The Daughters of Palatine Hill: A Novel

by Phyllis T. Smith

  We—my father and Livia, Tiberius and I—now lived in adjacent houses on the Palatine Hill. I told myself I would still see my sons regularly when they were in my father’s care, and I did. But I would have preferred to keep them with me.

  My passion for Tiberius did not ebb away. But it began to be mixed with resentment.

  And yet I tried. I tried to be a good wife to my husband, and to help and understand him.

  We regularly appeared in public with Livia and my father. Tiberius disliked these occasions and was often in a bad mood afterward.

  “Why do the people shout your name?” he said one evening after he came home from attending the theater with Father and Livia.

  I shrugged. “They’ve always done that.”

  “My mother spends her money succoring the poor. She feeds orphans. She gives poor girls dowries. You’d think the people would love her—but they don’t, at least not the way they love you. And what have you ever done? Smile at them?”

  “My sons represent Rome’s future,” I said.

  “Your sons. But your sons are not you.” Tiberius was frowning. “You remind me of Drusus. He has a way of dazzling the eye. Everyone loves him. Hades take it, even I can’t help loving my brother. But the truth is, I’ve always worked harder than he does and accomplished more. And who knows it? Who cares?”

  “My father appreciates—” I began.

  “Your father!” Tiberius snorted. “Drusus can insult him to his face, and he smiles. I treat him with reverence and get sneers in return.”

  “You’re not serious.” What he was saying seemed so extreme and silly I actually giggled. “You’re in an awful mood today. ‘Poor me, poor Tiberius. Nobody gives me the appreciation I deserve.’”

  He suddenly gripped my arm. I felt his nails biting into my flesh. “Are you mocking me?”

  “For heaven’s sake, stop it, you’re hurting me. What are you talking about? Everyone admires you. Other than my father, you’re the most important man in Rome.”

  “But did you hear one person shout my name today? Even one?”

  I had been wrong to laugh. There are people who require continual assurance of love but don’t know how to seek it. Tiberius was one of these. I saw the need at the core of him, and that made it possible to forgive a great deal. “Smile at the crowd a little,” I said. “That’s what I do. That’s all it takes. Everyone knows how much you’ve accomplished.”

  He made a sour face, but looked slightly appeased.

  He did not take my advice about smiling, however.

  Our marriage was not the sweet melding of souls that I had dreamed of as a girl. Still, Tiberius had only to look at me in a certain way, and I would feel an inward thrill of delight. He never spoke flowery words, but I knew he wanted me as much as I desired him. There was a spark between us, which I had never felt in the years I was Agrippa’s wife. I thought if I was affectionate and gentle, in time Tiberius would become gentler too. I told myself sternly that I must fight down any impulse to tease him and must try to look at the world through his eyes. My previous marriage had been a desert. Now, in Tiberius’s arms, I knew passion. And if it sometimes burned too hot . . . well, fire is better than ice. I wanted with all my heart for our marriage to succeed.

  Did I love him? I did feel a kind of love. And I wanted him to love me.

  When I noted how my son Tiberius and Julia gazed at each other, in the early days of their marriage, I felt enormous relief. My fears about their marrying seemed absurd. It was as if my love for Tavius was being carried forward into the next generation, with the marital felicity of our children.

  “I am glad you and Tiberius are so happy,” I said to Julia one day as we sat together at the chariot races. There were unstated questions in my mind: You are, aren’t you? Hope hasn’t tricked me into seeing what isn’t there?

  She turned a glowing face to me. “Tiberius is exactly the husband I needed. And I want to be the wife he needs.”

  I patted her knee and was even moved to confide. “I hope there will be a child in time. It will mean something very special to your father and me.”

  She smiled. “I hope there will be several children. We both want them.”

  Julia, the ideal daughter-in-law? Oh, Diana, let it be so.

  The crowd cheered. A charioteer driving a team of pure-white horses won his race, the other competitors bunched up three lengths behind.

