by Allan Massie
Perhaps it was my evident grief over Gallus that touched Livia's heart. At any rate, suddenly, to my great joy, she withdrew her opposition to the marriage of Marcellus and Julia. That was how it seemed to me at the time. There were alas darker reasons.
How deceptive is one's progress through life. It is as if we travelled on a footpath cut through a gloomy forest. Because we remain on the path and are able to advance, we feel in control of our destiny. But the surrounding forest remains unknown and hostile, and we are ignorant of what dangers lurk only a few feet from the path.
THREE
I fell ill in Spain in the spring of 24, a fever that would not leave me. I had to hand over command of the army there to my legates, C. Antistius Vetus and P. Carisius, sound men who, following my plan of campaign, subdued the rebellious tribes. I therefore ordered the door of the temple of Janus to be closed, in order to show to the city what I had achieved for Rome, and to persuade my enemies of the unrivalled blessings of peace. Meanwhile I took the waters of the Pyrenaean mountains, and began to write a fragment of autobiography, dedicated to Agrippa and Maecenas. It did not proceed far but I was to draw on it later for that book which I wrote for the instruction, and, as I hoped, delight of my sons Gaius and Lucius.
To write their names even pains me. How shall I deal with their lives? Better perhaps to abandon these last mutterings this side of the tomb. Yet I have a duty to the Gods, to Livia, to the shade of Virgil, and finally to my own reputation, to persevere.
A letter has just come from Tiberius assuring me that all is quiet on the Rhine. Old age would be insupportable but for him. If he were to die, in whom could I rest my trust?
Trust… the word oppresses me. Owls call hunting from the Aventine; the river stench rises to my nostrils. Slaves, seeing my grey countenance and sour look, slink through the palace in whey-faced fear – as if I would vent my misery and displeasure on them. That I have lived to this! Oh, all may be quiet on the Rhine, I am sure it is, Tiberius would not lie for my comfort, though he knows well how little comfort I have now, in anything… oh Varus, give me back my legions! I have sent to Gaul to seek out the little girl who ran by her father's side. I shall entrust her, and her mother, if she lives, to Livia.
Is it some kind of judgement that the Gods have deserted me in old age? I spent sixty years the favourite of Fortune, to be deprived of Fortune in my last days.
Trust… life is a hollow gourd without it, trust in family, trust in friends, trust in one's own integrity and the integrity of others… trust that one's benevolence will be recognized. Such trust is a mockery; it mocks him who trusts and what he trusts in. It denies the sharp appetites of man.
I returned to Rome, weary and still fevered – a frightful journey – in the autumn of that year. I selected Terentius Varro Murena to be my colleague in the consulship. His sister Terentia was Maecenas' wife and he himself had done well as commander of the legions I had sent against the Salassi. Would I however have made him consul if Terentia had not asked me to do so? She had liquid brown eyes and hair the colour of beech-nuts, and when I called to see Maecenas she was desperate. Though we hardly knew each other she told me of her unhappiness. She had not known of her husband's tastes when the marriage was arranged; for the first year she had not believed they could really be exclusive. As she told me this her eyes brimmed with tears. She lay back on the couch and looked at me, her breasts heaving. Her gown was slit up the right side and she let it fall away to reveal the long rounded line of delicious thigh. Everything in her attitude cried out to me, 'Come and rape me, don't you see I shall die of frustration if you don't?' I smiled to her and she crossed the room and sat on my lap and thrust her tongue into my mouth. She was brown and warm and eager and uncomplicated. I felt the cruelty of what we impose on women and was gentle with her. When all was over, and, in her starved condition, our first love-making was as brief as a dog's, she sobbed in relief.
'There's no point,' I said, 'in hoping that Maecenas… You have to accept that he is Maecenas.' 'These nasty little Gallic blonds,' she said.
