Augustus (45 page)

'And Rome's need is that he marry your daughter?'

'You are laughing at me, Livia. Very well, it's true. Rome does require that, because Rome requires stability when I am dead, and only a marriage between Julia and Tiberius can ensure that. There. What do you say?'

'What can I say? You accuse me of mockery, but I'm a good Roman wife. I'm not going to dispute your words, especially as I've reached the same conclusion myself. It's true I don't fully share your certainty that Gaius and Lucius will continue your work - you always forget how differently and indulgently you have had them raised - but I fully realize that dynastic marriages are necessary. I can see that, Agrippa being dead, Vipsania is of no account, and I can see that a marriage between Tiberius and Julia is the best way of securing the future for the family and for Rome. But don't expect me to be delighted. On the contrary. I feel like Volumnia, and I fully expect Tiberius to greet me with Coriolanus' words, "Mother, you have saved Rome, but you have destroyed your son . .

Livia had again put me in the wrong. She made it seem as if I was demanding a sacrifice from her son. Yet, once he had recovered from the unease which the ending of his marriage to Vipsania would cause him, surely he would appreciate the glittering prospect I was holding out. He was, after all, being invited to succeed Agrippa as the second man in the Republic, and to demonstrate this, I arranged, even before his marriage to Julia, that he be invested with the tribunician power for a period of ten years. Furthermore, he could not fail to be gratified by the confidence shown in him, not only by me, but also by the Senate and the Roman People. Finally, was not Julia the most desirable match in Rome, not only beautiful but brilliant, the mother of children to whom it was an honour to be asked to serve as guardian?

Yet Tiberius sulked. He tried at first to refuse the honour, saying he was unworthy of it. That irritated me, as false humility always does, and I snapped that there should be an end to it. When he still protested, I told him that he was insulting my daughter, myself and Rome. Not so, he said, he respected all, but Vipsania was his wife and he loved her. I told him that was fustian, and when he received this rebuke in silence, I quite lost my temper (a rare happening of which I was subsequently ashamed) and told him he was so much dung stuffed into a toga. Eventually, I had to get his mother to speak to him. Tell him,' I said, 'that he can either do my will, or I will see to it that he is stripped of his offices and responsibilities, and banished to a remote island in the Mediterranean.'

'I wouldn't say that,' she said, 'Tiberius has always had a taste for islands. He has often said he can imagine nothing more agreeable than an island retreat.'

'Has he indeed? You can assure him there would be nothing agreeable about the one I would send him to.'

The fact is, Tiberius, for all his virtues, has always been stubborn as a mule. There are times when he behaves with as much intelligence as a beetroot, and I knew very well that he was taking a perverse pleasure in defying me. Fortunately, Livia saw that my mind was set, and talked persuasively to her son. I don't know what she said, for I thought it wiser not to enquire, but it was effective. Tiberius returned much chastened, prepared, though sullenly, to do my will.

Yet that wasn't the end of the matter. Incredible though it is to relate, Julia now dug her heels in and refused point-blank. She wouldn't marry Tiberius if he was the last man on earth, she told me. By now my patience was, understandably, near breaking-point. I told her I had loved no one as much as she, that I had always been proud of her, and asked her if this was my reward. 'A fine return for my devotion,' I cried. 'Well, young woman, if you are determined to prove yourself an undutiful daughter, I can only conclude that you are an equally unloving mother. I propose to you a marriage which will safeguard your sons' future after I am dead - and that may happen any day now. I wonder indeed that it hasn't in the face of this obstinate defiance - and you refuse it. Why? Because you want to be free to whore with every loose-living young spark in Rome? Is that why? Very well, the boys are not going to be contaminated and corrupted like that - you have a clear choice, young woman. Marry Tiberius, as I tell you to, or prepare to be separated from your children and exiled to some remote spot. And be sure I'll choose a climate that will cool your ardour.' Whereupon she screamed that I had never loved her, that I only pretended to, that I had made her the victim of my insane ambition, that I had chosen her husbands to please myself, and that she wished she was dead. There was a good deal of nonsense in the same vein, but I could see that my ultimatum had fazed her. Even so, I cannot be certain that she would have complied if she had not learned of Tiberius' own reluctance. She took that as a challenge of course. How dare he not wish to marry her?

