Augustus (46 page)

His ashes were laid in the family mausoleum, and I could not escape the reflection that the two most brilliant men of the younger generation, Drusus and Marcellus, would never fulfil their promise. My heart ached to think of the sad waste.

Fortunately Drusus and Antonia had had three children, and so Antonia was not left without consolation. I assured her that I would do whatever was in my power to care for them.

Many drown in the sea that surges round the shipwreck of old age. Maecenas died the following year. Our ways had drifted apart, for I had found it hard to forget what he had said to me on that occasion when we had talked of Julia's marriage, and, though I offered to go to see him on his deathbed, my olive branch (as I thought it) was rejected. Yet there was something of his old wit and panache in the terms of his reply: 'Maecenas, weak with fever, wasted with disease, and now incontinent, has no wish to meet Caesar on even more unequal terms than usual. Let us delay our next encounter till we both find ourselves in Pluto's realm, whither I hasten to prepare your couch.' It was like Maecenas not to be able to maintain his third-person formality to the end of the sentence.

With his departure went the last companion of my great adventure, for even Livia did not know me till I was established. It was perhaps memory of these salad days that persuaded Maecenas to name me as his heir.

The poet Horace did not survive his patron by more than a few weeks. I never felt for Horace as I did for Virgil, for there was little sense of the uncanny in him, little sense that he brought us mere mortals intimations of the divine purpose. But I liked him; he was a man with whom one could be easy, content with little, a strange contrast to Maecenas, and yet the affection between them ran deep.

Virgil had promised the inauguration of a golden age.

The air was chill with death.

TEN

I myself supervised the boys' education. I saw to it that they studied mathematics, philosophy, rhetoric, literature; that they grew adept in martial exercise and equitation. I took direct charge myself of their political education, devising a number of Socratic dialogues for their instruction. I had come to admit to myself precisely what I was doing: I was training the rulers of the Republic. Some may see in this a primarily dynastic pre-occupation. There were, I knew, those who grumbled that I was treating my grandsons as princes. I ignored the slander. Those who uttered it were ignorant of the nature of Republican government. Precisely because a Republic permits more liberty than a monarchy may, so for that very reason it is the more essential that its leaders be thoroughly educated and taught the principles of political ratiocination: for a Republic is more easily swayed by sentiment than by reason.

Among the doubters was Tiberius. He wrote me several carefully worded letters from his lonely frontier outpost (to which Julia, distressed by the death of their child, had no longer the heart to accompany him, the place being, as she told me, full of wretched memories). He acknowledged my care for his stepsons, but protested that I should remember they were as yet untried.

I knew that of course. It was my intention that they should receive trial soon, for I was aware how debilitating the life of Roman society could be even for ardent youth, and I was determined that they should not frequent the society that circled round their mother.

There were many eager to natter them, and the Senate even passed a resolution permitting Gaius to hold the consulship when he was fifteen. That was too early, and I quashed the proposal though it pleased me to see the esteem in which the boys were held.

That year Tiberius was accorded a Triumph for his work on the northern frontiers and his tribunician powers were renewed for five years. Though I was distressed by the apparent coolness between him and Julia - it was reported to me that they never addressed one another in private -1 could not avoid satisfaction at the unfolding of my plans.

'I am worried about Tiberius,' Livia said.

'But why? I don't understand. He is surely a notable success. Our greatest general, consul for the second time, my trusted partner. . .'

Livia sighed and looked away from me.

'You will never understand him,' she said, 'your natures are so different.'

'Perhaps that is so. Nevertheless Tiberius and I are in constant correspondence, as you know, when he is away from Rome, and I have had several long discussions with him. He is always lucid and level-headed, eminently sensible. I don't understand why you should be worried.'

'You have always seen just what you want to see, and the habit has been growing on you. As for Tiberius, when you talk to him, what does he reveal of his sentiments, of what he feels in his heart? He denies entry even to me. I love Tiberius, husband, second only to you, and indeed more deeply in that different way, with that intense responsibility which mothers feel towards their sons. And he withdraws from me. I see only what flickers on the surface of the waters, nothing of the dark swirling currents below. But I know three things: first, he has never recovered from Drusus' death . . .'

'Ah, which of us has?'

'For Drusus was his only confidant. Much I have known of Tiberius throughout his life, I have learned by way of Drusus. Second, Tiberius' pride is a fearful and secret thing such as we can never measure, for you have no pride of that sort and no understanding of it. Third, allied to this pride, runs a deep resentment. . .'

'Resentment?' I cried. 'What has Tiberius to resent. . . ?' Livia smiled, 'Resentment,' she said, 'is an inborn quality.'

Was she warning me, or merely expressing her own doubts and fears?

It mattered little, I reflected. There was work for Tiberius to do. Whatever the difference between us, we had this in common: that neither had ever shirked a job. A renewal of unrest in Armenia demanded the presence of a strong man in the East. Tiberius' prestige was high there. The legions would be reassured by his arrival. I therefore summoned him before me, and invited him to take up this command, with a grant of full imperium.

'I am offering you,' I said, 'exactly what Agrippa had. And the job is even more urgent and demanding now.'

He stood before me long, lanky and balding, his eyes a little bloodshot, as if he had drunk deeply the night before. (It was his only vice: fortunately one the troops admired; they used to call him
Biberius Caldius Mero).*
He seemed to sway, and it occurred to me that he might even be still a little drunk. When he spoke I was sure he was.

