Augustus (33 page)

Yet one can never be sure how men will respond to changed circumstances. Under my eye, Gallus' prudence curbed his fecund imagination. Given a command which he interpreted as offering more independence than was actually the case, a reversal of nature occurred. Now his imagination got the upper hand of prudence. Perhaps that is a faulty interpretation. It may rather be that nature asserted itself, that the true Gallus emerged freed, as he must have thought, from the trammels of dependence. He began to behave like a proconsul of the old Republic, embarking on a war against the Sabeans. He wrote glowingly to me (after his expedition had started) that he would bring back a great treasure of gems, gold and spices from the remote heart of Arabia. His men suffered agonies of thirst in a long desert march, and he was fortunate to extricate them without disaster; without treasure either. I wrote urging him to be more circumspect. He paid no heed to my letter, for, without even acknowledging it, he marched south into Ethiopia, announcing that he would explore the springs of the Nile. Agrippa wrote assuring me that Gallus had gone off his head, and some senator - I forget which - laid a formal accusation against him. I was alarmed, and dismissed him, forbidding him however, for his own safety which I could not guarantee against the Senate's wrath, to come to Italy . . . The Senate, in my absence, proclaimed his banishment and confiscated his estates. Gallus, hearing this, did not wait for my response, but killed himself. I had wished no such fate on him. How could I? Whatever he had done, he had not forfeited my affection. I wept when I heard the news; was I the only man whose frown was followed by death? Who could not set a limit to the consequences of my displeasure with my friends?

Gallus had erected statues in his own honour, and had boastful inscriptions carved on the pyramids of Egypt. He had set up a high column recording that he had advanced with his army beyond the cataracts of the Nile where neither the Roman people nor the Kings of Egypt had previously despatched an army. He said nothing of the pointlessness and expense of this expedition. The cursed corruption of Egypt, distorting reality, had perhaps scattered his wits. Thereafter I resolved that that frightful but necessary country must remain under my direct authority.

Perhaps it was my evident grief over Gallus that touched Livia's heart. At any rate, suddenly, to my great joy, she withdrew her opposition to the marriage of Marcellus and Julia. That was how it seemed to me at the time. There were alas darker reasons.

How deceptive is one's progress through life. It is as if we travelled on a footpath cut through a gloomy forest. Because we remain on the path and are able to advance, we feel in control of our destiny. But the surrounding forest remains unknown and hostile, and we are ignorant of what dangers lurk only a few feet from the path.

THREE

I fell ill in Spain in the spring of 24, a fever that would not leave me. I had to hand over command of the army there to my legates, C. Antistius Vetus and P. Carisius, sound men who, following my plan of campaign, subdued the rebellious tribes. I therefore ordered the door of the temple of Janus to be closed, in order to show to the city what I had achieved for Rome, and to persuade my enemies of the unrivalled blessings of peace. Meanwhile I took the waters of the Pyrenaean mountains, and began to write a fragment of autobiography, dedicated to Agrippa and Maecenas. It did not proceed far but I was to draw on it later for that book which I wrote for the instruction, and, as I hoped, delight of my sons Gaius and Lucius.

To write their names even pains me. How shall I deal with their lives? Better perhaps to abandon these last mutterings this side of the tomb. Yet I have a duty to the Gods, to Livia, to the shade of Virgil, and finally to my own reputation, to persevere.

A letter has just come from Tiberius assuring me that all is quiet on the Rhine. Old age would be insupportable but for him. If he were to die, in whom could I rest my trust?

Trust . . . the word oppresses me. Owls call hunting from the Aventine; the river stench rises to my nostrils. Slaves, seeing my grey countenance and sour look, slink through the palace in whey-faced fear - as if I would vent my misery and displeasure on them. That I have lived to this! Oh, all may be quiet on the Rhine, I am sure it is, Tiberius would not lie for my comfort, though he knows well how little comfort I have now, in anything
...
oh Varus, give me back my legions! I have sent to Gaul to seek out the little girl who ran by her father's side. I shall entrust her, and her mother, if she lives, to Livia.

Is it some kind of judgement that the Gods have deserted me in old age? I spent sixty years the favourite of Fortune, to be deprived of Fortune in my last days.

Trust
...
life is a hollow gourd without it, trust in family, trust in friends, trust in one's own integrity and the integrity of others . . . trust that one's benevolence will be recognized. Such trust is a mockery; it mocks him who trusts and what he trusts in. It denies the sharp appetites of man.

I returned to Rome, weary and still fevered - a frightful journey - in the autumn of that year. I selected Terentius Varro Murena to be my colleague in the consulship. His sister Terentia was Maecenas' wife and he himself had done well as commander of the legions I had sent against the Salassi. Would I however have made him consul if Terentia had not asked me to do so? She had liquid brown eyes and hair the colour of beech-nuts, and when I called to see Maecenas she was desperate. Though we hardly knew each other she told me of her unhappiness. She had not known of her husband's tastes when the marriage was arranged; for the first year she had not believed they could really be exclusive. As she told me this her eyes brimmed with tears. She lay back on the couch and looked at me, her breasts heaving. Her gown was slit up the right side and she let it fall away to reveal the long rounded line of delicious thigh. Everything in her attitude cried out to me, 'Come and rape me, don't you see I shall die of frustration if you don't?' I smiled to her and she crossed the room and sat on my lap and thrust her tongue into my mouth. She was brown and warm and eager and uncomplicated. I felt the cruelty of what we impose on women and was gentle with her. When all was over, and, in her starved condition, our first love-making was as brief as a dog's, she sobbed in relief.

'There's no point,' I said, 'in hoping that Maecenas . . . You have to accept that he is Maecenas.'

'These nasty little Gallic blonds,' she said.

