parks. There are cash donations to everybody. And this obviously goes down tremendously well. Even in death, Caesar is the populist, Tom. Absolutely. Yes.

And so all kind of, you know, Brutus's kind of garden editorial speeches seem very pallid compared to the red-bloblooded here's loads of cash going by you know we're in a metro kind of stuff um and by the end of it basically people mobs are roaming rome looking for assassins to lynch and this is again a kind of awful episode where they they corner a guy called sinner and they mistake this guy who's actually a poet for one of the praetors who was seen as having been sympathetic to the assassins. And they rip him to pieces, chop off his head and carry it around on a spike. So generally, things are not looking good for the assassins. And adding to the generally apocalyptic mood.

So again, Shakespeare in his play has these great lines. When beggars die, there are no comets seen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. Mount Etna in Sicily has erupted. And the atmospheric effect of this is, you know, in the days and weeks that follow Caesar's assassination, a cosmic doom seems written in the skies. You know, the sun is blotted out. The skies turn a kind of bruised violet. And people say the sun, you know, is averting its eyes from the wrongs done to Caesar.

And one thing we didn't mention, Tom, actually, is that one of the people who was in the city at the time, who we've talked about a lot last year on the rest of history, is Cleopatra, Caesar's former mistress. And she races for the coast, doesn't she? I mean, she recognizes that it's all going to kick off very shortly in Rome and she's better the coast doesn't she i mean she recognizes that um it's all going to kick off very shortly in rome and she's better off going back to egypt yeah absolutely so she scrams off and um meanwhile people looking up in the skies a comet blazes across the sky people say it sees a soul going up to the heavens and so all in all it seems as though the heavens have turned against the assassins so the figure who the figure who provides us with a window onto what is going on at this time, as he's done throughout the last decades of the Republic and the Civil War is Cicero.

We have his letters, we have speeches that he wrote, philosophical meditations, and in his letters, we can see his kind of sense of disappointment and frustration. And so he despairs basically of the assassins. I said in the previous episode that he complains that they had the souls of men, the spirits of men, but they had the foresight of children. And he puzzles at the way that freedom seems to have been restored, but the Republic hasn't, he complains. And so he you know what's he going to do he so he contemplates going to to athens where his son is at the equivalent of university and misbehaving and so he sets off for that gets on the ship storm blows it back in comes back and he gets letters from his friend saying why are you running away and so he kind of feels ashamed and so he

comes back to rome and even as many of the conspirators are thinking, well, we should probably leave Rome, it's getting awkward. And Brutus, don't forget, is the urban praetor, so he's meant not to leave Rome, but he ends up heading east. Cassius does, many of the other conspirators do. Decimus Brutus heads northwards to try and take possession of Cisalpine Gaul and the legions that are up there. Cicero remains in Rome, and he ends up becoming the chief spokesman for the cause of the kind of traditional constitution, the traditional way of doing things. And for a man who is, he's very elderly by this point. And as I said, you know, he's not a naturally brave man. This is his kind of great last swan song, his attempt to rally enthusiasts of the Republic against what he sees as the threat

of tyranny that still lingers because although Caesar is dead, his lieutenant isn't. And Cicero identifies the great danger to the Republic as being Antony. Just before we go into Antony, Tom, first an observation, then a question. So the observation is that the behaviour of the conspirators really reminds me of another group of conspirators we talked about last year, the plotters in 1991, who deposed Mikhail Gorbachev. And they wanted to get rid of Gorbachev, but they had no real, they wanted to sort of turn back the clock in this vague, nostalgic way to what they saw as the glory days of the Soviet Union. But they had no concrete plan for doing it. Now, one thing that they did try to do when they had that putsch was they brought troops into the center of Moscow.

And so my question is, do the conspirators have any reservoir of troops that they can call on to restore order in the city and impose you know martial law or whatever or have they not even given thought to that they have um there is a legion on the island in the tiber that is under the command of lepidus yeah and lepidus of course is caesar's master of horse his deputies that is a threat to them but there are legions that have been assigned to decimus brutus in his role as putative governor of Cisalpine Gaul. However, these are Caesar's legions. And although Decimus Brutus had served under Caesar in Gaul, again, it's a kind of moot point whether they will serve him. Everything is up in the air. And one person who absolutely does not have any legions is Cicero. And basically the only weapon he has is his powers of oratory.