I kissed her pouting mouth and licked the tears from her cheeks. It was the only day that year I felt well, and, though we made love again, it was never the same. Our affair was brief. I felt no guilt towards Maecenas. Later, the poor girl went, as they say, to the bad. She and Maecenas became friends after I had liberated her, and he introduced her to his other friends in the theatre, and she took up with a Greek dancer called Nikolides whose morals were notorious. I'm afraid that, as the years passed, her own behaviour won her the same reputation. Livia and her circle used to talk of her with disgust; they said she had become little better than a common prostitute. She began to drink heavily and died a couple of years before Maecenas himself. She had quite lost her looks by then, poor thing. I used to receive all sorts of frightful reports about her from my agents, and she could certainly have been prosecuted for immorality. I refused to do so, and even Livia did not dare urge me to, because she was afraid that I would regard such a suggestion as being aimed at Maecenas. That wasn't my reason at all of course; Maecenas didn't enter into it. I felt sorry for the poor girl, because I saw that being married to Maecenas would have disturbed any woman. Only once did I have occasion to reprove her. That was when it was reported to me that she had been boasting of the affair she had had with Augustus. I couldn't permit that and I told her so. She wept again and said it wasn't herself she was revenging, but her brother. That was ridiculous, and I told her so, sharply. We were never alone together again. It is a sad story. I have never forgotten her nut-brown laughter.
Once I asked Horace why he wrote poetry: There are too many reasons,' he said. 'Because I have to is the simplest. But there is one reason that appeals to me. I write poetry to preserve what would otherwise be lost, or would decay.' When I think of nut-brown Terentia, I understand what he meant. Her brother betrayed me.
The crisis blew up out of nothing. The proconsul of Macedonia, Marcus Primus, suffered like my poor Gallus from the delusion that can afflict those unaccustomed to authority when it is unwisely granted them. (But it is impossible to know whether a man is fit for authority till he is granted it.) He did not understand that the days of the anarchic Republic, when provincial governors were so little subject to control that they frequently made war without the sanction of the Senate, had gone. He launched an attack on the kingdom of Thrace. I was displeased, both because he had acted on his own account and also because I had no wish to embroil the Republic in a war on that frontier; indeed his act disturbed delicate diplomatic discussions which were then in train. Naturally the dignity of the Senate was likewise affronted. Primus was charged with treason. He had the impudence to allege that he was acting on my instructions. I appeared in the witness box myself to deny this, and the vainglorious fool was condemned to death.
At that point my fellow-consul, Terentia's brother, protested. Primus was a friend of his, he told me, and he was deeply offended that I had allowed the trial to go forward. Moreover, Primus had committed no crime. He was acting for the greater glory of the Roman People.
'We cannot,' I said, 'permit this private initiative. A generation ago it brought the Republic to its knees.' He flushed, like a man in wine, and banged the table.
'You talk of restoring the Republic, Caesar, but it is no more than cant. I see that now. You invest me in this empty consular office, as if it represented the authority of the Republic, but though the two consuls are of equal status according to all the traditions of Rome, I find I am only a cipher, good for nothing. A Roman general seeks glory and empire, and you declare him a traitor…' 'The Senate declared him a traitor…'
'More cant. The Senate would not dare declare a mouse a thief without your nod…' 'Listen,' I said, but he was deaf to reason.
'What you call authority, I call tyranny,' he cried and turned away and marched out of the room. As he walked he held his head unnaturally stiff and high, like an actor wishing to convey outraged dignity. I was naturally perturbed. I
asked Maecenas what he knew of his brother-in-law. 'Less, my friend, than you know of my wife,' he said. 'Could he be dangerous?'
Maecenas smiled: 'I had thought better of you, my dear, than to think you capable of such naivety. It's worthy of the comedian you call your father. Think of the gang who murdered him, ducky. I daresay he even disdained to ask that question of them, for he despised men like Casca and Decius Brutus. Yet they were dangerous enough, in concert, to prick him to death. All men are dangerous, and the weak and stupid the most dangerous of all. My brother-in-law is viewy…' 'Viewy?' 'He likes abstract nouns.' 'Like Liberty.'
