Augustus

by John Williams

  Perhaps I am mistaken, but there seems to me an air of ugly unrest in Rome; it is not that uncertain restlessness that you must have known in the early days of Octavius Caesar’s power, nor the restless excitement that infected me when I first came here fourteen years ago.

  Octavius Caesar has brought peace to this land; not since Actium has Roman raised sword against Roman. He has brought prosperity to the city and the countryside; not even the poorest of the people wants for food in the city, and those in the provinces prosper from the beneficences of Rome and Octavius Caesar. Octavius Caesar has brought liberty to the people; no longer need the slave live in fear of the arbitrary cruelty of his master, nor the poor man fear the venality of the rich, nor the responsible speaker fear the consequences of his words.

  And yet there is an ugliness in the air which, I fear, bodes ill for the future of the city, the Empire, and the reign of Octavius Caesar himself. Faction is ranged against faction; rumors abound; and no one seems content to live in the comfort and dignity which their Emperor has made possible. These are extraordinary people. . . . It is as if they cannot endure safety and peace and comfort.

  So I shall leave Rome, this city that has been my home for so many rich years. I shall return to Damascus, and live out the days that remain to me among my books and whatever words I may write. I shall leave Rome in sorrow and love—without anger or recrimination or disappointment. And I realize as I write these words that I really am saying that I shall leave my friend, Octavius Caesar, with these feelings within me. For Octavius Caesar is Rome; and that, perhaps, is the tragedy of his life.

  Oh, Strabo, if the truth were known, I feel that his life is over; in these past few years he has endured more than any man ought to endure. His face has upon it the inhuman composure of one who knows his life is over, and who waits only upon the decay of the flesh which signifies that end.

  I have never known a man to whom friendship meant so much; and I mean a friendship of a particular kind. His true friends were those whom he knew when he was young, before he gained the power that he now has. I suppose that one with power can trust only those whom he knew and could trust before he had power; or it may be something else. . . . And now he is alone. He has no one.

  Five years ago his friend, Marcus Agrippa, whom he had made his son-in-law, died in the loneliness of his return to Italy from a foreign land; and Octavius Caesar could not even bid him farewell. The year following, that good lady, his sister Octavia, died in the bitter isolation she had chosen away from the city and her brother, on a simple farm at Velletri. And now the last of his old friends, Maecenas, is dead; and Octavius Caesar is alone. No one from his youth remains alive, and therefore there is no one whom he feels that he can trust, no one to whom he can talk about those things that are nearest to him.

  I saw the Emperor the week after Maecenas died; I had been in the country during the unhappy event, and I hurried back as soon as I learned of it. I tried to offer him my condolences.

  He looked at me with those clear blue eyes that are so startlingly young in his lined face. There was a little smile on his lips.

  “Well, our comedy is almost over,” he said. “But there can be much sadness in a comedy.”

  I did not know what to say. “Maecenas,” I began. “Maecenas—”

  “Did you know him well?” Octavius asked.

  “I knew him,” I said, “but I do not think I knew him well.”

  “Few people knew him well,” he said. “Not many liked him. But there was a time when we were young—Marcus Agrippa was young, too—there was a time when we were friends, and knew that we would be friends for as long as we lived. Agrippa; Maecenas; myself; Salvidienus Rufus. Salvidienus is dead too, but he died long ago. Perhaps we all died then, when we were young.”

  I became alarmed, for I had never heard my friend talk disconnectedly before. I said: “You are distraught. It is a heavy loss.”

  He said: “I was with him when he died. And our friend Horace was there. He died very quietly; he was conscious until the end. We talked about the old times together. He asked me to look out for Horace’s welfare; he said that poets had more important things to do than to care for themselves. I believe Horace sobbed and turned away. Then Maecenas said that he was tired. And he died.”

  “Perhaps he was tired.”

  He said: “Yes, he was tired.”

  There was a silence between us. And then Octavius said:

  “And there will be another soon. Another who is tired.”

  “My friend—” I said.

  He shook his head, still smiling. “I do not mean myself; the gods will not be so kind. It is Horace. I saw the look on his face afterward. Vergil, and then Maecenas, Horace said. He reminded me later that once, many years ago, in a poem—he was making a little fun of one of Maecenas’s illnesses—and in the poem he said to Maecenas—can I remember it?—‘On the same day shall the earth be heaped upon us both. I make the soldier’s vow —you lead, and we shall go together, both ready to slog the road that ends all roads, inseparable friends.’ . . . I don’t think that Horace will outlive him by many months. He does not wish to.”

  “Horace,” I said.

  “Maecenas wrote badly,” Octavius said. “I always told him that he wrote badly.”

  . . . I could not comfort him. Two months later Horace was dead. He was discovered one morning by his servant, in his little house above the Digentia. His face was quiet, as if he were simply asleep. Octavius had his ashes interred beside those of Maecenas, at the farther end of the Esquiline hill.

  The only one alive now whom he loves is his daughter. And I fear for that love; I fear most desperately. For his daughter seems to grow more careless of her position month by month; her husband will not live with her, but remains abroad, though he is consul for the year.

