Augustus

by John Williams

But, ruled or ruler, it is no great matter. There, from a corner, some Lesbia gives a glance that darkens the torches; bright Delias languish on couches, their shoulders bare in the dim light; but he disdains them all. For boldly there comes to him the wife of a friend (who does not see, his eyes being filled with the vision of a boy dancing to the torchlight). Why not? he thinks, this ruler of men. Of his time, Maecenas has given freely; this other little thing he never uses, surely he’d not begrudge.

  IV. Letter: Quintus Horatius Flaccus to Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, at Arezzo (21 B.C.)

  The author of the libel is, indeed, as you suspected, that same Timagenes whom you have encouraged and aided, to whom you unwisely gave your friendship, and whom you introduced into the household of our friend. Besides being an ungrateful guest and uncertain in his meter, he is most foolishly indiscreet; he has bragged about his accomplishment to those who he imagines will admire him, while attempting secrecy among those who will not. He would have at once the responsibility of fame and the pleasure of anonymity, a condition which is clearly impossible.

  Octavius knows his identity. He will take no action, though (needless to say) Timagenes is no longer welcome in his house. He has asked me to assure you that he holds you in no way responsible for the betrayal; indeed, he is as much concerned for your feelings in the matter as he is for his own, and hopes that you have not suffered an undue embarrassment. His regard for you is as warm as ever; he regrets your absence from Rome, and is affectionately jealous of the time you have decided to spend at the feet of the Muses.

  I, too, regret not seeing you more often; but I believe that I understand even more fully than our friend the contentment you must feel in the quiet and beauty of your Arezzo, away from the bustle and stench of this most extraordinary city. Tomorrow I return to my little place above the Digentia, whose murmur will soothe my ears and at length return me from noise to language. How trivial all these matters will seem there, as they must seem to you in your retreat.

  V. Letter: Nicolaus of Damascus to Strabo of Amasia, from Rome (21 B.C.)

  My dear old friend, you have been eminently correct in your descriptions and enthusiasms over the years—this is the most extraordinary of cities in the most extraordinary of times. Being here now, I think that this is where my destiny has aimed me all my life, though I cannot bewail the long chain of circumstances that has delayed my discovery.

  As you may know, I have in recent years become of increasing use to Herod, who knows that he rules Judaea only by the protection of Octavius Caesar; now I am in Rome upon another service to Herod, the extraordinary nature of which I shall reveal to you in due course. At the moment I shall content myself with saying that necessary to that service was the somewhat intimidating duty of presenting myself to Octavius Caesar himself. For despite the fact that you have written me so often of your familiarity with him, his fame and power are such as to overwhelm even your assurances. And I had, after all, once been tutor to the children of his enemy, Cleopatra of Egypt.

  But again you were, as you are in all things, right; he put me at my ease at once, greeting me with even more warmth than I might have expected as an envoy from Herod, and recalled his friendship with you, remarking upon how often you had mentioned my name. I did not wish, upon such slight acquaintance, to bring up to him the matter which I had been sent to accomplish; and thus I was particularly pleased when he invited me the next evening to dine with him at his private residence—I had, of course, presented myself to him at the Imperial Palace, which I understand he uses only during his official day.

  I must not really have believed you when you wrote me of the modesty of his home. The simple luxury of my own quarters in Jerusalem would put this house to shame; I have seen moderately successful tradespeople live in more elegance! And it is not, I believe, merely an affectation of that austerity toward which he urges others; in this charming and comfortable little house, he seems a friendly host eager to please his guests, rather than the ruler of the world.

  Let me set the scene for you and recapture the essence of that evening, in the manner of our master, Aristotle, in those marvelous Conversations that we used to study.