'His very favourite. Say Liberty and the poor fool enjoys an instant orgasm…' I summoned Timotheus, the Greek boy whom we had found useful in the affair of Antony's will lodged in the Temple of Vesta. He was a man now, of course, but still the same ringleted and scented epicene, with the same seductive squirm and fluttering eyelashes. I had learned though to respect him, for I had found him uncommonly useful on several occasions. He had indeed come to occupy a trusted position in my personal secretariat, though his duties were hardly secretarial. I am not proud of the use to which I was accustomed to put men like Timotheus (I had perhaps twenty such in my employment); but neither am I ashamed. Of course in the old days of the pristine Republic, spies and undercover agents were unknown, or at least employed only to gather intelligence about Rome's foreign enemies. But for more than a century now, great men had found it necessary to maintain an intelligence service; and in my position as princeps, I could not have done without one. I could hardly fail to be aware that many who appeared satisfied with the Republic I had restored yet nursed grievances. Some did so for family reasons; others because they were ambitious for power; others because they were jealous of what I had achieved. I would have been neglecting my duty towards the Republic if I had not made it my business to keep an eye on subversive elements in the State. I therefore told Timotheus that I wanted a full report on my fellow-consul, together with a list of his associates and notes on them, as soon as possible.
'That will be easy, Caesar,' he said. 'As soon as you announced that he was to be your colleague, I introduced one of my contacts into his household. Frankly, my lord…'
'I have told you, Timotheus, that I will not be addressed by that title
'But Caesar, I am only a poor Greek freedman,' he squirmed. 'I think of you as my lord, for I owe my manumission to the noble generosity of your character.' 'Don't, it offends me.'
'Sorry, I'm sure then. As I was saying, I introduced one of my contacts into his household. You don't mind, do you, that I act on my own initiative in such matters? I'll buzz round and get a report from him straightaway…'
'Be careful, Timotheus. There must be no connection between me and this investigation.' 'Trust me for that. I'll be as quiet and circumspect as a mouse.' I was troubled. My health remained poor, and I had to be bled several times that autumn to draw off fevered blood. In my disordered state I was prey to alarms. It seemed that the stability I had sought for Rome was not yet achieved. Livia said to me, 'Take care. There are whispers, husband, and where there are whispers, daggers glint in the candle-light.' That remark astonished me; it was unlike Livia to use melodramatic language.
I brooded on death, as I awaited the report Timotheus was preparing. Julia came to me with complaints against her husband. 'He's so conceited, and he easily shows he has little time for me.' I begged her to be patient and dutiful. I had passed legislation which would permit Marcellus to be elected aedile that year and to stand for the consulship (to which he would of course be elected) ten years before the statutory age. To appease Livia I arranged that Tiberius and Drusus should also be eligible for office five years before they were of age. Livia was barely appeased, but, since Marcellus was my chosen heir, I could hardly permit them to assume equality. That would have made dissension certain.
Maecenas told me that Agrippa was irked by my promotion of Marcellus. 'He feels that the boy will usurp his place in the State,' he warned me. I put the matter to Agrippa, assuring him that he was my closest companion, and would always remain so. 'But Marcellus is my daughter's husband,' I said. 'You cannot wonder that I wish to advance him. Besides, he's your brother-in-law too.'
Yes,' he said, 'and your fellow-consul stands in that relation to Maecenas.'
Relations between Agrippa and Maecenas had deteriorated. We had shared the great adventure of our youth, but the memory was not strong enough to enable them to overcome their growing distrust. Each man had hardened in his character, and each found the other antipathetic. It was not the least of the distresses of that difficult year. Report from Timotheus: agent of the Private Office: to Caesar Augustus: Confidential. The consul Terentius Varro Murena: The consul is punctilious in the exercise of his official functions. No one has heard him breathe a word of disaffection in public. He has few dealings with his sister Terentia, and has never been known to dine in the house of his brother-in-law Maecenas. The fact that he spent a week last August staying in Maecenas' villa near Cerveteri may be of significance. But Maecenas was not there at the time, though on both the preceding and subsequent weeks he is reported as having sacrificed at his family's ancestral tombs in the vicinity.
