by Allan Massie
Meanwhile I reposed all my trust in Sejanus. He was the one man living who had never let me down. Then one day he approached me with a request, an unprecedented act, for he had previously been content to accept what I offered and never to ask anything for himself. But this request was startling. To emphasise its importance, he put it in epistolary form, though we had long been accustomed to discuss everything freely and without formality.
The many kindnesses of your father Augustus, and the still more numerous marks of favour and friendship I have received at your hand, have accustomed me to bring my hopes and desires to the imperial ear as readily as to the gods. I have never asked for anything for myself, neither money nor great office. I would prefer, like any other soldier, to work for the emperor's safety, which I am ready to secure with my own life. Yet I have now, to my astonishment, won the greatest of privileges - to be thought worthy by a certain great lady of alliance in marriage with your family. I speak of Julia Livilla, the widow of your lamented son. The consciousness of what Rome has lost by his untimely death drew us together: we discovered a common sympathy and comforted each other in our grief. Her sentiments towards me have encouraged me to hope for what I would not otherwise have dreamed of as being within the realms of possibility. Besides, she has reminded me that Augustus himself, when choosing a husband for his daughter, did not regard men of my equestrian order as beneath consideration. Therefore, I humbly request you to bear in mind, if you should now be thinking of a husband for Julia Livilla, your devoted friend who would gain nothing but prestige from the relationship. I ask nothing more. I am content with the duties I perform; satisfied — for my children's sake — if my family is safeguarded against the unfounded spite and malevolence of Agrippina. For myself, to live out my life under so great an emperor represents the summit of my ambitions . . .
The request surprised me. On reflection however it seemed natural that Julia Livilla, deprived by cruel fate of her husband, should have turned for consolation to the only man of comparable quality with whom she was acquainted, more especially since Sejanus' own marriage to Apicata had failed, to his evident distress. Yet there were issues other than personal happiness to be considered. I therefore replied in cautious and non-committal manner.
My dear Sejanus,
There is no one, as you know, for whom I feel more affection, and in whom I repose greater trust, than yourself. I have proved this again and again. If we were all private persons, then I would not hesitate.
However, while such men's decisions may be based on their own interests and affections, rulers are situated differently, since in important matters they need to consult public opinion. So 1 can't fall back on an easy answer and merely say that Julia Livilla can decide for herself whether she wants to marry again or not. (And of course if she does, she could find no one more worthy as a person than yourself.) I shan't even say that she has a noble mother, Antonia, who is more properly her intimate adviser than I am myself. No, I shall be more frank with you, as you deserve.
First then, Agrippina's ill-feelings (to use a mild term) will be greatly intensified if Julia Livilla, who is - I don't need to remind you - her sister-in-law, should be joined with you in marriage. This would virtually split the imperial family in two. (As you know, I detest the expression "the imperial family", as being incompatible with our Republican inheritance, but nevertheless facts are facts, and this is one, however disagreeable.) Even now, the women's rivalry can't be repressed, and my grandsons are torn between them. What would be the consequences if the proposed marriage made the feud worse?
Second, you are mistaken, dear boy, if you think that Julia Livilla, after being married to Gaius Caesar and then to my beloved Drusus, would be content to grow old as the wife of a mere knight - or that you could retain that status. Even if I allowed it, do you think it would be tolerated by those who have seen her brother and father, and our ancestors, holding the great offices of state? Your elevation would be necessary. You say you do not want to rise above your present rank. I honour that sentiment, though it is the general opinion that you have long ago eclipsed all other knights. You are even now an object of envy and, in envying you, people criticise me. I am already criticised for the favours I have granted you. Don't you see that the envy and criticism would be intensified by this marriage?
You remark quite correctly that Augustus considered marrying his daughter to a knight. But he foresaw that any man distinguished by such an alliance would be enormously elevated, and so those he had in mind were men like Gaius Proculeius, a close friend of his, who took no part in public affairs. The two positions are not comparable. Moreover, in the end you must remember, the sons-in-law whom he actually chose were, first, Marcus Agrippa, and then myself.
I have spoken openly as your friend. Ultimately I shall not oppose any decision that you and Julia Livilla come to. Of certain projects of my own, and additional ties by which I plan to link you to me, I shall not speak now. I shall only say this: your own personal merits, and my consciousness of your profound devotion to my interests and to my person, convince me that no elevation would be too high. When the time is ripe I shall speak frankly to the Senate . . .
Sejanus declared himself deeply touched by my letter. He acknowledged the justice of my observations and promised to consider them carefully.
"Nothing," he said, "must be done to give any further cause for the vile and unjustified criticisms directed at you, or that will encourage Agrippina in her seditious manoeuvrings."
But I knew from the look in his eye that he had not abandoned his hopes. That was natural, for the prospect of marriage to my son's widow was alluring. Moreover, Julia Livilla herself was eager for the match; and she had no fear of antagonising Agrippina further. Indeed she welcomed the prospect.
The same autumn saw two disturbing trials which contributed to the resolution I was secretly forming.
