“You will not remain in that man’s house another day,” Tavius told his sister. I knew he preferred that Octavia not bear the onus of initiating a divorce from Antony. But pride required that she at least take a step toward this severance. “I just bought two houses near mine. I intended to use them for governmental purposes, but you can have your choice of them. While the house is being furnished, you’ll come and stay with us.”
“I know you mean that kindly,” Octavia said, “but I intend to stay here.”
“You will not stay here,” Tavius said. “I forbid it. You’re not going to stay in this house and pretend you’re that man’s wife.”
“But I am his wife,” Octavia said.
“It’s true he hasn’t had the decency to send you a letter of divorce.” Tavius’s cheek muscle quivered. “But you must know your marriage is over.”
I said softly, “Tavius, there are children to think of. You haven’t mentioned the children.”
Tavius nodded. “Yes, of course. Octavia, you will take Antonia and Antonilla with you. Livia and I will welcome them.” He spoke in a flat, stony way only, I think, because he was fighting to control himself. Whatever he had expected when he sent his sister to Antony, he had been unprepared for the outcome. Unfortunately, he had so far not spoken one gentle word to Octavia, who certainly could have used his kindness and comfort. But he did say, though in the same stony voice, “Don’t fear separation from your children. I doubt if Antony even remembers they’re alive, but if he does, he’ll have to walk over my corpse to get them. Those girls are my flesh and blood, and I’ll always look after them, just as I’ll always look after you.”
Octavia acknowledged his words with a bleak half-smile. “That’s good of you. But I have other responsibilities that I must think of. To begin with, my stepsons. They are only twelve and eight years old. How can I abandon them?”
Antony’s sons by Fulvia? Tavius looked amazed that his sister should give them a thought at this juncture. But with hardly a pause, he said, “All right, I’ll take them into my home too, and you can look after them until their father makes provision for them.” He could not restrain himself from adding, “If he ever bothers to. He seems not to recollect he has any children but Cleopatra’s spawn.”
At the mention of Cleopatra, Octavia stiffened and looked away. She said in a low voice, “You’re kind to say you will accept the boys. But I have other responsibilities, just as important to me as the children’s welfare. I married Antony, for good or ill. I owe him something even now. At least I can wait and see if he comes to his senses. And I owe Rome something.” Her eyes returned to Tavius. “You exalted me, beyond my merits. I have become a sort of symbol of peace, and people look to me to guarantee the peace between you and my husband. I can do that only as Antony’s wife.”
Tavius just stared at her, his eyes burning.
She reached over and touched his hand. “If you are set on war for motives that have nothing to do with me, there is little I can do. But you and Antony are the most powerful men in the world. How would it be if Rome is brought to civil war because one of you is besotted with a woman, and the other is carried away by protectiveness and resentment on a woman’s behalf—on my behalf? It would be both tragic and laughable.”
“I have not been speaking of war,” Tavius said between his teeth.
“But I sense you’re thinking of it. If there is to be war, please—don’t make any insult to me the pretext. I beg you. I couldn’t stand that.”
The three of us were silent. Then Tavius said in a taut voice, “I have no intention as of now of breaking the peace. But you’re to leave this house. I will not have you stay here.”
“Tavius, dearest, I can’t leave his house. The only right course for me is to continue on the path I’m on, to walk the very last mile to salvage my marriage.”
“For the love of heaven,” Tavius said, caught between exasperation and pain for her, “do as I say.”
She smiled slightly and tried to speak in a light voice. “I’m afraid that you will have to call your soldiers and have me dragged out of here. Because I won’t leave of my own will.”
I understood at that moment Octavia’s true nobility. In face of the public shame Antony had inflicted on her, she eschewed anger but sought to act in the best interests of Rome and all of us. She was single-handedly making her stand, trying to avert war. It was how I would have wished to have acted in her place, but I did not know if I would have been capable of it.
Tavius did not say another word but rose and left the house.
So she stayed, tending Antony’s property, looking after Antony’s sons as if they were her own, and being a gracious hostess to any of his friends who visited the city. This earned her general admiration in Rome. But the fact that she continued, though at a distance, to be a loyal, serviceable wife to Antony was a stone in Tavius’s heart.
The peace held, a rancorous peace punctuated by angry letters from Antony to Tavius, and from Tavius to Antony, a raking up of old and present grievances. As this continued for month after month, it seemed possible we would go on this way forever. But the treaty of alliance between Tavius and Antony had a set term—which had less than two years left to it.
Despite the animosity, it was a very good time for Rome. Tavius wanted to solidify his rule. If it did come to war with Antony, he would need the people’s love. So the huge building program under Agrippa’s management proceeded at a rapid pace, and even expanded. One saw workmen and construction sites in every part of Rome. My good works expanded also.
Just as Tavius did, I set aside regular morning hours in which to receive ordinary people. By this time, I had acquired wealth in the form of commercial farms, granaries, and olive presses. I was not profligate with my money, but I was generous. If a decent, indigent girl found herself hard-pressed, she would, if she were wise, come to me. I would find her a way to survive other than selling her body. Often I made her a gift of a dowry, enough for her to attract some upstanding fellow to marry her. In return, I expected loyalty—and usually I got it, not only from the girl herself but from her immediate circle. I had many clients of my own, people bound to me by ties of mutual loyalty, who ranged from recipients of my charity to senators’ wives; in fact, I could even include some senators in that group. The small, daily exchanges of favors to create and nurture political bonds were as much a part of my life as they were of Tavius’s.
