I Am Livia

by Phyllis T. Smith

  And he is quite tame. I took a grape from my plate and put it in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. I fed him several more grapes, which, listening to guests’ talk, he hardly noticed.

  I caught Mucia’s glance and spoke to her without words. He loves and trusts me. You may have heard that my influence with him is substantial and growing. Believe me, that is true.

  Some would say it hardly mattered what women thought of Tavius, that even senators’ wives, like Mucia, had no power to shape events. But what if Portia, Brutus’s beloved wife, rather than encouraging his plan to assassinate Julius Caesar, had told him he would pointlessly destroy himself and others? I think Portia might have changed history.

  The dinner ended; nothing important seemed to have happened. But as Mucia took her leave, she said, “Livia, dear, I’m having a luncheon soon with a few ladies. It would delight me to have you come. Four days from now. Is that too soon?”

  I told her I was perfectly free, and when she and the other guests left, I threw my arms exultantly around Tavius’s neck. “You’re so happy to receive a lunch invitation from that woman?” he said.

  “That invitation matters. It will be to our benefit,” I told him.

  We walked into the atrium. A yawning slave was extinguishing the lamps—all but the small one on the altar by the entranceway; that one would be kept blazing all night. Tavius drew me into his arms. I remembered a night from my childhood—peeking out from my bedchamber, watching my parents arrive home from a social engagement. They were in a gay mood and, not knowing they were observed, embraced and kissed.

  “And now you’re sad.” Tavius had said he could read me, and he could.

  “Mucia was my mother’s friend,” I said. “She wants to be kind to me for my mother’s sake. Seeing her brought back the past.”

  “You have to forget the past.”

  “I try to,” I said. “And most of the time, I succeed, don’t I?”

  “Come to bed,” Tavius said. “I know how to make your sadness go away.”

  For Mucia’s luncheon, I wore a new stola of fine yellow linen, expensive but austere, trimmed only with thin scarlet edging. Pelia draped it so that it fell in perfect, graceful folds. I put on gold earrings, a ruby necklace, and a gold rose-shaped brooch I had from my mother. My hair was arranged in tight curls around my face, pulled back over my ears, and pinned up. If any hairstyle could make a political statement, this one did. Because it was so simple, people associated it with the old-fashioned Republican virtues. I had taken to wearing it whenever I appeared at Tavius’s side in public, and for all other important occasions.

  I sensed that Mucia’s luncheon qualified as important. As it happened, I was right. All the other guests were wives of high-ranking senators. None of their husbands could be considered Tavius’s firm friend; in fact, if I had wanted to recruit a cabal to overthrow my husband, I probably would have approached those very men. So, I had my work to do.

  The scent of expensive perfume hung in the air. Emeralds and pearls glittered on throats and wrists. Delicate hands lifted pastries filled with spiced meats. Rouged lips sipped wine from silver cups. There was the tinkling sound of feminine laughter. At first the conversation was just what you would expect at a gathering of patrician matrons. We discussed the merits and demerits of several dressmakers, at length. Meanwhile, my every word and gesture was being analyzed by a half dozen shrewd and wary minds.

  I was the wife of Rome’s ruler. Most of the women spoke to me with more than a hint of deference. In return, I was gracious, even cordial. They appreciated that and relaxed a bit. They knew I had been born noble. I was a Claudian; I was one of them. It would be impossible to overestimate how much that mattered. I could feel a softening under the careful courtesy. Why not accept me, why not make friends? Still, one of the women, Caecilia, was cool, if not hostile. I sensed she thought it would be wise to be pleasant to me, but could not manage it. When we spoke of children, she said, “It must be so hard for you, to have such young children and not have them living with you.”

  “It is hard not to have them under my roof,” I said, “but my former husband is very kind, and he allows me to direct their care.”

  “How fortunate,” she said.

  Mucia gave Caecilia a barely discernible reproving glance and changed the subject. A flutter of small talk rose. Then, Papiria, the youngest woman present, said, “Has anyone seen a good play lately? I would love to see a good play.”

  I leaned toward her. “Do you know what play I would like to see, which is almost never presented? It’s Greek. Surely you have heard of it. Lysistrata.”

  Papiria smiled. “Isn’t that the one in which all the wives refuse to make love until their husbands bring a terrible war to an end?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s a comedy, of course,” Caecilia said.

  “Yes,” I said, “it’s a comedy. And it deals with the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, which went on for only twenty-five years.”

  “Only?” Hirtia, another of the women, said.

  “Greeks killed Greeks for twenty-five years,” I said. “By Roman standards, what is that? We’ve been at it much longer.”

  Papiria laughed. “A pity Rome has no women like Lysistrata.”

  “Yes,” I said. “A pity.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Caecilia asked. “That we all refuse to couple with our husbands until Italy is at peace?”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Nothing as crude as that.” I shrugged. “I don’t think it would work. After all, the man now breaking the peace is Sextus Pompey, and he’s outside our influence. But I believe women should give serious thought to peace and what is likely to bring peace—what and who.” I nibbled a pastry.

  “By ‘who’ you mean Caesar Octavianus,” Caecilia said, almost accusingly.

