Tiberius (11 page)

I left him and entered into black night, choking with smoke, from which, it sometimes seems, I have never emerged. As I descended the slippery steps of his palace, I was accosted by a whore. I took her, in anger, like a goat, against a wall. I paid her ten times the fee she demanded.

"You must raise your price," I said to her, "for, since all value is destroyed, no measure of worth can survive and you may ask what you choose."

"Oh thank you, sir, I wish all my clients were gentlemen like yourself."

I did not leave my chamber for two days, but lay in sullen torpor, drowning myself in wine. When I received a message summoning me to the Princeps, I sent word that I was sick, and turned my face to the wall.

On the third day a letter came from my wife. I have it here now. It has never been parted from me, all these years . . .

Husband,

It is with a heavy heart that I write that word for the last time. Henceforth it must remain locked up in my grieving heart. I do not blame you, for I understand that you too are a victim, and that you too will suffer. I believe this because I am confident of the virtue of your love for me. And I do not even reproach you, my dear Tiberius, for having lacked the courage to break the news to me yourself. Why, I can imagine you protesting, should I be compelled to do the deed when it is not of my desiring? It is the certainty that you do not desire it which makes it possible for me to bear my sorrow.

My own life is, I now feel, well nigh ended, and I exist only for our son. Yet I cannot quite convince myself that even this is true, for it has been hinted that — of course — I shall be compensated with a new and respectable marriage. I do not want it, but since I do not want what is about to befall me either, what has indeed befallen me, I have no doubt I shall submit. I was brought up to do my duty, and this new departure will be presented to me as duty.

I hesitate to write more, lest my feelings betray me.

I would wish also to warn you. I shall not do so, because my judgment may be mistaken, because I am certain you will share my doubts, and because it would be both improper and unwise to say what I think. I will merely add that my father once remarked that to make Julia happy was work for a god, not a man.

You will, I know, continue to care lovingly for our son, though you will naturally be aware also of the new, and very great, responsibilities you have assumed . . .

Believe me, my dear Tiberius, ever your loving and devoted — but I no longer know how to sign myself . . .

I do not know why I have kept this letter, for I knew it by heart almost from the first. I turn it over in my mind, in self-laceration and for reassurance. It is both a dagger and a talisman.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this unholy episode was that I never discussed it with Augustus. He behaved to me in the weeks that followed with benevolence, respect and that evasiveness of which he was the supreme master. There were countless moments when it seemed as if he was about to broach the subject, others when it appeared that I had been granted an opening which would allow me to do so myself; yet nothing was said between us, till the eve of my wedding to Julia when he embraced me — almost without the involuntary shrinking which I had always sensed when he took me in his arms — and assured me of his love and confidence, assurance sweetened by his gift of a villa and estate at Ravello.

"At last," he said, "I can face the future without Agrippa."

But I had raged to my mother, stormed and pleaded. I had howled at the malignity of fortune which deprived me of what I chiefly valued. I had protested that if deprived of Vipsania I would be rendered unfit to prosecute my career. I swore that Livia's connivance in this brutality would destroy my love and respect for her herself. And, in the privacy of my mother's chamber, I cursed my stepfather who had made the world in which I was compelled to live.

She accused me of behaving like a spoiled child; and I was indeed spoiled, I was damaged.

She, my mother, had damaged me. I saw her at that moment, a lean woman with fading hair and a face that grew more chiselled every year, as if preparing itself to be preserved only in stone, and I saw her as one who had failed me, her son, by her subservience to her husband, by the subordination of her duty to me to his devouring ambition, and her ambition for him. Resentment filled me, tasting of bile. Even as I let bitterness fill my mouth, I knew my reaction was absurd. I knew that every man carries his own destiny with him, and that to blame my mother for my present predicament was as ridiculous as to blame winter for bringing snow to the mountains. I knew too that for a man of my age, for one who had achieved what I had, who had commanded armies and consigned men to death, to experience such resentment was contemptible. Indeed my resentment was as contemptible as my submission; yet I could not resist it.

I soon learned also not to despise myself for submitting. What else could I have done? I had already seen lives wither when men set themselves against Augustus. I have since seen how no considerations of affection, loyalty or decency can deflect him from a course which he has judged expedient or necessary. All men, yes, and all women too, exist for him ultimately as malleable objects: creatures whose lives may be deformed or cut off at his command. I told myself that if I had resisted, if I had opposed my will to his, it would have profited me nothing: I would have been cast into exile, Vipsania would still have been denied me, and my son Drusus' future would have been darkened. My acquiescence was my only means of protecting him.

I told myself this, and knew it to be true; yet still despised my weakness. To appease my troubled mind I transferred my self-contempt to a pervasive scorn for the degeneracy of our times, when, with the loss of our antique Republican virtue, even the nobility of Rome have become the despot's playthings. "O generation fit for slavery," I growled; and those who heard me, and shrank from my harsh speech, did not understand that I included myself among the slaves.

9

S
o we were married. The night before the wedding I sat late over the wine with my friend Gnaeus Piso, a man who has ever been ready to match me bottle for bottle. Piso, as a member of a family almost as distinguished as my own, would later be my colleague in the consulship. We shared more than a taste for good liquor, for, like me, he was a stern critic of the vices of our age, and yearned for the virtue of the free state. A realist however, he recognised that the great days were departed. He had - and indeed, I trust, still has — a talent for making the tart and pertinent observation which had pleased me from the first days of our acquaintance.

