Augustus i-1

by Allan Massie

  'How generous of him to offer what he has no means of delivering.'

  ***

  I took Maco and half a dozen men and we rode into the sun. We rode some two hours and saw no soldiers, nothing but quiet villages and farmers working in their fields. Then Maco touched my sleeve: 'There's a glint of metal in that oak grove there. Shall I ride on to check?' 'No,' I said, 'it will be Agrippa.' 'Can't be sure.'

  'It will be Agrippa. Have no fear, Maco. I'm not being rash, you know. There's no chance in the business to-day. The dice have fallen. All we have to do is pick up our winnings.'

  (How much of this, you ask, was acting? How much conviction? Such a question would have been almost meaningless even then. I had to behave as I did. My men must know that I never questioned my destiny; nor, on this occasion, did I. I don't say that it was always so, for I have known nights of doubt when the blankets seem to shroud me, as I am denied restoring sleep; nights when I felt that the Gods had abandoned me and when I walked in empty wind-swept passages. But on this occasion I had all the certainty of the great artist who finds a long-projected and much brooded-on work slowly assuming the perfect, hardly-understood, shape before his eyes; a moment of magic, as Virgil once described it to me, 'When everything you have ever known or dreamed assumes an unknown and undreamed-of reality and lightness.' So it was with me in those August days.)

  Agrippa was drinking wine and eating pecorino cheese and apples in the midst of some dozen men. They had tied their horses under the oak trees, in the shade. 'You see,' I had said to Maco as we drew near, 'no sentries even. That's a measure of our victory, our self-confidence and relaxation.' 'Nevertheless', he said, and proceeded straightaway to do what Agrippa had thought unnecessary. That 'nevertheless' was why Maco was such a fine sergeant-major – he never took things at face value; and why he stayed a sergeant-major – there are times when face value is true value. 'Well?' I said. 'Well. Have you eaten?' 'No, I don't think so.'

  'Well, you bloody should. I've told you that often. You'll wear yourself out, shrimp, if you don't eat. You'll get ulcers. Told you that too bloody often, you don't bloody listen, do you? You feed your horse, don't you? Wouldn't let him go without food, eh? Well, then, don't be such a bloody fool. This is good cheese. Here, you!' he called, 'Bring the general bread and cheese and wine. Look sharp about it.'

  'All right, all right,' I said, 'you don't need to go on. I've nothing against food, you know.'

  'I should hope not. It's only the bloody rich can afford to despise food.' 'Well, I'm rich,' I said. 'Bloody rich, if you like. So what's the news?' Agrippa began to laugh.

  'All right,' I said, 'I concede. You've forced me to ask this time.'

  I picked up a piece of bread. 'Look,' I said, 'I'm eating. So what's the news?'

  'They'll all desert, bar a few of the stuffier officers. But on one condition. You yourself must advance to them, ahead of your army, with no bigger escort than you have here. They want to make it seem spontaneous, not as if they've been coerced.'

  He paused, gave me a crooked smile. 'Do you buy that?' he said.

  'Why not? It's not that proposal I'm buying, it's your judgement. And I bought that a long time ago, and see no reason to go back on the deal. You obviously think it's fine, or you wouldn't be eating this bread – which is on the stale side by the way, and the wine's sour – sitting here on your backside. You would have been posting back to camp, fairly sharply I should say.'

  'Too bloody right I would,' he said. 'It's OK, they're yours. There are no hostile troops between here and Rome.'

  ***

  It was very hot the next few days. Agrippa drank great draughts of beer and sweated it out almost as fast as he engulfed them. As for me I contented myself with sucking at lemons and pomegranates and sipping white wine in which a block of snow brought down by mule train from the high Apennines had been allowed to dissolve. We were lucky, they said, to get snow to cool our wine so late in the year.

  There was a constant coming and going of secretaries. Letters were flooding in from the municipalities, from the priestly colleges, from individual senators, from the trade guilds and the equestrian corporations. 'If we'd realized you were this loved, my dear, we wouldn't have delayed all these dreary months,' Maecenas said. 'I can't wait to be in the city. To visit the baths and the theatre. I've heard there's a sensational new dancer from Spain, a real yum-yum, only sixteen and not an ounce of puppy fat, hard as a camp-bed (to coin a phrase). Give me another glass of that muck, ducky, I can hardly wait…' 'What the hell are we waiting for anyway?' Agrippa said.

