by Allan Massie
"He was besotted with the boy," she told me later. "It blinded his judgment and made him obstinate as a pig."
Curiously, Marcellus' own mother, Augustus' sister, Octavia, also disapproved of the marriage. She feared that it would expose her son to the jealousy of more capable and more ruthless men.
She knew he was a lightweight, even if she adored him. Indeed it is quite possible that Marcellus commanded the adoration of his mother and uncle precisely for that reason.
Nevertheless the marriage went ahead. Augustus was silly with joy. Marcellus preened himself. Julia sulked. She soon found however that there was something to be said for her new state. As a married woman she had privileges denied a virgin. She had her own household and discovered that she enjoyed the freedom and the opportunities to command which this afforded her.
But she was not happy and she had reason for discontent. One evening she invited me to supper. I was surprised to discover that we were alone together.
"Don't be silly, my old bear," she said. "After all we're practically brother and sister."
She toyed with her food, nibbling a little dried fish and some green grapes, a slice of smoked ham and two purple figs, which she held up between thumb and forefinger before putting them whole into her mouth. She drank two or three goblets of wine, and urged me on. Then she dismissed the slaves and we were alone.
She stretched out on her couch, holding up her arm to admire the shape of her hand, and let me have a glimpse of her breasts. She pulled up the skirts of her gown to display her legs.
"They're improving, aren't they?" she said. "Only a few weeks ago they were still fat. What do you think of them, old bear?"
"Stop it," I said.
"Why?"
"Because it's not right…"
"It's not my fault if I fancy you and not my husband. Is it now?"
She stroked her thighs and smiled.
"Cat," I said; but didn't move.
"Old bear. Are you a virgin, old bear?"
I'm sure I blushed.
"As a matter of fact, no," I said.
"Oh good. The Hyacinth can't do it," she said, "not with me anyway. I think he needs people to tell him how pretty he is, and I won't do that. Do you know where he is tonight, actually…?"
I shook my head. I couldn't take my eyes off her legs and the movement of her hands…
"He's having supper with Maecenas," she said.
"Won't the conversation be rather over his head?" I asked, for Augustus' Etruscan minister was celebrated as the patron of poets and artists.
Julia giggled.
"Maecenas gives other kinds of parties, you know. With dancers and painted chorus-boys. That's the kind he invites Marcellus to. He's been doing it for years and nobody dares tell my father, not even his paid spies."
She sat up.
"Look at me. I'm a beautiful girl, the daughter of the most powerful man in the world, and the husband my father has forced on me would rather have any Phrygian boy who wiggles his bum at him."
She threw herself down sobbing. I watched her shoulders rise and fall, and felt my mouth dry. I touched cracked lips with my tongue. I moved to comfort her. In a trice her arms were round my neck, her tongue seeking mine. I tasted tears, wine and warm, eager, scented flesh; she was soft as rose petals and firm as a galloping horse. She cried aloud with joy-filled pain, and I sank into unimaginable delight…
"Old bear, old bear, hairy beast…"
"Lascivious cat…"
It was like that then. The night dies over the ocean. The moon swells behind the mountains of Asia which roll back, wave upon wave, to the confines of empire. I pour myself more wine and gulp it, seeking fierce oblivion that will not come.
3
The following morning my mother summoned me to her apartments. She gave me what Drusus and I called her Medusa look.
"You're a fool," she said, "and you look awful…" "I'm afraid I drank too much wine last night…" "That's not all you did last night. I suppose you're too old to whip…"
"Yes," I said, "that must be a matter of regret for you, but I am indeed too old to whip."
"Then I shall have to employ my tongue. I didn't ask you to sit down."
"No, you didn't. Nevertheless…"
"Don't be insolent. Don't add insolence to your other folly."
