Augustus i-1

by Allan Massie

  She had seduced my father when she was hardly more than a child. He refused to see her when he occupied Egypt because his plans for the kingdom did not include the Ptolemy family. So she had herself delivered to him wrapped up in a carpet. It was unfolded in his presence and all her charms were exposed, because, not unnaturally, though with some art, her scanty costume was agreeably disarranged, and she lay there giggling before him, mischievous as a kitten. (He called her 'kitten'.) Well, you may say – and you would be right – that it was about as difficult to seduce Julius Caesar as it is to eat the first strawberries of the season. Nevertheless, mark the sequel. She not only popped into his bed quicker than boiled asparagus; he popped her on to the throne of Egypt, having her brother (with whom she should have shared the kingdom) disposed of, at her request. What sort of a girl was it who at fourteen would sacrifice her brother for the sake of power? I find that much more remarkable than her ability to fascinate my father.

  It wasn't her beauty. Oh, she was pretty, very pretty, as a young girl; small, sinuous, active, with dancing eyes and mobile features, and a voice that always seemed to be choking back a laugh. They talked Greek of course – you do know that the Egyptian royal family are Greeks, and no more Egyptian than, well, your father Marcus Agrippa, don't you? Her Greek was quaint and provincial – Alexandrian Greeks swallow up consonants and run their words together so that their conversation sounds like the chattering of sparrows under the eaves. She made a great many grammatical mistakes. As you know correct Greek prescribes that neuter plural subjects take singular verbs; Cleopatra ignored this. Of course only a pedant concerns himself with grammatical niceties, and it is quite gentlemanly to make the occasional error. Still, our Roman ladies take pride in speaking correct Latin. Cleopatra didn't care; she disregarded the subjunctive whenever she felt like it, for instance. She never troubled herself, by the way, to learn even a little Latin, for there is no doubt that from the start, despite her affairs with my father and Antony, her hatred and resentment of Rome ran deep.

  Nothing could have been more deliberate than her assault on Antony. Its blatancy surpassed even her first meeting with Julius, which could be explained as a sort of childish prank and had certainly a childish charm. (As he said himself, 'Well, the last thing you expect from a carpet is to unroll a gorgeous piece of that sort of muslin.') I have already quoted to you one version of that encounter. Whose was it? Salvidienus's, I think. It was, I suppose, accurate enough. The arrival in the barge made an enormous impression and curiously most versions which I have heard agree. Certainly nobody who saw it forgot. Cleopatra was not really beautiful – her legs were too short for one thing (Livia always used to point that out, and add that, according to her information, she had very thick ankles too). But she was quite amazingly made up; her appearance when she set out to captivate Antony represented a superb triumph of art, if not of nature. Everyone agrees on that. What is often ignored is the extraordinary vulgarity of the spectacle. I admire the theatre myself, and I recognize that theatre is an indispensable part of politics too; but private life should eschew theatre, and, anyway, there should be a measure in all things. I really find it impossible to distinguish between Cleopatra's vulgar exhibitionism and the sort of disgusting spectacle put on for tourists in the red light district of Corinth; the only difference I can discern is that her show cost more. Morally, it was just the same sort of whore-display.

  Antony succumbed of course, for his own taste was ever deficient. He couldn't see how essentially comical the spectacle was – all the more comical because Cleopatra's very real intelligence allowed for a degree of self-parody. She was playing a part. She knew it. And she enjoyed it. She was the kind of woman who cannot help despising the men she deceives and, from that first meeting, she always retained a certain contempt for Antony. She had not despised Julius because she saw that he approached sex in the same spirit of irony as she did herself. Besides, she was then a child; he was the greatest man in the world; it is possible that even Cleopatra was dazzled by him. She did not love him, for that was not her nature. She was incapable of the dependency without which real love is impossible; she could not lose anything of herself in another.

  Antony was a different matter. True, at first he preserved some detachment. When he told me at Brindisi that it was politics – 'politics and sex, boy – she's a great lay, the Queen' – I believe he was speaking the truth. He was overwhelmed in the first days, but his intelligence and will reasserted themselves. The proof of that is that he was able for three years to abide by the agreement we made; in that time he never once saw Cleopatra alone.