And he targets Antony. And there's a kind of inherent paradox in that because Antony is the consul. So he's the legitimate magistrate of the Roman Republic. And Cicero, as the self-appointed spokesman of constitutional legitimacy, is setting out to destroy him. And he wants him named as a public enemy. And what Cicero does effectively is he turns the consuls designate for 43. So the following year, who again are two Caesareans, a guy called Hirtius, who again served with Caesar. It's Hirtius who finishes writing Caesar's commentaries on his various wars. So it's Hirschers who um finishes writing caesar's commentaries on his various wars so it's hirschers probably who writes the account of caesar in alexandria when he meets cleopatra and a guy

called vibious panzer right um so a tank of a man tom a tank of a man yes and he succeeds in um turning them against anthony so it looks as though perhaps cicero is succeeding in rallying the causes of legitimacy legitimacy he sees against Antony, even though Antony is actually the consul. Now, all of this is, you know, these are figures who you would expect to be players in this game. But there is a rogue element that has been introduced by this primary heir that Caesar has appointed in his will. The grandson of Caesar's sister, a guy called Octavius, who at the time is 18 years old. And when the news of Caesar's murder reaches him, he's with troops on the other side of the Adriatic from Italy, getting ready to go to Parthia to serve with Caesar on the Parthian campaign. And he is told, you know,

you are Caesar's heir. And his mother says, don't go to Rome. Yeah, whatever you do. You know, you have a large bullseye on your back now. But Octavius is a guy who, as events will show, is unbelievably ambitious and ruthless and able and determined um and he takes on the name gaius julius caesar from caesar's you know by the terms of caesar's will so he he is julius caesar when you get adopted you add the word anus to your name so octavius becomes Octavianus. And so he is known as Octavian. He did not call himself that. He called himself Julius Caesar. He wanted to forget all about Octavius, but let's call him Octavian. Octavian crosses to Italy. He goes to Rome. The story is put about by

his supporters that as he enters Rome, the sun is haloed by a rainbow, which is a kind of supernatural sign that, you know, the gods have blessed him. Sure, that definitely happened, Tom. Again, stories are put about that even as a boy, you know, he'd had superhuman powers that he could command frogs to obey him. So very Dr. Valverde behaviour. He's very effective at constructing improbable stories around himself. Because he has disguised the fact that he's, you know,

he's 18. Yeah. But he has pals, isn't he? Is he got my seen us his, his great sort of his Alistair Campbell figure, his spin doctor. And a gripper is his,

you know, his kind of Gordon Brown who never, who never loses it. Right. Who always stays loyal. He doesn't throw staplers at people. So Octavian arrives in rome and then he he's testing the waters because although he's 18 years old although he's kind of geeky inexperienced operating in in a absolute kind of pond full of

sharks and in a world where as an 18 year old he has no right to run for any magistracy at all yeah i mean you know that's the whole. Nevertheless, he has two absolutely kind of priceless attributes. The first is his great uncle's name. So that's why he calls himself Julius Caesar rather than Octavian. And the second is the fortune, you know, and money is power. And he starts spending it very, very lavishly. And very soon he's entered into a kind of rivalry with Antony. So when Antony is asked to hand over Caesar's treasure so that the bequests of the people can be given out and Antony's obstructive, Octavian auctions off some of the estates that he's inherited from Caesar and uses the proceeds to give to the people, which obviously makes him incredibly popular. And he also uses his money to start recruiting

a private bodyguard. And very soon he has a bodyguard of 3,000 people, 3,000 men. And he actually briefly occupies the forum with these men, this 18-year-old boy surrounded by all his thugs that he's recruited. He occupies the forum, gets beaten off and retreats, but he's still absolutely a player. And it's the measure of the fact that he's not simply willing to use violence and aggression, although he's clearly signaled that he is, but also that he's a kind of shrewd political player is that he goes to Naples where Cicero is hanging out and he tries basically to win Cicero over. And Cicero is suspicious of him. But developments towards the end of 44 persuade Cicero that perhaps there's a deal to be done with Octavian.

Because basically what has happened towards the end of 44 is that as Antony's consulship draws to an end, and therefore the kind of legitimacy he holds as the most senior magistrate in the state, he decides that he's going to go north and try and raise troops there. But the problem is, is that Decimus Brutus has had exactly the same plan. So there's a kind of Antony with the power of his name is able to recruit legions. But Brutus has some legions as well, Decimus Brutus. And faced by Antony, he holds himself up in Mutina, so Medina in northern Italy. And Antony settles down in front of him and aims to starve him out, puts him under siege. And, you know, this is it.

