Augustus (38 page)

'Of course,' she said, 'it is no great match in terms of birth, but a Claudian can elevate any connection. Besides, she's a sweet well-behaved girl. Very affectionate and sensible. I've quite taken to her.'

On reflection, I understood that she thought the marriage would secure Tiberius' position if Agrippa survived me. He would feel obliged to promote his daughter's husband. At the time Livia believed too that Julia could have no children.

A long letter to-day from Tiberius on the banks of the Rhine:

All is quiet, Father. The Germans attempted a raid last week. We gave them a bloody nose, and drove them back in confusion. Some of our young officers were eager to pursue them, and two were quite insubordinate when I ordered them on no account to do so. I have no doubt they think ill of me, and probably even consider me an old woman. (Few have much experience of how tough old women can be.) I have however made orders absolutely unequivocal. I will permit no forces to advance more than five miles beyond our lines.

I have been pondering deeply on the talks we had when I was last in Rome. I am glad that we are in complete agreement that the Empire is large enough and that we have entered on a period of consolidation which may well last two generations. There is nothing to be gained from annexing the gloomy and unproductive forests of Germany, and I must say that my observations gathered after many years of campaigning on our frontiers have convinced me that the Germans, unlike the inhabitants of Illyria or Thrace, are fundamentally unsuited to civilized life. There is therefore nothing to be gained from trying to incorporate them in the Empire. They are by nature savage. They worship gods as vile as can be imagined, and they have neither gift for urban life nor interest in it. Moreover, they barely cultivate the earth.

If it were feasible, I would lay waste a wide swathe of southern Germany, burning the forests for a hundred miles beyond the frontier, and so creating a depopulated zone, which would act as a sanitary cordon between the Empire and barbarism . . .

I repeat: it is my considered judgement that nothing is to be gained from adventurism on the northern frontier. Those who advocate an expansionist policy are fired by the ardour of ignorant and ill-judging youth . . .

(He means his nephew, Germanicus, of course. The young boy has charm and I love him, but this time I am on the same side as Tiberius. Even if I had doubts, his last paragraph would still them . . . )

Yesterday something remarkable happened. A cry went up that a body of men had been spied debouching from the forest. Naturally the alarm was raised, but it soon became evident that it was only a small band. Stragglers, we assumed, or perhaps a fragment of a tribe which had suffered in one of the petty wars that are always breaking out between the various Germanic tribes, and who were now approaching our defences in search of sanctuary. I at once resolved that they should not be admitted, since past experience has shown that Germans invariably become bored with civilized living very quickly, and are then a disruptive nuisance. I therefore despatched a cohort with orders to drive them back into the forest. Imagine my surprise when I learned that they were in fact bringing them in. I went into the camp to upbraid those responsible for disobeying my orders, only to be met with a sight that aroused pity and horror, for these refugees were not Germans but a score of survivors from Varus' legions. They had in fact been prisoners who had escaped, and you never saw such a miserable crowd, or heard such horrors. Their account of their treatment chilled the blood. I say treatment, but maltreatment would be the right word. A dozen of them had had their tongues torn out, simply for sport the others said, though one legionary, an Italian from Calabria, told a horrible story of how some of their barbarian captors had announced that they wished to learn to speak Latin, and believed that they could do so by cutting out and eating the tongues of our soldiers. Have you ever heard anything so disgusting? They actually did so. And yet some people say you can civilize the Germans. I ask you.

You will be glad to know that these poor men have been treated honourably by us, and given every comfort. I have however ordered that they be escorted from the army as soon as they are fit to travel. They should be settled in a colony of veterans. It is undesirable to keep them near the frontier, because, though on the one hand one wants our men to have a dislike of the Germans and even to feel slightly apprehensive of them, sufficiently so to deter adventurism, one doesn't on the other hand want them to develop an unhealthy fear of the enemy. It occurs to me however that you may wish to receive them in Rome, that you may honour their sufferings endured on behalf of the Republic. I should be grateful if you could let me know as soon as possible whether this is so.

