Augustus

by Allan Massie

  It had been a difficult business to negotiate. I was pleased when it was over and settled. It never occurred to me that I had made a mistake. Certainly I had acted in a manner that disturbed and even pained the three people involved, but I was confident that, when things had settled down, they would realize that I had been acting for their best interests as well as Rome's. They could see after all that I had derived no personal advantage from what I had arranged. And they were all sensible people, capable of corning to terms with the changed situation. Moreover, it was a comfort to know that Livia and I had acted in concert. It was she who had finally persuaded Tiberius that he should fall in with my plans.

  Apart from that one occasion when he caught sight of Vipsania and lost control of himself, he gave no indication that he had reservations or regrets. He resumed his duties with his former efficiency. His brother Drusus was doing great things in the far north, and in the year of Agrippa's death reached the river Weser, having cut a canal between the Rhine and Zuyder Zee to facilitate the supply of his troops. Tiberius' task still lay in Dalmatia and on the Danube frontier. It was demanding work, hard slogging, requiring close attention to detail, nothing glamorous about it, well-suited to his temper. No man could have done it better. Let me say this clearly, for I am well aware that I have been accused of injustice to Tiberius, and that events have been so misconstrued as to suggest that there was ill-feeling between us. That was nonsense. The proof is that I gave him my daughter in marriage. Anyone who doubts that as evidence of my high regard for Tiberius should consider how I esteemed her first two husbands.

  Julia accompanied him to Dalmatia. It was good for her to get away from the frivolities of the city and to be reminded of the real unremitting work of Empire. To wake in camp, to the rattle of harness and the champing of horses, to feel the cold nip one's fingers and see the rime-encrusted flaps of the tent glitter in the morning sunshine, or feel the chill of river-mists penetrate one's bones, to see the flies swarm round the horses in July heat, and to be jolted miles in cumbersome baggage-wagons -these are the experiences, unremarkable in themselves, yet real and demanding, that the city fops Julia had made her friends have never known. I am a man who has seen enough war to prize the blessings of peace, but I can never forget that Rome's greatness depends on the army. The meaning of Empire is certainly to be tasted in the simplicity and order of rural Italy, but it is something which cannot be grasped by one ignorant of the harsh realities of the frontier camps.

  A child was born to them after eighteen months of marriage, but lived little more than a week. It was the Gods' will that the little boy be taken from us, but I wept, for the death of a child is a frightful thing and I feared its effect on Julia and her husband.

  Death began to absorb too great a part of my thoughts. I was in my middle fifties, and, though my own health remained good, and was indeed, thanks to the Gods and Antonius Musa, better than it had been in my youth, I could hardly fail to be aware that I was now old. The unveiling of the Altar of Peace seemed to me my apotheosis. It represented the sum of my accomplishment and a statement of my vision of Rome. The frieze round the altar shows me and my family on our way to sacrifice in the Field of Mars. I look on the figures now with sadness as well as pride: so many memories, so many regrets. Another carving displays Italy as Mother Earth, the source, provider, guarantor and witness of the prosperity I had enabled our people to recover. Aeneas too is there, sacrificing a pregnant sow on the site of Alba Longa, Rome's mother city.

  I summoned all the family to the unveiling. Only Drusus was absent, still campaigning in Germany. The sky was cerulean, the sun intense.

  We proceeded on foot down from the Palatine, along the Sacred Way, round the base of the Capitol, all the time through throngs of the happy and sweaty crowd. The loudest cheers were reserved for my boys, Gaius and Lucius, who, having no known foibles, were free from the affectionate ribaldry directed at Tiberius and myself by veterans who had served under us. But there was another reason for the cheers which greeted the boys: Gaius and Lucius were recognized by all as the hope for the future; they would themselves provide and guarantee Rome's continued victory and the lasting peace. Their eyes shone as brightly as the sun as they delighted in their reception; it was in that day and hour that they first tasted glory.

  Celebrations continued for several days in the city, but our own were cut abruptly short. News was brought from the north that, in returning from his campaigning, Drusus had suffered a severe fall in a river crossing. He had caught a fever and was gravely ill. Livia's grief and alarm were terrible to see; she snatched Drusus' wife Antonia to her bosom, and I saw what I had never seen in our thirty years of marriage, tears spring into her eyes, and run unrestrained by pride down her cheeks, which were themselves pale. Horrified at this sight, I knew there was nothing I could do to comfort her, but called Tiberius to me. I told him to ride at once, with no ceremony or delay, to his brother's bedside.

  'As soon as you are there, write to us, that we may have some reliable knowledge. I have never seen your mother so afflicted.'

  The letter from Tiberius was brief indeed:

  I arrived here to find my poor brother barely conscious. He recognized me, commended his children to me, expressed his love and gratitude to his mother and yourself, and died before nightfall. It was as if he had been waiting my arrival in order to die. It seems that his horse slipped in the river, and fell on top of him, crushing his ribs and breaking a thigh. Men have survived worse injuries, but it is the will of the Gods. I shall accompany the body to Rome.

