Tiberius (6 page)

The Tiberius who went to the island of Rhodes was a grim, angry, powerful man. Tiberius was now thirty-six years old. He was at the very height of his powers. He was fit to rule an Empire, conduct a great war, or govern a continent of barbarians; but all his ability and strength began to turn inwards.

Rhodes was Greek, not Roman. The inhabitants were part of the Empire—practically all the world was part of the Empire—but on the island they spoke Doric Greek, they followed Greek customs, the homes were of Greek design, and the natives wore Grecian dress. That suited Tiberius perfectly. He held a sullen, slow-burning anger against Rome, which had made him a cuckold and an outcast. On Rhodes Tiberius was in a small puddle, but in it he was a large frog.

When Tiberius was elected tribune for a five-year term, shortly before his voluntary exile, he was given one of the most important posts in the Empire. A tribune was exempt from punishment. He could not be held to account under the law. His person was inviolate. He was entitled to respect wherever he went. (Of course, a mischievous tribune might have to face an accounting when his term was over and his immunities ended.) Tiberius would have been quite within his rights to insist on the privileges of his office even on Rhodes: ceremonial dress, a herald to clear the way for him when he walked out, the traditio
nal courtesies that went with th
e tribune's power. Tiberius did not. He wore the dress of a simple Greek. He mingled with the natives in the marketplace and allowed them to speak to him as equals. He even accepted insults—sometimes. There was a Greek literary teacher named Diogenes (not the famed one who sought an honest man.) On Saturdays this Diogenes lectured to anyone who cared to hear. Tiberius came to his villa one day and the proud Greek sent a slave out to turn him away. "Come
back on the seventh day," the slave ordered the tribune, and the tribune meekly turned away. Sometimes Tiberius was less forgiving. What a learned Greek could do, a mere plebeian could not. On one such occasion Tiberius went back to the villa where he was staying for his official robes, and came back in his role of rank and privilege; he had the impudent fellow jailed.

Rhodes turned itself inside out to welcome him. Tiberius built himself a great, fine villa, and while it was under construction he was welcomed in the homes of the best families— not only himself, but all his train of servants and followers. Tiberius might not be on the best of terms with Augustus, but he was very close to the purple. Once he went
to visit die sick in hospitals, but made th
e mistake of telling the authorities he was coming. Eager to impress him, they dragged every patient out into die open for his inspection, even the moribund and wretched. Tiberius was horrified. He went from man to man, apologizing, and increased his popularity with the Rhodians.

In his new home Tiberius was hardly lonesome. As he no longer had any cares of war or state, he could devote his thoughts to art and to science. Greek literary men and philosophers were plentiful in Rhodes, and Tiberius' villa always had a few in the guest rooms, ready to debate a literary point with him at dinner or compose an ode in his honor in the morning. Other guest rooms were given to scientists— we would call them astrologers; but astrology is, after all, the embryo form of astronomy. Tiberius was always fascinated by the study of the stars. He wanted to know what was in store for him, and the astrologers were willing to tell.

Besides the chosen guests, th
ere were the "c
lients." The ordinary were entitl
ed by custom to their
sportula,
or daily basket of food, or to its equivalent in money. The legacy-hunters were men whose principal occupation was making friends with the rich in the hope of a bequest. They were quite a problem in Rome. Augustus worried about them, because they had a bad effect; it was pleasant to be cultivated by legacy-hunters, and therefore many rich men deliberately stayed free of marriage and its consequent presumptive heirs in order to enjoy the flattery and attentions of the legacy-hunters. That was bad for the Roman birth rate, always a
concern to Augustus. Still, there were many thousands of them. Augustus himself was sometimes called one, by his enemies—at least, it was certain when a friend of Augustus died, the Emperor was visibly mortified if there was no sizable bequest for him in the will. He didn't always accept the money, but he liked to have it offered.

Tiberius, even in exile, had hordes of these sycophants always about him. When he tired of art, science, and flattery, he still did not need to be lonesome. The fact that his wife was far away did not, of course, mean that his sexual life was in any way curtailed. Far from it. It almost seemed that Tiberius set out to show Julia that anything she could do, he could do better—and more variously.

We can almost see Tiberius, living his idler's life on Rhodes. A pleasa
nt hour in the morning, while th
e clients came t
o pay their respects and earn th
eir
sportula.
A brief interlude in his library, among the cedar presses that held his thousands of rolls of books, parchment, and pap
yrus, while one slave stood with
a wax tablet and stylus to write down any thoughts he might have, and another read to him from a favorite work—from, perhaps, one of the Egyptian how-to-do-it manuals of sexual intercourse which he imported from the city of Elephantis. A pleasant light lunch, and a stroll in the marketplace. A lingering hour in the baths, where he could have his choice of conversational partners if his mood was for literature or astrology, or where the surroundings would add a pleasant variety to sex, if that was his mood. Then dinner with whatever guests he liked, reclining on die triclinium, casting dice, talking, or watching dancers and musicians —or all at once. Then bed and a good night's sleep . . . with his selected woman. Or girl. Or boy. Or several at once.

It sounds like a relaxing existence. We might think that Tiberius would have enjoyed it very much. We know, though, that he was miserable. He was thirty-six years old, at the peak of his powers, and he had nothing to do.

Time did not stand still in Rome, however slowly it might pass for Tiberius on Rhodes.

Augustus was becoming quite an old man. When Tiberius raged away to Rhodes, Augustus was not yet sixty; but time passed, he was beginning to limp, he was in serious pain from stones in his bladder; summers were too hot and winters were too cold. He was at an age where a man begins to feel that if he wants to see his life's work done he'd better get on with it. And he was constantly being interfered with by an annoying women's war that raged around him.

