“He’s needed in Spain. Mutinous troops.”
“I know. The trouble there started with Sertorius.”
“Sertorius was more than thirty years ago! How is he toblame?”
“He enlisted the local peoples and taught them to fight like Romans. So now the Spanish legions are mostly that—Spanish. A fierce lot, but they don’t drink in Roman discipline with their mother’s milk. One reason I’ll not try the same experiment in the Gauls, Caesar. But getting back to the subject, who?”
“Sabinus. Even if there was a province begging for a new governor—which there isn’t—Sabinus doesn’t want it. He wants to stay in Italia and participate in fleet maneuvers when they happen.” He grinned briefly. “It won’t be uplifting listening to him when he discovers that’s four years off. I wouldn’t trust him with legions, but I think he’ll make an excellent supervisor of engineers for Portus Julius.
That’s what we’ll call your harbor.”
Agrippa laughed. “Poor Sabinus! He’ll never live it down, that one bungled battle while Caesar was conquering Further Gaul.”
“He was self-important then, and he’s self-important now. I’ll send him to you for a thorough grounding in what has to be done. Will you be here in Narbo?”
“Not unless he’s quick, Caesar. I’m going to Germania.”
“Agrippa! Seriously?”
“Very. The Suebi are boiling and they’ve grown used to the sight of what’s left of Caesar’s bridge across the Rhenus. Not that I’m going to use it. I’m going to build my own bridge, and farther upstream. The Ubii are eating out of my hand, so I don’t want them or the Cherusci to take alarm. Therefore I’ll dive into pure Suebi country.”
“And into the forest?”
“No. I could, but the troops are afraid of the Bacenis—too dark and gloomy. They think there’s a German behind every tree, not to mention bears, wolves, and aurochs.”
“And is there? Are there?”
“Behind some, at any rate. Fear not, Caesar, I’ll be careful.”
Since it was politic that Caesar’s heir show himself to the Gallic legions, Octavian stayed long enough to visit every one of the six legions camped around Narbo, walking among the soldiers and giving them Caesar’s old smile; many of them were veterans of the Gallic wars, enlisted yet again from sheer boredom at civilian life.
That has to stop, Octavian thought as he made his rounds, his right hand feeling like pulp from so many hearty handshakes. Some of these men have become considerable landowners from a dozen enlistments; they are discharged, they collect their ten iugera each, and a year later they’re back for another campaign. In, out, in, out, each time accumulating more land. Rome has to have a standing army, its men enlisted to serve for twenty years without discharge. Then at the end, they will receive a monetary pension rather than land. Italia is only so big, and settling them in the Gauls or Spains or Bithynia or wherever doesn’t please them; they are Romans, and long for an old age at home. My divine father settled the Tenth around Narbo because they mutinied, but where are those men now? Why, in Agrippa’s legions.
An army should be where the dangers are, ready to fight in a nundinum. No more of this sending praetors to recruit, equipping and training troops in a tremendous hurry around Capua, then sending them on a thousand-mile march to face the enemy at once. Capua will continue to be the training ground, yes, but the moment a soldier is satisfactory, he ought to go immediately to some frontier to join a legion already there. Gaius Marius threw the legions open to enlistment of pauper Head Count—oh, how the boni hated him for that! To the boni—the good men—Head Count paupers had nothing to defend, not land nor property. But Head Count soldiers turned out to be even braver than the old propertied men, and now Rome’s legions are exclusively composed of the Head Count. Once the proletarii had had nothing to give Rome save children; now they gave Rome their valor and their lives. A brilliant move, Gaius Marius!
Divus Julius was an odd one. His legionaries worshipped him long before he was deified, but he never bothered to initiate the changes the army was crying for. He didn’t even think of it as an army, he thought of it as legions. And he was a constitutional man, one who disliked changing the constitution, the mos maiorum, for all that the boni said to the contrary. But Divus Julius had been wrong about the mos maiorum.
