Allan Massie: Tiberius

"He's having supper with Maecenas," she said.

"Won't the conversation be rather over his head?" I asked, for Augustus' Etruscan minister was celebrated as the patron of poets and artists.

Julia giggled.

"Maecenas gives other kinds of parties, you know. With dancers and painted chorus-boys. That's the kind he invites Marcellus to. He's been doing it for years and nobody dares tell my father, not even his paid spies."

She sat up.

"Look at me. I'm a beautiful girl, the daughter of the most powerful man in the world, and the husband my father has forced on me would rather have any Phrygian boy who wiggles his bum at him."

She threw herself down sobbing. I watched her shoulders rise and fall, and felt my mouth dry. I touched cracked lips with my tongue. I moved to comfort her. In a trice her arms were round my neck, her tongue seeking mine. I tasted tears, wine and warm, eager, scented flesh; she was soft as rose petals and firm as a galloping horse. She cried aloud with joy-filled pain, and I sank into unimaginable delight…

"Old bear, old bear, hairy beast…"

"Lascivious cat…"

It was like that then. The night dies over the ocean. The moon swells behind the mountains of Asia which roll back, wave upon wave, to the confines of empire. I pour myself more wine and gulp it, seeking fierce oblivion that will not come.

The following morning my mother summoned me to her apartments. She gave me what Drusus and I called her Medusa look.

"You're a fool," she said, "and you look awful…" "I'm afraid I drank too much wine last night…" "That's not all you did last night. I suppose you're too old to whip…"

"Yes," I said, "that must be a matter of regret for you, but I am indeed too old to whip."

"Then I shall have to employ my tongue. I didn't ask you to sit down."

"No, you didn't. Nevertheless…"

"Don't be insolent. Don't add insolence to your other folly."

"If I knew what you were talking about…"

"You know very well… And don't smile. You have put yourself, and everything I have worked for on your behalf, at risk, for a little honeypot with the morals of an alley-cat…"

"Ah," I said, "I should have realised, Mother, that you would have an informer in Julia's household…"

"You should indeed. Shall I tell you something which you should never forget? Success in life and politics, which for people like us amounts to much the same thing, depends on information. Naturally, therefore, one takes steps to obtain it. I hadn't thought you could be such a fool."

I picked up an apple and bit into it. I knew that a show of unconcern would screw Livia to still more intense fury, but I had long ago found that apparent indifference was my surest weapon against her. Or if not a weapon, at least a shield.

She said, "Tiberius, I wonder if you realise what the Princeps would do if he found out what I know…?"

It irritated me when she referred to him in that way.

I said, "He ought to be grateful to me for making his daughter happy. It's more, it seems, than his beloved Marcellus has been able to do…"

"Do I care if she is happy?"

"Do you care if anyone is happy, Mother?"

"Don't be foolish. You know that my constant concern is for your future, and that of Drusus. But, unlike you, I know the world. You can't be blamed for your ignorance. You haven't seen the best part of a generation destroyed as I have. Therefore you don't realise how necessary it is to be circumspect, to plan every action, to eschew all folly, especially such as you have been guilty of. You don't realise that the life of a public man, that is to say of anyone who belongs to the Roman noble class, is perilous. Do you think you are safe in a world in which Caesar, Antony, Pompey, Cicero, Marcus Brutus all found themselves powerless in the end against the malignity of fate? Can you imagine that? I took you for someone more intelligent."

"But, Mother," I said. "I am protected surely. The love the Princeps bears you is my shield…"

The irony in my tone annoyed her. Livia has always been sensitive to irony. She resents its assumption of superiority.

"Of course he loves me," she said, "and I love him myself. That's not the point. We are not private people and we have different ambitions for our own children. Don't think the Princeps' love for me will protect you if you disturb his arrangements. He is quite capable of operating in a secret world from which I am excluded, and then of being full of regrets if his actions distress me. A dynast, a man of power like your father…"

"My stepfather, Mother…"

"Very well, your stepfather, if you insist, lives on two distinct planes, both real enough. There is the family man who is all concern and warm affection, and there is the politician who has no affections, no loyalty, no scruples. He loves his sister Octavia. That didn't prevent him from forcing her into marriage with Mark Antony, though he knew precisely how cruelly Antony would treat her. And, since you insist on it, remember always he is indeed your stepfather, not your father. He has no natural affection for you any more, since I am being frank, than I have for that little hussy, his daughter. Moreover, I must tell you that she is quite capable of destroying herself. I don't choose that she should pull you down with her…"

I cannot of course be certain that, at this distance of time, my memory restores to me the precise words of our conversation. Our own past, it sometimes seems to me, is a species of dream, just as dreaming so often reveals to us glimpses of the future which we cannot recognise till we find ourselves enacting those heralded moments. Experience is like a journey along a foggy river valley: for brief moments the line of the hills may be seen; then the mist hides them. We never know quite where we are or what surrounds us. Even the sounds we hear are deceptive. Our life is composed of a series of illusions, some of which we dignify by the name reality, but our perceptions are never more truthful than the shadows flickering on the wall of Plato's cave.

The successful man is often the sleepwalker. Augustus believed in his destiny. This freed him from the self-examination with which I have perplexed myself.

What he remembers becomes true for him. I sit here wondering if I have only dreamed this conversation with my mother.

But did I dream her last sentence?

"Believe me, my son, your stepfather's love for me secures you no more protection than Thetis obtained for her beloved Achilles…"

And if I dreamed it, wasn't my dream a true warning?

I entered public life in my twentieth year when I was elected quaestor. I had been granted the right to stand for each magistracy at five years below the legal limit. In retrospect I deplore this example of favouritism, though I am bound to point out that I was less favoured than Marcellus, who was excused ten years' seniority. Nevertheless, despite my disapproval, I understand Augustus' decision. Two reasons may be advanced. First, it is always difficult to find reliable men to undertake necessary work and it was natural for Augustus to seek them among the members of his own family, whom he believed he could trust. Second, as Agrippa remarked in his crude vernacular, "You young buggers are best kept busy. It keeps you out of mischief."

The quaestorship was no empty honour. As every schoolboy knows, this office is an essential but unglamorous part of our body politic. It may be compared to the post of quartermaster in the army: he directs no strategy, wins no glory, but the army cannot function without him. Those ignorant of military affairs think of the quartermaster, if they think of him at all, as a dull fellow doing a dull job. Every serving soldier, however, knows that his comfort and safety depends on the efficiency with which this dull fellow works.