I Am Livia

by Phyllis T. Smith

  “Julia,” he crooned to the child. He looked up at me. “Isn’t she pretty?”

  To me, she was only a tiny red mite, no different from any other child. She was not mine. But I promised her silently that I would be no evil stepmother to her. It struck me that by the nature of things I would spend more time in the future with Tavius’s daughter than I did with my own children. Certainly I would visit little Tiberius and my baby after it was born. But I would miss those small, important moments—when my son wept and needed soothing, when the baby spoke its first words or took its first steps. I would not be there with my little ones but living in another house. This thought hurt me and made me question the course I was taking. How could I leave my children?

  Tavius gave the infant to her nurse, and we walked to the entranceway. He put his arms around me. “I can’t stand to let you go,” he said.

  “But I must go,” I told him.

  “I know. And it will only be for a little while. But it’s hard.”

  My pregnant state felt like a physical barrier between us. But we kissed, and when I drew away, I whispered, “Beloved.” I had never spoken that word before, to anyone.

  I rode back home in my litter, the curtains drawn, my mind pulled this way and that. And yet my thoughts came back to Tavius, always to Tavius. I dreaded that the huge scandal attached to our marriage might threaten his rule.

  Many Romans would have said Caesar Octavianus needed as much protection as a scorpion did. But mixed in with my passion for him there was, from the first, fear for him, and a desire to keep him safe.

  He had said he had the right to act foolishly just this once, that is, to act on the basis of desire and human emotion. But his rule was still new and fragile. He could be doomed by even one foolish action. I did not want my marriage to him to cause more bloodshed, least of all for it to bring him harm.

  Men might look at his taking me from Tiberius Nero as one more exchange of partners among the sophisticated Roman elite, an ordinary divorce and remarriage. Or they might believe they saw an act of infamy, a tyrant wrenching a wife away from her lawful husband.

  Tiberius Nero might smolder in the Senate House. I could imagine a group of malcontents gathering around him, and finally striking Tavius down. I could just as easily see Tavius recognizing the threat and putting Tiberius Nero and others to death. I wanted neither of these eventualities. I was not like Fulvia, ready to exacerbate our rifts. My marriage must somehow become a part of Rome’s healing. I came to the conclusion that how the wedding was conducted mattered; and Tiberius Nero’s attitude mattered greatly.

  As soon as I entered the house, I went looking for my husband. I found him in his study, staring grimly into space. Awkwardly, because of my pregnancy, I sank to my knees before him. “Forgive me,” I said.

  Surprise flickered across Tiberius Nero’s face, but he said nothing.

  “I will marry him. Forgive me,” I said.

  Still, he did not speak.

  “Do you know what I have been asking myself?” Though I remained on my knees, my voice sounded ordinary to my own ears. I was speaking, as a friend, to a man I had known well for a quarter of my life. “I’ve been wondering who will give me away, at the wedding. There must be a man to stand up with me. But my father is dead. And my male cousins are scattered to the wind. So who will do it?”

  Seeing me kneeling softened Tiberius Nero somewhat, I think. He said in a reasonable enough tone, “All you have to do is let Caesar know the difficulty, and he’ll snap his fingers and some senator will leap at the chance to do you this service. This is really a very small problem. Why you are talking to me about it I can’t imagine.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. I just—I want my father. And if it can’t be him—well, I think to myself that I should ask one of his friends. And then I go down the list in my mind, and I find that they’re all dead. Who will give me away, in place of my father? Marcus Brutus? Decimus Brutus? Cicero?”

  “Livia—”

  I allowed myself to cry. My grief was real, and the tears were genuine, and yet I knew weeping would serve me. “Forgive me. I realize that I deserve no kindness from you. But what occurs to me is this: that you were my father’s friend and also his cousin.”

  “You can’t mean…”

  If he had become enraged, I would have fallen silent, risen, and withdrawn. But he just seemed amazed.

  “You are the leader of the Claudians now, the senior member of our lineage. It is up to you to act for our family. I ask you to act—for the sake of the peace of Rome. It would be a noble deed. And it would win you Caesar’s undying gratitude.”

  Tiberius Nero said nothing.

  I added in a low voice, “It would bind you to Caesar as an in-law.”

  I wanted Tiberius Nero to see that although he was losing a wife, he still stood to gain in the transaction. Nothing served so well to solidify political alliances than for one man to give another man a female relative to be his wife. The fact that Tiberius Nero was my husband made our situation peculiar. But he was also my kinsman; and only a few days before, he had desperately wanted Tavius’s favor.

  “You truly want me to give you away?”

  “It would mean everything to me.”

  In the tone of a prince granting a favor to a milkmaid, he said, “I suppose I could do it.”

  When I suggested that he hold the wedding banquet for Tavius and me here in his home, he muttered assent. With a grave face and downcast eyes, I rose and withdrew from his presence.

  That night, as I did for the few more nights I remained Tiberius Nero’s wife, I slept in a little spare room. I fell asleep quickly, but I had a bad dream.

  I stood on a high pinnacle. Below me lay a ravine. I saw with horror that it was filled with corpses, twisted and gray. They lay in a sea of blood.

