43 b.c. (a full year after the assassination), to march his army into Gaul. He had failed militarily as well as politically.
Octavius, master of Rome, now forced the Senate to recognize him at last as heir to Caesar. In September 43 b.c. he himself led an army against Decius. Octavius was no fighter, but the name of Caesar succeeded where Antony had failed. Decius' soldiers deserted in droves, and Decius himself had to flee. He was captured and executed and Octavius' reputation skyrocketed.
By that time, though, Brutus and Cassius had consolidated their power over the eastern half of the Roman realm. It was clear that if Antony and Octavius continued to maneuver against each other, they would both lose and the conspirators would yet emerge in control.
Lepidus therefore labored to bring Antony and Octavius together in a compromise settlement, and succeeded. All three met in Bononia (the modern Bologna) on November 27, 43 b.c., twenty months after the assassination.
The three agreed to combine in a three-man government, an agreement resembling the one that had been made by Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus seventeen years before. In fact, the new agreement is called the Second Triumvirate. The fourth act opens after the Second Triumvirate has been formed.
... with a spot...
Shakespeare presents the Triumvirate at the moment they make a grisly bargain to seal their compact.
What they chiefly need, after all, is money. One way of obtaining it is to declare certain well-to-do Individuals guilty of treason, execute them, and confiscate their estates. This also gives each triumvir a chance to get rid of personal enemies as well. The enemy of one, however, might be the friend or relative of another member of the Triumvirate; and if one of them sacrifices a friend or relative he would naturally expect the other two to make a similar sacrifice.
The proscriptions (that is, arbitrary condemnations) include, for instance, Lepidus' brother. As quid pro quo, Antony must allow his nephew to be marked with a prick in the wax (see page I-290), indicating he is listed for execution. Antony says, with a kind of gruesome magnanimity:
He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him.
- Act IV, scene i, line 6
What Mark Antony demands (something that does not appear in the play at this point) and Octavius is forced to concede, is Cicero's life. Cicero had labored for Octavius and had made all the difference when the young man had first come to Rome as an almost ignored young man, and now Octavius, grown to power, delivers the great orator to his enemy. However much we might excuse it as practical politics, however much we might argue that Octavius had no choice, it remains the blackest single act of Octavius' long and illustrious career.
Are levying powers. ..
With the immediate financial problem ironed out by means of the proscriptions, the Triumvirate can turn to military matters. Antony says:
And now, Octavius,
Listen great things. Brutus and Cassius
Are levying powers; we must straight make head.
- Act IV, scene i, lines 40-42
The united Caesarians must face the united conspirators. Brutus had been in Macedonia for a year now and Cassius in Syria. In the face of the gathering of their enemies, they were getting armies ready for battle and planning to unite their forces.
... this night in Sardis...
At once the action moves to the conspirators, who are meeting each other in Asia Minor, and for the first tune the setting of the play is outside the city of Rome.
The scene is laid in the camp of Brutus' army outside Sardis, and one of Brutus' aides, Lucilius, tells him with reference to Cassius' approaching army:
They mean this night in Sardis to be quartered;
- Act IV, scene ii, line 28
Sardis is a city in western Asia Minor, forty-five miles east of the Aegean Sea. In ancient times it was the capital of the Lydian monarchy, which reached its height under Croesus, who reigned there from 560 to 546 b.c. The wealth of Sardis and the kingdom of Lydia at that time was such that the Greeks used to say "as rich as Croesus," a phrase that is still used today.
It was captured by the Persians in 546 b.c. Then when Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian Empire two centuries later, Sardis fell under the rule of Macedonian generals and monarchs.
In 133 b.c. it became Roman and continued to remain a great city for over a thousand years more. It was finally destroyed in 1402 by the hosts of Tamerlane, the Mongol conqueror, and