I Am Livia (11 page)

On the day when we learned the outcome of the Battle of Philippi, grief settled in my heart that would never leave entirely; I would carry it until the day of my own death. And there was guilt also
.
W
hen I urged my husband to ally himself with Antony, I betrayed my father. I could argue that I had not changed his fate one iota. But I had done what he never would have: chosen safety over honor.

Mother, Secunda, and I put on the white garb of women’s mourning, but we did not have Father’s body to tend and could not even expect it would be treated with honor by the victors. That deepened our grief.

When word of Philippi’s aftermath trickled back to Rome and came to Tiberius Nero’s ears, I insisted on knowing what was happening, however awful it might be. I learned that after the battle, Caesar Octavianus, still so sick he could barely walk, sat in a curule chair of office and, with Antony, judged those who had surrendered. Every one of Julius Caesar’s assassins who was taken alive was executed. No matter how they pleaded for mercy, young Caesar always spoke the same words: “You must die.” He and Antony looked on as prisoners were thrown on the ground and decapitated.

That Caesar wanted to put all his “father’s” assassins to death surprised no one. The savagery of his manner was the shock. One poor man begged Caesar to at least allow him a decent burial. Caesar said, “Take that up with the crows.”

The bodies of the dead were burned in piles like the carcasses of foundered cattle.

Young Caesar ordered one of his own bodyguards, a veteran of Julius Caesar’s Gallic wars, to cut Brutus’s head from the corpse. On his instruction, this soldier galloped to Rome, carrying the head, stopping only to change horses.
When he reached the city, the veteran rode his horse into the Forum, straight up to the statue of Julius Caesar that had been erected on young Caesar’s order. “See this vengeance, O gods!” he shouted. He threw the head down at the statue’s feet.

Now when I remembered the attraction I had felt for Caesar Octavianus, I recoiled. But strangely enough, I still could not help putting myself in his place. I felt in my viscera what Caesar must have felt, when his body failed him just before the great battle to avenge the man he called Father. He saw himself transformed again into the boy he had been, too sickly to hope to play a man’s role in the world. I imagined his unbearable humiliation. Perhaps this had helped to fuel the rage he displayed after the battle.

If he meant for men to call him merciless rather than say he was a weakling, he managed that very well. He performed only one clement act. Tiberius Nero came rushing home to bring me the news. Seeing my stricken face—what could I expect but word of another enormity?—he blurted, “No, for once I bring you some comfort. Truly. An unbelievable thing has happened—but my source is irreproachable.”

I sat in my sewing room, where, with the heart to do almost nothing, I accomplished little work these days. I slipped my needle into the cloth for a tiny tunic I had been trying to make for my coming child. “What has happened?”

“Caesar gave your father a funeral.”

I rose. “Wha
t
?”

“He gave him a perfectly proper military funeral, with sacrifices and incense, and legions lined up in rows to do him honor. He lit his funeral pyre himself.”

“Did he say why he treated my father differently?”

Tiberius Nero shook his head.

Caesar had informed me that I could expect repayment of a debt.
When he avenged his “father,” he demonstrated to all Rome that he paid back debts with interest. I was sure he gave Father a funeral for my sake. This did not make me think well of him. It was just knowledge I could not escape.

“I heard Caesar has recovered from his illness,”
Tiberius Nero said. “What a pity, eh?”

“A pity,” I echoed.

I wondered what had become of Marcus Brutus’s wife, Portia. She had ardently espoused the Republican cause and encouraged her husband in the course he had taken. The day after we heard news of my father’s funeral, word came of her fate. Often when a man is impelled by honor to take his own life, his wife will do the same. And so Portia did, most painfully, jamming a hot coal down her throat.
When I heard of this, fear tugged at me.
What if my mother should also resolve to die?

What anchored Mother to life was my pregnancy. She was aware, as all women are, that first births are very dangerous. As the moment for my baby’s birth approached, Mother did not treat me with any new warmth. But she hovered over me as she never had before, prepared special foods that were supposed to be particularly nourishing for women facing childbirth, and hung an amulet round my neck that she had worn when she gave birth to her children.

