Augustus i-1

by Allan Massie

  'The most perfect and delectable fruit of the earth,' he said. 'It comes from Nemi, doesn't it, from benign fields by the water's edge? But in the woods of Nemi lies a grimmer tale. There stands the Temple of Diana, guarded by its sole priest, a man who can never safely sleep, but must, night after night, prowl round the shadowy temple, a drawn sword in his hand. He is, as you know, Caesar, a priest and a murderer, a runaway slave who won the right to guard the holy place of the Goddess by slaying him who was priest before. How men are chosen for this cruel, arduous, and sacred duty we cannot tell. That they are divinely selected we cannot doubt. That his mission is holy, however cruel and fraught with fear, dismay and anguish, is certain. He performs what the Goddess commands in response to some necessity that is beyond human understanding. His life is a symbol perhaps of the decay and corruption of the world which can only be pardoned by the benign action of the Gods and by love. Without Diana there is no fertility; without fertility neither joy nor life. Yet this paradox remains: that Diana's temple, the home of the Great Goddess who brings forth life, is guarded by a murderer's sword, and that the priest himself must die, ingloriously, ignorant perhaps even of the nobility and importance of his achievement. We cannot fathom the mystery, but we can acknowledge its truth.'

  He paused, and cast on me a look of the utmost tenderness, in which love, pity and respect, such as I have never seen on another countenance, were mingled. I looked into that sad and noble face, in which the refined delicacy of feature could not hide the strength that derived from his complete honesty, and felt my courage return.

  'Caesar,' he said, 'I know little of history and less of politics. But listen. Cincinnatus is legend; he belongs to a young world when everything was straightforward, and right-doing was rewarded by a calm spirit. As legend, it is for children, it is an ideal to present to them that they may grow up seeing and admiring whatever is good, straight and true. But the priest of Diana who guards the Golden Bough and the Temple at Nemi presents no legend but myth, which reveals the truth darkly to grown men. The world has gone beyond Cincinnatus, and you cannot lay aside your toga and return to the plough. You are bound for life to prowl with naked unsheathed sword round the Temple that is Rome. Forgive me.' He smiled sadly and laid his hand on mine in understanding and pity. Thus, I took my perturbed spirit to the four people whom I loved and to whom I might look for guidance; and though all indicated the same path to me, it was the poet who led me by the hand unscathed through the briars that concealed its entrance and past the wild jaws of the beasts that threatened my passage.

  ELEVEN

  The great wagon-wheels of Mars and Bellona were set in motion. Rome simmered in feverish heat as it had done in the summer after my father's murder. Once again there was taking of sides, jockeying for position (as the chariot-drivers do in the circus), dark eyeing of old acquaintances. Once again true social intercourse was corrupted.

  The most terrible stories reached us from the East; Antony, whether because of drink, infatuation, the strange madness of power with which the Gods can afflict great men and render them unmindful of Nemesis, was losing all proportion, all sense of the connection of things. He celebrated a Triumph for his Parthian War, in Alexandria. Do I need to spell out the enormity of this gesture? A Triumph, I surely do not need to tell you, is an honour granted to a Roman general by the Conscript Fathers of the Senate; it may be celebrated only in Rome, for it is not merely a personal honour, it is a proclamation of the greatness and genius of the city. To arrogate to oneself the right to determine one's entitlement to a Triumph is sheer madness, an act of hubris, unforgivable by men, indubitably punished by the Gods of Rome.

  He did not stop there. The circumstances of the Triumph were as outrageous as the thing itself. There was no reverence in it; the occasion was made a pretext for the glorification of Cleopatra. She sat on a raised dais on a great carved throne of gold; she there received the gift of captives who should have been offered to Jupiter, the most high and mighty God. The next day, robed as Isis, Goddess of the Nile mud-flats, she shared a throne with Antony; their children, Cleopatra and Alexander, sat at their feet. With them was a lean boy of thirteen or fourteen, also Cleopatra's son – that was not doubted; she had had the impudence to name him Ptolemy Caesar or Caesarion and assert that he was my father's son – a lie notably exposed by the quite un-Roman cast of his features. But now, Antony, his face purple and his eye watery, swayed to his feet, beckoned the boy to him, embraced him, and, showing him to the legions, the eunuchs and slaves of Egypt, proclaimed that this was indeed Caesar's son, 'Kings of kings,' he cried, 'son of the Divine Julius and Cleopatra, mother of kings, and queen of kings.' 'It is a direct insult to you as that man's son,' Livia said.

