“What do you mean?”
“You want to get me with child as quickly as possible.”
“Of course I want a son. Don’t you?”
Someday, of course, I might have answered. A child was not a pressing desire for me at this time. I just shrugged.
“It’s a problem for your father that he has no sons,” Marcellus said. “The only way to preserve his work is to ensure the succession. And he’s done such great work, Julia. He saved Rome.”
“I know that.”
“Well, then you see why it’s important . . .”
Why it’s important for us to couple.
“To produce an heir for the empire. Yes, of course.” My mouth twisted.
My husband turned over in bed so he was facing away from me.
“Marcellus—”
“I’m tired. I have a busy day ahead of me tomorrow.”
When did he not?
Touch me, I wanted to say. Touch me once with your whole being. Love me, at least a little. Hold me the way I know my father must hold Livia after the candles are out.
Does an unborn chick, inside an egg, know a whole world awaits it when it begins to peck on the shell that encloses it? The chick surely does not know the egg will give way and it will emerge into the light. Nature guides young living things, even when they are blind to the road ahead and also to who and what they are meant to become. So it was with me.
One evening after we retired, Marcellus sat on the bed, reading some official-looking papyrus scroll. Oh, gods, I thought, he even takes public documents to bed!
I stood there in my night shift, watching him for a few moments. “Is that interesting?” I finally asked.
He shrugged.
His hair, usually so carefully combed, hung down on his forehead as he read. He wore only a loincloth. He had broad, muscular shoulders, but the rest of his body was boyishly lean.
“What you’re reading must be interesting since you can’t tear your eyes away,” I said.
He glanced up at me. “It’s just a lot to absorb.”
“And I’m not interesting at all, am I, Marcellus? Your boring little cousin, now your boring little wife.”
“I never said you were boring.”
“You’ve said it without words. And I don’t blame you. I understand how you feel. You bore me too.”
He just stared at me.
“You bore me to tears. You’re so earnest about everything. Reading your musty documents in bed. You bore me, Marcellus.”
He put the document on the little marble table at the side of the bed. “Well, that’s unfortunate, isn’t it? That we bore each other?”
“It’s a tragedy,” I said.
I was fourteen. I did not know what I was doing. Surely instinct guided me.
I walked to the bed, reached out, and tenderly stroked his cheekbone and his chin. “It’s a tragedy. Especially when you are so handsome.”
“Am I?”
“You have the handsomest face, and the most beautiful body. If only . . .”
“If only what?”
I laughed. “Don’t you know?”
He shook his head.
I moved away from him. “If only you weren’t such a bore, Marcellus.”
He just watched me. He looked wary.
“Do you even see me?” I asked.
“Of course I do.”
“Truly?” I pulled my shift off over my head, cast it to the floor. I had never before stood naked in his presence, never stood naked in front of any man. My heart hammered. A part of me wanted to flee. “Do you see me now?”
“Yes.”
We stared at each other. It was strange, that moment. It was as if we had never met until then.
“You’re very beautiful,” he said, his face flushed.
Gods above, it was easy, so easy. I felt a power in my nakedness, a power I had never felt before. I walked to the bed, bent, and kissed his lips. It was the first time we had ever kissed. “Are you always so good and earnest and—”
“Not always,” he said, and his arms went around me.
“Prove it,” I said.
One night, not long after this, I murmured in his ear, “You ask how many of your kisses are enough for me. As many as are the stars.”
He laughed. “I don’t remember asking you that.”
“It’s poetry.”
“Very pretty,” he said and nuzzled my neck.
“Have you had many other women?”
“Of course.”
I frowned. “A great many?”
“What does it matter?”
“I’m curious.”
“For someone of my birth and with my prospects, women are . . . well, women are always available. It’s been that way since I was twelve.”
I did not feel that he was boasting, but telling me the truth.
“Oh. And did you love any of them?”
“Of course not.”