  'Things must be done properly,' Marcellus said. 'We are not entering the city as conquerors. We must arrange the right sort of reception. It takes time.'

  I experienced a curious peace as I listened to them, a peace such as I had indeed not known before. It was as if we had rolled the whole last year of struggle into one ball, which was now hanging on the lip of the hole as in a game of marbles. For the moment there was no need of decision, no further struggle. I have known the same feeling since; it comes when the flood of events has taken direction of one's life out of one's hands. No doubt despair can affect one similarly. I have never known despair.

  Now all I said was: 'Besides I must first go to see that all is well with my mother and sister.'

  ***

  Octavia was confused.

  'You look the same,' she said, 'when I look at you properly, but I would hardly have recognized you. Why haven't you brought Marcellus?' 'Staff duties,' I said. 'Pig.'

  'Besides,' I said, 'if you think I've changed, well, it seems to me that marriage has changed you. I don't really feel you are my sister when I see you playing his wife. That's really why I found him staff duties to-day, I'm jealous. How's Mother?' 'Preparing the banquet.'

  'You should have stopped her. I can't eat banquet food. You know that. Anyway I haven't time.' 'Just you try stopping her. How's our stepfather?'

  'Prosy, apprehensive and a damned bore. This time tomorrow I'll be consul. You know that, don't you? But he's still afraid we'll get our throats cut. It's incredible. Still, he's been very useful, that's got to be said.' 'Him useful? I make a rude gesture to that.'

  'It's true, sis. You see he's invaluable in council. Nobody wants to be associated with him, so I've only to invite him to speak first, which I invariably do of course out of my respect for our relationship and his grey hairs…' 'And his fat belly.'

  'Yes of course, and his fat belly – how could I forget the famous belly – well, I've only to do that to make quite certain that everyone else proposes more or less what 1 want, since that's bound to be the exact opposite of what old Flutter-fingers has advocated. Oh yes, I'll be able to tell Mamma her man has been invaluable.'

  'She won't care, she'll know you're mocking him and pulling her leg, but she won't care. She's really proud, you know. She keeps saying you've proved you're a true Julian.'

  I looked out into the summer sky where a hawk hovered, then dropped sheer on its prey. 'No,' I said, 'she's wrong there. I shall never be a real Julian.'

  I couldn't avoid the banquet, though I managed to excuse myself from eating the lake fish on the grounds that it would make me bilious in the hot weather. Before I left my mother said to me: 'Remember, Brutus and Cassius live.'

  ***

  Cicero met me at the gates of the city. There had come first a crowd of senators few of whom I knew even by sight. Most of them tried to smile; sullenness and fear showed through however. I used Philippus and Marcellus to mingle among them. 'Be affable,' I said. I plucked Salvidienus by the sleeve. 'There are some of your family here, aren't there?' 'My two brothers'; he flushed as if my question indicated distrust of his absolute loyalty. 'Do pray introduce me,' I said. He complied with an ill grace, and his brothers looked sheepish as men do who have backed the defeated side. I urged them to regard me as their friend, but I could see they were enviously counting the years between us.

  A hush fell on the assembly, broken only by a high-pitched giggle
– Maecenas of course. I looked round for explanation. An ornate purple-canopied litter was emerging from the shadow of a narrow street into the full sun of the piazza. It was carried by half a dozen slaves, mountaineers from Anatolia by the look of them. It halted before the dais on which I was standing. The curtains were withdrawn to reveal Cicero.

  I have been much criticized – both at the time and later – for what happened next. I can only say it seemed the most natural thing in the world to me. I leapt from the dais and advanced towards the litter. For a moment I thought the old man was going to lie there, even extend his hand to me as if I had been a client or supplicant. I am sure the thought crossed his mind. He must however have calculated that the satisfaction to be obtained from such a gesture would be no more than momentary, for, with a visible effort and an arthritic groan he stuck out his scrawny neck, heaved his legs round, and disembarked from the litter. I resumed my advance and embraced him (he smelled of old yellow papyrus) with the words: 'Ah, the last of all my friends.' I am not ashamed of the words, which were well and deliberately chosen. If he had been more prominent and constant in friendship, this point would never have been reached. All the same, as I spoke, I felt him stiffen. He kissed my cheek, and held me a moment in a grip like a vulture's talons.

