Augustus (30 page)

The developments which had taken place were regretted by traditionalists. I could share their regret. I have no doubt that our ancestors' Republic was a fine and honourable thing. But, unlike the myopic Cato, unlike Cicero who was a sentimentalist, I knew it could never be recovered. We had to move on to some new thing, whatever it might be; and, after I had digested Livia's words, and knew she spoke the truth, I realized that my task was now to establish a new structure for Roman political life. It must reflect realities, as Cicero's plan for 'an agreement of the classes' never did; but, if it was to satisfy the old political classes, and, my nature being conservative I had no wish to do otherwise, it must also retain the form and appearance of the old Republic as far as possible.

I make no apology for the dryness of this part of my memoirs. Whoever wishes to understand me, must understand the work I had to do. Those who find constitutional politics boring can always skip this chapter. Only let them remember that their judgement of my life and work will then be flawed, for they will have neglected to examine the heart of the matter. They will be like those who judge a melon by its skin, and do not taste the flesh.

I invited Maecenas and Agrippa to dine with me, that we might explore the courses open to us. We dined sparingly, for there is no deep thinking on a full stomach, just as there is no sound thinking on an empty one.

Agrippa of course was generally as abstemious as I have always been myself, though, like many who are essentially men of action, he was given to occasional bouts of heavy asking. I avoided him then for it distressed me to see my closest friend give himself over to brutish vulgarity that would end in a stupor so deep that revolution might break out with him unaware. As for Maecenas, he was more and more given to tippling. Sip, sip, sip, all day long, never quite drunk, less and less often wholly sober. That night however he was in full possession of his faculties.

I outlined the position as I saw it.

Agrippa said: They killed Caesar because he would not restore the Republic. They killed him in the name of liberty. We fought against the Liberators because it was in our interest to do so. We would have been nothing if we hadn't. And we fought against Antony, partly for that reason too, but also because, with all his Eastern nonsense, he was going the same bloody way as Caesar. He'd even taken up with the same woman, and Jupiter only knows what notions of Oriental tyranny she stuffed his poor head with. That's why Italy rallied to us, supported us, and, with a bit of help from our boys, swore an oath of loyalty to you. But that loyalty was - what's the bloody word? -conditional, that's it, and temporary. People, not only the nobles, but all good Romans, want the Republic back. They respect you, they're grateful to us all even, but they love the old forms of government and won't be happy without them. Don't go getting other ideas into your head, old boy. If you take the same road Julius did, you'll end up where he did, with your body full of dagger-thrusts, lying at the base of Pompey's statue. Don't kid yourself it won't be like that.'

Maecenas said: 'Well, of course, my dears, I'm only a poor Etruscan outsider. But that gives me a certain advantage. I can see things clearly. Now I'm quite sure Marcus Agrippa is right, as he usually is, when he says the Romans love their old institutions and won't be happy without them, but things change, that's the trouble. It's our business to ask, not so much why, as how, and then seek the remedy. I know you've kept me off the wine tonight but give me a small mug while I get this straight. Thanks, lovey. Well, it seems to me that, to put it in the proverbial nutshell, the cause of our troubles - and even Agrippa can't deny we've had troubles - isn't so much the vice and ambition of particular men, as the complexity of our situation. You could say it rests in the multitude of our population and the magnitude of the business of government. The old ways were fine when Rome was a city of farmers and a few merchants, but now . . . just consider, the population of the Empire, even of the city itself, embraces men of every kind, both as regards race and endowment. Their tempers and desires are of every imaginable sort, and the business of the State has become so vast, so complicated and demanding that it can be administered only with the greatest difficulty . . .' He paused. I asked him to continue.

