by Allan Massie
'Well,' Livia said, 'you are right there anyway. Have you anyone in mind?'
'It can't,' I said, 'be any of the young men she is frequenting now. They're none of them politically reliable… I had thought, perhaps…'
I paused. Livia was sewing. Her needle moved to and fro, quick, certain, exact. She didn't look up to question my silence, but waited for me to continue. It was cold outside, and the slaves had let the furnaces which served our heating system die down. I shivered, despite the thick under-vest I was wearing -I have always hated extremes of climate, and the north wind, scudding across the mountains, was bringing snow to the fringe of the city. I had noticed that afternoon that the Alban Hills were white. 'Tiberius,' I said. Livia made no reply.
'You have often observed,' I said, 'that Julia is fond of him, and you have said too that his stability is what she needs.'
'You're misquoting me.' Livia looked up from her sewing. 'I have never said she is fond of him. I have said she runs after the boy. That is not quite the same thing. It wouldn't do…'
She must have been tempted. I have always been certain of that. What was I offering after all? My only daughter, and hence, for Tiberius, the position in the Republic which she knew I had been reserving for Marcellus; surely she must have been tempted? Yet, not only then, but a few days later too, after 'many hours of consideration' she turned my proposal down, flat. 'It wouldn't do,' was all she would vouchsafe me, no explanation. I didn't understand it. I had thought to please her. It has taken me years, much pain and perplexity, to come to an understanding. She knew of course, and valued, what she was declining. Once, a few years later, she half-suggested that she had been unwilling to expose Tiberius to the envy of his contemporaries, but that wasn't the true reason. It was rather that she didn't trust my daughter, was sure she would make Tiberius unhappy, would bruise that Claudian pride of his, and would retard the development of his character. She feared he would withdraw into his secret world of brooding, drawing those heavy eyebrows down, fixing that long mouth in a sullen and recalcitrant line. If that happened, his career would suffer. Livia had no desire to see Tiberius a recluse. She was ambitious for her sons. I had counted on her ambition to secure agreement, but I had given insufficient value to her intelligence. I had failed to realize how well she knew Tiberius, and how she feared his nature. I could hardly blame myself for that, not knowing him well enough; so I blamed his mother. She had failed me. She had done nothing to solve my problem. More exasperatingly, I had thought to please her by this suggestion, and had not done so. I resented her refusal to be pleased. It was Maecenas who turned my mind to the solution for Julia. Over the last couple of years I had seen less of him, partly because Murena's conspiracy and his brother-in-law's execution had caused a coolness, but more because Maecenas found politics interesting only in times of crisis. He took no interest in administration, and had been drifting into a different world. His pleasure now lay in being a patron of the arts rather than in politics, and he was carrying on a new and far too blatant love affair with the actor Bathyllus. I disapproved of his public displays of affection for him, and had told him so. I suppose he resented my reproof. For Maecenas had in fact fallen in love, as comprehensively as a middle-aged man who has only flirted with his emotions all his life can do. If I had given him the choice (which crossed my mind) between life in Rome without Bathyllus and exile in his company, he would have chosen the latter. There was accordingly some constraint between us. I believe too that he was jealous of the regard Virgil felt for me, for he considered the poet his protege.
Nevertheless enough of the old affection persisted to allow him to speak frankly to me, and enough of mine remained to make it improbable that I would ever offer that choice to him, for to do so would be to deprive myself of the one man who had never given me bad advice, and who, though he had often bored me, could still make me laugh. The one man too who still spoke as an unchanging friend of my youth… 'It is difficult,' he said now, 'disposing of people, isn't it?' I said,'Fathers have a duty to provide for their daughters…'
'Don't be so stuffy, dear. Between you and me and a deaf slave, we can surely speak without flummery. I know precisely what your problem is, and you're quite right. You see, my dear, I know these… types… that Julia's, shall we say, frequenting. They're riff-raff, old Republican riff-raff, spouters of rhetoric with the morals of an alley-cat. And I speak as one who knows.'