“You made love to them and cared nothing for them?”
“Julia, it’s never been as it is with you. You’re my wife and . . . you’re like a new country for me. That’s the closest I can come to poetry.”
We were young, and every night, we explored each other’s bodies. In his arms I discovered sensations I did not know I was capable of feeling. I learned the meaning of ecstasy.
Did he love me as Catullus loved Lesbia, as my father and Livia loved each other? I asked myself that sometimes. And I wondered, did I love him that way?
His flesh was sweet. I knew that much. And when he held me, I felt warm and safe and no longer alone. I imagined years ahead in which our love would only grow.
Octavia’s house, the home of my brother Jullus, echoed with a girl’s wailing. I had come—as I was permitted to—for a brief visit with my brother. “What is it?” I asked him. We stood in the atrium, the sound reaching us from down a corridor.
“Marcella,” he told me. He explained that Octavia, her mother, had just informed her she was to marry Agrippa.
“He’s so old,” I said.
“Forty isn’t ancient.”
“She’s only sixteen.”
Jullus shrugged. “Augustus decided to reward Agrippa, so he’s giving him his niece. Personally, of the two, it’s Agrippa I pity. What a little bitch that one is.”
Marcella, like Marcellus, was Octavia’s child by a senator now long dead. She was pretty and arrogant. Octavia had three other daughters, two the children of my father, Mark Antony. I never felt the sense of kinship with my half sisters that I did with Jullus. They were Augustus’s nieces after all.
“I wish Marcella would stop shrieking,” my brother said.
“Augustus will be home in just a few days,” I said abruptly. It was what I had come to talk about with Jullus. I could hear fear in my own voice. “He’s with Livia at Prima Porta, but I hear they are returning to Rome. I will have to live under the same roof with him.”
Jullus gave me a warning look. “That’s a privilege, sweet Sister.”
“Of course. I am so lucky.”
He nodded approvingly, then said in a low voice, “Watch your words when you speak of him, even with me. We have to keep in mind that unseen ears might be listening. And when you’re with him, smile. Let him know you’re grateful for his kindness. Charm him.”
“Charm him?”
Jullus smiled at me. “After all, you are Cleopatra’s daughter.”
As I lay on my sleeping couch, after snuffing out the candle, I often whispered the names of my mother and father. Cleopatra. Mark Antony. The names of my twin, Alexander Helios, and my little brother, Ptolemy, whom I had adored. I thought also of my two tall half brothers, the giants of my early childhood. Say their names. Remember them. Caesarion. Antyllus. Caesarion was seventeen, Antyllus sixteen, both accounted men when Augustus, the benevolent, put them to death.
In daylight I tried to drive all thoughts of the dead from my mind, to show myself cheerful and content, not sad nor angry and certainly not veng
eful. This became especially important after Augustus returned home.
One morning I heard a not completely unfamiliar voice in the atrium. I peeked in from behind the curtain that led to the corridor off my bedchamber, and I saw him. He was of medium height and too thin, in no way the colossus you would expect to bestride the world. He stood talking to Livia, both of them examining a wall mural, which I guessed had been painted while he was at war. She touched his arm as she spoke, smiling up at him. He laughed. The two of them could not have looked more ordinary—a loving married couple discussing domestic matters.
I had seen him in Octavia’s house, but fleetingly, from a distance. I had never before thought of him as in any way like an ordinary man, but rather as a monster, the stuff of childhood nightmares.
Later that day, Livia summoned me into a sitting room, and he was there. He stood when I entered. That surprised me because I anticipated no courtesy from him. Livia was standing also, but I did not look at her, only at him.
He had bright blue eyes and a thin, tense mouth.
He gazed at me for a long moment, and I thought I should avert my eyes, but I could not. It was as if I became my mother. Her pride entered me in her enemy’s presence. I could not humbly lower my eyes before this man, even if my life depended on it.
