by Allan Massie
'Do,' she said, 'do just that. See if she will commit sacrilege to help her beloved brother.'
And with these words, and a face as full of wifely love as Clytemnestra's, she swept from the room. As it happened I dared not approach Octavia. I told myself I could not ask her to take this weight on herself. But that was not the true reason. I was afraid of her anger and contempt.
Even Agrippa shrank from the deed. When I talked of the will to him, he at once rattled off a string of military statistics, all claiming to prove that Antony was lost whatever happened in Rome and Italy. Only his refusal to meet my eye told me of his fear, told me he was lying. I couldn't recall that he had ever lied to me before.
So, in the end, I had to take full responsibility. Even Plancus slipped into the shadows, and I wrote to the High Priestess requesting an interview. She declined, politely. No doubt rumour of my intention had reached her; it was unlikely that Plancus had kept his mouth shut. Alternatively… but to dwell on the alternative could do nothing for my self-esteem.
Then, one of the tribunes, whose name I now forget, organized a pro-Antonian demonstration in the forum. There was something of a riot, a few houses were burnt, and Agrippa's police had to clear the streets. Men started to talk wildly – as men always will in times of civil unrest. This time word flew round that we would soon be back in the days of Clodius and Milo, those gangsters whose ruffians had made political life impossible for a time some twenty years previously. This talk alarmed Agrippa. Your father was a great man, a great soldier and even finer administrator; at heart however he was a policeman. There was nothing he feared except disorder.
He came to me now like a bewildered bull, to tell me I had been right and he himself wrong. 'It's no longer a question of what to do,' he said, 'but how to do it.'
'I'm glad you see it that way. Have you any ideas?' I said. 'I may say,' I added, 'that we can't look for any co-operation from the Vestals.' 'In that case,' he said, 'it's a choice between force and fraud.' 'That's no choice,' I said. 'Can I leave it to you?' He bungled it. We were dining late (which was ever Livia's taste, itself a surprise to those who cast her as a conventional Roman lady of the old school, and did not realize that, when Livia abode by conventions, she did so because they pleased her, while remaining always ready to disregard them if they happened to clash with her immediate preferences or inclinations). We were, as I say, dining late, when my stepfather bustled in, full of that simulated consternation with which he was wont to impart the latest news, and, having attracted general attention by his huffing and puffing and hopping from foot to foot, exclaimed, 'You'll never believe the atrocious news I have just heard. There's been an attempted robbery at the Temple of Vesta.' 'Attempted?' 'Robbery?' Livia's head came up like a startled mare's. 'Who were the thieves? What were they after?'
Philippus, gratified by the attention he had won, seated himself on a couch and clapped his hands for the slave-boy. 'Give me wine,' he said, 'I'm all out of breath with the hurry of coming here. That precisely no one knows. They were slaves of course. Greeks, men say. Whose is not yet clear. Nor what they were after. But I'm told we can expect revelations. They'll be put to the question of course. You look pale, my boy,' he said to me. 'You're overdoing things, I've told you that. What do you make of my news? It's terrible, isn't it, to think of such a thing happening. I don't know what the world's coming to,' and he drank his wine, not, you will understand, as if that could tell him… Livia denied herself to me. I knew she had so determined by the way she refused to look at me, and, when I came to bed, she had turned her face to the wall and was pretending to be asleep.
Before then, however, I had talked to Agrippa, whom I had sent a slave to fetch from wherever he was gambling. The shock having been sprung, I was quite calm. 'They're your men, I take it,' I said.
He nodded. All the colour had been drained away from his face, and his usual composure had vanished.
I said, They mustn't be permitted to speak. I don't suppose they can be trusted to keep silence. They're Greeks, aren't they?'
They're Greeks. Dammit all, they had to be. I couldn't use illiterates.'
