The Daughters of Palatine Hill: A Novel

by Phyllis T. Smith

  “There are many men in Rome who long for the return of our old liberties,” Jullus said. “They would back us.”

  “Then you think . . . ?”

  “To topple your father from power would be hard and risky, but not impossible.”

  I saw that Jullus wanted this—truly wanted it. The unwelcome thought came to me that perhaps for years he had harbored a hope of seeing my father overthrown. He was Mark Antony’s son. But I loved him. And I saw that as long as Father was in power, we could never have a life together. I wanted that life with all my soul.

  Still I recoiled. My mouth felt dry. “Oh, gods above. Oh, gods, what are we talking about, Jullus? Can we really be talking about this?”

  Was there a moment when we stopped toying with the idea of overthrowing my father and started to plan it? I think that moment passed by, without us marking it.

  Jullus and I had gathered around us a circle of senators who disliked my father’s rule and feared the prospect of Tiberius as his successor. Some of these men had been my lovers. Some had long been Jullus’s friends. They were now our allies.

  The heart of this group was Gracchus. His was the calm voice encouraging the others. It was as if his great-grandfather’s noble spirit had revived in him. He spoke of democratic reforms he hoped Jullus would institute in Rome’s government.

  “You trust me,” Jullus said, gratified.

  Gracchus smiled. “Not completely. But at least with you there is hope. With Tiberius there would be no hope at all.”

  A secret member of our group was Quinctius Crisponus, a former consul. I did not particularly like this man, who plainly was driven by jealousy of my father. But his active support was vital to us. Father almost never turned down a social invitation from such a high-ranking member of the Senate. And he trusted Crisponus, whom he considered a close political ally.

  “When we are ready to act, Crisponus will invite your father to dinner,” Jullus told me. “My friends and I will be waiting for him.”

  I drew in a sharp breath. “Waiting to do what?”

  “Take him into custody. It won’t be hard. Your father has grown careless in recent years about the matter of bodyguards. He’ll only have a couple of them, and we will surprise and overpower them.”

  I felt an inward recoil, a shrinking in the marrow of my being. It seemed impossible at that moment that I could take part in such a scheme, deposing my own father, taking him prisoner.

  Jullus put his hands on my shoulders. “Is there another way for us?”

  “My father must not be hurt.”

  “Of course.” Jullus’s voice was gentle. “He will be allowed a comfortable retirement.”

  It was as if at that instant a dark pit swallowed me up. Jullus is lying to me, I thought. He knows it would be too risky to let Father live. I am here plotting my own father’s death.

  I shook my head. No, that is not true. I thought of how during the civil wars, a general named Lepidus had made himself my father’s enemy. Father had defeated him. This was shortly after his marriage to Livia, and she had moved his heart to mercy. And so this man Lepidus, already past middle age, had been allowed a peaceful retirement. He withdrew from public life to his own villa on the southern coast of Italy. Father stationed guards all around to keep watch, but the man was left alone to live as he wished on the grounds of the villa. He had had a long, peaceful old age and never caused any trouble, finally dying of natural causes.

  “We’ll allow Father to retire as Lepidus did,” I said. “Jullus, we will do that?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  Caesar Augustus in his country villa . . . making no trouble for those who deposed him . . . Was that an impossible vision? I told myself it was not, that Father was a man who accommodated himself to reality and would accept what he could not alter. Of one thing I was certain, though. He would never forgive me for stripping him of power. If he lived to be a hundred, he would go to his grave cursing me. And if Jullus and I tried to overthrow him and failed, his vengeance would be terrible.

  We had to avoid alerting Father and yet in some way prepare the people of Rome so they would assent to his overthrow. They had to rally to our side when Father was deposed.

  “They love you, Julia,” Jullus said. “They will rally to you.”

  Rome had a spot where ordinary citizens went to discuss public affairs, the open space in front of the statue of the satyr Marsyas in the Forum. To the common people, the swaggering Marsyas—a creature with a goat’s ears and legs and a tail—was a symbol of liberty. He was said to have boldly risked the wrath of Apollo, the Olympian who vastly outranked him in the pantheon of immortal beings. Since Father worshipped Apollo above all other deities, the statue of Marsyas had taken on a special meaning for those who did not care for Father’s imperium. People had for years adorned the statue’s base with bits of papyrus on which they wrote criticisms of Rome’s ruler, often in obscene language. Father permitted this and could point to it as proof that he had not deprived Romans of their right to speak frankly. I think he even believed it made his rule more secure when citizens vented complaints against him this way, rather than silently nursing anger.

  For Jullus and I to simply make an appearance in front of the statue of Marsyas was no crime. But I knew it would infuriate Father. A tinge of fear kept me from going there with Jullus during the day.

  So we went at night and stood beside the statue in the torchlight. Gracchus came with us the first time we did this—an act of friendship I would never forget.

  A few men stood talking near the statue, but they did not seem to notice our presence.

  Jullus and I smiled at each other. No harm done. But our course was set.