I felt the first pangs of labor early in the morning a fortnight after I heard the news of my father’s death
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W
hat I learned on the birthing chair was this: my body’s capacity for pain. The midwife, Mother, and Secunda all stayed in the room with me. They wiped my face with cool water, and they murmured encouraging words. But they could not ease my agony or make the baby come forth. I did not call on Diana or any other god or goddess; they all seemed so far off. I felt I had only my own strength to rely on as I pushed and pushed, gripping the arms of the mahogany chair. I knew if I won the struggle I would live, and my son would live. Otherwise we would both die.

When the day had waned and come again, sunlight slanting in through the bedchamber windows, and still the baby had not been born, I saw grave looks on my mother’s and the midwife’s faces. As for Secunda, she had already begun to cry.

I was beginning to lose my battle, that was plain. Something in me revolted at this thought. I would not lose.
Would not
. I said to myself that when the sharpest pains came again I would push with all my might, while I still had strength left to make this attempt, push and push and push and hold back nothing, and not cease until the baby was born. Live or die: I would stake everything on one toss of the dice. As soon as the pain came, I did just as I resolved, biting on the strip of leather the wet nurse had given me, refusing to scream. I felt my insides being torn asunder. I did not know I had won my battle until I heard the midwife cry, “A son! And he is perfect!”

What more honored estate can there be for a woman in this world than to be mother to a son? But I was too exhausted to feel triumphant.

Later, I held my son in my arms and counted his fingers, almost suspiciously. Five on each hand. I told myself that proved he was perfect, just as the midwife had said. They say every child looks beautiful to his own mother, but the truth is, he did not seem beautiful to me. His tiny, wrinkled red face reminded me of a peevish little old man. Yet I loved him.

We hired a woman named Rubria, whose own baby had died, to serve as wet nurse for the child. Right after the birth, of course, the midwife had laid the swaddled baby at Tiberius Nero’s feet, and he—exultant—had lifted it in his arms, signifying his decision to rear, rather than expose it. I have never known a wealthy father to cast out of doors a healthy, legitimate child, even a girl.

Nine days after the birth, as custom required, we held a naming ceremony for the baby. The celebration was a small one, since Father was so recently dead. There sat Mother, Secunda, and I in our white mourning clothes, trying to balance grief and happiness. Tiberius Nero hung a child’s protective amulet—a bulla—on the baby’s cradle. Our guests applauded, which made the baby wake up and wail. I rocked him, but could not soothe him. Finally, Mother lifted him, and little Tiberius Claudius Nero quieted in her arms.

Mother put the baby back in the cradle. “You feel quite well now, don’t you, Livia? No signs of fever? No weakness?”

“Mother, I’m fine.”

She brushed my hair back from my face. “Always so messy. Ah well, life goes on.”

I went to bed rather late that night and also slept late, long after Tiberius Nero and the rest of the household were up. A knock on the bedchamber door roused me. I opened it to find Antiope, the maid who waited on my mother, looking anxious. She said she had repeatedly knocked on the door of Mother’s bedchamber and was concerned that Mother did not answer.

I raced to Mother’s bedchamber. Before I threw the door open, I suspected what awaited me there. Mother lay across her bed, dressed just as she had been for yesterday’s ceremony. Her head rested on a pillow. Her legs were crossed at the ankles. The folds of her stola were carefully arranged. There was a smear of yellow across her lips, and in her hand she clutched the kind of vial used to hold expensive perfume. Her eyes, wide open, gawked at the ceiling.

A waxed tablet with writing on it lay on the stool at the foot of her bed. I snatched it up with desperate eagerness, as if words could somehow make everything right.

Livia, I have gone to join your father. The loss of our property has played only a minor part in my decision. Certainly I have no desire to be a burden to you or your husband. But I have chosen this course because it pays the greatest honor to your father and our marriage. I am sure you have enough daughterly reverence that you would not dream of questioning the rightness of my action.

Secunda is to get my emerald necklace, which I promised her; you may divide the rest of my jewelry with her as you think just.

I forbid you to follow my example, and hope I need not remind you of your responsibilities to your husband and your son.

I had received the news of my father’s death calmly; Mother was there to order me to be calm. She was not here now. I sank down on my knees, howled like an animal, and tore at my clothes.