A new mos maiorum is long overdue. The phrase may mean the way things have always been done, but people’s memories are short, and a new mos maiorum will soon turn into a hallowed relic. It’s time for a different political structure, one more suited to rule a far-flung empire. Can I, Caesar Divi Filius, let myself be held to ransom by a handful of men determined to strip me of my political power? Divus Julius let that happen to him, had to cross the Rubicon into rebellion to save himself. But a good mos maiorum would never have let Cato Uticensis, the Marcelli, and Pompeius Magnus push my divine father into outlawry. A good mos maiorum would have protected him, for he did nothing that that puffed-up toad Pompeius Magnus hadn’t done a dozen times. It was a classic case of one law for this man, Magnus, but another law for that man, Caesar. Caesar’s heart had broken at the stain on his honor, just as it broke when the Ninth and Tenth mutinied. Neither would have happened if he had kept a closer eye on and more control of everything from his insane political opponents to his shiftless relatives. Well, that is not going to happen to me! I am going to change the mos maiorum and the way Rome is governed to suit me and my needs. I will not be outlawed. I will not wage civil war. What I have to do will be done legally.
He spoke of all that to Agrippa over dinner on his last day in Narbo, but he didn’t discuss his divorce, or Livia Drusilla, or the dilemma of choice facing him. For he could see as in the full flush of a summer sun that Agrippa must be kept apart from his emotional tribulations. They were a burden unsuited to Agrippa, who was not his twin or his divine father, but the military and civil executive of his own creating. His invincible right arm.
So he kissed Agrippa on both cheeks and climbed into his gig for the long journey home, made even longer by his resolution to visit every other legion in Further Gaul. They must all see and meet Caesar’s heir, they must all be bound to him personally. For who knew where or when he would need their allegiance?
Even with that punishing schedule, he was home again well before the end of the year, his priorities mentally assembled in definite order, some of them extremely urgent. But first on his list was Livia Drusilla. Only with that matter settled would he be able to bend his mind to more important things. For in and of itself it was not an important thing; it owed its power only to a weakness in him, a deficiency he couldn’t fathom, and had given up trying to. Therefore, get it over and done with.
Maecenas was back in Rome, happily married to his Terentia, whose great-aunt, the formidably ugly widow of the august Cicero, thoroughly approved of such a charming man from such a good family. Having been some years older than Cicero, she was past seventy now, but still controlled her enormous fortune with an iron hand and an encyclopaedic knowledge of religious laws permitting her to wriggle out of paying taxes. Caesar’s civil war against Pompey the Great had seen her family scattered and ruined; the only one left alive was her son, an irascible drunkard whom she despised. So there was room for a man in her tough old bosom, and Maecenas fitted himself there very comfortably indeed. Who knew? Perhaps one day he’d fall heir to her money. Though privately he informed Octavian that he was convinced she’d outlive all of them, and find a way to take her money with her when she finally went.
So Maecenas was available to do the negotiating with Nero; the only problem with that lay in the fact that Octavian still had not breathed a word of his passion for Livia Drusilla to a single soul, even Maecenas. Who would listen gravely, then proceed to try to talk him out of this bizarre union. Nor, given Nero’s stupidity and intractability, would Maecenas enjoy his usual advantages. In his mind Octavian had equated his nonaffair with the privacy of bodily functions; no one must see or hear. Gods did not e
xcrete, and he was the son of a god who one day would be a god himself. There was much about the state religion that he dismissed as sheer claptrap, but his skepticism did not extend to Divus Julius or his own status, which he didn’t think of in the Greek fashion. There was no Divus Julius sitting atop a mountain or dwelling in the temple Octavian was building for Divus Julius in the Forum; no, Divus Julius was a disembodied force whose addition to the pantheon of forces had augmented Roman power, Roman might, Roman military excellence. Some of it pervaded Agrippa, he was sure of it. And much of it pervaded him; he could feel it surging through his veins, and had learned the trick of steepling his fingers, to build the force ever higher.
Did such a man confess his weaknesses to another man? No, he did not. He might confess his frustrations, his trials, his bouts of practical depression. But never the weaknesses or flaws in his character. Therefore to use Maecenas was out of the question. He would have to conduct these negotiations himself.