Acting on instructions received I inserted an agent into Murena's household in the days following my discussion with the Princeps. I had of course done likewise as soon as Murena's consulship was announced. Unfortunately, my first agent fell foul of the consul's major-domo, and was dismissed for alleged drunkenness and insubordination. (N. B. I have since arranged that this first agent be transferred to the galleys where there is no danger that he will disclose the instructions he received by way of me.) His replacement was a Greek boy, it being reported that Murena's tastes were so inclined. (It is recognized that there is some hazard in employing such an agent, if only because circumstances may arise in which he begins to feel an affection for his subject/nominal master, and thus be himself tempted to disloyalty. In this case however it was judged that the danger was slight. That judgement was based on observation of the character of the agent employed.) The introduction was successful. The agent soon caught his master's eye and was promoted to act as cup-bearer at private supper parties. Despite this, these supper parties seem to have been decorous affairs. There is no reason to doubt the agent's report. Indeed he complained with a visible degree of pique of the tepidity of the subject's interest, the subject doing no more than caress him negligently… 'What a sink of iniquity,' Agrippa said. 'How can you bear to employ such people?'
'Come,' I replied, 'it was you yourself who introduced Timotheus to my notice.' 'Doesn't make him stink less.'
'Never mind. Read on. You will find what follows more interesting, more to your taste and to the point.'
'Bloody little catamites. I'd send the whole shooting-match to the Rhine frontier.'
'I doubt if that would secure us against the Germans. Do read on and stop grumbling.' The agent reports that these supper parties were exclusively male. He found them serious affairs, and was at first puzzled by the tenor of the conversation. He has been regrettably less than completely efficient in obtaining a full list of names of those who attended the parties, of which he attended six in the course of a fortnight. At all of them he and other servants were excluded when the main part of the meal had been concluded. On three occasions he waited at the door for more than three hours between the time of his dismissal and the departure of the guests.
Three men, besides the consul, are reported as having been ever-present. They have been identified as: Fannius Caepio, Lucius Primus, and G. Aemilius Scaurus.
Notes on the above: Fannius Caepio is the nephew of C. Fannius who served with Sextus Pompey in Sicily, and accompanied him after his defeat there to Asia. It is not recorded how he died, but neither is there any record of him after Pompey's death. Fannius Caepio was brought up by his mother, whose own father was killed fighting alongside C. Cassius at Philippi. There is therefore on both sides of the family a history of
disaffection. The young Fannius Caepio – he is in his early twenties – has expressed disdain of those who accept public office 'in the Republic as now constituted'. Is this in itself not a treasonable offence, or at least an insult to the Senate and magistrates? In character, he is violent, ill-tempered, high-spoken, and given to gaming and wine.
Lucius Primus is the half-brother of M. Primus, recently disgraced proconsul of Macedonia. Though L. Primus is reported as being of timid, even cowardly, disposition, he resents his half-brother's condemnation. He has been heard to say that it is proof that Rome suffers an Oriental despotism.
Q. Aemilius Scaurus is the nephew of the stepbrother of Sextus Pompey, Mam Aemilius Scaurus, whose life was spared and whose estates were restored after the Battle of Actium in which he was taken prisoner. Q. Aemilius Scaurus, who is also a connection of the disgraced former triumvir, M. Aemilius Lepidus, is known to be heavily in debt. He has been heard to say that 'only a real provincial governorship in the old style of the Republic can restore my fortunes…' Agrippa looked up from his reading, 'What a shoddy gang.'
'They are all obviously traitors. Are they dangerous? That is the question.' Conclusion: It is clear that these four have been taking soundings among their extensive connections and acquaintances. Though there is no prima facie evidence of conspiracy as yet, there is sufficiently strong ground for suspicion to justify intervention. Alternatively it is recommended that some of those who have attended only one supper party at the consul's, some of whom, it is presumed, have rejected overtures made to them, be questioned. A list is appended in appendix one. 'A sorry crew,' Agrippa said, looking over the list. 'Hardly a good man among them. No Marcus Brutus certainly.'