Augustus

by John Williams

  But Athenodorus, who gave me my first vision of a world outside myself, my family, and even of Rome, was a stern and unrelenting master. His students were few—the sons of Octavia, both adopted and natural; Livia’s sons, Drusus and Tiberius; and the sons of various relatives of my father. I was the only girl among them, and I was the youngest. It was made clear to all of us by my father that Athenodorus was the master; and despite whatever name and power the parents of his students might have, Athenodorus’s word in all matters was final, and that there was no recourse beyond him.

  We were made to arise before dawn and to assemble at the first hour at Athenodorus’s home, where we recited the lines from Homer or Hesiod or Aeschylus that we had been assigned the day before; we attempted compositions of our own in the styles of those poets; and at noon we had a light lunch. In the afternoon, the boys devoted themselves to exercises in rhetoric and declamation, and to the study of law; such subjects being deemed inappropriate for me, I was allowed to use my time otherwise, in the study of philosophy, and in the elucidation of whatever poems, Latin or Greek, that I chose, and in composition upon whatever matters struck my fancy. Late in the afternoon, I was allowed to return to my home, so that I might perform my household duties under the tutelage of Livia. It was a release that became increasingly irksome to me.

  For as within my body there had begun to work the changes that led me to womanhood, there began to work also in my mind the beginnings of a vision that I had not suspected before. Later, when we became friends, Athenodorus and I used to talk about the Roman distaste for any learning that did not lead to a practical end; and he told me that once, more than a hundred years before my birth, all teachers of literature and philosophy were, by a decree of the Senate, expelled from Rome, though it was a decree that could not be enforced.

  It seems to me that I was happy, then, perhaps as happy as I have been in my life; but within three years that life was over, and it became necessary for me to become a woman. It was an exile from a world that I had just begun to see.

  III. Letter: Quintus Horatius Flaccus to Albius Tibullus (25 B.C.)

  My dear Tibullus, you are a good poet and my friend, but you are a fool.

  I will say it as plainly as possible: you are not to write a poem celebrating the marriage of young Marcellus and the Emperor’s daughter. You have asked me for my advice, I have given it as strongly as I might give a command, and for the several reasons that I shall proceed to enumerate.

  First: Octavius Caesar has made it clear, even to me and Vergil, who are among his closest friends, that he would be most unhappy if we ever alluded, directly or indirectly, to the personal affairs of any member of his family in one of our own poems. It is a principle upon which he stands firm, and it is a principle which I understand. Despite your hints to the contrary, he is deeply attached both to his wife and his daughter; he does not wish to condemn the bad poem which offers them praise, nor does he wish to praise the good poem which might offer them offense. Moreover, his life with his family is nearly his only respite from the burdensome and difficult task he has in attempting to run this chaotic world that he has inherited. He does not wish that respite endangered.

  Second: your natural talent does not lie in the direction that you describe, and you are unlikely to write a good poem upon this subject. I have admired your poems upon your lady friends; I have not admired your poems upon your friend and commander in chief, Messalla. To write an indifferent poem upon a dangerous topic is to choose to behave foolishly.

  And third: even if you were able to somehow turn the natural bent of your talent in another direction, the few attitudes you hint at in your letter convince me that you had better not try what you propose. For no man may write a good poem the worth of whose subject he doubts; and no poet can will away his misgivings. I say this not in recrimination of your uncertainties, my friend; I say it merely as a fact. Were I to engage myself in the composition of such a poem as you propose, I might discover that I had the same ones.

  And yet I believe that I would not. You hint that you suspect a coldness in the Emperor’s feelings toward his daughter, and that in the marriage he is “using” her for purposes of state. The latter may be true; the former is not.

  I have known Octavius Caesar for more than ten years; he is my friend, and we are on truly equal terms. As any friend might do, I have praised him when in my judgment he deserved praise, I have doubted him when I judged he merited doubt, and I have criticized him when I believed that he deserved criticism. I have done these publicly, and with utter freedom. Our friendship has not suffered.

  Thus, when I speak to you now of this matter, you will understand that I speak as freely as I ever have, and as I ever will.

  Octavius Caesar loves his daughter more than you understand; if he has a fault, it is that his feeling for her is too deep. He has overseen her education with more care than many a less busy father has given to that of a son; nor has he been content to limit her learning to the weaving and sewing and singing and lute-playing and the usual smattering of letters that most women get in school. Julia’s Greek is now better than her father’s; her knowledge of literature is impressive; and she has studied both rhetoric and philosophy with Athenodorus, a man whose wisdom and learning could augment even our own, my dear Tibullus.

  During these years when he so often has had to be absent from Rome, not a week has gone by that his daughter has not received in the mail a packet of letters from her father; I have seen some of them, and they display a concern and kindness that is indeed touching.

  And upon those welcome occasions when his duties allowed him the freedom of his family and his home, he spent what might seem to some an inordinate amount of time with his daughter, behaving with the utmost simplicity and joy in her presence. I have seen him roll hoops with her as if he, too, were a child, and let her ride upon his shoulders as if he were a horse, and play blind-man’s buff; I have seen them fish together from the banks of the Tiber, laughing in delight when their hooks snagged a tiny sunfish; and I have seen them walk in perfect companionship in the fields beyond their home, picking wild flowers for the dinner table.

