Augustus i-1

by Allan Massie

  He was warming to his work. I learned then that a weak man's thirst for blood is fiercer than a strong man's. In drawing up this list Lepidus was repaying the world for his own sense that he was less than his name.

  Antony gave me no lead. He had recently received conspicuous kindness from Atticus, acts which had been reprobated by the Senate's grandees. Now he was silent. His generosity of spirit stopped short of paying debts. I made a note of that, and myself said: 'There are many reasons for including Atticus on the list as our colleague suggests. His wealth for a start; the protection he has extended to Brutus' mother; the effect such a pricking would have on others. Yet I think we should consider the matter more closely. We may be about to embark on a long war. It is not only Brutus and Cassius whom we must confront. There's Sextus Pompey too. Who knows how many years it may take us? Now, proscriptions on this scale cannot be repeated. They must be regarded as a once-for-all capital levy. But when we have exhausted its proceeds, we shall still need money, often in a hurry. Who knows how to raise funds or advance credit better than Atticus or his fellow banker Balbus? They are men we shall need in the future. The wise course now is to bind them to us by manifest obligation. Therefore I move we omit their names from our list. We shall get more in the long run that way…'

  I pitched my argument low, to convince Lepidus. All the same his lips pushed forward in a discontented pout; he felt disregard again envelop him like a bad smell.

  Antony, shifting his pen, muttered: 'I agree. Carried, two to one. Atticus lives.' 'And Balbus.' 'Oh yes, Balbus too.'

  The lamp went out. We sat in a thin twilight and felt cold. I drew my sheepskins round me, and still shivered. The brazier which alone heated the tent was low.

  Antony spoke. We had waited for his words: 'Cicero must die.' Neither responded.

  'His attacks on me have been past, past anything. Himself spared him – oh, old Cicero is an ornament of our culture, he said – and less than a month after his murder, that ornamental mouth spouted forth: "Is there anyone except Antony and those who were glad to have Caesar reign over us, who did not wish for his death, or who disapproved of what was done? All were responsible, for all good men joined in killing Caesar. Some were ignorant of the plot, some lacked courage, some opportunity. None lacked the will." Those were his very words, they are engraved in my memory. Some ornament, some culture. These words alone should be enough to condemn this most insidious of our enemies. We have the opportunity; surely we do not lack the will?'

  Antony's hands trembled on the table. I thought of the old man flattering me, digging his teeth into a fig, interrupting his declamation of his speech against Catiline to heed a call of nature and then resuming it at the exact point at which he had broken off; I felt his old crooked arthritic hands press against my shoulder. I said, 'As you wish it, Antony.'

  He turned a face, moonlike with wonder, on me. Lepidus emitted a little hiss of excitement. I repeated:

  'As you wish it, Antony. "The boy," I quoted, "must be flattered, decorated, and got rid of." Cicero has had flattery enough for a lifetime; he will receive honour from generations that have forgotten us. Let that be sufficient epitaph. Let him depart.'

  I do not propose to defend my decision now in other words than I employed then. That evening Marcellus urged me to send a messenger to warn the old man of the fate decreed. I replied that the publication of the proscription lists would give him ample warning. As all the world knows, he delayed to act, moved either by vanity or indecision. The manner of his death, which did credit to his virtue, is too well known to repeat here.

  FOUR

  Cassius died at Philippi, in the first battle, falling on his sword in imitation of Cato. Brutus, three days later, fled to the mountains; he hesitated to kill himself and besought the freedman who was his last companion to perform the work. These battles were Antony's triumph, not mine. My health was poor throughout the campaign, but that was not the only reason. Civil war is a horrible business; I could never forget that the legions which opposed us were themselves made up of our countrymen. Yet, after the battle, when the defeated were led before us, they hailed Antony as 'imperator'; they reviled me. I stood on the dais, sick at heart and in my belly, while they cursed. The body of Brutus had been brought down from the high mountains to the forum; in an actor's gesture Antony covered it with his own purple cloak. Stony-faced, I accepted the verdict of the defeated; it recognized that it had been my determination to avenge my father which had created the army that destroyed them.

