Augustus

CHAPTER THREE

I. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)

Of all the women I have known, I have admired Livia the most. I was never fond of her, nor she of me; yet she behaved toward me always with honesty and civility; we got along well, despite the fact that my mere existence thwarted her ambitions, and despite the fact that she made no secret of her impersonal animosity toward me. Livia knew herself thoroughly, and had no illusions about her own nature; she was beautiful, and used her beauty without vanity; she was cold, and thus could feign warmth with utter success; she was ambitious, and employed her considerable intelligence exclusively to further her ambition's end. Had she been a man, I do not doubt that she would have been more ruthless than my father, and would have been troubled by fewer compunctions. Within her nature she was an altogether admirable woman.

Though I was only fourteen years of age at the time and could not understand the reason for it, I knew that Livia opposed my marriage to Marcellus, seeing it as a nearly absolute impediment to her son Tiberius's succession to power. And when Marcellus died so quickly after our marriage, she must have felt the possibility of her ambition urgently renewed. For even before the obligatory months of mourning had elapsed, Livia approached me. My father, having been offered the dictatorship of Italy in the wake of a famine, and having refused, had some weeks before prudently removed himself from Rome upon the pretext of business in Syria, so that he might not have further to exacerbate the frustrations of the Senate and the people by the presence of his refusal. It was a tactic that he employed often in his life.

As was her habit, Livia came at once to the point.

"Your time of mourning will be ended soon," she said.

"Yes," I replied.

"And you will be free to marry again."

"Yes."

"It is not appropriate that a young widow should remain long unmarried," she said. "It is not the custom."

I believe I did not reply. I must have thought even then that my widowhood was as much a matter of form as my marriage had been.

Livia continued. "Is your grief such that the prospect of marriage offends you?"

I remembered that I was my father's daughter. "I shall do my duty," I said.

Livia nodded as if she had expected the answer. "Of course," she said. "It is the way… Did your father speak to you of this matter? Or has he written?"

"No," I said.

"I am sure that he has been considering it." She paused. "You must understand that I speak now for myself, not your father. But were he here, I would have his permission."

"Yes," I said.

"I have behaved toward you as if you were my daughter," Livia said. "Insofar as it has been possible, I have not acted against your interests."

I waited.

She said slowly, "Do you find my son at all to your liking?"

I still did not understand. "Your son?"

She made a little impatient gesture. "Tiberius, of course."

I did not find Tiberius to my liking, and I never had; I did not know why. Later I came to understand that it was because he discovered in all others those vices he would not recognize in himself. I said: "He has never been fond of me. He thinks me flighty and unstable."

"That is no matter, even if it is true," Livia said.

"And he is betrothed to Vipsania," I said. Vipsania was the daughter of Marcus Agrippa; and though younger than I, she was almost my friend.

"Nor does that matter," Livia said, still impatiently. "You understand such things."

"Yes," I said, and did not speak further. I did not know what to say.

"You know that your father is fond of you," Livia said. "Some have thought him too fond of you, but that is of no substance here. At issue is the fact, which you know, that he will listen to you more attentively than most fathers will listen to their daughters, and that he would hesitate to go against your wishes. Your wishes carry great weight with him. Therefore, if you find the idea of marriage to Tiberius not disagreeable to you, it would be appropriate for you to let your father know that."

I did not speak.

"On the other hand," Livia said, "if you find the idea wholly disagreeable, you would do me a service now to let me know. I have never dissembled with you."

My head was whirling. I did not know what to say. I said: "I must obey my father. I do not wish to displease you. I do not know."

Livia nodded. "I understand your position. I am grateful to you. I shall not trouble you more with this."

… Poor Livia. I believe that she thought then that everything was arranged, and that her will would prevail. But it did not, on that occasion. It was perhaps the bitterest blow of her life.

II Letter: Livia to Octavius Caesar, at Samos (21 B.C.)