  But if you have doubts in that part of your soul which is the poet’s, I know that I cannot allay them, though I might erase them from that part of your mind that is a man’s. You know that if another father chose for his daughter a husband as rich and promising as young Marcellus, you would applaud his foresight and his concern. You know, too, that the “youth” of Julia in this matter would, in another instance, be cause for another kind of concern. How old was that lady (whom you have chosen to disguise as Delia) when first you began your campaign against her virtue? Sixteen? Seventeen? Younger?

  No, my dear Tibullus, you are well advised not to write this poem. There are many other subjects, and many other places to find them. If you wish to retain the admiration of your Emperor, stick to those poems about your Delias, which you do so well. I assure you that Octavius reads them and admires them; hard as it may be for you to believe, when he reads a poem he admires good writing more than praise.

  IV. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)

  In my life, I had three husbands, none of whom I loved. . . .

  Yesterday morning, not knowing what I wished to say, I wrote those words; and I have been pondering what they might mean. I do not know what they mean. I only know that the question occurred to me late in my life, at a time when it no longer mattered.

  The poets say that youth is the day of the fevered blood, the hour of love, the moment of passion; and that with age come the cooling baths of wisdom, whereby the fever is cured. The poets are wrong. I did not know love until late in my life, when I could no longer grasp it. Youth is ignorant, and its passion is abstract.

  I was betrothed first when I was fourteen years of age to my cousin, Marcellus, who was the son of my father’s sister Octavia. It was perhaps a measure of my ignorance, and the ignorance of all women, that such a marriage seemed to me perfectly ordinary
at the time. Ever since I could remember, Marcellus had been a familiar part of our household, along with the other children of Octavia and Livia; I had grown up with him, but I did not know him. Now, after nearly thirty years, I have hardly a memory of what he was like or even of his physical appearance. He was tall, I believe, and blond in the Octavian way.

  But I remember the letter my father sent informing me of the betrothal. I remember the tone of it. It was almost as if he were writing to a stranger; his tone was pompous and stiff, and that was unlike him. He wrote from Spain, where for nearly a year he had been engaged in putting down the border insurrections, a mission upon which Marcellus, though only seventeen years of age, had accompanied him. Persuaded (he said) by Marcellus’s fortitude and loyalty, and concerned that his daughter be placed in the care of one whose worth was beyond dispute, he had determined that this marriage was in the best interests of myself and of our family. He wished me happiness, regretted that he would not be in Rome to take his proper part in the ceremony, and said that he was asking his friend Marcus Agrippa to take his place; and told me that Livia would inform me further upon what was expected of me.

  At the age of fourteen, I believed myself to be a woman; I had been taught to believe so. I had studied with Athenodorus; I was the daughter of an Emperor; and I was to be married. I believe I behaved in a most urbane and languid fashion, until the urbanity and languidness became almost real; I had no apprehension of the world that I was beginning to enter.

  And Marcellus remained a stranger. He returned from Spain, and we spoke distantly, as we always had done. The arrangements for the wedding proceeded as if neither of us was involved in our fates. I know now, of course, that we were not.

  It was a ceremony in the old fashion. Marcellus gave me a gift, before witnesses, of an ivory box inlaid with pearls from Spain, and I received it with the ritual words; the night before the wedding, in the presence of Livia and Octavia and Marcus Agrippa, I bade farewell to the toys of my childhood, and gave those that would burn to the household gods; and late that night Livia, acting as my mother, braided my hair into the six plaits that signified my womanhood, and fastened them with the bands of white wool.

  I went through the ceremony as if through a dream. The guests and relatives gathered in the courtyard; the priests said the things that priests say; the documents were signed, witnessed, and exchanged; and I spoke the words that bound me to my husband. And in the evening, after the banquet, Livia and Octavia, according to ceremony, dressed me in the bridal tunic and led me to Marcellus’s chamber. I do not know what I expected.

  Marcellus sat upon the edge of the bed, yawning; the bridal flowers were strewn carelessly upon the floor.

  “It is late,” Marcellus said, and added in the voice he had used toward me as a child; “get to bed.”

  I lay beside him; I imagine I must have been trembling. He yawned once more, turned upon his side away from me, and in a few moments was asleep.

  Thus did my wifehood begin; and it did not change substantially during the two years of my marriage to Marcellus. As I wrote earlier, I hardly remember him now; there is little reason why I should.

  V. Letter: Livia to Octavius Caesar in Spain (25 B.C.)

  To her husband, Livia sends affectionate greetings. I have followed your instructions; your daughter is married; she is well. I hasten over this bare information so that I might write of the matter that is of more immediate concern to me: the state of your health. For I have heard (do not ask the source of my information) that it is more precarious than you have let me know; and thus I begin to apprehend the urgency you have felt in seeing your daughter safely married, and am therefore more ashamed than I might have been of my opposition to the marriage, and I sorrow at the unhappiness that that opposition must have caused you. Please be assured now that my resentment is gone, and that at last my pride in our marriage and our duty has laid to rest my maternal ambitions for my own son. You are right; Marcellus carries the name of the Claudian, the Julian, and the Octavian tribes, whereas my Tiberius carries the name only of the Claudian. Your decision is, as usual, the intelligent one. I forget sometimes that our authority is more precarious than it seems.

