by Allan Massie
Fulvia's reply was to gird on a sword, assume the guise of a general and occupy Praeneste. I invited them to meet me at Gabbii; they declined; they would not come, they said, 'to any Senate in uniform'. What could I do? They were determined on a test of arms. I sent a legion to Brindisi to guard against Pompey or his lieutenants, with whom I feared they were in correspondence. I left Lepidus two legions with which to guard Rome. I despatched Agrippa with another two legions after Lucius. By the autumn the rebels had thrown themselves into Perusia. Agrippa invested the town and threw up siegeworks. My heart was bitter.
Perusia is a natural stronghold perched on the rim of the Aperinines. Winter brought deep snow, hard night frosts, biting and lip-chafing winds. In the town Fulvia – so my agents told me – announced herself Rome's new she-wolf, the men her litter. She did not hesitate to bite more savagely than any wolf; one of my agents, an ex-centurion of the Martian legion, was discovered. They bound him with chains, and Fulvia herself commenced to torture him. The brave man kept silence and died the death of a thousand cuts. She who had delivered the first then ordered him to be eviscerated, plunged her own hands in the reeking entrails, and cried that she read my doom there. Her own legions shrank back, appalled, and spat on the ground covered by her departing shadow.
The siege endured all winter, till, with the first melting snows, we were able to identify and block up the springs that fed the town's wells. Then the hardships afflicting troops and citizens doubled. They begged Fulvia to surrender; she hanged the two leaders of the embassy. Lucius, who feared his terrible sister-in-law as much as any slave did, sent a messenger secretly to Agrippa. Realizing the end was near, he summoned me to take the surrender.
Even then Fulvia's lust was not slaked. She had her slaves set the municipal buildings on fire. From the siege camp we watched the flames leap to the moonless sky and assume ghastly shapes against the higher mountains; we listened to the shrieks of the women and the wild cries of looting soldiers – some managed to make their way into the hills in that night's confusion; others tried to cut a path through our camp and died in the attempt.
In the grey morning, buffeted by March winds – we were, with the unrelenting irony of Fate, one day short of the Ides of March, the grim anniversary of my father's murder – I rode through the dismantled defences into an air still swirling with ash and heavy with the stench of burning, blood, spilt wine and death.
Lucius, assembling the shreds of the soldier he had been, had collected the remnants of his legions to make a formal surrender. His breath too stank of wine; his tunic was stained with blood, sweat and smoke-grime; he had always been less than Antony; now he looked like his brother's ghost, a spectre from whom all nobility, all presence, had departed; a man abandoned by the Gods of War.
Agrippa urged me to put both Lucius and Fulvia to death. 'They have made war against the Triumvirate,' he said, with absolute truth. Lepidus sent the same message, all the more eagerly. I do not deny I was tempted. Their actions could not be forgiven; they had tried to disrupt my settlement and destroy me. Fulvia too had revived the mean and baseless scandals about my private life.
Yet of course I could not dispose of them. They were still Antony's kin. I knew he cherished Lucius. I knew that, though he might be weary of Fulvia, he could not stomach the insult of her death at my hands. My position was absurd, acutely uncomfortable. I could mete out death to those Senatorial diehards, old Pompeians, connections of the 'Liberators', whose irreconcilable nature had been fully demonstrated, and who had long ago exhausted their ration of pardons. I could seize their estates for distribution to my veterans (if they had not already been taken during the proscriptions); all this with perfect justice and equanimity. But I could not touch those they had chosen to follow.
Those whom you cannot punish you must appease. I came to terms with Lucius. I summoned him to my presence, alone. He entered, humbled and still battle-stained, for I had given instructions that he be permitted neither to bathe nor change. I could keep him at that disadvantage at least, a couple of weeks in a cell dug out of the rock on which Perusia is built. I could make him fully sensible of the clemency he was about to be granted.
