by Allan Massie
"Very well," I said, "but I do not wish them put to death… I shall write in suitable terms to the Senate." "Now," he said.
I watched his boat shrink into invisibility. There were pink roses on my terrace, I called for wine. I waited.
The Senate, now certain of my intentions, was only too happy to order the arrest of Agrippina and Nero. A vote of thanks for my deliverance from vile conspiracy was passed. Some ardent spirits, hoping to please me, called for the death penalty. This time no mob swirled around the Senate House. Rome was quiet as the grave. Agrippina was sent to the island of Pandateria to be confined in the villa where her mother, my poor Julia, had been lodged. Nero was imprisoned on the island of Pontia, where several of Julia's lovers had dragged out existence. I thanked the Senate for their vigilance on my behalf, and commended Sejanus to them as "the partner of my labours". When he wrote renewing his request to be allowed to marry my daughter-in-law, Julia Livilla, I made no objection. Let him please himself, if it still pleased the lady. I asked him only to maintain his care for the children he had had by Apicata.
A few weeks after his mother's arrest, Drusus visited me on Capri. I had not invited him for I detested the thought that this young man, who had been so zealous in the destruction of his brother Nero, should be seen by so many as my ostensible heir. He demanded praise for his loyalty and eagerly begged a reward. It was time he was granted command of an army, he said. I replied that I entrusted military commands to experienced and trusted soldiers, not to ignorant boys. He flushed.
"Furthermore," I said, "I find your expressions of loyalty to me less striking than your indifference to your mother's fate. Where natural affections wither, it is hard to trust noble sentiments."
"You have made an enemy of that young man," Sejanus wrote. "He returned to Rome inspired by malice directed at your person."
I could not help that. I saw in Drusus the fierce and cunning servility which has been the bane of Rome. It is the Ides of March today, the anniversary of Caesar's murder. Of course the corruption of virtue long preceded that, which was indeed a vain attempt at its purification. Marcus Brutus at least, a man who won the admiration of almost all those opposed to his actions, certainly saw that murder as a necessary cleansing deed. I am told he looked down on Caesar's mangled corpse, and muttered, "Cruel imperative". There was one exception to the general approval of Brutus: my stepfather always described him as a prig, fool and ingrate; he called the conspiracy against Caesar "a mad dream of disappointed careerists given a spurious respectability by Brutus who lacked any understanding of how the Republic had changed since the Punic Wars".
Augustus was right. Yet I have often wondered whether I would not myself have been among the self-styled Liberators. I am sure at some moments that I would have been, for I would have found the rule of a single person — a rule then in its infancy — as repugnant as… as I find it now when I am myself that person. And yet, if I have any consistent virtue, clarity of mind must be granted me. Would I not then have looked around the Senate as I do now and have found a generation fit for slavery, no longer capable of exercising the restraint of the passions on which the enjoyment of true liberty depends?
It is not only a question of morality, though ultimately all political questions must be seen as that. It is a question of consistent authority. Rome has been destroyed by its empire; the doom of the Republic was written in the conquest of Greece, Asia, Africa, Gaul and Spain. My whole life, animated by Republican sentiments, has yet been devoted to making the re-establishment of the Republic impossible. And it is thanks to Brutus and his friends that the inevitable principate had its origins in murder and civil war.
These thoughts have been with me a long time. I looked around and saw no man but Sejanus capable of governing the empire. Drusus was a scoundrel. I doubted the mental balance of his younger brother, Gaius Caligula. My own grandson Tiberius Gemellus was a sweet child, but nothing in his nature promised that he would be a man of chara cter. Perhaps the best security for him was indeed that Sejanus should marry his mother and be entrusted with his care, as Augustus had entrusted me with the rearing of Gaius and Lucius. Surely, I thought, I could trust Sejanus? The nobility, jealous of his comparatively humble birth, would rebel if he was openly elevated to the position which Augustus had enjoyed, and I had endured; but he could be the power, as it were, behind the throne, my grandson's throne. I announced that as he had long been the partner of my labours, I would honour him by making him my partner in the consulship for the following year.
That announcement proved to Drusus that he had gained nothing by his betrayal of his mother and brother. He collected about him a group of giddy-minded, dissipated and discontented nobles. Their dinner-table talk was rank sedition. This was reported to me; I relayed it to the Senate, who ordered Drusus' arrest. Pending full investigation, he was held under house arrest. I ordered that he be strictly guarded, and forbidden company.
Agrippina, hearing the news, embarked on a hunger strike. Orders were given that she be forcibly fed. She resisted the attempt. Struggling with her guards, she received a blow which cost her the sight of her left eye.
9
Does chance govern all? I had a letter from Antonia, my brother's widow, Germanicus' mother, saying she hoped to visit me, perhaps for a few days while she was holidaying at her villa on the Bay of Naples. I was minded to refuse, though I have always liked and admired Antonia. I was afraid that she would plead for her grandsons Nero and Drusus; not for her daughter-in-law Agrippina, I was sure of that, for she had never cared for her. It would have been embarrassing to endure her intercession on their behalf. So I wrote a letter saying I was unwell and unable to receive visitors.