  The meal—three excellent courses, served in a comfortable style between the austere and elegant—is over. The wine is mixed and poured, the servants moving noiselessly among the guests. It is a small gathering, of Octavius Caesar’s relatives and friends. Reclining beside Octavius is Terentia, the wife of Maecenas, who (to my regret, for I should have liked to meet him) is out of the city for the season, devoting himself to his literary studies in the north; upon another couch are Julia, the Emperor’s young and beautiful and vivacious daughter, and her new husband, Marcus Agrippa, a large and solid man, who, despite his distinction and importance, seems oddly out of place in this company; the great Horace, short and somewhat stout with graying hair around a young face, has pulled down beside him the Syrian dancing girl who earlier entertained us, and (to her nervous yet exultant delight) is teasing her to laughter; the young Tibullus (who languishes in the absence of his mistress) sits with his wine and observes the company with benevolent sadness; nearby sits his patron Messalla (who once, it is said, was proscribed by the triumvirs, who fought with Marcus Antonius against Octavius Caesar, and who now sits in easy friendship with his host and one-time enemy!) and that Livy, whom you have mentioned so often, and whose first books of that long history of Rome which he has projected, have begun to appear regularly in the bookstalls. Messalla proposes a toast to Octavius Caesar, who in turn proposes a toast to Terentia, whom he attends with courtesy and regard. We drink, and the conversation begins. Our host speaks first.

  OCTAVIUS CAESAR: My dear and old friends, I take this occasion to present our guest. From our friend and ally in the East, that Herod who governs Judaea, comes the emissary Nicolaus of Damascus, who also is a scholar and philosopher of much distinction, and therefore doubly welcome in the company which graces my home upon this happy occasion. I am sure that he would wish to give you the greetings of Herod himself.

  NICOLAUS: Great Caesar, I am humbled by your hospitality and honored beyond my merits to be included in the company of your renowned and intimate friends. Herod does, indeed, wish me to convey to you and your colleagues in the destiny of Rome his respectful greetings. The kindness and mutual affection which I have observed this evening persuade me that I shall be allowed to speak to you openly of that mission I have come to fulfill from the ancient land of Judaea. As a token of the boundless respect in which he holds Octavius Caesar, my friend and master Herod has given me leave to travel to Rome in order to speak to that man who has led Rome into the light of order and prosperity, and who has united the world. In honor of that Caesar, who is my host, I propose to write a Life, which will celebrate his fame to all the world.

  OCTAVIUS CAESAR: As flattered as I am by this gesture of my good friend Herod, I must protest that my accomplishments do not merit such attention. I cannot persuade myself that the considerable talents which you, our new friend Nicolaus, possess should be put to so unimportant a purpose. Therefore, for the sake of those more significant tasks of learning which you might perform, and for the sake of my own sense of propriety and yet with all my gratitude and friendship, I must attempt to dissuade you from this unworthy task.

  NICOLAUS: Your modesty, great Caesar, does honor to your person. But my master Herod would have me protest that modesty, and remind you that, great as your fame is, yet there are those in distant lands who have heard of your great accomplishments only by word of mouth. Even in Judaea, where the Latin tongue is used only by the educated few, there are those who do not know of your greatness. Thus were a record of your deeds put into that Greek language which all know, then would Judaea and much of the Eastern world be cognizant even more deeply of their dependence upon your beneficent power; and therefore might Herod more firmly rule, under your auspices and wisdom.

  AGRIPPA: Great Caesar and dear friend, you have heeded my counsel before; I beseech you to do so ag
ain. Be persuaded by Nicolaus’s eloquent request, and forsake your modesty in the interest of that which you must love more than your own person —that Rome, and the order which you have bequeathed her. The admiration which men in distant lands will give to you, will become love for the Rome that you have built.

  LIVY: I shall make bold to add my voice to the persuasions you have heard. I know the reputation of this Nicolaus who stands before us now, and you could not put your fame in more trustworthy hands. Let mankind repay in some small measure that which you have given in such abundance.

  OCTAVIUS CAESAR: I am at last persuaded. Nicolaus, you have the freedom of my house and you have my friendship. But I would beg you to confine your labors to those matters which have to do only with my acts in regard to Rome, and do not trouble your readers with those unimportant things that might have to do with my person.