  Across the ravine, also on a pinnacle, stood Tavius. He extended his hand to me and commanded, “Leap!”

  My heart pounded but I obeyed him. I flew like an eagle over the ravine, over the corpses. Tavius grabbed me in his arms. I clung to him with all my might, certain that if we let go of each other we would fall. I would not let him go. We stood there, pressed together, swaying, for an unimaginably long time. I felt wave after wave of terror, because I knew how likely it was that we would eventually fall and land on the pile of corpses, shattered and broken.

  I woke in darkness. I did not have to ask myself what the dream meant.

  Early the next day, I received a note from Tavius, scrawled on a tablet in his own hand, carried by a messenger: Dearest love, come and visit me at midday, for I cannot go a day without seeing you. And we have most urgent matters to discuss, specifically our wedding. I noticed his handwriting, which I had never seen before. I could sense how quickly he wrote, how the stylus ripped through the wax. His writing was so different from Tiberius Nero’s schoolmasterish hand.

  A memory came to my mind, of the time I had ridden a horse. All that power, between my thighs, under my control. Then I realized where my thoughts were leading me, and I almost blushed.

  Of course I wanted to control Tavius—to an extent. And to our mutual benefit, and the benefit of Rome. Any woman who says she does not want to guide the actions of the man she loves is, in my opinion, lying.

  I took a leisurely bath with scented oils, and then Pelia helped me dress and arranged my hair. I thought that I would bring her with me when I married, and also take the gardener, with whom she cohabited, and their little child, to keep her happy. In addition, I would keep the twins Talos and Antitalos, of whom I was fond. They could all count toward the repayment of my dowry. Its full amount must be returned; of that I was determined. Forfeiture of half the woman’s dowry was the penalty for adultery. For me to ask in private for Tiberius Nero’s forgiveness was one thing; to be publicly besmirched by the loss of any part of my dowry was another. Given Tiberius Nero’s re
duced circumstances, returning all he owed me would create problems for him. But I had a plan to deal with that.

  These mostly pleasant thoughts occupied my mind while Pelia rouged my lips and applied kohl to my eyelids. Then I thought of Rubria. I regretted that I could not take her with me when Tavius and I married. I would always be a friend to her, but she had to stay in Tiberius Nero’s household, to look after my son.

  When I remembered, again, that little Tiberius must stay with his father, the room seemed to go dark, or rather, I was drawn into a dark place within myself. I saw in the mirror Pelia held up to me a ruthless, selfish woman about to abandon the child she had already borne and the infant she would bear. I imagined what my father and mother would be thinking of me, if they could know, in Elysium, that I intended to leave my husband and marry, of all men, Caesar.

  “Why, the kohl isn’t too much, is it, Mistress?” Pelia said to me. “You said you liked the way I did it last time, and this is just the same.”

  She was responding to the expression of dismay she saw on my face.

  “The kohl is not too much,” I said. “It is exactly as I wish it.” I stood up, threw my shoulders back, and summoned my litter bearers to carry me to Tavius’s house.

  Tavius had lived a very strange and perilous life for the past few years. Despite his steadfast courage, this had taken a toll on his nerves. That was how I understood the fact that he greeted me not with pleasure so much as relief, as if he were not sure I would come at his summons. Enfolding me in his arms, he said, “I keep thinking this great happiness is not for me, that it’s going to be snatched away.”

  Caesar—the man so many had reason to fear, the one who had ordered executions—that was someone else. I wanted to believe that. Tavius gave me every reason to believe it. Of course, I knew the other part of him existed. Love did not make me a simpleton. But that part seemed to have no relevance to our life together.

  “I have news to tell you,” I said, when we reclined in his dining room, over another of his exceedingly plain meals.

  “What?” he asked tautly.

  We must marry as soon as possible, for his sake. In the meantime, for love of me, he will be a tortured soul. This thought made me smile.

  “Good news,” I said. I told him that Tiberius had agreed to give me away and to host our wedding.

  “You got him to agree to do that?” Tavius said. He saw immediately how Tiberius Nero publicly blessing our marriage would be to everyone’s benefit.

  While he was still rejoicing, I said, “I don’t want our marriage to cause any resentment of you in any quarter. Tavius, may I ask you this? Please treat Tiberius Nero with the greatest respect and kindness.”

  Tavius laughed. “Why not? He’ll be my new, most treasured friend.”

  I looked down at my food. “Then you’ll see to it that his property, which you seized, is returned to him?” I raised my eyes to find Tavius staring at me, not precisely with dismay but certainly with surprise. “It will sweeten him even further,” I said. “And it’s good for men to know that those who accommodate you don’t go unrewarded.” I smiled. “Beloved, I have an interest in this too. I want my dowry back. Also, what Tiberius Nero owns will eventually belong to my children.”

  Tavius tilted his head and assumed an inward look. This pose of his would soon become very familiar to me. I knew at once that it meant that he was thinking, of course, but I had only a dim sense as yet of what it meant for Tavius to think about a problem. In time I would come to understand that he did not ponder just what was on the surface but plotted out all the strategic implications of any move he made, as if life were some incredibly complex board game.

