Augustus (37 page)

Flowers
...
I hardly noticed them when I was a young man, and even that day, took Julia's words as being merely conventional. After all, the brevity of a flower's life has long been a commonplace of poets, though few have expressed the idea as felicitously as Horace. But I could not understand Livia's enthusiasm for gardening and flowers, could not see that a garden is to be valued because at one and the same time it denies whatever is discordant in life, and affirms mortality. Now it is with melancholy irony that I recall Julia's words.

October brought wind and rain, a sudden drop in temperature, and squalls throwing up sea-foam on the rocks below the villa. Marcellus caught a chill. I found him shivering over a game of dice and, irritated by his carelessness, snapped him to bed. His condition worsened during the night. Julia sent to wake me, and I found her crouching by his bedside, her face swollen with fearful weeping. I sent urgently for Antonius Musa, but even as I waited for him, despair stabbed me. Marcellus choked and struggled for breath, sweated, tossed and babbled. I ordered Julia to be led from the chamber, for her grief added only to her husband's distress. I knew he was going to die, and yet could not believe it. His eyes opened in momentary lucidity and I read terror in his gaze. I pressed his hand, but I do not know that he recognized me, or drew any comfort from it. In the hour before nightfall I saw him weaken, and with the dark, he crossed the Styx.

Later, I could hear Julia howl among her maids. I begged Livia to comfort her, but she was unable to do so. Between waking and sleeping our world was torn apart. The next day Julia miscarried.

There are many who say I over-valued Marcellus. Tiberius, I know, is certain he would have disappointed me. Perhaps it is true. Perhaps his charm would have died as he lost the ardour of youth and he would have seemed less remarkable. Perhaps Livia is right, and he was never indeed remarkable. I cannot tell, and it is so long ago. But I was not alone in what I thought. In Book VI of 'The Aeneid' Virgil honoured my nephew by having Aeneas meet him in the Shades: I cannot recall his lines, even now, without tears and an aching heart.

Whom the Gods love die young, and I am old. Fortune and misfortune rattle against each other throughout my life like dice in a box, they fall to the table as capriciously. Marcellus died but the work of the Republic was unceasing. I had sent Agrippa to the East. Now stories were put about that he had gone there in pique, resenting Marcellus. What nonsense! I needed him to report on the administration and morale of the Eastern provinces, especially Syria and Judaea. Both were troublesome for different reasons, Syria because it had been mismanaged, Judaea because it was unmanageable. Its inhabitants, the Jews, are a nation of narrow cantankerous monotheists, as reluctant to pay Roman taxes as to honour Roman Gods. They needed a few cuts from Agrippa's swagger-stick. How best to govern the Jews is difficult to know. I have tried direct rule, and also governing through a client-king, Herod. They like neither one nor the other. Revolt always simmers below the surface, for they are religious fanatics who believe, absurdly, that they are the chosen people of the one true God. I say, absurdly, for two reasons. First, we have no cause to believe there is only one God, and indeed all rational enquiry and observation of human history suggest that it is nonsensical to believe there is. Why should the Jews alone march in step? Secondly, if they were indeed the Chosen People, one would have thought they might have made more of God's favour. As it is, they live, squabbling like monkeys among themselves, pinned between the sea and the desert. One cannot avoid the conclusion that their assumption of God's favour is the most ridiculous evidence of man's infinite vanity and ability to deceive himself.

What was to be done with Julia? I was not surprised to find her grief for Marcellus shorter-lasting than my own. She was young, still at an age when six months can seem an eternity. But I was displeased when Timotheus, tremblingly, warned me that she was frequenting disreputable late-night parties at the houses of dissolute young aristocrats. Such conduct was both unseemly and dangerous. I upbraided her.

'So you're spying on me,' she said. 'Well, that's delightful.'

'I don't have to spy on you, your behaviour is apparently common knowledge even though I am one of the last to hear of it.'

'Then it's Livia.'