  NICOLAUS: I accede to your wishes, great Caesar, and shall endeavor by my poor efforts to do justice to your leadership of the Roman world.

  . . . And thus, my dear Strabo, was the matter accomplished; Herod will be pleased, and I flatter myself by imagining that Octavius (he insists that I use the familiar address to him, in the intimacy of his house) has full confidence in my abilities to perform this work. You understand, of course, that the foregoing account has been submitted to the formal necessities of the dialogue in which I have cast it; the actual conversation was a good deal more informal and more lengthy; there was much bantering, all quite good-natured; Horace made jokes about Greeks who bore gifts, and asked if I intended to compose my work in prose or in verses; the vivacious Julia, who teases her father constantly, informed me that I could write anything I wanted, since her father’s Greek was such that he could easily take an insult as a compliment. But I have, I believe, captured in my account the essence of the matter; for however these people make jokes with each other, there is a kind of seriousness going on—or at least, so it seems to me.

  Besides, in order to take further advantage of my stay here (which promises to be a lengthy one), I have projected a new work beyond the Life of Octavius Caesar, which Herod has commissioned. It shall be called “Conversations with Notable Romans,” and I expect that what you have read will be a part of it. Does it strike you as a feasible idea? Do you think that the dialogue is a suitable form in which to cast it? I shall await your advice, which I treasure as much as always.

  VI. Letter: Terentia to Octavius Caesar, in Asia (20 B.C.)

  Tavius, dear Tavius—I say our name for you, but you do not appear. Can you know how cruel your absence is? I rail against your greatness, which calls you away and keeps you in a country that is strange and detestable to me, because it holds you as I cannot. I know that you have told me that rage against necessity is the rage of a child; but your wisdom has fled from me with your body, and I am a restless child until you return.

  How could I have been persuaded to let you go from me, who could not be happy for even a day outside your presence, once you had loved me? The scandal, you said, if I followed you—but there can be no scandal where there is common knowledge. Your enemies whisper; your friends are silent; and both know you are above the customs that others find necessary to lead orderly lives. Nor would there have been harm to anyone. My husband, who is my friend as well as yours, does not have that pride of possession that a lesser man might have; from the beginning it was known between us that I would have lovers, and that Maecenas would go where his tastes led him. He was not a hypocrite then, nor is he now. And Livia seems content with things as they are; I see her at readings, and she speaks to me civilly; we are not friends, but we are pleasant to each other. On my part, I am almost fond of her; for she chose to relinquish you, and thus you became mine.

  Are you mine? I know that you are when you are with me, but when you are so far away—where is your touch, that tells me more than I have known before? Does my unhappiness please you? I hope it does. Lovers are cruel; I would almost be happy, if I could know that you are as unhappy as I am. Tell me that you are unhappy, so that I may have some comfort.

  For I find no comfort in Rome; all things seem trivial to me now. I attend those festivals required of me by my position, the rituals seem empty; I go to the Circus, I cannot care who wins the races; I go to readings, my mind wanders from the poems read—even those of our friend Horace. And I have been faithful to you, all these weeks—I would tell you so, even if it were not true. But it is true; I have been. Does that matter to you?

  Your daughter is well and is pleased with her new life. I visit with her and Marcus Agrippa once or twice a week. Julia seems pleased to see me; we have become friends, I believe. She is very heavy with child now, and seems proud of her impending motherhood. Would I want a child by you? I do not know. What would Maecenas say? It would be another scandal, but such an amusing one! . . . You see how I chatter on to your memory, as I used to do to your presence.

  There is no gossip amusing enough to pass on to you. The marriages that you encouraged before you left Rome have at last taken place. Tiberius, it seems, has given up his ambitions, and is wed to Vipsania; and Jullus Antonius is wed to Marcella. Jullus seems happy that he is now officially your nephew and a member of the Octavian family, and even Tiberius seems grumpily content—even though he knows that Jullus’s union with your niece is more advantageous than his own marriage to one of Agrippa’s daughters.