  Meanwhile my son Drusus carried on the war in Germania. He had been chosen consul and went from victory to victory. But he managed to snatch time to be with his wife, Antonia. We received news that a second son had been born to her in Gaul. The little one was called Claudius.

  I took care to make the proper sacrifices to all the gods and in particular to my tutelary deity, Diana. I have always been suspicious of life at those times when the world accords too well to my own wants.

  A small event cast a tiny shadow on my happiness. Tavius and I were dining with Tiberius and Julia one evening when a messenger arrived from Drusus. This soldier had first left official dispatches and personal letters for Tavius and me at our house, then preceded to bring Tiberius a letter from his brother.

  Tavius said, “Open the letter now, Tiberius. You might read us some of what Drusus has to say. I’m hoping for good news on the military front.”

  Tiberius obeyed and started to read the letter out loud. What came first was word of the campaign. All was well. “‘The new province of Germania is secure for now. Our frontier has been pushed back from the Rhine to the Elba. Your plan to begin another military action in the spring I heartily approve. I look forward to your being back here, Brother. The time is ripe for us to act in concert again.’” Tiberius looked pleased. He glanced at Tavius. “You see, we are in accord on that.” He planned to leave to rejoin his army in only a few days.

  Tavius nodded benignly. “Is there more to your brother’s letter? Read us the rest.”

  Tiberius went on reading aloud. “‘I’m happy to be at actual war, rather than fighting political wars at home. I think you vastly underestimate the feeling against Augustus in the Senate. It’s mainly men of our generation . . .’” Tiberius paused, looking embarrassed.

  “No, don’t stop,” Tavius said coolly. “Please read us the rest.”

  “‘It’s mainly men of our generation who groan because of his . . . high-handed approach.’” Tiberius stopped again.

  Julia, reclining beside Tiberius, looked as taken aback as I felt. “Father . . .”

  “Read it,” Tavius said in a hard voice.

  “‘The bad feeling among younger men of the most illustrious birth causes me great concern. I wish they wouldn’t write me to complain, but they do. He does not consult with the Senate nearly as much as he should, nor does he pay sufficient attention to the views of the common people. We will have to get him to alter his dictatorial methods. Really, it’s for his own good.’”

  “Haven’t we heard enough?” I said.

  Tavius gave me an icy smile. “I’m touched that Drusus is concerned for me.”

  “My brother may be a great soldier, but in some ways he is a fool,” Tiberius said angrily. “This tripe he writes me is utter idiocy. If there is opposition to you in the Senate, you must stamp it into the ground.”

  “In your view I’ve been too soft?” Tavius said.

  “Yes!”

  “You and your brother seem to have diametrically opposed views. But you both agree I don’t know what I’m doing. And yet somehow I am where I am. Isn’t that odd?”

  The antipathy toward Tavius among certain younger senators that Drusus alluded to was only mildly worrisome. What I feared more was a serious falling-out over politics between my husband and my younger son. It might have come about in time. The gods decreed otherwise.

  I hated the thought of Tiberius leaving for war. I asked him if I could go and live in Gaul as Antonia did. He shook his head.

  “Don’t you want me there, where you can come and visit me?”

&nbs
p; “Of course I’d like it,” he said. “But I happen to believe a man should pay full attention to business when he is dispatched to a province. Don’t you see it’s absurd—a general constantly leaving his troops to go running back to see his wife?”

  Actually, I did not see the absurdity at all. But Tiberius was adamant. “I am not a fool like my brother,” he said. “And I won’t have my soldiers laughing at me.”

  “Do they laugh at Drusus? It is the first I’ve heard it. I thought they worshipped him.”

