Allan Massie: Augustus

I had hoped that my surviving grandson Agrippa Postumus might be able to share the labour of Empire. Alas, it was not to be. As I have said, he grew up dull and stupid, caring for nothing but field sports and the spectacle of the arena. Watching him one day lick his blubbery lips with eager tongue as he watched death being meted out there, I recoiled from him. The disgusting spectacles in the arena are necessary to keep the People happy, but it is intolerable that a gentleman should enjoy them. Then the boy has a nasty temper which he makes no effort to control. One day he even struck his grandmother. That decided me; he wasn't fit for civilized life. It is the brief hour of twilight. The sea has taken on a deep purple and the olive trees stand out black against the fading light. The summer moon rises behind the temple to Minerva. I have just heard the first cries of Minerva's bird, the hunting owl. What a long way I have travelled. Now, in my secret musings, about to die, I salute whatever Gods rule the world and mankind in it, and I can confess to myself that I indeed sought that Empire which I attained. But in following what one wishes, one never understands the meaning of that wish. In possessing Empire what have I found? Certainly there are pleasures, there is the consciousness of duty performed which must always give some satisfaction, but they are always accompanied, shaded and soured, by endless and frightful anxieties, unending alarms, thousands of secret enemies; since Agrippa and Maecenas died I have held no equal conversation with any man. For more than twenty years! Twenty years of chilling isolation. Virgil foresaw it and hence the look of deep pity he used to direct upon me. Only Livia has survived to remind me that I am only a man… Only Livia, and me. There has been no pleasure free of an accompanying pain, and there has been no rest. For almost sixty years now I have not known a single moment of true repose. The other night I did what I have not done for twenty years, visited Livia's bedchamber. She looked up in alarm when I entered, fearing that I was ill or about to bring her some evil news. But I smiled and put my finger first to my lips and then to hers, and crawled into bed beside her. For a long time we lay in silence pressing together; the last reality. Towards dawn we woke and talked tranquilly for two hours, but it is not suitable to reveal even to posterity what we said. Let me repeat merely that I have known nothing in life so deep and so mysterious as my marriage. It has sustained and fortified me in all my endeavours, and I would truly wish such a marriage for all I love. As I left her room I said, 'Live, my dear, mindful of our marriage and what it has signified for both of us.' Without Livia I could not have survived. Antony appeared to me in a dream last night. He lay against me and spoke words of praise, and when he vanished, as figures may in dreams, it was like the extinction of a flaming torch, and I awoke empty, afraid, and with a hollow sense of loss. One regrets what one has not done, rather than any action one has performed. Will Virgil guide me through the Shades, will Cicero make speeches there, will I be confronted with bloody and accusing eyes? We travelled by slow stages to Benevento to greet Tiberius who was on his way to Brindisi from where he would take ship to our armies in Illyria. Thinking I would not see him again, I first thanked him for the support he had been.

'I could not,' I said, 'have sustained these last years without you. In particular Varus' folly would have destroyed me. Now listen, I have had reports from my agents about the state of opinion in the city. Briefly, some welcome the prospect of my death and are, I am told, already chattering of the blessings of freedom – ah, the crimes that have been committed in the name of liberty! Others however are apprehensive and mutter fears of civil war. I know you well, Tiberius, and I know that your tendencies incline you to be sympathetic to those who babble of liberty. But I know also that you have too much good sense to give way to them. You cannot remember what they used to call the Free State – how long ago, in what unimaginable springtime it seems, since I heard Cicero roll that expression round his mouth like a ripe and luscious plum. The Free State – it cannot return without the destruction of the Empire. It took me a long time, my son, to admit my achievement, though Maecenas told me just what I was doing forty years ago. In a word, I have saved Rome and its Empire at the expense of the privileges of the class into which you were born. They hate me for it, and are blind to the benefits secured at the same time. They will hate you too, but like me you will care little for it.

'Now, as to the danger of a renewed civil war, I have taken such precautions as I can. You have direct command of the armies; pay them a donative when my death is announced. Try to achieve a partnership with the Senate, but remember that it must always take the second place…

'I have done one other thing for you. Two months ago I visited the island where my surviving grandson, Agrippa Postumus, is confined. I hoped I might find him improved. I hoped that it might be possible to suggest to you that his case is not hopeless and that he might even be able to help you in the management of the Empire, as you have helped me. Alas, the visit was useless and painful. I found the young man as brutish and violent and stupid as ever. Worse even. In placid moments he fishes happily, but the captain of the guard told me that these moments are becoming fewer. He spends much of the time in a violent rage. I have therefore concluded that he is incurable, and so I left the captain of the guard with sealed orders to be opened on the occasion of my death. They instruct him to put my grandson to death. You will find a copy in that travelling bureau there…

'What else? They will call me a God. What fools! Are you and I the last two sane men in a demented world? Don't you ask yourself about the deterioration in our race? They would never have thought to name Cincinnatus or Scipio a God.

'I am tired. Do you see how withered those laurel wreaths above my statue are…?

'Remember Bato, sheepdogs not wolves… revere your mother, love her and protect her… and the children, Agrippina's children who carry my seed… don't let them mock the poor crippled Claudius, he's not altogether a fool.' We started back to Rome the next day, yesterday. I felt dizzy from the motion of the litter, and we have halted here at Nola, still eighteen miles short of Naples. It's an old family villa. Indeed my father died here, perhaps in this very room. I must send for someone to find out… They brought me news: my cat died yesterday. Herodotus says the Ancient Egyptians went into mourning when their cats died: only good thing I ever heard of them. That museum I established at Capri, with the giants' bones, how strange… I have arranged that little Moragh should marry my freedman Pithias. That should secure her future. He's very sharp. So many memories, so many regrets… it was not my fault that Cicero was killed, I take responsibility but not blame… responsibility… (The night is at hand and it is good to yield to the night' – Homer, Iliad vii, 282) I dreamed last night that forty young men were carrying me off, and woke with a start of terror. Silly; I suppose they were the Praetorians and I caught a glimpse of my funeral rites… It is fifty-seven years ago, to this day, that I entered on my first consulship… I shall see Gaius and Lucius in the Shades, Marcellus smiling to me, Agrippa and Maecenas, Virgil and Horace… and… I don't wish to talk with Julius… Antony will be there… August, my month, ripe with harvest… I always wanted an easy death… they tell me my granddaughter Livilla has been ill, but is recovering, Tiberius is hurrying back from Brindisi… Livia, remember whose wife you have been… remember. The horses by the olive groves and Marcus Agrippa forcing me to eat bread and cheese… red-hot walnut shells are… so few gaudy nights… so much work… Varus, give me… they spat on the ground as they… Comedy, comedy… Livia.