I Am Livia

by Phyllis T. Smith

  One evening at dinner, I heard Lucius say something that terrified me. “That little swine Caesar wants to act like he’s the third Gracchi brother. It’s too much.” Looking intently at my husband, he added, “I’ve written to my brother that he can absolutely depend on you.”

  “Of course he can,” Tiberius Nero hastened to say.

  Caesar was almost never in the city of Rome, and he shared the governing of it with Antony’s men. His priority was to hold the loyalty of his soldiers, and so he was settling his veterans on small farms. Since the time of the Gracchi, it had been considered a great injustice for Roman soldiers to return from the wars to nothing. Their commander was expected to see to it that when they mustered out they got small plots of land.

  Like the Gracchi, my father had loathed the latifundia, the great estates worked by slaves, which ate up so much Italian land. He said the latifundia owners often drove poor citizens off the land by foul, illegal means. If he approved of nothing else that Caesar did, he would approve of this—that he was going about Italy, breaking up latifundia so he could give his veterans small farms.

  “What is Antony depending on you to do about Caesar and the latifundia?” An edge in my voice, I asked the question of my husband that night as we prepared for bed.

  “There are legal matters that fall under my jurisdiction,” Tiberius Nero said. His duties as praetor were largely those of a judge.

  “He wants you to rule in favor of the latifundia’s owners? Just to thwart Caesar?”

  Tiberius Nero did not reply.

  “He does, doesn’t he?” I gasped for breath as if all the air had drained out my lungs. “The question of land—it drips blood. It always has.” Strife in Italy had first started nearly a century ago over this very matter.

  “Now, dear, calm yourself.”

  The guttering candle on the table beside our bed flickered feebly. I could not see my husband’s face. “This is ruination.”

  “It would be ruination for me not to do what Antony requires,” Tiberius Nero said. “I have no choice. Not if I want my head to stay attached to my neck. Do you think I like this business?”

  “Caesar and his men won’t stand for this,” I said.

  The carnage, the civil war, would all begin again. This present lull was only a brief holiday from the Roman habit of self-destruction. What made matters worse—what had me sick with despair—was that my husband’s allegiance, and therefore mine, had to be with Antony in a battle in which right and justice were with Caesar.

  I wonder how many women from time immemorial have thought that if only women could rule the world it would be better than it is. Really, has any woman not, some time or other, thought that? Of course I thought it too. I believed women were unquestionably less bloodthirsty than men. Then I met Fulvia.

  She was Mark Antony’s wife. Her husband, whom she was said to love passionately, had assumed control of the eastern empire, gone to Egypt, and fallen into the snares of Cleopatra. One might, as a woman, have sympathized with her if she had had a shred of decent human feeling. She did not.

  When Tiberius Nero and I went to have dinner at her home, the mourning period for my father and mother had not yet elapsed, and I wore white. Fulvia looked me up and down and said, “Oh, you poor creature, you just lost your parents, didn’t you? What a pity they chose the wrong side.”

  She was about forty years old, tall and full-busted. Her bright makeup was just this side of grotesque. I did not reply to her remark about my parents but returned her gaze steadily, while wishing her in the hottest corner of Tartarus.

  She ushered Tiberius Nero and me into her dining room. Murals depicting Dionysian revels adorned the walls. Her brother-in-law Lucius was already eating dinner, along with a raven-haired girl of ten or eleven.

  “That slimy little beast has divorced her,” Fulvia informed me, when she saw me gazing at the child.

  “Caesar?” I said.

  “Who else do you think I mean? To think that the poor child lived with him for months on end,” Fulvia said.

  “Lived with him?” I stared at her.

  “Well, she lived in his house,” Fulvia said. “He didn’t touch her. He didn’t touch you, did he, Claudia?”

  The girl shook her head. “He said I was too young.”