I trust, sir, that you enjoy good health. Please convey my dutiful sentiments to my mother. Tiberius.

I recoiled from his suggestion. I have always hated dwarfs and physical freaks, and the thought of meeting these unfortunate mutilated men made me feel sick. I wrote at once telling Tiberius they should be settled in a colony near Mantua, and assuring him that I would supply money from my private treasury to defray all expenses and establish them in a new life with ample pensions. I concluded my letter with these words:

Your campaigns of last summer, dear Tiberius, deserve all the praise I can muster. No other man alive could have conducted them as capably, in the face of so many difficulties and the war-weariness and low morale of the troops under your command. Everyone praises you, and what Ennius said of Quintus Fabius Cunctator, who saved Rome from Hannibal, may be applied to you: 'Alone he saved us by his watchful eye . . .' Do not neglect your health, my son. If you were to fall ill, I can't answer for the effect of such news on your mother and myself, and, what is of supreme public importance, the whole Fatherland would be endangered by uncertainty about its leadership. You kindly ask for my health. It matters little now compared to yours. I pray daily that the Gods keep you safe, if they have not taken an utter aversion to our dear Rome . . .

What more could I write to convince Tiberius that I need him, that Rome needs him? Yet how little I once thought to write such words to Livia's son . . .

I have been unsettled though by his news of the survivors. I sent therefore to ask if there was any news of the little girl who had danced by the line of march. Do they think my request that she be found but a senile whim? I have been unable to concentrate on work since I dictated my letter to Tiberius and scrawled the last words in my own hand.

Agrippa was still in the East when I decided he should marry Julia. I wrote to him telling him of what I intended. It would of course be necessary for him to divorce Attica, but her father was long dead, and Agrippa had secured his millions. He could easily afford to make a substantial settlement, and it might well be that Attica, like many middle-aged ladies, would be happy to be freed from the marriage bond. I have observed often how easily they can adapt to single status, provided the financial arrangements are satisfactory. And why not? Who would not prefer to have only self to please? Moreover, I was certain that Attica would be appeased by the honour proposed for her daughter Vipsania. After all, it is still something for the granddaughter of a mere banker (however many times over he may be a millionaire) to marry a Claudian. There are those obscurantists who sneer at such social elevation; nothing is more necessary than that it take place, and that there should be a certain fluidity in the social order.

I am told that Agrippa was flabbergasted by my invitation, and even went so far as to ask his staff whether they thought it was some sort of plot. He even had my letter scrutinized by his secretaries in case it was a forgery, though I had written to him in my own hand which he had known for years. Of course when he was finally convinced that the offer was genuine, he was delighted. Julia was after all intensely desirable as well as being my daughter.

She was intelligent enough too to realize that her objections to the marriage could be of no avail, and so to put a good face on her acceptance. And of course though Agrippa was hardly the sort of young man in whom she delighted, he was a hero. He was commanding, brave, dignified and surprisingly epigamic, as Livia pointed out. We agreed that Julia would benefit from being deprived of the company of the epicene young men who thronged her apartments; and certainly, for a time, they were scared off by Agrippa.

As for me, I basked in the achievement of the marriage. I owed much to Agrippa and was delighted to pay my debt in this way. The knowledge that he was one of the family added to my security, and I was pleased to see how his influence brought stability to my beloved daughter's character and conduct. Best of all, she soon proved that the fear that she could bear no children was unfounded. Four were born in the years of their marriage, and a fifth, the unfortunate Agrippa Postumus, six months after his father died. The two eldest, Gaius and Lucius, were to be the joys of my life.

It was pleasant too to see how Vipsania made Tiberius more conversable, and eased his stiff and withdrawn manner.

