Tiberius (10 page)

Then he talked of Agrippa with a tenderness that was affecting. "The best of friends" he called him. "When we were young," he said, "people used to laugh at his accent, and I remember Mark Antony telling me that people took my fondness for Agrippa as a sign that I was myself second-rate. He laughed as he said that, but Antony learned himself how wrong that judgment was. We would never have triumphed but for Agrippa. I loved him, you know. He never doubted that our improbable adventure would end happily. Of course he was deficient in imagination, but that gave me confidence too. And now he is gone. It's like having my leg or my right arm cut off. But our life goes on, that's the terrible thing."

I couldn't imagine Augustus ever thinking that a terrible thing. I have never known a man who so revelled in existence, or one who took such pleasure in unravelling problems . . .

"And we who are left," he said, "have to fill the vacancy he has left behind. I'm happy with the condition of the armies, thanks to you and to our dear Drusus, I know everything there is in safe hands. Of course I don't expect either of you to replace Agrippa in the management of the Republic, that's a task I shall have to shoulder alone, it would be putting far too much weight on your young, if capable, shoulders. But there's our darling Julia. Of course she's overcome with a very proper grief now but when that subsides, well, it'll be a matter of finding her a husband. Who shall we choose? And then there are the boys, my two darlings Gaius and Lucius. Whoever marries Julia must be a man I trust absolutely, you know, for he will have to act as their guardian too. Naturally, as long as I am spared, I will secure their interests, but I'm not immortal, and my health has never been good. I nearly died ten years ago, you remember, and my doctor says he couldn't call me a good life. I take care of myself of course, exercise, and frugality in eating and drinking, but who knows when the gods will call me? So, you see, my dear Tiberius, the question is worrying. It keeps me awake at nights, and that's not good for me. Your dear mother shares my worries, that's a great comfort, but even she can't think of an ideal solution. We can neither of us think of any solution which won't hurt somebody. That's the shame of it. I hate hurting people I am fond of, you know, and yet I don't see how it can be done otherwise. Have you any suggestions, dear boy?"

Was I expected to answer? I was a blind fool. I did not see the way his thoughts were tending. But even if I had, I do not see how I could have been other than impotent. Augustus has inserted himself into the state in such a manner that his will is always pregnant of the future.

I was kept dangling in Rome. When I announced my intention of leaving the city to join Vipsania, urgent reasons for postponement were produced. Then I was invited to supper by Maecenas. I had always disliked and distrusted my stepfather's Etruscan counsellor; his effeminacy disgusted me, and I could not forget that Agrippa had described him to me as being as "wily as a Spanish banker and vicious as a Corinthian brothel-keeper". My instinct was to refuse the invitation, but the slave who brought it to me coughed to attract my attention and said:

"My master ordered me to add in speech what he chose not to commit in writing: that your future happiness depends on your acceptance. He said you would not immediately believe this, but commanded me to assure you that he has only your best interests at heart, and to say also that the matter concerns your wife."

The great house on the Esquiline was a mixture of gross luxury and dirt. There was furniture of the utmost extravagance and rich wall-paintings and vases, and a profusion of flowers, but a small dog was lifting its leg against a carved ivory couch as I entered. No one reproved it, and the number of little dogs and cats that swarmed over the palace suggested to me that the action was common. The air was oversweet and perfumed, as if to mask the stench of urine. I knew Maecenas to be in poor health himself. He had retired, as I believed, from public life. His wife Terentia had long abandoned him, and he cohabited with the actor Bathyllus whose behaviour even on the public stage had become a byword for indecency. Maecenas himself had lost whatever reputation he had possessed, and few people mentioned his name without a snigger or an expression of disgust; yet I knew that Augustus still consulted him, and even valued his advice above all others; except my late father-in-law's.