  'He is mad,' Octavia sighed. 'That woman has deranged his senses, and destroyed his judgement. I could almost weep if I weren't so angry.' 'Drink, more like,' said Agrippa.

  'Wait,' said Maecenas, 'there is yet more. Carry on, boy,' he said to the messenger.

  My agent, a young Greek called Nicias, shrugged his shoulders. 'I warn you,' he said, 'it gets still more bizarre. I only hope, Caesar, you will not treat me as my own countrymen, in their heroic days, used to treat the bearer of bad news. Well, Caesarion – you must allow me to call him that, for at the moment he bears no other name – had some difficulty in getting Antony back on to his throne, and he sat there for a long time in silence, while everyone grew very embarrassed and wondered if he was about to pass out. There could be no doubt by now that he was decidedly drunk, you see, and everyone was speculating nervously as to what would happen if… but then Cleopatra gave him a sort of jab with the wand which she was holding as a symbol of something – I'm not very well up in Egyptian symbolism, you'll have to forgive me, it strikes me as a Greek as terribly silly and a bit comical too – and he raised his great head – it's a marvellous head now, in his decline, you know, like a wounded lion's or that of an old bull standing knee deep in a swamp and ready to stand a last charge from an enemy who has already all but destroyed him. Well, he raised his head and for a moment a look crossed his face of invincible self-hatred, and he shot a glance at Cleopatra which was positively venomous – like Perseus holding up the Gorgon's head – and he began speaking again, but this time without any of the swagger of his first speech. And – you'll hardly credit it – he began parcelling out the Empire among the children: Alexander, a little squirt of nine or ten with a wandering eye, typical little Egyptian brat, was given Armenia and all the lands east of the Euphrates; and the girl Cleopatra, Lybia and Cyrenaica. Can you believe it? And…' 'What about Caesarion?'

  'Nothing for liim; yet. It is said he will, in time, be made lord of Asia.' 'You see what that means,' Agrippa said. We all did.

  'And then,' said Nicias, 'the whole company except for the detachments of legionaries began crying out and hailing Antony as Dionysus and Osiris, consort of the goddess-queen of Egypt and all that exaggerated Eastern nonsense.'

  (Greeks are capable of the same sort of nonsense, you know, but Nicias, having identified himself with Rome, had become more Roman than the Romans in his distaste for such emotional and intellectual extravagance.)

  'Antony,' he said, 'looked a bit sheepish, but he could hardly deny them.'

  ***

  There was no need to take special measures to see that reports of this ceremony were disseminated through the city. The news ran fast, and bred fear and dismay. Everyone realized what was implicit in it; Cleopatra had not only seduced Antony; she had suborned his mind. Alexandria would displace Rome. The legions would be commanded by the sorceress of the Nile. The Republic would be destroyed. I have been called a master of propaganda; I had no need of such skills now. The facts spoke for themselves.

  ***

  Yet Antony retained partisans in the city. I had still to move cautiously. I sent Antony a friendly, yet strongly worded, protest, pointing out that he had no authority to dispose of the provinces of the Roman state as he had reportedly done. He replied insolently, dem
anding that the Senate approve what he had done in Egypt. His henchmen in the Senate, the consuls Gaius Sosius and Domitius Ahenobarbus, did not dare to present this message, but they conveyed the news that Antony now regarded the triumvirate as having expired, its powers as obsolete. The implication was that henceforth I had no authority, no imperium.

  I attended the Senate, and in a speech of the utmost moderation, I outlined the course of Antony's actions over the last year. 'Do you wish, conscript fathers,' I asked, 'to deliver Rome into the hands of Cleopatra?' It was a question Antony's friends could not answer; instead Sosius, a man of neither merit nor achievement, tried to shift the argument by attacking me. He even went so far as to propose that I be named a public enemy. A tribune interposed his veto; a kind but unnecessary act, for the motion could not have passed. Nevertheless his veto saved me a momentary embarrassment and I was grateful to him.