The civil war has blazed into life again. And so Cicero back in Rome is thinking, well, we need troops. We need money. And so Octavian's kind of been wooing him. And so Cicero decides, well, actually, let's try and win him over to the cause of the Republic of the Constitution. And so he stands up in the Senate House and asks the Senate not to condemn Octavian's recruitment of a private army but to make it official and to kind of award him public honors yeah and obviously everyone in the senate is completely bewildered by this what what on earth is cicero doing but he sees octavian's at all doesn't he he absolutely

does and isn't it interesting that um at this point so the the liberators have disappeared off to the east haven't they they? Antony is besieging Decimus Brutus, but the Senate has turned against him. Cicero is against him. Well, Cicero is working to turn the Senate against him. He's working to get them to name Antony a public enemy, but they haven't yet done that. And do they do it? Well, we'll see. But he does persuade them to legitimize this private army that Octavian has recruited and to enroll him in the forces of Hirsus and Panza, who, you know, when 44 becomes 43, become the consuls on the 1st

of January. But even as he's doing this, Cicero is terribly prone to making fatal witticisms. And so he says of Octavian, even as he's bigging him up in the Senate, he says, this young man should be lauded, glorified, and then raised to the skies in the way that Caesar had been raised to the skies, i.e. murdered. He says that publicly. He says it privately, but it's a joke that reaches Octavian's ears and Octavian, you know, puts it away and accepts his role as someone who's going supposedly as a, you know, a kind of lieutenant to the two consuls,

but he doesn't forget it. So spring 43, the beginning of the campaigning season, Herschus and Panzer advance on Mutina to try and relieve it from Antony. Herschus and Panzer, please Gordon Carrera to know, communicate by pigeon. Because Antony's troops are in their way.

At a place called Forum Galorum, Antony attacks Panzer, has the better of the first day's fighting. Panzer is very badly wounded. But then on the second day, he's ambushed by Hirsius and has to retreat. And the news of this, that Antony has been beaten in battle and has retreated northwards, when it's brought to the Senate, it's what persuades them to declare him a public enemy. So that's when they take that fateful step. But they then get very bad news, which is that Herschel has died in battle and Panzer shortly afterwards dies of his wounds.

So suddenly there are no consuls and there's only Octavian lurking in the background. Meanwhile, Antony has escaped into Gaul and there he meets up with Lepidus. And Lepidus has seven legions and Antony has a large number of legions as well. And the two men, the two armies kind of fraternise. Decimus, realising that he's completely sunk,

there's no way that he can fight Lepidus and Antony together. He scarpers, tries to make his way through north of the Alps to join the liberators in the east, but gets captured by a Gallic chieftain, handed over and put to death. And so that's the end of him. And so that means that there is now only Octavian and his armies between Rome and the huge army of Antony and Lepidus. And at that point, you would think this is the action now.

This is the civil war. Well, so everyone in Rome is wondering, you know, what's he going to do? And the answer comes in late July when a centurion arrives in the Senate House and he demands a consulship for Octavian, who by now is 19. So he's, what, 21 years too young for yes for the job he is and people in the senate kind of splutter and say this is an outrage and you know what authority are you doing this and the centurion puts his hand on the hilt of his sword and says if you do not make him consul, my sword will. And so 19th of August, Octavian is formally elected consul. And off he heads to fight Antony and Lepidus, only he doesn't fight them.

He meets up and they come to an agreement and they arrange a triumvirate. This is the second triumvirate. Caesar and Pompey and Crassus had done earlier, but that had been an informal agreement. This one is a formal one, even though they're kind of doing it themselves. And they decide that they'll hold their triumviral powers for five years, that they will exercise authority over the whole of the empire, that they can pass or annul whatever laws they want without reference to the Senate, without reference to the people, that martial law is extended to Rome itself. And effectively, this, after 400 years, is the end of freedom as

the Romans had always understood it. It's imposing directly a military dictatorship. The sublime and tragic irony that the one act that was supposed to precipitate the end of autocracy or to avert autocracy and to turn back the clock to the republican tradition, that that one act has hastened it and destroyed the republic. Because at that point, so you still have the liberators, don't you? They're off in the east. We've sort of put them to one side in the first half of this podcast. But Antony, Lepidus, Octavian, there is no way that i mean the republic is dead isn't it the senate have no troops so what will they do with these powers and with their armies rome is

basically defenseless before them and before their arrival in rome again there are terrible portents so dogs howl like wolves wolves are seen running through the forum. Loud shouts are heard coming from the sky. The clash of weapons, the pounding of unseen hooves. It seems to threaten horror. Oh, my word. And so, Dominic, it proves to be. And perhaps we should take a break.

