Free Cleopatra and Antony by Diana Preston

in helping restore Auletes to the Egyptian throne. He was among Caesar’s commanders at his last great battle in Gaul at Alesia, near present-day Dijon, where Caesar besieged Vercingetorix in his hilltop fortress. Told by his scouts that a massive relieving army of Gauls was, in turn, about to attack him in the rear, Caesar ordered some of his heavily outnumbered legionaries to about-face and build ramparts at the Roman army’s rear to allow the battle to be joined on two sides. Antony was in the thick of the four days of hard fighting. In his Gallic Wars Caesar praised his young commander in particular for his calmness and leadership during a nighttime attack by the Gauls, when Antony and another officer skillfully moved legionaries around their defensive perimeter to reinforce weak points and successfully held off the Gauls.
    Throughout the battle the red-cloaked Caesar was himself visible everywhere, encouraging his troops until, when he believed his opponents exhausted, he ordered his cavalry to charge. The weight and ferocity of their attack routed his besiegers. Those Gauls who could fled. Those inside the fortress who could not surrendered, including Vercingetorix. Caesar had now finally subdued Gaul, killing, so he calculated, nearly 1.2 million Gauls in battle, to say nothing of the numbers of civilians killed, dispossessed or enslaved with his many prisoners of war. As a result of his efforts, Rome was no longer solely a Mediterranean power. Its legions now also guarded the Atlantic and the North Sea; its merchants and traders had even greater dominions from which to profit.
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    While Caesar was facing the Gallic rebels, in Rome the Senate should have been giving thought as to how best to govern the extensive new territories being acquired. Instead, politics in the capital had deteriorated yet further into petty factionalism and corruption, particularly following Crassus’ death at Carrhae. Pompey remained uncertain of what he wanted—absolute power or the respect of the Senate. In August 54, his much-loved wife, Julia, died after a miscarriage. When elections were postponed because bribery had become so blatant and universal that the Senate felt compelled to act, some senators turned to Pompey, suggesting that he assume dictatorial power—a proposal that, unsurprisingly, was anathema to Cato.
    Cato now put forward as his favored candidate in the much-postponed consular elections Milo, Pompey’s former henchman, who had long since fallen from Pompey’s favor. Pompey was not amused and neither was Clodius, Milo’s long-standing adversary. Clodius, under the guidance of his strong-minded, politically astute wife, Fulvia—who would one day marry Antony and be an equally forceful presence in his life—had, under Caesar’s patronage, been attempting to become a mainstream politician. Both outraged and threatened by Milo’s candidature, he returned, probably with relish, to his street-fighting past.
    Yelling and heavily armed mobs rampaged through Rome’s streets once more. Then, in January 52, the two gang leaders and their gangs clashed on the Appian Way. A javelin wounded Clodius in the shoulder, and his supporters carried him bleeding into a neighboring inn. Milo’s men rushed in after them, dragged Clodius out and lynched him.
    Fulvia, instead of collapsing into paroxysms of grief, had her husband’s mangled and naked body retrieved from where it was lying in the street—ironically, next to an altar of the Good Goddess—and coolly orchestrated revenge. First she summoned more of Clodius’ supporters from the slums. Then, when they arrived, she exhibited her husband’s body to them in the lobby of her house. Carefully and dramatically, she revealed his wounds one by one as the onlookers’ indignation rose. The next day, with her encouragement, the mob transported Clodius’ corpse to the Senate, where they cremated it using the furniture and papers as makeshift fuel for the pyre, which consumed