  She didn't resent this. Why should she? She was vain (she would spend three hours a day before her looking-glass) and self-absorbed; but she was without that peculiarly feminine emotional vanity which demands a man's total surrender and is piqued when it is refused. You may find this surprising, but I believe it to be true. Their first affair had achieved her purpose. She had guaranteed her continued control of Egypt; she had placed Antony in her debt. Power was her chief interest, not love.

  Yet Antony never quite escaped her. I have talked of this with Octavia. She said, 'Of course I never truly loved Antony. I married him because you asked me to. I could not love him, for I could not respect him. I admired much. Who could fail to? I responded to the grandeur of his gestures. I came close, I confess, to loving the little boy in him; that is something which women find appealing in a man till one day, quite unexpectedly, it revolts us. He was kind to me, and considerate, and gentle; he made love with unexpected gentleness and took pleasure in doing what pleased me. Yet I knew all the time that I never possessed his heart. There was a part in him that always lusted after Cleopatra. Of course, there was another part that was grateful to me for protecting him from the Queen, for I am quite clear that deep down he feared her. What was it he said? "No Roman can stand without Rome." He knew that Cleopatra would lure him to disaster. He knew too that there was something in himself that welcomed that prospect. He feared it. He could never quite deny it. You see, Antony was far more complicated than people realized. They saw the bluff soldier; that was no more than a part of him, perhaps no more than a facade.'

  But I never denied Antony's complicated nature. I had after all good reason to know it.

  When Antony turned away from Octavia and turned his face back to the East and let his eyes dwell on the Queen, he surrendered to all that was self-destructive in his nature.

  They used to drink heavily together. Stories of their drinking bouts are legion. They would tope through the night and then stagger into the morning street where Antony would pick fights with costermongers and the keepers of fried-fish stalls, and Cleopatra would hold his coat while he exchanged blows with them. At other times they lay for days downing flask after flask as they sprawled on cushions and rose-petals and slaves wafted branches of palm trees over them. Reports came to us in Rome of Antony's effeminacy: how he had put on women's clothes and tended Cleopatra's toilet. Of course I didn't believe such stories; yet the fact that they were so freely relayed was not only disquieting (and politically dangerous); it showed how Antony had fallen away from the old Roman standards. 'No smoke without fire,' men said.

  Cleopatra would emerge from these debauches, bright-eyed and keen-witted. 'If all that's said is truth,' Agrippa grumbled, 'that Queen must have a liver like a senior centurion's.' Antony however was said to be prostrated with nausea after their sessions, sometimes taking as many as four or five days to recover. No doubt it was, as Agrippa said, largely a question of their different livers. Yet I knew there was more to it. Abstemious myself – you have never seen me drink wine without adding water to it; a practice I have adhered to since my late twenties – I have yet made close observation of those addicted to wine. It always represents some degree of self-hate. It is a surrender to the weaker and worse element in a man's nature. Even as he indulges this, and surrenders to Bacchus with every expression of pleasure, he is, in his willed self-debasement, willing his self-k
illing. Such a man will always suffer worse from wine, for such suffering and punishment is what he unconsciously seeks. In turning to Cleopatra and abjuring Octavia, Antony set himself to kill whatever was good in his own nature; he opened the door to his dark spirits. He beckoned defeat. I have never forgotten hearing a common soldier say, 'Bloody ruler of the world, you call him; a strumpet's fool and nothing else, poor sodding misbegotten bugger.'

  I started to talk of Cleopatra and have involuntarily ended by discussing Antony. I have a good grasp of him, but the Queen is like quicksilver. Let me say one thing only: she was depraved, but not evil; my enemy, but, in her own light, justified; an enchantress, but one who, like Circe, turned men swine. She was also Rome's most dangerous and implacable foe.