“I hope you are happy living here, Selene.” His voice was softer than I expected it to be.
“Oh, yes, I am very happy.”
We had never spoken to each other before. I wondered if I was I supposed to call him Uncle as I called his wife Aunt. Fearful of making a mistake, I called him nothing.
Livia mentioned my studies, praising me, I think. I could not fully comprehend what she was saying, nor could I look at her. My eyes were locked on his. Charm him, Jullus had advised me. Smile. I could not do it. My heart pounded, and death’s metallic taste filled my mouth. I was sweating, yet I felt terribly cold. A word, a flick of this man’s hand, and I would be dead with my brothers.
Strangely enough, he looked sad. “Well, I am glad you are attending to your lessons. Knowledge is precious. I wish I had the time to read philosophy, history, as I did as a boy. You like your tutors?”
I nodded, unable to force out a word.
“That is good,” Augustus said. “I’m happy all is well with you.”
“Run along, Selene,” Livia said gently.
I turned and walked away. I was out of the room, out of their sight, when I felt a churning in my guts. I ran and barely made it to the privy. Kneeling on the tiled floor, I leaned over the wooden seat, looking down at the stinking hole, smelling the sewers, as I vomited.
My cousin Marcella, Marcellus’s oldest sister, was betrothed to Marcus Agrippa soon after my father returned from Spain. Sitting in the sewing room one morning with her mother, Octavia, and me, she did not hide her misery. “It is not that he is old—though he is—he’s older than your father, Julia! It is that he is so disgustingly lowborn. Everyone knows his grandparents were nothing but freed slaves!”
“He has merits that far outweigh the circumstances of his birth,” Aunt Octavia said.
An expression of distaste constricted Marcella’s features. “Nothing can outweigh descent from slaves! Oh, Mother, if you spoke to Uncle Tavius—if you begged him—surely he would relent and not force me into this grotesque marriage!”
“The peace of Rome is at stake,” Octavia said. “There cannot be a severance between Agrippa and your uncle and your brother. It is life and death, Marcella—can you understand that? Your uncle believes a marriage tie is necessary at this juncture. And Agrippa has many merits as a man.”
“Merits!” Marcella had honey-colored hair and fair skin that took on a mottled look when she was angry or upset. It was mottled now. She had been doing some decorative embroidering—fine gold thread on a red coverlet. She snapped the thread in a furious gesture. “Oh, yes, and if Agrippa had no merits at all, if he were cruel and vicious as well as old and baseborn, I would have to marry him all the same, wouldn’t I? For Uncle Tavius’s convenience? As far as you’re concerned, Mother, that’s all that matters, isn’t it? Oh, gods, what’s the use of talking?” She got up and rushed from the room.
Octavia shut her eyes for a moment. “She blames me. Does she think I can change the circumstances of our lives? Doesn’t she understand anything?”
“I think she only knows she is unhappy,” I said.
“Agrippa is a great man. The greatest man in Rome after your father. It is not as if your father is forcing Marcella into some mean marriage.” Aunt Octavia spoke in a calm, even voice, but she suddenly looked older, every line deeper cut.
She had married Mark Antony in order to seal the alliance between Antony and my father. The marriage had dissolved, and the peace of Rome had been destroyed. I imagined she was thinking of that—remembering her own unhappiness, fearing a similar fate for her daughter.
Poor Aunt Octavia—and poor Marcella, I thought. I felt so lucky when I compared my lot to theirs that I felt a prick of guilt. Why should I have good fortune when they did not?
I thanked the gods that I was married to Marcellus. For there was passion in our marriage; and looking toward the future, I could imagine a deeper bond, even the kind of partnership that Livia and my father had. In time Marcellus would fill my father’s place. He wanted that grand destiny, and I desired it for him. I wanted to stand beside him. For the first time, I listened with true interest to political conversations. I thought of what it meant to get and retain power, and what was required of the wife of a ruler.