  He walked away from me without another word. I had committed two faults—arguing with him over a decision he had made and praising his brother. His orders, once given, had to be the law in our household. Even if you showed him clearly why he was wrong, he stuck rigidly to his original dictate. This was strange to me because my father was not that way, at least not with Livia, and my two previous husbands had never been that rigid either. I had also erred in mentioning how Drusus’s soldiers adored him. Tiberius’s feelings toward his younger brother were complicated. He would smile telling me about things he and Drusus had done together as boys. Yet he envied him.

  In any case, Tiberius left for war without me. I did not care for his farewell words. “Behave yourself while I’m away.”

  I just looked at him quizzically.

  “Be careful whom you associate with. What you do reflects on me.”

  I began to miss him as soon as he was gone. Yet I felt freer without him. I realized I had been expending a great deal of effort just to avoid displeasing him.

  Since my marriage, I had stayed away from Gracchus and his circle. I hoped they understood the cause and did not hold it against me. I continued to keep clear of them after Tiberius left for war. But there were many people whose company I enjoyed who Tiberius had no special grievance against but never wanted to spend much time with. With him away, I was able to see them more often. One of these, whom I’d known well since I was a little girl, was Maecenas.

  I attended a dinner party at his house. He was an attentive host, talking to me of this poet and that. “Have you read Ovid’s latest book of poems?” I asked him. I had yet to get my hands on it.

  “Yes, it is wonderful.”

  “I wish I could get my father to appreciate Ovid.”

  “I’m glad I wasn’t drinking wine when you said that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I would have choked.”

  I don’t think there had ever been a quarrel between Maecenas and my father, certainly not an open break. They had, however, come to look at certain important matters differently.

  Maecenas looked perfectly healthy that evening. He seemed to enjoy the honeyed peacock his superb cook prepared as much as or even more than his guests did. We all laughed a great deal. Certainly he did not complain of any illness. Therefore, it was a great shock to me to learn that the next morning when his servants went to wake him, they found him dead in his bed.

  Poets who had received his patronage vied in writing poems in his memory. They were the greatest writers in the Latin tongue; Maecenas had set our literature on a new, glorious path. In regard to sculpture and painting, his accomplishment was only slightly less. I only truly understood the extent of his achievement after he was gone.

  I wondered, when people to come remembered my father’s time, would they remember mainly the order he had brought to the empire? Or would they think first of the great flourishing in the arts that owed so much to Maecenas?

  Maecenas’s wife, Terentilla, had died the previous year, and he had no close relations. I had imagined he would bequeath his money to the same needy artists he had made it his calling to help. But he did not do this. He left every bit of his vast estate to my father. This was a grand gesture, an affirmation of friendship that surprised many in view of the recent strain between them.

  Father plunged into deep mourning, as shattered as when Agrippa died. He had many allies, but I think that his whole life long, he only had two close friends. With Maecenas gone, who was left?

  “We were boys together,” he said. “I never expected Maecenas to die.”

  He and his friend were almost the same age. And Maecenas’s death had come so suddenly. I imagined losing my father in an equally abrupt fashion. It seemed a real possibility in a way it never had before. The thought filled me with dread.

  It devastated Tavius that he had seen so little of Maecenas in the years directly preceeding his death. I think he had been telling himself that they would revive their friendship in good time. Now that would not happen. As for me, I felt the loss of an irreplaceable friend and also another loss, harder to define—I felt as though our sun had passed its zenith. It was as if Maecenas took the last bit of our youth with him.

  The war in Germania continued to go well. If Tavius had not forgotten Drusus’s criticism of him, he had largely shrugged it off. I imagined a luminous future for my younger son. He was happy in his marriage and family life, happy in his many victories. He was idolized. And then, suddenly all was lost.

  It was not the result of war, but a mere riding accident. Drusus, on horseback, accompanied his marching troops on the way to a new encampment. Something startled the horse, which threw him. The fall broke Drusus’s leg. He developed a fever. As his condition worsened, he got word to Tiberius, who was camped a considerable distance away. Tiberius raced to reach Drusus’s side. People would talk of this ride as an incredible exploit. He exhausted horse after horse, rode for a day and a night without pause.