I have been in all things obedient to your will. I have been your wife, and faithful to my duty; I have been your friend, and faithful to your interests. So far as I can determine, I have failed you in only one regard, and I grant that that is an important one: I have not been able to give you a son, or even a child. If that is a fault, it is one which is beyond my control; I have offered divorce, which, out of what I believed to be affection for my person, you have often refused. Now I cannot be sure of that affection, and I am bitterly troubled.

Though I had reasonable cause to believe that you should have thought my Tiberius to be more nearly your own son than was Marcellus, who was only your nephew, I forgave your choice upon the grounds of your illness and upon the grounds of your plea that Marcellus carried the blood of the Claudian, the Octavian, and the Julian lines, while Tiberius carried only the Claudian. I even forgave what I must see now as your insults to my son; if in the extreme youth in which you judged him he displayed what appeared to be some instability of character and excess of behavior, I might suggest that the character of a boy is not the character of a man.

But now your course is clear, and I cannot conceal from you my bitterness. You have refused my son, and thus you have refused a part of me. And you have given your daughter a father rather than a husband.

Marcus Agrippa is a good man, and I know that he has been your friend; I bear no ill will for his person. But he bears no name, and whatever virtues he may possess are merely his own. It may have been amusing to the world that a man with such a lack of breeding might hold so much power as a subordinate of the Emperor; it will not be amusing to the world that now he is the designated successor, and thus nearly equal to the Emperor himself.

I trust you understand that my position has become nearly impossible; all Rome expected that Tiberius should become betrothed to your daughter, and that in the normal course of affairs he should have had some part in your life. Now you have refused him that.

And you remain abroad upon the occasion of this marriage of your daughter, as you did upon the first-whether out of necessity or choice, I do not know. And I do not care.

I shall continue in my duty toward you. My house will remain your house, and open to you and your friends. We have been too close in our common endeavors for it to be otherwise. I shall, indeed, attempt to continue to remain your friend; I have not been false to you, in thought or word or deed; and I shall not be in the future. But you must know the distance that this has put between us; it is farther than even the Samos where you now sojourn. It shall remain so.

Your daughter is married to Marcus Agrippa, and has removed herself to his house; she is now mother to that Vipsania Agrippa, who once was her playmate. Your niece, Marcella, bereft of a husband, is with your sister at Velletri. Your daughter seems content with her marriage. I trust that you are the same.

III. Broadsheet: Tima?enes of Athens (21 B. c.)

Now who is mightier in the house of Caesar- the one whom all call Emperor and the August, or that one who, by all custom, should have been his loving helpmate, dutiful to both bed and banquet hall? See now how ruler is ruled: the torches flicker, the company is gay, and laughter flows more quickly than wine. He speaks to his Livia, and will not be heard by her; he speaks again, and is frozen by a smile.

It is said that he refused her a bauble; you'd think the Tiberwas agrip in winter ice!

But, ruled or ruler, it is no great matter.

There, from a corner, some Lesbia gives a glance that darkens the torches; bright Delias languish on couches, their shoulders bare in the dim light; but he disdains them all. For boldly there comes to him the wife of a friend (who does not see, his eyes being filled with the vision of a boy dancing to the torchlight). Why not? he thinks, this ruler of men. Of his time, Maecenas has given freely; this other little thing he never uses, surely he'd not begrudge.

IV. Letter: Quintus Homtius Flaccus to Gains Cilnius Maecenas, at Arezzo (21 B.C.)

The author of the libel is, indeed, as you suspected, that same Timagenes whom you have encouraged and aided, to whom you unwisely gave your friendship, and whom you introduced into the household of our friend. Besides being an ungrateful guest and uncertain in his meter, he is most foolishly indiscreet; he has bragged about his accomplishment to those who he imagines will admire him, while attempting secrecy among those who will not. He would have at once the responsibility of fame and the pleasure of anonymity, a condition which is clearly impossible.