"If I knew what you were talking about…"
"You know very well… And don't smile. You have put yourself, and everything I have worked for on your behalf, at risk, for a little honeypot with the morals of an alley-cat…"
"Ah," I said, "I should have realised, Mother, that you would have an informer in Julia's household…"
"You should indeed. Shall I tell you something which you should never forget? Success in life and politics, which for people like us amounts to much the same thing, depends on information. Naturally, therefore, one takes steps to obtain it. I hadn't thought you could be such a fool."
I picked up an apple and bit into it. I knew that a show of unconcern would screw Livia to still more intense fury, but I had long ago found that apparent indifference was my surest weapon against her. Or if not a weapon, at least a shield.
She said, "Tiberius, I wonder if you realise what the Princeps would do if he found out what I know…?"
It irritated me when she referred to him in that way.
I said, "He ought to be grateful to me for making his daughter happy. It's more, it seems, than his beloved Marcellus has been able to do…"
"Do I care if she is happy?"
"Do you care if anyone is happy, Mother?"
"Don't be foolish. You know that my constant concern is for your future, and that of Drusus. But, unlike you, I know the world. You can't be blamed for your ignorance. You haven't seen the best part of a generation destroyed as I have. Therefore you don't realise how necessary it is to be circumspect, to plan every action, to eschew all folly, especially such as you have been guilty of. You don't realise that the life of a public man, that is to say of anyone who belongs to the Roman noble class, is perilous. Do you think you are safe in a world in which Caesar, Antony, Pompey, Cicero, Marcus Brutus all found themselves powerless in the end against the malignity of fate? Can you imagine that? I took you for someone more intelligent."
"But, Mother," I said. "I am protected surely. The love the Princeps bears you is my shield…"
The irony in my tone annoyed her. Livia has always been sensitive to irony. She resents its assumption of superiority.
"Of course he loves me," she said, "and I love him myself. That's not the point. We are not private people and we have different ambitions for our own children. Don't think the Princeps' love for me will protect you if you disturb his arrangements. He is quite capable of operating in a secret world from which I am excluded, and then of being full of regrets if his actions distress me. A dynast, a man of power like your father…"
"My stepfather, Mother…"
"Very well, your stepfather, if you insist, lives on two distinct planes, both real enough. There is the family man who is all concern and warm affection, and there is the politician who has no affections, no loyalty, no scruples. He loves his sister Octavia. That didn't prevent him from forcing her into marriage with Mark Antony, though he knew precisely how cruelly Antony would treat her. And, since you insist on it, remember always he is indeed your stepfather, not your father. He has no natural affection for you any more, since I am being frank, than I have for that little hussy, his daughter. Moreover, I must tell you that she is quite capable of destroying herself. I don't choose that she should pull you down with her…"
I cannot of course be certain that, at this distance of time, my memory restores to me the precise words of our conversation. Our own past, it sometimes seems to me, is a species of dream, just as dreaming so often reveals to us glimpses of the future which we cannot recognise till we find ourselves enacting those heralded moments. Experience is like a journey along a foggy river valley: for brief moments the line of the hills may be
seen; then the mist hides them. We never know quite where we are or what surrounds us. Even the sounds we hear are deceptive. Our life is composed of a series of illusions, some of which we dignify by the name reality, but our perceptions are never more truthful than the shadows flickering on the wall of Plato's cave.
The successful man is often the sleepwalker. Augustus believed in his destiny. This freed him from the self-examination with which I have perplexed myself.
What he remembers becomes true for him. I sit here wondering if I have only dreamed this conversation with my mother.
But did I dream her last sentence?
"Believe me, my son, your stepfather's love for me secures you no more protection than Thetis obtained for her beloved Achilles…"
And if I dreamed it, wasn't my dream a true warning?
4
I entered public life in my twentieth year when I was elected quaestor. I had been granted the right to stand for each magistracy at five years below the legal limit. In retrospect I deplore this example of favouritism, though I am bound to point out that I was less favoured than Marcellus, who was excused ten years' seniority. Nevertheless, despite my disapproval, I understand Augustus' decision. Two reasons may be advanced. First, it is always difficult to find reliable men to undertake necessary work and it was natural for Augustus to seek them among the members of his own family, whom he believed he could trust. Second, as Agrippa remarked in his crude vernacular, "You young buggers are best kept busy. It keeps you out of mischief."