The interview was disagreeable. He abased himself before me. He blamed everything on Fulvia – 'that terrible woman' -and begged me to spare his life. It was all offensive; I preferred the insolence with which I had been greeted after Philippi. Lucius promised future loyalty. Defeat had scattered his wits. His promises were worthless and he should have realized how impossible it was for me to treat him as he deserved. Instead I raised him up, embraced him, ordered a slave to make a bath ready for him and lay out clean raiment, promised him we would dine together and then talk. It was all a charade; it restored his spirits.
That evening I offered him the post of Governor of Further Spain with command of two legions. My pleasure in this magnanimity was increased by the knowledge of how it would fret Lepidus.
As for Fulvia, I refused to see her. It would have appealed to an element in my nature I have learned to distrust to have granted her an interview. I sent her a letter commanding her to be ready to journey to Rome under escort, where she must take up residence in the Temple of Vesta, till I had fully acquainted her husband with the record of her crimes. 'It is for Antony to punish you,' I wrote. 'It is not seemly for me to be your prosecutor and judge.' 'That should make the bitch sweat,' I said. Meanwhile I wrote to Antony and told him of what I had done for his brother; I advised him to rid himself of Fulvia. 'She is an insurmountable obstacle to our common labours,' I said. I suppose I was doing him a service.
I took the opportunity to divorce Claudia. The conclusion of the so-called War of Perusia was therefore happy.
FIVE
I have been married three times. That with Claudia was hardly a marriage, for it was never consummated -1 could not look on her without being reminded of Fulvia; this chilled the desire her kittenish charm aroused; I knew the wildcat she would become. (I was wrong, poor thing; she eventually fell into melancholy-madness, which Greek doctors call 'depression' and drowned herself in a fish-pond.)
Soon after the end of the War of Perusia I married, to Maecenas' amusement, your grandmother Scribonia. His amusement was justified. She was twenty years older than I, and had been married twice. Both her previous husbands had been consuls, though men of no personal note. I married her because her daughter was Sextus Pompey's wife; it seemed a prudent and potentially valuable connection. Even so, I would hardly have committed myself to the marriage, which was arranged by my stepfather, if I had met the lady first.
I never cease to be baffled by the tricks of heredity. How, I wonder, could that gap-toothed, big-breasted scold be the mother of my adored and beautiful Julia? Scribonia herself felt the absurdity of our position – for one thing I was several inches shorter, as well as being younger than her daughter. Nevertheless the marriage fed her ambition. On our wedding night she said to me:
'You're very lucky, my lad, to be marrying a woman of my experience, and I expect to be treated with respect. I know that you now call yourself Julius' son and that you have made him into a God. Well, there is sense in that. It shows me you have a head on your shoulders. But it's a young head, my lad. What's more, I'll point out to you that I knew your real father, and very common he was. I'm told his grandfather had been a ropemaker. It doesn't surprise me. Of course old Philippus is a gentleman, but he's no blood-relation of yours. Well then, you must see that I am demeaning myself by this marriage. We have seven consuls in my family, one of them fought beside Coriolanus. Both my previous husbands were consuls too, so that makes this a remarkably good marriage for you. Now, there's something else I must say. I don't like your associates. Marcellus is all right of course, but the rest of them are ill-bred or degenerate or both. Nobody, I must tell you, can afford such associations unless his own family is above reproach. Real aristocrats can mix with riff-raff without losing face, but, when someone of your background does, then it is merely evidence of vu
lgar tastes. I can see I'll have to educate you. Meanwhile you will despatch those friends of yours to some suitably distant employment. There's another thing too. I've heard stories about you that do you no credit. Everyone knows just what your relations were with your uncle Julius. Well, you're a pretty boy of course, and Julius was well… Julius. I don't blame you for that. He had terrific charm and personality. I'm a moral woman myself, but, if Julius had asked me, well, I'd have had to say yes. But I'm told you prostituted yourself to that awful Aulus Hirtius. And I've heard about those walnut shells – that surprises you, eh? Now I won't have that sort of thing. My first husband used to say that boys who went in for that sort of thing were no better than Greeks. Or Asiatics. Syrians even. I like a man to take pride in his appearance, but I can't stand effeminacy. So, if I catch you at that sort of trick, you jolly well watch out for squalls, my lad. I'm a plain woman…' (my God, she was) 'and blunt-spoken. What I admire is the old Roman virtue. As for sex, that's important in a marriage but it must be on my terms. With your reputation and experience you won't know what pleases a woman. Well, I'll be frank. If you can't satisfy me in our marriage bed, I'll let the world know about it. I won't stay married to any mollycoddle or nancy-boy. I know fine you have married me for political reasons and it's in my interest to further your political career. I'll see that my precious son-in-law Pompey toes the line – if, that is, you keep me happy in bed. I'm a strong woman in the prime of life and I need it three times a week. I can't speak plainer than that. Mind you, I expect to be treated with respect in bed too. You needn't hope to see me naked' (I shuddered). 'I daresay we'll do all right when you've learned what I want.'
