by Allan Massie
"Give me beneath the plane tree's shade to rest While tinkling fountains murmur and caress…"
And when I lift my gaze behind the villa I see mighty pines stride up the hillside. Below, the sea glistens like a shield.
I busy myself improving on perfection. I live simply, eating and drinking little: asparagus, cucumbers, radishes, red mullet, bread, fruit and sheep-milk cheese from the mountain content me; I take no thought for fine wines, the resinated stuff of the locality suffices.
For four years I lived in Arcady, without distractions of war, politics, lust, thought of Rome, power or intrigue. I lived as my nature assures me I was born to live. At night I followed the pure and passionless movement of the stars. I was completely myself…
But, there is always a but in human life. My use of tenses wavers. Do I describe a state, settled as a summer afternoon, or am I struggling to recall, and in recalling to perpetuate, something which, even as I form the conception of my sweet content, is slipping from my possession?
I was not free of disturbance. One day, for example, I had expressed a wish to visit some of the sick people in the city, an obligation I have cheerfully undertaken at regular intervals since coming here. Now a new servant misunderstood my intention, and, when I descended into the town, I was disgusted to discover that a great number of the sick had been collected in a public cloister, at what inconvenience and discomfort I did not care to think. They had even been arranged in separate squads according to their ailments. Naturally I made my apologies as best I could, and the affair passed. But my distress was increased by the realisation that these poor fellows had taken it for granted that they should be put to such inconvenience merely to enable me to display my benevolence. There is something disagreeable, and to my mind immoral, in the social relationships which we have established by our exercise of power. A coarse thought came to me, with a memory. Once, in a temper, Julia flashed at me, "It's all the same whether I get it from a labourer or a nobleman, and, believe me, the former are often better." There is, it struck me, a strange honesty and decency in that judgment.
How ironical that sentence looks.
It was a few months after that incident that disquieting rumours reached me from Rome. The first hint was offered in a cryptic note attached to a letter from Gnaeus Piso; he suggested I look to my wife. I understood him only too well. I consulted Thrasyllus, who was evasive. When pressed he admitted that misfortune threatened; the stars were in ill conjunction. I wrote to Livia in guarded terms. She ignored my covert questions in her reply, though I could not imagine that she had failed to understand them. I hesitated before writing to Julia, for I was certain that her correspondence would be intercepted and examined. It so happened, however, that a young officer, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, whose father L. Seius Strabo had been Prefect of the Praetorians and was now Proconsul of Egypt, paid a courtesy call on me while travelling from Antioch to Rome. I received him, as I did any young Roman who showed me such respect, and also because his father had served under me on the Danube.
"There are many in the armies," young Sejanus said, "who wish for your return, sir."
He spoke in an open manly fashion. His eyes, which were very blue, met mine and he did not flinch from my assessing gaze. I liked him for his frank smile, for his ease of body and of manner. We dined together and he made me laugh with his accounts of his travels in the East and also because of his evident dislike of Egypt. When he spoke of that country, a strain of exaggeration of which he was wholly conscious was evident in his language. He set out to amuse me, and succeeded. Yet it was not that which pleased me most, but rather his ingenuous acceptance of experience. There was something of my brother Drusus in his manner, and when I looked at him stretched out on the couch beside me, like an athlete resting between races, I felt for him that mixture of affection and envy with which I had been accustomed to regard Drusus, and which I had not known since my brother's death. The world, and the nature of man, were less complicated matters for him, and would always be less complicated, I sensed, than they were for me, and I responded to his youthful candour. He was little more than a boy, but he was already worthy of my trust.
"If I asked you," I said, "to do something for me that might put you at risk, and certainly, if discovered, would endanger your chances of promotion in the service, but which would nevertheless be a very valuable service to me, would you be prepared to undertake it?"
He blushed at the question.
"Yes, I should," he said, and then smiled. It was a shy smile, and an uncommonly sweet one. "For I know that you would not ask me to do anything which was dishonourable."