I had become ambitious, but that ambition was born of my feeling for my husband. What came first with me was the joy we found in our marriage bed, the way just looking at him could move me, the moments of tenderness that were incomparably sweet. Give me a thousand kisses . . .
Shortly before he turned twenty, he became an aedile, and Father also gave him a Senate seat. My aunt Octavia told me pointedly that a young man needed his rest. I suppose she had heard sounds coming from our bedchamber late at night. Father certainly worked him hard during the day. My husband seemed to thrive on this, however. I believe he was happy.
During the first year of my marriage, I came to a true understanding of my own role in the greater scheme of things. I might picture myself becoming a trusted partner in government, just as Livia was, but I knew that right now, one thing was required of me—that I give birth to sons. Father’s imperium had brought Rome’s peace. Marcellus and the children we had together must carry that imperium into the future.
However, as month followed month, my courses came with a disappointing regularity. Livia and Octavia took to asking me from time to time if there was any chance I was pregnant. Of course I had to tell them no. I sensed that they reported this news back to Father, and as months passed and I was not with child, I began to imagine that I saw a question in his eyes when he looked at me. When I contemplated what it would mean if I proved barren, it was Father more than Marcellus I feared failing.
Marcellus and I—we might have had high aspirations, but what good children we were. How hard we both tried to please Father. We were truly free only in the confines of our bedchamber—and even there we were doing exactly what Father most wanted us to do—performing the requisite actions for producing an heir.
Sometimes we appeared in public at Father’s side—for example, at the chariot races or the theater. On these occasions, I wore my hair in exactly the same old-fashioned style Livia favored; it had been delicately suggested to me by Octavia that Father considered that most suitable. Marcellus always had his spotless toga perfectly draped. We smiled modestly at the people who gawked at us.
Our notion of a social evening was to attend staid dinner parties given by Father’s allies in the Senate, and guard every word we spoke—lest some slip of the tongue embarrass Father.
We were of course just puppets. But we quickly became well liked. As an unmarried girl, I had been allowed to go almost nowhere. Now my life was not so secluded. I rememb
er how odd it felt the first time I heard people shout my name at the racing course at Mars Field. As I entered Father’s private box, I was gaped at by great hordes of people—some in ragged tunics up in the bleachers, others well dressed in the good seats. Many waved wineskins or sausages on sticks that the venders sold. All these strangers cried, “Julia! Julia!” They called to me as if they knew me, though they did not know me at all. Father smiled at me. “It’s all right to nod at the people,” he whispered. I nodded, and the shouts grew louder.
Father looked proud, and I felt a little thrill of happiness.
“The people gaze at you and Marcellus, and they see the future,” Father said later. “It reassures them.”
Father wanted my husband to be popular with the people and seen by them as a future leader. When Marcellus and I had been married a little over a year, he, as aedile, presented gladiatorial shows to the people of Rome. The games were in fact paid for by my father and arranged by men in his employ. But my husband officially sponsored them.
I remember the stench. It is not blood you smell, Marcellus informed me. Blood has no odor. It is men’s insides, the viscera torn open. The half-digested food, the voided bowels. And of course the sweat. The sweat of men fighting for their lives, the sweat of thousands of eager spectators. All that mixes together and causes a terrible odor.
“You didn’t enjoy the games much,” Father said to me when they were all over.
We were at dinner. I looked down at a hunk of venison and shook my head.
“A philosopher I know wrote this about the gladiatorial games,” Father said. “‘Granted that many of those who fight and die are criminals who deserve their fate—what in the world have we spectators done that we must witness such butchery?’ Would you agree with his point of view?”
“I agree,” I said.
Father leaned across the space between our couches. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said in a low voice, almost in a whisper. “I hate gladiatorial games. Not the fighting. The dying. As I’ve grown older, I’ve become queasy when I look at corpses.” He smiled faintly. “Maybe because dying myself is less and less of a distant prospect.”
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