Octavius knows his identity. He will take no action, though (needless to say) Timagenes is no longer welcome in his house. He has asked me to assure you that he holds you in no way responsible for the betrayal; indeed, he is as much concerned for your feelings in the matter as he is for his own, and hopes that you have not suffered an undue embarrassment. His regard for you is as warm as ever; he regrets your absence from Rome, and is affectionately jealous of the time you have decided to spend at the feet of the Muses.

I, too, regret not seeing you more often; but I believe that I understand even more fully than our friend the contentment you must feel in the quiet and beauty of your Arezzo, away from the bustle and stench of this most extraordinary city. Tomorrow I return to my little place above the Digentia, whose murmur will soothe my ears and at length return me from noise to language. How trivial all these matters will seem there, as they must seem to you in your retreat.

V. Letter: Nico laus of Damascus to Strabo of

Amasia, from Rome (21 B. c.)

My dear old friend, you have been eminently correct in your descriptions and enthusiasms over the years-this is the most extraordinary of cities in the most extraordinary of times. Being here now, I think that this is where my destiny has aimed me all my life, though I cannot bewail the long chain of circumstances that has delayed my discovery.

As you may know, I have in recent years become of increasing use to Herod, who knows that he rules Judaea only by the protection of Octavius Caesar; now I am in Rome upon another service to Herod, the extraordinary nature of which I shall reveal to you in due course. At the moment I shall content myself with saying that necessary to that service was the somewhat intimidating duty of presenting myself to Octavius Caesar himself. For despite the fact that you have written me so often of your familiarity with him, his fame and power are such as to overwhelm even your assurances. And I had, after all, once been tutor to the children of his enemy, Cleopatra of Egypt.

But again you were, as you are in all things, right; he put me at my ease at once, greeting me with even more warmth than I might have expected as an envoy from Herod, and recalled his friendship with you, remarking upon how often you had mentioned my name. I did not wish, upon such slight acquaintance, to bring up to him the matter which I had been sent to accomplish; and thus I was particularly pleased when he invited me the next evening to dine with him at his private residence-I had, of course, presented myself to him at the Imperial Palace, which I understand he uses only during his official day.

I must not really have believed you when you wrote me of the modesty of his home. The simple luxury of my own quarters in Jerusalem would put this house to shame; I have seen moderately successful tradespeople live in more elegance! And it is not, I believe, merely an affectation ofthat austerity toward which he urges others; in this charming and comfortable little house, he seems a friendly host eager to please his guests, rather than the ruler of the world.

Let me set the scene for you and recapture the essence of that evening, in the manner of our master, Aristotle, in those marvelous Conversations that we used to study.

The meal-three excellent courses, served in a comfortable style between the austere and elegant-is over. The wine is mixed and poured, the servants moving noiselessly among the guests. It is a small gathering, of Octavius Caesar's relatives and friends. Reclining beside Octavius is Terentia, the wife of Maecenas, who (to my regret, for I should have liked to meet him) is out of the city for the season, devoting himself to his literary studies in the north; upon another couch are Julia, the Emperor's young and beautiful and vivacious daughter, and her new husband, Marcus Agrippa, a large and solid man, who, despite his distinction and importance, seems oddly out of place in this company; the great Horace, short and somewhat stout with graying hair around a young face, has pulled down beside him the Syrian dancing girl who earlier entertained us, and (to her nervous yet exultant delight) is teasing her to laughter; the young Tibullus (who languishes in the absence of his mistress) sits with his wine and observes the company with benevolent sadness; nearby sits his patron Messalla (who once, it is said, was proscribed by the triumvirs, who fought with Marcus Antonius against Octavius Caesar, and who now sits in easy friendship with his host and one-time enemy!) and that Livy, whom you have mentioned so often, and whose first books of that long history of Rome which he has projected, have begun to appear regularly in the bookstalls. Messalla proposes a toast to Octavius Caesar, who in turn proposes a toast to Terentia, whom he attends with courtesy and regard. We drink, and the conversation begins. Our host speaks first.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR: My dear and old friends, I take this occasion to present our guest. From our friend and ally in the East, that Herod who governs Judaea, comes the emissary Nicolaus of Damascus, who also is a scholar and philosopher of much distinction, and therefore doubly welcome in the company which graces my home upon this happy occasion. I am sure that he would wish to give you the greetings of Herod himself.