The quaestorship was no empty honour. As every schoolboy knows, this office is an essential but unglamorous part of our body politic. It may be compared to the post of quartermaster in the army: he directs no strategy, wins no glory, but the army cannot function without him. Those ignorant of military affairs think of the quartermaster, if they think of him at all, as a dull fellow doing a dull job. Every serving soldier, however, knows that his comfort and safety depends on the efficiency with which this dull fellow works.
My first task as quaestor was to investigate irregularities which were occurring at the port of Ostia in the supply of corn to Rome. The assurance of a regular supply of grain for the capital is one of the most necessary tasks of government; if the supply fails, then there can be no guarantee of civil order. Augustus impressed upon me the importance of the task with which he had entrusted me.
"I know you are young," he said, "but you have this advantage: you have not been corrupted by experience. I have found that any man who has been long engaged in this business comes to accept the arguments of the middlemen and monopolists."
I soon discovered that it was the practice of certain shipowners' agents at Ostia to delay the transmission of cargoes from the port to the city till they had assured themselves that the price was satisfactory. If anyone tried to persuade them to move more quickly, they would only do so on payment of a personal commission. Moreover, the overseers at the docks, generally freedmen, were likewise prepared to delay the unloading of a ship at their own pleasure. In short, there was a chain of corruption which, in being worked to the advantage of numerous distinct individuals, amounted to a conspiracy against the public interest.
Yet I was uncertain how to proceed. It is one thing to identify the cause of some malfunctioning, another to remove it. One of my fellow quaestors suggested that we should arrange to pay a bounty to any grain merchant who delivered corn from Ostia to Rome within a given period.
"In this way," he said, "we shall accelerate the period."
I did not dispute his argument, but I had seen him engaged in close conversation with a number of merchants whom I deemed among the most corrupt, and it seemed to me likely that a portion at least of the bounty would find its way into his own coffers. Moreover, it seemed to me wrong, as a general principle, to attempt to check corruption by actions which were themselves in essence corrupt.
Not wishing to trouble Augustus with my problem, for I was convinced that to do so would lower his estimate of my capacities, I approached Agrippa. In retrospect, I find this significant. Despite my juvenile prejudice against him, I recognised in the imperial coadjutor a man devoted to efficiency.
He received me in his office, where he was surrounded by maps and plans of the water system for Rome which he was then attempting to reorganise. I outlined my problem as I saw it. He listened in silence, something Augustus could never have done.
"What is your own inclination?" he said. "Since you dislike your colleague's suggestion."
"I've already explained my reasons for that," I said. "But it seems to me one has a choice in these matters. You can reward or you can punish. My colleague proposes what is in effect bribery. I would rather impose penalties." "Why?"
"I do not believe you can make men good, but I believe it is possible to make them behave well."
"And you consider fear of punishment more efficacious than the promise of reward?"
"Yes, when the reward is offered as a sort of condonement of the offence."
"You are quite right."
He tapped his nose.
"I'm a soldier," he said, "and I believe in discipline. Perhaps you have the makings of a soldier yourself. It would be a change in your family."
Fortified by his approval, I drew up a code of penalties to be imposed for any delay in the transmission of grain. My colleague was horrified; he saw his own prospect of a reward draining away. I stood firm. The code was enacted. For a short while the blockages were cleared. But I am afraid that old practices were soon resumed when my responsibilities took me elsewhere.
Nevertheless I have never forgotten this experience. I am very conscious that Rome is dependent on supplies from abroad, and that the life of the Roman people is every day tossed about not only at the mercy of wind and wave but at the greedy whim of the merchant classes and their underlings. These drive the price up, and so threaten popular insurrection. If the state is to remain orderly, as all good men must devoutly wish, then the grain supply must be assured. The popularity of government rests on full bellies. A hungry people does not listen to reason.