'No,' he said.

Nothing else; just the blank negative. I was taken aback.

'You can't have understood me,' I said. 'What I am offering you confirms your position as my partner in the Government of the Republic. Is that nothing? Oh, you may feel that your place is still on the German Frontier and I am indeed loth to take you away from there, but this matter is really urgent. It is a task of the utmost importance and one in which you will win great honour.'

'No,' he said again. 'I've had enough. I want out.' 'What do you mean?'

What sort of trick was this, I wondered. He fixed his gaze on a fly buzzing round the rim of a wine-jar, and stood there, like a great bull in sullen silence.

'I don't understand you,' I said again.

* 'Drinker of hot wine without water'

'That's too bad, but it's plain enough,' he muttered, turned on his heel and shambled out.

I was mystified, then I was furious.

'What,' I cried to his mother, 'does your son think he is doing? How dare he refuse to serve the Republic? How dare he throw my offer back in my face? Is he mad? Was he drunk?'

'Listen,' she said, 'and stop shouting at me. I have told you of my concern for Tiberius. I told you I was worried about him. This is precisely what I feared. Something in him has been rotted by the gnawing worm of resentment.'

I threw my hands up: 'He has cause to feel resentment! What about me?'

'I shall discuss the matter with him, and see if I can persuade him to see sense.'

Her discussion bore no fruit. Instead I received a letter from Tiberius:

Augustus: I esteem the offer you have made me and express my gratitude for the confidence you have always shown in my abilities. Nevertheless I must decline. I have served Rome now for more than twenty years . . .

(On reading that line, I crumpled the letter up and hurled it into the corner of the room; what right had he to boast of his mere twenty years? While I . . . then I told a slave to retrieve the document and read on
...
)

It is my desire to retire to an island and study philosophy and science. The Republic will manage very well without me, for it is not desirable that one man monopolize honours and commands as you have been kind enough to permit me to do. Moreover, I feel that Gaius and Lucius, my stepsons, should be able to embark on their careers without being in the shadow of my achievement
...
I have fixed on Rhodes as my place of retirement. I have always been fond of islands, and the climate is said to be pleasant.

I have never read a more insolent letter.

Livia said, 'I can get no other sense from him. He gives me a half-smile and shakes his head, and says it is time for the boys to take up the torch.'

'Lucius is eleven. Eleven. Does your dolt of a son expect him to command the army of Armenia?'

'I know, I know. And then he talks in a faraway voice about the pleasures of astronomical studies.'

'It doesn't make sense.'

'Something broke in him when Drusus died.'

'Haven't we all suffered losses?'

Reluctantly, at Livia's insistence, I consulted Julia.

'You would have me marry him,' she pouted. 'But I can do nothing with him. If he's barely civil to you, he's as rude as an angry bear to me. I think he's a bit mad, if you must know. And of course he's as jealous of the boys as a bear with a pot of honey.'

'But they're still children.'

'The Senate proposed Gaius should share your next consulship.'

Tiberius retired to a villa he owned in the hills, and gave out that he had embarked on a hunger strike. Naturally the news aroused great excitement among the gossips of the Senate where Tiberius, because of his long and frequent absences on campaign, was largely an unknown quantity and an enigmatic figure.

My agents reported that some senators saw his expressed wish for retirement as being in some way a challenge to my authority; it was said that he was warning me not to advance the careers of my grandsons. Tiberius knew he was indispensable and was using his threat of retirement merely for bargaining purposes; he wanted his open elevation to a position of equality with me. Those who viewed my restored Republic as a disguised monarchy said he was making a bid for the succession.

Others however accepted his wish as genuine. Tiberius was weary of virtue, they said. All his life he had been a hypocrite, nursing secret vices which he was ashamed to practise publicly. Desire had however now overcome him, and the purpose of his retreat was to enable him to indulge his lusts.

Nobody dared bring me the one rumour that had any base of truth, and so I continued to think harshly of Tiberius.

I took care that he should be made acquaint with what was being said. I hoped that he would be either alarmed or shamed into changing his mind. He replied in quite unequivocal terms:

Augustus, how could I wish to challenge an authority which I have served willingly to the best of my poor abilities these twenty years? I am well aware that your authority which I respect is founded in the decrees of the Conscript Fathers, which no good Roman could wish to challenge.

The sincerity of my wish for retirement acquits me of the charge of ambition. It would be a stupid manoeuvre to put myself in this position if I was truly ambitious, for you have only to grant my wish for retirement, to bring my public career to an end.

The charge of vice is absurd. I repeat that I wish to devote the rest of my life to study. My chosen companions in my retreat will be Thrasyllus the astronomer, and other mathematicians. They are hardly the company I should select for an orgy.

I am worn out, disturbed, have never recovered from my brother's death, and there is now a new generation ready to serve Rome. My continued presence at the head of the armies would be likely to cause them embarrassment.

I am ashamed now to say that this letter, which was so dignified, truthful and yet reticent, in no way calmed my anger. I was indeed furious with him, and remained so a long time. I replied asking him what sort of example he thought this selfish abnegation of duty would be for the new generation of which he spoke. 'I have worked longer than you for Rome, and every bit as hard,' I said, 'but I have never thought to indulge in the luxury of retirement. It would be a fine state of affairs if we could all slip off our responsibilities as you are doing. Do you realize how you are hurting your mother and me?'