  “The day after the divorce he married a relative of Sextus Pompey,” Fulvia told me. Sextus, the son of Julius Caesar’s great enemy, Pompey Magnus, was at that time gathering military support and preparing to seize Sicily. “Scribonia. She’s skinny and ugly and at least thirty-five years old. He’s desperate for Sextus’s help against Antony, you see. The coward. It won’t do him any good. I’m raising such a force in Italy that it will be simple—like that”—she snapped her fingers—“to obliterate him.”

  “You are raising a military force?”

  “Of course,” Fulvia said, and looked at me as if I were stupid.

  Throughout dinner, it was embarrassing to hear Fulvia bark orders at Tiberius Nero and Lucius Antony. She acted as if the Roman government and Antony’s army in Italy were in her hands. Neither of the men dared to say no to her. Such was her force of will.

  Fulvia never recruited as many troops as she hoped to, but it was not for lack of trying. And for month after month, she put pressure on Tiberius Nero to give legal rulings inimical to Caesar. Then, not content with this, she ordered her soldiers to harass Caesar’s veterans. Skirmishes were fought in which men died. Caesar could not control his veterans’ resulting fury. They demanded Caesar lead them against Fulvia and cursed him when he seemed to hesitate.

  Fortune favored my husband and me. When Caesar and his veterans began their march on Rome, we heard about it early enough not to be trapped in the city.

  We knew Tiberius Nero would have to flee. No one doubted that, as the man who had handed down judicial rulings as Fulvia had instructed, he would be torn limb from limb by Caesar’s troops when they took Rome.

  On a sunny morning, I stood in the courtyard clutching my son in my arms as Tiberius Nero told me that Fulvia, Lucius Antony, and their supporters had decided to withdraw from Rome to Perusia. A small city a hundred miles away, it was highly fortified and could hold out for a long time against an attacking army.

  “Livia, you and the baby must come to Perusia with me,” Tiberius Nero said. “Caesar hasn’t gone in for murdering women and children yet, but there’s always a first time—and besides, the gods alone know if his troops will obey him once they enter Rome.”

  The risk of staying was too great. I held my son more tightly and buried my face in his curling dark hair. We were fortune’s playthings and might lose everything. But I promised myself that whatever happened, I would keep my child safe.

  Perusia did not seem like a city at all to me but only a walled town, for it was tiny compared to Rome. Guards opened the city gates for us. Our cart drove down narrow streets to Perusia’s forum, an unimpressive square ringed by one-story brick buildings. It was filled with soldiers, armed and wearing breastplates and war helms. A runner had been sent from the gate to tell Lucius Antony of our arrival. He came through the press, smiling. “Welcome, my friend,” he said to Tiberius Nero. He looked at me. “I hope you and your child are no worse for the trip. I have a house prepared for you.”

  The house that Lucius had commandeered for us stood not far from the forum. It had belonged to one of the city’s leading men, but when we entered and I glanced around the atrium, I was taken aback. There were a few old couches, a couple of plain oak tables, no frescoes on the walls, nothing costly or beautiful.

  Tiberius Nero looked around somberly.

  I felt I must keep up his spirits as well as my own. “This is better than I expected,” I said. “We can be very comfortable here.”

  A rough-faced former legionary named Buteo, once Tiberius Nero’s armor bearer, had accompanied us to Perusia as a se
rvant. Rubria had come too, to help care for little Tiberius. While Buteo carried our things in from the cart, Rubria and I explored the house and found a little room where she could nurse the baby. She seemed perfectly accepting of the situation in which she found herself. She sat down on a stool and bared her breast, her plain, broad face placid as she placed her nipple in my son’s mouth. I went back to the atrium, where Tiberius Nero stood with Buteo.

  “I want to start putting our things away and making us comfortable,” I said. “You’ll help me, won’t you, Buteo? Will you carry that chest into the room on the left side of the atrium?” I pointed. Buteo grimaced but picked up the chest.