FIVE

The security of the Empire depends on two things: ordered liberty at home and the inviolability of the frontiers. It has been my life's work to establish both, and maintain them. Only two frontiers are in fact insecure: the northern and the eastern, which latter marches with the Parthian Empire. In central Europe my generals, especially Tiberius, have at last made the Danube a line of safe defence. We have met with less success in Germany, and as that exchange of letters with Tiberius, which I quoted in the last chapter, shows, I have concluded that there is little to be gained from pushing forward to the River Elbe as I once intended. I confess that to have been a failure of judgement, and, though I do not entirely share Tiberius' gloomy scorn for the Germans (being of the opinion that even these ferocious tribes are not altogether insusceptible to the ordered charms of civilized life), yet I bequeath this advice to those who will have authority in the Republic: Rome is a Mediterranean power, and further expansion to the north is dangerous, unprofitable and immaterial to our true interests.

The East however is a different matter. We are there confronted, not with hordes of barbarians, loosely organized in tribal confederations that are inconstant as water, but with a great Empire. If we are to believe the historians the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates are the very seed-bed of civilized life, older even than Egypt. Cities were known there before Troy was founded. Even the Jews trace their descent from one Abraham who came, they say, from Ur in the Chaldees. A succession of Empires has held sway in these river valleys, rich in crops. Every schoolboy knows of the Empire of the Persians which tried to conquer Greece and which it required the genius of Alexander to subdue.

That Empire has been replaced by the Parthians, and their politics are a complicated business. I cannot do better here than to reproduce, with tears in my eyes, a memorandum which I wrote for my beloved Gaius when I appointed him to an Eastern Command:

My dear boy, it is a great task I have set you, for I have asked you to deal with peoples whose way of life is very different from ours, the like of which you have never encountered. I am therefore going to supply you with as much background information as possible. Always remember: knowledge is power. It is necessary to study closely whatever and whomever you have to deal with.

You have read of course of the old Persian Empire. The Parthians, who conquered it, were originally savage nomads, horsemen who swooped down on the rich cities from the wind-swept plains of remotest Asia. They found there a great bureaucracy, which they hardly understood, but which they were wise enough not to destroy. Though they remain in their manner of warfare what their ancestors were, yet they have added oriental refinement to their barbaric splendour; and the combination is formidable. They have even assimilated something of Greek civilization - that potent brew which corrupts and poisons even while it enlightens and invigorates. Do not underestimate them therefore.

Their Empire has never approached what we Romans understand by a Civil State, for liberty is unknown there, and the will of the ruler is all-powerful. The only check on it is his need to conciliate the nobility, lest they become so disaffected that they resort to assassination or rebellion. It is therefore a tyranny, for one means by which you can identify a tyranny is by asking whether a ruler is fettered by law or immemorial custom, or whether there exists any legal authority independent of his. We of course have such authority in Rome, for our Government depends on the will of the Senate and the Roman People. As you know, my authority derives thence. When I restored the Republic, I was entrusted with its care and management by my fellow-senators. They have no such independent authority in the Parthian Empire and therefore we are right to consider it a mere tyranny. Remember this distinction, and ponder the implications, dear boy.

Don't forget however that this Empire is formidable. It represents a great military force. Fortunately, for much of its frontier, it is divided from us by the torrid wastes of a great desert, that desert across which the vainglorious millionaire, Marcus Crassus, who was so eager to emulate his fellow-triumvirs, Pompey and Caesar, marched his legions, leaden-footed and faint from thirst, to the carnage of Carrhae. Crassus should be a warning to all Roman generals. 'What a fool!' you will say, and you will be right . . . Did he think his fortune proved that the Gods loved him? Yet all legend and history teach us of the Gods' jealousy. Hubris and Nemesis - all men of power should dwell on these words - but the wretched Crassus was too busy with his Account Books to read the Poets.

The existence of the desert means that the Parthians (who are wiser than Crassus) hardly constitute a threat on the southern marches of our Empire; the desert lies between us, horrid, life-denying, trackless sands, godless waste - it makes me shudder to think of it. The northern fringe is a different matter. There, Armenia juts into the Parthian Empire, like a peninsula, and invites attack. Such invasion, if successful, would open the road to the Asiatic heartland so vital to us: Cappadocia, Bithynia, Lycia would all be exposed, and the Parthians would be established on the shores of the Black Sea, even threatening the Mediterranean.