On one side were the light ladies—Julia and her sporting companions, now embarked on a project which they did not regard lightly at all, the destruction of Tiberius. On the other were Livia, the Emperor's wife but also Tiberius' mother. With Livia was Antonia, the widow of the beloved brother Drusus, always as loyal a friend (and astonishingly untouched by scandal) as- Tiberius could have. Both sides attracted followers until most of Rome was entered for or against "the Exile." Julia's sons, Lucius and Gaius, were automatically enrolled against him, for the suspicion was always there that Tiberius m
ight seek to inherit the princi
pate, and Lucius and Gaius were comfortably aware that they had first call. They were still young but old enough to be elected to high civic office, by stretching the law, and they would soon be old enough to become a consul, either of them or both together as partners. Not all of Tiberius' clients and legacy-hunters were idle parasites. Some were spies. The Exile hardly made a move that was not reported to Julia, Gaius, and Lucius. And not all their hangers-on were quite idle, either; one of Gaius' clients offered to go to Rhodes and murder Tiberius if that was his master's pleasure.

The struggle was disturbing, and Augustus tried to stay outside it. He did not want to see Tiberius murdered, but neither did he want to see him back in Rome. He wanted things to stay as they were. He had given Tiberius permission to go to Rhodes, when Tiberius spleenfully demanded it; let him stay there; Augustus would not allow him to return. Augustus wanted no one about him that he could not rely on, and besides his feelings were hurt and there were more important things to do.

All the outposts of Empire needed to be governed, and Augustus had to appoint governors, watch them, replace them —and, often enough, punish them. There were constant little border squabbles and minor tribal insurrections, and Augustus had to see that they never got big enough to matter. There were religious duties to fulfill. Augustus' old ally and later enemy, Lepidus, had died; Augustus would not take away from him his office as Chief Pontiff of the Roman state religion while he lived, but after he died Augustus immediately assumed the job; he could not afford to give it to another— it was too important.

And Rome itself needed a constant clucking attendance. Romans
would
do things that threatened the stability of the state. Augustus had already passed laws against their wicked extravagant spending and their adulterous folly. Now he had the problem of slavery to consider.

It was not the institution of slavery that worried Augustus— that was perfectly right and proper—it was what was happening to Rome. Slaves were sometimes freed, in spite of everything. As freedmen, they had certain civil rights, even Parthians and Gauls and Greeks, even Jews and Egyptians, even the black litter-bearers and the brown Arabians. They were mongreiizing the pure Roman blood! It was not so long ago that even Italians from less than fifty miles away were "new men" and distinctly honored to be allowed to call themselves Roman; now any rag-bag provincial or barbarian might spend a few decades in slavery and thus—on being freed—become the equal of a true-born son of Rome.

It was a disgrace, and Augustus devised a law—the
Lex fufina canina,
it was called. Let this helter-skelter freeing of slaves he stopped, or at least kept within bounds. A master who owned two slaves was forbidden to free more than one of them. A master with a hundred slaves might free twenty-five. No master, no matter how many slaves he owned (and Augustus owned six thousand, remember; some rich farm owners possessed two or three times that), could free more than a hundred.

It was a satisfying law to Augustus and, unlike the sumptuary laws against extravagance, it could be enforced. He was well pleased. But he hardly had turned from solving one problem before he was faced with another.

The Tiberian party—Livia, Antonia and the others—had their backs to the wall. The libertine Julians made the very Forum ring with their revels. The poet Ovid published his
Arts
of
Lo
ve
—a manual of seduction and adultery—disgraceful! (Why, it was almost the equal in obscenity to Tiberius' favorite Elephantine Books.) Rome was a stench of shameful behavior.

For Julia had gone from bad to unspeakable.

Adultery was nothing new to her; she had cuckolded Tiberius a hundred times, and cuckolded Agrippa before him. Her affair with Sempronius Gracchus had already lasted through ten years and two husbands. Mark Antony's son, Antonius, was her lover; so was Appius Claudius and so was Scipio; so were half the handsome and wellborn males of Rome. She went farther. She slept with men whose names she did not know, and then with men who had no names. She rioted through the streets with her Inimitable Livers, and the women of the party hailed passers-by as though they were prostitutes, and it was a great lark when the passers-by took them off into an archway for a quick transaction. It was a lark; it became a habit. Every night, finally, Julia, daughter of the godlike Augustus, went to the assigned post of Rome's whoredom by the statue of Marsyas in the Forum, and practiced "every shamelessness"—says Seneca—"in the arms of the first pas
ser-by." A stench indeed. Yet th
e old Emperor obstinately refused to sniff.

They brought the smell directly under his nose. Livia found a way to secure proofs of Julia's misbehavior, and she displayed them to the Emperor.

He had to see it. He could not believe, but then he had to believe.

Worse, he had to act. It was his own
Lex Iu
lia de adulteriis coercendis,
the Julian Law of Adultery; an adulteress must be prosecuted—'by her husband (but Tiberius was far away in Rhodes!), and if not by her husband, then by her father. He had to obey his own law, particularly as he was informed that if he did not another Roman would.

Augustus had borne much, but he could not bear to have Julia's disgrace come at the hands of others; he called her before him and, in a tirade of reproaches and invective, he tried her, condemned her, and sentenced her. It should have been to death; that was
Lex Iulia.
Old Augustus did not have the heart for that. He banished her to an island—a tiny rock, really, hardly fit for life; its name was Pandateria.

Julia exiled!

It was what Tiberius had prayed for. But queerly it did not do for him what he had hoped. When his tribune's power ran out, Augustus refused to renew it; he begged to return to Rome, but Augustus said no. What could it mean? Was Augustus forever his enemy now? Had the Lady Livia lost all influence with her husband?