  I smiled into her eyes and said, “Yes, actually I do.” I looked at Mucia. “The pastries are delicious. If your cook would give mine the recipe, I would be so grateful.”

  I had planted a seed, and that was all that I had intended. In the months and even years ahead, I planned to assiduously water and tend it.

  When the lunch ended, several of the women came up to me and, looking abashed, drew sheets of folded parchment from the folds of their stolas. One wished a certain piece of confiscated property to be returned to her family; another had a husband who sought an official appointment; a third had another favor she wanted from Tavius.

  Then Caecilia approached me. “My brother,” she said, her face burning. “He is in exile. It’s destroying him, not being able to come home.” She held out a document warily, as if she expected me to refuse to accept it.

  But of course I took it. “I will do my best for you,” I said.

  She looked at me with doubt in her eyes.

  “Truly,” I said.

  I went home to Tavius with these petitions, and after dinner, we curled up on a couch in his study in the mellow lamplight and scrutinized them together. I did not need to tell him why I wished for the petitions to be granted. He knew. He hoped I would help to sway the nobility to his side, and these women with whom I had lunched were the cream of the nobility. The favors requested were hardly earthshaking, and he quickly granted three of them, partly, I suppose, to please me but also because doing so was in his interest.

  Then he said, “Caecilia’s brother…”

  “Is he a threat?”

  Tavius shook his head. “He’s an obnoxious little toad who was disloyal to my father. I have absolutely no desire to pardon him.”

  Could I get him to do it, just to please me? What would be the best way of going about that? As I pondered these questions, I studied his face and noticed blue half-moons under his eyes. “You look tired. You need a holiday.”

  He grimaced.

  “We ought to get away from Rome for a few days, now while thing
s are quiet,” I said. “We could do that, couldn’t we?”

  “Maybe. I have a villa halfway between here and Neapolis. I almost never go there, but it’s beautiful. Would you like to go?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  He smiled faintly. “I expected you to say, ‘Certainly, let’s go, but first pardon Caecilius.’ ”

  Poor man. Everyone was always importuning him to do this or that. Each morning a crowd of favor-seekers stood waiting before our door, and they dogged his steps when he went out. Imagine what it would be like, to have a wife who acted like she was only another in that horde of supplicants. “Forget Caecilius,” I said.

  There were chariot races the next afternoon at the Circus Maximus. Tavius and I sat in the large private box that was now reserved for us, and we were the focus of all eyes. He won two big bets, which delighted him. But though he enjoyed himself, by the time he finished giving out prizes to the winning charioteers, night was falling and he was too tired to keep from yawning. “Let’s go to the country soon,” I said.

  Torches lit our way home. We rode through the streets in a great litter, borne by eight bearers. We opened the curtains to wave at people who came out to cheer.

  Later, at home, we lay entwined in each other’s arms. “So…you want me to pardon Caecilius,” Tavius said.

  “Note that you are bringing it up again, and I am not.”

  “But you want me to pardon the little snake.”

  “I want you to be magnificent, I want you to be merciful,” I said.

  “But you see, dear love, I’m not merciful. What I am is rancorous and vengeful.”

  “You’re a being of light.”

  The being of light kissed me. The next day he pardoned Caecilius, and we left for the country.

  Sometimes he did things he might otherwise not have done, for no other reason but to make me happy. Perhaps he wanted to live up to my dream of him. The question of whether pardoning Caecilius was wise policy or not was not settled for him, even after he did it. He chewed on the greater implications of this act.

  “It’s a puzzle,” he said to me, as we traveled in a closed carriage together, surrounded on all sides by his mounted bodyguard. “I ask myself how much one should strive to be feared, or alternately, to be loved. There’s no sure answer.”

  “Oh, better to be loved,” I said, and took his hand.

  He smiled. “In some relations, undoubtedly. But in public life?”

  “You’ve made yourself sufficiently feared,” I said. “Now it is vital that the nobility see you as moderate and the opposite of bloodthirsty. All men must understand you are a safe harbor for Rome after the bloodshed of the past. Then they will support you.”

  “That’s how you see it?” he said, pondering.

  “I believe too much fear can lead to hatred and desperate acts,” I said. “And many people can be conciliated by kindness.”

  “I think you trust too much in what kindness can do,” he said. “But I’m willing to give this more consideration.”

  For the rest of the trip, we spoke of lighter matters.

  Tavius’s villa had been left to him in Julius Caesar’s will. Once there, we walked through stately rooms and vast gardens, and saw works of art everywhere we looked. Early in our stay, we lay on our bellies on smooth marble slabs after a dip in the pleasantly warm swimming pool, being pummeled by specially trained slave masseurs. I turned my head to look at Tavius and said, “You own this, and you almost never come here?”

  “I’ve been busy,” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching at the understatement.

  “But I have the feeling money and what money can buy means nothing to you,” I said.

  “No. Money can buy armies. It’s a great help to a political career.”

  Despite the opulent surroundings, we mainly engaged in simple pastimes. It was not yet spring, but the weather was warm. We felt so free, outside alone without hovering bodyguards. There were fields and orchards where we could just walk and walk. And one day Tavius with his own hands hitched a pony to a little open carriage—painted red with a red leather harness—and took me for a carriage ride, through orchards he owned.

  During that carriage ride, an eagle swooped overhead. It seemed to be flying right along on the same path we took. Tavius kept glancing up at it. The eagle flew lower. “Look,” Tavius said, “it has something in its talons.”

  It did—something white in color. A bird, I thought. Was it a dove? No, a bigger bird than that.

  “Maybe this is a mother eagle, who has been out hunting and is going home to feed her young,” I said. I thought of little Tiberius and Drusus, with their father back in Rome. I had never before been away from my children for even a few days. Pleasant as this holiday was, I missed them.

  Even as I spoke, the bird the eagle had been carrying somehow broke free—or else the eagle dropped it. Wings fluttering, it plummeted toward the ground, the eagle diving after it. The eagle swerved away, just before the bird landed in my lap.

  I gazed down at a small white hen. On its sides, I saw traces of blood from the eagle’s talons. But the hen was alive and looked up at me with bright, black eyes. In its beak, it clutched a stem with some leaves on it.

  Tavius gazed at me, openmouthed.

  I stroked the hen’s feathers. “Poor thing. Do you think it will live?”

  Tavius gave the hen a closer look, but not to judge its injuries. “That stem is from a laurel bush.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He said the word flatly. He had gone a little pale. Laurels. Associated not only with victory but with his patron deity, the god Apollo.

  We both knew that something uncanny had happened. Oh, perhaps eagles do sometimes drop their prey, and people just happen to be underneath and catch birds out of the sky. But how to account for the laurel twig?

  “We must keep that hen,” Tavius said, “see that it recovers from its wounds, and never harm it. The steward who runs the farm here must take the greatest care. As for the laurel, we should give it to the gardener and tell him to treat it as a cutting, and see if he can grow a new tree from it. I’m sure that’s what a priest would tell me to do.”

  I nodded. Then, because Tavius looked so grave, I said, “It’s an omen of victory, isn’t it? It has to be!”

  “It’s an omen of victory. For you.”

  “But dearest, ‘Where thou art Gaius, I am Gaia.’ It’s for both of us, surely.”

  “A hen with a laurel twig, dropped in your lap? No, that doesn’t sound like an omen for me, Livia.”

  I stared at him in dismay.

  “Don’t misunderstand,” he said. “I’m pleased. This is a very fortunate omen.”

  He did not sound pleased, however. We rode back to the villa, neither of us saying a word, me clutching the hen all the way. I think we both felt somewhat chastened. I remembered the days I had spent holding an egg in my hands, wanting so much to hatch a rooster chick, harbinger of a son. Now the gods had deposited a hen in my lap, in her beak the laurel of victory. Could there be a rebuke in that?

  Later, Tavius seemed happier about the omen. “I’ll publicize it, of course,” he told me over dinner. “And all the sophisticates will be sure I made it up. But the simple folk will believe and be awed. This can only add to our stature.” He had already sent a messenger racing to Rome, to consult the College of Augurs as to the omen’s exact meaning.

  The augurs sent our messenger back to us with great speed, bearing a letter that Tavius read at once. “They said I’m to take good care of that hen, and plant the twig, just as I thought,” Tavius told me. “You see, I was right.”

  “And the meaning of the omen?”

  He read aloud from the letter. “ ‘The eagle is Rome’s symbol and is also a sacred bird belonging to Father Jupiter. The hen is female. The laurel means victo
ry. Therefore, we understand that Jupiter grants victory or great benefit to Rome, through a female.’ ” Tavius looked at me. “Specifically, through you.” He gave me a slightly grudging smile, then glanced down at the letter again. “Nothing in here about me, except, oh yes, the gods obviously approve of my marriage, since the hen fell into your lap while I was riding with you.”

  I remembered how as a girl I had wanted to perform mighty deeds for my country, and how out of reach that had seemed because I was female. Now the gods seemed to be saying that as Tavius’s wife I could indeed accomplish great things for Rome. It was wonderful to think that this could be so.

  I was especially affectionate to Tavius in bed that night. We were happy together, and omens and augurs’ verdicts were banished from our minds.

  The days we had to be together, free of responsibilities, passed quickly. “Before we go back to Rome,” Tavius said one morning, “I want to take a side trip. There is an important supporter who has been begging me to visit him. Vedius Pollio. Have you ever heard of him?”

  I had not.

  “Well, he’s eccentric,” Tavius said. “But he is extremely rich and was loyal to my father.”

  We set out the next morning for Vedius’s villa in a carriage, accompanied by Tavius’s bodyguards. Our time of bucolic peace was over. As if to emphasize the point, the weather had turned bitter cold. It was a three-hour journey, so I pulled my cloak tight around me. Tavius, also warmly dressed, began to wheeze a bit. I looked at him with concern.

  “Sometimes cold weather has this effect on me,” he said indifferently.

  “Maybe we should visit Vedius another time,” I said.

  “Certainly not.”

  “Tavius—”