That's all right,' I said, 'but their mouths must be stopped. You know that. You've taken an interest in the city's aqueducts. You know what happens if an aqueduct springs a leak. Exactly. Well, your plumbers have failed in their repair job. They're leaky themselves. They mustn't be allowed to talk. I've had the Praetorian Prefect take over responsibility. But the question is, is there one of them who might sing the right tune to save his skin? Find out will you, before he's killed trying to escape. And if he exists, this is what he should sing…' I looked at Livia in the half-light. I knew she wasn't asleep. The air of our room was heavy and menacing with her resentment and reproach. When I laid my hand on her thigh I felt the muscles stiffen. 'It's going to be all right,' I said. Without shifting her body, she distanced herself from me. I was excluded from all that I most immediately desired, and I dared not move towards her. The boy was brought before me in the morning. I had taken care to have a dozen senators assembled, at least three of whom I knew to have been friends of Antony. The Greek was very young, about sixteen I suppose, with oiled curls and a smooth oiled body. His mouth was swollen and a bruise was coming up on his cheekbone. He looked frightened, like a puppy expecting to be whipped. I was surprised that he was so young, but Agrippa explained that he had been the lookout boy. 'I suppose Democritus,' (an ex-gladiator who had been the leader of the gang) 'fancied him,' Agrippa said. 'You can see he's a bloody little catamite. Typical Greeks, you know.'
The boy fluttered his long eyelashes over his big doe eyes. I looked at him severely, rejecting the timid smile he was trying to muster. I said to Agrippa, 'What's his name and provenance?'
Timotheus. Slave-born. Has been a member of a dancing-troupe. Taken up by the gladiator Democritus.' 'Has he been put to the question?' 'Wasn't necessary. He babbled at the sight of the instruments.'
I turned to the group of consulars I had invited to be present at the examination.
'Would one of you like to question him?' I asked. 'You perhaps?' I offered the role to M. Cocceius Nerva, consul three or four years before, who had served under Antony, but who was also, like all his family, a close friend of Plancus. I made the choice carefully. Cocceius Nerva, a leading member of a rising family, was swithering on a tightrope of indecision; he danced in the air unable to decide which side would better promote his career. Now he looked for a moment as if he would rather decline my invitation, considered the consequences of that, and nodded his head in acceptance. He began to question the boy in a harsh guttural accent. The boy stuttered over his first responses (I thought to myself; he has a certain theatrical talent; well chosen, Agrippa). Seeing his fear, Nerva warmed to his work. His voice snarled out his questions, and the boy began to whimper obediently. Then at last, as if giving way to intolerable pressure, he told his story.
He had had no responsibility himself, yet he had to confess he had been in it from the beginning.
'I was drinking,' he said, 'with Democritus – that's my friend, my special friend, you understand, in a wineshop in the Suburra. We were short of money, business has been bad lately with so many patrons out of the city, and we were moaning about it. Democritus was always a moaner, I have to say that. Well, then, as we were drinking, a big hook-nosed fellow came up and sat at our table. I didn't like the look of him from the start. He spoke to Democritus as if he knew him, but it soon came out that he'd only been recommended to him. Then he looked at me doubtfully. "You can say anything before the boy," Democritus said. So the man nodded and said there was a job on. "What sort of a job?" says Democritus. "A big one," says the man. "Can you read?" he says. "Not so well," says Democritus. "Bugger that," says the man. "But I've friends as can," says Democritus, not anxious to see the job slip away from us. "That's all right then," says the man, "it's not a one-man job anyway." "So what is it then?" "Well," the man says, "you know the Temple of Vesta?" "Who doesn't? Not that any m
an's ever been in it," says Democritus, laughing but really intrigued now, because it does sound like it's going to be big. "Well, I don't," says the man. "I'm a Roman citizen, but I was born in a colony and I've never lived in Rome. I'm a soldier," he said, "from the East, and I don't know the city, else I'd do the job myself." "All right, then," Democritus says, "so what is it?" And then the man comes out straight. "The General Mark Antony has deposited his will with the Vestals, and the man wants us to snitch it." "Why?" says Democritus, playing dumb, "why and what's in it for us?" Well, to cut a long story short, what's in it for us sounds pretty good, but I understand you gentlemen want to know the why, and it seems from what I understood that this will was like to prove an embarrassment and so some of the General's friends, maybe the General himself, thought it best that it be got rid of…'
'All right,' Nerva said, 'we understand that. Didn't it occur to ycu that he had only to ask for its return? Why this elaborate burglary…?' The boy looked Nerva in the eye for the first time.