Every day Tavius depended on me to shoulder a share of the burden of work he carried. He often said he was lucky in the wife he had chosen. But I felt my failure every time I saw a baby—and at this time, it seemed as if every woman I was close to was giving birth. First, my sister had her second daughter. Then Caecilia, now happily wed to Agrippa, had a daughter too. Shortly after that, Rubria, who still looked after my boys like a kindly aunt, brought her little Marcus into the world.
Tavius and I made an appearance at the naming ceremony that her husband, Ortho, held for his son. Ortho greeted us, flushed with pride. A few years before, he never would have dreamed of having Caesar as his guest, but now the house he welcomed us to was large and grand, and his baby son lay in an ornate cradle, trimmed with carved ivory flowers.
Little Marcus was not red and wrinkled, as many nine-day-old children are, but already handsome. When I peered at him in his cradle, I swear he smiled as if he knew me. I, not one to gush over infants, felt a fluttering in my heart and a rush of longing.
I tore my eyes away from the child and noticed a statue of Minerva in a wall niche across the atrium: a costly statue, delicately painted. It pleased me that Ortho and Rubria could afford such artwork. The celebration, itself, pleased me—the happy guests, the smell of sweet cakes in the air, the wine poured into silver goblets.
Rubria, still recovering from childbirth and looking a bit pale, sat beside the cradle greeting her guests. When I sat down beside her, she gave me a searching, a
lmost stricken look.
“Why, dear, what is it?” I said. “Surely you are happy?”
“It just feels like a dream to me.”
I laughed and patted her hand. “It’s no dream.”
She looked across the room at her husband. “He has become so wealthy, so quickly. Oh, with your help, and we are grateful for it. But it’s like watching a shooting star. And a shooting star rises—and then it falls.”
Her words chilled me, the more so because Rubria had never before spoken in such a fashion. I said, “After women give birth, they can have strange moods. But that passes.”
“I think sometimes that I’m still alone and poor. I’m not a merchant’s wife with a house and a son. I have fallen asleep and dreamed this, but I will wake and realize—”
“Stop it,” I said, but gently because I was so fond of her. “You mustn’t give in to such fancies.”
“Is it just a fancy?”
“Of course it is.” I knocked on the gilded arm of her chair. “This is solid. And look around you. Here is your house, your husband, your son. And here am I, your loving friend. I assure you, I’m not some dream phantasm.”
“Lady Livia, do you think of the forest fire and the cave? Does it never seem dreamlike to you, to have risen so high, after all that? Oh, I am not comparing myself to you. But don’t you, yourself, sometimes wonder if you’re dreaming?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think such thoughts. For one thing, I’m much too busy.” The truth was that when such ideas entered my mind, I did my best to push them away.
“And you don’t fear that you might fall?”
“I will never allow myself to fall,” I said.
Soon Tavius came to whisper in my ear that we had other engagements that day. So we left, borne off in the large and comfortable litter we used when we traveled about the city together. People stood in the street to cheer, and we kept the litter curtains open so they could see us.
“Do you feel it?” I asked Tavius in a low voice. “Do you feel how the people adore you?”
He smiled and lifted his hand to wave at the crowd.
“And I adore you,” I whispered. “Do you know how much?”
I think he sensed some need for reassurance in me. He turned his head and gave me a questioning look, but then the shouts of the crowd distracted him, and he looked away.
At that moment—strangely—I had the impulse to pray. Inwardly, I supplicated myself before Diana. I begged her, as I always did in my prayers, to protect Tavius. I begged for continued peace. And I asked for one thing more, a vital thing. I asked that I be allowed to bear Tavius a son.
Sometimes you are going down a particular road, and the journey seems so long that you can almost imagine it will never end. Then you reach a landmark, and that is enough to make you understand that indeed you are covering distance, and reaching your destination is only a matter of time. But what if you don’t want to reach the destination at all? What if you wish to pretend to yourself that you are not traveling? A change in terrain can be so unwelcome.
I wanted to believe that Antony and Octavia could live married though apart forever, and that Tavius and Antony could continue to growl at each other but never come to blows. They were not, after all, living in adjoining towns but in distant lands within a vast empire. Maybe Tavius and Antony could just go on, tolerating each other’s existence.
Then one day Tavius entered the room in which I was inspecting some weaving done by my maids. “Come into my study,” he said. It was unusual for him to fetch me this way, and his eyes were as fierce as they had been at Vedius’s house when he smashed all the precious crystal.
We closed the study door behind us. I sat on the couch. “What has happened?”
Tavius did not sit. I felt almost afraid of him, as he loomed above me. His hands were clenched into fists, and he looked as if he wanted to find someone to strike. “I’ve gotten a report on Antony’s doings. He annexed Armenia.”
“We expected that, didn’t we?” I blurted.