  That debate however convinced me that the moment had come for a bold stroke. First, I asked Maecenas to call on the consuls.

  'Let them know,' I said, 'in your most silky and sinister manner that I am displeased. Let them know that I will not brook such behaviour. Ask them – politely – how many legions they have. Suggest that their friends in the East must be bewailing their absence. Remind them how brief is a consul's authority. Ask them if they imagine the mob will respect Cleopatra's friends. In short, my dear Maecenas, I look to you to put the fear of death into the pair of them.'

  'Don't worry, ducky,' Maecenas said, 'when I've finished with them they'll be scared even to shit.' 'I don't want them so scared they can't run.'

  They ran; I then announced that all those who regarded themselves as friends or clients of Antony might leave Italy. Perhaps one-third of the Senate departed.

  ***

  Traffic however ran both ways. Many Romans who had been attached to Antony could not stomach his exotic and deluded and disgusting debasement. Among these was L. Munatius Plancus.

  A word on him whose arrival I greeted with great pleasure. Plancus came from a good bourgeois family of Tibur. He had served on my father's staff in the Gallic wars and at Pharsalus, but he had never before, in all the comings and goings of the last decade, adhered to me. Indeed, he had fought against me in the war of Perusia, for he had been a close friend of Antony's brother Lucius. He had later joined Antony himself, and had recently been proconsul of Asia and of Syria. There was no one more experienced, no one more knowledgeable of how things stood in Antony's party. Curiously, I had only met him once before: at the time of the Proscription when he had proved his zeal for the Republic by assenting to the inclusion of his own brother in the list, and also his eye for personal advantage by seeing to it that the Coponii of Tibur, old rivals of his family, were pricked down.

  I would not have recognized the thin grey-haired man who was ushered in. He had a restless, glance-over-the-shoulder, finger-twitching manner which I have often observed as being induced by long immersion in politics. His speech too was nervous and jerky.

  I apologized for the search to which he had been subjected before he was allowed in.

  'I am ashamed of it,' I said. 'Nevertheless the fact is, that only a couple of months ago, I had a dagger drawn on me… so my friends insist that now I should see nobody alone who hasn't first undergone a search, and, my dear Plancus, I very much wanted to see you alone.'

  We talked a little about the changes he found in the city, for he had not been there since the year after Caesar's murder. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'this makes it easier for me to applaud what you have done in the way of restoration; perhaps also it has made it possible for me to retain an ideal Rome in my mind; and it was, Caesar, my vision of that ideal Rome which persuaded me to break the old bonds of my friendship with Mark Antony. I could not stomach the perversions he now displays.' I was sure this was high-flown nonsense. Plancus I had written down as a cunning old time-server, quick to sniff the direction of the prevailing wind and ready to tack – if I have got the right nautical expression – before it. I had welcomed his arrival for just this reason, also of course for the news he could bring…

  I remained wary though, in case Antony had sent him to deceive me. He soon disembarrassed me of this notion.

  'I can't stomach,' he said, 'what's happened and what's happening over there. I tell you, no Roman could. The last straw was seeing Antony in Egyptian robes walking among that woman's eunuchs. He is about to divorce your sister, you know, and stage a public wedding with that woman. Not that that means much, in my view they've been man and wife for years. He's half-besotted, and half-blind to any other way to restore his fortunes… But, Caesar, I've come, on conditions, to hand you the game…' 'Conditions?' I said.

  'Conditions which your natural gratitude and dignity will be happy to satisfy.' He gave a quick forky lick of his lips. 'Caesar, I have served the Republic all my life. I have lived as honourably as a man can these last terrible two decades. I recognize what you have done to shore up the State, but I have done my bit myself even though we have sometimes found our judgements differ. No more of that though. I've attained some honour, I say – do you know, in Mylyssa in Caria where I was proconsul there's a priest consecrated in my honour – awful, these Orientals, aren't they? But honour is one thing and a man can't live on it in his old age.'