It's always good to end on a cliffhanger, Tom, and we certainly have. Wolves howling like dogs, vice versa. It's all happening. What will happen next? Find out after the break. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Of his murderers, scarcely any outlived him more than three years or died a natural death.

All were condemned and met with a variety of fates. Some died at sea, some in battle, and some, using the very daggers with which they had done such terrible violence to Caesar, killed themselves. So, Tom, you're desperate. You've been badgering me about reading that quotation. That's from Suetonius, the Twelve Caesars. It's your own translation, which is why you wanted me, because you sort of felt, I think, didn't you, that there hadn't been enough of you in this podcast?

I did, yes. You wanted a bit more. So basically… Very Caesar in behaviour. You wanted to speak yourself, but when I'm speaking, you want me just to read out things you've written. Yes. Is that right?

Yes. It's the spirit of julius this is very julius caesar like behavior all right now you can speak in your own words tell us what happens um rome is in this apocalyptic state the armies of antony lepidus octavian they're all there the liberators are off in the east and everyone's well i've forgotten about them what happens next well so the reason i wanted that particular passage to read the idea that suetonius is is articulating there it's the last lines of his biography of julius caesar is that this idea that the triumvirs anthony octavian and lepidus feel that they're embodying the idea that there's

that they are they are visiting divine vengeance yeah on the assassins of Caesar. And this is what is legitimating their actions. And so this is what justifies them in putting Decimus Brutus to death. But it's not enough for them just to kill the assassins and to hunt them down. Because what they need if they're going to go and fight Brutus and Cassius in the East is money to raise legions, even more than they already have. And the obvious source of money are the wealthy senators in Rome who are kind of sitting there waiting to be plucked. And there's an example in this from an early period in history where a man called Sulla, the first man to march on Rome, and he had issued prescription lists, which were kind of white boards put up in the forum. And so how this worked was that you would get a reward if you cornered someone who was on a prescription list and proved that you killed him by bringing his head to the triumvirs. And so this is what happens.

And it's absolutely kind of brutal and murderous so you all kinds of terrible stories of of you know condemn men having to kind of hide out in attics or stables that there are kind of shameful stories so there's a story of a woman who was um who hated her husband betrayed her portrayed him to bounty hunters and then married her lover the same day oh so that's that's not good behavior but then there's equally that many uplifting tales of wives who nobly stand by their husbands. And so there's one in particular who braves a beating from from thugs sent by Lepidus to beg for her husband's life. And he does actually survive. He gets off and he wrote to this this kind of moving tribute.

They covered you with bruises, he wrote, but never broke your spirit. So, you know, there are kind of inspiring stories that come out of this. But by and large, it's very, very brutal. And the Triumvirs make enormous amounts of money by wiping out vast swathes of the Roman elite. Now, there is one person, obviously, who Antony wants to see dead, and that is Cicero, who has spent the previous year writing escalatingly abusive speeches about him, kind of accusing him of being drunk, dressing up as a woman. Corrupt, I suppose.

Corrupt. All kinds of stuff. So Antony's very keen to have him killed. Octavian, of course, is ostensibly his friend and might have been thought to stick up for him. But when the triumvirs first met and agreed on the prescriptions, as a signal, as a marker of the way that they were all obliged to dabble their fingers in blood, each of them was obliged to sacrifice a man whom they might otherwise have felt obliged to save. So Antony agrees to the prescription of an uncle,

Lepidus his brother, and Octavian agrees that Cicero should die. And so Cicero heads off. I mean, he could have escaped. He could have escaped, but he's a natural vacillator. He keeps kind of going around in his litter, trying to work out, you know, where he should stay. And eventually he gets cornered by a troop of bounty hunters. He leans out from his litter, bares his throat in the way that a gladiator does when he's been condemned to death by the crowd and his throat is slit and his head is taken to Antony who gives it to Antony's wife Fulvia

who has all kinds of personal reasons for hating Cicero and she pulls out his tongue and stabs the tongue with her hairpins and the head and his hands are then hung up in the forum and you know this mutilation of cicero's tongue perfect you know it's absolutely perfect symbol of the way in which the great tradition of free speech in rome has now been silenced and the hands that wrote the speeches that abused antony yeah are now severed and bleeding in the Forum. So Rome is in an absolutely terrible state. Meanwhile, what is happening in the East? So that line at the beginning from Suetonius,

