Yet I tried to give it to Marcellus, since he was my husband and I had been taught my proper behavior. He looked at me in bewilderment, and then said that however unfortunate, Rome would endure the loss, since our Emperor had had the foresight to leave his affairs in order. I was angry then, for I felt that my husband was cold and I knew that he thought himself to be the heir to my father’s power, and foresaw the day when he too would be an Emperor; now I know that if he were cold and ambitious, it was the only way he knew; it was the life to which he had been reared.
My father’s recovery from the illness that should have led to his death was regarded by the world as a miracle emanating from his divinity, and thus in the normal order of things. When the physician Antonius Musa at last performed his desperate treatment, which in later years came to bear his name, the arrangements for my father’s funeral were already being made. Yet he survived the treatment, and slowly began to recover, so that by late summer he had regained some of his weight and was able to stroll for a few minutes each day in the garden behind our house. Marcus Agrippa returned the seal of the Sphinx that had been entrusted to him, and the Senate decreed a week of thanksgiving and prayer in Rome, and the people in the countryside all over Italy erected images of him on the crossroads, in celebration of his health and to protect travelers on their journeys.
When it was clear that my father would regain his health, my husband, Marcellus, fell ill with the same fever. For two weeks the fever worsened, and at last the physician Antonius Musa prescribed the same treatment that had saved my father. In another week, in the midst of the rejoicing over the recovery of the Emperor, Marcellus was dead; and I was a widow in my seventeenth year.
IX. Letter: Publius Vergilius Maro to Quintus Horatius Flaccus (22 B.C.)
The sister of our friend Octavius still grieves for her son; time does not bring her that gradual diminution of pain, which is time’s only gift; and I fear that my poor efforts to give her heart some solace may have had an effect I did not intend.
Last week, Octavius, knowing that I had been moved to compose a poem upon the death of his nephew, urged me to come again to Rome so that he might hear what I had done; and when I informed him that the poem I had written I intended to incorporate in that long work upon Aeneas, the completed parts of which he has rather extravagantly admired, he suggested that it might give some comfort to his sister to know that her son was so admired by the Roman people that he would live in their memories for so long as they had them. Thus he invited her to be present at the reading, informing her of the nature of the occasion.
Only a few were present at Octavius’s house—Octavius himself, of course, and Livia; his daughter Julia (it is difficult to think of one so young and beautiful as a widow); Maecenas and Terentia; and Octavia, who came into the room as if she were a walking corpse, dreadfully pale, with deep shadows under her eyes. Yet she seemed composed, as always, and behaved with graciousness and consideration to those who could comfort her.
We talked quietly for a while, remembering Marcellus; once or twice, Octavia almost smiled, as if charmed by a pleasant memory of her son. And then Octavius asked me to read to them what I had written.
You know the poem and its place in my book; I shall not repeat it. But whatever faults the poem may have in its present state, it was a moving occasion; for a moment we saw Marcellus walking once more among the living, vital in the memories of his friends and his countrymen.
When I finished, there was a quietness in the room, and then a gentle murmuring. I looked at Octavia, hoping that I might see in her face, beyond the sadness, some comfort in the knowledge of our concern and pride. But I saw no comfort there. What I saw I cannot truly describe; her eyes blazed darkly, as if they burned deep in her skull, and her lips were drawn in the awful semblance of a grin that bared her teeth. It was a look, it seemed to me, almost of pure hatred. Then she gave a high toneless little scream, swayed sideways, and fell upon her couch in a dead faint.
We rushed to her; Octavius massaged her hands; she gradually revived, and the ladies took her away.
“I am sorry,” I said at last. “If I had known— I only intended her some comfort.”
“Do not reproach yourself, my friend,” Octavius said quietly. “Perhaps you have given her a comfort, after all—one that none of us can see. We cannot know at last the effects of what we do, whether for good or ill.”
I have returned to Naples; tomorrow I shall resume my labors. But I am troubled by what I have done, and I cannot but fear for the future happiness of that great lady who has given so much to her country.
X. Letter: Octavia to Octavius Caesar, from Velletri (22 B.C.)
My dear brother, I arrived, safe but weary, in Velletri yesterday afternoon, and have been resting since. Below my window is the garden where we used to play as children. It is somewhat overgrown now, or at least it seems so to me; most of the shrubs have succumbed to the winter weather, the beeches need pruning, and one of the old chestnut trees has died. Nevertheless, it is pleasant to gaze upon this spot and recall those days when we were free from the cares and sorrows of the world, so many years ago.
I write you upon two matters: first, to extend my long overdue apologies for my behavior on that awful night when our friend Vergil read to us of my late son; and second, to make a request.
When next you have occasion to write or speak to Vergil, will you explicitly ask his forgiveness for me? I did not intend my action, and I would be regretful if he took it as an unkindness. He is a good and gentle man, and I would not have him believe that I thought otherwise.
But it is the request that I make to you with which I am more concerned.