  I do not believe that Rome can endure the death of Octavius Caesar, and I do not believe that Octavius Caesar can endure the death of his soul.

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

  The way of life that I had in Rome, then, was a way of almost utter freedom. Tiberius was abroad, spending even the year of his consulship in Germany, organizing the outposts there against the encroachments of the barbarian tribes. Upon the few occasions that he had to return to Rome, he made a ritual visit, and quickly found business elsewhere.

  The year after his consulship, my father, upon his own initiative, ordered a replacement for him on the German frontier, and ordered my husband to return to his duties in Rome. And Tiberius refused. It was, I thought, the most admirable thing he had ever done; and I almost respected him for his courage.

  He wrote to my father indicating his refusal to pursue a public life, and expressing a desire to retire to the Island of Rhodes, where his family had extensive holdings, to devote the rest of his years to his private studies of literature and philosophy. My father pretended anger; I think that he was pleased. He imagined that Tiberius Claudius Nero had served his purpose.

  I have often wondered what my life would have been like, had my husband meant what he wrote to my father.

  6

  I. Letter: Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso to Tiberius Claudius Nero, on Rhodes (4 B.C.)

  My dear Tiberius, your absence is regretted by your friends in Rome, which seems content in its own stagnation. Yet for the present, perhaps that stagnation is fortunate. There is no news of the past year that might profoundly affect our futures—and that, I suppose, in these days, is the best we can hope for.

  Herod the Jew is dead at last, and that is perhaps best for all of us. During the last few years of his life, he was no doubt mad, and growing madder; I know the Emperor had become profoundly distrustful of him, and perhaps was considering to effect his overthrow; and that, of course, if it came to war, would have united the people behind the Emperor as nothing else might have done. Just a few days before he died, Herod had put to death one of his sons, whom he suspected of having plotted against him— which gave the Emperor occasion for an
other of his witticisms. “I had rather,” he said, “be Herod’s pig than his son.” In any event, he is succeeded by another of his sons, who has made sincere overtures to Rome; so the possibility of an armed excursion seems remote at this time.

  Incidental to Herod’s death, and preceding it by some time was the departure from Rome of the unpleasant little Nicolaus of Damascus, of whom the Emperor has always been so fond. This may seem a trivial thing to record, yet it has some bearing on our futures, I believe; for this departure has saddened the Emperor more than one might reasonably expect. For now none of his old close friends remain—and he seems to grow more bitter and more private as the months succeed one another. And of course as one grows so, one’s grasp upon power and authority progressively must weaken.

  And that grasp does seem to be weakening, though in ways that are not yet significant enough to raise uncautious hopes. For example: this year, he refused the clamor of the Senate to accept his thirteenth consulship, pleading age and weariness. When it became clear that he was firm in his decision, the Senate demanded to know whom he would have to serve in his place— and he named Gaius Calvisius Sabinus! Do you remember the name? He is an old Caesarean, older even than the Emperor himself, and was consul once under the triumvirate, some thirty-five years ago, and served under the Emperor and Marcus Agrippa in the naval battles against Sextus Pompeius! The other consul is one Lucius Passienus Rufus (if you can imagine one of such an undistinguished name serving as consul), of whom you may or may not have heard. He is one of the new men, and I really have no idea of his allegiance to the family of the Emperor. I suspect that he will support the government, no matter who might be in power. So the consulship of this year promises no real consolidation that might be ranged against your eventual assumption of power. One who is senile, and one who has no name!

  Somewhat more depressing (though we knew it had to come, eventually) were the rites of manhood conferred by the Emperor upon your stepsons. Gaius and Lucius (though neither is sixteen yet) are now citizens of Rome, they wear the togas of manhood, and no doubt as soon as he dares, the Emperor will give each of them at least nominal command of an army. Fortunately, he would not dare do more than that at the moment; and none of us knows what the future may bring. He will see that his old friend, Marcus Agrippa, though dead, is somehow in the center of things, even if it is only through his sons.

  None of this, my dear Tiberius, need disturb us, I think; we have expected much of it, and that which we did not expect certainly has done us no harm.

  But I fear that my concluding observations, tentative though they may be, offer some cause for apprehension. As you may have suspected, these observations have to do with the recent activities of your wife.

  The scandals surrounding your wife have to some degree subsided, and they have done so for several reasons. First, the public is growing used to her behavior; second, what is often described as her infectious charm and gaiety have gone a long way toward softening opinion about her; third, her popularity among the young seems to be growing rather than diminishing; and last (and this is, for reasons that I shall shortly explain, the most ominous) her more blatant disregard of the proprieties seems to have diminished, and to have diminished substantially. It is to this last that I shall address myself.

  Her rather indiscriminate and promiscuous choice of lovers seems to be a thing of the past. Sempronius Gracchus, as far as I can gather, is no longer her lover, but remains a friend; the same may be said for Appius Claudius Pulcher, and several others of note. The rather despicable toys with which she once amused herself (such as that Demosthenes, who was little better than a freedman, though technically a citizen) have been discarded; she seems, in a curious way, to have become more serious, though she retains sufficient wit and humor and abandon to still be a favorite of the frivolous young.

