Free The Horse Changer by Craig Smith

ruled Rome, which is to say Antony ruled the world. Caesar’s enemies were on the run, and the plebs were certain Antony embraced their cause. Nor did he play the tyrant. He took all and sundry matters before either the senate or the people’s assembly. Nothing became law without a vote.
    Nor was there any more murder of the aristocracy. Both Antony and Dolabella were happy to write passports for any of the assassins who asked the favour of them. At that late date, there were no senior positions to be had, but a minor office in some foreign city gave them the legal excuse to leave Italy.
    As for the legions available to Antony and Dolabella, the two consuls made no personal use of them. Lepidus marched off to Gaul in a matter of days after Caesar’s funeral. The great army in western Macedonia remained in camp for the duration of the summer.
    For the better part of my life I have wondered how fortune turned so quickly against Antony. Within a matter of weeks everything he had accomplished began to unravel. Did he not understand the dangers he faced? Was he overconfident of his popularity with the mob? Too certain of the loyalty of the legions?
    Only in my old age has it come to me. Antony acted quite properly. He was not interested in becoming another Caesar. He only wanted to serve his term as consul and then retire to a prosperous provincial government, where he might amass a fortune that even he could not exhaust. It can never be said that Antony was politically inept or stupid. Quite the opposite: he proved himself a political genius in the aftermath of Caesar’s murder.
    That he lost his power so quickly makes it seem as if he misjudged matters terribly or somehow let his success blind him to danger. There is some truth in both views, but a better assessment of the situation is that Julius Caesar came back from the dead. After that, no mortal could anticipate what might happen next.

V
A SULPHUROUS FOG
Rome, Macedonia, and Brindisi: April, 44 BC
    Some days after the riots in Rome we awakened to find the city under a heavy fog. This was not the usual kind of moist air that forms around a river on a cold morning. Ashes drifted in the air and a vile sulphurous stench permeated everything. We thought it would pass with the first wind, but it stayed in Rome through the whole summer. It limited vision and burned the eyes. It wore on men’s nerves as it lingered and made everyone wonder if it would ever depart.
    The plebs were quick to assume the gods had sent this fog as a punishment on Rome. This was of course pure nonsense. With the coming of Octavian, Rome was going to have all the punishment she could endure. The more thoughtful of the superstitious eventually decided that the fog served as a harbinger of his coming. Another view, and certainly a less romantic one, is that Mount Etna blew its top.
    Caesar’s grandnephew had been in western Macedonia with the army when he learned of Caesar’s assassination. At the news, Octavian’s two closest friends, Marcus Agrippa and Cilnius Maecenas, advised him to return to Italy at once. His mother and stepfather sent a letter by courier to counsel delay; the city, they wrote, was unsafe. Octavian hesitated only until he learned of the riots at Caesar’s funeral. At that point he took courage and crossed the Adriatic and came to Brindisi, at the boot heel of Italy.
    In Brindisi, still three hundred miles by road to Rome, there was more news. Caesar’s will had been read. Legacies and gifts aside, Caesar had named Octavian his sole heir. Caesar had also adopted Octavian as his son. Having no other heirs with whom to share Caesar’s fortune, Octavian quite suddenly became the richest boy in the world. Of course the law in those days was anything but clear on testamentary adoptions, but Caesar’s will provided Octavian enough justification to call himself by his adoptive father’s name, Gaius Julius Caesar.
    Feted in Caesarean-friendly Brindisi as Caesar’s avenger, our new