I Am Livia (34 page)

He believed these words when he spoke them. His thoughts were filled with plans for governing a land at peace.

W
e finally moved to the Palatine Hill. Our new house was just what I wanted it to be—not larger than an ordinary senator’s, nothing to excite malignant envy, but beautiful, with glorious murals on the walls, a huge study for Tavius to work in, and another study, almost as large, for me. On each side of our front door, Tavius ordered a laurel tree planted, symbols of victory.
We grew them from cuttings of a tree that had sprouted from the stem the hen had held in her beak when she fell from the eagle’s claws. Privately we gave the trees silly names, Pompo and Tatilla, and pretended they were a married couple. Out of war’s shadow, we were in the mood for such nonsense.

Tavius generously rewarded those who had served him well. The peasants who had rescued him when he was hunted by Sextus’s forces did handsomely. Maecenas gained a large estate in Sicily. But no one deserved more of
Tavius’s bounty than Agrippa, and no one received more. Extensive Sicilian holdings made him an extremely wealthy man.

I was present when Tavius told Agrippa he was to oversee a vast renovation of Rome’s aqueducts, sewers, and public buildings. Agrippa just nodded.

“You will be city aedile,”
Tavius said. “That’s the proper title, given what your new responsibilities will be.”

Agrippa nodded again. Titles did not matter to him. He began to ask questions of the most practical kind. How many buildings would be rebuil
t
? How extensive a sewer renovation did Tavius have in mind? He and Tavius were soon engrossed in a long, technical discussion.

Then Tavius said, “There will be a great new temple for all the gods, a Pantheon. You should put your name on it.
We’ll have ‘Marcus Agrippa built this’ carved in stone where everyone can see it. How will that be?”

“That will be fine.” Agrippa smiled. Then he went back to talking about drainage ducts.

“He will do everything I asked him to do,”
Tavius said to me later. “And watch—he’ll do it all superbly.”

I said I did not doubt it. Agrippa excelled in every practical art except, happily, political maneuvering. He was as faithful as a good hound. The thing was to keep him that way.

A few days later Tavius and I sat together in our large and lush new garden. “Do you know what Agrippa needs?” I said. “A wife.”

Tavius gave me a quizzical look.

“I know just the right one. She is rich, attractive, and well-born. And”—my eyes roamed across the garden, to where a slave was trimming the hedges so no branches stuck out—“she is personally loyal to me.”
The last thing I wanted was to see Agrippa marry some fool who would try to sway his allegiance.

“Who is this paragon?”

“Caecilia.”

“The one whose brother I pardoned?”

I nodded. Her husband had recently died and left her a young widow. Though frosty at our first meeting, she had become one of my dearest friends. And she was wise. She had seen men in her family destroyed by misplaced ambition; she would never urge any foolish course on her husband. Also, she had the discernment to look past Agrippa’s lowly pedigree to his true worth. “A highborn wife will give Agrippa the luster he needs,” I said.

Before long, they married. Both thought they had made a good bargain and were grateful to Tavius and me, just as I had hoped.

There are periods when life is so pleasant one can almost imagine the world is sun-dappled and safe. At this moment, everything I touched seemed golden. My new house was a short stroll from Tiberius Nero’s residence, so I lived close to my sons. Tiberius Nero had not remarried; people whispered that a slave girl he bought himself could pass for a twin of me at fifteen.
When I glimpsed her I did not see the resemblance, except that she had red hair. Be that as it may, Tiberius Nero treated me as a friend, and he was a reliable supporter to Tavius in the Senate. It pleased him that other senators deferred to him because of his ties to power.

No one ever lost by giving Tavius or me their loyalty, not the highest, not the lowest. I began a practice of setting free, after a time, each of the women who attended me personally; Pelia, who rose to a position of authority in my household, was the first of these. Rubria, of course, was freeborn. It frustrated me that she, to whom I owed a huge debt, wanted little I could give her. I rewarded her well in a material way for the care she gave my sons. She thanked me, but I noted her basic indifference. Then one day she said to me, quite shyly, “Do you know who Marcus Ortho is?”

We sat in the courtyard of Tiberius Nero’s house. My sons, whom I had come to see, were wrestling on the ground like lion cubs. I would have put a stop to it if I had feared little Drusus would get hurt. But Tiberius, who was big for his five years and could be rough with boys his own age, always took care not to injure his brother.

“Marcus Ortho?” I looked at Rubria questioningly. “The name seems familiar, but I can’t quite place it.”

“He is a member of Caesar’s bodyguard,” she told me. Then she blushed.

At last I had found the reward she desired.

Because Rubria was alone in the world and my dependent, I investigated Ortho. He was temperate, honest, and, I learned, even had a good head for figures. So I took charge of the practical arrangements for the marriage. Ortho left the army, and I set him up in a jewel-importing business, which thrived. He allowed Rubria to continue to oversee the care of my sons. It was a happy arrangement for all concerned.