  Later, when we were alone, Tiberius Nero touched my cheek. “Little dove, do you truly understand what is going on here? Do you realize what will happen if Mark Antony doesn’t get here in time with an army?”

  “Yes,” I said. I put my arms around him and rested my cheek against his shoulder. Shared misery seemed to deepen the bond between us, and I felt true affection for him at that moment. “We’re together. You, me, and our boy. That’s the most important thing.”

  “You’re brave,” my husband said.

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’m frightened. But if my father were here, he would say that this is a moment when it is necessary to be brave.” Now, I thought. In this miserable city, waiting to be besieged. Now. This is a time when the gods are at work to forge our souls.

  We settled down and lived as best we could. I had been trained in all housewifely arts by my mother, on the theory that it was necessary to know how a task should be performed in order to supervise the work of others. No one could get house servants in Perusia. Well, Fulvia could and did. But virtually all of the town’s womenfolk—except for those at the bathhouse that doubled as a house of prostitution—had fled to surrounding farms or other towns. So I scrubbed our clothes and cooked the meals myself. Buteo helped with the heaviest work, though always with a scowl. Rubria pitched in generously.

  The country people, who came to the city gates to sell us food, brought news of Rome. Caesar and his veterans had marched into the city. There was some looting by soldiers, but in the end Caesar had restored order.

  “Next he will want to assert control over all of Italy,” Tiberius Nero said grimly.

  We had been in Perusia barely a month when Caesar’s army arrived and camped outside the town. Fulvia mounted the public speakers’ platform in the Perusian forum. Over her woman’s garb, she had strapped on a sword. In a voice as carrying and confident as any man’s, she addressed the troops and told them they need not fear. Her husband was on the way; his army would soon arrive to defend us. She pointed at her two little sons, who stood at the foot of the speakers’ platform. Mark Antony would not abandon his wife and children.

  Even in the insane times in which we were living, women did not don swords and deliver speeches. This was more than outlandish—it was as if the moon had fallen to Earth. But I admit that much as I disliked Fulvia, I felt a little shiver of admiration for her audacity. Though some snickered at first, in the end the soldiers all cheered her—after all, she had promised them help.

  Fulvia on the speakers’ platform with her sword—a repellent image, surely. And yet it pulled at my mind: a woman wielding unvarnished political power.

  Caesar encircled Perusia. His army commenced to dig a ditch all around the town and to build a rampart. They would starve us to begin with, and then, when we were weakened, climb over the town walls.

  Our soldiers fired slings full of pebble-sized lead balls and stones as big as a man’s fist over the walls at the enemy, and received the same in return. Soldiers etched insulting messages into the lead pieces. References to intimate parts of Fulvia’s body adorned most of those that came flying in our direction. “I seek Caesar’s ass” was one of the milder messages on the balls our side fired. Very amusing, except that those lead balls, like the stones, shattered soldiers’ skulls.

  How strange it felt to be in a town besieged by a young man with whom I had chatted at my father’s dinner table, a young man to whom I’d felt attraction. I wanted to plead with him, Why must we have this conflict? Can’t you call off the siege and go away?

  Though greatly outnumbered, Lucius Antony and my husband again and again led out soldiers to attack Caesar’s troops. They could not defeat Caesar’s army but hoped to slow down the construction of the rampart, which would completely seal off the town. Our hope was that Mark Antony, summoned by Lucius and Fulvia, had left Egypt and was sailing toward us with the bulk of his army. After all, we were fighting not just to hold Perusia but for dominance in Italy. We prayed that Mark Antony would reach us before the rampart was finished and we began to starve.

  Every time Tiberius Nero left me to attack Caesar’s forces, my heart constricted. What if he were killed, what if I were left alone in this besieged town with only my baby and two servants? But I knew my role was to see him off with a calm and confident face. I always did.