So, in the end, both consented. The necessary marriage took place. It was not altogether a happy occasion, for I was dismayed by the selfishness and unreasonableness both had displayed. I had only had their best interests at heart, and I regretted having been compelled to employ such means of persuasion. I knew they were unworthy, and accordingly I felt the resentment one always experiences towards those who have forced one to behave in a shabby fashion. Nevertheless, the marriage accomplished, I knew I had done what was right for Rome and the boys.

Yet even this was not the end of the matter. A few months after the wedding it was reported to me that Tiberius and Vipsania had encountered each other at a reception. The General, I was told, couldn't take his eyes off his former wife; his gaze followed her round the room with a pathetic ardour. That night, and for two days afterwards, Rome's greatest general surrendered himself completely to Bacchus. Eventually, Livia had to order all wine to be removed from his rooms, and herself took over the supervision of his recovery. He was pale and shaking when I next saw him, declined to meet my eyes (his own were bloodshot), shuffled his feet, and muttered sullen replies to my questions.

Clearly such an encounter could not be permitted to recur. I went to see Vipsania myself, and was pleased to find that she received me with a very proper sense of her own dignity. She made no complaint. I assured her of my continued respect, but indicated that, for reasons which it was unnecessary to elaborate, I had decided that she could no longer live in Rome. I asked her which of her father's many estates pleased her most. She named one in the Sabine Hills some fifty miles from Rome. It was perhaps too close to the city to be ideal, but at least Tiberius had no property there. Agrippa had of course left the estate to me and I was happy to make it over to his daughter, along with another in Greece. I told her it would please me if she would retire to one or other of these properties and divide her life between them. I promised that I would supply her with a handsome income, and I even made over to her part of Agrippa's capital. She was a sensible woman - I had always admired her good sense - and set herself to create a pleasing life within these confines.

It had been a difficult business to negotiate. I was pleased when it was over and settled. It never occurred to me that I had made a mistake. Certainly I had acted in a manner that disturbed and even pained the three people involved, but I was confident that, when things had settled down, they would realize that I had been acting for their best interests as well as Rome's. They could see after all that I had derived no personal advantage from what I had arranged. And they were all sensible people, capable of corning to terms with the changed situation. Moreover, it was a comfort to know that Livia and I had acted in concert. It was she who had finally persuaded Tiberius that he should fall in with my plans.

Apart from that one occasion when he caught sight of Vipsania and lost control of himself, he gave no indication that he had reservations or regrets. He resumed his duties with his former efficiency. His brother Drusus was doing great things in the far north, and in the year of Agrippa's death reached the river Weser, having cut a canal between the Rhine and Zuyder Zee to facilitate the supply of his troops. Tiberius' task still lay in Dalmatia and on the Danube frontier. It was demanding work, hard slogging, requiring close attention to detail, nothing glamorous about it, well-suited to his temper. No man could have done it better. Let me say this clearly, for I am well aware that I have been accused of injustice to Tiberius, and that events have been so misconstrued as to suggest that there was ill-feeling between us. That was nonsense. The proof is that I gave him my daughter in marriage. Anyone who doubts that as evidence of my high regard for Tiberius should consider how I esteemed her first two husbands.