But I did not send it. I was distracted by another letter I had received. This was from Sejanus. He requested that I accord him the tribunician power, that Republican status which Augustus had employed as a device to enable him to initiate and veto legislation and to ensure that his person was sacrosanct, which I had, of course, been granted by him. In fact I had been considering whether this should not be accorded Sejanus; I had hesitated because I knew how much a grant would stimulate discontent and envy. Yet the matter was on my mind. Now, on the other hand, there was something in the tone of Sejanus' letter which was displeasing, a peremptory note, as if he had only to ask to be given what he demanded. There was an underlying suggestion that with this power he would be free of my authority. It was not stated. Perhaps Sejanus himself did not know that it was there, but I caught a whiff of arrogance and impatience and this disquieted me.
In my perturbation, nostalgia invaded me. When I thought of Antonia, I set aside my fears as to what she would request. I was able to forget the sink of political Rome, with its private bureaux of espionage, its stench of conspiracy, its atmosphere infected by suspicion and fear; instead the memory came to me of conversations under chestnut trees, conversations that stretched towards the setting sun, and covered in the most friendly and sincere manner the whole range of human experience. In talking with Antonia, I reflected, I would share again some species of communion with my long-dead brother. And I remembered that in those distant days Antonia and I had been bound together by the purest sort of affection, that between a man and a woman, into which is breathed only the lightest breeze of sexual desire — a desire which, for imperative reasons, will never be translated into action; an affection which floats like a raft on a lake in the sunshine of a summer afternoon that can never end.
There was to be a happy day before she arrived. Sigmund had fallen in love with a local girl, a Greek called Euphrosyne, whose father practised as a doctor in Naples, but owned a little villa on Capri, given to him by Augustus in return for some service he had rendered. It would have been a quite unsuitable marriage but for my patronage. Miltiades (the father) would never have consented that his adored daughter should marry anyone so unsuitable as a German freedman, who had, moreover, been a gladiator, if that freedman had not also been my favourite. For my part I was delig
hted by the match. Euphrosyne was an enchanting girl, with black eyes and a mass of dark curls, a creature made for pleasure, yet tender-hearted and witty. To see them together was a justification of empire, for what but Rome could have brought these two perfect, but contrasting, physical types together? Their happiness and the delight they took in each other enfolded us all. I blessed the marriage, asking only that both remained in my household.
Antonia arrived early, while we were still celebrating. Her hair was white but she retained that serene beauty which she had inherited from her mother, Octavia.
"You must forgive me," she said, "I never keep to my plans exactly, for reasons I shall later explain. Meanwhile, Tiberius, how delightful it is to see you again, looking so well and happy."
"You have come in the middle of a happy occasion," I said, "and your arrival, Antonia, adds to the pleasure."
"Ah," she said, "if Rome could see you now, so innocently engaged as a sort of godfather, people would be ashamed of the scurrilous stories they are so fond of retailing."
"You risk spoiling my pleasure by mentioning that place."
"That's the last thing I want to do," she replied, but her face clouded.
"It's strange," she said, "how we have remained friends."
"We have our dear Drusus and many memories in common."
"And yet I cannot turn anywhere without being told that you are the enemy of my family."
"We could never be enemies, Antonia. I remember with the greatest gratitude how you refused to heed the vile rumours about Germanicus' death."
"I knew they were all lies. I knew you could never have a hand in the death of your brother's son. Now two of his grandsons have been imprisoned by your command."
"By order of the Senate."
"At your request…"
"If you had seen the evidence…"
She looked away, her grey eyes filled with tears. A little wind blew whispers of the ocean towards us. The blue-veined marble of the terrace shone like a dull shield in the noon sun. We sat in the shade under an arbour of trailing roses.
"I came a day early," she said, "because I no longer choose to advertise my movements exactly. More than that, I do not dare. And I brought Gaius Caligula with me because…" she paused, and looked me in the eyes with a candid gaze which I was reluctant to meet but from which I could not turn away, "because I am afraid of what may happen to him if he is not with you."
She then spoke of Gaius. He was an unsatisfactory youth, moody, disorganised, given to apparently unprovoked outbursts of cackling laughter and fits of temper. He had, she was afraid, a streak of cruelty. (I pictured the boy, his tow-coloured hair wild as a slum-child's, leaping from his seat in the theatre and shrieking, "Kill him, kill him!" as Sigmund lay helpless and terrified on the sand.) Nevertheless, and perhaps precisely because he was difficult, awkward, and given to nervous terrors at night, Antonia loved him; Agrippina, who, having once spoiled him, had come to detest him, had long ago consigned his upbringing to her care, and she felt the special responsibility for him that good women so often feel for their most unsatisfactory child. Now she was afraid on his account.
He had friends, a year or two older than himself for the most part, of good family, but given to dissipation and wild talk. She disapproved of their influence, but her alarm ran deeper.
"I don't know how to say this," she said, "without angering you."
"Antonia, you won't anger me, because I appreciate that you speak out of friendship."
She laid her hand on mine. The bones of old age met in mutual reassurance.