NICOLAUS: Great Caesar, I am humbled by your hospitality and honored beyond my merits to be included in the company of your renowned and intimate friends. Herod does, indeed, wish me to convey to you and your colleagues in the destiny of Rome his respectful greetings. The kindness and mutual affection which I have observed this evening persuade me that I shall be allowed to speak to you openly ofthat mission I have come to fulfill from the ancient land of Judaea. As a token of the boundless respect in which he holds Octavius Caesar, my friend and master Herod has given me leave to travel to Rome in order to speak to that man who has led Rome into the light of order and prosperity, and who has united the world. In honor ofthat Caesar, who is my host, I propose to write a Life, which will celebrate his fame to all the world.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR: AS flattered as I am by this gesture of my good friend Herod, I must protest that my accomplishments do not merit such attention. I cannot persuade myself that the considerable talents which you, our new friend Nicolaus, possess should be put to so unimportant a purpose. Therefore, for the sake of those more significant tasks of learning which you might perform, and for the sake of my own sense of propriety and yet with all my gratitude and friendship, I must attempt to dissuade you from this unworthy task.

NICOLAUS: Your modesty, great Caesar, does honor to your person. But my master Herod would have me protest that modesty, and remind you that, great as your fame is, yet there are those in distant lands who have heard of your great accomplishments only by word of mouth. Even in Judaea, where the Latin tongue is used only by the educated few, there are those who do not know of your greatness. Thus were a record of your deeds put into that Greek language which all know, then would Judaea and much of the Eastern world be cognizant even more deeply of their dependence upon your beneficent power; and therefore might Herod more firmly rule, under your auspices and wisdom.

AGRIPPA: Great Caesar and dear friend, you have heeded my counsel before; I beseech you to do so again. Be persuaded by Nicolaus's eloquent request, and forsake your modesty in the interest of that which you must love more than your own person-that Rome, and the order which you have bequeathed her. The admiration which men in distant lands will give to you, will become love for the Rome that you have built.

LIVY: I shall make bold to add my voice to the persuasions you have heard. I know the reputation of this Nicolaus who stands before us now, and you could not put your fame in more trustworthy hands. Let mankind repay in some small measure that which you have given in such abundance.

OCTAVIUS CAESAR: I am at last persuaded. Nicolaus, you have the freedom of my house and you have my friendship. But I would beg you to confine your labors to those matters which have to do only with my acts in regard to Rome, and do not trouble your readers with those unimportant things that might have to do with my person.

NICOLAUS: I accede to your wishes, great Caesar, and shall endeavor by my poor efforts to do justice to your leadership of the Roman world.

… And thus, my dear Strabo, was the matter accomplished; Herod will be pleased, and I flatter myself by imagining that Octavius (he insists that I use the familiar address to him, in the intimacy of his house) has full confidence in my abilities to perform this work. You understand, of course, that the foregoing account has been submitted to the formal necessities of the dialogue in which I have cast it; the actual conversation was a good deal more informal and more lengthy; there was much bantering, all quite good-natured; Horace made jokes about Greeks who bore gifts, and asked if I intended to compose my work in prose or in verses; the vivacious Julia, who teases her father constantly, informed me that I could write anything I wanted, since her father's Greek was such that he could easily take an insult as a compliment. But I have, I believe, captured in my account the essence of the matter; for however these people make jokes with each other, there is a kind of seriousness going on-or at least, so it seems to me.

Besides, in order to take further advantage of my stay here (which promises to be a lengthy one), I have projected a new work beyond the Life of Octavius Caesar, which Herod has commissioned. It shall be called "Conversations with Notable Romans," and I expect that what you have read will be a part of it. Does it strike you as a feasible idea? Do you think that the dialogue is a suitable form in which to cast it? I shall await your advice, which I treasure as much as always.