  Once, Tiberius Nero brought home a wounded soldier, a boy who had distinguished himself with gallantry in a raid. With Buteo’s help, he managed to carry him back into the city from the place outside where he had fallen. The young soldier had a deep wound in his back that slowly seeped blood. He could not live. But because he was no more than sixteen or seventeen and had been so brave, Tiberius Nero did not want him to die in the grisly hospital barracks. So he put him in our bed, without saying a word to me. And I, equally silent, brought water and washed the boy’s face, which was streaked with the blood and mud of battle.

  The young soldier lay on his side, very still. He had dark, wavy hair and smooth olive skin. I noticed his eyelashes. What a strange thing to notice, but they were unusually long and thick. I was sure girls had sighed over him.

  Once, he said a word, “Water.” So I held a cup to his lips. He tried to drink, but it was beyond him. I dipped my fingers in the cup and moistened his lips. Then I sat and held his hand.

  He opened his eyes wide and seemed to truly see me for the first time. He looked surprised to find a woman beside him. Then he smiled. I wondered if he mistook me for some girl he fancied. Or perhaps he had a sister. I hoped he took me for whatever woman he preferred that I be. He shut his eyes again and seemed to sleep.

  Look what the fools have done to you. Caesar and Antony and Fulvia—all those fools.

  I held on to the boy’s hand, even though I knew he was no longer aware of my presence but was far away, and going on a farther journey still.

  Why don’t the gods intervene and stop this slaughter? I would do it if I were them. If I had power, that is what I would use it for. I do not care if Caesar rules or Antony does. We must have peace.

  The young soldier died before morning, died because Rome could not govern herself. His passing reawakened memories of the loss of my father and mother, and took me to a place beyond tears.

  Once, Tiberius Nero came home from a raid flushed with rage. His manner was so grim that at first I thought it best not to question him. After I helped him to take his armor off, and bound up a small flesh wound on his right forearm, he said, “Oh, Livia, we almost got him.”

  “Got whom?” I said.

  “Him. That piece of manure, Caesar.”

  I stared. “You mean, you were that close? You actually saw him? What happened?”

  “They were holding some ceremony—he stood at a little makeshift altar with a knife in his hand, about to sacrifice a sheep. And we came at them, suddenly, in force. I threw a javelin, and it almost hit him. I swear to you, my aim was true. But he saw it coming and he ducked, and it went over his shoulder. And then all his men came surging around him, and—well, he escaped. Maybe this all would be over if I had just managed to kill him.”

  But it was not over, nowhere near the end.

  Water we had in ample supply, because there were many wells in the town. There was no way the
enemy could make us die of thirst. But very soon we ran out of eggs and fish. The small amount of produce that one saw in the market—roots, mostly—looked half rotten and gnawed by vermin. Silos stored a limited supply of grain. We made it into porridge or had it milled into flour and baked a gritty and tasteless bread. We did not precisely starve.

  I was often hungry but had no right to complain. We, Tiberius Nero’s family, received more generous grain rations than the ordinary soldiers did. What was most important to me was that Rubria, our wet nurse, had enough to eat, and that little Tiberius did not go hungry.

  My son had turned one year old. He was big for his age and confidently walking. It was good that he was still nursing, but he required other food too, and more than just grain.

  I ventured out of our house only to go to the marketplace. Tiberius Nero insisted that Buteo accompany me, for he did not want me alone on the streets of a town that was almost womanless and packed with thousands of soldiers. Except for Fulvia, Rubria, and me, there were almost no women in Perusia who were not prostitutes. So with Buteo’s grudging company, I searched the market for food. I was quite willing to stick several gold coins into a butcher’s hand in exchange for some decent-looking meat. But it became hard to find meat that did not seem tainted. All the horses and mules in the town not immediately needed for military purposes were slaughtered and eaten early on. Then people killed the dogs and ate them.

  Once I stood at a butcher’s stall, looking at small cubes of flesh. “What is that?” I asked.

  “Chicken,” the butcher said. He wore a frayed gray tunic that was spotted with blood. Though he made a point of looking me in the eye, I knew he was lying.