Tiberius Nero came running. It was a long time before he could get me up on my feet. He made me down a sleeping draught, and I soon fell into a stupor. I think my husband was afraid that if he did not give me the draught I would do myself harm.

D
ecember is the most joyous month of the year, the time of the Saturnalia, of games and feasting, and at the end of the month, new year’s presents. Fresh grief at this time walls you off from everyone
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W
ith so many people dead in the proscriptions and in battle, the revels that year had a forced quality, but one still heard music in the streets and smelled honey cakes and spiced wine. When I had to go anywhere, I kept the curtains of my litter closed. Young as I was, I did not know that mourning passes, and was as defenseless before grief as the young usually are.

I did not take much pleasure even in my son. I felt terrified if he so much as sneezed.
What if I lost him as I had lost my parents?

Soon it was time for me to take up my duties as a wife again. They were less onerous than they had once been. Tiberius Nero’s ardor in the bedchamber had lessened. I suspected that he began seeking other women during my pregnancy, and having fallen into this habit, he never stopped. For men of the nobility this was expected, conventional behavior. It still would have upset me, if I had loved him.

I no longer had the illusion that my marriage might help save the Republic. The Republic was quite dead. Antony, Lepidus, and Caesar had carved up the empire between them. Antony was in the east, Lepidus in North Africa, and Caesar remained in Italy.

Tiberius Nero was named a praetor. Lucius Antony stayed in Rome, having been chosen consul. People said that Lucius could almost be taken for his brother’s less competent and vital twin; he had the same tall, husky build and fleshy face as Mark Antony. He would frequently dine at my home, and then he and my husband would withdraw to confer for long hours.

One evening at dinner, I heard Lucius say something that terrified me. “That little swine Caesar wants to act like he’s the third Gracchi brother. It’s too much.” Looking intently at my husband, he added, “I’ve written to my brother that he can absolutely depend on you.”

“Of course he can,
”
T
iberius Nero hastened to say.

Caesar was almost never in the city of Rome, and he shared the governing of it with Antony’s men. His priority was to hold the loyalty of his soldiers, and so he was settling his veterans on small farms. Since the time of the Gracchi, it had been considered a great injustice for Roman soldiers to return from the wars to nothing. Their commander was expected to see to it that when they mustered out they got small plots of land.

Like the Gracchi, my father had loathed the latifundia, the great estates worked by slaves, which ate up so much Italian land. He said the latifundia owners often drove poor citizens off the land by foul, illegal means. If he approved of nothing else that Caesar did, he would approve of this—that he was going about Italy, breaking up latifundia so he could give his veterans small farms.

“What is Antony depending on you to do about Caesar and the latifundia?” An edge in my voice, I asked the question of my husband that night as we prepared for bed.

“There are legal matters that fall under my jurisdiction,” Tiberius Nero said. His duties as praetor were largely those of a judge.

“He wants you to rule in favor of the latifundia’s owners? Just to thwart Caesar?”

Tiberius Nero did not reply.

“He does, doesn’t he?” I gasped for breath as if all the air had drained out my lungs. “The question of land—it drips blood. It always has.” Strife in Italy had first started nearly a century ago over this very matter.

“Now, dear, calm yourself.”

The guttering candle on the table beside our bed flickered feebly. I could not see my husband’s face. “This is ruination.”

“It would be ruination for me not to do what Antony requires,” Tiberius Nero said. “I have no choice. Not if I want my head to stay attached to my neck. Do you think I like this business?”

“Caesar and his men won’t stand for this,” I said.

The carnage, the civil war, would all begin again. This present lull was only a brief holiday from the Roman habit of self-destruction. What made matters worse—what had me sick with despair—was that my husband’s allegiance, and therefore mine, had to be with Antony in a battle in which right and justice were with Caesar.

I wonder how many women from time immemorial have thought that if only women could rule the world it would be better than it is. Really, has any woman
not,
some time or other, thought tha
t
? Of course I thought it too. I believed women were unquestionably less bloodthirsty than men. Then I met Fulvia.

She was Mark Antony’s wife. Her husband, whom she was said to love passionately, had assumed control of the eastern empire, gone to Egypt, and fallen into the snares of Cleopatra. One might, as a woman, have sympathized with her if she had had a shred of decent human feeling. She did not.