  I implore you to return from Spain. It is clear that the climate there encourages those fevers to which you are subject, and that in such a barbaric place you cannot receive proper care. In this your physician agrees with me, and adds his professional supplication to my affectionate one.

  Marcellus returns to you within the week. Octavia sends her love, and asks that you guard the safety of her son; your wife also sends her love, and her prayers for your recovery, and for the well-being of her son Tiberius. Please return to Rome.

  VI. Letter: Quintus Horatius Flaccus to Publius Vergilius Maro, at Naples (23 B.C.)

  My dear Vergil, I urge you to come to Rome with all possible speed. Ever since his return from Spain, our friend’s health has declined; and now his condition is exceedingly grave. The fever is constant; he cannot rise from his bed; and his body has shrunken so that his skin seems like cloth upon frail sticks. Though we all put on cheerful countenances, we have come to despair of his life. We do not deceive him; he, too, feels that his life draws to a close; he has given to his co-consul his records of the army and of revenue, and has given to Marcus Agrippa his seal, so that there might be an adequate succession of his authority. Only his physician, his intimate friends, and his immediate family are allowed in his presence. A great calm has come upon him; it is as if he wishes to savor for the last time all that he has held dearest to his heart.

  Both Maecenas and I have been staying here at his private house on the Palatine, so that we might be near him when he wishes aid or comfort. Livia attends him meticulously and with the dutifulness that he so admires in her; Julia laughs and teases him, as he so enjoys, when she is in his presence, and weeps most pitifully when she is out of his sight; he and Maecenas speak fondly of the days of their youth; and Agrippa, strong as he is, can hardly keep his composure when he speaks to him.

  Though he would not impose himself and though he does not say so, I know that he wants you here. Sometimes, when he is too weary to converse with his family, he asks me to read to him some of those poems of ours that he has most admired; and yesterday he recalled that happy and triumphant autumn, only a few years ago, when he returned from Samos, after the defeat of the Egyptian armies, and we were all together, and you read to him the completed Georgics. And he said to me, quite calmly and without pity of self: “If I should die, one of the things that I shall most regret is not having been able to attend the completion of our old friend’s poem upon the founding of our city. Do you think it would please him to know this?”

  Though I was hardly able to speak, I said, “I am sure it would, my friend.”

  He said, “Then you must tell him so when you see him.”

  “I shall tell him when you have recovered,” I said.

  He smiled. I could not endure it longer. I made some apology, and went from his room.

  As you can see, the time may be short. He is in no pain; he retains his faculties; but his will is dying with his body.

  Within the week, if his condition does not improve, his physician (one Antonius Musa, whose abilities, despite his fame, I do not trust) is prepared to put into effect a final and drastic remedy. I urge you to attend him before that desperation is performed.

  VII. Medical Directive of Antonius Musa, the Physician, to His Assistants (23 B.C.)

  The Preparation of the Baths. Three hundred pounds of ice, to be delivered to the residence of the Emperor Octavius Caesar, at the designated hour. This may be obtained from the storehouse of Asinius Pollio on the Via Campana. The ice is to be broken into pieces of the size of a tightly closed fist, and only those pieces that can be seen to be free of sediment are to be used. Twenty-five of these pieces are to be put into the bath, which will contain water to the depth of eight inches, where they shall be let to remain until all are melted.

  The Pre
paration of the Ointment. One pint of my own powder, to which has been added two spoonfuls of finely ground mustard seed; which mixture is to be added to two quarts of the finest olive oil, which is to be heated just below the point of boiling, and then allowed to cool to the exact degree of body warmth.

  The Treatment of the Patient. The patient is to be immersed fully, with the water covering every part of his body except the head, into the cold bath, where he is to remain for the length of time required to count slowly to one hundred. He is then to be removed and wrapped in the undyed blankets of wool, which have been heated over hot stones. He is to remain wrapped until he sweats freely, at which point the entirety of his body is to be anointed with the prepared oil. He is then to be returned to the cold bath, to which has been added sufficient ice to return it to its original coldness.

  This treatment is to be repeated four times; then the patient will be allowed to rest for two hours. This routine of treatment shall be continued until the patient’s fever subsides.

  VIII. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)

  When my father returned home from Spain, I knew at once the reason for my marriage. He had not expected to survive even the journey to his family, so grave had been his illness in Spain; to insure my future, he gave me to Marcellus; and to insure the future of what he often called his “other daughter,” he gave Rome to Marcus Agrippa. My marriage to Marcellus was largely a ritual affair; technically I became nonvirginal; but I was hardly touched by the union and I remained a girl, or nearly so. It was during the illness of my father that I became a woman, for I saw the inevitability of death and knew its smell and felt its presence.

  I remember that I wept, knowing that my father would die, whom I had known only as a child; and I came to know that loss was the condition of our living. It is a knowledge that one cannot give to another.