Augustus

by Allan Massie

  'There's no point,' I said, 'in hoping that Maecenas . . . You have to accept that he is Maecenas.'

  'These nasty little Gallic blonds,' she said.

  I kissed her pouting mouth and licked the tears from her cheeks. It was the only day that year I felt well, and, though we made love again, it was never the same. Our affair was brief. I felt no guilt towards Maecenas. Later, the poor girl went, as they say, to the bad. She and Maecenas became friends after I had liberated her, and he introduced her to his other friends in the theatre, and she took up with a Greek dancer called Nikolides whose morals were notorious. I'm afraid that, as the years passed, her own behaviour won her the same reputation. Livia and her circle used to talk of her with disgust; they said she had become little better than a common prostitute. She began to drink heavily and died a couple of years before Maecenas himself. She had quite lost her looks by then, poor thing. I used to receive all sorts of frightful reports about her from my agents, and she could certainly have been prosecuted for immorality. I refused to do so, and even Livia did not dare urge me to, because she was afraid that I would regard such a suggestion as being aimed at Maecenas. That wasn't my reason at all of course; Maecenas didn't enter into it. I felt sorry for the poor girl, because I saw that being married to Maecenas would have disturbed any woman. Only once did I have occasion to reprove her. That was when it was reported to me that she had been boasting of the affair she had had with Augustus. I couldn't permit that and I told her so. She wept again and said it wasn't herself she was revenging, but her brother. That was ridiculous, and I told her so, sharply. We were never alone together again. It is a sad story. I have never forgotten her nut-brown laughter.

  Once I asked Horace why he wrote poetry: There are too many reasons,' he said. 'Because I have to is the simplest. But there is one reason that appeals to me. I write poetry to preserve what would otherwise be lost, or would decay.' When I think of nut-brown Terentia, I understand what he meant.

  Her brother betrayed me.

  The crisis blew up out of nothing. The proconsul of Macedonia, Marcus Primus, suffered like my poor Gallus from the delusion that can afflict those unaccustomed to authority when it is unwisely granted them. (But it is impossible to know whether a man is fit for authority till he is granted it.) He did not understand that the days of the anarchic Republic, when provincial governors were so little subject to control that they frequently made war without the sanction of the Senate, had gone. He launched an attack on the kingdom of Thrace. I was displeased, both because he had acted on his own account and also because I had no wish to embroil the Republic in a war on that frontier; indeed his act disturbed delicate diplomatic discussions which were then in train. Naturally the dignity of the Senate was likewise affronted. Primus was charged with treason. He had the impudence to allege that he was acting on my instructions. I appeared in the witness box myself to deny this, and the vainglorious fool was condemned to death.

  At that point my fellow-consul, Terentia's brother, protested. Primus was a friend of his, he told me, and he was deeply offended that I had allowed the trial to go forward. Moreover, Primus had committed no crime. He was acting for the greater glory of the Roman People.

  'We cannot,' I said, 'permit this private initiative. A generation ago it brought the Republic to its knees.'

  He flushed, like a man in wine, and banged the table.

  'You talk of restoring the Republic, Caesar, but it is no more than cant. I see that now. You invest me in this empty consular office, as if it represented the authority of the Republic, but though the two consuls are of equal status according to all the traditions of Rome, I find I am only a cipher, good for nothing. A Roman general seeks glory and empire, and you declare him a traitor . . .'

  'The Senate declared him a traitor . . .'

  'More cant. The Senate would not dare declare a mouse a thief without your nod . . .'

  'Listen,' I said, but he was deaf to reason.

  'What you call authority, I call tyranny,' he cried and turned away and marched out of the room. As he walked he held his head unnaturally stiff and high, like an actor wishing to convey outraged dignity. I was naturally perturbed. I asked Maecenas what he knew of his brother-in-law.

  'Less, my friend, than you know of my wife,' he said.

  'Could he be dangerous?'

  Maecenas smiled: 'I had thought better of you, my dear, than to think you capable of such naivety. It's worthy of the comedian you call your father. Think of the gang who murdered him, ducky. I daresay he even disdained to ask that question of them, for he despised men like Casca and Decius Brutus. Yet they were dangerous enough, in concert, to prick him to death. All men are dangerous, and the weak and stupid the most dangerous of all. My brother-in-law is viewy . . .' 'Viewy?'

  'He likes abstract nouns.' 'Like Liberty.'

  'His very favourite. Say Liberty and the poor fool enjoys an instant orgasm . . .'

  I summoned Timotheus, the Greek boy whom we had found useful in the affair of Antony's will lodged in the Temple of Vesta. He was a man now, of course, but still the same ringleted and scented epicene, with the same seductive squirm and fluttering eyelashes. I had learned though to respect him, for I had found him uncommonly useful on several occasions. He had indeed come to occupy a trusted position in my personal secretariat, though his duties were hardly secretarial. I am not proud of the use to which I was accustomed to put men like Timotheus (I had perhaps twenty such in my employment); but neither am I ashamed. Of course in the old days of the pristine Republic, spies and undercover agents were unknown, or at least employed only to gather intelligence about Rome's foreign enemies. But for more than a century now, great men had found it necessary to maintain an intelligence service; and in my position as princeps, I could not have done without one. I could hardly fail to be aware that many who appeared satisfied with the Republic I had restored yet nursed grievances. Some did so for family reasons; others because they were ambitious for power; others because they were jealous of what I had achieved. I would have been neglecting my duty towards the Republic if I had not made it my business to keep an eye on subversive elements in the State. I therefore told Timotheus that I wanted a full report on my fellow-consul, together with a list of his associates and notes on them, as soon as possible.