the idea that all the assassins must be hunted down, this is something that the Triumvirs are embodying. But even before they form the Triumvirate, the idea that Caesar's assassins should be hunted down has been put into action. So Desmos Brutus is not the first assassin to be executed. He's actually the third. The first is Trebonius, who is the guy who had held Antony from going into the Senate House when Caesar was being murdered, and who had then been given the province of Asia in the kind of the meeting of the Senate immediately after the assassination. And so he heads off to Asia and he's followed by Dolabella, this kind of sinister, thuggish figure who has been given Syria. And Dolabella basically surprises Trebonius, takes him prisoner and hands him over to be tortured. And he's tortured very, very horribly for two days. And then his head is chopped off and placed beneath a statue of Caesar.

And this kind of serves as a warning to all the assassins who are out to get you. And this is given legal justification by a law that is passed by a guy called Quintus Pedius, who is consul with Octavian in 43. And so he passes the Lex Pedia, which goes back on the amnesty that had been given to the assassins and sentences all of them to death. And the assassins could not have averted this if they had stayed in Rome.

So if they'd stayed, was Rome too dangerous for them? I think Rome is too dangerous for them. So there's no way that they had, so from that very first failure to secure the city. Everything follows from that. Everything follows from that.

And they've made this, they've disappeared. Now they've gone to the east presumably because the east is rich and they think they can raise troops. Is that right? And they do. And they've been doing it very effectively. So we shouldn't think that brutality and ambition is only on the side of the triumvirs. Brutus and Cassius both show themselves very capable of committing atrocities in the cause of raising money that they can then spend on troops so brutus you know he destroys an entire city the horror that he visits and encourages the inhabitants of the city to

commit mass suicide um there's kind of emblematic horror when a woman is found hanged with a dead child around her neck and a flaming torch in her hand. And this is just before Brutus sees, you know, the apparition that we began the episode with. Brutus has also put Anthony's brother to death. He'd taken him prisoner and put him to death. Cassius, likewise, has been busy extorting money. So the traditional view, which is that you have these incredibly hard-nosed ruthless people on one side and these sort of naive you know bien pensant kind of dinner party people on the other is not really accurate at all no except i suppose brutus and cassius would say that they were extorting money from provincials whereas the triumvirs were were looting it from their own class it doesn't count

if they're doing it to you you know, Eastern provincials. I mean, obviously it does. It's not, it's not legal, but it kind of, you know, it matters less,

I suppose, to a Roman that you're, you're stiffing the people of Rhodes or Xanthus for money than, than that you're kind of murdering senators. Yeah. But it's, there's brutality and violence on all sides. And both men and both sides end up with a vast, vast armies. So Britain Cassius end up with 20 legions, which is, you know, just under 100,000 men.

They've also got larks, you know, thousands of cavalry mounted archers. So, I mean, this is a huge force. Yeah. And so Antony Octavian in Italy know that they've, you know, they need to match, and they manage to raise a kind of matching force. They also have 20 legions. Antony and Octavian cross the Adriatic. They leave Lepidus behind. They send advance force across northern Greece into Macedonia, so what had once been the kingdom of alexander yeah um and they they try to block the assassins but um brutus and cassius are able to they kind of go around the the bottom of a very densely forested mountain and snake past and then they emerge near the largest town in macedonia which is a place called philopi and they divide their armies brutus commanding one cassius another and they block off the via ignatia which is the great high road that leads from the

adriatic towards towards asia yeah and basically they're in a strong position because they have supplies cassius's position enables him to uh control access to the nearest port so they can have food and all kinds of things brought into them anthony octavian much more exposed supplies for them are much more difficult so it's incumbent on them to try and force their position. And just on the commanders. So Octavian is very inexperienced. He's little more than a teenager. Antony obviously is very experienced. On the other side, Brutus is more of a politician. But Cassius is also, I mean, Cassius is, you know, would be, would fancy himself against Antony in a fight, presumably. Yes. And so it's Antony who faces Cassius and it's Octavian who faces Brutus.

