Augustus

by John Williams

  You understand, my dear Livy, that war is never pretty, and that one must expect a certain brutality from soldiers. But Agrippa came with Octavius into the city after the night of the plunder; and Agrippa has told me a little, though our Emperor would never speak of it.

  The houses of the rich and poor were burned without discrimination or reason; hundreds of innocent townspeople, who had been guilty of nothing save the misfortune of having their town occupied by the Pompeian legions—old men, and women, and even children—were slaughtered and tortured by the troops. Agrippa told me that even in the late morning after the carnage, when he and our Emperor rode into the city, they could hear like a single sound the moan and cry of the wounded and dying.

  And when our Emperor confronted Lepidus at last, after having dispatched many of his men to care for the suffering townspeople, he was so moved by sorrow that he could not speak; and poor, ignorant Lepidus, mistaking that silence for weakness and in the hysteria of what he must have conceived to be an invincible power afforded him by his sudden acquisition of the twenty-two rested and well-fed legions under his command, peremptorily ordered his colleague, to whom he spoke in contemptuous and threatening tones, to quit Sicily; and said that if he wished to remain a triumvir, he must be content with only Africa, which he (Lepidus) was willing to relinquish to him. It was an extraordinary speech. . . .

  Poor Lepidus, I have said. It was a strange delusion he had. Our Emperor did not speak in reply to Lepidus’s preposterous claim.

  The next day, accompanied only by Agrippa and six bodyguards, he came into the city, and went to the small Forum, and spoke to the soldiers of Lepidus and the surrendered troops of Sextus Pompeius, and told them that the promises of Lepidus were empty without his assent, and that they were in danger of putting themselves beyond the protection of Rome if they persisted in following a false leader. He had the name of Caesar, and that probably would have been enough to lead the soldiers to reason, even without Lepidus’s fatal error. For Lepidus’s own guard, in Lepidus’s presence, made to attack the person of our Emperor, who might indeed have been gravely wounded or even killed, had not one of his guards interposed himself between the Emperor and a hurled javelin, giving his life.

  Agrippa told me that as the guard fell at our Emperor’s feet, a strange hush fell upon the crowd, and that even the bodyguards of Lepidus remained still and did not pursue their advantage. Octavius looked with sorrow upon the body of his fallen guard, and then lifted his eyes to the multitude before him.

  He said quietly, but in a voice that carried to all the soldiers: “Thus by leave of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, another brave and loyal Roman soldier, who offered harm to none of his comrades, is dead in a foreign land.”

  He had his other guards pick up the body and bear it aloft; and in front of the guard, unprotected, as if at a funeral, he walked through the crowd; and the soldiers parted before him like stalks of grain before the wind.

  And one by one the legions of Sextus Pompeius deserted Lepidus, and joined our forces outside the city; and then the legions of Lepidus, despising the sluggishness and ineptness of their leader, came to our side; until Lepidus, with only a few who remained loyal to him, was helpless inside the city walls.

  Lepidus must have expected to be captured and executed, yet Octavius did not move. One would have thought that in such a position he would have chosen suicide, but Lepidus did not. Rather, he sent a messenger to Octavius, and asked pardon, and asked that his life be spared. Octavius agreed, and set a condition.

  Thus, on a bright chill morning in the early fall, Octavius ordered an assembly of all the officers and centurions of the legions of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus and Sextus Pompeius, and the officers and centurions of his own legions, in the Forum of Messina. And Lepidus made a public plea for mercy.

  With his sparse gray hair blowing in the wind, in a plain toga with none of the colors of office, without attendants, he walked slowly the length of the Forum and mounted the platform where Octavius stood. There he knelt and asked forgiveness for his crimes, and made public relinquishment of all his powers. Agrippa has said that his face was without color or expression, and that his voice was like the voice of one in a trance.

  Octavius said: “This man is pardoned, and he will walk with safety among you. No harm is to come to him. He will be exiled from Rome, but he is under the protection of Rome; and he is stripped of all his titles save that of Pontifex Maximus, which is a title that only the gods can take from him.”