'Let me make a comparison,' he said. 'Our city is like a great merchant-vessel. It's manned by a crew of every race and lacks a pilot. So for many generations now, four, five, I don't know, it's been rolling and plunging, like a ship with neither ballast nor steersman. No wonder it's crashed into the rocks. The miracle is, it hasn't sunk. It's enough indeed to make one believe in the Gods and in a sacred destiny for Rome, that it hasn't sunk. But it can't continue long without the guidance of one directing spirit. Restore the Republic and everything we have achieved in the last seventeen years will be swallowed up. We will have performed a vast waste of effort. Oh yes, and one more thing, when I say a directing spirit, I mean the directing spirit of one man - which, in the circumstances, must be you. Don't even think in terms of a new triumvirate. That's a recipe for civil war. It's happened twice. It would happen again, even if the triumvirate were formed by us three here, who have been good friends for a long time. It's in the nature of things. I tell you, ducky, you have a simple choice. Assume your responsibilities and make the civil wars worthwhile; duck them and make your whole life to now a nonsense . . .'

When I had landed at Naples on my return from Egypt, I found Virgil there. He was living in a villa a few miles out of the city on the Sorrentine peninsula, where, in ancient times, the Sirens dwelled. He invited me to dine with him, but, when I arrived in the mellow glow of the late afternoon, I found the poet pale, listless and unable to eat. It was the first intimation of the illness that would afflict him over the next decade and bring about his death, that came too soon for me, for Rome and for Poetry. He toyed with his food, but brushed aside my concern, and was himself solicitous for my health.

'Olives and bread and a little pecorino cheese, and the white wine of those hills suffice me. I am no man of action. But you have aged Caesar, in grief and disillusion,' he said.

'Antony's death,' I said . . . and left my meaning for him to divine. One never had to speak copiously to this master of words who understood silence. 'And Egypt was horrible,' I said. 'I hated it. Flies and corruption and incessant demanding chatter. I caught a fever but the cause was, I'm sure, my loathing for the ancient vice, cruelty, superstition and greed of Egypt.'

He had finally completed his Georgics and I asked him to read me a passage.

He complied, in that soft and gentle voice that nevertheless carried all the authority of knowledge:

Happy - even too happy, if they knew their bliss -are farmers who receive, far from the clash of war, an easy livelihood from the just and generous earth. Although they own no lofty mansion with proud gates, from every hall disgorging floods of visitors, nor gape at doorposts bright with tortoise-shell veneer, tapestry tricked with gold, and rich bronzes of Corinth, nor yet disguise white wool with vile Assyrian dye and waste the value of clear oil with frankincense, still they sleep without care and live without deceit, rich with various plenty, peaceful in broad expanses, in grottoes, lakes of living water, cool dark glens, with the brute music of cattle, soft sleep at noon beneath the trees: they have forests, the lairs of wild game;

they have sturdy sons, hard-working, content with little,

the sanctity of God, and reverence for the old.

Justice, quitting this earth, left her last footprints there . . .

He gave me his slow smile. 'You envy my farmers, Caesar, who would never envy you. But we are not all called to the same work. Listen to the last line of that passage again.' And he repeated slowly, pausing over each word as if in wonder. 'Justice, in its ideal form,' he said, 'has quit the earth. But we can still discern the footprints. It falls on you, Caesar, to restore the shadow of justice.'

And then he read me another passage, a great hymn of praise to Italy, which I shall not quote since it ends in a compliment to myself - one I value more highly than all the honours that have been paid me . . .

We sat in silence. The air was still warm with the smell of flowers, and the red glow of the dying sun lay like a carpet of roses on the bay. We heard no more than a murmur from the city below. In the distance a dog barked, and though we could not hear it, I sensed the steady munching of cattle knee-deep in meadows, an image of peace and plenitude called forth by the poetry. All at once, I knew that the world was at the same time good and barren; that life had a deep purpose which was not made insignificant (though the actors were all ultimately that themselves) simply because it would never be fulfilled.

Virgil, as if reading my thoughts, said: 'The finished poem is never as good as the poem that was not written; and yet it must be set down as though it were. Every start contains the seed of a new failure, but that is no excuse for not starting.'