VI. Letter: Terentia to Octavius Caesar, in Asia (20 B. c.)

Tavius, dear Tavius-I say our name for you, but you do not appear. Can you know how cruel your absence is? I rail against your greatness, which calls you away and keeps you in a country that is strange and detestable to me, because it holds you as I cannot. I know that you have told me that rage against necessity is the rage of a child; but your wisdom has fled from me with your body, and I am a restless child until you return.

How could I have been persuaded to let you go from me, who could not be happy for even a day outside your presence, once you had loved me? The scandal, you said, if I followed you-but there can be no scandal where there is common knowledge. Your enemies whisper; your friends are silent; and both know you are above the customs that others find necessary to lead orderly lives. Nor would there have been harm to anyone. My husband, who is my friend as well as yours, does not have that pride of possession that a lesser man might have; from the beginning it was known between us that I would have lovers, and that Maecenas would go where his tastes led him. He was not a hypocrite then, nor is he now. And Livia seems content with things as they are; I see her at readings, and she speaks to me civilly; we are not friends, but we are pleasant to each other. On my part, I am almost fond of her; for she chose to relinquish you, and thus you became mine.

Are you mine? I know that you are when you are with me, but when you are so far away-where is your touch, that tells me more than I have known before? Does my unhappiness please you? I hope it does. Lovers are cruel; I would almost be happy, if I could know that you are as unhappy as I am. Tell me that you are unhappy, so that I may have some comfort.

For I find no comfort in Rome; all things seem trivial to me now. I attend those festivals required of me by my position, the rituals seem empty; I go to the Circus, I cannot care who wins the races; I go to readings, my mind wanders from the poems read-even those of our friend Horace. And I have been faithful to you, all these weeks-I would tell you so, even if it were not true. But it is true; I have been. Does that matter to you?

Your daughter is well and is pleased with her new life. I visit with her and Marcus Agrippa once or twice a week. Julia seems pleased to see me; we have become friends, I believe. She is very heavy with child now, and seems proud of her impending motherhood. Would I want a child by you? I do not know. What would Maecenas say? It would be another scandal, but such an amusing one!… You see how I chatter on to your memory, as I used to do to your presence.

There is no gossip amusing enough to pass on to you. The marriages that you encouraged before you left Rome have at last taken place. Tiberius, it seems, has given up his ambitions, and is wed to Vipsania; and Julius Antonius is wed to Marcella. Julius seems happy that he is now officially your nephew and a member of the Octavian family, and even Tiberius seems grumpily content-even though he knows that Julius's union with your niece is more advantageous than his own marriage to one of Agrippa's daughters.

Will you return to me this autumn, before the winter storms make your voyage impossible? Or will you wait until spring? It seems to me that I shall not be able to endure your absence for so long. You must tell me how I may endure.

VII Letter: Quintus Horatius Flaccus to Gains Cilnius Maecenas, at Arezzo (19 B.C.)

Our Vergil is dead.

I have just received the news, and I write you of it before grief overwhelms the numbness that I feel now, a numbness that must be a foretaste of that inexorable fate that has overtaken our friend, and which pursues us all. His remains are in Brindisi, attended by Octavius. The details are sketchy; I shall pass on to you what I have learned, for I have no doubt that Octavius's grief will delay his writing to you for some time.

Apparently the work of revision upon his poem, for the sake of which he had absented himself from Italy, had been going badly. Thus when Octavius, returning to Rome from Asia, stopped off at Athens, he had little difficulty persuading Vergil to accompany him back to Italy, for which he was already homesick, though he had been away for less than six months. Or perhaps he had some intimation of his death, and did not want his body to waste in a foreign soil. In any event, before setting out on the final journey, he persuaded Octavius to visit Megara with him; perhaps he wished to see that valley of rocks where the young Theseus is said to have slain the murderer Sciron. Whatever the reason, Vergil remained too long in the sun, and became ill. However, he insisted upon continuing the voyage; aboard ship, his condition worsened, and an old malaria returned upon him. Three days after landing at Brindisi, he died. Octavius was at his bedside, and accompanied him as far as any can on that journey from which there is no return.