  Without saying more, Lepidus rose and went to his quarters. And Agrippa told me a curious thing. As he was walking away, Agrippa said to Octavius: “You have given him worse than death.”

  And Octavius smiled. “Perhaps,” he said. “But perhaps I have given him a kind of happiness.”

  . . . I wonder what his last years were like, in his exile at Circeii. Was he happy? When one has had power in his grasp, and has failed to hold it, and has remained alive—what does one become?

  X. The Memoirs of Marcus Agrippa: Fragments (13 B.C.)

  And we returned to Rome and the gratitude of the Roman people, whom we had saved from starvation. In the temples of the cities of Italy, from Arezzo in the north to Vibo in the south, statues of Octavius Caesar were raised, and he was worshiped by the people as a god of the hearth. And the Senate and the people of Rome made to be erected in the Forum a statue of gold, in commemoration of the order that had been restored to sea and land.

  To celebrate the occasion, Octavius Caesar remitted the debts and taxes of all the people, and gave them assurance of final peace and freedom when Marcus Antonius had subdued the Parthians in the East. And upon my own head, after giving thanks to Rome for its steadfastness, he placed the crown of gold adorned with images of our ships. It was an honor given to no one before and to no one since.

  Thus while Antonius in the distant East hunted the barbarian Parthian tribes, in Italy Caesar Augustus devoted himself to securing the borders of his homeland, neglected by the many years of dissension in which it had suffered. We conquered the Pannonian tribes and drove the tribal invaders from the coast of Dalmatia, so that Italy was secure from any threat from the north. In these campaigns, Octavius Caesar himself led his troops, and received honorable wounds in the battles.

  6

  I. Letters: Nicolaus of Damascus to Strabo of Amasia, from Antioch and Alexandria (36 B.C.)

  My dear Strabo, I have witnessed an event, the significance of which only you, the dearest of all my friends, will apprehend. For on this day Marcus Antonius, triumvir of Rome, has become Imperator of Egypt—a king in fact, though he does not call himself such. He has taken in marriage that Cleopatra who is the Incarnate Isis, Queen of Egypt, and Empress of all the lands of the Nile.

  I give you news that, I suspect, none of Rome has heard yet, possibly not even that young ruler of the Roman world of whom you have so often written and whom you so admire; for the marriage was sudden, and known even to this Eastern world only a few days before the actual event. Oh, my old friend, I would almost relinquish some part of that wisdom toward which we both have so laboriously striven, if I could but see the look upon your face at this moment! It must be one of surprise—and a little chagrin? You will forgive one who chides and teases you; I cannot resist provoking what I hope is a friendly envy in one whose good fortune in the world has provoked the same in me. For you must have known that your letters from Rome have raised that envy in me. How often in Damascus did I wish that I was with you there, in the “center of the world,” as you have called it, conversing with the great men you mention with such frequency and such intimacy. Now I, too, have come into the world; and by a stroke of good fortune, which I still cannot quite believe, I have secured a most remarkable position. I am tutor to the children of Cleopatra, master of the Royal library, and principal of the schools of the Royal household.

  All of this has happened so quickly that I can hardly believe it, and I still do not fully understand the reasons for the appointment. Perhaps it
is because I am nominally a Jew yet a philosopher and no fanatic, and because my father has had some small business connection with the court of King Herod, whom Marcus Antonius has recently legitimatized as King of all Judaea and with whom he wants to live in peace. Could politics touch one so unpolitical as myself? I hope that I am being too modest; I would like to think that my reputation as a scholar has had the final weight in the matter.

  In any event, I was approached by an emissary of the Queen at Alexandria, where I had gone on some business for my father, in the course of which I took the time to make use of the Royal library; I was approached, and I accepted at once. Aside from the material advantages of the position (which are considerable), the Royal Library is the most remarkable I have ever seen; and I will have continual access to books that few men have used or even seen before.