A case was brought against a senator, Votienus Montanus, who was accused of slandering me and the constitution Rome had inherited from Augustus. With incredible folly, he called a common soldier, by name Aemilius, as one of his witnesses. This man, who had been dishonourably discharged from the service some time previously, had apparently been deprived of his wits by a sense of grievance. He poured out a stream of abusive filth, mostly directed against me. I can scarcely, even now, bring myself to list the slanders. The least was habitual immorality. I was accused also of having been an accessory to the murder of Germanicus - a murder which was, of course, wholly imaginary and which had been disproved in poor Piso's trial. Impiety towards the gods and the memory of Augustus, participation in orgies and magic rites involving the prostitution of free-born virgins and even the ritual sacrifice of servile children - such monstrosities stood out from the stream of filth with which my ears were assailed. Perhaps the demented man had been encouraged to speak like this — though he probably needed little encouragement - in the hope that the court would be distracted from consideration of the crimes with which Votienus himself was charged.
The second case was even more serious and distressing. It was first brought to my notice by Sejanus. Compelled as any ruler must be in our unhappy times, to operate a system of surveillance, I had nevertheless found this requirement so distasteful that, unlike Augustus, who kept a close eye on such matters himself, I had delegated full responsibility to Sejanus, as the only man in whose honour and scrupulosity I could trust. One morning he approached me frowning, his face a study in gloom and perturbation.
"Something extremely unpleasant has come to light," he said. "It concerns a noble lady, Claudia Pulchra."
Then he recounted how this lady, a cousin of mine and also of Agrippina's, whose close friend she also was, had made her house on the Aventine a hive of sedition. The first rumours had been brought to Sejanus by Gnaeus Domitius Afer, a recent praetor, whom Claudia had attempted to seduce.
"Indeed," Sejanus said, with that frank and sceptical smile which he was accustomed to bring to any story of depravity, "I rather t
hink she succeeded, and the wretched Afer believed himself the chosen of fortune. He was certainly greatly flattered by her attentions. But then he discovered that she was indulging herself with another adulterous relationship, with Caius Furnius, and this displeased him."
"Furnius?" I said. "A difficult and disagreeable fellow, yet not without ability."
"Quite."
The name alarmed me, though I chose not to let Sejanus see this. I knew Furnius for a malcontent. He was a man of considerable merit whom I had denied responsibility on account of his wayward character, ungovernable temper, and suspect associates. His grandfather had been a friend of Mark Antony: his father had had the good sense to adhere to Augustus, and had indeed held a consulship towards the end of Augustus' life. But I had been unable to honour Furnius as he would have wished. There could be no doubt that he was disaffected.
"When I learned this," Sejanus said, "I naturally took such steps as I thought necessary to investigate affairs. I placed a trusted agent in Claudia's household. His reports convinced me not only of her uncontrollable, or at least uncontrolled, immorality — her habitual adultery which exposes her to the penalties decreed by the lex papia poppaea, but of still more heinous crimes. Here, would you like to read the full reports, or shall I summarise them . . . ?"
I shook my head. My spirit was invaded by gloom as a sea-fog creeps inland.
"Naturally," Sejanus said, "I don't rely on these reports alone. As you have often reminded me there is a danger that agents will tell you what they think you want to hear, though of course I have done everything in my power, by the example of punishments meted out to any falsifiers, to convince them that what we want is nothing but the truth. At any rate, I am certain that the wretched woman has conspired against your life, both by suborning professional poisoners and by employing sorcerers to practise their black arts to your harm. Here for example" — he delved into the sheaf of reports which lay on the table before him - "I have an affidavit from one of her freedwomen, detailing how, at the last full moon, an Egyptian sorceress - but you don't want to sicken yourself with the details, which I can tell you are so disgusting that they have cost me a night's sleep . . ."
"No," I said, "I don't want to know. You had better arrange for the law to take its course."
"Yes," he said, "I think I might get Afer to conduct the prosecution. He has an interest in its success."
"I am beginning to understand you Romans," Sigmund said. "When they made me into a gladiator, I thought, this is all wrong, life isn't like this. I thought that, because it was all so different from life as I knew it. But I know better now. I'm not good at expressing myself, despite your kindness in trying to teach me, but it seems to me that the arena is a sort of mirror to the life you all lead. You are the most powerful man in the world, but you can't escape the net. I haven't angered you, I hope."
"No," I said, "the truth should never make you angry. And I am pleased you are learning how things are . . ."
I averted my gaze from his candid eyes, and looked over the roof-tops of the turbulent city. A red kite swooped in low circles over the temples of the Capitol.
Agrippina wrote to me, protesting at the trial of her friend.
Claudia Pulchra is nothing but a pretext. I know that the accusations levelled against her are really directed at me. You sacrifice to Augustus, as the law ordains, but you persecute his descendants. It is not in mute statues that his divine spirit has lodged — I, born of his sacred blood, am its incarnation. Nothing can alter that. So I see my danger. Claudia Pulchra's only offence is that she has had the recklessness to choose the persecuted Agrippina as her friend.
Sejanus handed me back the letter.
"She really is deranged, poor woman," he said. "Who knows what she may attempt in her delirium? I'm not sure that it's safe to leave her at liberty."
