Allan Massie: Tiberius

"I won't ask you how you are getting on," he said to me a few days after the marriage. "But I want you to know that I welcome you as an ally."

"An ally, sir?"

He sat back in his chair, his massively muscled legs thrust out before him.

"Don't pretend you don't understand me. I've watched you for years, ever since your mother and I agreed to this match. Don't pretend to be an innocent or a fool. You know perfectly well that a marriage such as yours is more than a family compact. It's a political act. Of course I hope that you and Vipsania will be happy together: she's my daughter and I'm fond of her; but I also hope that this marriage will make it easier for you and me to work together. You're young, but you have a head on you, and I'm ready to swear that you have some understanding of how things stand. If nothing else, your experiences as prosecutor in the recent case should have opened your eyes. What sort of state would you say we live in?"

"My stepfather has often told me how proud he is to have restored the Republic."

"Balls. And you know it, don't you?"

"Well…" "Precisely."

"Of course I realise it's not the Republic as it used to be, and that he doesn't deceive himself that it is."

"That's better. It's not the Republic, and the Republic will never be restored. Its time has gone. You can't run an empire on the basis of votes in the Roman forum, or of long-winded deliberations in the Senate either. So it's not the Republic. What is it then?"

"Let's say it's the empire, sir."

"Fair enough. But what's the empire? Is it a monarchy?" "Not precisely." "A dictatorship?"

"The office of dictator has been abolished, hasn't it?" Agrippa laughed, drank some beer, fixed me with his eyes. His gaze was hard, heavy, imperious. I felt his power. He waited. I held my peace. "So what is the empire?" he said again. "You are one of its two architects, sir."

"And even I am ignorant. But I can tell you this: only immature states can be either democracies or monarchies. We have grown beyond both these forms of government. The classic Greek delineation of types of state no longer applies, for we are not even an oligarchy as they understood the term. We are perhaps a constellation of powers…"

Agrippa had no reputation as a theorist. Indeed, to hear him speak, you would have thought him a mere force of nature, an exponent of brute strengths. Not so.

"The Princeps is a remarkable man," he said. "But you know that. Nevertheless you must see that he doesn't owe his success to his own qualities entirely."

"I know that too, sir."

"And he has his faults."

Again I said nothing. We were in his villa by the sea, north of the city, in a garden apartment. The sun shone on a path beyond and a westerly breeze wafted in the scent of box trees and rosemary growing on the terrace. Below, in a sunken garden, there were mulberries and fig trees. I could hear, in the lacunae of our conversation, the sea lapping at the wall.

"His chief fault," Agrippa said, "is his affectionate nature.

Often he allows it to dominate his intellect, warp his judgment. It's strange when he can be so ruthless at other times."

"Marcellus is very charming," I said. "It's no wonder that my stepfather is so fond of him."

"Yes," Agrippa said, "he's a delightful boy, isn't he?"

He got to his feet.

"We've said enough, haven't we? I'm glad it's you, not Marcellus, who is married to my daughter. Your mother is also concerned about the Princeps' fondness for the boy. She realises, like me, that it won't do for him to advance him further. Not too quickly. This isn't, as we agreed, a monarchy. We're a faction in power, a party. There are always those who would displace us if they could, like Caepio, whom you prosecuted so capably, and his friend Murena, and you know whose brother-in-law he was. That comes a bit near home. Marcellus sees too much of that bugger, my old friend Maecenas. That's enough, don't need to spell it out further, do I? One other thing. Remember: the basis of our power is the legions. Think you have the makings of a soldier. I'm bloody sure Marcellus hasn't."

I pondered that conversation.

A few weeks later Augustus fell ill. He was indeed near death. They said he raved in delirium. Livia fled from the chamber distressed by what he uttered in his madness. She retired to the Temple of Vesta to pray and sacrifice to the gods, that they might relent and restore her husband to health. In a brief moment of lucidity, fearing that he was on the point of death, he summoned Agrippa and Calpurnius Piso, who had replaced Murena as his consular colleague, and consigned to them the care of the Republic. A change of doctor and a change of treatment proved effective. He recovered and all was well.

But, though all was well, a secret had been revealed: the revolution he had accomplished depended on his life. The conspirators of the summer were posthumously justified. If they had killed Augustus, the regime would have crumbled.

It was for this reason that he remodelled it that autumn, obtaining a grant of maius imperium for himself from the Senate, and abandoning his practice of holding one of the consulships himself. More important, he associated Agrippa more closely in the government, granting him proconsular power over all the provinces of the empire, and, more important still, the tribunicia potestas, the tribunician power.

The will of Livia and Agrippa had prevailed over the inclinations of my stepfather. Marcellus was eclipsed. And that winter he died, suddenly.

Julia had miscarried as her husband died, thus cheating her father of the grandson he so greatly longed for. But his grief for Marcellus for a time blinded him to this other loss. That was excessive. To please him, Vergil would incorporate a reference to Marcellus in his Aeneid, ridiculously exaggerated, I'm afraid.

But a curious thing: Julia also appeared to be overcome by grief. This amazed me for I had doubted whether the child she was carrying and had lost, was indeed her husband's. (Indeed I wondered if it might be mine; it was possible.) Livia of course dismissed Julia's display of emotion as playacting, but she was naturally volatile and might have been sincere. Vipsania said to me that while she realised there had been difficulties between them, it was her impression that they had been agreeing better in the last months. That might indeed be true; Vipsania was a good judge of these matters. On the other hand, I knew, as she didn't, how close Marcellus had come to being singed by the conspiracy of the spring. He hadn't been directly involved, but the conspirators had been his friends. He had had a fright, and it may have seemed prudent to give the impression of devotion to his wife. After all, since his talents were slight, Marcellus depended absolutely on his uncle's favour.

You wonder how I knew of his involvement? In two ways. First, Fannius Caepio, under examination, tried to throw suspicion on him. I recognised this as a bargaining counter, when the "evidence" was brought before me in my capacity as prosecutor. Therefore I decided to have nothing to do with it and, to prevent any hint of the accusation from being brought before the court, I had it expunged from the record of the examination. But before I did so I confronted Marcellus with the charge. He came near to fainting. When I told him I didn't believe a word of it, and was going to make sure that Caepio's accusation didn't go any further, his relief and gratitude were pathetic, and repulsive. He fawned on me and I felt a certain thrill as I realised the depth of his terror and savoured the knowledge that he had confessed himself in every way my inferior. He hugged me with gratitude.

"How could he do such a thing to me?" he said again and again. "I've never even met him, except at a party."