I was ushered into a little dining-room. The table was already spread and Maecenas, in an improbable gown of gold and purple silks, reclined on a couch. He was gazing at a blond boy, who posed, nude, on a stool; his right ankle rested on his left knee and his face was concealed as he leaned forward to examine the sole of his raised foot. An artist across the room was sketching the boy.

Maecenas neither rose when I entered, nor took his eyes from the boy. Instead he stretched out his long bony hand and squeezed the boy's leg. Understanding this to be a command, the boy rose, and, without a backward glance, strolled from the room, trailing a tunic behind him. The artist collected his materials and slipped away. We were left alone, and Maecenas rose and extended both hands in a gesture of greeting. His face was drawn and wasted by disease, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse and seemed to come from a distance. During the meal he conversed merely of trivialities and plied me with Falernian wine. He ate only some smoked fish and a peach himself. Then he dismissed the slaves.

"I rarely entertain now," he said. "My health does not permit it. You see before you, dear boy, the wreck of a man who has all but exhausted pleasure."

(I thought of the blond model, and dissented tacitly.)

"And yet," he said, fingering a fat purple fig, letting its juice trickle over his fingers which he then licked before dipping them in water and wiping them with a linen cloth, "you are the second supper guest I have had this week. Remarkable. The first was your stepfather . . ."

"Your messenger hinted," I said, "that you had something to say concerning my wife. That is why I came."

"Tiberius, I pray you to allow a sick old man to approach the matter gradually. Display to me, dear boy, the patience with which you are so splendidly equipped, which you practise with such admirable skill in war. It is my affliction that what was once affectation has become so much a part of my nature that I cannot now approach a subject except circuitously. What I have to say would endanger me if I spoke to any man other than yourself. That I choose to ignore the danger is the measure of the respect in which I hold you. Remember that. I have watched you, and watched over you, all your life, and believe me, dear boy, I have your best interests at heart. Yet you despise me, don't you?"

I made no reply. He smiled.

"All my life," he said, "I have made it my business to know men. It is in that knowledge that all my skill lies, and I possess it because I have never neglected the gods' advice: 'Know thyself. You will know, for all Rome knows it, that I am helpless before the actor Bathyllus. My passion for him has made me an object of mockery. I cannot appear in the street now without enduring insult. What was once pleasant self-indulgence has become addiction. I need Bathyllus and his like - yes, and more, boys like that child you saw here tonight — as a drunkard needs wine. It is what my life has become. Once, I loved my wife, in a manner of speaking. But . . ." he extended his hands, the rings flashed in the light of the lamps, and he laughed,
"...
but they have all been substitutes. There is only one person I have truly loved, and

I made it my business to secure him what he most ardently desired: which was Rome. His accession to power, aided by my advice on innumerable occasions, has saved the state, and perhaps the world. I helped to make him a great man for the benefit of all and, in doing so, collaborated with time and the world in the destruction of the boy I loved. I adored Octavius and I still love the boy who survives behind the mask of Augustus. Yet in giving him the world, I lost him. In saving Rome, I taught him to place reasons of state above the claims of ordinary human love. I am proud of what I accomplished, and disgusted by its consequences. My disgust expresses itself in my own enslavement to lust, and it is for me small consolation that the enjoyment of embraces is less damaging to the psyche and the character than the enjoyment of power . . .

"Are you still listening, Tiberius?"

"Yes," I said, "I am listening to your words and to the sound of the gathering night."

"I believe you love Vipsania?" "I do."

"And she loves you?" "I believe so."

"And you are happy together."

"We have grown in love, and that love is at least a shield against the realities of the world."

"An insubstantial shield, I fear. Can love armour you against destiny?"

"As to destiny, I have moments of scepticism."

"All wise men are sceptics. I myself am even sceptical of scepticism . . ."

He sighed, and leant back on his cushions.

"Pass me that phial, dear boy. My medicine. And have patience. We approach the point. Forgive my procrastination. I had to be sure things were as I had thought them to be."