'I can't let Julia marry one of them, certainly. The consequences…'
'You can't even let her be laid by one of them…' Maecenas waved his ringed hand before me, and played with his jewels. 'There's only one man who will do,' he said. 'Agrippa.'
'Agrippa? I hadn't even thought of him. It had never occurred…'
'Of course not. You still think of Agrippa as your bosom chum, the utterly reliable lieutenant. It's very odd, my dear, how you keep your innocence and still fail to understand power. You really believe in affection, don't you? Oh yes, I'm sure Agrippa's fond of you, but haven't you ever wondered what really goes on in the block of wood he calls a head? Have you asked yourself what it feels like to know that you are the greatest soldier in the world, and the greatest administrator, loved, feared and trusted by the legions, but still, always and forever, compelled to stand a half-pace behind your oldest friend whose every weakness you know, and to whom you feel yourself superior in so many important respects…'
'You have always told me the truth, Maecenas… why do you say this now?' He smiled and did not answer. 'Of course you hate Agrippa,' I said.
'Of course I do. He has never forgiven me for being more intelligent than he is. Agrippa is a lion. Can you keep a lion as a pet? Can you ever really trust a lion? My dear, power imposes its own imperatives, and you have a choice. You can kill Agrippa and so check his power, or you can bind him still more closely to you. Let him marry your daughter. Feed him with honour, trust and glory, and the lion may consent to purr, docile as a domestic cat…' Julia was dismayed. Her lips pouted and her eyes filled with tears and narrowed or contracted at the same time. I could see what she would look like in middle-age: piggy, her looks lost. I felt tenderly towards her, but I could not of course relent, so tried instead to persuade her. I pointed out that I could not live for ever, that indeed I had nearly died last year, and that, when I did so, Agrippa would be the most powerful man in the world. 'What do I care?' she said. 'I want fun, not power…'
Inadequate desire! Poor Julia, who understood so little about life! I tried to explain, but without success. Livia however assured me that she would make her see sense. There would be no trouble at any rate. I had been doubtful of her own response to the proposed marriage. Rather to my surprise, she approved. Did she feel, I wondered, that Agrippa would never be acceptable to the Roman nobility, and that this marriage would leave the way clear for Tiberius? But then she puzzled me further by corning forward with the suggestion that Tiberius should himself marry Agrippa's daughter Vipsania. I had no objection, but she observed my surprise.
'Of course,' she said, 'it is no great match in terms of birth, but a Claudian can elevate any connection. Besides, she's a sweet well-behaved girl. Very affectionate and sensible. I've quite taken to her.'
On reflection, I understood that she thought the marriage would secure Tiberius' position if Agrippa survived me. He would feel obliged to promote his daughter's husband. At the time Livia believed too that Julia could have no children. A long letter to-day from Tiberius on the banks of the Rhine: All is quiet, Father. The Germans attempted a raid last week. We gave them a bloody nose, and drove them back in confusion. Some of our young officers were eager to pursue them, and two were quite insubordinate when I ordered them on no account to do so. I have no doubt they think ill of me, and probably even consider me an old woman. (Few have much experience of how tough old women can be.) I have however made orders absolutely unequivocal. I will permit no forces to advance more than five miles beyond our lines.
I have been pondering deeply on the talks we h
ad when I was last in Rome. I am glad that we are in complete agreement that the Empire is large enough and that we have entered on a period of consolidation which may well last two generations. There is nothing to be gained from annexing the gloomy and unproductive forests of Germany, and I must say that my observations gathered after many years of campaigning on our frontiers have convinced me that the Germans, unlike the inhabitants of Illyria or Thrace, are fundamentally unsuited to civilized life. There is therefore nothing to be gained from trying to incorporate them in the Empire. They are by nature savage. They worship gods as vile as can be imagined, and they have neither gift for urban life nor interest in it. Moreover, they barely cultivate the earth.