  'That will be easy, Caesar,' he said. 'As soon as you announced that he was to be your colleague, I introduced one of my contacts into his household. Frankly, my lord . . .'

  'I have told you, Timotheus, that I will not be addressed by that title

  'But Caesar, I am only a poor Greek freedman,' he squirmed. 'I think of you as my lord, for I owe my manumission to the noble generosity of your character.'

  'Don't, it offends me.'

  'Sorry, I'm sure then. As I was saying, I introduced one of my contacts into his household. You don't mind, do you, that I act on my own initiative in such matters? I'll buzz round and get a report from him straightaway . . .'

  'Be careful, Timotheus. There must be no connection between me and this investigation.'

  'Trust me for that. I'll be as quiet and circumspect as a mouse.'

  I was troubled. My health remained poor, and I had to be bled several times that autumn to draw off fevered blood. In my disordered state I was prey to alarms. It seemed that the stability I had sought for Rome was not yet achieved. Livia said to me, 'Take care. There are whispers, husband, and where there are whispers, daggers glint in the candle-light.' That remark astonished me; it was unlike Livia to use melodramatic language.

  I brooded on death, as I awaited the report Timotheus was preparing. Julia came to me with complaints against her husband. 'He's so conceited, and he easily shows he has little time for me.' I begged her to be patient and dutiful. I had passed legislation which would permit Marcellus to be elected aedile that year and to stand for the consulship (to which he would of course be elected) ten years before the statutory age. To appease Livia I arranged that Tiberius and Drusus should also be eligible for off
ice five years before they were of age. Livia was barely appeased, but, since Marcellus was my chosen heir, I could hardly permit them to assume equality. That would have made dissension certain.

  Maecenas told me that Agrippa was irked by my promotion of Marcellus. 'He feels that the boy will usurp his place in the State,' he warned me. I put the matter to Agrippa, assuring him that he was my closest companion, and would always remain so.

  'But Marcellus is my daughter's husband,' I said. 'You cannot wonder that I wish to advance him. Besides, he's your brother-in-law too.'

  Yes,' he said, 'and your fellow-consul stands in that relation to Maecenas.'

  Relations between Agrippa and Maecenas had deteriorated. We had shared the great adventure of our youth, but the memory was not strong enough to enable them to overcome their growing distrust. Each man had hardened in his character, and each found the other antipathetic. It was not the least of the distresses of that difficult year.

  Report from Timotheus: agent of the Private Office: to Caesar Augustus: Confidential.

  The consul Terentius Varro Murena: The consul is punctilious in the exercise of his official functions. No one has heard him breathe a word of disaffection in public. He has few dealings with his sister Terentia, and has never been known to dine in the house of his brother-in-law Maecenas. The fact that he spent a week last August staying in Maecenas' villa near Cerveteri may be of significance. But Maecenas was not there at the time, though on both the preceding and subsequent weeks he is reported as having sacrificed at his family's ancestral tombs in the vicinity.

  Acting on instructions received I inserted an agent into Murena's household in the days following my discussion with the Princeps. I had of course done likewise as soon as Murena's consulship was announced. Unfortunately, my first agent fell foul of the consul's major-domo, and was dismissed for alleged drunkenness and insubordination. (N. B. I have since arranged that this first agent be transferred to the galleys where there is no danger that he will disclose the instructions he received by way of me.) His replacement was a Greek boy, it being reported that Murena's tastes were so inclined. (It is recognized that there is some hazard in employing such an agent, if only because circumstances may arise in which he begins to feel an affection for his subject/nominal master, and thus be himself tempted to disloyalty. In this case however it was judged that the danger was slight. That judgement was based on observation of the character of the agent employed.) The introduction was successful. The agent soon caught his master's eye and was promoted to act as cup-bearer at private supper parties. Despite this, these supper parties seem to have been decorous affairs. There is no reason to doubt the agent's report. Indeed he complained with a visible degree of pique of the tepidity of the subject's interest, the subject doing no more than caress him negligently . . .

  'What a sink of iniquity,' Agrippa said. 'How can you bear to employ such people?'

  'Come,' I replied, 'it was you yourself who introduced Timotheus to my notice.'

  'Doesn't make him stink less.'

  'Never mind. Read on. You will find what follows more interesting, more to your taste and to the point.'

  'Bloody little catamites. I'd send the whole shooting-match to the Rhine frontier.'

  'I doubt if that would secure us against the Germans. Do read on and stop grumbling.'

