Augustus

by John Williams

  I am Julia, daughter of Gaius Octavius Caesar, the August, and I was born on the third day of September in the year of the consulship of Lucius Marcius and Gaius Sabinus, in the city of Rome. My mother was that Scribonia whose brother was father-in-law to Sextus Pompeius, the pirate whom my father destroyed for the safety of Rome two years after my birth. . . .

  That is a beginning of which even Athenodorus, my poor Athenodorus, would have approved.

  III. Letter: Lucius Varius Rufus to Publius Vergilius Maro, from Rome (39 B.C.)

  My dear Vergil, I trust that your illness does not progress, and that the warmth of the Neapolitan sun has indeed bettered the state of your health. Your friends send their best wishes, and have charged me to assure you that our well-being depends upon your own; if you are well, so are we. Your friends also have charged me to convey to you our regrets that you could not attend the banquet at the home of Claudius Nero last night, a celebration from whose effects I am just this afternoon beginning to recover. It was an extraordinary evening, and it may beguile you from your discomfort if I give you some account of it.

  Do you know Claudius Nero, your would-be host? He speaks of you with some familiarity, so I suspect that you have at least met him. If you do know him, you may remember that only two years ago he was in exile in Sicily for having opposed our Octavius Caesar at Perusia; now he has apparently renounced politics, and he and Octavius seem to be the best of friends. He is quite old, and his wife, Livia, seems more nearly his daughter than his spouse—a fortunate circumstance, as you shall shortly understand.

  It turned out to be a literary evening, though I doubt that Claudius planned it that way. He is a good fellow, but he has little learning. It soon became clear that Octavius was really behind it all, and that Claudius was, as it were, the pseudo-host. The occasion was designed to honor our friend Pollio, who will at last give to the Roman people that library he has been promising, so that learning may flourish even among the common people.

  It was a mixed gathering, but, as it turned out, a rather fortunate one. Most were our friends—Pollio, Octavius and (alas!) Scribonia, Maecenas, Agrippa, myself, Aemilius Macer; your “admirer” Mevius, who no doubt wangled the invitation from Claudius, who knew no better than to invite him; one whom none of us knew, an odd little Pontene from Amasia called Strabo, a sort of philosopher, I believe; for embellishment, several ladies of quality, whose names I cannot recall; and to my surprise (and I suspect to your pleasure) that rather blunt but appealing young man whose work you have been kind enough to admire, your Horace. I believe that Maecenas was responsible for his invitation, despite the rudeness he suffered at Horace’s hands several months ago.

  I must say that Octavius was in extraordinary good spirits, almost loquacious, despite the usual long face that Scribonia wore. He has just returned from Gaul, you know, and perhaps the rather severe months there have made him hungry for civilized company; moreover, it seems now that the difficulties with both Marcus Antonius and Sextus Pompeius are in abeyance, if not finally settled. Or perhaps his gaiety had its source in the presence of Claudius’s wife, Livia, to whom he seems to have taken a strong fancy.

  In any event, Octavius insisted upon playing the part of the wine-master, and mixed the wine much more strongly than he usually does, with nearly equal parts of water, so that even before the first course arrived most of us were a little tipsy. He insisted that Pollio, rather than himself, be placed at the position of honor beside Claudius; while he chose to recline at the inferior position at the table, with Livia beside him.

  I must say that Octavius and Claudius were exceedingly civilized toward each other, given the circumstances; one would almost think that they had reached an understanding. Scribonia sat at the other table, gossiping with the ladies and glowering at the table where we sat—though the gods know why she should glower. She dislikes the marriage as much as Octavius does, and there is no secret about the fact that a divorce will be effected as soon as Octavius’s child is born. . . . What games they must play, those who have power in the world! And how ludicrous must they seem to the Muses! It must be that those who are nearest to the gods are most at their mercy. We are most fortunate, my dear Vergil, that we need not marry to ensure our posterity, but can make the children of our souls march beautifully into the future, where they will not change or die.