And you're right that Octavian is not a good commander. His contribution to the general shebang is on the eve of the battle, he swears an oath that he will build a temple to Mars Ultor, Mars the Avenger in Rome, which in due course he will do. But basically that's the limit of his contribution because he then falls sick. And so he gets taken from his tent to receive medical treatment. And this isn't obviously as inspiring as it could be. But meanwhile, Antony is very, very kind of alert. And so he tries to outflank Cassius, Cassius' positions by going through a marsh and try and cut Cassius off from the sea. And this precipitates the beginning of the whole battle. So Cassius's forces engage with Antony's

and Brutus's, even though they don't need to come out of their fortified positions, they do, they attack Octavian's camp and they capture it. Octavian, you know, he's already left, but it's a kind of very bloody defeat for Octavian's men. But meanwhile, Antony has defeated Cassius's force and Cassius commits suicide. I mean, that is a colossal blow for the liberators or the assassins, depending on how you call them, given that Brutus is nowhere near as experienced a commander as Cassius is, presumably. Right, but still has troops. But it's the measure, perhaps, of his inexperience that he holds to his position for three weeks, but then he comes out to meet them and he seems to have been pressured by his, but then he comes out to meet them and he seems

to be pressured by his staff. And he loses and he commits suicide as well. So the ghost, the ghost is a Roman formula, I'm assuming, a literary formula that is a sort of foreshadowing of your doom and your guilt and all that sort of stuff. Well, so, you know, you began it with this kind of vision that Brutus has as they're crossing into Asia, but there is a ghost of Caesar that is seen. It's again reported by Suetonius. Someone from Thessaly kind of region in Northern Greece comes to Octavian

and says that I have seen Caesar. And Caesar predicts that you will win. So Octavian goes and, you know, he's whether that's true or not. I mean, who knows? But this is all kind of part of the idea that this great battle at Philippi, which I'm not an expert on the napoleonic wars and but i would guess it's a battle on that kind of scale i mean you know 200 250 000 people engaged i mean these

vast vast numbers but but just on the battle tom can i just ask a question about the battle so the way we've told the story the way that everybody always tells the story of this whole business going right back to 44 bc and and the conspiracy against caesar we tell it in the knowledge that the assassins will lose and that so all the emphasis is on the the cunning and the ruthlessness of anthony and octavian the naivety and folly of brutony and Octavian, the naivety and folly of Brutus and Cassius in not making sufficient preparations and all these things. But battles with such vast numbers, I mean, they're pretty evenly matched armies and notoriously hard to predict. So had that first battle, for example, gone differently, had Cassius not been killed,

wouldn't we have done these two podcasts completely differently? And, oh, do you think I'm being... Yes, I think so. I mean, had the Trinvirs lost the Battle of Philippi? Yeah. I mean, it depends whether they die in battle or not. If they die in battle, then... It's kind of game over, isn't it?

Lepidus is an ineffectual politician, as he will show himself to be. And Brutus and Cassius could well have restored liberty at the point of a sword. I mean, but whether they would have been able to do that or not, I don't know. If Antony had managed to escape from Philippi, the battle would have raged on and probably Rome's empire would have been destroyed in the resulting battle. It's the fact that, I mean, you know, we began this series with the example of Cato committing suicide. And I think that that is the model that stands before Cassius and Brutus. Because of course, Cassius didn't need to commit suicide because Brutus had won. He commits suicide before the news of Brutus' victory reaches him. So he could have lived to fight another day. So in that sense, there's a kind of great irony that in fact, the example of Cato is what dooms the Republic. And the sense of something historic and noble passing is there in accounts of how Brutus's body is treated. So there are two rival accounts. In one, Antony hunts out Brutus's body. He covers the body with his cloak, burns it honorably, and sends the ashes back to Seville, to Brutus's mother.

But in the alternative tradition, the body of Brutus is beheaded on Octavian's orders, and he sends it back to Rome to be placed beneath Caesar's statue. And for Octavian, there is no shred of sentimentality about what has been done. I mean, it's not really very much about Verantini, but he at least is old enough to have the sense that something has been lost with what has happened at Philippi. And it's the measure of that, that when prisoners are led before the triumvirs, kind of, you know, the noblemen who've been taken captive, they salute Antony as imperator, as the general who has defeated them but they curse octavian octavian is seen as vicious and savage and utterly beyond the pale right um and brutus and cassius their deaths