The blood flooded to her cheeks and her eyes sparkled. She had never looked lovelier. 'Really, Daddy, your wife's an old cat,' she said, and giggled.

One of her most charming features was her inability to maintain a sour or angry mood. 'Livia knows nothing of the matter.'

'Don't be naive, Daddy. Your wife knows everything that's going on in the Palace, and especially anything concerning me. She's never approved of me, and she's always on the look-out to see if I slip up.'

'You mustn't talk like that,' I said, though I knew of course that I couldn't stop her. 'Marcellus has been dead less than half a year. Don't you ever think of that?'

'Oh Daddy, just because I go to parties doesn't mean I don't miss Marcellus. But I would miss him more if I didn't go and lay around at home. Don't you see that?'

'It's a matter though of decent behaviour.'

'Oh really, decent behaviour! All my friends think that old-fashioned mourning awfully stuffy. It's just not done nowadays. I bet if it was me that was dead, Marcellus wouldn't be glooming at home. No, and I don't suppose you'd be ticking him off for gadding about either. So there.'

I would have to provide her with a new husband. It was, as I said to Livia (who sniffed on hearing it) unnatural to expect a girl as full of life as Julia to deny herself; besides we had to consider the effect on her of losing a child; and finally, if she didn't marry again soon, I was afraid she might get into trouble. A scandal was the last thing we wanted.

'Well,' Livia said, 'you are right there anyway. Have you anyone in mind?'

'It can't,' I said, 'be any of the young men she is frequenting now. They're none of them politically reliable. . . I had thought, perhaps . . .'

I paused. Livia was sewing. Her needle moved to and fro, quick, certain, exact. She didn't look up to question my silence, but waited for me to continue. It was cold outside, and the slaves had let the furnaces which served our heating system die down. I shivered, despite the thick under-vest I was wearing -I have always hated extremes of climate, and the north wind, scudding across the mountains, was bringing snow to the fringe of the city. I had noticed that afternoon that the Alban Hills were white.

'Tiberius,' I said.

Livia made no reply.

'You have often observed,' I said, 'that Julia is fond of him, and you have said too that his stability is what she needs.'

'You're misquoting me.' Livia looked up from her sewing. 'I have never said she is fond of him. I have said she runs after the boy. That is not quite the same thing. It wouldn't do . . .'

She must have been tempted. I have always been certain of that. What was I offering after all? My only daughter, and hence, for Tiberius, the position in the Republic which she knew I had been reserving for Marcellus; surely she must have been tempted? Yet, not only then, but a few days later too, after 'many hours of consideration' she turned my proposal down, flat. 'It wouldn't do,' was all she would vouchsafe me, no explanation. I didn't understand it. I had thought to please her. It has taken me years, much pain and perplexity, to come to an understanding. She knew of course, and valued, what she was declining. Once, a few years later, she half-suggested that she had been unwilling to expose Tiberius to the envy of his contemporaries, but that wasn't the true reason. It was rather that she didn't trust my daughter, was sure she would make Tiberius unhappy, would bruise that Claudian pride of his, and would retard the development of his character. She feared he would withdraw into his secret world of brooding, drawing those heavy eyebrows down, fixing that long mouth in a sullen and recalcitrant line. If that happened, his career would suffer. Livia had no desire to see Tiberius a recluse. She was ambitious for her sons. I had counted on her ambition to secure agreement, but I had given insufficient value to her intelligence. I had failed to realize how well she knew Tiberius, and how she feared his nature. I could hardly blame myself for that, not knowing him well enough; so I blamed his mother. She had failed me. She had done nothing to s
olve my problem. More exasperat
ingly, I had thought to please her by this suggestion, and had not done so. I resented her refusal to be pleased.