  Claudius serves a good table, I must say—a very decent Campanian wine before the meal, and a good Falernian afterwards. The meal was neither ostentatiously elaborate nor affectedly simple: oysters, eggs, and tiny onions to begin; roast kid, broiled chicken, and grilled bream; and a variety of fresh fruits.

  After the meal, Octavius proposed that we toast the Muses, and that we converse upon their separate functions; and argued briefly with himself as to whether we should drink individual toasts to the ancient three or to the more recent nine; and finally, after pretending a great struggle, decided upon the latter.

  “But,” he said, and glanced, smiling, at Claudius, “we must honor the Muses to this extent; we must not allow them to be soiled by any mention of politics. It is a subject that might embarrass us all.”

  There was general, if nervous, laughter; and I suddenly realized how many enemies, past and potential, were in the room. Claudius, whom Octavius had exiled from Italy less than two years before; Pollio himself, our guest of honor, who was an old friend of Marcus Antonius; our young Horace, who only three years ago had fought on the side of the traitor Brutus; and Mevius, poor Mevius, whose envy ran so deep that no man might be spared from the treachery of his flattery, or vice versa.

  Pollio, being the guest of honor, began. With an apologetic bow to Octavius, he chose to extol the ancient Muse of Memory, Mneme; and likening all mankind to a single body, he went on to compare the collective experience of mankind to the mind of that body; and thence rather neatly (though obviously) he spoke of the library which he was establishing in Rome as if it were the most important quality of the mind, memory; and concluded that the Muse of Memory presided over all the others in a beneficent reign.

  Mevius gave a tremulous sigh and said to someone in a loud whisper: “Beautiful. Oh, how beautiful!” Horace glanced at him, and raised a dubious eyebrow.

  Agrippa addressed himself to Clio, the Muse of History; Mevius whispered loudly something about manliness and bravery; and Horace glowered at Mevius. Upon my turn, I spoke of Calliope —rather badly, I fear, since I could not allude to my own work upon the slain Julius Caesar, even though it is a poem, without trespassing upon Octavius’s interdiction against politics.

  It was all rather dull, I fear, though Octavius, reclining with Livia seated beside him in the torchlight, seemed pleased; it was his animation and gaiety that made possible what otherwise would have been impossible.

  He assigned to Mevius (rather obviously, I thought, though Mevius was too full of himself to notice) that Thalia who is the Muse of Comedy; and Mevius, delighted to be singled out, launched into a long, farcical account (stolen, I believe, from Antiphanes of Athens) about the upstarts of old Athens—slaves, freedmen, and tradespeople—who presumed to set themselves upon a level with their social betters; who wangled invitations to the homes of the great, and gorged themselves at their tables, abusing the kindness and generosity of their noble hosts; and how Thalia, the goddess of the comic spirit, to punish such interlopers, called down upon them certain afflictions, so that their class might be distinguished, and so that the nobility might be protected. Some, Mevius said, she made dwarfs, and gave thatches of hair like the hay in which they were born, and afflicted with the manners of the stable. And so on, and so on.

  It became quickly clear that Mevius was attacking your young friend Horace, though for what reason none was quite sure. And no one knew precisely how to behave; we looked at Octavius, but his face was impassive; we looked at Maecenas, who seemed unconcerned. None would look at Horace, except myself, who was seated next to him. His face was pale in the flickering light.

  Mevius finished a
nd sat back, satisfied that he had flattered a patron and destroyed a possible rival. There was a murmur. Octavius thanked him, and said:

  “Now who shall speak for that Erato who is the Muse of Poetry?”

  And Mevius, raised by what he thought was his success, said: “Oh, Maecenas, of course; for he has courted the Muse and won her. It must be Maecenas.”

  Maecenas waved languidly. “I must decline,” he said. “These last months, she has wandered from my gardens. . . . Perhaps my young friend Horace will speak for her.”

  Octavius laughed, and turned toward Horace with perfect civility. “I have met our guest only this evening, but I will presume upon that slight acquaintance. Will you speak, Horace?”

  “I will speak,” Horace said; but for a long time he was silent. Without waiting for a servant, he poured himself a measure of unmixed wine, and drank it at once. And he spoke. I give you his words as I remember them.