I have condensed her discourse of course. She went on like that and like that for three hours. Then she dismissed me with instructions to return in half an hour. Agrippa was waiting for me with a jug of wine. 'I reckon you are going to need this, boy,' he said. He was, as so often, quite right. When I returned, fortified, she was sitting up in bed with a night-cap on. I've told my women we are on no account to be disturbed,' she said, and blew the candle out. She seized me vigorously, like one who has waited too long. I set myself to other imaginings. Not even images of twining tawny slavegirls' limbs helped me much.
She was a horrible woman, but she gave me Julia. I suppose, on reflection, she may have been congenitally unhappy. Certainly I never knew her other than discontented. When I came to divorce her I explained that I did so because I could not bear the way she nagged at me.
***
Of all the noble families of Rome, none is more remarkable than the Claudians. According to a popular song the Claudian family tree is like an apple tree which bears two kinds of fruit: sweet apples, that are delightful to eat and of great culinary value, and crab apples that are sour and distasteful. Certainly popular history divides them into good and bad Claudians. People still delight to tell of that Claudius Pulcher who took the auspices before a naval battle and found that the sacred chickens would not eat. 'If they will not eat,' he cried, 'then let them drink,' and threw them into the sea where they drowned. (The subsequent battle was, not surprisingly, lost.) Publius Clodius, the gangster who had been Fulvia's first husband, was another wild one; you know of some of his outrageous acts. He burned one of his mistresses in her bed too. Fulvia's half-insane violence was, I always felt, a reflection of his. There was also Appius Claudius Superbus who, in the early days of Rome, tried to enslave a free-born girl called Virginia whom he had already raped. On the other hand there were great servants of the State like Claudius Claudex, who expelled the Carthaginians from Sicily, and that Claudius Nero (I am told that 'Nero' means 'strong' in the old Sabine dialect, though some say it means 'black') who defeated Hasdrubal. The Claudian women are reputed equally to be of the same two types.
No family has been more important to me, but I think that the man who pretends to understand a Claudian is a fool. One reason why my love for Livia has never diminished, but has grown steadily deeper and more powerfully pervasive through the long years of our marriage, rests in her unfathomable Claudian nature. The man who fully understands his wife soon reaches the end of his marriage.
Nothing is harder to understand than the condition of marriage. Politics, that deep mystery, is child's play in comparison. We enter on marriage lightly; it becomes the deepest thing in life. That is a paradox perhaps; there is a sense in which my memoirs will be a sustained commentary on it.