  And now that I am a member of the Royal household, I travel wherever the Queen goes; thus, I arrived in Antioch three days ago, though her children remain in the palace at Alexandria. I do not fully understand why the ceremonies were held here, rather than in the Royal palace at Alexandria; perhaps Antonius does not wish to flout Roman law too openly, even though he seems to have cast his fortunes in the East (what is the Roman legality of this matter, I wonder, since, it is said, he has not bothered to obtain a legal divorce from his former wife?); or perhaps he merely wants to make clear to the Egyptians that he does not usurp the authority of their Queen. Perhaps there is no meaning.

  However that may be, the ceremonies have been held; and to all the Eastern world, the Queen and Marcus Antonius are man and wife; and whatever Rome may think, they are the joint rulers of this world. Marcus Antonius has announced publicly that Caesarion (known to be the child of his one-time friend, Julius Caesar) is heir to the throne of Cleopatra, and that the twins that the Queen has borne are to be considered his legitimate offspring. He has, moreover, increased the extent of Egypt’s possessions many-fold; the Queen now has under her authority all of Arabia, including Petra and the Sinai Peninsula; that part of Jordan which lies between the Dead Sea and Jericho; parts of Galilee and Samaria; the whole of the Phoenician coast; the richest parts of Lebanon, Syria, and Cilicia; the whole of the Island of Cyprus, and a part of Crete. Thus I, who was once a Syrian Roman, might now consider myself a Syrian Egyptian; but I am neither. Like you, my old friend, I am a scholar, who would be a philosopher; and I am no more Roman or Egyptian than was our Aristotle a Greek, who never lost his love and pride for his native Ionia. I shall emulate that greatest of all men, and remain content to be a Damascene.

  Yet as you yourself have so often said, the world of affairs is an extraordinarily interesting one; and perhaps neither of us, even in the arrogance of our youth, ought to have so removed ourselves from it in our studies. The way to knowledge is a long journey, and the goal is distant; and one must visit many places along the way, if he is to know that goal when he arrives at it.

  Though I have seen her at a distance, I have not yet had an audience with the Queen by whom I am employed. Marcus Antonius is everywhere—jovial, familiar, and not at all forbidding. He is a little like a child, I think—though his hair is graying, and he is getting a bit fat.

  I think I shall again be happy in Alexandria, as I was during our student days.

  As I believe I mentioned in my last letter to you, I had seen the Queen only at a distance—at the wedding ceremony which united her to Marcus Antonius and the power of Rome, a ceremony which only those attached to the Royal household were allowed to attend.

  The palace at Antioch is not so imposing as that in Alexandria, but it is grand enough; and at the wedding, I was crowded to the rear of the long hall, from which vantage I could make out very little, though an ebony dais had been raised, upon which Cleopatra and Antonius stood. All I could see of the Queen was her jeweled gown, which sparkled in the torchlight, and the great disk of gold representing the sun, which was set above her crown of state. She moved in a slow and grave manner, as if she were indeed the goddess that her title proclaims her to be. It was an extraordinarily elaborate ceremony (though described by some of my new friends as really rather simple), the significance of which I do not understand; priests marched about and chanted various incantations in that ancient form of the language which only they can speak; anointings with various oils were made; wands were waved. It was all very mystifying and (I must confess I thought) rather uncivilized, almost barbaric.

  And so I went to my first audience with the Queen with an odd feeling, as if I were going into the presence of some Medea or Circe, neither quite goddess nor quite woman, but something more unnatural than either.

  My dear Strabo, I cannot tell you how fortunately I was surprised, and how happy I was at my surprise. I expected to encounter a swarthy and rather hefty woman, such as one sees in the market place; I met a slender woman of fair skin and soft brown hair, with enormous eyes, who had poise and dignity and an extraordinary charm, who put me at ease at once and bade me sit near her on a couch no less luxurious than her own, as if I were a guest in a simple and friendly household. And we spoke at length upon those ordinary topics which constitute any civilized conversation. She laughs easily and quietly, and seems totally attentive to her audience. Her Greek is impeccable; her Latin is at least as good as mine; and she speaks casually to her servants in a dialect I cannot understand. She is widely and intelligently read —she even shares my admiration for our Aristotle, and assures me that she knows my own work upon his philosophy, and that her understanding has been enhanced by that knowledge.