  “You all know the story of the Greek Orpheus of whom our absent Vergil has written so beautifully—son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope, whom the god honored by the presence of his manhood, and inheritor of the golden lyre which sent forth light into the world, making even the stones and trees glimmer in a beauty not apprehended before by man. And you know of his love for Eurydice, of which he sang with such purity and grace that Eurydice thought herself to be part of the singer’s own soul and came to him in marriage, at which Hymen wept, as if at a fate no one could imagine. And you know, too, how Eurydice at last, wandering foolishly beyond the precincts of her husband’s magic, was touched by a serpent that came out of the bowels of the earth, and dragged from the light of life into the darkness of the underground—where Orpheus in his despair followed, having bound his eyes against a dark that no man can imagine. And there he sang so beautifully and gave such light to the darkness, that the very ghosts shed tears, the wheel upon which Ixion whirled in terror stilled; and the demons of the night relented, and said that Eurydice might return with her husband to the world of light, upon the condition that Orpheus remain blindfolded and not look back upon the wife who followed him. . . .

  “The legend does not tell us why Orpheus broke the vow; it tells us only that he did, that he saw where he had been, and saw Eurydice drawn back into the earth, and saw the earth close around her so that he could not follow. And legend tells of how thereafter Orpheus sang his sorrow, and how the maidens who had lived in light only and could not imagine where he had been, came to him and offered themselves to beguile him from his knowledge; and how he refused them, and how in their anger then they shouted down his song, so that its magic could not stay them, and in their mania tore his body apart, and cast it in the River Hebrus, where his severed head continued to sing its wordless song; and the very shores parted and widened so that the singing head might be borne in safety out to the landless sea. . . . This is the story of the Greek Orpheus which Vergil has told us, and to which we have listened.”

  A silence had come upon the room; Horace dipped his cup into the jar of wine and drank again.

  “The gods in their wisdom,” he said, “tell us all of our lives, if we will but listen. I speak to you now of another Orpheus— not the son of a god and goddess, but an Italian Orpheus whose father was a slave, and whose mother had no name. Some, no doubt, would scoff at such an Orpheus; but they would scoff who have forgotten that all Romans are descended from a god, and bear the name of his son; and from a mortal woman, and wear her humanity. Thus even a dwarf who wears upon his head a thatch of hay may have been touched by a god, if he springs from the earth that Mars loved. . . . This Orpheus of whom I speak received no golden lyre, but only a poor torch from a humble father who would have given his life that his son might be worthy of his dream. Thus was this young Orpheus in his childhood shown the light of Rome, equally with the sons of the rich and mighty; and in his young manhood, at the cost of his father’s substance was shown too the source of what was said to be the light of all mankind that came from the mother city of all knowledge, Athens. Thus his love was no woman; his Eurydice was knowledge, a dream of the world, to which he sang his song. But the world of light that was his dream of knowledge became eclipsed by a civil war; and forsaking the light, this young Orpheus went into the darkness to retrieve his dream; and at Philippi, almost forgetting his song, he fought against one whom he thought to represent the powers of darkness. And then the gods, or the demons—he knows not which, even now—granted him the gift of cowardice, and bade him flee the field with the power of his dream and knowledge intact, and bade him not to look back upon what he fled. But like the other Orpheus, just as he was safely escaped, he did look back; and his dream vanished, as if a vapor, into the darkness of time and circumstance. He saw the world, and knew he was alone—without father, without property, without hope, without dreams. . . . It was only then that the gods gave to him their golden lyre, and bade him play not as they but as he wished. The gods are wise in their cruelty; for now he sings, who would not have sung before. No Thracian maidens blandish him, nor offer him their charms; he makes do with the honest whore, and for a fair price. It is the dogs of the world that yap at him as he sings, trying to drown his voice. They grow in number as more he sings; and no doubt he, too, will suffer to have his limbs torn from his body, even though he sing against the yapping, and sing as he is carried to that sea of oblivion which will receive us all. . . . Thus, my masters and my betters, I have told you a tedious story of a local Orpheus; and I wish you well with his remains.”