Even so I hesitated. There was shame in my hesitation, which did not distress me, and fear, which did. They were strangely mingled, for one part of my shame rested in my fear to trust him. And this was strange too, for such fear was natural. But I was also ashamed to make use of him, as I intended, though I knew he longed for me to do so. He leaped up, sparkling with youthful life, and fell on his knee before me. He took hold of my hands and pressed them.
"Trust me, sir. I am eager to do you service."
"It is in itself a small thing," I said, "merely to deliver a letter that I dare not send in the normal fashion. But this small thing could destroy you. You must understand that."
"Sir, you already have my answer."
"Yes," I said, "I have your answer, and am grateful for your willingness, but my perplexity nevertheless remains. I do not know whether I dare put you to this trial, or whether I would be justified in making use of you in this manner."
The pressure on my hands tightened.
"Sir," he said speaking in a low and urgent voice, which was yet gentle as that of a woman in love, "I am yours to command. Make such use of me as you please."
His eager smile seemed to mock the seriousness of his words.
"You're only a boy, a boy for whom the sun shines every day, and, if you accept my commission, I am going to introduce you to a world where there is no sunshine. What do you know of my wife?"
The abruptness of my question, and the bitterness of my tone startled him. He got to his feet and turned his back on me. His fingers played on the soft flesh of a ripe peach in the basket on the table.
"I don't know how to answer that, sir."
"I see. Perhaps that is a sufficient reply. It is to my wife that I wish you to convey a letter, and, when she has read it, I warn you that she will be angry with its bearer…"
But — I thought — she will look at its bearer, and she will imagine herself caressed by these strong hands and wrestling with these youthful limbs, and she will look at that lock of red-gold hair that falls over his eye, which he brushes back in so negligent a manner… and then she will set herself to seduce him; and that is not what I would want for him. But I need someone I can trust, and I think I can trust this boy…
"You have nothing to hope for from me," I said. "I am a man on the threshold of old age, who has resigned from the struggle for power. Do you understand that?"
"I hear your words, but I also hear that the stars speak differently, that they promise you a glorious future. And I know also what they say in the armies. So I am happy to accept your commission.."
He turned on me with a radiant smile.
"You see, sir," he said, "I have chosen to bind my future with yours. I am, as I told you, yours to command in all affairs."
Tenderness steals on you unawares like the evening breeze that wafts into my garden from the sea. It is not an emotion I have known often: for Vipsania when she would look at me with her plain face beautiful in its response to the pain or unhappiness of others; for Julia as she lay with our little son in her arms; for Drusus as I accompanied his dead body on that long march to the mausoleum; for young Segestes as I held him in my arms against the world. In each case, it seems to me, my experience of tenderness was a form of protest against the cruelty and mindlessness of life. Any rational being knows that the life of man is nasty and brutish, that all our carefully acquire
d and cherished culture amounts to no more than fragments of defence, work we have made against the reality of existence, against — to coin a phrase — its remorseless nihilism. The gods mock our feeble efforts or are indifferent to them; hence our hearts go out most powerfully to those who struggle against fate, and fail, for in their failure we recognise an ultimate truth about this life to which we are condemned. "Who," as the poet says, "would have heard of Hector, if Troy had not been taken?" When I stood on the cliff-top and watched the sail of the ship that carried young Sejanus back to Rome dip below the horizon, I felt a renewal of that strange tenderness, and I could see him as Hector, that broken hero, dragged behind the chariot of his destroyer, his long limbs that delighted in movement now flaccid and streaked with blood, the red-gold hair begrimed with the dust through which it was dragged, while the vulgar shrieked execrations, and those of noble mind stood silent, aghast at the defilement of beauty, courage and virtue.
A sea-bird mewed, dived in search of fish. I shook off my waking dream. "Ridiculous," I said to myself, and turned from the glistening mirror of the sea that seemed to foreshadow death into the sweet shades of evening under the laurels.
