I Am Livia

by Phyllis T. Smith

  “Cicero thinks you will forgo vengeance for your uncle. But he’s a fool, isn’t he?”

  “Only my friends have the right to ask me that kind of question,” Caesar said. His eyes altered, took on an inward look. It was so cold, so removed from me, I felt as if I were gazing at someone I had never met before. He pressed his lips together, as though he was trying to hold back words it was better not to utter. But then his expression softened, and he spoke. “I’ll say this—if you can detach your husband and your father from their allegiance to Brutus, they’ll probably thank you in the end.”

  I recoiled. The implicit threat to both my husband and my father was clear. I understood the full magnitude of the sin I had committed. This man who I had tried to help was my family’s deadly enemy.

  He read my face, I am sure. Accurately, and with no surprise, and yet with a certain sadness. If he could read my expression, I could read his too. It was almost as if he had spoken his thoughts aloud: So now you truly see me, and you don’t like me anymore. I can expect no more kindness from you.

  “I have to go and buy mourning clothes for my mother’s funeral,” he said. “Farewell, Livia Drusilla.” He walked away.

  My mother called on me that afternoon. It was not like her usual visits. She often came to see me, usually bringing Secunda with her. She would inspect my house, frequently finding dirt in corners that I had not noticed. “You must keep in mind that even the best slave will do only the minimum that is required,” she would tell me. “That is human nature. If you are too lazy to discipline your servants, you will wind up living in squalor.” I would nod my head obediently, and Secunda would nod too.

  This time my mother had left my sister at home and was uninterested in housekeeping. We sat in the garden. She said to me with no preamble, “Your behavior at dinner last night was unseemly and rude. I am most displeased, and so is your father.”

  Silent, I gazed at the tree near the garden wall, which was flowering with peach blossoms.

  She leaned forward and gave me a hard tap on the knee. “Livia, pay attention. It is possible for a woman to influence public affairs. I’m not saying that one should, but that one can. Everyone knows Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, did it.”

  In the Forum stood statues of the Gracchi brothers, great political reformers and champions of the common people who had lived three generations ago. Nearby was a statue of their mother—our only public statue of a female that was not a goddess or an allegorical figure but an actual Roman woman who had once lived.

  “A woman can exert influence through her sons, as Cornelia did,” Mother said. “Or through her husband. And in no other way. Can it really be you don’t know this?”

  “In some countries, women are queens and rule kingdoms,” I said.

  “I am talking about Rome, not barbarian lands. Listen to me. What you should have done, if you decided Cicero—Cicero!—needed your advice was whisper what you thought into Tiberius Nero’s ear.” Mother averted her gaze for a moment. “At a time when he was likely to be receptive, that is what I mean. And if you were truly clever you would arrange matters so that he arose next morning convinced that it was he who had worked out why Cicero was going down the wrong path. He would have emerged from the house eager to seek Cicero out and show him the flaws in his thinking.”

  And Cicero would have heard him, I thought. The old goat would probably not have changed course anyway, but at least he would have had to listen.

  “There are ways for a woman to get what she wants in this world. If you are wise, you will use them.”

  “I will remember what you said, Mother.”

  She let out a breath and settled back in her chair. “See that you do.”

  As long as I could remember, a distance had existed between Mother and me. Yet at that moment I felt she did care about me, in her way. It made me wish to confide in her. I repeated to her the words that Caesar had said, which I had taken as a threat to Father and Tiberius Nero.

  She grew somber. “Well, your father should certainly know about this.”

  In keeping with their policy of honoring Julius Caesar’s memory, most of the Senate joined the procession taking his niece Atia’s body to the Field of Mars. My mother, sister, and I walked beside Father and Tiberius Nero. Father spoke to me in a voice so low I could barely hear it above the wails of the hired mourners who led the cortege. “Your mother has repeated to me what young Caesar said to you. I’m not surprised that he has no love for those who killed his own kin. It doesn’t surprise me either that he spoke to you with boyish bravado.”

  “I don’t think it was just bravado,” I said. “You should have seen the look on his face.”

  Father gave a snort of amusement. “I’m sure that boy can look very fierce, talking to a girl he wants to impress.”

  “Father, how can it make sense to give him the right to raise an army?”

  “Cicero has spent many hours in young Caesar’s company and has come to the conclusion that he is a loyal son of the Republic.”

  “What if Cicero is a fool?”

  “Cicero,” Father said with asperity, “is considered the wisest man in Rome. I was appalled by the lack of respect you showed him when he dined with us. But your mother says she discussed that subject with you, and so I don’t need to.”

  “Father—”

  “That’s all I wish to say. Let’s both be quiet now and honor the dead.”

  At the Field, I stood with my family to the side, at the front edge of the great crowd, as Atia’s body, draped in a shroud, was reverently lifted and set on a pile of wood. The air was thick with the smell of incense. Priests chanted, and the hired mourners continued their loud wailing and tore at their clothes. At first I did not see young Caesar because a dozen men wearing wax masks, portraying his mother’s illustrious ancestors, blocked my view.