  TEN

  I could now look back on a decade of achievement: I had restored order in that part of the Republic under my immediate control; I had avenged my father; none of the self-styled 'Liberators' survived to hold public office, though Antony still indulged the younger Domitius Ahenobarbus whose father had been among them; I had built up a loyal party of friends, dedicated to the service and virtue of Rome; with the able and industrious assistance of Agrippa I had already repaired years of neglect and damage to our public buildings; my policy had ensured the gratitude of my fellow citizens; acting in concert with my friend Maecenas I had encouraged and fostered the arts; under my patronage Virgil, secure in the possession of his ancestral lands, had almost completed his great poem in praise of Italy, the sublime Georgics, and was already brooding, in the deep mysteries of the poetic spirit, his hymn to Rome's destiny ('What, Caesar,' he asked me, 'is Rome's mission?' 'Order and clemency', I replied, a judgement to which he gave lapidary expression in the resounding line: 'to spare the humble and subdue the proud'); in honour of my achievements, my fellow-citizens had of their own will erected a golden statue of me in the Forum.

  I had one private grief. Despite a lustrum of profound domestic happiness, Livia and I had no child of our own. Our tenderness continued to be lavished on my daughter Julia and Livia's sons, Drusus and Tiberius, as well as on my nephew Marcellus; the lack of a child born of our loins was nevertheless a sad deprivation; in vain Livia celebrated the mysteries of the Great Mother; in vain visited those shrines, to be found in all the country districts of Italy, to which village maidens resort that the Gods may bless their fertility. Speaking to you, my beloved grandchildren and adopted sons, it would be unseemly to rehearse the private questionings of the reasons for our unfruitfulness which disturbed our night hours. All I shall say here is that your happy presence has long consoled us for whatever might otherwise have been.

  Yet in that long summer of my thirty-first year, this private grief nagged me, running like an itch in a muscle alongside a deeper pain. Whenever I lifted my eyes towards the east I seemed to see dark clouds loom over the hills. I could take no abiding pleasure in the lizard basking in the sun; the mimic war of the arena disturbed me. I was weary after ten years of struggle, and oppressed by the knowledge of what was to come.

  I sought refuge in Livia and found her adamant. 'Rome cannot have two masters,' she said. When I protested that I was not 'master' of Rome, that, as a true Roman, I found the term 'lord' repellent, she withdrew herself from my embrace, and, resting on her right elbow, looked at me without smiling. 'You can no more hide from the truth,' she said, 'than a man can walk in a thunderstorm and remain dry.' 'The master's in bed,' said the painted slave-boy who guarded Maecenas' chamber.' 'No matter.' 'He's not alone,' the boy smirked. 'No matter. I must see him,' I said and pushed past.

  The room was dark. I called for candles. Maecenas lay there, entwined with a blond, pale-skinned boy, a Gaul I suppose, whose face took on a fugitive expression as he woke to my interruption. Maecenas stretched himself.

  'Caesar,' he yawned elaborately. 'Dear me. Perfect timing as usual. An hour earlier and I should have been seriously miffed. Run along, ducky,' he said to the boy, who withdrew sullenly now from the bed. He sat a moment on its edge, his hair tousled, eyes bleared with sleep and mouth slack-lipped. Then he rose to his feet, Maecenas patted him affectionately on the buttocks and he left us alone. 'Gorgeous, isn't he?' Maecenas said. 'I don't know why, I've suddenly developed a taste for these manly blonds, such a delicious combination of strength and softness, eagerness and shame. Do you know he…' 'Oh stop it,' I said, 'you don't have to put on this act for me.'

  'Well, hand me that dressing-gown, there's a love. You look worried.'

  'Would I be here at night if I wasn't? I couldn't sleep. My belly's disordered, I have a beastly headache and my nerves are a-jangle.' 'And Livia's no comfort, eh?' 'I didn't say that' 'No?'

  'There are things you can't say to a woman, aspects you can't reveal, doubts you're reluctant to share.'

  'Don't I know it. I love my own wife, you know. But she's not for every day. What is it?'

  'I don't know what to do,' I said. I sat down on the bed. 'Help me,' I said. Then: 'I'm not telling the truth. I know what must be done. But I'm nervous. I'm apprehensive. There's so much to be done. I don't know if we can bring it off. I don't know if they will stand for it.'