  My dear Vergil, I cannot tell you how long the silence lasted; and I cannot tell you the source of that silence, whether it was shock or fear, or whether all (like myself) had been entranced as if by a true Orphic lyre. The torches, burning low, flickered; and for a moment I had the odd feeling that we all, had, indeed, been in that underground of which Horace had been speaking, and were emerging from it, and dared not look back. Mevius stirred, and whispered fiercely, knowing that he would be heard by whom he intended:

  “Philippi,” he said. “Power of darkness, indeed! Is this not treason against the triumvir? Is this not treason?”

  Octavius had not moved during Horace’s recital. He raised himself on his couch and sat beside Livia. “Treason?” he said gently. “It is not treason, Mevius. You will not speak so again in my presence.” He rose from his couch and crossed over to where Horace sat. “Horace, will you permit me to join you?” he asked.

  Our young friend nodded dumbly. Octavius sat beside him, and they spoke quietly. Mevius said no more that night.

  Thus, my dear Vergil, did our Horace, who has already endeared himself to us, find the friendship of Octavius Caesar. All in all, it was a successful evening.

  IV. Letter: Mevius to Furius Bibaculus, from Rome (January, 38 B.C.)

  My dear Furius, I really have not the heart to write you at any length about that disastrous evening at the home of Claudius Nero last September, the only pleasant aspect of which was the absence of our “friend” Vergil. But perhaps it is just as well; for certain events have transpired since that evening that make the whole affair even more ludicrous than it seemed then.

  I don’t really remember all who were there—Octavius, of course, and those odd friends of his: the Etruscan Maecenas, be-jeweled and perfumed, and Agrippa, smelling of sweat and leather. It was ostensibly a literary evening, but my dear, to what low state have our letters fallen! Beside these, even that whining little fraud, Catullus, would have seemed almost a poet. There was Pollio, the pompous ass, to whom one must be pleasant because of his wealth and political power, and to whose works one must listen endlessly if one is foolish enough to attend his parties, stifling laughter at his tragedies and feigning emotion at his verses; Maecenas again, who writes lugubrious poems in a Latin that seems almost like a foreign tongue; Macer, who has discovered a Tenth Muse, that of Dullness; and that extraordinary little upstart, Horace, whom, you will be happy to hear, I rather effectively disposed of during the course of the evening. Garrulous politicians, luxurian
t magpies, and illiterate peasants deface the garden of the Muses. It’s a wonder that you and I can find the courage to persist!

  But the social intrigues that evening were a good deal more interesting than the literary ones, and it is about that which I really want to write you.

  We all have heard of Octavius’s proclivities toward women. I really had not given the reports so much credence before that evening—he is such a pallid little fellow that one might think a glass of unmixed wine and a fervent embrace would send him lifeless to join his ancestors (whoever they might be)—but now I begin to suspect that there may be truth in them.

  The wife of our host was one Livia, of an old and conservative Republican family (I have heard that her own father was slain by the Octavian army at Philippi). An extraordinarily beautiful girl, if you like the type—a modest and proper figure, blonde, perfectly regular features, rather thin lips, softly spoken, and so forth; very much the “patrician ideal,” as they say. She is quite young—perhaps eighteen—yet she has already given her husband, who must be thrice her age, one son; and she was again rather visibly pregnant.

  I must say, we all had had a great deal to drink; nevertheless, Octavius’s conduct was really extraordinary. He mooned over her like a love-sick Catullus, stroking her hand, whispering in her ear, laughing like a boy (though of course he is really little more, despite the importance he has assigned to himself), all manner of nonsense; and all this wholly in view of his own wife (not that that really mattered, though she too is pregnant), and of Livia’s husband, who seemed either not to notice or to smile benignly, like an ambitious father rather than a husband whose honor ought to have been offended. At any rate, at the time I thought little of it; I considered it rather vulgar behavior, but what (I asked myself) might one expect from the grandson of an ordinary small-town moneylender. If having filled one cart he wanted to ride in another that was full too, that was his business.