  The agent reports that these supper parties were exclusively male. He found them serious affairs, and was at first puzzled by the tenor of the conversation. He has been regrettably less than completely efficient in obtaining a full list of names of those who attended the parties, of which he attended six in the course of a fortnight. At all of them he and other servants were excluded when the main part of the meal had been concluded. On three occasions he waited at the door for more than three hours between the time of his dismissal and the departure of the guests.

  Three men, besides the consul, are reported as having been ever-present. They have been identified as: Fannius Caepio, Lucius Primus, and G. Aemilius Scaurus.

  Notes on the above: Fannius Caepio is the nephew of C. Fannius who served with Sextus Pompey in Sicily, and accompanied him after his defeat there to Asia. It is not recorded how he died, but neither is there any record of him after Pompey's death. Fannius Caepio was brought up by his mother, whose own father was killed fighting alongside C. Cassius at Philippi. There is therefore on both sides of the family a history of disaffection. The young Fannius Caepio - he is in his early twenties - has expressed disdain of those who accept public office 'in the Republic as now constituted'. Is this in itself not a treasonable offence, or at least an insult to the Senate and magistrates? In character, he is violent, ill-tempered, high-spoken, and given to gaming and wine.

  Lucius Primus is the half-brother of M. Primus, recently disgraced proconsul of Macedonia. Though L. Primus is reported as being of timid, even cowardly, disposition, he resents his half-brother's condemnation. He has been heard to say that it is proof that Rome suffers an Oriental despotism.

  Q. Aemilius Scaurus is the nephew of the stepbrother of Sextus Pompey, Mam Aemilius Scaurus, whose life was spared and whose estates were restored after the Battle of Actium in which he was taken prisoner. Q. Aemilius Scaurus, who is also a connection of the disgraced former triumvir, M. Aemilius Lepidus, is known to be heavily in debt. He has been heard to say that 'only a real provincial governorship in the old style of the Republic can restore my fortunes . . .'

  Agrippa looked up from his reading, 'What a shoddy gang.'

  'They are all obviously traitors. Are they dangerous? That is the question.'

  Conclusion: It is clear that these four have been taking soundings among their extensive connections and acquaintances. Though there is no prima facie evidence of conspiracy as yet, there is sufficiently strong ground for suspicion to justify intervention. Alternatively it is recommended that some of those who have attended only one supper party at the consul's, some of whom, it is presumed, have rejected overtures made to them, be questioned. A list is appended in appendix one.

  'A sorry crew,' Agrippa said, looking over the list. 'Hardly a good man among them. No Marcus Brutus certainly.'

  I was always irritated by Agrippa's respect for Brutus, but I let it pass.

  'Appendix II is marked "for your eyes only",' Agrippa said.

  'Read it if you like,' I said. 'I doubt if we shall have to act upon it. It contains proposals for the manufacture of evidence. Like all agents Timotheus loves to provoke what he thinks is merely dormant. You don't care for him, but he has not only relish for the game. He shows a remarkable aptitude. But, as I say, I don't think it will be necessary. One of these on that list will spill the beans. It's just a matter of whom he tries to implicate.'

  'You've no doubt then that there is a conspiracy?' 'Oh none. One can't have, can one?' 'It could be just loose drunken talk. No more. I hate acting on reports from rats like Timotheus.' 'Unfortunately, rats deliver the best reports.' Agrippa bit his lip.

  'Look,' I said, 'it's too much of a coincidence. Nevertheless we have to act carefully. That's why I have asked Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso to call on us. He should be here any minute.'

  'Piso? Why him?'

  'I'm going to need a new consular colleague, aren't I?' 'That old brute though?'

  Agrippa's surprise was not itself surprising. Piso was an old enemy. A heavy dark bushy-eyebrowed man, he had joined Brutus and Cassius before Philippi and fought bravely there. He too had subsequently adhered to Sextus Pompey, but, on Pompey's defeat in Sicily, resigned himself to the extinction of the cause he had supported and retired to his estates in Latium. I had excluded him from my purge of the Senate because I admired his virtue, but he had refused my overtures and declined to return to public life. His self-regard was high; his consciousness of his own superior virtue great. He was in short a prig, and the man I needed. When he was shown in, I had wine set before him. (All the

  Pisos are great drinkers, and most of them incapable of rational discourse without the aid
of Bacchus.) He quaffed a glass.

  'Falernian,' he said. 'On the thin side. My own wine is better.'

  He looked at Agrippa.

  'What's he doing here? I understood this was to be a private conversation.'

  'Vipsanius Agrippa is my closest co-adjutor,' I replied, choosing an old-fashioned word, even one pedantically old-fashioned, to describe him. 'I have no secrets from him, and he is part of my privacy.'

  'Hmphm,' he said, 'well, nobody can claim they knew his father.'

  Such a remark could still make Agrippa bridle. I placed my hand on his sleeve.

  'His deeds supply him with the glory ancestors reflect on others,' I said.

  'Hmphm,' he said again. 'I like to know a man's ancestors when I deal with him. Well, you've dragged me here, Caesar, just when the new wine is ready. I hope you have a good reason. Why?'