  There was a hush. The men in masks moved out of the way, and young Caesar approached his mother’s pyre, a flaming torch in his hand.

  I could see his face clearly in profile. He looked very pale and grim in his black-dyed toga. Beside him stood a woman, his elder by a few years, with fair hair and pretty features, surely his sister.

  What I felt made no sense. I could summon up no wariness when I looked at Caesar. My heart went out to him. I wished that, instead of being in my place with my family, I could go and stand beside him.

  He touched the torch to his mother’s pyre, which burst into flames. He stepped back and for a few moments stood like a statue, still holding the torch, watching the smoke rise. Then he did something that people might have thought odd, if anyone but me had noticed it. He turned his head and looked toward the place, some yards from him, where senators and their families stood. His gaze moved over the throng, as if he were seeking someone. Our eyes met.

  I felt as if through the force of my own emotion I had somehow reached out and touched him, and impelled him to look at me. We held each other’s gaze for a long moment.

  He broke off the contact, threw the torch into the flames, and stood in the smoky haze watching the pyre burn. He was still there, watching as a filial son should, when my family and I left the Field.

  Afterward, Caesar Octavianus and Cicero continued their public love affair. Caesar told one and all that Cicero stood in the place of a father to him. Cicero made a series of speeches in which he attacked Mark Antony not only as a public figure but as a man, accusing him of corruption and every conceivable sexual filthiness. On the other hand, he praised Caesar, calling him “this heaven-sent youth.” “It is my solemn promise to you,” he told the Senate, “that he will always be what he is today—the kind of citizen we have all prayed for.”

  With Cicero’s endorsement, Caesar was named a propraetor of Rome. He continued to expand his army, acting fully within the law, and after the turn of the year, he marched off to help save Decimus Brutus from Mark Antony.
The force that went against Antony included Caesar’s own soldiers and a larger army, under command of the two newly chosen consuls.

  In April, they met Antony in battle. Both consuls were killed. Caesar fought well despite his inexperience. Routed, Antony and his army fled.

  Caesar now led the consular army as well as his own force. The Senate sent him a dispatch, ordering him to turn command over to Decimus Brutus. He wrote back courteously explaining why that was impossible—many of the soldiers were veterans of Julius Caesar’s army; they could hardly be expected to follow the lead of one of his assassins.

  When a delegation from Decimus Brutus arrived in his camp, wishing to negotiate an accommodation and suggesting a meeting between the two commanders, young Caesar explained that this was impossible too. Decimus Brutus had participated in the murder of his great-uncle and adoptive father. “Nature forbids me either to set eyes on or talk to Decimus Brutus. Let him seek his own safety.”

  In other words, tell Decimus Brutus to run for his life.

  Decimus was caught between Caesar’s forces and those of Mark Antony. His soldiers began to desert. He and a little band of loyalists tried to escape to Macedonia, where Republican forces had begun to gather under the leadership of Marcus Brutus. They were captured by a tribe of Gallic savages.

  The Gauls, fearful of Roman power, sent word to Antony, asking what they should do with their prisoners. Antony said to kill them. So the savages whooped with pleasure and hacked them to death.

  Caesar had secured the loyalty of eight legions, fifty thousand men. A deputation of four hundred centurions from his forces arrived in Rome. They put two demands before the Senate. For Caesar’s soldiers, they required a bonus in gold. For their commander, they demanded the consulship.

  Tiberius Nero tried to talk sense to them. The centurions, men of plebeian background raised to positions of authority because of their judgment and courage, heard him out because they respected him as a soldier. For the Senate, they had only contempt. “They said the Senate has done nothing for the common people, ever,” Tiberius Nero told me. “They worshipped Julius Caesar and insist that young Caesar is the one great hope for Rome’s future. I couldn’t change their opinions.”

  The next day, several centurions addressed the Senate. One of them pulled out his sword. “Make Caesar consul, or we’ll get the consulship for him with this,” he said.

  The Senate ordered the centurions to go back to Caesar and tell him that his demands had been rejected. Soon after, we learned that Caesar Octavianus was marching on Rome.

  It was winter. The days were short. Caesar’s army approached the city. We had a family dinner, my mother, my father, Tiberius Nero, and me. Secunda was at the table too. Her lower lip trembled. I wondered how much she understood of what was happening. Perhaps only enough to be afraid.

  “Cicero urges negotiation,” Father said. “But the boy has already said there’s nothing to negotiate.”

  Mother gestured for a slave to serve the second course and fill our wine cups. “Not the ordinary wine,” she said. “Bring in the Judean vintage.” She gave my husband a tense smile. “Our son-in-law is here, after all.”

  “Thank you, Alfidia,” Tiberius Nero said. “But really, the ordinary stuff is good enough for me.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Negotiation would be pointless,” Tiberius Nero said to my father. “The wonder is Cicero is not ashamed to show his face.”

  “He was misled by a scoundrel,” Father said. The scoundrel he meant was Caesar.

  “I hope the chicken is well done enough,” Mother said.