  This is not to say that she is no longer adulterous; she is. But she seems to have chosen a lover of somewhat more substance than the riffraff she once favored, and one of more danger. It is Jullus Antonius, whose wife (once the intimate of Julia) has conveniently begun to travel abroad a good deal more than she is accustomed to doing.

  There still are gatherings of her old friends, of course; but Jullus is always with her, and the discussions are reported to be of a much less frivolous nature than they had been before—though they remain, in my eyes, frivolous enough. At least, I trust that my reports are accurate in this respect. They discuss philosophy, literature, politics, and the theater—all such matters.

  I do not know what to make of it, nor does Rome. I do not know whether her father is aware of this new affair, or not; if he is, he condones it; if he is not, he is a fool; for he therefore knows less than any of his fellow citizens. I do not know whether her recent behavior will help us or harm us. But you may be assured that I shall make it my business to keep myself fully informed upon this new development, and that I shall impart what I learn to you. I do have certain sources of information in the household of Jullus Antonius, and I shall develop more—discreetly, you may be sure. I shall not develop these sources in your wife’s household. That would be altogether too dangerous to me, to you, and to our cause.

  I trust that you will destroy this letter—or if you do not, be sure that it is secreted so that it cannot fall into unfriendly hands.

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

  My old friend and tutor Athenodorus once told me that our ancient Roman ancestors thought it unhealthy to bathe more than once or twice a month, that their daily ablutions consisted only of washing from their arms and legs the dirt that had been gathered in the day’s labor. It was the Greeks, he said (with a kind of ironic pride), who had introduced to Rome the habit of the daily bath, and who had taught their barbaric conquerors the elaborate possibilities to be discovered in this ritual. . . . Though I have discovered the excellent simplicity of peasant food, and hence, no doubt, in that respect returned to the ways of my ancestors, I have not yet persuaded myself to adopt their habits of the bath. I bathe nearly every day, though I have no retinue to serve me with oils and perfumes, and my bath has but one wall —the rock cliff that rises above the shore of this island that is my home.

  In the second year of my marriage to Marcus Agrippa, he opened in Rome, for the comfort of the people, what was said to be the most opulent bathhouse in the history of our city. Before that, I had not often attended the public baths; I believe that when I was young, Livia, fancying herself the model of the ancient virtues, disapproved of the luxuries offered at such places; and I must have caught the infection of her virtue. But my husband had read in a work by a Greek physician that bathing ought not to be looked upon merely as a luxury, that it might indeed contribute toward the prevention of mysterious illnesses that periodically swept through any crowded city; he wished to encourage as many of the common people as he might to avail themselves of such hygienic measures, and he persuaded me to occasionally forsake the privacy of my own bath and go among the people, so that all would see that it was fashionable to frequent the public baths. I went as if it were a duty; but I had to admit to myself that it became a joy.

  I had never known the people before. I had seen them in the city, of course; they had waited on me in the shops; I had spoken to them, and they had spoken to me. But they had known always who I was: I was the Emperor’s daughter. And I had known (or thought I had known) that their lives were so distant from my life that they might as well belong to another species. But naked in the bath, surrounded by hundreds of women who shout and scream and laugh, an Emperor’s daughter is indistinguishable from the sausagemaker’s wife. And an Emperor’s daughter, vain though she might be, discovered an odd pleasure in such an indistinguishability. So I became a connoisseur of baths, and remained one for the rest of my life; and after the death of Marcus Agrippa, I discovered baths in Rome whose existence I had never dreamed of, which offered pleasures that it seemed I had known once, but in a dream. . . .

  And now, still, I bathe nearly eve
ry day, as I imagine the soldier does, or the peasant, after his work is done, if there is a stream nearby. My bathhouse is the sea, and the marble of the pool is the black volcanic sand that gleams in the afternoon sun. There is a guard who attends me—I suspect that he has been ordered to prevent me from drowning myself—and stands impassively away from me, watching me incuriously as I let my body into the water. He is a castrate. His presence does not disturb me.

  On quiet afternoons, when the sea is calm, the water is like a mirror; and I can see my face reflected there. It amazes me that my hair is nearly white now, and that my face is becoming lined. I was always vain about my hair, which began to go gray when I was very young. I remember that my father came upon me once when one of my maidservants was plucking out these gray hairs, and he asked me: “Do you look forward to becoming bald?” I replied that I did not. “Then,” he said, “why do you allow your servant to hasten that condition?”

  . . . The hair is nearly white, the face is lined—and as I lie in this shallow water, the body that I see seems to have nothing to do with that face. The flesh is as firm as it was twenty years ago, the stomach flat, the breasts full. In the chill water, the nipples harden, as once they did beneath the caress of a man; and in the buoyancy of the water, the body undulates, as once it did when it took its pleasure. It has served me well, this body, over the years—though it began its service later than it might have done. It began its service late, for it was told that it had no rights, and must by the nature of things be subservient to dictates other than its own. When I learned that the body had its rights, I had been twice married, and was the mother of three children. . . .