John Williams - Augustus

Marcus Agrippa's harbor now furnishes oysters for the Sybarite of Rome, the bodies of honest Roman soldiers fertilize his luxuriant garden of clipped box and cypress, and the tears of their widows make his artificial streams flow merrily in the Italian sunlight. And in the north the barbarian waits.

The barbarian waits. Five years ago, on that part of the German frontier that is marked by the Upper Rhine, a disaster befell Rome from which she has not yet recovered; it is perhaps a portent of her fate.

From the northern shore of the Black Sea to the lower coast of the German Ocean, from Moesia to Belgium, a distance of more than a thousand miles, Italy lies unprotected by any natural barrier from the Germanic tribes. They cannot be defeated, and they cannot be persuaded from their habits of pillage and murder. My uncle was not able to do so, nor could I during the years of my authority. Therefore it was necessary to fortify that frontier, to protect at once the northern provinces of Rome and at last to protect Rome itself. The most difficult part of that frontier, since it protected land that was particularly rich and fertile, was the area in the northwest, below the Rhine. Thus, of the twenty-five legions of some one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers that protected the Empire of Rome, five legions of the most experienced veterans I had assigned to that small region. They were under the command of Publius Quintilius Varus, who had successfully served as proconsul of Africa and governor of Syria.

I suppose that I must hold myself responsible for that disaster, for I allowed myself to be persuaded to give the German command to Varus. He was a distant relative of my wife, and he had been of some service to Tiberius in the past. It was one of the most serious mistakes I ever made, and the only time in my memory that I placed a man of whom I knew so little in such a high position.

For on the rude and primitive border of that northern province, Varus imagined that he might still live in the luxury and ease of Syria; he remained aloof from his own soldiers, and began to trust those German provincials who were adept at flattery and able to offer him some semblance of the sensual life to which he had become accustomed in Syria. Chief among these sycophants was one Arminius of the Cherusci, who had once served in the Roman army and had been rewarded by the gift of citizenship. Arminius, who spoke fluent Latin despite his barbaric origin, gained the confidence of Varus, so that he might further his own ambitions of power over the scattered German tribes; and when he was sufficiently sure of Varus's credulity and vanity, he falsely informed him that the distant tribes of the Chauci and the Bructeri were in revolt and sweeping southward to threaten the security of the provincial border. Varus, in his arrogance and recklessness, would not listen to the counsel of others; and he withdrew three legions from the summer camp on the Weser and marched northward. Arminius had laid his plans well; for as Varus led his legions through the forest and marshland toward Lemgo, the barbarian tribes that had been forewarned and prepared by Arminius, fell upon the laboring legions. Confused by the suddenness of the attack, unable to maintain an orderly resistance, bewildered by the thick forest and rain and marshy ground, they were annihilated. Within three days, fifteen thousand soldiers were slain or captured; some of the captured were buried alive by the barbarians, some were crucified, and some were offered to the northern gods by the barbaric priests, who decapitated them and secured the heads to trees in the sacred groves. Fewer than a hundred soldiers managed to escape the ambush, and they reported the disaster. Varus was either slain or took his own life; no one could be sure which. In any event, his severed head was returned to me in Rome by a tribal chieftain named Maroboduus, whether out of an anxious piety or an exultant mockery I do not know. I gave the poor remnant of Varus a decent burial, not so much for the sake of his soul as for the sake of the soldiers who had been led to disaster by his authority. And still in the north the barbarian waits.

After his victory on the Rhine, Arminius did not have the wit to pursue his advantage; the north lay open to him-from the mouth of the Rhine nearly to its confluence with the Elbe- and yet he was content merely to plunder his neighbors. The following year, I put the German armies under the command of Tiberius, since it was he who had persuaded me to appoint Varus. He recognized his own part in the disaster, and knew that his future depended upon his success in subduing the Germans and restoring order in those troubled northern provinces. In this endeavor he was successful, largely because he relied upon the experience of the veteran centurions and tribunes of the legions rather than upon his own initiative. And so now there is an uneasy peace in the north, though Arminius remains free, somewhere in that wilderness beyond the border he disturbed.

Far to the east, beyond even India, in a part ofthat unknown world where no Roman has been known to set foot, there is said to be a land whose kings, over unnumbered successive reigns, have erected a great fortress wall that extends hundreds of miles across the entirety of their northern frontier, so that their kingdom might be protected against the encroachments of their barbaric neighbors. It may be that this tale is a fantasy of an adventurer; it may even be that there is no such land as this. Nevertheless, I will confess that the possibility of such a project has occurred to me when I have had to think of our northern neighbors who will be neither conquered nor appeased. And yet I know that it is useless. The winds and rains of time will at last crumble the most solid stone, and there is no wall that can be built to protect the human heart from its own weakness.

For it was not Arminius and his horde; it was Varus in his weakness who slaughtered fifteen thousand Roman soldiers, as it is the Roman Sybarite in his life of shade who invites the slaughter of thousands more. The barbarian waits, and we grow weaker in the security of our ease and pleasure .

Again it is night, the second night of this voyage which, it becomes clearer and clearer to me, may be my last. I do not believe that my mind fails with my body, but I must confess that the darkness came over me before I even noticed its encroachment; and I found myself staring sightlessly to the west. It was then that Philippus could no longer avoid his anxiety and approached me with that slightly rude manner of his that so transparently reveals his shyness and uncertainty. I allowed him to place his hand upon my forehead so that he could judge the extent of my fever, and I answered a few of his questions- untruthfully, I might add. But when he tried to insist that I retire to my room below deck, so that I might be protected from the night air, I assumed the role of the willful and crotchety old man and pretended to lose my temper. I did so with such energy that Philippus was convinced of my strength, and was content to send below for some blankets with which I promised to wrap myself. Philippus elected to stay on deck, so that he could keep an eye on me; but soon he nodded, and now, curled on the bare deck, his head cradled in his folded arms, with that touching faith and completeness of the young, he sleeps, certain that he will awake in the morning.

I cannot see it now, but earlier, before the late afternoon mists rose from the sea to shroud the western horizon, I thought I could make out its contours, a dark smudge against the vast circle of the sea. I believe that I saw the Island of Pandateria, where for so many years my daughter suffered to live in her exile. She is no longer on Pandateria. Ten years ago, I judged that it was possible to allow her to return in safety to the mainland of Italy; now she abides in the Calabrian village of Reggio, at the very toe of the Italian boot. For more than fifteen years, I have not seen her, or spoken her name, or allowed the fact of her existence to be mentioned in my presence. It was too painful for me. And that silence merely defined another of the many roles that contained me in my life.