It was Maecenas who turned my mind to the solution for Julia. Over the last couple of years I had seen less of him, partly because Murena's conspiracy and his brother-in-law's execution had caused a coolness, but more because Maecenas found politics interesting only in times of crisis. He took no interest in administration, and had been drifting into a different world. His pleasure now lay in being a patron of the arts rather than in politics, and he was carrying on a new and far too blatant love affair with the actor Bathyllus. I disapproved of his public displays of affection for him, and had told him so. I suppose he resented my reproof. For Maecenas had in fact fallen in love, as comprehensively as a middle-aged man who has only flirted with his emotions all his life can do. If I had given him the choice (which crossed my mind) between life in Rome without Bathyllus and exile in his company, he would have chosen the latter. There was accordingly some constraint between us. I believe too that he was jealous of the regard Virgil felt for me, for he considered the poet his protege.

Nevertheless enough of the old affection persisted to allow him to speak frankly to me, and enough of mine remained to make it improbable that I would ever offer that choice to him, for to do so would be to deprive myself of the one man who had never given me bad advice, and who, though he had often bored me, could still make me laugh. The one man too who still spoke as an unchanging friend of my youth . . .

'It is difficult,' he said now, 'disposing of people, isn't it?'

I said,'Fathers have a duty to provide for their daughters . . .'

'Don't be so stuffy, dear. Between you and me and a deaf slave, we can surely speak without flummery. I know precisely what your problem is, and you're quite right. You see, my dear, I know these . . . types . . . that Julia's, shall we say, frequenting. They're riff-raff, old Republican riff-raff, spouters of rhetoric with the morals of an alley-cat. And I speak as one who knows.'

'I can't let Julia marry one of them, certainly. The consequences . . .'

'You can't even let her be laid by one of them . . .' Maecenas waved his ringed hand before me, and played with his jewels. 'There's only one man who will do,' he said. 'Agrippa.'

'Agrippa? I hadn't even thought of him. It had never occurred . . .'

'Of course not. You still think of Agrippa as your bosom chum, the utterly reliable lieutenant. It's very odd, my dear, how you keep your innocence and still fail to understand power. You really believe in affection, don't you? Oh yes, I'm sure Agrippa's fond of you, but haven't you ever wondered what really goes on in the block of wood he calls a head? Have you asked yourself what it feels like to know that you are the greatest soldier in the world, and the greatest administrator, loved, feared and trusted by the legions, but still, always and forever, compelled to stand a half-pace behind your oldest friend whose every weakness you know, and to whom you feel yourself superior in so many important respects . . .'

'You have always told me the truth, Maecenas . . . why do you say this now?'

He smiled and did not answer.

'Of course you hate Agrippa,' I said.

'Of course I do. He has never forgiven me for being more intelligent than he is. Agrippa is a lion. Can you keep a lion as a pet? Can you ever really trust a lion? My dear, power imposes its own imperatives, and you have a choice. You can kill Agrippa and so check his power, or you can bind him still more closely to you. Let him marry your daughter. Feed him with honour, trust and glory, and the lion may consent to purr, docile as a domestic cat. . .'

Julia was dismayed. Her lips pouted and her eyes filled with tears and narrowed or contracted at the same time. I could see what she would look like in middle-age: piggy, her looks lost. I felt tenderly towards her, but I could not of course relent, so tried instead to persuade her. I pointed out that I could not live for ever, that indeed I had nearly died last year, and that, when I did so, Agrippa would be the most powerful man in the world.

'What do I care?' she said. 'I want fun, not power . . .'

Inadequate desire! Poor Julia, who understood so little about life! I tried to explain, but without success. Livia however assured me that she would make her see sense. There would be no trouble at any rate. I had been doubtful of her own response to the proposed marriage. Rather to my surprise, she approved. Did she feel, I wondered, that Agrippa would never be acceptable to the Roman nobility, and that this marriage would leave the way clear for Tiberius? But then she puzzled me further by corning forward with the suggestion that Tiberius should himself marry Agrippa's daughter Vipsania. I had no objection, but she observed my surprise.