'I know what you are telling me,' I said.

Was it that evening that we first talked of 'The Aeneid'? Memory flickers in old age like a dying candle, and I cannot be certain; but I think it was. Perhaps in reality we made a contract, Virgil and I. If I assumed the burden of Empire, he would write Rome's epic: tell all how the Gods promised Aeneas limitless Empire. But it wasn't as simple as that. It never is
...
All the same, the contract existed. We both knew it. It hung in the soft air between us, and we both knew the cogency of a destiny recognized and accepted.

Once, I said to him: 'What is destiny? Are we not free men?'

Virgil said: 'Leave that question to the philosophers. Act out what you feel and know. And our knowledge is this, Caesar: for both of us: we can only be free when we work out the destiny which we perceive is written for us. I do not know how this can be reconciled. I only know it is how it is.'

The Curia buzzed with the rumour of a great occasion. Even the laziest and most inattentive senators thronged the benches. My stepfather sat with a rose pressed to his nostrils, to ward off the smell of hot flesh. The buzz died away as I began to speak.

The ground had of course been well-prepared. Agrippa, Maecenas and my other friends had taken soundings. We had, for instance, long discussed the question of names and tides. I had rejected the dictatorship, likewise the title of
'imperator', by which the soldiers had so often acclaimed me. It smacked too much of military rule. For a long time we could not come to a decision. Then someone - it may have been myself, it may have been Maecenas - suggested 'princeps'. It symbolized no direct power, merely a recognition of authority; Cicero, I recalled, had used it of both Pericles and Pompey . . .

Now I began by recounting what I had achieved for Rome. 'For the first time in a generation,' I said, 'civil discord is still. We are at peace.' Sunlight was visible beyond the open door. Philippus pressed his flower against his nose. Agrippa sat, tensed as a fighting bull. I reminded them that I had already rescinded all the acts of the triumvirate: Romans were no more subject to the arbitrary law which our extremity had made necessary. The Free State lived again. 'Accordingly,' I said, 'though speaking as one of this year's consuls, and invested with the tribunician power which I prize as the expression of the love and confidence of the Roman People, and which enables me to do my duty towards the people, I must tell you, Conscript Fathers, that the days of extraordinary powers are over. I shall lead you no longer . . . Receive back your liberty and the Republic. Take over responsibility for the army and the provinces, and govern yourselves in the manner hallowed by our fathers' example. The ship of the Republic, shaken by storms, almost wrecked on the rocks of ambition, sails free and serene again on the open sea.'

It was a pity I mentioned the sea, because looking over the assembled senators I saw so many mouths hanging open like fish waiting for a hook, that I almost broke out in giggles to see their consternation. However, I gathered up my papers and walked out of the Senate. The silence followed me into the Forum.

Livia was alarmed when she heard what I had done, alarmed and angry.

Tm sorry,' I said, 'that I didn't consult you, but since you have been so unwilling to listen to what I had to say, it was difficult to do so. But don't worry, I haven't flown in the face of what you want me to do. I'm not giving up power. I'm making it legitimate.'

'If it works,' she said. 'I can guess what you're going to say. It seems to me a jolly sight too clever.'

'No,' I said, 'if you had seen their astonishment, you wouldn't say so. What I've done is give them a glimpse of the void. They are appalled. You see, my dear, whatever they say, they have forgotten how to act as free men capable of thinking of the general good. Even in this purged Senate the majority are either beasts or poltroons. Trust me, Livia, please.'

I put my arm round her, drew her to me, and kissed her. I took her chin and turned her face round that our lips might meet. For a moment she resisted, then returned my kiss as she had not done for almost five years. I drew her down to the couch, and, mindless of any possible interruption, we made love, as parched and starving men might fall on bread and wine. Our first intensity slackened and was replaced by that yielding tenderness coming from the knowledge of perfect union, which I had found with Livia and no other woman.