"Well, Tiberius," he said that night, "Heracles himself might shrink from the task thrust upon you."

"Heracles' own matrimonial history was unhappy."

"Most people would call you a lucky man, of course. She's not only the Princeps' daughter, but also the most beautiful and seductive woman in Rome."

"She was faithful, I think, to Agrippa."

Piso laughed.

"There's faithfulness and then there's fidelity," he said.

"What do you mean? It's unlike you to play with words."

"When you are faced with women like Julia, what else is there to do with them?"

"I don't understand you, and I think I am happy not to."

"Tiberius, we both know Julia. We have both known Julia. Don't forget that I was once on Marcellus' staff . . . and, old friend, when that pretty boy was alive, what were you to Julia? Can you control her now?"

I pushed the wine-flask in his direction.

"What would you advise?"

"I would advise you not to be in your present position. Seeing as you are, and there's no help for it, then there are only two things to be done. First, you must insist that she accompanies you to the armies, so that she is at least under your eye. Second, keep her in pig. A flighty woman can be anchored only in that way."

I swallowed my wine, and made a face.

"You're forgetting," I said, "that my mother was in just that condition when the Princeps seduced her."

"The situations," I continued, after a pause during which silence and uncertainty filled the room, "are not, of course, analogous. If my stepfather was not yet Princeps and Augustus, he was nevertheless triumvir. There is no one today with that glamour of power . . ."

"Yes, and Livia was already a woman celebrated for her virtue. As you say, the situations are not analogous . . ."

I had not seen Julia for more than two years, and we had held no communication concerning the decision made for our future. I had therefore no idea whether she approved the marriage. In recent years she had shown no sign of the desire she had felt for me when we were young, and I could not believe that I would have been her choice. Iullus Antonius was, of course, a liar, but the confidence with which he had spoken of Julia's feeling for him had been convincing. On the other hand, Julia had always disliked Vipsania and would be pleased to have triumphed over her. These reflections made me nervous, and my evening with Piso had left me ill at ease. I steadied myself with a jug of wine before the ceremony, and then, to ward off criticism from Livia, and perhaps Julia herself — though hers would rather take the form of mockery — I sweetened my breath with a handful of violet pastilles.

My mother summoned me to her apartments. I found her alone, which pleased me, for I had feared that my stepfather would be there too. Then I realised that he would be unwilling to confront me till the marriage had been celebrated: in case I dug my heels in. (He has often remarked on my resemblance to a mule: a poor joke in present circumstances, I thought.)

Livia kissed me on the forehead.

"This is a solemn moment for you, my son," she said.

"Mother, there's no need for dissimulation when we are alone. I take it we are alone - no spies concealed in waiting, no informers behind the screens?"

She snapped her fingers.

"There's no need to take that tone, Tiberius. I can see you are still displeased. Well, sulk if you must but I'm glad that you have the sense to go through with it. I was going to commend you on your sense of duty. Here, come and sit beside me and listen to what I have to say. What have you been eating? There's a nasty smell on your breath."

"Violet pastilles, Mother. My doctor recommends them for heartburn."

"I see. Well, that doesn't matter. You're not making some joke when you mention heartburn, are you?" "No, Mother."

"I've never liked your jokes. I don't understand them, but there's always been a cruel streak in your idea of humour. However, that's neither here nor there. But I wanted to speak to you before this marriage takes place, since I know you don't like it. Well, I confess I don't like it myself. Julia and I are opposites. That's all there is to it. I can't think of a single matter on which we have ever thought the same. Not even Augustus, for I love him for what he is and she only cares for him on account of what he has to give her. And now he is giving her you, my son, and I am not certain that that is what she wants. So I see trouble ahead . . ."

"In that case, Mother . . ."

"No, don't interrupt. You are wondering why in the end I have approved the marriage. I say in the end because whether you believe me or not — and you have never believed anything that ran counter to your ingrained opinions, I know that well — I have to tell you I opposed it as long as I could. I told Augustus Vipsania made you happy. I even admitted that I was jealous of her as mothers often are of their sons' wives. But
...
no good. The fact is that you are a sacrifice to reason of state. Your domestic happiness is being sacrificed to necessity. And necessity imposes its own rules. Julia must have a husband, and the boys must have a father, and her nature is such that it must be a man who is thoroughly admirable, honourable and reliable. That is why you have been compelled to act dishonourably towards Vipsania that you may act honourably in the interests of Rome. People like us cannot live by private impulses for we cannot live private lives."

"I understand that, Mother . . ." and I did. Political imperatives make sense to me. If that hadn't been true, I would have fought harder.

"I am only sorry," I said, "that it should have to be me . . ." "There was no one else . . ."

Was the same thought in both our minds? That Drusus could have been chosen? If so, I didn't raise the question. I had always understood that Drusus was different, that he would not be asked to make the same sacrifice of personal interest that was regularly demanded of me. Drusus was different. Everybody liked him. I was devoted to him myself. He was, to use a weak word, nice. But he was nice perhaps because he had never been emotionally challenged. Livia had kept her relationship with him a happy, sunny one. Augustus smiled when he appeared.

Besides, Drusus was married to Antonia, Octavia's daughter, and, even apart from my stepfather's feeling for his sister, her daughter was not expendable as my poor Vipsania was.