I understand that he was delirious much of the time during his last days-though I have no doubt that Vergil delirious was more reasonable than most men lucid. At the end he spoke your name, and mine, and that of Varius. And he elicited from Octavius the promise that the unperfected manuscript of his Aeneid be destroyed. I trust that the promise will not be kept.

I wrote once that Vergil was half my soul. I feel now that I understated what I thought then was an exaggeration. For at Brindisi lies half the soul of Rome; we are diminished more than we know. -And yet my mind returns to smaller things, to things that only you and I, perhaps, can ever understand. At Brindisi, he lies. When was it that the three of us traveled so happily across Italy, from Rome to Brindisi? Twenty years… It seems yesterday. I can still feel my eyes smart from the smoke of the green wood that the innkeepers burned in their fireplaces, and hear our laughter like that of boys released from school. And the farm girl we picked up at Trivicus, who promised to come to my room, and did not; I hear Vergil mocking me, and remember the horseplay. And the quiet talk. And the luxuriant comfort of Brindisi, after the countryside.

I shall not return to Brindisi again. Grief comes upon me now, and I cannot write more.

VIII. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)

In my youth, when I first knew her, I thought Terentia to be a trivial, foolish, and amusing woman, and I could not understand my father's fondness for her. She chattered like a magpie, flirted outrageously with everyone, and it seemed to me that her mind had never been violated by a serious thought. Though he was my father's friend, I did not like her husband, Gaius Maecenas; and I was never able to understand Terentia's agreement to that union with him. Looking back upon it, I can see that my marriage to Marcus Agrippa was nearly as strange; but then I was young and ignorant, and so filled with myself that I could see nothing.

I have come to understand Terentia, I believe. In her own way, she may have been wiser than any of us. I do not know what has become of her. What does become of people who slip quietly out of your life?

I believe now that she loved my father, perhaps in a way that even he did not understand. Or perhaps he did. She was reasonably faithful to him, taking casual lovers only during his protracted absences. And perhaps, too, his fondness for her was more serious than his appearance of amused toleration led me then to believe. They were together for more than ten years, and seemed happy to be so. I see now-perhaps I dimly saw even then-that my judgments were those of youth and position. My husband, who could have been my father, was the most important man in Rome and its provinces during my father's absence; and I imagined myself to be another Livia, as proud and grave as she, at the side of one who might as well have been the true Emperor. Thus it did not seem appropriate to me that my father should love one so unlike Livia (and, as I foolishly thought, myself) as Terentia. But I remember things now that I did not recognize then.

I remember when my father returned alone from Asia, having only a few days before, at Brindisi, held in his arms his dying friend Vergil, and watched the breath go out of his body. Terentia was the only one who gave him comfort. Livia did not; I did not. I knew the idea of loss, but not its self. Livia spoke to him the ritual words that were meant to be comfort: Vergil had done his duty to his country, he would live in the memories of his countrymen, and the gods would receive him as one of their favored sons. And she hinted that too much grief was unseemly from the person of the Emperor.

My father looked at her gravely, and said: "Then the Emperor will show that grief that befits an Emperor. But how shall the man show the grief that befits him?"

It was Terentia who gave him comfort. She wept at the loss of their friend, recalled old memories, until my father became the man and wept too, at last had to comfort Terentia, and thus was comforted himself.

… I do not know why I thought of Terentia today, or of the death of Vergil. The morning is bright; the sky is clear; and far beyond my window, to the east, I see that point of land that juts into the sea above Naples. Perhaps I remembered that Vergil lived there when he was not in Rome, and remembered that he had been fond of Terentia in that dour way of his that concealed so much sentiment. And Terentia is a woman, even as I once was.