Julia accompanied him to Dalmatia. It was good for her to get away from the frivolities of the city and to be reminded of the real unremitting work of Empire. To wake in camp, to the rattle of harness and the champing of horses, to feel the cold nip one's fingers and see the rime-encrusted flaps of the tent glitter in the morning sunshine, or feel the chill of river-mists penetrate one's bones, to see the flies swarm round the horses in July heat, and to be jolted miles in cumbersome baggage-wagons -these are the experiences, unremarkable in themselves, yet real and demanding, that the city fops Julia had made her friends have never known. I am a man who has seen enough war to prize the blessings of peace, but I can never forget that Rome's greatness depends on the army. The meaning of Empire is certainly to be tasted in the simplicity and order of rural Italy, but it is something which cannot be grasped by one ignorant of the harsh realities of the frontier camps.

A child was born to them after eighteen months of marriage, but lived little more than a week. It was the Gods' will that the little boy be taken from us, but I wept, for the death of a child is a frightful thing and I feared its effect on Julia and her husband.

Death began to absorb too great a part of my thoughts. I was in my middle fifties, and, though my own health remained good, and was indeed, thanks to the Gods and Antonius Musa, better than it had been in my youth, I could hardly fail to be aware that I was now old. The unveiling of the Altar of Peace seemed to me my apotheosis. It represented the sum of my accomplishment and a statement of my vision of Rome. The frieze round the altar shows me and my family on our way to sacrifice in the Field of Mars. I look on the figures now with sadness as well as pride: so many memories, so many regrets. Another carving displays Italy as Mother Earth, the source, provider, guarantor and witness of the prosperity I had enabled our people to recover. Aeneas too is there, sacrificing a pregnant sow on the site of Alba Longa, Rome's mother city.

I summoned all the family to the unveiling. Only Drusus was absent, still campaigning in Germany. The sky was cerulean, the sun intense.

We proceeded on foot down from the Palatine, along the Sacred Way, round the base of the Capitol, all the time through throngs of the happy and sweaty crowd. The loudest cheers were reserved for my boys, Gaius and Lucius, who, having no known foibles, were free from the affectionate ribaldry directed at Tiberius and myself by veterans who had served under us. But there was another reason for the cheers which greeted the boys: Gaius and Lucius were recognized by all as the hope for the future; they would themselves provide and guarantee Rome's continued victory and the lasting peace. Their eyes shone as brightly as the sun as they delighted in their reception; it was in that day and hour that they first tasted glory.

Celebrations continued for several days in the city, but our own were cut abruptly short. News was brought from the north that, in returning from his campaigning, Drusus had suffered a severe fall in a river crossing. He had caught a fever and was gravely ill. Livia's grief and alarm were terrible to see; she snatched Drusus' wife Antonia to her bosom, and I saw what I had never seen in our thirty years of marriage, tears spring into her eyes, and run unrestrained by pride down her cheeks, which were themselves pale. Horrified at this sight, I knew there was nothing I could do to comfort her, but called Tiberius to me. I told him to ride at once, with no ceremony or delay, to his brother's bedside.

'As soon as you are there, write to us, that we may have some reliable knowledge. I have never seen your mother so afflicted.'

The letter from Tiberius was brief indeed:

I arrived here to find my poor brother barely conscious. He recognized me, commended his children to me, expressed his love and gratitude to his mother and yourself, and died before nightfall. It was as if he had been waiting my arrival in order to die. It seems that his horse slipped in the river, and fell on top of him, crushing his ribs and breaking a thigh. Men have survived worse injuries, but it is the will of the Gods. I shall accompany the body to Rome.

I pictured Tiberius tramping by the side of the bier, down the dusty roads of Gaul, into the high Alpine passes, cool even in September noon, descending to the rich plain of the Po valley, skirting the Apennines, and at last coming in sight of the city.

The stamp and shuffle of the march, the creak of the wagons and the long silence in his heart. 'We are the Gods' sport,' I had heard Tiberius say. Would he not believe that even more thoroughly now?

As for me, I wept for Drusus, but no tears of mine could assuage his mother's grief. A mother's love for her son is something more profound than any other love between man and woman. There is no pride of conquest in it. And Drusus had been a warm and loving son.