14
My letter to Julia had urged restraint, renewed my warning that she was subject to police scrutiny, and advised her that proceedings were being contemplated against her. I dared not say more. In fact events marched faster than I had supposed. Even while Sejanus was with me in Rhodes, information was lodged with Augustus. His distress at this revelation of his daughter's habits was, I am sure, genuine. He must have been the only man in Rome who did not know of her misconduct. Her behaviour had grown more openly scandalous since my departure. The report informed him (he sent me a copy) that "Subject, after a dinner-party, where much wine had been consumed, staggered with her companions into the Forum, and there mounted the Rostra from which position she solicited the custom of chance passers-by, to the pleasure of her associates, who called out, 'Roll up, roll up, for the best-born f- in Rome…' "
When I received the letter in which Augustus told me of what had happened, enclosing a copy of the police report, Julia was already doomed. I had only to read the catalogue of her noble lovers again to realise this. It was a political scandal of the first order, as well as a sexual one. Augustus gave no hint in his letter that he now understood my ulterior motive in retiring. On the other hand he did not upbraid me for having done so, so perhaps he guessed.
I could not know how far things had gone while the letter was on its way. Naturally I was also alarmed to think that I had despatched Sejanus with a missive which would compromise me, and might destroy him. I wondered what he had done, was doing, would do, with it. But that was beyond my control, though I wrote to him urging caution in "that matter of which you know" — in itself perhaps a compromising phrase. Meanwhile it was my duty to do whatever I could to rescue Julia from the consequences of her folly. I therefore wrote to Augustus.
My wife, suffering perhaps from a species of desperation that can, my doctors tell me, afflict women as they approach middle-life, has behaved in a manner which is worse than foolish. The peculiarly public nature of her conduct must touch the bounds of forgiveness, for, as Princeps, you can hardly fail to interpret it as a public challenge to the admirable legislation you have caused to be passed. Yet I appeal to you, in your public and private capacity, to show clemency. Clemency would become you both as father of our country, and as father of your unfortunate daughter. I would beg you to consider that my own absence, the result of my intense weariness of spirit and body, and of my desire to allow Gaius and Lucius to flourish, may have contributed to my wife's aberrations. Clemency is good in itself. The harsh letter of justice will be like a knife which you yourself drive into your own heart…
I paused there. There was a further sentence which I knew I ought to write. My gorge rose at the thought of doing so — I gazed with melancholy at the tranquil beauty of my garden — and did what I had to do…
I live in contented exile, remote from public affairs and from the hurly-burly of the city, in an atmosphere free from temptation to excess, ideally suited to the cultivation of a philosophic mind. May I suggest therefore that you command Julia to return to her husband?
It was beyond me to do more than make the flat suggestion, to supplement the recommendation with entreaties which could not be other than insincere, for the thought of Julia again invading the life I had so carefully reconstructed revolted me. Augustus' reply was brief:
I have received your letter and noted its contents. The course you urge is impractical. When a woman has once become a whore, she is like a dog which has taken to worrying sheep: beyond cure. As her husband you have failed to exercise proper control in the past; I see no reason to suppose you would be more successful in the future. I am therefore arranging for you to divorce her. I do not wish to hear the wretched woman's name from you again…
Julia endured no public trial. Judgment descended on her secretly, implacably, stunningly. Her freedwoman Phoebe, a partner in her licentiousness, hanged herself. Julia endured. She was despatched to the island prison of Pandateria, and forbidden wine and male company. Meanwhile retribution was enacted on her lovers. Iullus Antonius was put to death; the others condemned to perpetual exile. I am told that Antonius died in ignoble fashion; the news did not surprise me. He was a man animated by vanity, rather than pride. I found myself agreeably indifferent to Julia's fate. She, after all, had first rejected me. Sejanus wrote to me to say that, in view of what he had discovered on arrival in Rome, he had deemed it wise to destroy my communication. He kissed my hands, and remained my loving and obedient servant. I approved his prudence, and besought him to pay me another visit. Meanwhile I advised him to pursue his military and legal studies with assiduity. "One cannot reach the highest without industry. Therefore, I urge you, in Vergil's words, 'O beautiful boy, trust not too much to complexion'. Study hard therefore, and in the words of another, inferior poet, 'So may the nymphs give thee water to assuage thirst'. Meanwhile, you are aware of my gratitude and good wishes. Though I have withdrawn from public life, I retain influence and friends, and would wish you to regard me henceforth as your father, patron and friend…"