On the twenty-third day of September each year he had his birth anniversary, and now had celebrated twenty-four of them. A fog had descended over the years just after his divine father’s assassination; he didn’t remember quite how he had marshaled the strength to embark upon his career, aware that some of his deeds were due to the folly of youth. But they had turned out well, and that was what he recollected. Philippi formed a watershed, for after it he remembered everything with crystal clarity. He knew why. In the aftermath of Philippi he had faced down Antony and won. A simple demand: the head of Brutus. That was when his future had unfolded before his mental gaze, and he had seen his way. Antony had given in after a performance that went from terrifying rage to bathetic tears. Yes, he had given in.
His encounters with Antony hadn’t been numerous since, but at each of them he had found himself stronger, until, at the last such, he had spoken his mind without even the faintest falter in his breathing. He wasn’t Antony’s equal anymore; he was Antony’s superior. Perhaps because Divus Julius had never managed to break him, Cato Uticensis came into his mind, and he knew at last what Divus Julius had always known: that no one can break a man who has no idea he owns an imperfection. Take Cato Uticensis out of the equation, and you had—Tiberius Claudius Nero. Another Cato, but a Cato without an intellect.
He went to call on Nero at an hour of the short morning that would see him arrive after the last of Nero’s clients had gone, but before Nero himself could sally forth to sniff the damp winter air and see what was going on in the Forum. Had Nero been a lawyer of repute, he might have been defending some noble villain against accusations of peculation or fraud, but his advocacy was not prized; he would act for his friends in the fourth or fifth position if they asked, but none had recently. His circle was small, composed of ineffectual aristocrats like himself, and most of it had followed Antony to Athens, preferring that to living in Octavian’s Rome of taxes and riots.
It would have given Nero untold satisfaction to have declined to see this unwelcome caller, but civility said that he ought, and punctiliousness said that he must.
“Caesar Octavianus,” he said stiffly, rising to his feet, but not moving from behind his desk, or extending a hand. “Pray be seated.” He did not offer wine or water, simply sank back into his chair and gazed at that detested face, so smooth, appallingly young. It reminded him that he was now in his mid-forties and had not yet been consul; he had been praetor the year of Philippi, no help to anyone’s career, least of all his. If he couldn’t mend his fortunes, he would never be consul, for to get himself elected would take massive bribes. Nearly a hundred men were standing for the praetorship next year and the Senate was talking of letting sixty or more actually hold office; that would release a flood of ex-praetors to contest every consulship for the next generation.
“What do you want, Octavianus?” he asked.
Out with it: best so. “I want your wife.”
An answer that left Nero bereft of words; dark eyes wide, he gaped and gobbled, choked, had to get clumsily to his feet and run for the water jug. “You jest,” he said then, chest heaving.
“Absolutely not.”
“But—but that’s ridiculous!” Then the implications of the request began to sink in. Mouth tight, he returned to his desk to sit down again, hands clenched around the homely contours of a cheap pottery beaker; his set of gilt goblets and flagons had vanished. “You want my wife?”
“Yes.”
“That she’s unfaithful is bad enough, but with you—!”
“She hasn’t been unfaithful. I’ve only met her once, in the ruins of Fregellae.”
Deciding that Octavian’s request wasn’t carnal, but rather a mystery, Nero asked, “What do you want her for?”
“Marriage.”
“She has been unfaithful! The child is yours! I curse her, I curse her, the cunnus! Well, you’ll not get her the easy way, you filthy prick! Out my door she goes, her disgrace spread far and wide!” The beaker spilled, the hands that held it shaking.
“She is innocent of any transgression, Nero. As I’ve said, I met her only once, and from start to finish of that encounter, she behaved with complete decorum—such exquisite manners! You chose well in your wife. Which is why I want her as my wife.”
Something in the usually opaque eyes said that Octavian spoke the truth; his cerebral apparatus already taxed to its limits, Nero resorted to logic. “But people don’t just go around asking men for their wives! It’s ludicrous! What do you expect me to say? I don’t know what to say! You can’t be serious! This sort of thing just isn’t done! You do have a trace of noble blood, Octavianus, you ought to know it isn’t done!”