  Will you return to me this autumn, before the winter storms make your voyage impossible? Or will you wait until spring? It seems to me that I shall not be able to endure your absence for so long. You must tell me how I may endure.

  VII. Letter: Quintus Horatius Flaccus to Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, at Arezzo (19 B.C.)

  Our Vergil is dead.

  I have just received the news, and I write you of it before grief overwhelms the numbness that I feel now, a numbness that must be a foretaste of that inexorable fate that has overtaken our friend, and which pursues us all. His remains are in Brindisi, attended by Octavius. The details are sketchy; I shall pass on to you what I have learned, for I have no doubt that Octavius’s grief will delay his writing to you for some time.

  Apparently the work of revision upon his poem, for the sake of which he had absented himself from Italy, had been going badly. Thus when Octavius, returning to Rome from Asia, stopped off at Athens, he had little difficulty persuading Vergil to accompany him back to Italy, for which he was already homesick, though he had been away for less than six months. Or perhaps he had some intimation of his death, and did not want his body to waste in a foreign soil. In any event, before setting out on the final journey, he persuaded Octavius to visit Megara with him; perhaps he wished to see that valley of rocks where the young Theseus is said to have slain the murderer Sciron. Whatever the reason, Vergil remained too long in the sun, and became ill. However, he insisted upon continuing the voyage; aboard ship, his condition worsened, and an old malaria returned upon him. Three days after landing at Brindisi, he died. Octavius was at his bedside, and accompanied him as far as any can on that journey from which there is no return.

  I understand that he was delirious much of the time during his last days—though I have no doubt that Vergil delirious was more reasonable than most men lucid. At the end he spoke your name, and mine, and that of Varius. And he elicted from Octavius the promise that the unperfected manuscript of his Aeneid be destroyed. I trust that the promise will not be kept.

  I wrote once that Vergil was half my soul. I feel now that I understated what I thought then was an exaggeration. For at Brindisi lies half the soul of Rome; we are diminished more than we know. —And yet my mind returns to smaller things, to things that only you and I, perhaps, can ever understand. At Brindisi, he lies. When was it that the three of us traveled so happily across Italy, from Rome to Brindisi? Twenty years. . . . It seems yesterday. I can still feel my eyes smart from the smoke of the green wood that the innkeepers burned in their fireplaces, and hear our laughter like that of boys released from school. And the farm girl we
picked up at Trivicus, who promised to come to my room, and did not; I hear Vergil mocking me, and remember the horseplay. And the quiet talk. And the luxuriant comfort of Brindisi, after the countryside.

  I shall not return to Brindisi again. Grief comes upon me now, and I cannot write more.

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

  In my youth, when I first knew her, I thought Terentia to be a trivial, foolish, and amusing woman, and I could not understand my father’s fondness for her. She chattered like a magpie, flirted outrageously with everyone, and it seemed to me that her mind had never been violated by a serious thought. Though he was my father’s friend, I did not like her husband, Gaius Maecenas; and I was never able to understand Terentia’s agreement to that union with him. Looking back upon it, I can see that my marriage to Marcus Agrippa was nearly as strange; but then I was young and ignorant, and so filled with myself that I could see nothing.

  I have come to understand Terentia, I believe. In her own way, she may have been wiser than any of us. I do not know what has become of her. What does become of people who slip quietly out of your life?

  I believe now that she loved my father, perhaps in a way that even he did not understand. Or perhaps he did. She was reasonably faithful to him, taking casual lovers only during his protracted absences. And perhaps, too, his fondness for her was more serious than his appearance of amused toleration led me then to believe. They were together for more than ten years, and seemed happy to be so. I see now—perhaps I dimly saw even then— that my judgments were those of youth and position. My husband, who could have been my father, was the most important man in Rome and its provinces during my father’s absence; and I imagined myself to be another Livia, as proud and grave as she, at the side of one who might as well have been the true Emperor. Thus it did not seem appropriate to me that my father should love one so unlike Livia (and, as I foolishly thought, myself) as Terentia. But I remember things now that I did not recognize then.