by Allan Massie
"Indeed," Sejanus said, with that frank and sceptical smile which he was accustomed to bring to any story of depravity, "I rather think 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 Germa nicus," 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 s pontaneity 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 could 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.
I removed to Capri. Why that island? Because it pleased me. Simply that? Because I could settle on it as my abode without the agony of introspection and self-justification. Because of the colour of the sea.
Sejanus approved my choice. He said: "You will be safe there. There is only one landing-stage."
I told the Senate I should communicate by letter and that they should consider Sejanus my mouthpiece. But I was not rash enough to grant him the maius imperium, which I alone possessed. I would not put that temptation before him, nor make him such a mark for the envy of others. He threw back his head and laughed when I explained my reasons.
"Is it any wonder," he said, "that I have served you so long and with such content?"
"You old fox," he said later.
I trusted Sejanus, but I no longer found any pleasure in his company. That was another reason for my departure from Rome. His presence no longer invigorated me. He was a middle-aged man, with a bald spot, running to fat, and dominated by ambition, a calculating man, without that blithe acceptance of being in which I had taken such delight. I embraced him on embarkation, and said to myself, "It's over. I no longer need Sejanus, except in a political sense." But there, thanks to my abdication, I needed him more than ever.
Augustus had left me a villa which I immediately occupied. But I set myself to build a new villa, to my own taste, higher up the mountain.
"Why have you come here?" Sigmund asked. "Is it rest you seek, master?"
"No," I said, though I longed for rest, "beauty. In the end only beauty offers consolation. The only rest is to be found in the experience of beauty. I don't say 'contemplation', because that is passive. The experience of beauty must be active."
The poor boy looked at me, and shook his head.
I invited some old friends to accompany me: Marcus Cocceius Nerva, an ex-consul; Curtius Atticus, the distinguished knight; and my mathematical philosopher, Thrasyllus. I took also the Greek freedman Philip, and of course Sigmund. It was a small household, and such as I trusted would not weary me with importunate demands. There was no point in going to say goodbye to my mother; she no longer recognised anyone, but would sit and rail and weep for death. I prayed that she would soon be released, and in fact this happened within six months of my departure.
Those first months were the happiest I had known since I left Rhodes. The sea air let me breathe more easily, and in the early morning, before the heat of the day caused me to surrender my terrace to the lizards, I felt ten years younger. Best of all was the awareness of freedom. Of course I was still bound to my official boxes. Not a day passed that did not require me to take twenty decisions concerning the welfare of the empire, or write twenty letters. But I was able to do so, calmly, without the agitation of spirit which had so disturbed me in Rome, without the pressing consciousness of a greedy and untrustworthy humanity, without the fear that I was doing nothing more than shore up a barrier against the corruption of the age; for, strange to say, all that oppressiveness and disquiet were lifted from me. Others sensed my unwonted contentment.
"It is as if the world stops at the water's edge," Atticus said, "and yet I feel as if the world is waiting for some great sign, as if we had reached a stage of history pregnant with possibility."
"That is as true now as at any time in the history of our people," I replied.
In the late afternoon I would sometimes have myself rowed out into the bay. I kept my gaze on those rocks where Philip's uncle by marriage had encountered his Siren lover. But the rocks were deserted and there was no music in my ears. Nevertheless somewhere, I knew, the Sirens rested, nursing promises of bliss.
One day a wind blew up, and the boat was unable to make its way round a headland. Instead we found ourselves forced back to land. An opening yawned before us, and our helmsman steered towards it. For a moment my bodyguard shifted his hand to his sword-hilt, but I smiled and told him there was no danger.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"I am going to show Caesar one of the wonders of the island," said the helmsman, and guided the little boat under a shelf of rock and into a cave. All at once the world and daylight disappeared, and we found ourselves in a twilight that was intensely blue. The water lapped against the boat, and s himmered caerul ean, shot with violet streaks. The walls glistened a deep azure, and the bubbles of the water sparkled darker than any sky or sea that yet remained blue, with little gleams of ruby red and emerald. The boat paused in the middle of the violet water that was as still as a summer lake. There was silence. An air of freedom from earthly concerns breathed over me. "This is peace."
I sighed to leave the place of enchantment, but when we came back to the world of men, and I saw by the landing-stage bronzed boys, naked to the waist, their tunics kirtled, wade thigh-deep in the water to drag nets of fish to the shore, and heard their girls cry encouragement, and saw pride in their mothers' eyes, I gave myself up for a little to the illusion that life is good.
Of course it is an illusion. At best, life has good moments. But the atmosphere of Capri nursed my pain and grief, as nothing had done since my marriage to Vipsania was severed by politics.
One other afternoon, dismissing my attendants, I climbed the hill behind my villa. A narrow lane led to a little temple. The walls were covered with ivy and wild honeysuckle and, as I approached, an owl rose on silent wings from a broken column, and flew towards a grove of cypresses. The sun was still hot and, weary from my climb, I rested there, leaning my back against the temple walls and watching the lizards dart to and fro. Far below the sea murmured, and there was no wind. Finches twittered among the nearby pines, and the crackle of crickets was the only other sound to disturb the tranquillity. I think I fell asleep.
A boy was standing before me, his golden limbs moulded like the finest carving. Flowers were twined in his dark hair, and his brow was smooth as one untroubled by dreams, or one whose dreams are only of delight. I found I could not speak.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
When I made no reply, he touched my lips with a wand he carried, and repeated his question.
"Men do not usually dare to make such an enquiry of me," I said.
He smiled.
"Oh men," he said: "Mortal men."
"Are you not mortal then that you speak
of men and death so lightly?"
"No, why should you think that?"
He smiled again.
"What are you seeking?" he said. "Oblivion."
"You cannot enjoy that in your life." "Peace, then. And the experience of beauty." "You are not moderate in your requests." "Who are you," I said, "that you speak so confidently, despite your youth?"
"I am a youth only because I choose to appear to you as such, because I choose not to age. I am the genius of this place, and I am here because you summoned me."
"Did I do that?"
"Certainly."
"And can you grant me what I seek?"
"Only if you are prepared to pay the price."
"Is there a price?" I asked. "But of course there must be a price. Well, beautiful boy, tell me what it is…"
"It is a price that few would pay, and which most would think themselves dishonoured by paying. But, since I know that your misery is great, I shall make you an offer."
His mouth, which was shaped like a bow, curved in mockery, in which, nevertheless, I discerned a sympathy such as I have never known and which I yearned for deeply.
"This beautiful island," he said, "is yours for consolation. Isn't that enough, without extracting my price from me, and submitting to it?"
"Tell me what it is," I said.
"Very well, you may enjoy such beauty, peace and oblivion as is within your means, if you consent to let your name be branded with infamy down the ages of time…"
"Such beauty, peace and oblivion as is within my means? How much is that?"
"Not as much as you would wish, more than you would achieve without my aid." "And my name infamous?"
"You will be denounced as a monster, a murderer, a brute and satyr, a deified beast…" "And if I say no?"
"Then you will never see me again. I shall depart, and leave you to your nightmares, your fears, and memories…"