  That night Antony grew maudlin. He spoke lovingly of Brutus, of their friendship in youth. 'He was the noblest of us,' he said over and over again. 'The others envied Caesar. He alone acted out of true public spirit, honest and true to his conception of the Republic. He had principles; he died for them. Whatever else you say of him, he was a Man.'

  I kept my argument to myself, and spoke soothingly. Antony was sunk in the guilt of victory. I did not then recognize it as such. It took his own death more than ten years later to let me feel it; a battle won in a civil war can be crueller and more bitter than a battle lost. Right can never be concentrated altogether on one side. The dead bodies of citizens reproach the living. Pray, my sons, you never have such experiences.

  I am glad I soothed him. Yet my true feelings were quite other. I had no tender memories of Brutus. For me he was a dishonest rhetorician. I saw the man Caesar had spared and honoured with his love, who had then drawn the dagger against him. Is there anything in literature or history more terrible than that moment in my father's agony when he looked on the face of Brutus among his assassins, and clearly said: 'You too, my son?'; then covered his face and abandoned all resistance? Only a man of the most abnormal self-conceit could live with such a memory; Brutus managed to do so. He was inflated, like the frog in Aesop, with self-importance; carried through treachery, dishonesty and crime by his consciousness of his own virtue. I am glad I had his head sent back to Rome to be thrown at the feet of Caesar's statue.

  Brutus' self-righteousness was shared by his colleagues: one of the other murderers, Quintus Ligarius, had the insolence to look me in the eye, and demand that he be given honourable burial. 'That is a matter for the carrion-crows and vultures,' I replied. My flash of temper was unworthy; I hope you do not think it uncalled for. On the other hand the story that I told a father and son who pleaded that one at least should be spared, that they should themselves decide which by casting lots or throwing dice, is a calumny. (You will note that when this story is related, no names are mentioned; always distrust the anecdote with anonymous subjects.) It was this rumour however which caused Marcus Pavenius to abuse me with filthy epithets which I recall with horror even now. To receive such insults from a man who is about to die is like the touch of an icy finger; what reports will he carry to the Immortals?

  Antony and I had come close together after our meeting on the island. It was like our first days in Spain again, before shadows fell between us. I warmed to his Sun, to his spontaneous affection. Antony had a great need to be loved; this made him lovable wherever he let his radiance light. So I had been happy to seal our bond by agreeing to marry his stepdaughter Claudia; the pleasure this gave Antony and the legions over-rode my natural distaste for any connection with the girl's mother Fulvia. But now, after Philippi, I sensed that Antony, ever a ready victim of rumour (as gossips generally are) was drawing away from me. My inability fully to share his boozy sentimentality about Brutus distressed him; he was perturbed by what he saw as my coldness of heart. Almost overnight he stopped calling me 'kid', and it was only once or twice in later years that he resumed the habit. He was still able for a long time to be affectionate at a distance, his letters to me were lively and loving, but my presence froze him; it was as if the carrion-crows and vultures settled on the table between us.

  ***

  I sailed back to Italy, sea-sick as usual, to arrange for the demobilization of 100,000 men. Antony meanwhile turned to the rising sun to undertake my father's long-medita
ted war against the Parthian Empire. Agrippa grumbled all the way back across the Adriatic that Antony had pinched the glory and left us the dross; but then, Agrippa, unlike me, was a soldier at heart, even though I knew that his true genius lay in administration. (But that, let me remind you, dear boys, is the necessary foundation of all military success; that general triumphs best who best organizes supply. Look at the history of Alexander's campaigns for proof of this adage.)

  'Besides,' I told Agrippa, 'Antony is moving to the frontier, where anything can happen. Think of Crassus.' (The fat booby Marcus Crassus allowed his army to be surrounded in the desert sands. That was the end of Crassus. They threw his head before the Parthian king as he sat watching some Greek tragedy. According to some versions of the story, it was actually carried on to the stage.)

  'We, on the other hand,' I said, 'are given the chance of establishing ourselves at the seat of power.'

  'Oh sure,' Agrippa said, 'you mean we're going to get our throats cut, left and right. We'll never get enough land, or good enough land, to satisfy the veterans; yet every municipality and every landowner we dispossess will be an enemy for life.' 'We shall pay whenever possible.'