  'What,' I said, 'do you have to…'I hesitated before the word 'sell'; it hardly chimed with all this talk of honour… 'tell me? I am sure we shall be able to satisfy you.'

  'Antony's made a will,' he said. 'I witnessed it and know its provisions… As for me, there's various honours and comforts – a priesthood of Jupiter, an estate on the Bay of Naples – that I have my eye on… I would like a contract, Caesar… the provisions of the will are scandalous…' 'Would they be believed?' I said. 'My word…' he said. 'Words,' I said, 'are discounted these days. The currency of language has been debased. Look at the insults Antony has showered on me. They mean nothing, have no effect.'

  Plancus smiled. This would be different. Let me tell you what is in the will. He asserts again that Ptolemy Caesar is Caesar's son and leaves huge legacies to him and Cleopatra's other brats. Nothing is left Octavia or her daughter Antonia. He orders that his body be buried in the royal mausoleum at Alexandria. I don't need to spell out the implications of this will, do I, Caesar?'

  He did not; I felt my head swim with excitement. Plancus had handed me what I needed to convert a personal struggle (as some persisted in seeing it) into the cause of Rome and all Italy. 'But words,' I said. 'I can prove them… but first my contract…' I called for a slave, signed whatever he dictated. (It mattered little.) 'The will,' he said, 'is deposited in the Temple of Vesta.' Livia was adamant: it could not, must not, be done. It was wrong in itself, sacrilege. Whatever lay in the Temple of Vesta was a sacred trust of the Goddess. No man might enter the shrine; no man might compel the Virgins to surrender what had been entrusted to their keeping. Her eyes flashed as she said this, and love, fear and anger were mingled in my heart. If no man… could she not herself? 'You have been blinded, Caesar,' she said. 'You are in danger of losing your sense of what is right and what is wrong. I beg you to have nothing to do with this, to forget and lay aside the evil temptation that that man Plancus has sown in your mind. I warn you too, that if you commit this sacrilege, our marriage will be doomed to perpetual unfruitfulness…'

  How can a man respond to such a plea from his wife? There are no words. No argument can still a trembling heart such as Livia revealed. I took her in my arms, but she drew her head away, resisting my kiss. There was no answering embrace.

  'You will kill,' she said, 'whatever is good and true in you and in us…' A shadow crossed the face of the sun and the room was cold. Maecenas, too, hesitated. The news shook him out of his affectations. His hand flew to the carved frog he wore on a chain round his neck. For some time he could not speak. Then he went and looked out of the window to the hills…

  Tm afraid,' he said, 'I would be afraid to do it myself, and I'm afraid for you, my dear. You
can put me down as a dark and superstitious old Etruscan, but… Your star, yes, the Gods have looked kindly on you and on us. Will they do so after what you propose… this violation?'

  'We shall fight Antony at sea perhaps. I do not think Neptune cares a rap for the Temple of Vesta.'

  'The Gods punish impiety, whatever form it takes. My dear, if you do this, you will suffer, some time, I cannot tell when, but you will…'

  I remembered what Virgil had said of the Temple of Diana, and knew Maecenas spoke truth.

  It frightened me that Livia and Maecenas, who disliked each other, should proffer the same advice, the same warning.

  It frightened me; yet I could not turn back. Plancus had handed me a set of loaded dice. When I cast them on the table, they would inevitably roll to my advantage. My hand holding the dice-box felt cold and bony; my mouth filled with nausea, as I hesitated. I turned back, once more, to Livia, and begged her to free me from the guilt. She, being a woman, could act as intermediary. She was permitted to enter the Temple, and wasn't the High Priestess her mother's sister?

  Livia said, 'You are asking me to do what I know to be wrong; to ask my aunt to betray the trust vested in her order through all the centuries of Rome's history.' I felt my face grow obstinate as a small boy's.

  'You don't understand,' I said. 'We cannot avoid war, and you refuse me what alone can ensure my victory. Antony has all the riches of the East behind him. I must march against him, for I cannot endure war in Italy. But I dare not leave disaffection behind. That will cook Antony's goose,' I said. 'If you will not help me, I shall ask Octavia.'