If it were feasible, I would lay waste a wide swathe of southern Germany, burning the forests for a hundred miles beyond the frontier, and so creating a depopulated zone, which would act as a sanitary cordon between the Empire and barbarism…
I repeat: it is my considered judgement that nothing is to be gained from adventurism on the northern frontier. Those who advocate an expansionist policy are fired by the ardour of ignorant and ill-judging youth…
(He means his nephew, Germanicus, of course. The young boy has charm and I love him, but this time I am on the same side as Tiberius. Even if I had doubts, his last paragraph would still them…) Yesterday something remarkable happened. A cry went up that a body of men had been spied debouching from the forest. Naturally the alarm was raised, but it soon became evident that it was only a small band. Stragglers, we assumed, or perhaps a fragment of a tribe which had suffered in one of the petty wars that are always breaking out between the various Germanic tribes, and who were now approaching our defences in search of sanctuary. I at once resolved that they should not be admitted, since past experience has shown that Germans invariably become bored with civilized living very quickly, and are then a disruptive nuisance. I therefore despatched a cohort with orders to drive them back into the forest. Imagine my surprise when I learned that they were in fact bringing them in. I went into the camp to upbraid those responsible for disobeying my orders, only to be met with a sight that aroused pity and horror, for these refugees were not Germans but a score of survivors from Varus' legions. They had in fact been prisoners who had escaped, and you never saw such a miserable crowd, or heard such horrors. Their account of their treatment chilled the blood. I say treatment, but maltreatment would be the right word. A dozen of them had had their tongues torn out, simply for sport the others said, though one legionary, an Italian from Calabria, told a horrible story of how some of their barbarian captors had announced that they wished to learn to speak Latin, and believed that they could do so by cutting out and eating the tongues of our soldiers. Have you ever heard anything so disgusting? They actually did so. And yet some people say you can civilize the Germans. I ask you.
You will be glad to know that these poor men have been treated honourably by us, and given every comfort. I have however ordered that they be escorted from the army as soon as they are fit to travel. They should be settled in a colony of veterans. It is undesirable to keep them near the frontier, because, though on the one hand one wants our men to have a dislike of the Germans and even to feel slightly apprehensive of them, sufficiently so to deter adventurism, one doesn't on the other hand want them to develop an unhealthy fear of the enemy. It occurs to me however that you may wish to receive them in Rome, that you may honour their sufferings endured on behalf of the Republic. I should be grateful if you could let me know as soon as possible whether this is so.
I trust, sir, that you enjoy good health. Please convey my dutiful sentiments to my mother. Tiberius. I recoiled from his suggestion. I have always hated dwarfs and physical freaks, and the thought of meeting these unfortunate mutilated men made me feel sick. I wrote at once telling Tiberius they should be settled in a colony near Mantua, and assuring him that I would supply money from my private treasury to defray all expenses and establish them in a new life with ample pensions. I concluded my letter with these words: Your campaigns of last summer, dear Tiberius, deserve all the praise I can muster. No other man alive could have conducted them as capably, in the face of so many difficulties and the war-weariness and low morale of the troops under your command. Everyone praises you, and what Ennius said of Quintus Fabius Cunctator, who saved Rome from Hannibal, may be applied to you: 'Alone he saved us by his watchful eye…' Do not neglect your health, my son. If you were to fall ill, I can't answer for the effect of such news on your mother and myself, and, what is of supreme public importance, the whole Fatherland would be endangered by uncertainty about its leadership. You kindly ask for my health. It matters little now compared to yours. I pray daily that the Gods keep you safe, if they have not taken an utter aversion to our dear Rome… What more could I write to convince Tiberius that I need him, that Rome needs him? Yet how little I once thought to write such words to Livia's son… I have been unsettled though by his news of the survivors. I sent therefore to ask if there was any news of the little girl who had danced by the line of march. Do they think my request that she be found but a senile whim? I have been unable to concentrate on work since I dictated my letter to Tiberius and scrawled the last words in my own hand. Agrippa was still in the East when I decided he should marry Julia. I wrote to him telling him of what I intended. It would of course be necessary for him to divorce Attica, but her father was long dead, and Agrippa had secured his millions. He could easily afford to make a substantial settlement, and it might well be that Attica, like many middle-aged ladies, would be happy to be freed from the marriage bond. I have observed often how easily they can adapt to single status, provided the financial arrangements are satisfactory. And why not? Who would not prefer to have only self to please? Moreover, I was certain that Attica would be appeased by the honour proposed for her daughter Vipsania. After all, it is still something for the granddaughter of a mere banker (however many times over he may be a millionaire) to marry a Claudian. There are those obscurantists who sneer at such social elevation; nothing is more necessary than that it take place, and that there should be a certain fluidity in the social order.