She was suspicious of these friends, some of whom had appeared suddenly, and all the more because she had come to know that much wild talk was exchanged at their drunken suppers. So she had taken steps to enquire about them, and had been alarmed to discover — she hesitated on the word "alarmed" — that two of them had also been intimates of Sejanus. "They were described to me as his proteges. Or else as his creatures." And they maintained relations with him. She had had one of them followed on several mornings after he had attended supper-parties with Gaius, either at her house, or at the home of another member of the group, or at a tavern. On each occasion, he had gone straight to Sejanus' house on the Esquiline, and remained there a long time. "I could only conclude that he had gone there to make a report…"
"Tiberius," she said, "my boy is wild and uncontrolled in his language. He is easily led, because he has no confidence in himself and so is open to flattery. It wouldn't be difficult to lure him into saying stupid things, even engaging in stupid… conspiracies. I am afraid for him, because I believe that one day soon, Sejanus will come to you with evidence, and witnesses to support it, all showing that he has engaged in sedition. That's why I want you to take him into your own household. Permanently."
When I didn't answer, she said:
"Tiberius, did all the evidence against his brothers, Nero and Drusus, come to you by way of Sejanus…?" "I trust Sejanus…"
"Where there is the most trust, there is also the greatest treachery."
She cleared her throat, a polite preparatory noise. She folded her hands in her lap and sat very straight.
"Nobody else," she said, "will dare to tell you what I am going to say. In giving such entire confidence to that man, you have isolated yourself. He has made of you a mystery at Rome, and mysteries are always feared. You made him what he is, but are you sure he has not escaped your control? When he claims to act in your interests, are you always certain that he is not in reality preferring his own? Agrippina has been your enemy — certainly — she is a foolish and bitter woman — but are you so sure that her sons were not made to appear your enemies, by the contrivance, indeed by the order, of that man? What reason do you have to believe the evidence he offers, when I can show you how that evidence has been concocted?"
"He has never told me a lie."
"He has never told you a lie which you have discovered. My poor Tiberius," again she placed her hand on mine, "this is not the first time you have been betrayed by affection, and trusted beyond the moment when reason for trust had vanished. You don't like to hear what I am saying, but if these same thoughts have not come to you in dark moments and been then thrust aside because you find them intolerable, then, mindless of our old, long-enduring friendship, you will act against me. I too will follow the other women of our family to an island prison, and Sejanus will be left master of the field and of your mind. But if I speak to you doubts which you have already entertained in your secret heart, then you will know that they are not vain and unworthy imaginings since they are shared by another. You will know that you are as much his victim as Nero and Drusus or as my poor chick Gaius Caligula may be. If you are not convinced, ask him for a report about the boy. I will wager that he will, with expressions of sorrow, present you with all the evidence he thinks necessary to destroy him. Has it not occurred to you that the chief beneficiary of my grandsons' pretended plots has been that man: Lucius Aelius Sejanus, and none other?"
Night closed in about me like a blanket of wet mist. Sleep was denied me; through the dead hours questions, fear and hesitations afflicted me, like nails hammered into my brain. At dawn the chorus of sea-birds circling the cliffs mocked my red-eyed restlessness. Before we separated, Antonia had said: "In Rome men now talk of you as a monster, given over to nameless vices which everyone is yet ready to name. These stories are spread and believed. At a dinner-party the other day, someone remarked that one day, when sacrificing, you took a fancy to the acolyte who carried the casket with the incense, and could hardly wait for the ceremony to end before you hurried the lad out of the temple and assaulted him; then you did the same for his brother, the sacred trumpeter… Who spreads such stories?"
"The Roman people," I said, turning away to hide my feelings, "have ever been scurrilous."
"I grant you that."
"They are the kind of stories people invent about men in positions of authority, and which others love to spread. They told like tales of Au
gustus himself, though nobody who knew him believed them."
"But people choose to believe them of you. Why is that?"
For a moment I was tempted to tell her of the vision I had had on the mountainside, and of the promise which the divine boy had made to me. But that promise seemed already a cheat; I was no nearer the peace of mind he had offered me in exchange for my reputation. Besides, Antonia might think I was suffering from the delusions of old age, such as had afflicted Livia.
"Perhaps simply because I have withdrawn here," I said.
"That certainly is one cause for credulity. But there is another. When I first heard that story told, I made it my business to track it down. It was said to have come from Quintus Junius Blaesus, who is, as you know, Sejanus' uncle. Do you think such a man — for he is of very little merit and a known coward — would dare to invent such a story, or if he did, would he not be certain that his nephew would support him?"
"But I cannot see that it is in Sejanus' interest to imperil my authority in this manner."
Antonia sighed. "Tiberius," she said. "You are too reasonable. That has always been your fault. You have acquired a reputation for duplicity simply by telling the truth. Don't you see that you consider Sejanus truthful because he has consistently lied to you? As to your question: it is in his interest to have you thought unstable, capricious and cruel, near to madness. In this way anything vicious or unpopular can be laid at your door, while Sejanus acquires the reputation of being the only man capable of restraining your savagery.