Since Julia abandoned me I had felt myself to be, in a profound yet uncertain sense, a superfluous man. Now, in solitude, I brooded on the strangeness of our marriage and of her fate. She had brought her misfortunes on herself; yet she had done so in the same blithe and regardless manner that had twice, for periods of my life, delighted and enflamed me. And now that fire was extinguished, utterly. Even my resentment of her infidelity, and of the shame she had brought on me, withered. It was almost as if she had never existed. There are loves of which one retains a fragrant and nostalgic memory. Such had been mine for Vipsania. I never thought of her without tenderness, but then I rarely thought of her. She had simply belonged to a stage of my life from which I was separated by the welter of events, so that it was as if our love had belonged to two quite different people. My love for Julia had been more intense, as my emotions had been less pure. I knew now that I had been awaiting her disgrace as after days of steamy weather you expect a thunderstorm. And her disgrace had done the work of the thunder. I felt free to live again.
This realisation perplexed me, for I had imagined myself possessed of a full and satisfying happiness, and had judged that this rested in my abandonment of ambition and my acceptance of the meaninglessness of life. Yet though that conviction had been confirmed by her misfortunes — for what life could in any scale of values be thought to have less significance than hers? — I was now assailed with a renewed dissatisfaction, occasioned, I had to conclude, by the sensation of liberty.
Absurd; hadn't the events in Rome confirmed my scornful judgment that liberty had been Augustus' principal victim?
I did not entirely escape the effects of Julia's ignominy. It was reported to me that when men mentioned my name in Rome they did so without respect. I was a figure who was receding into the p
ast; of no account. Only a few old friends remained loyal. Sejanus was almost my only link with the younger generation. There was, however, one other, though tenuous: my stepson Lucius. Whereas his older brother Gaius ignored me completely, Lucius wrote to me on my birthday, sent me good wishes, thanked me for the presents I sent him — I sent presents to Gaius also at appropriate moments, but received no thanks, though the gifts were not returned. Lucius expressed his distress on his mother's account, though he was honest enough to add that he had always known she did not care for him. All I could say in reply was that, as far as I knew, he had nothing with which to reproach himself: barren comfort, for self-reproach needs no objective justification. It was ironic however that Julia's disgrace coincided with Lucius' own appointment, three years after his brother's, as a Prince of the Youth Movement. He was excited by this elevation; with good cause, for it confirmed that Augustus intended that the brothers should share in the government of the empire after his death, even perhaps in his old age. For the same reason it intensified the discontent in Rome which had already been fanned by the persecution of those old noble families which had supplied Julia with her paramours. My own son Drusus sent me only brief, occasional and uninformative letters; perhaps he felt that I had abandoned him, though I exercised such care for his education as was possible at a distance.
My mother remained my stay, supporter and source of news. She was displeased by the rapid elevation of Gaius and Lucius, all the more because they were not her blood relations. She did not dislike them for that reason, though she was certain that Augustus gravely overestimated their abilities. Her objections were primarily political. Despite being a woman, and subject to the characteristic prejudices of her gender, Livia possessed an acute understanding of the way things are done in the world. Augustus had owed much to her connections, more to her sagacity; but now he was, as she put it, "blind with love for the boys as he was once before in the case of Marcellus". Livia knew that the Roman nobility would rebel against the semblance of hereditary monarchy. She knew — none better — that her husband's claim to have restored the Republic was a figment; she realised that the secret would be out if power passed to Gaius and Lucius on account of their birth rather than their achievement. She urged restraint on Augustus and she urged me to return to Rome. Yet I still rebelled against doing so.