I am told that Agrippa was flabbergasted by my invitation, and even went so far as to ask his staff whether they thought it was some sort of plot. He even had my letter scrutinized by his secretaries in case it was a forgery, though I had written to him in my own hand which he had known for years. Of course when he was finally convinced that the offer was genuine, he was delighted. Julia was after all intensely desirable as well as being my daughter.
She was intelligent enough too to realize that her objections to the marriage could be of no avail, and so to put a good face on her acceptance. And of course though Agrippa was hardly the sort of young man in whom she delighted, he was a hero. He was commanding, brave, dignified and surprisingly epigamic, as Livia pointed out. We agreed that Julia would benefit from being deprived of the company of the epicene young men who thronged her apartments; and certainly, for a time, they were scared off by Agrippa.
As for me, I basked in the achievement of the marriage. I owed much to Agrippa and was delighted to pay my debt in this way. The knowledge that he was one of the family added to my security, and I was pleased to see how his influence brought stability to my beloved daughter's character and conduct. Best of all, she soon proved that the fear that she could bear no children was unfounded. Four were born in the years of their marriage, and a fifth, the unfortunate Agrippa Postumus, six months after his father died. The two eldest, Gaius and Lucius, were to be the joys of my life.
It was pleasant too to see how Vipsania made Tiberius more conversable, and eased his stiff and withdrawn manner.
FIVE
The security of the Empire depends on two things: ordered liberty at home and the inviolability of the frontiers. It has been my life's work to establish both, and maintain them. Only two frontiers are in fact insecure: the northern and the eastern, which latter marches with the Parthian Empire. In central Europe my general
s, especially Tiberius, have at last made the Danube a line of safe defence. We have met with less success in Germany, and as that exchange of letters with Tiberius, which I quoted in the last chapter, shows, I have concluded that there is little to be gained from pushing forward to the River Elbe as I once intended. I confess that to have been a failure of judgement, and, though I do not entirely share Tiberius' gloomy scorn for the Germans (being of the opinion that even these ferocious tribes are not altogether insusceptible to the ordered charms of civilized life), yet I bequeath this advice to those who will have authority in the Republic: Rome is a Mediterranean power, and further expansion to the north is dangerous, unprofitable and immaterial to our true interests.
The East however is a different matter. We are there confronted, not with hordes of barbarians, loosely organized in tribal confederations that are inconstant as water, but with a great Empire. If we are to believe the historians the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates are the very seed-bed of civilized life, older even than Egypt. Cities were known there before Troy was founded. Even the Jews trace their descent from one Abraham who came, they say, from Ur in the Chaldees. A succession of Empires has held sway in these river valleys, rich in crops. Every schoolboy knows of the Empire of the Persians which tried to conquer Greece and which it required the genius of Alexander to subdue.
That Empire has been replaced by the Parthians, and their politics are a complicated business. I cannot do better here than to reproduce, with tears in my eyes, a memorandum which I wrote for my beloved Gaius when I appointed him to an Eastern Command: My dear boy, it is a great task I have set you, for I have asked you to deal with peoples whose way of life is very different from ours, the like of which you have never encountered. I am therefore going to supply you with as much background information as possible. Always remember: knowledge is power. It is necessary to study closely whatever and whomever you have to deal with.