Augustus

by Allan Massie

  '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 mother 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.

  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 he
rself 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 vulgar 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.'