“Livia, will you be quiet and listen? He returned to Alexandria, to Cleopatra. And he went through some kind of marriage ceremony with her.”
Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.
“And he made a speech to the people of Alexandria,” Tavius went on relentlessly. “And in the speech he said this—that Cleopatra had been the legitimate wife of Julius Caesar. That her son Caesarion is Julius Caesar’s only true heir.”
“Antony has always been a fool,” I said in a rush. “He does and says stupid things without realizing the implications. He did this, likely, only to please Cleopatra. Knowing him, he might have been drunk.”
Tavius said in a furious voice, “He has dishonored my sister, his wife. He has publicly said I am not the heir of Julius Caesar. And you make excuses for him?”
A voice in my mind spoke. It was like a child’s voice. I’m afraid. Please. There must not be war. I drew in a breath. “Beloved, you mistake me. I don’t excuse him. I am pointing out that he is a fool. If he were a rational, sober man and acted this way, I would take it as a declaration of uncompromising enmity against you. But he is Antony.”
Tavius nodded, becoming calmer. “Yes. He’s a fool.” He sat beside me. “My informant sent me this.” He opened his hand. In his palm lay a large silver coin. I took it and examined it. On one side of it was a portrait of Antony in profile, on the other the profile of Cleopatra. I knew that in the kingdoms of the east, this was how kings and queens symbolized their rule.
There were inscriptions in Greek on both sides of the coin. Above Antony’s portrait: “Antony after the conquest of Armenia.” Above Cleopatra’s: “Cleopatra, queen of kings and mother of kings.”
“He wishes to establish a monarchy independent of and even hostile to Rome,” Tavius said. “He wishes to dismember the empire that generations shed blood to win, so he can become an eastern potentate, with her by his side.”
Was that truly his aim? How could we know? “He is erratic. Sometimes he acts with no serious aim at all. He may intend only to gratify her.”
“And what does she intend?” Tavius said.
“She?” I said. I had often wondered about Cleopatra’s motives. But Tavius had previously spoken of her as if she had no existence apart from Antony.
He gave a mirthless chuckle. “Do you discount her because she is a woman? I don’t. Haven’t you ever given thought to who and what she is?”
“She is a queen,” I said, “and I do not discount her.”
“I met her when my father was consorting with her,” Tavius said. “She never struck me as beautiful, but she has, when she wishes to exert it, enormous charm. She speaks six languages fluently—oh, she is learned. Learned and also savage. The royal line from which she springs is known for treachery and murder.”
I nodded; I knew this. But Tavius went on speaking as if reciting the ugly details gave him a perverse pleasure.
“When Cleopatra was small, her older sister rose in rebellion against her father. He executed his own daughter. After her father died, to secure the throne, Cleopatra murdered both her brothers. This included the one who was also her husband. The royal family of Egypt practices incest—though the boy did not live long enough to consummate the marriage. Cleopatra’s younger sister, Arsinoe, showed herself no friend of Rome, but because she was just a young girl, my father spared her life. Do you know what happened to Arsinoe, a few years ago?”
Of course I knew. Cleopatra had insisted that Antony order Arsinoe put to death. He had her dragged out of a temple sanctuary and executed.
Cleopatra had used every gift of guile and feminine allure to maintain her rule of Egypt. She had slaughtered members of her own family to keep her power. But what would she have said if forced to explain herself? No doubt she would have spoken of the struggle with disloyal kin and the need to hold her kingdom against Rome.
She might have maintained that her choices were dictated by necessity.
It would be wrong to say I felt a shred of kinship with Cleopatra. But I remembered that Tavius and I had gone down twisted paths we never would have trodden if we had been born in a well-ordered Republic. Who could say what I would have done in Cleopatra’s situation? It might be that she and I had more in common than I could comfortably admit. I wondered, did she love Antony as I loved Tavius?
Was she simply laying claim to a husband now? Or was it an empire Cleopatra was claiming?
“I don’t know how any man, even Antony, could prefer that woman to my sister, who is kind and good, and I swear to you, more beautiful,” Tavius said. “But he’s become her creature. They had a great public ceremony, at which he awarded his older son by her the whole Parthian empire he has yet to conquer. Their daughter, he gave Crete and Cyrenaica, and the younger boy got Syria and Asia Minor. Caesarion he dubbed ‘king of kings’ just as his mother is ‘queen of kings.’ ”
From a Roman point of view, these were bizarre doings. But several kings reigned in the territories Antony governed, subordinate to Rome and to Antony himself. If he wanted to make his children vassal rulers, some would argue that was within his authority and need not injure Rome. I said this to Tavius, and he did not contradict me. Still, I felt he did not hear me.
“Antony has obviously lost his reason,” I said. “And who can predict what a madman will do? Just because of that, you should not take any precipitate action. You need to know his and Cleopatra’s true aim. And if there is to be war—” I nearly choked on the word. “If there is to be war, all of Rome must be on your side. They look upon you, with good reason, as the man who has brought them peace. They love you for that. You must keep their love, now more than ever. They must be made to understand that war, if it comes, is Antony’s fault, not yours. Then they will support you. And then you will win.”
I Am Livia Page 28