Even as I once was… Was Terentia content to be a woman, as I was not? When I lived in the world, I believed that she was content, and had a secret contempt for her. Now I do not know. I do not know the human heart of another; I do not even know my own.

IX. Letter: Nicolaus of Damascus to Strabo of Amasia (18 B. c.)

Herod is in Rome. He is well pleased with my life of Octavius Caesar, which has been published abroad, and wishes me to remain here in the city for an indefinite period, so that he might have a trustworthy liaison with the Emperor. It is rather a delicate position, as you might imagine; but I feel confident that I can acquit my duties. Herod knows that I have the confidence and friendship of the Emperor, and I believe he has the wisdom to understand that I will betray neither; he is practical enough, at least, to know that if I do so, I should be of no further use to either of them.

Despite your kind praise, I have at last come to the conclusion that I would be wise to abandon the projected work that was to be called "Conversations with Notable Romans." As I have come to know these people, I have been forced to acknowledge that the Aristotelian mode in which we have both been schooled simply is not one in whose terms they may be defined. It is a difficult decision for me to make, for it must signify one of two things: either those modes in which we were schooled are incomplete, or I am not so finished a scholar of the master as I had led myself to believe. The former is too nearly inconceivable and the latter too humiliating to contemplate; and I would make this admission to none save you, who are the friend of my youth.

Let me try to demonstrate what I mean by an example.

All Rome is aflutter with the news of the latest law enacted by the Senate, which by a recent edict of Octavius Caesar has been reduced to some six hundred members. It is, in short, an effort to codify the marriage customs of this odd country, customs which have in recent times been more nearly acknowledged by abandonment than adherence. Among other things it gives to freed slaves more rights of marriage and property than they have had before, and that has caused some grumbling in certain quarters; but such grumblings are drowned by the cries of outrage at the more startling parts of the law, of which there are two. The first forbids any man who is or will be eligible by reason of his wealth to become a senator, to marry a freed-woman, an actress, or the daughter of an actor or actress. Nor shall the daughter or granddaughter of one of senatorial rank marry a freedman, an actor, or the son of one of those in the acting profession. No freeborn man, regardless of rank, shall marry a prostitute, a procuress, anyone convicted of a criminal act, one who has been an actress-or any woman who has been apprehended and convicted of adultery, regardless of her rank.

But the second part of the law is even more drastic than the first; for it provides that any father who apprehends an adulterer of his daughter in his own home, or the home of his son-in-law, is permitted (though not required) to kill the adulterer without fear of reprisal, and is permitted to do the same to his daughter. A husband is permitted to kill the offending man, but not his wife; in any event, he is required to denounce the offending wife and divorce her, else he may be prosecuted himself as a procurer.

As I say, all Rome is aflutter. Lampoons are circulated wildly; rumors abound; and each citizen has his own notion of what the whole thing means. Some take it seriously; some do not. Some say that it ought to be called the Livian rather than the Julian Law, and suspect that somehow Livia managed to insinuate it behind Octavius Caesar's back, in revenge for his own liaison with a certain lady who is also the wife of his friend. Others attribute it to Octavius himself; and of those, his enemies pretend outrage at his hypocrisy, others are heartened by what they see as the re-establishment of the "old virtues," and yet others see it as some obscure plot on the part of either Octavius Caesar or his enemies.

Through all the uproar, the Emperor himself walks calmly, as if he had no notion of what anyone was saying or thinking. But he does know. He always knows.

That is one side of the man.

Yet there is another. It is one that I, and a few of his friends know. It is unlike the one that I have shown you.

Upon formal occasions, I have been guest in his home on the Palatine, where Livia reigns. These occasions have been pleasant and not at all strained; Octavius and Livia behave toward each other with perfect civility, if not warmth. Upon other occasions I have been guest at the home of Marcus Agrippa and Julia while Octavius was present, usually in the company of Terentia, the wife of Gaius Maecenas. And upon several intimate and casual occasions I have been guest at the home of Maecenas himself, also in the presence of Octavius and Terentia. The three of them behave toward each other with the ease of old friendship.