I wish to have your permission to retire from that world of affairs in which I have lived for as long as I can remember, so that I may spend the years that remain to me in the quiet and solitude of the country.
All my life I have done the duty required of me by my family and my country. I have performed this duty willingly, even when it went against the inclinations of my person.
In my childhood and early youth, under the tutelage of our mother, I performed the duties of the household with willing pleasure; and after her death, I more fully performed them for you. When it became necessary to our cause to conciliate the enemies of Julius Caesar, I gave myself in marriage to Gaius Claudius Marcellus, and upon his death I became wife to Marcus Antonius. To the best of my abilities, I was a good wife to Marcus, while remaining your sister and dutiful to our family. After Marcus Antonius divorced me and cast his fortunes in the East, I raised the children of his other marriages as if they were my own, indeed, even that Jullus Antonius of whom you now are so fond; after his death, I took under my protection those children of his by Cleopatra that survived the war.
Both of your wives I have treated as my sisters, though the first was too ill-tempered to receive my kindness and the second too ambitious for herself to trust my duty to our common cause. And from my own body I have given five children to our family and to the future of Rome.
Now my first-born and only son, my Marcellus, is dead in your service; and the happiness of his sister, Marcella, my beloved second-born, is threatened by the necessity of your policy. Fifteen years ago—perhaps even ten years ago—I should have been proud that you had chosen one of my children to shape in the succession of your destiny. But now I believe that my pride is vain, and I do not persuade myself that the possession of fame and power is worth the price of it. My daughter is happy in her marriage to Marcus Agrippa; I believe she loves him; I trust that he is fond of her. The divorce that you propose between them will not make her unhappy because she shall have lost the power and prestige that have accreted to her by the marriage; she shall be unhappy because she shall have lost a man for whom she feels respect and affection.
You must understand me, my dear brother; I do not quarrel with your decision; you are right. It is both fitting and necessary that your successor be one with your daughter, either through marriage or parentage.
And Marcus Agrippa is the most able man of all your friends and associates. He is my friend, as well as my son-in-law; despite whatever may happen I trust that he shall remain the former.
And thus without resentment let me ask that the permission that I must give for this divorce be the last public act that I shall have to commit. I grant the permission. Now I wish to remove myself from the household in Rome, and remain with my books here in Velletri for as long as I may. I do not renounce your love; I do not renounce my children; I do not renounce my friends.
But the feeling that I had that awful evening, when Vergil read to us of Marcellus, remains with me, and shall remain for as long as I live; it was as if suddenly, and for the first time, I truly saw that world in which you must live, and saw the world in which I had lived without seeing for so long. There are other ways and other worlds in which one might live, humbler and more obscure, perhaps—though what is that in the eyes of the indifferent gods?
I have not done so yet, but within a few years I shall have reached the age when it will no longer be seemly for me to marry again. Give me these few years; for I do not wish to marry, and I shall not regret not having done so, even when I am old. That which we call our world of marriage is, as you know, a world of necessary bondage; and I sometimes think that the meanest slave has had more freedom than we women have known. I wish to spend the remainder of my life here; I shall welcome my children and grandchildren to visit me. There may be a kind of wisdom somewhere in myself, or in my books, that I shall find in the quiet years that lie ahead.
3
I. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
Of all the women I have known, I have admired Livia the most. I was never fond of her, nor she of me; yet she behaved toward me always with honesty and civility; we got along well, despite the fact that my mere existence thwarted her ambitions, and despite the fact that she made no secret of her impersonal animosity toward me. Livia knew herself thoroughly, and had no illusions about her own nature; she was beautiful, and used her beauty without vanity; she was cold, and thus could feign warmth with utter success; she was ambitious, and employed her considerable intelligence exclusively to further her ambition’s end. Had she been a man, I do not doubt that she would have been more ruthless than my father, and would have been troubled by fewer compunctions. Within her nature she was an altogether admirable woman.
Though I was only fourteen years of age at the time and could not understand the reason for it, I knew that Livia opposed my marriage to Marcellus, seeing it as a nearly absolute impediment to her son Tiberius’s succession to power. And when Marcellus died so quickly after our marriage, she must have felt the possibility of her ambition urgently renewed. For even before the obligatory months of mourning had elapsed, Livia approached me. My father, having been offered the dictatorship of Italy in the wake of a famine, and having refused, had some weeks before prudently removed himself from Rome upon the pretext of business in Syria, so that he might not have further to exacerbate the frustrations of the Senate and the people by the presence of his refusal. It was a tactic that he employed often in his life.
As was her habit, Livia came at once to the point.
“Your time of mourning will be ended soon,” she said.
“Yes,” I replied.
“And you will be free to marry again.”
“Yes.”
“It is not appropriate that a young widow should remain long unmarried,” she said. “It is not the custom.”
I believe I did not reply. I must have thought even then that my widowhood was as much a matter of form as my marriage had been.
Livia continued. “Is your grief such that the prospect of marriage offends you?”
I remembered that I was my father’s daughter. “I shall do my duty,” I said.