  I pictured Tiberius tramping by the side of the bier, down the dusty roads of Gaul, into the high Alpine passes, cool even in September noon, descending to the rich plain of the Po valley, skirting the Apennines, and at last coming in sight of the city.

  The stamp and shuffle of the march, the creak of the wagons and the long silence in his heart. 'We are the Gods' sport,' I had heard Tiberius say. Would he not believe that even more thoroughly now?

  As for me, I wept for Drusus, but no tears of mine could assuage his mother's grief. A mother's love for her son is something more profound than any other love between man and woman. There is no pride of conquest in it. And Drusus had been a warm and loving son.

  His ashes were laid in the family mausoleum, and I could not escape the reflection that the two most brilliant men of the younger generation, Drusus and Marcellus, would never fulfil their promise. My heart ached to think of the sad waste.

  Fortunately Drusus and Antonia had had three children, and so Antonia was not left without consolation. I assured her that I would do whatever was in my power to care for them.

  Many drown in the sea that surges round the shipwreck of old age. Maecenas died the following year. Our ways had drifted apart, for I had found it hard to forget what he had said to me on that occasion when we had talked of Julia's marriage, and, though I offered to go to see him on his deathbed, my olive branch (as I thought it) was rejected. Yet there was something of his old wit and panache in the terms of his reply: 'Maecenas, weak with fever, wasted with disease, and now incontinent, has no wish to meet Caesar on even more unequal terms than usual. Let us delay our next encounter till we both find ourselves in Pluto's realm, whither I hasten to prepare your couch.' It was like Maecenas not to be able to maintain his third-person formality to the end of the sentence.

  With his departure went the last companion of my great adventure, for even Livia did not know me till I was established. It was perhaps memory of these salad days that persuaded Maecenas to name me as his heir.

  The poet Horace did not survive his patron by more than a few weeks. I never felt for Horace as I did for Virgil, for there was little sense of the uncanny in him, little sense that he brought us mere mortals intimations of the divine purpose. But I liked him; he was a man with whom one could be easy, content with little, a strange contrast to Maecenas, and yet the affection between them ran deep.

  Virgil had promised the inauguration of a golden age. />
  The air was chill with death.

  TEN

  I myself supervised the boys' education. I saw to it that they studied mathematics, philosophy, rhetoric, literature; that they grew adept in martial exercise and equitation. I took direct charge myself of their political education, devising a number of Socratic dialogues for their instruction. I had come to admit to myself precisely what I was doing: I was training the rulers of the Republic. Some may see in this a primarily dynastic pre-occupation. There were, I knew, those who grumbled that I was treating my grandsons as princes. I ignored the slander. Those who uttered it were ignorant of the nature of Republican government. Precisely because a Republic permits more liberty than a monarchy may, so for that very reason it is the more essential that its leaders be thoroughly educated and taught the principles of political ratiocination: for a Republic is more easily swayed by sentiment than by reason.

  Among the doubters was Tiberius. He wrote me several carefully worded letters from his lonely frontier outpost (to which Julia, distressed by the death of their child, had no longer the heart to accompany him, the place being, as she told me, full of wretched memories). He acknowledged my care for his stepsons, but protested that I should remember they were as yet untried.

  I knew that of course. It was my intention that they should receive trial soon, for I was aware how debilitating the life of Roman society could be even for ardent youth, and I was determined that they should not frequent the society that circled round their mother.

  There were many eager to natter them, and the Senate even passed a resolution permitting Gaius to hold the consulship when he was fifteen. That was too early, and I quashed the proposal though it pleased me to see the esteem in which the boys were held.

  That year Tiberius was accorded a Triumph for his work on the northern frontiers and his tribunician powers were renewed for five years. Though I was distressed by the apparent coolness between him and Julia - it was reported to me that they never addressed one another in private -1 could not avoid satisfaction at the unfolding of my plans.

  'I am worried about Tiberius,' Livia said.

  'But why? I don't understand. He is surely a notable success. Our greatest general, consul for the second time, my trusted partner. . .'

  Livia sighed and looked away from me.

  'You will never understand him,' she said, 'your natures are so different.'

  'Perhaps that is so. Nevertheless Tiberius and I are in constant correspondence, as you know, when he is away from Rome, and I have had several long discussions with him. He is always lucid and level-headed, eminently sensible. I don't understand why you should be worried.'

  'You have always seen just what you want to see, and the habit has been growing on you. As for Tiberius, when you talk to him, what does he reveal of his sentiments, of what he feels in his heart? He denies entry even to me. I love Tiberius, husband, second only to you, and indeed more deeply in that different way, with that intense responsibility which mothers feel towards their sons. And he withdraws from me. I see only what flickers on the surface of the waters, nothing of the dark swirling currents below. But I know three things: first, he has never recovered from Drusus' death . . .'

  'Ah, which of us has?'

  'For Drusus was his only confidant. Much I have known of Tiberius throughout his life, I have learned by way of Drusus. Second, Tiberius' pride is a fearful and secret thing such as we can never measure, for you have no pride of that sort and no understanding of it. Third, allied to this pride, runs a deep resentment. . .'