  The slave came back with the Judean wine and poured some into each of our cups. The second course was served. Even in these circumstances, Mother had ordered the cook to prepare roast tuna in a mint-and-vinegar sauce, as well as baked chicken. There was also a dish of lentils with coriander. But none of us were hungry.

  “It’s very good chicken, Mother,” Secunda said. She looked as if she might cry.

  “I don’t suppose there is still time for us to leave the city,” Mother said to Father. “It’s too late for that, I suppose?”

  “Much too late,” Father said. “All the roads are clogged. Decent people are being set upon by thugs as they try to escape from Rome with their goods. And Caesar’s army is rapidly advancing toward the city. It’s more dangerous to go than to stay.”

  “I see,” Mother said.

  We were quiet for a while, doing our best to down our dinner.

  I had known for two months that I was with child, and my husband fervently hoped I would give birth to a son. Every morning I rose to vomit my insides out. A hostile army approached Rome; and the child in my belly made me feel even more vulnerable than I might have otherwise.

  “I don’t see how it’s possible to make a stand,” Tiberius Nero said. “With what troops?”

  “Are you suggesting capitulation?” Father said. “Has it really come to that?”

  “What’s the alternative?”

  Father ran his hand over his face.

  Would the Senate put up a fight when Caesar tried to enter the city? Everyone knew who would win such a fight. And then what—when the battle was over? Would Caesar order the execution of all men allied with the killers of his adoptive father? Might he wreak revenge on their families?

  What if it came to the worst?

  If it did, then I would go as a supplicant to Caesar, clasp his knees, and hope he remembered that I had once done him a kindness. I would beg for the lives of my father and my mother and my sister—and yes, even my husband. I would plead for my own life and that of my unborn child.

  My father had an empty, wounded expression on his face. Perhaps he wished he could go back in time and relive the last year. Despite his keen intellect, he had followed Brutus’s lead and then Cicero’s, even when they acted foolishly. He was a loyal man who had put too much faith in the judgment of others. I could have wept for him.

  I decided that if I survived I would never do what Father had done, never defer to anyone’s judgment or refuse to look clear-eyed at the world. I would never be so blind, never.

  If I survived.

  You were quiet at dinner,” Tiberius Nero said when we arrived home. “It’s unlike you.”

  “There are no words,” I said. “For a Roman to march on Rome, demanding to be consul! What kind of man could do such a thing?”

  “Try not to distress yourself,” Tiberius Nero said. “Think of the child.”

  Think of the child.

  I imagined afterward, that the baby, having received a hint of what the world was like, thought better of the idea of being born and declined to join the dance of folly. Tiberius Nero and I went to bed, and in the middle of the night I awoke in pain, as if someone were driving a knife into my belly. The miscarriage was an ugly, bloody business, and the midwife could do nothing to make it easier for me. For several days afterward, my husband and my father and mother feared that I would die. As for me, I never realized my danger but lay in a stupor of pain. Then I began to recover.

  I had felt little pleasurable excitement anticipating the birth of my child, perhaps because I was sick so often or because of the worries that occupied my mind. Yet I felt the loss keenly, as if a part of me had been ripped away.

  As I lay in bed, feverish and ill, I thought of how it would have been to hold my baby in my arms, to guide his steps as he grew. I imagined a son, a small boy running through the garden to me, shouting, “Mother!” and grieved for the child who would never be born.

  I was still confined to bed when I learned that Caesar’s army had paused, a day’s march from Rome. He exchanged no messages with the Senate, made no threats. Silently, he waited.

  The Senate capitulated and made Caesar consul.

  I sat up in bed, my back resting against a pile of pillows. Tiberius Nero enter
ed the bedchamber, dressed in his senator’s toga with its purple trim. He sat down on the bed beside me. For many nights, sleep had eluded him, and his eyes were hollow with exhaustion. But he gave me a reassuring smile.

  So, I thought. We will all go on living.

  I struggled to frame a question that would not be humiliating for my husband to answer. “How did Caesar act?” I asked finally.

  “Oh, he was very polite, very reasonable. No boyish arrogance—he could have been a fifty-year-old magistrate, the way he acted. He thanked us all for coming to the Appian Way to greet him and escort him into the city—”

  “The whole Senate was there?”

  “Yes, certainly. The whole Senate.”

  My father too? I almost asked. But Tiberius Nero had already said The whole Senate.

  “Well, we welcomed him warmly, of course. Many men kissed him on the cheek. I didn’t. Maybe I should have. Perhaps he’ll remember that I didn’t and hold it against me. But in any case, he said how moved he was by our wonderful welcome. He sacrificed at the Temple of Jupiter officially as consul. And then we escorted him to the Forum, to show himself to the people. All along the way, there were cheering throngs. He made a speech from the Rostra, quite a smooth speech, about what he intends to do.”

  A consul’s role while in Rome was to preside over the Senate and carry out senatorial decisions. But everyone knew that with an army at his back, Caesar would do more than preside. He would dictate. With the Senate’s acquiescence, he would do just as he wished.

  “And what does he intend?” I asked in a taut voice.

  “First, to set up tribunals to try the killers of his ‘father’—”