I kissed her pouting mouth and licked the tears from her cheeks. It was the only day that year I felt well, and, though we made love again, it was never the same. Our affair was brief. I felt no guilt towards Maecenas. Later, the poor girl went, as they say, to the bad. She and Maecenas became friends after I had liberated her, and he introduced her to his other friends in the theatre, and she took up with a Greek dancer called Nikolides whose morals were notorious. I'm afraid that, as the years passed, her own behaviour won her the same reputation. Livia and her circle used to talk of her with disgust; they said she had become little better than a common prostitute. She began to drink heavily and died a couple of years before Maecenas himself. She had quite lost her looks by then, poor thing. I used to receive all sorts of frightful reports about her from my agents, and she could certainly have been prosecuted for immorality. I refused to do so, and even Livia did not dare urge me to, because she was afraid that I would regard such a suggestion as being aimed at Maecenas. That wasn't my reason at all of course; Maecenas didn't enter into it. I felt sorry for the poor girl, because I saw that being married to Maecenas would have disturbed any woman. Only once did I have occasion to reprove her. That was when it was reported to me that she had been boasting of the affair she had had with Augustus. I couldn't permit that and I told her so. She wept again and said it wasn't herself she was revenging, but her brother. That was ridiculous, and I told her so, sharply. We were never alone together again. It is a sad story. I have never forgotten her nut-brown laughter.

Once I asked Horace why he wrote poetry: There are too many reasons,' he said. 'Because I have to is the simplest. But there is one reason that appeals to me. I write poetry to preserve what would otherwise be lost, or would decay.' When I think of nut-brown Terentia, I understand what he meant.

Her brother betrayed me.

The crisis blew up out of nothing. The proconsul of Macedonia, Marcus Primus, suffered like my poor Gallus from the delusion that can afflict those unaccustomed to authority when it is unwisely granted them. (But it is impossible to know whether a man is fit for authority till he is granted it.) He did not understand that the days of the anarchic Republic, when provincial governors were so little subject to control that they frequently made war without the sanction of the Senate, had gone. He launched an attack on the kingdom of Thrace. I was displeased, both because he had acted on his own account and also because I had no wish to embroil the Republic in a war on that frontier; indeed his act disturbed delicate diplomatic discussions which were then in train. Naturally the dignity of the Senate was likewise affronted. Primus was charged with treason. He had the impudence to allege that he was acting on my instructions. I appeared in the witness box myself to deny this, and the vainglorious fool was condemned to death.

At that point my fellow-consul, Terentia's brother, protested. Primus was a friend of his, he told me, and he was deeply offended that I had allowed the trial to go forward. Moreover, Primus had committed no crime. He was acting for the greater glory of the Roman People.

'We cannot,' I said, 'permit this private initiative. A generation ago it brought the Republic to its knees.'

He flushed, like a man in wine, and banged the table.

'You talk of restoring the Republic, Caesar, but it is no more than cant. I see that now. You invest me in this empty consular office, as if it represented the authority of the Republic, but though the two consuls are of equal status according to all the traditions of Rome, I find I am only a cipher, good for nothing. A Roman general seeks glory and empire, and you declare him a traitor . . .'

'The Senate declared him a traitor . . .'

'More cant. The Senate would not dare declare a mouse a thief without your nod . . .'

'Listen,' I said, but he was deaf to reason.

'What you call authority, I call tyranny,' he cried and turned away and marched out of the room. As he walked he held his head unnaturally stiff and high, like an actor wishing to convey outraged dignity. I was naturally perturbed. I asked Maecenas what he knew of his brother-in-law.

'Less, my friend, than you know of my wife,' he said.

'Could he be dangerous?'

Maecenas smiled: 'I had thought better of you, my dear, than to think you capable of such naivety. It's worthy of the comedian you call your father. Think of the gang who murdered him, ducky. I daresay he even disdained to ask that question of them, for he despised men like Casca and Decius Brutus. Yet they were dangerous enough, in concert, to prick him to death. All men are dangerous, and the weak and stupid the most dangerous of all. My brother-in-law is viewy . . .' 'Viewy?'

'He likes abstract nouns.' 'Like Liberty.'

'His very favourite. Say Liberty and the poor fool enjoys an instant orgasm . . .'

I summoned Timotheus, the Greek boy whom we had found useful in the affair of Antony's will lodged in the Temple of Vesta. He was a man now, of course, but still the same ringleted and scented epicene, with the same seductive squirm and fluttering eyelashes. I had learned though to respect him, for I had found him uncommonly useful on several occasions. He had indeed come to occupy a trusted position in my personal secretariat, though his duties were hardly secretarial. I am not proud of the use to which I was accustomed to put men like Timotheus (I had perhaps twenty such in my employment); but neither am I ashamed. Of course in the old days of the pristine Republic, spies and undercover agents were unknown, or at least employed only to gather intelligence about Rome's foreign enemies. But for more than a century now, great men had found it necessary to maintain an intelligence service; and in my position as princeps, I could not have done without one. I could hardly fail to be aware that many who appeared satisfied with the Republic I had restored yet nursed grievances. Some did so for family reasons; others because they were ambitious for power; others because they were jealous of what I had achieved. I would have been neglecting my duty towards the Republic if I had not made it my business to keep an eye on subversive elements in the State. I therefore told Timotheus that I wanted a full report on my fellow-consul, together with a list of his associates and notes on them, as soon as possible.

'That will be easy, Caesar,' he said. 'As soon as you announced that he was to be your colleague, I introduced one of my contacts into his household. Frankly, my lord . . .'

'I have told you, Timotheus, that I will not be addressed by that title

'But Caesar, I am only a poor Greek freedman,' he squirmed. 'I think of you as my lord, for I owe my manumission to the noble generosity of your character.'

'Don't, it offends me.'