  ***

  The next day I was elected consul. I chose as my colleague an obscure cousin, Quintus Pedius, recommended by my mother as a man who would hinder me in nothing. (Unfortunately she exaggerated his amiability; he was a damned nuisance.) I paused in the act of taking the auspices for the first time, and directed my gaze to the heavens. Naturally the crowd did the same, and there was a moment of awed silence before they broke out in loud huzzas at the sight of a dozen vultures winging in the direction of the Janiculum. Of course I had known what to expect; Marcellus had reminded us that a similar flight had greeted Romulus when he first performed that ceremony, and Maecenas had undertaken to obtain the birds through his theatrical connections ('I don't suppose buzzards would do? So much cheaper'). But I was impressed by his staff-work which had seen to it that a sufficient number of the crowd were aware of the precedent. Such manipulation of the emotions of the public may seem cynical to you, and I can indeed hardly deny the imputation. Nevertheless there are times when such manipulation is necessary. It was poetically right that vultures should make an appearance to link me to Romulus, first Father of Our Country, but the workings of nature are inclined to be capricious. Besides, vultures are much rarer in Italy now than they were in his day – 'I daresay they were common as crows then', as Maecenas said; it is permissible to give fate a nudge from time to time. I must tell you however that the occasional fabrication of omens in no way invalidates those that appear spontaneously. I was not of course impressed by the birds, but the crowd were. That was the great thing: they accepted the flight as confirmation of my authority. There was only one uncomfortable moment. A pair of the birds suddenly lost height; for a ghastly moment it looked as if they were about to plummet into the Tiber. I held my breath, wondering if we had been too clever by half. However – and here is substantial evidence of how hard it is to disentangle the human from the divine – they recovered more abruptly than they had fallen, and were soon lost in the pine trees of Janiculum. The crowd had been silenced by the fall and Maecenas seized the chance to improve the situation: 'See how the Gods favour the consul,' he cried, 'if he stumbles Jupiter himself lifts him to safe triumph.' The crowd broke out in renewed cheers. Later he said to me: 'Bloody birds, I could have died, my dear. I'll have that bird-seller flayed. He swore to me he had given them all a good trial flight in the Campagna.' 'Oh,' I said, 'let him alone. Your intervention improved things, don't you think?'

  The next day I had the court clear my adoption as Julius' heir. Henceforth I was Caesar: Gaius Julius Octavianus Caesar. This done, I paid my troops, which had taken the first steps to restore order and the rule of law in the Republic, their promised bounties, from the public treasury. I ordered the law which had granted an amnesty to Caesar's killers to be rescinded on the high moral grounds that the murder of the head of the Republic, perpetual dictator and pontifex maximus, could never be legally condoned. I set up a special court to outlaw the murderers who had styled themselves Liberators.

  Two days later Cicero left Rome. He wrote to me asking permission. His health was poor, he explained; he required sea air. He thanked me – for what I was never certain. He asked forgiveness for the Past and indulgence for the Future. I replied that I had nothing to forgive, and that I would ever value his counsel as I had always valued it, that he stood where he had always stood in my esteem and gratitude, and that I hoped the sea air would correct his disorders. I never saw him again. He was the saddest of men, one who had seen greatness beckon and failed to grasp the God's proffered hand. He failed because he disdained the true source and nature of power, and thought cleverness a substitute for vision; in the end he had no faith in his own destiny.

  THREE

  Agrippa never knew a day's illness (till he died). In contrast, as he told it, I spent my youth sneezing and expectorating, coughing, wheezing like a pair of holed bellows, shivering with ague sweating with fever, stricken by migraine, oppressed by bile, frequently unable to sit a horse or carry on a conversation that wasn't interrupted by nose-blowing, nose-bleeds or nausea. He exaggerated; he wasn't far wrong. I spent my first three weeks as consul and Caesar with a tortured throat, a runny nose, spots before the eyes and a high temperature. I was working eighteen hours a day. It is hard to concentrate when your shoulders are heavy with lassitude and your whole body trembles. But it was work I could not leave to my secretaries.

