Augustus by Allan Massie Read Free Book Online Page B

stronger.
    'You are in danger,' Marcellus said, 'of falling between two stools.' 'I have always said,' Philippus insisted, 'that you can't run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. It's beyond nature.' He spoke with the authority of the man whose backside is pinned to the fence. 'You have only two real choices,' he said. 'Either throw in your lot with Antony and take whatever he is willing to grant you, or do as I've always advised: give up the whole game and retire to your vineyards and beanfields. I know which course would please your mother.'
    The Council achieved nothing. Maecenas yawned through it, Agrippa glowered. He had reconciled himself to our opposition to Antony, having been shocked by the murder accusation and angered by a gibe about 'the boy supported by the plumber's mate and the pansy'. He urged me now to call a public meeting and explain my case to the People. 'It's the Roman course,' he kept saying.
    It made sense to me. Accordingly we arranged a meeting in the Temple of Castor for 10 November. The crowd's mood was uncertain. A tribune, Titus Cannutius, spoke first, attacking Antony and receiving excited applause. On the spur of the moment I jettisoned my prepared speech. I had been up all night writing it and had a fever coming on. This may have impaired my judgement. At any rate I was hardly launched before I knew I had not caught the mood. The art of public speaking consists first in sensing the audience's mood, in achieving a tacit empathy, so that you say what the crowd most deeply and unconsciously wants to hear. I failed. I attacked Antony of course, but I was too light, too mocking. I had not caught the intensity of the people's fear. They sniffed war and proscriptions on the chill tramontana that blew from Antony's northern camp. My mockery did nothing to dispel their apprehension. It made them rather distrust me: I seemed to lack the gravity and steadfastness of purpose that were needed to avert catastrophe. Even as I spoke I knew this. I suffered like an actor who finds himself in the wrong part. What had gone wrong? Later I decided I had been addressing myself to Maecenas instead of Agrippa. It was a lesson I was never to forget again. Meanwhile I plunged deeper. I heard myself launched on praise of Julius. That failed to restore the situation, for, instead of contenting myself with a recital of what he had achieved for Rome and a reminder of his generosity to the People, I heard my tongue declare my own intention 'to attain the honours of my father'. The words emerged from the fog and hung, nakedly ambitious, in the air. I sought to retrieve matters by dwelling on the indignities I had suffered from Antony. 'He has spread libels about me, he has accused me of shameful vices, he has even alleged that I was plotting his murder.' It was no good; it came over shrill. I felt my stature shrink in the imagination of those who heard me. The audience was even beginning to trickle away. I stopped in mid-sentence. Agrippa pulled me down and stood up himself.
    'See here,' he said, 'it's simple. You all know what Antony is. I'm an ordinary man myself. I know you can't trust Antony. He'd make off with his granny's last sow. You know that fine. There's not one of you will feel safe if he wins. That's what this meeting's about. Now I know Octavian here better than any of you. You may think he's a bit on the young side. Well, just ask yourselves what sort of mess his elders have got us all in to. I tell you a pig in shit would find it stinking. What sort of future will they give you and your children? Maybe it's time they turned over and gave youth a chance. At least we don't have criminal records. We're not drunkards and we haven't murdered our benefactors. Octavian here's a good lad. All right, he's young, but he offers you all the chance of a decent future. You just think about that. If you've got any nerve at all, or anything but sawdust in your top storey, you'll back us. To the bloody hilt, if you've got