  We visited the statue night after night, staying for the better part of an hour. Gradually people began to realize who we were, and to greet us. At first there were just a few people, but bit by bit, the number grew to several hundred. People grumbled about politics, in the way they were prone to do at this particular spot. They said elections were no longer free but invariably won by Father’s puppets. Young men of rank spoke with special vehemence about how Father financially penalized those who did not marry and father children. They called Father a hypocrite. And the poor spoke about how all the wealth we won in our wars somehow never found its way into their purses but only those of the rich, though their sons did the dying. Jullus and I said little but listened to all of this sympathetically. I actually did feel sympathy for these people who always greeted me kindly, often with a touch of awe.

  “The people want a change in government,” Jullus told me confidently.

  As more and more people took to gathering in front of the statue of Marsyas at night, Father surely heard of it. He took no action.

  I heard from Gracchus and other friends that Jullus and I were more and more spoken of, as two who were bound together in love of each other and of Rome. Those who wished to see a change in how Rome was governed viewed us as sympathizers, allies, even leaders.

  “Maybe Father will realize that we are loved by the people, and he will give way to the people’s will. He will let us marry.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Jullus said.

  “But even he must see that people do love us.”

  Jullus kissed me and, holding me tenderly, whispered, “It’s not us they love. They love you.”

  As expected, Cleopatra Selene arrived in Rome for a visit and came to stay with Tavius and me. Her son, Ptolemy, a darkly handsome youth of eighteen, and her little girl, Drusilla, accompanied her. As soon as they were ushered into our house, I embraced Selene and the boy affectionately. Then my eyes sought the little girl—Cleopatra’s granddaughter—named in my honor.

  The child wore a little red silk dress and had her hair arranged in curls. Her eyes in their darkness and depth were like her mother’s, surely like her grandmother’s too. “Greetings, Drusilla,” I said. I bent and kissed her and imagined her grandmother’s shade standing by, wearing an enigmatic smile.
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br />   That evening over dinner, Tavius turned to Selene and said, “Let’s postpone arguing about tax policy and Mauretania. Put it off at least until tomorrow—all right?”

  “I would never dream of arguing with you at any time, Augustus.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back.

  “You get my wife to do your arguing for you,” he said.

  “Lady Livia has been most kind. But we both know that it is your best interest and Rome’s that is always closest to her heart.”

  How at ease she seemed, reclining across from us, sipping the finest wine from a jeweled goblet. She wore her hair up, which showed her high cheekbones off to advantage. Her dress was purple silk—the royal color—and she wore amethyst earrings and a torque of worked gold.

  I had wondered if I ought to cancel her visit, for in a sense it came at an inauspicious time. The actions of Julia and Selene’s brother had become increasingly troubling. They were obviously seeking public support—wishing the people to press Tavius to allow them to marry. This had only served to infuriate him and reinforce his conviction that Jullus was unworthy of marriage to his daughter.

  Tavius and I did not wish to offend Selene by asking her not to come, and I, at least, had some notion she might provide her brother with wise counsel. They were close, and she had the prudence I had come to see he lacked. I therefore hoped—perhaps foolishly—that she could talk sense to him.

  He should stop the nonsense with Julia. That was how I thought of what was occurring—as nonsense. Irresponsible people meeting around a satyr’s statue to complain; it put me on edge. But I knew how power was gained and lost in Rome. I could mourn the days when it was a matter of counting votes—but those days had ended years before my birth. I had long since faced reality, understood that power was won with a sword. The people around Marsyas’s statue had no weapons. Tavius had an army. I admired his self-control in tolerating Jullus and Julia’s doings, much as he seethed.

  That first evening we spent with Selene, we did not speak her brother’s name, and neither did she. I doubted if she had heard about the gatherings around the statue, though probably she did know about her brother’s affair with Julia. The studied avoidance was the only indication that anything at all was wrong.

  As the day approached when we would carry out our plan to overthrow my father, I felt terror, but also exhilaration at the thought of having a life with Jullus, exhilaration at finally being free.

  “I want to bring one more person into our circle of friends,” Jullus said. “One more person, with a great name not only in Rome but in the entire empire.”

  “Do you mean Selene?” She had recently arrived in Rome as Father’s guest.

  “We will need supporters beyond the borders of Italy before we are done, and she can bring us that. She is a queen, the only descendant of the royal house of Egypt. She commands loyalty beyond Mauretania. Just the mention of her mother’s name will work magic.”

  “Are you certain she can be trusted?”

  A tender smile appeared on Jullus’s face. “She is my little sister,” he said.

  The festival of Liberalia came on March 17, a day on which gods associated with the common people were specially honored. On that day, it was a custom to crown the statue of Marsyas with a laurel wreath. “Who better to do the crowning than you?” Jullus said.

  And so that morning I appeared in daylight in the Forum and approached the statue with a wreath in my hand.

  A crowd of people had gathered. There must have been hundreds of them, and they shouted, “Julia! Julia!”

  Jullus walked beside me, smiling. “See how they love you?” he whispered.

  I made my way slowly through the crowd. People all around me continued to cry out my name. Their faces were so eager and hopeful. They were ordinary people, many of them poor, and I felt they truly believed in me, that somehow I would make things better for them. Then I was looking up at the statue. The satyr was depicted with his right arm raised, as if to rally some unseen army, and with a wineskin slung over his left shoulder. He had the horns and ears of a goat but a human face, thick lips curved in a smile.