Around this time Tavius’s health improved. Perhaps this was due to the curative potions I brewed him, or maybe respite from war and turmoil helped Tavius more than any drink could do. He coughed and wheezed less; he took more time to relax, and joyously welcomed his sister, Octavia, when she arrived in Rome. She had been dispatched by Mark Antony as he prepared to leave for Parthia, and she moved into his huge mansion on the Palatine. Along with her came her own children and Antony’s two boys.

Octavia still did not like me, but one day as we sat together at the chariot races she smiled with unexpected warmth. “I’m so happy,” she said. She glanced at Tavius, who stood out of earshot, talking to a senator. “But I feel embarrassed about telling
him
the news. Isn’t that silly? He’ll surely want to know, and be glad for me. Still, I’m not used to discussing such matters with my brother. Maybe you’ll tell him for me?”

“Tell him wha
t
?”

“Oh, didn’t I say?” She laughed. “I’m expecting another baby.”

It annoyed me that she was too delicate to tell this to Tavius herself; and for some time I had been fretting because I had yet to conceive a child by my beloved.
We had been married for two years, but I had been pregnant on our wedding day, and Tavius had been gone for months at a time. Still, the lack of a child worried me. So when Tavius came back to where we sat, I told him coolly, “Your sister is with child again.”

Octavia looked appalled; no doubt she wanted more fuss and ceremony in the way I conveyed the news. But Tavius smiled and kissed her.

This pregnancy, even I had to admit, was an excellent omen. When it became generally known that Octavia would again bear Antony a child, everyone thought their marital felicity almost guaranteed civil harmony. Rome wanted no more war between countrymen, and so Rome rejoiced.

One cloud had appeared in the azure sky of my happiness. Month after month, I had my hope to become pregnant dashed. No one thinks a man’s seed is to blame in such a case. And Tavius’s brief, chilly marriage to Scribonia had resulted in Julia’s birth. So surely the fault was mine. I ached to have Tavius’s child, longed to hold that small, warm bundle in my arms. I resolved not to speak of this to him. And yet one night, in bed, the words slipped out, bald as my announcement of Octavia’s pregnancy.

“Tavius, I want a baby.”

“It’s just a matter of time.”

“I hope so.” I snuggled up against him and said lightly, “Otherwise you’ll have to divorce me.”

“What are you talking abou
t
?”

“An empire needs an heir,” I said. “You need a son.”

“Livia, how old am I?”

“You are twenty-six years old.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one,” I said.

“I would say we have a little time left to get an heir,” he said. “Will you explain this to me: Why do women conjure up difficulties where none exis
t
?”

“Because women are wise, and they see the future coming down the road long before men see it.”

“Oh. I thought it was because they delight in misery.” He pulled me closer. “But if you feel we should try harder to get an heir, I’m all for redoubling our efforts.”

So we laughed and made love, and put the subject aside.

A day is a day whether you are a washerwoman or a baker or the ruler of Rome. You can’t increase the number of hours. People laughed when they heard Tavius used two barbers, that he would have one man shave one side of his face while another did the other side. They had no notion what the press of time was like for him. He had so much to accomplish.

We
had so much to accomplish. Increasingly, I handled correspondence from provincial governors on my own. I often met with senators on Tavius’s behest. He could not do everything, be everywhere, himself. And he knew he could rely on me.

I did not see much of my sister. I helped her, of course; her husband became even wealthier than he had been before. But Secunda moved in a different circle than I did. Political life frightened her.
When I broached the idea of elevating her husband to the Senate she looked at me with such horror that I dropped the subject and never raised it again.

She often did not even tell acquaintances that I was her sister. I tried not to take that personally. In a way, the inconspicuous role she had chosen was useful to me. I had recruited a group of confidants who told me what people were saying about Tavius and me. Not informers: Neither Tavius nor I wished to punish people for their opinions. But I never forgot the crowd in the amphitheater chanting “Neptune! Neptune!” I kept an eye on the public mood. Secunda, who chatted with women in the market and dined with merchants and tradesmen, became a source of information for me.

“Do people talk much about the fire brigades?” I asked one day.
We sat in my garden. I had my boys visiting that afternoon. Tiberius, Drusus, Julia, and Secunda’s little girl, Decimia, were all at play around us—or rather, Drusus and the girls played. Tiberius had a stack of child-sized javelins and had set up a target near the rosebushes, fifteen feet away. As serious as an adult, he practiced his javelin throw.

“Oh, yes, everyone praises them,” Secunda said. “But…”

“But wha
t
?”

“Well, I’ve heard some people say they’re like your private army.”

“My army? Not Caesar’s, mine?”

Secunda smiled faintly. She took a certain pleasure in bringing me bad news. “Why, practically every time a building catches on fire, you’re there with the fire brigades, aren’t you?”

I did often go to watch the brigades fight fires in the tenements. I would bring gifts of money, clothes, and food to people who lost their homes.
Women and children, especially, would crowd around me, as eager for a kind word as for the coins or material goods I could give them. Tavius could not go out to fires himself, because he could not take the smoke. But I wanted people to feel that he cared about them.