  'Sure again. The campaign's emptied the Treasury. And don't think we'll get any help from Fulvia or Antony's brother Lucius, who is – let me remind you – booked in as next year's consul.'

  I needed no such reminder, for I saw trouble there. Nevertheless I persevered in my appointed task. Most of the business of government is a matter of long hours and assiduous attention to detail; its only satisfaction is the consciousness of work well done. That has been the main part of my life. There is hardly any story in it; yet, without such work, without such scrupulous devotion to the minutiae of administration and justice, this great Empire of Rome would crumble. I am not sure that you realize this; your mother's husband, my stepson Tiberius, for all his faults of character and ungracious demeanour, appreciates it as I do, and as your natural father Agrippa did. You could do worse than look to Tiberius as a model.

  Very occasionally the drudgery of administration is lightened by the chance to perform some conspicuous benevolence. One such opportunity was given me this arduous year. Maecenas called one morning with a petition. There was – to cut through what I used to call his 'myrrh-distilling ringlets of speech' – a young protege of his, a poet called Virgil, of whom I certainly would not have heard, whose family farm, near Mantua, was on the list of those to be confiscated. Wouldn't I, to oblige Maecenas, stretch a point and reprieve the farm to which the young poet was devoted? Now such agricultural enthusiasm was not typical of Maecenas' proteges, and my curiosity was aroused. 'Is he a good poet?' I asked. 'I doubt if there is a more promising one in Italy,' Maecenas said, surprising me with the unaffected simplicity of his language. 'Very well,' I said, 'a reprieve will be granted, providing you promise to introduce the poet to me.'

  ***

  There was nothing poetical about the young man who was ushered in; I already knew enough about poets to find that pleasing and impressive. He was slim, dark-haired, with a tender mouth and blue-grey eyes. Though he was only a few years older than I, the dark hair was already streaked with touches of grey around the temples; long hours of study had grooved his forehead and drawn lines down to the corners of his mouth. When he spoke he did so without hesitation, but slowly, with broad vowels and a heavily rolled r. His speech had no affectation, though the soft voice had something of the Gallic lilt in it. He first thanked me for granting him an audience. I told him how highly Maecenas spoke of his poetry and he answered that he was too kind; 'I have accomplished little yet.'

  I brought the matter quickly to the point, for I already divined that for me the occasion of our meeting was no more than excuse. I cannot say what made me sense his quality so quickly; only that from the first instance I discerned in Virgil an authority such as I have known in no other man. It was not the authority that emanates from one accustomed to command; naturally my father had such authority; men jumped to do his bidding; they would die at his word. I knew such authority; I possessed it myself. Virgil's was quite different; his authority derived from the mastery of secret truths, from his penetration to the innermost heart of things. I have never subscribed to Plato's philosophy. It seems a wild, indeed poetical, exaggeration to interpret this world as a mere shadow of reality. The theory of Forms flies in the face of that knowledge we acquire from experience; to deny the reality of the material world is mere word-spinning. And yet, note, my sons, that I talk only of an 'exaggeration' not an absurdity. Though I have been initiated into the Eleusian Mysteries, I am too much a practical man (as I have had to be) to fancy myself a mystic, or indeed to give much credence to any of the innumerable mysteries and mysticisms which have clamoured for my attention. Nevertheless I cannot rest content with the material world; it is indeed, metaphorically, the shadow of a deeper truth; perhaps, to get away from the Platonic language, I should say it is to the real truth as our skin is to our hearts. (Heaven knows, skin is real enough, quick enough, delightful enough; and yet…) There is, lost in the mists of unconsciousness, something we must call 'soul'; and there is a soul in things as well as in men. Our fathers recognized this when they honoured the spirits of groves and streams and laid out offerings to tutelary deities. Such truths are easily obscured by the bustle of existence and the inevitable cynicism engendered by public life; Virgil brought them to my attention. All his work, of which I am proud to have been patron, speaks with a murmurous authority of subliminal joys and sorrows.