The trial followed its predictable course. The case against Claudia Pulchra was unanswerable. By my request, certain articles -those concerning her conspiracy against my life - were deleted. The adultery was enough; she and her paramour were both exiled by order of the Senate.
Agrippina fell ill, or gave out that she was ill. It is possible that this trial had let her see, for a moment, the dangers of the course on which she had so thoughtlessly and maliciously embarked. I do not know; I never understood the cause of her terrible anger, or plumbed the depths of her aggrieved self-pity. She asked to see me. I attended her sick-room where she lay, her eyes swollen by weeping; she held a cold compress against her temples, and she frequently interrupted her disordered speech with bouts of sobbing. I pitied her, and remembered that she was Julia's daughter, and that, in the early years of my marriage to her mother, I had taken pleasure in her childish intensity of feeling.
"I am lonely," she sobbed. "My children, for whom I have sacrificed everything since the death of my husband, are almost grown-up. My mother was torn from me when I was little more than a child. Now you who were my stepfather persecute me. Why do you do that, Tiberius? What harm have I ever done you? You were jealous of Germanicus? Is that a reason to pursue me as you do?"
"I was never jealous of Germanicus," I said. "He was my dear brother's son, and I admired him. Sometimes I thought him injudicious, and then I intervened, but I never accused him of anything worse than inexperience and the impetuosity of youth. Agrippina, we have — perhaps with neither of us willing it — drifted into misunderstandings and suspicions. There is no need for them. You know I detest talk of the imperial succession, since it is a matter for the Senate as to who should hold the first place in the Republic. But I know that there must be a Princeps, and that he must come from our family. Don't you realise that I see your sons, Nero and Drusus, as my immediate heirs? I am an old man, almost seventy, and few summers remain to me. Can't we set aside our animosities and be friends?"
I stretched out my hand to her, but she shrank from its touch. Nevertheless I felt that my words had moved her, and waited for a reply. She was silent a long time. Then she said:
"I am so miserable, so alone, neglected and misunderstood. And I am lonely. You cannot imagine how lonely I have been since my husband was torn from me. Not a night has passed that I have not wept to feel his place empty beside me. My youth is fleeing, and I see only a dark future. Help me, Tiberius, let me marry again. Indeed, I beg you to choose me a husband. I am still young enough. Marriage . . . marriage is the only respectable consolation open to me. Surely Rome contains men who would be proud to marry Germanicus' widow and become the father of his children ...?"
"Don't you see," Sejanus said, "she is laying a trap for you? Her appeal to your pity is only a device. If you choose a husband acceptable to her, you immediately raise up a rival to yourself. And if your choice settles on one whom she rejects, this will be further evidence of your persecution. She will say that you are insulting the memory of Germanicus by proposing a husband unworthy of her rank and his reputation."
Sejanus knew Agrippina well, better than I. I had thought her sincere in her request. Even now, I sometimes wonder if she was in truth sincere when she asked me; it seemed that her distress was genuine. And indeed I still believe it was. Yet she was torn by conflicting desires. I was moved by her emotion, wary of her volatile passions. We understand our own natures but little, and then usually in retrospect; the spontaneity of speech and action puzzles our understanding. It is not therefore strange that other people should be so unfathomable in their inconsistency.
I put myself about to do as she had asked. I selected two candidates, both worthy men of good family, both distinguished for public service, both trustworthy. Either would have made a distinguished husband; either would have been seen as an acceptable successor to Germanicus by any unprejudiced critic. I shall not name either, because I have no wish to reveal to the future shame of their family how contemptuously Agrippina responded to their names. One was "a sack of dung"; the other "a servile coward to whom Germanicus would not have given the time of day". Both judgments were absurd. But what co
uld I do, especially when she accused me — as Sejanus had predicted - of having chosen them merely to insult her? That was not my intention, though I grant that it might appear so in the case of the second candidate, for Sejanus told me subsequently that the man was one of young Nero's lovers. But I was ignorant of that when I recommended him.
8
In my sixty-ninth year I left Rome. I hope never to see the city again. It has become ugly to me. I could not attend the Senate without experiencing nausea, occasioned by my awareness of that body's degeneracy. A day spent there - no, even a morning — left me oppressed with an intolerable heaviness, a lassitude, the sensation that I had lost all sense of freedom, that I was seized with painful and disabling cramps, even to the point of paralysis. The smell of the place disgusted me; it reeked of decomposition. I was smothered with words. In all talk, I reflected, there is a grain of contempt. Whatever we have words for, that we have already gone beyond. Language, even the language of poets in the modern world, serves only what is average, mediocre, communicable. I felt a profound desire to escape all that and, in escaping, to resume my long-abandoned search for something beyond daily existence, mere existence, for something which might justify its tedium.
The value of anything does not lie in whatever one attains by it, but in what one pays for it — what it costs us. My assumption of the imperial role cost me happiness, even self-respect, for, in the shifts and manoeuvres necessary to maintain my authority, I abandoned any sense of my own virtue. I had become the slave of Augustus' legacy. Perhaps I might even in old age achieve freedom.