1 was then given another task of extraordinary interest and importance. At Agrippa's suggestion, as I believe, I was put at the head of a commission charged with investigating the condition of slave barracks throughout Italy.
("How disgusting," Julia said, when I told her of my appointment. "When you've finished you'd better not approach me till you have had a good many baths. Everyone knows we have to have slaves, but we don't have to think about them as well, surely.")
The immediate purpose of the commission was, as I discovered when I read the brief prepared, to determine whether freemen were being held illegally in these barracks and whether they were harbouring military deserters. But I soon found it necessary to go beyond this brief, and my eventual report was to mark a new chapter in the history of this unfortunate but necessary institution.
What can we say of slavery? It is an institution common to all people, and certainly to all civilised people. (There are, I believe, a few barbarian tribes amongst whom it is unknown, on account of their poverty or feeble character.) Nevertheless it must also be admitted that slavery violates the law of nature. Our ancestors did not think so; Marcus Porcius Cato, most disagreeable of men, considered that the slave was no more than a living tool. Those were his precise words. They disgust me. A slave has the same limbs and organs as a freeman; the same mind, the same · soul. I have always been careful to treat my own slaves as human beings. Indeed I think of them as unpretentious friends. There is a proverb: "As many enemies as you have slaves". But they are not essentially enemies. If slaves feel enmity towards their masters, then it is generally the masters who have provoked it. Too many Romans are haughty, cruel and insulting to their slaves, forgetting that like themselves the poor creatures breathe, live and die. A wise man, which is also to say a good man, treats his slaves as he would himself be treated by those set in authority over him. I have always experienced a mixture of amusement and contempt when
I have heard senators complain that liberty has vanished in Rome (which is unfortunately true) and yet have seen the same men delight in humiliating and exhausting their slaves.
These are ideas which I have acquired over the years. I did not hold them all when I was entrusted with this commission to investigate the slave barracks. But their seed was there, and that experience caused it to germinate. I saw in these barracks the degradation of man.
I was learning men's nature fast, and almost always with disgust. The year after my quaestorship the uneasy stability which had succeeded the civil wars was threatened by ambition and discontent. Fannius Caepio, whose father had been an adherent of
Sextus Pompeius, was the author of a conspiracy against the Princeps' life. His chief associate was Tarentius Varro Murena, that year's consul. He was the brother-in-law of Maecenas. Disaffection therefore infected the heart of the Republic. The conspiracy was discovered by Augustus' secret police, themselves, by the mere fact of existence, evidence of how Rome had changed for the worse. We had entered a time when, as Titus Livius observed in the preface to his History of Rome, "We could endure neither our vices nor their remedies". I was myself called upon to prosecute Caepio, which I did with an efficiency which was admired by many, at least in public, and a dismay which I sought to conceal.
That year I married Vipsania. We had been betrothed for many years and I had accustomed myself to the idea that we would be man and wife. At one time I had rebelled against the prospect. It seemed an unsuitable match for a Claudian. But I had reconciled myself when I came to know her father Agrippa, and was thus able to form a more just conception of his supreme capabilities.
"I won't ask you how you are getting on," he said to me a few days after the marriage. "But I want you to know that I welcome you as an ally."
"An ally, sir?"
He sat back in his chair, his massively muscled legs thrust out before him.
"Don't pretend you don't understand me. I've watched you for years, ever since your mother and I agreed to this match. Don't pretend to be an innocent or a fool. You know perfectly well that a marriage such as yours is more than a family compact. It's a political act. Of course I hope that you and Vipsania will be happy together: she's my daughter and I'm fond of her; but I also hope that this marriage will make it easier for you and me to work together. You're young, but you have a head on you, and I'm ready to swear that you have some understanding of how things stand. If nothing else, your experiences as prosecutor in the recent case should have opened your eyes. What sort of state would you say we live in?"