John Williams: Augustus

And so now we too move southward, and our less bulky ship dances upon the waves. The sunlight catches the flecks of white foam that top the little waves, the waves slap gently and whisper against the sides of our ship, the blue-green depth of the sea seems almost playful; and I can persuade myself now that after all there has been some symmetry to my life, some point; and that my existence has been of more benefit than harm to this world that I am content to leave.

Now throughout this world the Roman order prevails. The German barbarian may wait in the North, the Parthian in the East, and others beyond frontiers that we have not yet conceived; and if Rome does not fall to them, it will at last fall to that barbarian from which none escape-Time. Yet now, for a few years, the Roman order prevails. It prevails in every Italian town of consequence, in every colony, in every province-from the Rhine and the Danube to the border of Ethiopia; from the Atlantic shores of Spain and Gaul to the Arabian sands, and the Black Sea. Throughout the world I have established schools so that the Latin tongue and the Roman way may be known, and have seen to it that those schools will prosper; Roman law tempers the disordered cruelty of provincial custom, just as provincial custom modifies Roman law; and the world looks in awe upon that Rome that I found built of crumbling clay and that now is made of marble.

The despair that I have voiced seems to me now unworthy of what I have done. Rome is not eternal; it does not matter. Rome will fall; it does not matter. The barbarian will conquer; it does not matter. There was a moment of Rome, and it will not wholly die; the barbarian will become the Rome he conquers; the language will smooth his rough tongue; the vision of what he destroys will flow in his blood. And in time that is ceaseless as this salt sea upon which I am so frailly suspended, the cost is nothing, is less than nothing.

We approach the Island of Capri. It shines like a jewel in the morning sun, a dark emerald rising out of the blue sea. The wind has almost died, and we float as if upon the air toward that quiet and leisurely place where I have spent so many happy hours. Already the island inhabitants, who are my neighbors and my friends, have begun to gather at the harbor; they wave, and I can hear their voices calling. Gaily, gaily they call to me. In a moment I shall rise and answer them.

The dream, Nicolaus; I remember the dream I had last night. I dreamed I was again at Perusia, during the time of Lucius Antonius's uprising against the authority of Rome. All winter we had blockaded the town, hoping to effect Lucius's surrender and thus avoid the shedding of Roman blood. My men were weary and disheartened by the long waiting, and threatened revolt. To give them hope, I ordered that an altar be constructed outside the city walls and that sacrifice be offered to Jupiter. And this is the dream:

A white ox, never yoked to the plough, was led to the altar by the attendants; its horns were gilded, and its head was garlanded by a wreath of laurel. The rope was slack; the ox came forward willingly, its head raised. Its eyes were blue, and they seemed to be looking at me, as if the beast recognized who was to be its executioner. The attendant crumbled the salt cake on its head; it did not move; the attendant tasted the wine, and then poured the libation between its horns. Still the ox did not move. The attendant said: "Shall it be done?"

I raised my ax; the blue eyes were upon me; they did not waver. I struck, and said: "It is done." The ox quivered and sank slowly to its knees; still its head was upraised, and its eyes were upon me. The attendant drew his dagger and slit the throat, catching the blood in his goblet. And even as the blood flowed the blue eyes seemed to look into mine, until at last they glazed and the body toppled to one side.

That was more than fifty years ago; I was in my twenty-third year. It is curious that I should dream of that after so long a time.

Letter: Philippus of Athens to Lucius Annaeus Seneca, from Naples (A.D. 55)

I was surprised and pleased, my dear Seneca, to receive your letter; I trust that you will forgive my delay in replying. Your inquiry reached me in Rome on the very day that I was leaving the city, and I have only just begun to get settled in my new home. You will be pleased to learn that at last I have taken the advice you have given me, both to my face and in your writings, and have retired from the bustle and confusion of my practice, so that I might devote myself to the quiet dignity of learning, and pass on to others what little knowledge I have gained through the years. I write these words from my villa outside Naples; the sunlight, dispersed by the budding grapevines that arch over my terrace, dances over the paper upon which these words appear; and I am as happy as you promised I would be in my retirement. For that assurance and the truth of it, I wish to thank you.

Over the years our friendship has, indeed, been too sporadic; I am only grateful to you for remembering me, and for overlooking the fact that I did not speak out on your behalf during that unfortunate time that you were forced to spend on the barren waste of Corsica; you have understood better than most, I suspect, that a poor physician without worldly power, nor even a hundred like him, could have prevailed against the will of one so erratic as our late Emperor Claudius. All of us who have admired you, even in our silence, are elated that once again your genius may brighten the Rome that you have loved.

You ask me to write about that matter of which we have spoken upon those too infrequent occasions that we have had to converse-my brief acquaintance with the Emperor Caesar Augustus. I am happy to accede to your request, but you must know that I am consumed with a friendly curiosity: may we expect a new essay? an Epistle? or perhaps, even, a tragedy? I shall wait eagerly to learn the use to which you intend to put my few memories.

When we have spoken of the Emperor before, perhaps desiring a friendship which I imagined might be enhanced by your continued curiosity, I have been somewhat too mysterious and selfish with the information I would impart. But now I am in my sixty-sixth year-ten years younger than Octavius Caesar when he died. And I believe that I have at last gone beyond that vanity against which you have so often inveighed, yet have been kind enough to except me. I shall tell you what I remember.

As you know, I was physician to Octavius Caesar for only a few months; but in those few months, I was always near him, more often than not within a distance from which I could hear him call; and I was with him when he died. I do not know even now why he chose me to attend him during those months that he knew were to be his last; there were many others more famous and more experienced than I; and I was only in my twenty-sixth year at the time. Nevertheless, he did choose me; and though I could not conceive it in my youth, I suspect now that he was fond of me, in that curious detached way that he seemed to have. And though I was able to do nothing for him in his last days, he saw to it that I was a rich man after his death.

After a leisurely voyage of several days south from Ostia, we debarked at Capri; and though it was clear that his health was failing, he would not be so impolite as to ignore the throng that awaited him. He chatted with many of them, calling them by name, though upon occasion in his weakness he had to lean on my arm. Since most of the inhabitants of Capri are Greek, he spoke to them in that language, apologizing from time to time for his rather strange accent. At last he was content to bid his neighbors farewell, and we made our way to the Emperor's villa, which commanded a remarkable view of the Bay of Naples, not many miles away I persuaded him to rest, and he seemed content to do so.