When Tiberius Nero and I went to have dinner at her home, the mourning period for my father and mother had not yet elapsed, and I wore white. Fulvia looked me up and down and said, “Oh, you poor creature, you just lost your parents, didn’t you? What a pity they chose the wrong side.”

She was about forty years old, tall and full-busted. Her bright makeup was just this side of grotesque. I did not reply to her remark about my parents but returned her gaze steadily, while wishing her in the hottest corner of
Tartarus.

She ushered Tiberius Nero and me into her dining room. Murals depicting Dionysian revels adorned the walls. Her brother-in-law Lucius was already eating dinner, along with a raven-haired girl of ten or eleven.

“That slimy little beast has divorced her,” Fulvia informed me, when she saw me gazing at the child.

“Caesar?” I said.

“Who else do you think I mean? To think that the poor child lived with him for months on end,” Fulvia said.

“Lived with him?” I stared at her.

“Well, she lived in his house,” Fulvia said. “He didn’t touch her. He didn’t touch you, did he, Claudia?”

The girl shook her head. “He said I was too young.”

“The day after the divorce he married a relative of Sextus Pompey,” Fulvia told me. Sextus, the son of Julius Caesar’s great enemy, Pompey Magnus, was at that time gathering military support and preparing to seize Sicily. “Scribonia. She’s skinny and ugly and at least thirty-five years old. He’s desperate for Sextus’s help against Antony, you see. The coward. It won’t do him any good. I’m raising such a force in Italy that it will be simple—like that”—she snapped her fingers—“to obliterate him.”

“
You
are raising a military force?”

“Of course,” Fulvia said, and looked at me as if I were stupid.

Throughout dinner, it was embarrassing to hear Fulvia bark orders at Tiberius Nero and Lucius Antony. She acted as if the Roman government and Antony’s army in Italy were in her hands. Neither of the men dared to say no to her. Such was her force of will.

Fulvia never recruited as many troops as she hoped to, but it was not for lack of trying. And for month after month, she put pressure on Tiberius Nero to give legal rulings inimical to Caesar. Then, not content with this, she ordered her soldiers to harass Caesar’s veterans. Skirmishes were fought in which men died. Caesar could not control his veterans’ resulting fury. They demanded Caesar lead them against Fulvia and cursed him when he seemed to hesitate.

Fortune favored my husband and me. When Caesar and his veterans began their march on Rome, we heard about it early enough not to be trapped in the city.

We knew Tiberius Nero would have to flee. No one doubted that, as the man who had handed down judicial rulings as Fulvia had instructed, he would be torn limb from limb by Caesar’s troops when they took Rome.

On a sunny morning, I stood in the courtyard clutching my son in my arms as Tiberius Nero told me that Fulvia, Lucius Antony, and their supporters had decided to withdraw from Rome to Perusia. A small city a hundred miles away, it was highly fortified and could hold out for a long time against an attacking army.

“Livia, you and the baby must come to Perusia with me,” Tiberius Nero said. “Caesar hasn’t gone in for murdering women and children yet, but there’s always a first time—and besides, the gods alone know if his troops will obey him once they enter Rome.”

The risk of staying was too great. I held my son more tightly and buried my face in his curling dark hair. We were fortune’s playthings and might lose everything. But I promised myself that whatever happened, I would keep my child safe.

Perusia did not seem like a city at all to me but only a walled town, for it was tiny compared to Rome. Guards opened the city gates for us. Our cart drove down narrow streets to Perusia’s forum, an unimpressive square ringed by one-story brick buildings. It was filled with soldiers, armed and wearing breastplates and war helms. A runner had been sent from the gate to tell Lucius Antony of our arrival. He came through the press, smiling. “Welcome, my friend,” he said to Tiberius Nero. He looked at me. “I hope you and your child are no worse for the trip. I have a house prepared for you.”

The house that Lucius had commandeered for us stood not far from the forum. It had belonged to one of the city’s leading men, but when we entered and I glanced around the atrium, I was taken aback. There were a few old couches, a couple of plain oak tables, no frescoes on the walls, nothing costly or beautiful.

Tiberius Nero looked around somberly.

I felt I must keep up his spirits as well as my own. “This is better than I expected,” I said. “We can be very comfortable here.”