Livia nodded as if she had expected the answer. “Of course,” she said. “It is the way. . . . Did your father speak to you of this matter? Or has he written?”
“No,” I said.
“I am sure that he has been considering it.” She paused. “You must understand that I speak now for myself, not your father. But were he here, I would have his permission.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I have behaved toward you as if you were my daughter,” Livia said. “Insofar as it has been possible, I have not acted against your interests.”
I waited.
She said slowly, “Do you find my son at all to your liking?”
I still did not understand. “Your son?”
She made a little impatient gesture. “Tiberius, of course.”
I did not find Tiberius to my liking, and I never had; I did not know why. Later I came to understand that it was because he discovered in all others those vices he would not recognize in himself. I said: “He has never been fond of me. He thinks me flighty and unstable.”
“That is no matter, even if it is true,” Livia said.
“And he is betrothed to Vipsania,” I said. Vipsania was the daughter of Marcus Agrippa; and though younger than I, she was almost my friend.
“Nor does that matter,” Livia said, still impatiently. “You understand such things.”
“Yes,” I said, and did not speak further. I did not know what to say.
“You know that your father is fond of you,” Livia said. “Some have thought him too fond of you, but that is of no substance here. At issue is the fact, which you know, that he will listen to you more attentively than most fathers will listen to their daughters, and that he would hesitate to go against your wishes. Your wishes carry great weight with him. Therefore, if you find the idea of marriage to Tiberius not disagreeable to you, it would be appropriate for you to let your father know that.”
I did not speak.
“On the other hand,” Livia said, “if you find the idea wholly disagreeable, you would do me a service now to let me know. I have never dissembled with you.”
My head was whirling. I did not know what to say. I said: “I must obey my father. I do not wish to displease you. I do not know.”
Livia nodded. “I understand your position. I am grateful to you. I shall not trouble you more with this.”
. . . Poor Livia. I believe that she thought then that everything was arranged, and that her will would prevail. But it did not, on that occasion. It was perhaps the bitterest blow of her life.
II. Letter: Livia to Octavius Caesar, at Samos (21 B.C.)
I have been in all things obedient to your will. I have been your wife, and faithful to my duty; I have been your friend, and faithful to your interests. So far as I can determine, I have failed you in only one regard, and I grant that that is an important one: I have not been able to give you a son, or even a child. If that is a fault, it is one which is beyond my control; I have offered divorce, which, out of what I believed to be affection for my person, you have often refused. Now I cannot be sure of that affection, and I am bitterly troubled.
Though I had reasonable cause to believe that you should have thought my Tiberius to be more nearly your own son than was Marcellus, who was only your nephew, I forgave your choice upon the grounds of your illness and upon the grounds of your plea that Marcellus carried the blood of the Claudian, the Octavian, and the Julian lines, while Tiberius carried only the Claudian. I even forgave what I must see now as your insults to my son; if in the extreme youth in which you judged him he displayed what appeared to be some instability of character and excess of behavior, I might suggest that the character of a boy is not the character of a man.
But now your course is clear, and I cannot conceal from you my bitterness. You have refused my son, and thus you have refused a part of me. And you have given your daughter a father rather than a husband.
Marcus Agrippa is a good man, and I know that he has been your friend; I bear no ill will for his person. But he bears no name, and whatever virtues he may possess are merely his own. It may have been amusing to the world that a man with such a lack of breeding might hold so much power as a subo
rdinate of the Emperor; it will not be amusing to the world that now he is the designated successor, and thus nearly equal to the Emperor himself.
I trust you understand that my position has become nearly impossible; all Rome expected that Tiberius should become betrothed to your daughter, and that in the normal course of affairs he should have had some part in your life. Now you have refused him that.
And you remain abroad upon the occasion of this marriage of your daughter, as you did upon the first—whether out of necessity or choice, I do not know. And I do not care.
I shall continue in my duty toward you. My house will remain your house, and open to you and your friends. We have been too close in our common endeavors for it to be otherwise. I shall, indeed, attempt to continue to remain your friend; I have not been false to you, in thought or word or deed; and I shall not be in the future. But you must know the distance that this has put between us; it is farther than even the Samos where you now sojourn. It shall remain so.
Your daughter is married to Marcus Agrippa, and has removed herself to his house; she is now mother to that Vipsania Agrippa, who once was her playmate. Your niece, Marcella, bereft of a husband, is with your sister at Velletri. Your daughter seems content with her marriage. I trust that you are the same.
III. Broadsheet: Timagenes of Athens (21 B.C.)
Now who is mightier in the house of Caesar— the one whom all call Emperor and the August, or that one who, by all custom, should have been his loving helpmate, dutiful to both bed and banquet hall? See now how ruler is ruled: the torches flicker, the company is gay, and laughter flows more quickly than wine. He speaks to his Livia, and will not be heard by her; he speaks again, and is frozen by a smile. It is said that he refused her a bauble; you’d think the Tiber was agrip in winter ice!
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