  That day we quickly concluded the business on which he had come. He asked that not only his family farm but all the lands pertaining to Mantua should be reprieved from confiscation; Mantua, he said, is alas too near to poor Cremona, which had been selected by me as a town obstinately adhering to the defeated party and so ripe for spoliation. In Mantua, he said, there were only farmers, with no interest in politics. Would I not be so gracious as to exempt Mantua?

  I immediately resolved that I would, but, first, in order to let him understand the value of my concession, I expatiated on the problems that faced me.

  'My task,' I said, 'is to restore peace and order to a land that has known neither for almost a hundred years. In that time small farmers have been deprived of their holdings and driven out to form an urban proletariat, while great estates have been created and worked by slave labour. You know the misery and unrest this has provoked. Meanwhile,' I said, 'to fight these accursed civil wars, armies of unprecedented size have been called into being. They cannot and must not be maintained in arms. You will of course see that. Therefore the veterans must be found land. Such a provision serves a double purpose; it satisfies their natural ambition, and it brings new life to the countryside. I hope my measures will lead to the revival of agriculture in Italy and to a desirable reversion to old patterns of landholding. Unfortunately, in a reform of land tenure on such a scale, some innocent parties must suffer.'

  'Oh, I see that,' Virgil said. 'You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.' He observed my puzzled expression: 'A Mantovan proverb', he said. 'An omelette is a savoury egg dish we country people enjoy, it's extremely good, you should try it, Caesar, next time you're in the North.'

  I promised to do so (he was quite right by the way; omelettes are delicious, whatever Livia says), and then questioned him about farming. His answers were both informative and deeply-felt; he spoke with reverence of the partnership with nature that is the farmer's lot; of how he must strive for both domination and sympathy; of how these were not, as the vulgar or ignorant might suppose, opposites; 'They are in truth yoked together, like oxen; nature must be dominated, and yet the aim is harmony; it is like training a dog or breaking a horse,' he said. 'Real mastery is impossible without the understanding which derives from profound sympathy.' What is that but a definition of government?

  Now I recognize what he said to me that morning as the essence of his Georgics. He developed my theme of Italy, 'earthly paradise, mother of crops and m
other of men,' as he would call our country in one of his noblest passages. I heard in his speech my profound affinity with him. He thought of Italy and of Rome's mission as I did; I was born to make his words flesh. Later, in the great epic of Rome which I urged him to write, he told of how the Gods promised Aeneas 'limitless empire', even as he fled from burning Troy. And I have already reminded you of his interpretation of my work as being 'to bring back an age of gold to fields where Saturn used to reign'.

  ***

  My work was interrupted by vice, folly and jealousy. Antony had vanished into the Arabian sands. His wife Fulvia and brother Lucius set themselves up as guardians of his interest, and accused me of favouring my veterans at the expense of his. Absurd charge, mere excuse for trouble-making. Lucius hoped to break the triumvirate and force himself on his brother as an equal partner in greatness. The vile Fulvia knew that Antony had wearied of her virago-rages (as he had told me often enough in Greece; she was eager to impress him with her indispensability).

  The situation was aggravated by a corn shortage. Sextus Pompey was operating a blockade with more ability than I had credited him with possessing. For a few weeks it seemed that my achievements were slipping away. Philippus again flapped round my quarters like an over-fed Cassandra. Even Marcellus spoke of compromise with the remnants of the old Senatorial party who were using the corn shortage as an occasion to stir up animosity among the common people – and of course to obstruct my reforms. The mob rioted in Rome, and with the self-destructive madness typical of mob violence, burned the granaries where the last of the previous harvest was stored. I ordered Agrippa to discover the agents who had provoked these disturbances and bring them to summary trial.

  Meanwhile I naturally sought to appease Lucius and even Fulvia. ('Waste of time, ducky,' Maecenas said. 'Chuck a bucket of ice water over her – that's the only remedy for a bitch on heat.') I say 'naturally' for I had no wish to quarrel with my colleague's connections, and was dismayed by the prospect of a new outbreak of war in Italy, which I was working so hard to settle. I could not be unaware also of my own men's apprehensions. So I assured Lucius and Fulvia that I was completely loyal to Antony, that his interest was mine (and mine his); I even offered to submit any matter of controversy to the judgement of the Senate or independent arbitration.