  I am not, as you know, a vain man; and even if I were, I believe my vanity would have been overwhelmed by my gratitude and my admiration for this most extraordinary of women. That one so charming could also rule one of the richest lands in the world is almost beyond belief.

  I have been back in Alexandria for three weeks now, and I have begun my duties; Marcus Antonius and the Queen remain in Antioch, where Antonius is making preparations for his march, later in the year, against the Parthians. My duties are not heavy; I have as many slaves as I need for the management of the Queen’s library, and the children take up little of my time.

  The twins—Alexander of the Sun and Cleopatra of the Moon—are only a few months more than three years old, and therefore not capable of taking any instruction; but I have been directed to speak to them each day, for a few moments at least, in Greek and (at the Queen’s insistence) even in Latin, so that when they grow older the sounds of the language will not be unfamiliar to their ears.

  But Ptolemy Caesar—called Caesarion by the people— who is almost twelve years old, is another matter. I believe I would have guessed that he might be the son of the great Julius Caesar, even had I not known it. He recognizes his destiny, and he is prepared for it; he swears that he remembers his father from his mother’s residence in Rome, just before the assassination— though he could hardly have been four years old at the time of that event. He is serious, utterly without humor, and oddly intent on whatever he does. It is as if he never had a childhood, and did not want one; he speaks of the Queen as if she were not his mother at all, but only the powerful sovereign that she is; and he awaits the day of his assumption of the Queen’s throne, not impatiently, but with the same certainty that he waits the morning sunrise. He would frighten me a little, I believe, if he were to hold the vast power that his mother now has.

  But he is a good student, and it is a pleasure to teach him.

  For those who put stock in such things, it has been an ominous winter—almost no rainfall, so that the crops will be sparse this year; and a series of cyclones has swept across the lands of Syria and Egypt from the east, laying waste whole villages before spending themselves in the sea. And Antonius has marched from Antioch against the Parthians with what is said to be the greatest expeditionary army since the time of the Macedonian, Alexander the Great (whose blood, it is said, flows in the veins of Cleopatra)—more than sixty thousand seasoned veterans, ten thousand troops of horse from Gaul and Sp
ain, and thirty thousand auxiliary forces recruited from the kingdoms of the Eastern provinces to support the regulars. My young Caesarion, with the innocent ruthlessness of youth (he has recently become interested in the art of warfare), has said that such an army is wasted against the Eastern barbarians; were he king, he says—as if war were truly the game that it seems to him now—he would turn the army toward the west where there is more than plunder to be gained.

  The Queen has returned from Antioch, by way of Damascus, and will remain in Alexandria until Antonius concludes his campaign against the Parthians. Knowing that Damascus was my birthplace, she was kind enough to call me into her chambers and give me the news. It is extraordinary how thoughtful and human the great can be. For in Damascus, she had a meeting with King Herod on some business regarding the rents from some balsam fields; and remembering an earlier conversation with me, she inquired after the health of my father, and asked Herod to have conveyed to him greetings from his son and from the Queen.

  I have not heard from him since those greetings were conveyed, but I am sure he is pleased. He is growing old, and is becoming feeble in his age. I suspect that at such a time one looks back upon one’s life and wonders at its worth, and needs the kindness of some assurance.

  II. Letter: Marcus Antonius to Cleopatra, from Armenia (November, 36 B.C.)

  My dear wife, I now thank my Roman gods and your Egyptian ones that I did not succumb to my own desires and to your determination, and allow you to accompany me on this campaign. It has been even more difficult than I anticipated; and it is clear that what I had hoped would be concluded this fall will now have to wait until spring.