I say 'lightly', for we usually marry for political or family reasons. The woman herself is the least important element; we choose her because she will cement our political connections, or simply because she brings us some desirable property. Most marriages then start thus. Many never advance beyond this point. They remain a convenience. Even you, my dear boys, must have observed how few husbands and wives live in and for each other. Self-styled wits indeed regard marriage as a joke, the marriage-bond simply as providing spice for adultery. I find this shocking, yet easy to understand. Most marriages are empty affairs. Yet there are some, among which I count myself blessed of the Gods to number my own, which nourish both husband and wife, which provide unfailing delight, and which enable both man and woman to grow in sympathy and understanding. Marriage is first a legal contract, but some few are fortunate enough to find in wedlock a profound communion which, to revert to Platonic theories again, seems to offer the substance rather than the shadow of some ultimate God-given reality. We mock the uxorious man; yet only he whose marriage is profound and true can know the deepest happiness of which human beings are capable. Inasmuch as the philosophical concept of divided souls has any significance, its resolution can only be found in marriage. Nevertheless this deep understanding is based on a residual mystery. One's beloved wife is at the heart of existence, the union is complete, and yet one cannot ever fully know her, or escape consciousness of her other and separate being.
Livia herself is descended from that Appius Claudius Pulcher who advised the Senate not to ally the Republic with King Pyrrhus of Epirus, and so gained a reputation for wisdom. She was, when I first knew her, married to a cousin, Tiberius Claudius Nero; and they were my enemies. Her husband, who knew nothing of her nature, was a shiftless fellow, who had gone through the Civil Wars like a man playing dice. He had supported my father, then abandoned him. He had urged the Senate to honour Caesar's murderers, and then drifted to Antony's camp. At Bononia we had named him praetor for 42. He had adhered to Lucius and Fulvia, and had survived the terrible siege of Perusia during which your stepfather Tiberius was an infant. He then fled to Sicily and made terms with Sextus Pompey, that indiscriminate man. In 39 we concluded peace with Pompey at Misenum, and, after a brief skirmish in Campania, Tiberius Claudius Nero presented himself in my camp.
This irresolute man, consistent only in failure, was still haughty. Why? He was a Claudian. That being so, all was permitted him. Claudians survive any disgrace: they are not only better born; in their own estimation they are born better. His young wife was no different. She approached me as a great lady might a client, not as the partner of a vanquished and discredited man.
She approached, and stopped my heart. She is, as you know, the same height as I, or perhaps an inch taller. She wore a white gown fringed with pink, and no jewels; she has always disdained any jewels but her eyes. I said to myself: so Helen must have looked when Paris saw her in Menelaus' house. And then I saw that she was angry. Those liquid eyes, which in my fond imaginings – by distant camp-fires, on cold unfriendly shores are ever tender, were hard and scornful. Was the scorn for me, or for her husband? I could not tell, but I felt, all at once, guilty. She has never lost the power to make me feel guilty, to make me ashamed.
She would not speak. She stood a little aside in an attitude which, simply because it was not at all provocative, aroused in me a most terrible lust, such as I had never experienced before. I say simply, but there has never been anything about Livia properly called simple. I believe that if she had even for a moment given me some sign of desire, if she had play
ed the coquette even that instant, my lust would have abated, and I would have been able to listen to what her husband said. That might have freed me into anger, for he too, though I knew his feebleness, assumed a superiority to which nothing but his Claudian-consciousness entitled him. But I could not attend; Livia's restraint conquered me.
SIX
My sister Octavia was a pearl among women: chaste, intelligent, devout, loving, faithful; grey-eyed, modest and comely as apple-blossom. I sacrificed her happiness to the needs of the Republic (for Marcellus had opportunely died, and though Octavia grieved, I could not regret the opportunity thus given…)
***
Fulvia died, snarling. Even with her last breath she hissed poison in Antony's ear; I had cast him, she said, as Pompey to my Caesar. 'Antony won't have listened,' Salvidienus Rufus assured me. 'He has other interests.' 'Other interests?' 'Cleopatra.'
'Politics,' I said. 'The co-operation of the Queen of Egypt is necessary if he is to make a successful invasion of Parthia. As you know, I am against that. I think the first rule of Roman generalship should be: don't invade Parthia.' (Make a note of that, my sons. I believe it even more firmly now than I did then.) 'But Antony is wedded to the policy. I can't dissuade him. And he needs Egypt's help. He needs Egypt's subsidy. Politics.'