Octavian smiled. “As I understand it,” he said in ordinary tones, “a senescent Quintus Hortensius once went around to Cato Uticensis and asked if he could marry Cato’s daughter, a child at the time. Cato said no, so he asked for one of Cato’s nieces. Cato said no, so he asked for Cato’s wife. And Cato said yes. Wives, you see, are not of the same blood, though I admit yours is. That wife was Marcia, who was my stepsister. Hortensius paid through the nose for her, but Cato wouldn’t take a penny. The money went entirely to my stepfather, Philippus, chronically short of cash. An Epicure of the most expensive kind. Perhaps if you viewed my request in the same light as Cato did Hortensius’s, it would make it more credible. If you prefer, believe that, like Hortensius, I was visited by a dream Jupiter who said I must marry your wife. Cato found that a reasonable reason. Why shouldn’t you?”
A new thought had dawned on Nero as he listened to this: he was playing host to a madman! Quiet enough at the moment, but who knew when he might erupt into utter mania? “I’m going to call my servants and have you thrown out,” he said, thinking that, phrased thus, it didn’t sound too incendiary, wouldn’t provoke violence.
But before he could open his mouth to bellow for help, his visitor leaned across the desk and clasped his arm. Nero went as still as a mouse transfixed by the stare of the basilisk.
“Don’t do that, Nero. Or at least, let me finish first. I am not mad, I pledge my word on that. Do I behave like a madman? I simply want to marry your wife, which necessitates that you divorce her. But not in disgrace. Cite religious reasons, everyone accepts those, and honor is preserved on both sides. In return for your yielding me this pearl beyond price, I will undertake to lighten your present financial difficulties. In fact, I’ll conjure them out of existence better than a Samian magician. Come now, Nero, wouldn’t you like that?”
The eyes looked suddenly away, focusing beyond Octavian’s right shoulder, and the thin, saturnine face took on an expression of cunning. “How do you know I’m financially embarrassed?”
“All Rome knows,” Octavian said coolly. “You should have banked with Oppius or the Balbi, you really should. The heirs of Flavus Hemicillus are a shifty lot, anyone save a fool could see that. Unfortunately, you happen to be a fool, Nero. I heard my divine father say so on several occasions.”
“What is going on?” Nero cried, mopping up the spil
led water with a napkin as if in this trifling task he might banish the confusions of the last quarter hour. “Are you making fun of me? Are you?”
“Anything but, I do assure you. All I ask is that you divorce your wife immediately upon religious grounds.” He reached into the sinus of his toga and pulled out a piece of folded paper. “They are detailed in this, to save your getting a headache thinking of some. In the meantime, I’ll make my own arrangements with the College of Pontifices and the Quindecimviri regarding my marriage, which I intend to celebrate as quickly as I can.” He rose. “Of course it goes without saying that you will have full custody of both your children. When the second one is born, I’ll send it to you at once. A pity they won’t know their mother, but far be it from me to block a man’s right to his children.”
“Ah—um—ah,” said Nero, unable to assimilate the deftness with which he had been maneuvered into all this.
“I imagine her dowry is gone beyond recall,” said Octavian, a trace of contempt in his voice. “I’ll pay your outstanding debts—anonymously—give you an income of a hundred talents a year, and help you bribe if you seek the consulship. Though I’m not in a position to guarantee you’ll be elected. Even the sons of gods cannot dam the spate of public opinion effectively.” He walked to the door, turned to look back. “You will send Livia Drusilla to the House of the Vestals as soon as you divorce her. The moment you’ve done that, our business is concluded. Your first hundred talents are already lodged with the Balbi. A good firm.”
And out he went, shutting the door quietly behind him.
Much of what had transpired was fading fast, but Nero sat and tried to make sense of what he could, which was chiefly to do with the alleviation of his money worries. Though Octavian hadn’t said it, a healthy streak of self-preservation told Nero that he had two alternatives: tell the whole world, or be silent forever. If he talked, the debts would remain unpaid and the promised income would be withdrawn. If he kept his mouth shut, he would be able to take up his rightful position in Rome’s highest stratum, something he prized more than any wife. Therefore he would be silent.
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