rather like with cato that kind of dignifies them in the memory of of romans who in the decades and centuries to come lament the end of the republic so there's a historian writing in the end of the republic so there's a a historian writing in the reign of tiberius who commemorates them as the last of the romans and they you know there are historians right the way up into the present day who who mourn it um so ronald syme the great historian of what he calls the roman revolution writing in the 30s against the backdrop of fascism and show trials in Russia. He says to Philopi, this time the decision was final and irrevocable. The last struggle of the free state, henceforth nothing but a contest of despots over the corpse of liberty. So Octavian, I mean, spoiler, he ends up defeating Antony. The two of them end up kind of fighting a yet further civil war. Octavian defeats Antony and Cleopatra

and in due course is given the name Augustus and rules as Rome's first emperor. Whether he is a despot ruling over the corpse of liberty is a question that perhaps we can come to when we do Augustus. But, you know, there's no question that the Republic as it had been understood for centuries, is gone. And symbolically, that is focused by the murder in 30 BC. So that is after Antony has been defeated and committed suicide. Of the very last of the assassins to be hunted down, who's a guy called Cassius Parmensis. So they're hunting them down for 14 years.

Yeah, so it's rather like the hunting of the people who signed Charles I's death warrant. I was just thinking exactly that. It's like the search for the people who signed Charles I's death warrant. I was thinking exactly that. It's like the search for the regicides in the 1660s, isn't it? Yeah. Extraordinary that it lasts so long. There's a very good book on it by Peter Stoddart, who was editor of the Times, editor of the TLS, called, I think, The Last Assassin, about Cassius Parmensis. It's very good, highly recommended.

But it's a kind of terrible story. I mean, it's so brutal and bloody and murderous and so much destruction. But in due course, when Augustus comes to power, the measure of success is that people are willing to forget. So there's a story that Claudius, who will go on to become the emperor, as in I, Claudius, that he wanted to write a history of the civil wars. And Augustus's wife tells him, don't, don't go there. But Augustus, so we're sort of slightly jumping ahead, but Octavian becomes Augustus. He becomes the winner. But he has learned from Caesar's example, hasn't he?

Because he doesn't, I mean, he does take lots of offices, but he doesn't end up murdered because he doesn't, he makes a great spectacle of his own modesty and his humility and pretends to be the servant of the Senate in a way that perhaps Caesar didn't. Is that fair? Yeah, absolutely fair. Yes. I mean, he very much has caesar's example in front of him yeah and of course everyone in the empire romans and provincials have that example too so they also know not to assassinate him because they think we don't want another massive civil war presumably yeah but the republic was dead you know the republic wasn't killed by

the assassins of caesar or by Antony or by Octavian. Surely the Republic was, we know now with the benefit of hindsight, that the Republic was doomed, was finished because of Rome's expansion, its wealth, because it had acquired this empire and because the machinery of Republican government was no longer appropriate to govern this great, wealthy, powerful leviathan. I mean, I think the fact that Pompey doesn't make himself a military dictator suggests that perhaps that it's the peculiar qualities of Caesar, his ambition and his genius and his lack of sentimentality about the legacy of the Republic

that is ultimately what destroys it. Conversely, it's a bit like europe in 1914 if franz ferdinand hadn't been assassinated it's almost certain that some other spark would have been thrown on the right on the bonfire um i suspect that that the republican system of government had simply become too unstable to endure and that at some point you know someone was going to do what caesar ends up doing yeah um and i think it's the good fortune of of rome that octavian who we've portrayed as this kind of icy terrorist and and that's what he was i mean he was a he was a terrifying figure um who clearly from the beginning had as his goal, sole goal, the aim of making himself master of the Roman state, but that he was such a supremely gifted statesman. We've said this

before, have we not? Probably the single greatest political figure in Western history. I always think, Tom, you're much too hard on Octavian, frankly. I think he's in a really, really difficult position when he gets that inheritance at the age of 18 he's probably he's probably going to die i mean that's realistically yes that's the most likely outcome if you're a betting man and the fact that he doesn't and then he does okay he does become an autocrat but as autocracies go it could have been an awful lot worse than it than it But if he died at Philippi, he would be remembered as a monster, someone who had betrayed and murdered in cold blood, who had trampled on every tradition of Rome. And it's the fact that he survives and ends up as father of the state, the man who claims

to have restored the Republic. It's interesting that Octavian is actually such, although he's much less well-known than Julius Caesar, he's such a magnetic historical personality that we've ended up talking about him. But to turn it back to Caesar, what if Caesar doesn't die in 44 BC? What if he listens to Calpurnia? How does history, is this a completely fruitless exercise to pursue the counterfactual? I mean, it depends how he does in... Empathia. Empathia.