'Of course that struck us,' he said. 'We're not stupid, you know, sir. We asked him that very question. And he had an answer. He said that they'd chosen this method because the burglary was sure to be blamed on Caesar here, and that was the reason…'
Oh no, I thought to myself, Agrippa has overdone it. That's one refinement too many. Surely someone will see that if their burglary had been brought off, I would have been able to produce a will of some sort… my stomach twitched… but of course I was viewing the affair from a different angle; this possibility occurred to nobody else seemingly. Yet it was a possibility that must not be allowed to fester. Someone would spot the weak point in the story. 'This must be nonsense,' I said. 'I apologize, Nerva, for intervening in this cross-examination which you are conducting so ably and which has already elicited such interesting information, but this can't be right. There is a fundamental flaw in the boy's story. Surely, if the burglary had taken place successfully, and the burglary had been blamed on me – which…' I hesitated… 'is an impious thought profoundly offensive to me – such an attribution could only be convincing if I had had a will to produce. Otherwise the story would not hold water.'
The consulars frowned into the muddy pool. The boy turned his huge eyes on me.
'I thought of that too, General,' he said, 'and thinking my friend was being led into trouble, I even raised the point. The agent smiled and answered me in such a way as to leave no doubt that he was indeed your enemy. Then he furnished us with an explanation. You were indeed, after the burglary, to be supplied with the will – by a well-wisher. It was to be such that you could not resist publishing it. But Antony would have the real will, with the Vestals' seal, and the real will would be much more "innocuous" – that was his word – than the one you would have published. Then, you see, he would have sent the real will to the Senate, or invited leading senators to examine it. You see, my lords, the whole purpose of the plot was not to get hold of the will at all, because, according to our information, it really is innocuous; the plot was aimed at Caesar here. Its intention was to discredit him. It would seem he had first committed an act of sacrilege by ordering the burglary, and then discovering that the will he had stolen didn't suit his purposes, had committed a second crime: forgery…'
I was amazed by the boy's talent. What's more, he was now evidently enjoying his role, playing the part of a man revelling in the release that comes from the self-abasement of confession. Moreover, I marvelled at the effect of this last speech. It was clear that the consulars were convinced it was true. It was therefore safe to confess myself staggered by the enormity of what had been revealed, and at a loss as to the appropriate action to be taken. I did so, and there was much shaking of heads. Only one consular, my wife's cousin Appius Claudius Pulcher, seemed doubtful still. He said he would like confirmation from the other members of the gang.
'Killed, resisting arrest,' Agrippa said. 'My police report they were a desperate crew. Only this little rat submitted at once, in tears and without a struggle.'
'We may be thankful that he did,' Nerva said. 'Otherwise who knows what vile conclusions, damaging to the Republic, might have been drawn?'
The upshot was satisfactory. It was resolved that a motion be put to the Senate requiring the Vestals, in the name of the Senate and the Roman People, to broach convention and deliver to their keeping the Testament deposited there by Marcus Antonius, considering that they had reason to believe that the said Testament contained matter pertaining to the security and sovereignty of the Senate and the Roman People. Even the Vestals felt obliged to heed such a request, which they did, though adding a rider in which they proclaimed the reverence that should be due to testamentary documents lodged in their keeping – a reverence, I need hardly tell you, which I have never ceased to feel.
The publication of the will had the anticipated effect. It aroused fear and anxiety and rumours were soon rife that Antony intended to move the capital of the empire from Rome to Alexandria. There were spontaneous outbursts of popular feeling against Antony who had once been the people's darling. Now his house on the Aventine was fired by the mob. Everywhere one heard stories of his abject subjection to Cleopatra. It was said that he had walked in the train of her eunuchs, himself dressed in Egyptian robes and that he had taken part in the abominable rites with which the corrupt and decadent inhabitants of the Nile valley celebrate their loathsome gods.