He was silent a long time. The sand slipped down the hourglass and moths fluttered round the lamps. A little dog crawled out from under the couch where it had been sleeping and jumped on to his lap. He fondled its ears.

"When Augustus was here the other night, I said to him: if you really loved your daughter, you would let her marry a pretty playboy like Iullus Antonius, and be happy. He replied that he could not let her marry a man who would diminish her. Do you believe he was honest?"

"I believe he would never let her marry Antonius, if not for that exact reason."

"No, you are quite right. He would not trust him as the guardian of Gaius and Lucius. That will be his first concern. But you see, dear boy, for Augustus, people have become objects to be shifted for his advantage which he equates with the advantage of the state. And the terrible thing is he is right to do so. I said to him the other night: everyone has to yield to your monstrous will. It has come to dominate Rome, all of us; it dominates you yourself, it has killed your capacity for imagination and for ordinary human warmth. You, I said, are as much prisoner of your vice as I am of mine. And then, Tiberius, I told him what would happen. This is by way of being a confession. We need more wine."

He picked up a little bell and tinkled it twice. A painted slave in a short tunic brought in a jug of wine and poured a cup for both of us. I drank mine in a gulp and he filled it again. Maecenas held the rim of his own cup to his lips and watched the boy leave us alone.

"I said to him: we end as prisoners of our own character. Shall I tell you what you'll do? You will compel Tiberius to divorce Vipsania . . ."

When he spoke these words it was as if a fear which I had been denying stood erect before me with drawn sword.

"Yes, dear boy . . . after all, I said, Vipsania is no longer of any value since her father is dead. It doesn't matter that she and Tiberius have been happy together, for that happiness has become only an obstacle to your greater intent. You will throw it aside, and force him to marry Julia. He's a strong man, I said, and a man of honour - I do not say this to flatter you now, dear boy, but because I have always found it necessary to explain to Augustus how he makes his will appear reasonable. He will do the right thing by your grandsons, I said
...
As I spoke I could see the clouds slip away from him. He gave me the loving smile I remember from our youth, which he would accord me whenever I resolved a difficulty. For a moment it was as if our old intimacy had been rekindled. I was happy. But later, when he had gone, I was sad to think that this revival of intimacy had been made possible only by my ability to show him what he wanted to do, though he had not yet brought himself to the point of admitting it . . ."

"You know my stepfather very well," I said.

"I think I know him even better than Livia does. You see, unlike her, I remember the boy with whom I laughed and loved before the proscriptions, before he combined with Mark Antony and that imbecile Lepidus to mark down the names of those who must be killed because they had become inconvenient. When once a man has done that, Tiberius, he can excuse himself anything."

"Why do you tell me this? Is it to warn me, so that I can resist?"

"Tiberius, Tiberius, I had thought better of you." He closed his eyes, and, when he spoke again, his voice seemed to me to come from a great distance, across windy deserts of experience. "I had thought better of you. Surely you understand the world Augustus has made, with my help and Agrippa's? The time for effective resistance is over. An act of resistance now is no more than a piece of petulance, like telling the wind to cease blowing."

"I could kill myself rather than submit. . ."

"Tiberius, remember: 'Know thyself is the command of the gods. Your nature is to serve. You will obey. And you will praise yourself for your obedience."

"Never . . ."

"Then let us say you will console yourself with the thought that you obey in the public interest. And let me add something else: when Augustus unfolds his plan to you, he will assure you that he has consulted me, and that my advice has ever proved to be for the public good. Your submission will then become an act of virtue, just as defiance would be understood as the expression of your selfish and individual will. How, Tiberius, can you put your little marriage above the majesty of the interest of Rome? Together," he sniffed his wine, "we restored the Republic and created a despotism, a world fit for power, ruled by power, a world in which gentle values have become obsolete, a world where one commands and all others serve, a vision of the future in which a hard frost grips men's hearts, and generous sentiments are annulled by the habit of fearful subjection . . ."