  Maecenas put his hand on my shoulder. 'Relax,' he said, 'we have come a long way since the Ides of March.' 'Caesar,' I said, 'travelled far to reach the Ides.' 'Your star shines bright,' he said.

  We talked through the night, elaborating the courses open before us. Long talk with Maecenas always calmed me. I saw the subtlety of things, the complicated relations of one event with another; no one I have known could more surely discern the patterns that life traces to form the carpet of history. I always left him more confident of where to go and what to do. And yet this time, though my intellect assented to his argument, I still tasted the sour saliva of doubt and dismay. Agrippa was brusque. 'Look, mate,' he said, 'it's a damn sight less complicated than you think. Suppose,' he said, 'you're trapped in a defile by the enemy who are blocking both ways out. Well, you can't bloody wait. The only way is to smash your way through. That's how it seems to me. Now, look at the facts. That's what you forget, that you have to look at the facts, not your fears. Antony is Antony. That's bad enough. But now he's Antony and bloody Cleopatra. Rome needs Egypt. We can't feed the city without Egypt. We can't pay the troops without Egypt and the taxes of the Eastern Empire. Everything we've worked for in Italy depends on getting control of Egypt and the East. Conversely, while we hold Rome, Italy and the West, Antony can never feel his power is anything but precarious. I don't know what Antony wants. Maybe he wants to make himself king. Who cares? It doesn't matter a Greek's curse. There are opposing forces that cannot be reconciled. So, my boy, there's only one way out. We've got to biff him before he biffs us.'

  'Antony has friends, relations, adherents here in Rome. We are by no means all-powerful here.' 'Well, biff them first. We've done it before.'

  I shook my head. Arguing with Agrippa was like being an ox trying to argue with the slaughterer; he held a sledgehammer ready. But this time I shook my head.

  'We can have no more proscriptions. The time for that is past.' I invited Virgil to come to see me in my villa in the Alban Hills. We ate on a terrace overlooking the holy stillness of Lake Albano. Olive trees and vines tumbled down to the lakeside under a sky of the most intense blue. The idle heat of summer lapped around us. We ate perch fresh from the lake and strawberries brought from nearby Nemi, and drank my own straw-coloured wine. Flowers closed in the heat, red, yellow and deep purple slashed with white, and, after we had eaten, the slaves left us alone.

  During the meal we had talked of poetry and agriculture and, as ever, Virgil's calm knowledge refreshed me; but when we were alone, he said, in his quiet northern voice, that never sounded without offering a rustic comfort, 'Your spirit is perturbed, Caesar.'

  I made a vague fanning gesture over the scene below us, now empty of humanity, as the peasants took their siesta, waiting for the sun to decline before they resumed their labours.

  'Yes,' Virgil said, 'you are
right. It is good. It is life. Nevertheless…'

  'I don't want to fight Antony,' I said. 'It's very simple, isn't it?'

  'Oh simple. When we have seen complications we cannot evade them by a mere return to simplicity. For the peasants who work the fields and groves, life has a rude simplicity. They must listen to the moods and rhythms of nature and the succeeding seasons. But you cannot attain peace, Caesar, as a peasant would. I knew why you asked me here today and I have thought about what I must say.'

  He picked up a strawberry and held it up between thumb and forefinger, for a moment against the light, and then replaced it.

  'The story of Cincinnatus,' he said, 'is the ideal of every true Roman. To plough harmonious fields, to be summoned from that worthy work, proper to every good man and our rightful heritage, in order to save the State; then to be offered the supreme power of the dictatorship; to put on the toga of State to discharge his duty, defeat the enemies of the Republic and receive the grateful plaudits of his fellow-citizens; then to resign his office, lay aside his toga and resume his place behind the plough, enriching and taming the soil of Italy; is that not the perfect life, as it is the perfect story which every true Roman has imbibed almost with his mother's milk?' I nodded, but could not speak, for my heart was full. He picked up the strawberry again.