No one dared to raise a voice in his defence, not even in the Senate. On the contrary, feeling ran so high against him that, without any necessary prompting on my part, he was divested of his imperium and deposed from the consulship for the following year to which he had already been elected. There was even a proposal that he should be named as a public enemy; but here I thought fit to intervene. I had no desire to enflame feeling further against Antony, not because I had developed any tenderness for him – apart from the remnants of the affection which he had always inspired in me, however reluctantly – but for a more politic reason. Four years earlier, after Pompey's defeat, I had formally declared the era of the civil wars concluded. I had no wish to suggest that it was being renewed. On the contrary, the war, now being prepared, was directed against an enemy of Rome, not against a fellow-citizen who wished to subvert the state. Our foe was Cleopatra. I was calling on all Italy to make a supreme effort in a Great Patriotic War.
Accordingly, I now prepared my master stroke. I called on the whole of Italy, the whole Western world, senators, troops and civilians, to swear an oath of loyalty to me in Rome's struggle against perfidious Egypt. None was compelled to take this oath. Indeed, mindful of Antony's presence in the ranks of the enemy, and mindful too of the solemn nature of personal obligations, I made it clear that those who felt such loyalties to Antony should be under no pressure; I even specifically exempted the city of Bologna, an old cliency of Antony's, and stated that I would not regard its loyalty to its old patron as an expression of disaffection to me or to Rome. It was said that such clemency and benignity exceeded anything displayed by Julius.
Because the oath was voluntary and because my cause was just, being the cause of Rome and Italy, the whole country spontaneously flocked to the special offices established in every municipality to assure me of their trust. Nothing in my life has given me more enduring pride than this. Even those colonies of veterans who had served under Antony took the oath. I may add that this was all done despite the necessity of imposing some of the severest taxation Rome and Italy had ever suffered; denied resources of the East, we found it necessary to impose an income tax of twenty-five per cent to pay for the war. But, since all knew that the war was just, and all hoped that a combined and cheerful effort could bring it to a speedy termination, even this tax was paid, though before its purpose was fully understood and before the oath-taking served to rally the mass of our countrymen to the cause, there were sporadic riots and disturbances in some of the provincial towns. I could understand and forgive these; no sensible man likes to pay taxes. It was soon realized however th
at this tax was necessary, and it was paid all the more willingly when men remembered the enormous contributions to the public Treasury I had made and was continuing to make from my own resources. Moreover, everyone knew that I lived simply and spent little on myself.
The triumvirate having been abolished, the Senate responded by granting me a right of command without limitation of function or command. The title of dictator had also been abolished, and I had no wish to revive it, for its associations were no longer those of the heroic past of the Republic; but in fact I now possessed all the powers of the dictatorship for an unlimited period. Yet it was important that these had been granted me not solely by the Senate but by the spontaneous confidence of all Italy.
Only one shadow was cast over my serenity. Livia, distressed beyond my understanding by the affair of the Vestal Virgins, still denied me the marriage bed. My love was deep enough to enable me to continue to respect her feeling; but her withdrawal grieved me. My body and senses could find easy comfort, such as a man needs (or thinks he needs) but I felt a cold emptiness in my heart.
I was over thirty, and my youth died in that winter as we prepared for war with Cleopatra.
TWELVE
Had the virtue departed from Antony? I asked myself that question as we lay in our camp at Mikilitsi in the hills on the north side of the Bay of Actium. He had already made so many mistakes that I could not but wonder if his heart was in the war. He should never have permitted us to cross to Greece unmolested. He had then allowed us to take up our strong position on the hills. At first I feared a trap, but, when he crossed the narrows and encamped his army two miles south of mine and despatched his cavalry to the north of us to try to cut our supply of water, his movements, formerly so sure and often surprising, were now so hesitant and lethargic, that I realized there was no such trap. Antony had lost confidence in his own genius.