  'Resentment?' I cried. 'What has Tiberius to resent. . . ?' Livia smiled, 'Resentment,' she said, 'is an inborn quality.'

  Was she warning me, or merely expressing her own doubts and fears?

  It mattered little, I reflected. There was work for Tiberius to do. Whatever the difference between us, we had this in common: that neither had ever shirked a job. A renewal of unrest in Armenia demanded the presence of a strong man in the East. Tiberius' prestige was high there. The legions would be reassured by his arrival. I therefore summoned him before me, and invited him to take up this command, with a grant of full imperium.

  'I am offering you,' I said, 'exactly what Agrippa had. And the job is even more urgent and demanding now.'

  He stood before me long, lanky and balding, his eyes a little bloodshot, as if he had drunk deeply the night before. (It was his only vice: fortunately one the troops admired; they used to call him Biberius Caldius Mero).* He seemed to sway, and it occurred to me that he might even be still a little drunk. When he spoke I was sure he was.

  'No,' he said.

  Nothing else; just the blank negative. I was taken aback.

  'You can't have understood me,' I said. 'What I am offering you confirms your position as my partner in the Government of the Republic. Is that nothing? Oh, you may feel that your place is still on the German Frontier and I am indeed loth to take you away from there, but this matter is really urgent. It is a task of the utmost importance and one in which you will win great honour.'

  'No,' he said again. 'I've had enough. I want out.' 'What do you mean?'

  What sort of trick was this, I wondered. He fixed his gaze on a fly buzzing round the rim of a wine-jar, and stood there, like a great bull in sullen silence.

  'I don't understand you,' I said again.

  * 'Drinker of hot wine without water'

  'That's too bad, but it's plain enough,' he muttered, turned on his heel and shambled out.

  I was mystified, then I was furious.

  'What,' I cried to his mother, 'does your son think he is doing? How dare he refuse to serve the Republic? How dare he throw my offer back in my face? Is he mad? Was he drunk?'

  'Listen,' she said, 'and stop shouting at me. I have told you of my concern for Tiberius. I told you I was worried about him. This is precisely what I feared. Something in him has been rotted by the gnawing worm of resentment.'

  I threw my hands up: 'He has cause to feel resentment! What about me?'

  'I shall discuss the matter with him, and see if I can persuade him to see sense.'

  Her discussion bore no fruit. Instead I received a letter from Tiberius:

  Augustus: I esteem the offer you have made me and express my gratitude for the confidence you have always shown in my abilities. Nevertheless I must decline. I have served Rome now for more than twenty years . . .

  (On reading that line, I crumpled the letter up and hurled it into the corner of the room; what right had he to boast of his mere twenty years? While I . . . then I told a slave to retrieve the document and read on ... )

  It is my desire to retire to an island and study philosophy and science. The Republic will manage very well without me, for it is not desirable that one man monopolize honours and commands as you have been kind enough to permit me to do. Moreover, I feel that Gaius and Lucius, my stepsons, should be able to embark on their careers without being in the shadow of my achievement... I have fixed on Rhodes as my place of retirement. I have always been fond of islands, and the climate is said to be pleasant.

  I have never read a more insolent letter.

  Livia said, 'I can get no other sense from him. He gives me a half-smile and shakes his head, and says it is time for the boys to take up the torch.'

  'Lucius is eleven. Eleven. Does your dolt of a son expect him to command the army of Armenia?'

  'I know, I know. And then he talks in a faraway voice about the pleasures of astronomical studies.'

  'It doesn't make sense.'

  'Something broke in him when Drusus died.'

  'Haven't we all suffered losses?'

  Reluctantly, at Livia's insistence, I consulted Julia.

  'You would have me marry him,' she pouted. 'But I can do nothing with him. If he's barely civil to you, he's as rude as an angry bear to me. I think he's a bit mad, if you must know. And of course he's as jealous of the boys as a bear with a pot of honey.'

  'But they're still children.'

  'The Senate
proposed Gaius should share your next consulship.'

  Tiberius retired to a villa he owned in the hills, and gave out that he had embarked on a hunger strike. Naturally the news aroused great excitement among the gossips of the Senate where Tiberius, because of his long and frequent absences on campaign, was largely an unknown quantity and an enigmatic figure.

  My agents reported that some senators saw his expressed wish for retirement as being in some way a challenge to my authority; it was said that he was warning me not to advance the careers of my grandsons. Tiberius knew he was indispensable and was using his threat of retirement merely for bargaining purposes; he wanted his open elevation to a position of equality with me. Those who viewed my restored Republic as a disguised monarchy said he was making a bid for the succession.

  Others however accepted his wish as genuine. Tiberius was weary of virtue, they said. All his life he had been a hypocrite, nursing secret vices which he was ashamed to practise publicly. Desire had however now overcome him, and the purpose of his retreat was to enable him to indulge his lusts.

  Nobody dared bring me the one rumour that had any base of truth, and so I continued to think harshly of Tiberius.

  I took care that he should be made acquaint with what was being said. I hoped that he would be either alarmed or shamed into changing his mind. He replied in quite unequivocal terms: