I Am Livia

by Phyllis T. Smith

  They led me to their little fishing boat. Gnaeus and I scrambled aboard, and they took us to a point on shore where some of my own troops were gathered. So there I was, amazed to be among friends and even more amazed to be alive. I was able to launch a ship and finally got across to Sicily. Agrippa’s and Lepidus’s forces had been victorious. By the time I arrived, they were in possession of most of the island.

  Livia, my love, I confide in you as I would in my own soul. Let me briefly tell the rest. Sextus, with only the north tip of Sicily in his hands, decided to stake everything on a great sea battle. I was arming, about to go out and lead my forces, when…I don’t know what happened. I found myself sprawled on my cot. Gnaeus stood over me, wringing his hands, and informed me that I had passed out.

  My strength had all drained away, at a most crucial moment. Every time I tried to rise, I got dizzy and collapsed. I finally just lay there in a daze. Even the memory of this is absolutely awful.

  Agrippa came running into the tent, wondering where I was. He has always been a kind friend, and when he saw my condition, he said, “You probably have a fever, so don’t strain yourself. All you have to do is give me your command to commence hostilities.”

  I told him he had my command.

  People will tell all kinds of stories about why I didn’t take part in the final battle for Sicily. If you can think of something better to say than that I got sick, I would be grateful.

  Agrippa sailed off to confront Sextus without me. Fortune favored him in a remarkable way. Early on, one—only one—of Sextus’s many ships got rammed and surrendered. Some of our men raised a paean of victory, and it spread to our other ships and finally to our troops watching from the shore. This song—that was all it was—shook the confidence of Sextus’s whole navy, and a rout began. One of Sextus’s two admirals fell on his sword; the other surrendered.

  The commander of Sextus’s ground troops promptly surrendered too. Agrippa granted quarter to the common soldiers, which I’m sure will please you. He informed the officers that they would have to apply to me for pardon. I had their heads chopped off. No, dearest, I didn’t. I emerged from my stupor long enough to wave a benevolent hand and pardon all of them. Now aren’t you happy?

  What, you wonder, happened to Neptune’s son? He packed his close friends on a small boat, and according to our best intelligence, he is going east. I think he will fall into Antony’s hands, and that will be it for him. I’m sorry if that makes you sad.

  When I recovered from my fever, or whatever it was—the camp physicians scratched their heads—I leaped off my cot assuming I owned Sicily. I quickly discovered, however, that Lepidus had no intention of honoring his agreement to cede Sicily to me. We prepared for yet another battle. I sent out some spies, though, and got welcome reports about the mood of Lepidus’s army. Suffice to say, his troops did not love him.

  There are times when you have to throw the dice. I suspected they would desert him for me, if I made the right gesture. So I recruited some volunteers from my cavalry and rode to Lepidus’s camp. We left the horses at the fringe of the encampment and with a half dozen companions I went walking through the lines, smiling amiably. I was recognized, and soldiers saluted me.

  Unfortunately, someone told Lepidus what was happening. He sent a squad of loyal officers to repel this invasion of his camp. My men and I went running out of Lepidus’s camp. I could hear the ring of mocking laughter behind me, but no one gave chase. Back in my own camp, I sat in my tent on my cot with my head in my hands. I thought a battle would have to be fought. Then Agrippa came in smiling and said, “They’re all deserting and coming over to us.”

  A while later, Lepidus surrendered. When he entered my tent and began to fall down to clasp my knees, I grabbed him and told him that was unnecessary. I gave him some wine because he looked about to faint. “I have Sicily now, and expect you to cede North Africa too,” I told him. He gave me his pledge to retire from public life, and I shipped him home to his villa on the Italian coast.

  My darling Livia, I imagine you reading this and thinking, “What a malleable husband I have. I ask him to be merciful, and all of a sudden he is sparing a viper like Lepidus.” But you know the truth is more complicated than that, don’t you?

  Do the gods really favor the merciful? My reading of history does not uphold that point of view, though it’s an appealing belief that reflects well on you. I don’t have your gentle spirit. But I feel as you feel—as all Rome feels, by now—that all this mutual slaughter has got to end. I’m sick of it. We’re all sick of it.

  My niece’s birth delighted me mainly because it made Octavia happy. But politically speaking, it’s good Antony and I have become linked by blood, through little Antonia. Remember that map I once drew you? Sextus was on it, and so was Lepidus, and coming in from the west, marauding Gauls. It’s a simpler map now. Antony and I are the only ones left.

  Tavius took a month settling affairs in Sicily, and then he came home. I could not let him out of my arms. He said the tale of the Sicilian war was not heroic. To me it was. Tavius had won a war necessary to our survival. In addition, he had spared every life it was possible to spare. The people of Rome, especially the nobility, would now see him in a wholly different light—that of a restrained and judicious ruler. To prevent the spilling of more Roman blood, he had gone bare-handed into the camp of an opposing army. What act, in all our history, surpassed that in courage?

  The Senate fell over itself voting him honors. They even commissioned a gold-plated public statue of him.

  His fainting spell in Sicily worried me, though he told me there had been no recurrence. One day his trusted physician, Fustinius, happened to visit our home to attend a sick servant while Tavius was out. I seized the chance to invite him into my study and question him about Tavius’s health. In particular, I demanded to know why he had passed out in Sicily.

  The physician equivocated and rubbed his chin but finally said, “Well, Caesar was born with a sensitive constitution. Rich foods, any uncleanness—what you or I might easily tolerate has an adverse effect. Exposure to heat and cold worsens his condition. And of course worry, apprehension, and mental burdens…” He made a vague gesture with his hands.

  I stared at him. Was he saying Tavius had fainted in Sicily because of mental burdens? “You know who my husband is. You do realize he bears enormous mental burdens every day of his life?”

  “Yes. It’s not what I would recommend.”

  I could not change the circumstances of Tavius’s life. At this time, my interest in brewing curative potions increased, for what else could I do but try to minister to him as best I could? Malicious people would later read a sinister meaning into my study of medicinal plants. But I intended only to help my husband.

  On a glorious day in late autumn, he stood on the Rostra, the stone speakers’ platform from which our foremost leaders addressed the citizenry. People filled the Forum to overflowing. Cheering throngs stretched out on all sides of him, a sea of adulation, waiting to hear him report the victorious outcome of the Sicilian war. There was no place for a wife at such a gathering. But I had a runner stationed on the fringe of the square, to come back at once and tell me how he was received. No one chanted “Neptune, Neptune!” “Caesar!” was the name the multitude shouted. And “Imperator!”—a title reserved for our greatest military commanders. When the crowd quieted, Tavius spoke the words that made all Rome delirious with joy. He said, “The civil wars are over.”

  He believed these words when he spoke them. His thoughts were filled with plans for governing a land at peace.

  We finally moved to the Palatine Hill. Our new house was just what I wanted it to be—not larger than an ordinary senator’s, nothing to excite malignant envy, but beautiful, with glorious murals on the walls, a huge study for Tavius to work in, and another study, almost as large, for me. On each side of our front door, Tavius ordered a laurel tree planted, s
ymbols of victory. We grew them from cuttings of a tree that had sprouted from the stem the hen had held in her beak when she fell from the eagle’s claws. Privately we gave the trees silly names, Pompo and Tatilla, and pretended they were a married couple. Out of war’s shadow, we were in the mood for such nonsense.

  Tavius generously rewarded those who had served him well. The peasants who had rescued him when he was hunted by Sextus’s forces did handsomely. Maecenas gained a large estate in Sicily. But no one deserved more of Tavius’s bounty than Agrippa, and no one received more. Extensive Sicilian holdings made him an extremely wealthy man.

  I was present when Tavius told Agrippa he was to oversee a vast renovation of Rome’s aqueducts, sewers, and public buildings. Agrippa just nodded.

  “You will be city aedile,” Tavius said. “That’s the proper title, given what your new responsibilities will be.”

  Agrippa nodded again. Titles did not matter to him. He began to ask questions of the most practical kind. How many buildings would be rebuilt? How extensive a sewer renovation did Tavius have in mind? He and Tavius were soon engrossed in a long, technical discussion.

  Then Tavius said, “There will be a great new temple for all the gods, a Pantheon. You should put your name on it. We’ll have ‘Marcus Agrippa built this’ carved in stone where everyone can see it. How will that be?”

  “That will be fine.” Agrippa smiled. Then he went back to talking about drainage ducts.

  “He will do everything I asked him to do,” Tavius said to me later. “And watch—he’ll do it all superbly.”

  I said I did not doubt it. Agrippa excelled in every practical art except, happily, political maneuvering. He was as faithful as a good hound. The thing was to keep him that way.

  A few days later Tavius and I sat together in our large and lush new garden. “Do you know what Agrippa needs?” I said. “A wife.”

  Tavius gave me a quizzical look.

  “I know just the right one. She is rich, attractive, and well-born. And”—my eyes roamed across the garden, to where a slave was trimming the hedges so no branches stuck out—“she is personally loyal to me.” The last thing I wanted was to see Agrippa marry some fool who would try to sway his allegiance.

  “Who is this paragon?”

  “Caecilia.”

  “The one whose brother I pardoned?”

  I nodded. Her husband had recently died and left her a young widow. Though frosty at our first meeting, she had become one of my dearest friends. And she was wise. She had seen men in her family destroyed by misplaced ambition; she would never urge any foolish course on her husband. Also, she had the discernment to look past Agrippa’s lowly pedigree to his true worth. “A highborn wife will give Agrippa the luster he needs,” I said.

  Before long, they married. Both thought they had made a good bargain and were grateful to Tavius and me, just as I had hoped.

  There are periods when life is so pleasant one can almost imagine the world is sun-dappled and safe. At this moment, everything I touched seemed golden. My new house was a short stroll from Tiberius Nero’s residence, so I lived close to my sons. Tiberius Nero had not remarried; people whispered that a slave girl he bought himself could pass for a twin of me at fifteen. When I glimpsed her I did not see the resemblance, except that she had red hair. Be that as it may, Tiberius Nero treated me as a friend, and he was a reliable supporter to Tavius in the Senate. It pleased him that other senators deferred to him because of his ties to power.

  No one ever lost by giving Tavius or me their loyalty, not the highest, not the lowest. I began a practice of setting free, after a time, each of the women who attended me personally; Pelia, who rose to a position of authority in my household, was the first of these. Rubria, of course, was freeborn. It frustrated me that she, to whom I owed a huge debt, wanted little I could give her. I rewarded her well in a material way for the care she gave my sons. She thanked me, but I noted her basic indifference. Then one day she said to me, quite shyly, “Do you know who Marcus Ortho is?”

  We sat in the courtyard of Tiberius Nero’s house. My sons, whom I had come to see, were wrestling on the ground like lion cubs. I would have put a stop to it if I had feared little Drusus would get hurt. But Tiberius, who was big for his five years and could be rough with boys his own age, always took care not to injure his brother.

  “Marcus Ortho?” I looked at Rubria questioningly. “The name seems familiar, but I can’t quite place it.”

  “He is a member of Caesar’s bodyguard,” she told me. Then she blushed.

  At last I had found the reward she desired.

  Because Rubria was alone in the world and my dependent, I investigated Ortho. He was temperate, honest, and, I learned, even had a good head for figures. So I took charge of the practical arrangements for the marriage. Ortho left the army, and I set him up in a jewel-importing business, which thrived. He allowed Rubria to continue to oversee the care of my sons. It was a happy arrangement for all concerned.

  Around this time Tavius’s health improved. Perhaps this was due to the curative potions I brewed him, or maybe respite from war and turmoil helped Tavius more than any drink could do. He coughed and wheezed less; he took more time to relax, and joyously welcomed his sister, Octavia, when she arrived in Rome. She had been dispatched by Mark Antony as he prepared to leave for Parthia, and she moved into his huge mansion on the Palatine. Along with her came her own children and Antony’s two boys.

  Octavia still did not like me, but one day as we sat together at the chariot races she smiled with unexpected warmth. “I’m so happy,” she said. She glanced at Tavius, who stood out of earshot, talking to a senator. “But I feel embarrassed about telling him the news. Isn’t that silly? He’ll surely want to know, and be glad for me. Still, I’m not used to discussing such matters with my brother. Maybe you’ll tell him for me?”

  “Tell him what?”

  “Oh, didn’t I say?” She laughed. “I’m expecting another baby.”

  It annoyed me that she was too delicate to tell this to Tavius herself; and for some time I had been fretting because I had yet to conceive a child by my beloved. We had been married for two years, but I had been pregnant on our wedding day, and Tavius had been gone for months at a time. Still, the lack of a child worried me. So when Tavius came back to where we sat, I told him coolly, “Your sister is with child again.”

  Octavia looked appalled; no doubt she wanted more fuss and ceremony in the way I conveyed the news. But Tavius smiled and kissed her.

  This pregnancy, even I had to admit, was an excellent omen. When it became generally known that Octavia would again bear Antony a child, everyone thought their marital felicity almost guaranteed civil harmony. Rome wanted no more war between countrymen, and so Rome rejoiced.

  One cloud had appeared in the azure sky of my happiness. Month after month, I had my hope to become pregnant dashed. No one thinks a man’s seed is to blame in such a case. And Tavius’s brief, chilly marriage to Scribonia had resulted in Julia’s birth. So surely the fault was mine. I ached to have Tavius’s child, longed to hold that small, warm bundle in my arms. I resolved not to speak of this to him. And yet one night, in bed, the words slipped out, bald as my announcement of Octavia’s pregnancy.

  “Tavius, I want a baby.”

  “It’s just a matter of time.”

  “I hope so.” I snuggled up against him and said lightly, “Otherwise you’ll have to divorce me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “An empire needs an heir,” I said. “You need a son.”

  “Livia, how old am I?”

  “You are twenty-six years old.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one,” I said.

  “I would say we have a little time left to get an heir,” he said. “Will you explain this to me: Why do women conjure up difficulties where none ex
ist?”

  “Because women are wise, and they see the future coming down the road long before men see it.”

  “Oh. I thought it was because they delight in misery.” He pulled me closer. “But if you feel we should try harder to get an heir, I’m all for redoubling our efforts.”

  So we laughed and made love, and put the subject aside.

  A day is a day whether you are a washerwoman or a baker or the ruler of Rome. You can’t increase the number of hours. People laughed when they heard Tavius used two barbers, that he would have one man shave one side of his face while another did the other side. They had no notion what the press of time was like for him. He had so much to accomplish.

  We had so much to accomplish. Increasingly, I handled correspondence from provincial governors on my own. I often met with senators on Tavius’s behest. He could not do everything, be everywhere, himself. And he knew he could rely on me.

  I did not see much of my sister. I helped her, of course; her husband became even wealthier than he had been before. But Secunda moved in a different circle than I did. Political life frightened her. When I broached the idea of elevating her husband to the Senate she looked at me with such horror that I dropped the subject and never raised it again.

  She often did not even tell acquaintances that I was her sister. I tried not to take that personally. In a way, the inconspicuous role she had chosen was useful to me. I had recruited a group of confidants who told me what people were saying about Tavius and me. Not informers: Neither Tavius nor I wished to punish people for their opinions. But I never forgot the crowd in the amphitheater chanting “Neptune! Neptune!” I kept an eye on the public mood. Secunda, who chatted with women in the market and dined with merchants and tradesmen, became a source of information for me.