  Can one speak of comfort in such a circumstance? It was some slight balm that Tiberius did reach Drusus in time, that my younger son died in his brother’s arms. He was twenty-nine years old.

  The Senate voted him posthumous honors. Statues would be erected in his memory. They gave him the name Germanicus—conqueror of Germania—which would be passed on to his sons.

  Drusus’s troops at first refused to let Tiberius take his body from them—they claimed the right to conduct his funeral themselves. He had difficulty quelling what amounted to a near riot, but he gave a speech in which he reminded the soldiers of their duty to uphold discipline, even in their general’s absence. He also told them they must show manly restraint even in grief. They demanded the right to erect a monument to Drusus there in Germania, which Tiberius granted.

  Tiberius, Antonia, and the children accompanied Drusus’s body back to Rome, and Tavius and I traveled to meet the procession at the town of Ticinum in the north of Italy. All along the way there and back, people stood on the sides of the road, weeping as they watched us pass. They kept great pyres of wood burning in Drusus’s memory.

  In Mars Field in Rome, I stood listening to the eulogies both Tavius and Tiberius delivered. I was dry-eyed, beyond tears. Tavius said that his greatest hope was that his heirs, Gaius and Lucius, would grow up to emulate Drusus. It fell to Tiberius to light Drusus’s funeral fire; his elder son, who would afterward be called Germanicus, was only five years old. We placed the urn with his ashes in the great mausoleum Tavius had erected for our family.

  Afterward, for many days, I wished to be alone. I would sit in a small room with the shutters closed. When darkness came I did not bother to light a candle.

  One night Tavius came to me and took my hand. “I am going to write an account of Drusus’s life,” he said. “A book recounting not only his victories but how he was loved by his troops—indeed how he was loved by everyone. I will have it copied and widely distributed. I promise you, he will always be remembered.”

  I said nothing. I could not see his face in the darkness. But I heard the grief in his voice.

  “You know our political disagreements were all wind and air.”

  I did not speak.

  “He was a pure spirit. I already miss him.”

  Not as I do, I thought. You did not carry him in your body. You do not feel this unspeakable pain that only a mother can feel.

  I felt angry at Tavius—angry that he had sent my son away from me. I realized the injustice of
my anger, but I did not care. In some awful way, I was punishing Tavius with my silence. It was as if I needed to hurt someone, because of the great hurt I had received.

  “Antonia wishes to stay here in this household with us. It will be good to have the little ones living here, don’t you think? She told me she will never remarry. ‘Who will I find who will ever equal him?’ she said. I will never ask her to take another husband, not as long as she feels as she does. I understand. Theirs was a great love.”

  I listened, as if from a great distance. I wanted to be alone.

  “Oh, Livia,” Tavius said finally, “I can’t lose you the way I lost my sister. Please, have some pity on me. This is more than I can bear.”

  In his concern for me, Tavius insisted I speak with a Stoic philosopher named Areius. This man, who had long been a personal friend of Tavius’s, was supposed to be greatly skilled in helping people through times of grief. “Do not hesitate to talk about your son with others,” he told me. “Don’t avoid mentioning his name. Keep busts of him in places where you will often see them.”

  This philosopher meant well, and most of his advice was sensible enough, so I followed it. But in any case it was not in me to permanently turn my back on life, as Octavia had. For there were people who depended on me—Tavius above all. I loved Tavius too much to desert him. A part of me died with my son. I suffered. But I went on.

  After Tiberius’s return, my marriage seemed more and more like a kind of servitude. Tiberius disapproved of my friends. They were only friends—not lovers. But I had to see them behind his back. Otherwise I would have to suffer his black looks and listen to his criticism.

  If he did not find me home when he expected me to be there, he would ask me afterward where I had been. In reply, it was easier to lie than to tell him the truth.