  I told myself it was a small thing I was doing, participating in a yearly rite, crowning a statue. This could even be seen as a pious deed. But I realized it would be reported to my father—and he would view it as an act of utter defiance. My heart raced. I knew I had lied to myself. This was no small thing.

  A narrow ramp stood in front of the statue for me to walk up so I could reach to place the laurel wreath on the head of the statue. But I did not use it. I looked at Jullus, saying nothing, rested a hand on his shoulder. A light came into his eyes; he understood what I wanted, understood we must do this together. There before the crowd of people, he lifted me in his arms.

  There were more cries of “Julia! Julia!” and cries of “Antony!” as well. I also heard shouts of “Liberty!” and I felt that for this one moment, I embodied something greater than myself. I looked down at Jullus’s shining face and smiled at him. “Liberty!” the crowd shouted. I reached up, set the laurel wreath on the head of the statue. I had never felt so free.

  My brother had not been among those who welcomed my children and me when we arrived in Rome. In Augustus’s house his name was never mentioned. I found this understandable.

  In Mauretania I had my own, albeit limited, sources of information about what was happening in Rome. I knew that my brother was carrying on a love affair with Augustus’s daughter. Though Augustus had apparently tolerated this for well over a year, I did not suppose he was pleased with the situation.

  I would have much preferred it if Jullus had stayed clear of Julia. But I knew he was not her first lover, and I imagined that before long Jullus would be replaced in Julia’s bed, just as other men had been. I was woefully ignorant about the political implications of the liaison.

  Early in my stay in Rome, I received an invitation from Jullus to come and see him in lodgings he had taken in a humble part of the city. He had an important matter he wished to speak to me about in private, he said. Naturally I went to see him at the earliest opportunity.

  I had heard he and Marcella were estranged and living apart from each other. Still when he greeted me, I did not expect Julia to be standing there at his side, as if she were his wife.

  “Selene, I am glad to see you again.” Julia’s cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparkled. She was exactly my age, thirty-six years old, but when I looked at her, I thought of a girl on her wedding day.

  Jullus was tense and grave. He and Julia led me into a small sitting room with a sturdy oak door. Jullus closed the door firmly.

  “Your husband and children are well?” he said. “All is well with you?”

  Julia remained largely silent while Jullus and I spoke for a while of ordinary family matters. His side of the conversation seemed strained, forced. I felt as if he was trying to make sure I was still the loving sister he remembered. And I was of course. We could be apart for any length of time, live in different countries, yet never be estranged.

  “I have missed you,” I said, meaning it.

  “I’ve missed you too,” he said. “We can rely on each other, can’t we?”

  “Yes, we always have.”

  My brother grew more at ease with me. He leaned forward and said, “I have something to discuss with you. A very great matter.” Soon after, I understood that I had reached a crossroad in my life, and a moment of extraordinary peril.

  I listened with a feeling of dread as Jullus told me that he planned to overthrow Caesar Augustus. He said that the very next evening, Augustus would be induced to visit the home of a senator pledged to Jullus’s conspiracy and Jullus and his friends would seize him there.

  I stared at him in shock. “And you will become First Citizen?”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes burning.

  I turned toward Julia. “You have agreed to this?”

  “Yes.” She gazed at Jullus. “We will marry.”

  A look passed between
them. It made me think of my parents—political allies united in a quest for power but also more than that. Did love outweigh politics? I thought it did with Julia, from what I knew of her as a person. With my brother I could not be sure. But there was affection, even passion, in his glance.

  Jullus turned his attention back to me and said, “The story of Mark Antony, Cleopatra, and their children will have a different ending. Instead of spending his life groveling to the man who destroyed them, Mark Antony’s son will rise to power, with Cleopatra’s daughter as his respected ally. Don’t you like that ending better, Selene?”

  I said quietly, “You wish revenge? You will put Augustus to death?”

  “No!” Julia cried.

  Before she made this utterance, I had seen assent on my brother’s face.

  However when he spoke, he said, “Augustus’s death is not necessary. He is already old. He can retire to one of his country villas. Under guard of course. But in comfort and dignity.”

  Yes, of course, Caesar Augustus—Caesar Augustus!—could be nullified as a threat and yet still be left alive. I think Jullus read disbelief in my expression, because he quickly changed the subject and began to tell me the names of senators who had rallied to his side.

  “I need you beside me, little moon,” my brother said. “You and Juba as well. I will restore what is yours. You will have Egypt as well as Mauretania and even more lands. You and Juba will govern the eastern empire as Father and your mother did.”

  The offer took my breath away. I felt a stirring in my blood. But I said, “You do not plan to . . . neutralize Tiberius?”

  It was Julia who answered. “We do not wish to kill our opponents. We wish to be just.”

  “That is admirable,” I said. “But surely you do not think you will seize the empire without opposition? Tiberius will come against you with an army at his back. And even if he were eliminated, that would not mean you would be unopposed. There are other men whose standing with the army is nearly as great as his, and they would not simply submit to your rule.”