  We advanced by slow stages north. Most of the march I had to be carried in a litter, and that experience taught me something about my relationship with the legions that I have never forgotten. Had I been Julius, or even Antony, they would have chanted ribald songs about my condition and mode of transport. As it was, they marched past the litter in respectful silence. I knew they trusted me, admired me even, were amused by what they regarded as my cunning – 'He's a smart bugger, our general,' they would say – but they did not love me. There was hardly a man except those I kept round my person at Headquarters who would die for me. The magnetism of my personality does not operate at any distance, as Julius' did. I mention this because success in great endeavours depends so much on a just appreciation of one's assets and defects. Neither of you, my dear boys, suffers in this way. But you have other peculiar problems and weaknesses; are you aware of them? 'Know thyself is the wisest of philosophical advice.

  Yet – there is always a 'yet', a 'nevertheless' – such self-knowledge can be inhibitory. The man who has never examined his own mind and spirit acts with a spontaneity denied me.

  (On the other hand Maecenas used to say that I was able to deceive others because I had first deceived myself. I don't think he was right. I record his view merely as evidence of that diversity of interpretation that makes judgement of our fellows so difficult.)

  We halted in a plain on the south bank of the Po. The men, grumbling, pitched camp in the discomfort of a thin rain driving down from the mountains. With night the wind dropped and the river mist seeped through the camp. I sat wrapped in furs and sipped hot wine, aromatic with nutmeg, and still shivered. A slave read Homer to me till I sent him away. All round me the cold bustle of the camp made my tent's silence more acute. I called Maco to me. 'Are there lights across the river?' 'Too foggy to see, sir.' 'What's the men's mood?'

  'Not good, sir. Puzzled like and apprehensive. They're afraid, that's what, sir, afraid of a battle, afraid of it all starting over again.' 'There will be no battle by my will.' 'Ah, sir, will… many a battle starts by accident… you should go to bed, sir, you really should…" 'I can't sleep…'

  Waiting is always the worst. It was cockcrow when a cry came that a punt was edging across the river, and by then there were few voices in the camp, only the occasional challenge of a sentry or the cry of a man whose sleep was disturbed
by fear. There came the swish of boots in the wet grass, the tent flap was thrown back and Agrippa and Marcellus came in.

  'Lord,' said Agrippa, 'I'm tired, and I'll have a head tomorrow. It's all right though. The meeting's on. We held out for the island as the venue. The only point we gave way: he insists on Lepidus being there, wouldn't take no.'

  'I see. He can control Lepidus, and the pair of them will always outvote me. Nevertheless, we accept. When is it fixed for?'

  The day after tomorrow. Well, that's tomorrow by this time. At breakfast. That was a facer for Antony, breakfast, but he rallied.'

  'As for Lepidus,' Marcellus said, 'your interpretation's obviously right. But there's one other factor, Antony doesn't fancy being alone with you. You ought to think of that, brother-in-law.'

  'Thanks,' I said, 'I already had. You have done well, both of you. Now we can sleep.'

  ***

  I almost called the meeting off. I had after all been denied sleep and my fever was worse. The doctor gave me a draught of some herbal concoction, which brought on immediate nausea, but then to my surprise calmed my pulse and dulled my headache. I still felt weak as a sick kitten, as my old nurse used to describe it. 'A half-drowned weak rat' she would also call me.

  At first light Maco presented himself at my tent to find me still in my dressing-gown. He urged me to eat some bread, but one of the slaves brought me a sort of gruel, thin corn porridge mixed with honey, and I found that sufficiently reviving to dress.

  The punt was poled out by a couple of Gallic mountaineers who didn't seem to mind being half-naked in the raw morning. In midstream it was still thick mist and the bow had almost touched the bank of the island before I was aware of land. Maco and the half-dozen guards we had agreed should make up the escort disembarked first. I followed with Agrippa, Maecenas, Marcellus and Rufus; we had left Philippus behind. My stepfather had served his purpose. There was no place for him in a conference of the leaders of Caesar's party.