While we're discussing Antony's motivations on his own thread, I've found myself with another growing conviction (I love these - you cannot either support or deny them very easily lol). And that is - we think of Octavian as a harshly political animal who did everything he did motivated by expediency and political benefit. But was that quite true when it came to Caesar?

In discussing how Antony supported the Liberators after the assassination, the contrast is Octavian. I was reading about the Furies recently, how they are vengeance personified. Well, Octavian was about Caesar's death. There are a lot of peculiar actions he takes in the two years or so after Caesar's murder. And if you believe that Octavian was passionately fond of his great-uncle and was driven, not just by politics but by a hatred for those who had murdered him, his actions suddenly make a heckuva lot more sense than if you think otherwise.

Reading about how Antony and Octavian reacted to the deaths of Brutus and Cassius after Philippi is instructive. Never in his career was Octavian quite so relentlessly bloody-minded as in the months leading to Phillipi, and his treatment of those fighting for Brutus/Cassius is rather repellent because he treated them with the utmost cruelty and indifference. In contrast, Antony was sure to give Brutus the honors of war after his death - whereas Octavian had his head cut off and sent back to Rome to be offered at Caesar's temple, I believe. Although for a brief period Octavian had to make a political alliance with Cicero and even Decimus Brutus, as soon as he could politically he showed relentless hatred and made sure that ALL of the conspirators, even those on tangentally involved, were dead - most within 2 years of the Ides of March.

I'm sure politically it was popular to hound the 'liberators,' but I think there's more to it than that. I think perhaps none of us truly understand the links between Caesar and Octavian - his adoption of the boy DOES imply quite some relationship after all - and I think Octavian was fueled by personal grief and hatred as well as politics.

Of course, I can't prove it! lol