  Presented with a question such as whether he ought to return Tiberius Nero’s property, he considered not only the effect on Tiberius Nero and on me, but how other men, allies or adversaries, would interpret such a gesture, whether they would be soothed or irritated by it, where the money would come from, how it otherwise might be spent, and other repercussions of which I never would have conceived.

  Everything was weighed and balanced in a few moments. He smiled and said, “Done.”

  We were reclining together on one couch, and I kissed him. He stroked my hair and ran his fingertips down my throat and, lightly, over my breasts. I wished my baby were already born. Because I was vain enough to want my body perfect, not big with child, the first time we made love, and yet I desired him so. Lying there with him, I was sorely tempted to go beyond kisses and caresses, and I think so was he. But then I thought, no, it was better to wait until I was not another man’s wife and carrying another man’s child. I did not want our first time together besmirched by any hint of what was wrong, ungainly, or absurd, but to be an act of beauty. Perhaps he felt the same. Before long, we drew apart.

  We discussed our wedding and whom we wished to invite. The religious rites, such as the sharing of the consecrated cake, would not take place, but we would observe most of the usual customs. Tavius said, however, that he saw no reason for me to walk from the wedding banquet to his house. “It’s no requirement. I’m sure you’ll be more comfortable riding in a litter.”

  “Dearest,” I said, “I’m touched that you want to protect me. Thank you. But I think it is important that people see me walk to your home, and do it serenely, on our wedding day. Because I want to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that I’m no Lucretia.”

  Tavius’s eyes widened at this. But he understood my meaning.

  Roman men are complex beings. Some might think—I have at times thought it myself—that their wives and their daughters, and women in general, matter not a pin to them. They certainly have been known to act as if that were so. But there is a whole other aspect of their minds and hearts. After all, the birth of the Republic—the overthrow of the monarchy under which Rome was founded—can be attributed to good men’s indignation over the rape of a woman. One of the sons of Rome’s tyrannical king ravished Lucretia, a pure young wife. She told her husband and her father of this, before she committed suicide. The uprising that followed overthrew the monarchy for all time.

  If I had wanted to destroy Tavius, and had been willing to lay down my life to do it, the means were in my hands. All I would have to do was stab myself to death on his doorstep. The men of Rome would avenge me.

  But in fact I wanted to preserve his life and his power. I could best do that by walking through the streets to him, pregnant though I was, and showing the world that I consented to our marriage.

  Though I was caught up in the joy of love, the political implications of our marriage kept dogging my thoughts. Let Rome laugh at all three of us, Tavius, Tiberius Nero, and me. Let them crack jokes because Tavius and I did not have the self-control to wait for marriage until after the birth of my child, guffaw about this cool and calculating young man making a fool of himself over a woman. Let them assume Tiberius Nero was so venal that for political advantage he would cheerfully give away his wife. I could even bear being called an adulteress, much as I hated that. But no one must talk about a tyrant dragging an unwilling wife away from her husband. Of that, I would make sure.

  When I left Tavius that day, I did not go directly home but paid a visit to my sister. We went into the garden of her house and sat on a marble bench. Secunda pursed her lips and waited for me to speak.

  “In a few days,” I informed her, “Tiberius Nero and I will divorce, and Caesar and I will marry.”

  “Livia!” She wailed my name. “How can you do such a thing?”

  I lifted my chin. “Caesar and I have fallen in love.”

  Concern for me, dismay, and outrage warred in her expression. Outrage won. “Well, I certainly will not attend the wedding.”

  “Did I invite you? I don’t recall it.”

  “Not invite your own sister to your wedding?”

  “I admit I intended to, but if you will not come, you will not come. What
you must do is this: Tell your husband that he is about to be linked by marriage to Caesar Octavianus, and you’ve decided to deliver this deadly insult, and have refused, on behalf of you both, to go to the wedding. I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed at how well you’re managing his affairs.”

  As I walked out of the garden, and out of my sister’s house, I heard her calling after me. I ignored her, and, getting into my litter, ordered the bearers to take me home. Then I cried.

  It was not because I did not expect Secunda to attend my wedding. I knew my sister. She was not, fundamentally, a fool. There would be an apology. She would beg to be allowed to come to the wedding, and I would let her come.

  I cried because I saw in what she had said a reflection of what my parents’ reaction would have been, if they had lived. What if, by some miracle, my father had survived, and I had gone to him and told him I intended to marry Caesar? He would have considered me a traitor to the Republic. Whatever anguish it caused him, he would have turned his back on me forever.

  Father, Father, I called to him in my heart. But there was no answer. There would never be an answer.

  I wept all the way home. And then, before I exited the litter and put my foot down once more on the hard ground, I promised myself I would never cry again for this cause. I would not attend anymore to my guilt, or my regrets about the past. I would turn my face away from all that and look toward the future. That was what was required of me as Tavius’s wife.

  The day before my wedding, I went to the Temple of Diana on the Aventine Hill. This particular temple, ancient, fortress-like, and associated with the cause of the common people, breathed an awful history. Eighty years before, in front of the temple, senators led by a vicious consul had slaughtered Romans who espoused democratic political reform.