I mean, evading Iraq doesn't always work out, does it? But let's assume that it goes better than when Crassus did it, that it also goes a bit better than when Antony did it some years later. But it's not a complete, you know, he doesn't conquer Parthia. He inflicts maybe a couple of defeats, suffers a defeat himself, mixed record, but he can portray it as a win. And then he comes back. What happens next? Because they're still in the same position that they were in 45, 44 BC, aren't they? That he's too powerful, too rich. Is there any way that he can be accommodated in the system?

So this is recognised as a problem by contemporaries. And Cicero records, in the wake of the assassination, he records a friend of his saying, and I paraphrase because I don't have it exactly to hand, but I paraphrase. He says, we're screwed. Nothing can be done. If even Caesar, with all his genius, couldn't solve this problem, then what hope have any of us got of resolving it? So it's possible that the entire crisis would just have grumbled on and the entire fabric of Rome's empire would have started to disintegrate. Although, doesn't the example of Octavian suggest that it can be resolved, but maybe it takes an incredible descent into bloodshed to make that possible?

Yes, I think so. I think it has a kind of, the sheer scale of the bloodshed to make that possible yes i think so so i think it has a kind of the sheer scale of the bloodshed and the horror is is so traumatic that it serves as a cauterizing effect yeah and the the fortune of you know it's the good fortune of rome is that they end up with europe's most able politician yeah who who stabilizes the whole situation and the assassination generally you know when people tell that story, it's interesting, isn't it? How generally, maybe Shakespeare's actually slightly different.

But by and large, I think people's sympathies tend to be with Caesar rather than the assassins. Do you think I'm wrong? I think there's a slight sense that they're his friends and they've, in a cowardly and callous way,

they've struck him down in a way that he can't fight back. It's not a fair fight. He's outnumbered. He's betrayed. I think historically, it depends on what your ideological principles are. So if Shakespeare is able to show Caesar's assassination in a way that he couldn't show, for instance, the death of a king, because that would be far too sensitive. But of course, people entirely understand that the fascination of the story in an age where, you know, you can't talk about the murder of kings

is that it enables you to discuss precisely those kinds of issues. And so the murder of Caesar is, you know, if you're a French revolutionary, then of course you're all in favour of it. You know, they're all calling themselves brutus and all that kind of stuff. So I think it depends on your politics.

I mean, now, yes, I think people, because the issues have become less, I mean, there's no problem with kind of portraying the murder of kings or whatever, or indeed presidents. So 2017, I think it was, there was a production of Shakespeare in Central Park in New York, you know, the kind of regular summer performance of Shakespeare in Central Park in New York, you know, the kind of regular summer performance of Shakespeare. And there was kind of great scandal because Caesar was portrayed as someone

with a very long red tie. Oh, gosh. East European wife, a kind of orange skin tone. Right. And there was kind of outrage that, you know, effectively this was a portrayal of the assassination of Trump. But actually, why should there be outrage?

Because as you say, often people's sympathies are with Caesar because he's betrayed by his friends. Yeah, so interesting. Who are your sympathies with there? Deep down, I know you're trying to evade the question, but deep down, are you team Caesar or are you team Brutus? I know that it's going to go disastrously wrong. Yeah.

And I suppose a bit like Cicero, I kind of despair of their inability to plan ahead. And I do find, I mean, Caesar is a very sympathetic magnetic figure. Well, I think the interesting thing, so I think what loads it is the fact that Caesar had treated them a great magnanimity. Of course, Caesar is terribly ambitious and he can be very violent and ruthless, but he could so easily have punished all these people who had backed Pompey. And the fact that he didn't, and he was so forgiving, I mean, it's quite unusual, isn't it? In somebody of such military might. But as we said, that's quite an aggressive thing to do, to pardon your enemies as though you're the master and they're the slave. I mean, of course, it's better than torturing them to death for two days yes as dolla bella did but it's not quite as you

know forgiveness is more loaded than for us i think well tom i tell you when our enemies seize power in britain i'm i'm taking the pardon i have no shame in taking the pardon but dominic we have all been christianized so yeah that's that's why it's different. Anyway, I think we should end it. Actually, we should end it, shouldn't we, with a name check of after Et tu Brute, what is probably the most famous dramatic line written about Caesar's assassination, which was co-written by the father of my dear friend, Jamie Muir, Frank Muir, in Carry On Cleo, where Caesar cries out, infamy, infamy. They've all got it, infamy. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early