Allan Massie - Tiberius

"Anything may happen while I'm away," he said. "I have left good men in charge, but even good men may be suborned. What's brewing is more than a plot, more than a revolt. It's a revolution. Agrippina dines half a dozen different senators every day. Letters fly to and fro between her and the legions in Germany. Here's an example."

The letter he passed was evidently seditious. It called on the commander of the legions there to hold himself in readiness for the day which would soon be upon them. "As soon as we act against the Bull, or are ready to act against him, I shall let you know. I understand of course that you do not dare to commit yourself till you are certain he has been eliminated."

Sejanus threw back his head in that defiant gesture I had once loved.

"I am the Bull," he said. "And this is genuine?" "Yes."

"You are certain?" "Yes."

Four weeks earlier, one of Agrippina's trusted freedmen had left her house disguised as an Egyptian dealer in precious stones. He had given Sejanus' agent the slip in Ostia, but the agent discovered that he had embarked on a ship bound for Marseille. Messages had been sent to the governor of the city to intercept the merchant, but they had been delayed, and Agrippina's man had escaped the city. A cavalry troop had set off in pursuit, and he had been apprehended at the Augustan gate of Lyon. The letter had been found on his person. It bore no direction, but the freedman had been put to the question and, under torture, had revealed the name of its intended recipient.

Sejanus said, "It is unlikely that Agrippina will act till she has had an acknowledgment but, if none comes, she may be minded to move for fear it has been discovered. She will not dare to move directly against you in such circumstances, but she will certainly act against me. As you can see, that does not depend on the assurance of help from the German legions. Here, however, is the second sheet of the letter."

It read:

As for the old man himself, it will be time enough when we are in control of the machinery of the state to determine his fate. I know you have tender feelings of residual loyalty, and these shall be respected. Therefore you yourself may conclude, in conversation with my son, who to some extent shares your sentiments, whether he shall be imprisoned where he is, or in some less salubrious island, such as that to which my mother was confined, or whether he shall be more conclusively disposed of. I am bound to say that, for our general security, I favour the last course, since who can tell the number of adherents he may still have, or how his survival might act as a focus for disaffection?

Sejanus smiled for the first time that morning. I lifted my eyes from the page, compelled by his smiling stare.

"I do not think this is her handwriting," I said.

"No. She has dictated it."

"Would she trust a slave or freedman with such matter?" "Evidently. Since she has done so. Who else could have composed it? I grant you it was imprudent…" "Strangely imprudent…"

"Imprudent, yes, but not strangely so. I have always known that you have never understood Agrippina. She thinks normal rules don't apply to her, and consequently she disdains precautions that any sensible person would take. Moreover she is so swollen with pride in her own popularity that she cannot imagine one of her own people capable of acting against her. Besides which, in this case, she has been justified. She wasn't betrayed…"

His impatience and assurance both disturbed me. Early in my military career I learned to be suspicious of any course of action which was vehemently advanced. Whenever a man shows unusual ardour in urging a policy, you may be certain that something is wrong somewhere. Sejanus had always been alert to my moods; he caught a whiff of my doubts.

"You hesitate," he said, "because you are unwilling to believe Agrippina could desire your death, though you have evidence enough that she has long wanted that more than anything in the world. You have never accepted that she really believes Piso murdered Germanicus, and that you instigated the crime. She has been mad for revenge ever since…"

I did not answer. I felt the power of his stare. I had made Sejanus by my own choice and now it seemed to me that he had escaped my influence, achieved an autonomous force. I felt my age, and the weakness and irresolution of age. I looked down at the sea. The sun sparkled on the water and there were children playing, with happy cries, in the shallows. Sejanus followed the direction of my gaze.

"I can see it is a temptation," he said, "to pretend in this island paradise that you have escaped the world."

He sat on the terrace wall and crumbled fragments of rubble between his fingers. A cat brushed against my legs and I bent down to run my hand along the soft fur. Sejanus dropped pebbles over the wall, and seemed to listen for a sound that never came.

"I'm not out of the world," he said. "I am right in the centre of the horrible gory mess. You rescued that German boy from the arena but you left me to fight your battles there. Well, I've a confession to make. I'm afraid. There, you never thought to hear me admit to that. I'm as fearful as that German boy was when he lay on the sand while the world hurtled away from him and left him face to face with death. You may be indifferent to death, Tiberius, and I would be indifferent to death in battle, but this fear is different. It's the terror that stalks by night. Whenever any petitioner approaches me, I wonder if he is the murderer they have despatched. I try to reassure myself: 'He's been searched by my guards' I say. 'He can't possibly have a weapon'. And then I wonder if my guards have perhaps been suborned. It is to such imaginings unworthy of a man that my devotion to your person and your interests has condemned me."

"Very well," I said, "but I do not wish them put to death… I shall write in suitable terms to the Senate." "Now," he said.

I watched his boat shrink into invisibility. There were pink roses on my terrace, I called for wine. I waited.

The Senate, now certain of my intentions, was only too happy to order the arrest of Agrippina and Nero. A vote of thanks for my deliverance from vile conspiracy was passed. Some ardent spirits, hoping to please me, called for the death penalty. This time no mob swirled around the Senate House. Rome was quiet as the grave. Agrippina was sent to the island of Pandateria to be confined in the villa where her mother, my poor Julia, had been lodged. Nero was imprisoned on the island of Pontia, where several of Julia's lovers had dragged out existence. I thanked the Senate for their vigilance on my behalf, and commended Sejanus to them as "the partner of my labours". When he wrote renewing his request to be allowed to marry my daughter-in-law, Julia Livilla, I made no objection. Let him please himself, if it still pleased the lady. I asked him only to maintain his care for the children he had had by Apicata.

A few weeks after his mother's arrest, Drusus visited me on Capri. I had not invited him for I detested the thought that this young man, who had been so zealous in the destruction of his brother Nero, should be seen by so many as my ostensible heir. He demanded praise for his loyalty and eagerly begged a reward. It was time he was granted command of an army, he said. I replied that I entrusted military commands to experienced and trusted soldiers, not to ignorant boys. He flushed.

"Furthermore," I said, "I find your expressions of loyalty to me less striking than your indifference to your mother's fate. Where natural affections wither, it is hard to trust noble sentiments."

"You have made an enemy of that young man," Sejanus wrote. "He returned to Rome inspired by malice directed at your person."

I could not help that. I saw in Drusus the fierce and cunning servility which has been the bane of Rome. It is the Ides of March today, the anniversary of Caesar's murder. Of course the corruption of virtue long preceded that, which was indeed a vain attempt at its purification. Marcus Brutus at least, a man who won the admiration of almost all those opposed to his actions, certainly saw that murder as a necessary cleansing deed. I am told he looked down on Caesar's mangled corpse, and muttered, "Cruel imperative". There was one exception to the general approval of Brutus: my stepfather always described him as a prig, fool and ingrate; he called the conspiracy against Caesar "a mad dream of disappointed careerists given a spurious respectability by Brutus who lacked any understanding of how the Republic had changed since the Punic Wars".