Yet his liaison with Terentia is known to all, and has been for several years.

And there is more. Almost like a philosopher, he is without faith in the old gods of his countrymen; yet almost like a peasant, he is extraordinarily superstitious. He will use the auguries of his priests to any purpose that seems convenient to him, and be convinced of their truth because of his successful use of them; he will scoff (in a friendly fashion) at what he calls the "transcendent pomposity" of the God of my countrymen, and wonder at the sloth of a race that can invent only one god. "It is more fitting," he said once, "for the gods to be many, and to strive among themselves, as men do… No. I do not believe that the strange God of your Jews would do for us Romans." And once I chided him (we have become that friendly) for his faith in portents and dreams, and he replied: "Upon more than one occasion my life has been saved by my believing what my dreams told me. Once it is not saved, I shall cease believing in them."

In all things, he is the most prudent and cautious man, and will leave nothing to chance that may be gained by careful planning; yet he loves nothing more than to play at dice, and will willingly do so for hours upon end. Several times he has sent a messenger to me, inquiring of my leisure; and I have played with him, though I take more pleasure in observing my friend than I do in the silly game of chance we play. He is utterly serious when he plays, as if his Empire depended upon the turn of the pieces of bone; and when, after two or three hours of play, he has won a few pieces of silver, he is as pleased as if he had conquered Germany.

He confessed to me once that in his youth he had aspired to be a man of letters, and had written poems in competition with his friend Maecenas.

"Where are the poems now?" I asked him.

"Lost," he said. "I lost them at Philippi." He seemed almost sad. Then he smiled. "I even wrote a play, once, in the Greek fashion."

I chided him a little. "Upon one of your strange gods?"

He laughed. "A man," he said, "only a foolish man who was too proud, that Ajax who took his life with his sword."

"And is that, too, lost?"

He nodded. "In my modesty, I took his life again-with my eraser… It wasn't a very good play. My friend Vergil assured me that it was not."

We were both silent for a moment. A sadness had come over Octavius's face. Then he said almost roughly: "Come. Let's have another game." And he shook the dice and threw them on the table.

Do you see what I mean, my dear Strabo? There is so much that is not said. I almost believe that the form has not been devised that will let me say what I need to say.

X. Letter: Quintus Horatius Flaccus to Octavius Caesar (17B. c.)

You must forgive me for returning your messenger without reply to your invitation. He made it clear that you had bidden him wait upon me; I returned him to you upon my own responsibility.

You ask me to compose the choral hymn for the centennial festival that you have decreed this May. You know that I am flattered that you should think me worthy; we both know that the man who should have had the honor is dead; and I know how deeply important you consider this celebration to be.

Thus, you are no doubt puzzled at my uncertainty about accepting the commission, an uncertainty that has given me a sleepless night. I have at last concluded that it is my duty and my pleasure to accede to your wish; but I think you ought to know the considerations which occasioned my hesitation.

Please know that I understand the difficulty of your task in running this extraordinary nation that I love and hate, and this more extraordinary Empire at which I am horrified and filled with pride. I know, better than most, how much of your own happiness you have exchanged for the survival of our country; and I know the contempt you have had for that power which has been thrust upon you-only one with contempt for power could have used it so well. I know all these things, and more. Thus, when I venture a disagreement with you, I do so in the full knowledge of the wisdom which I confront.

Yet I cannot persuade myself that your new laws will bring anything but grief to yourself and your country.

I know the corruption of our city which you would stem, and I know the intent of the laws, I believe. In the circles in which you move, and which I observe, copulation has become an act designed to obtain power, either social or political; an adulterer may be more dangerous than a conspirator, both to your person and his country; and that act whose natural end is affectionate pleasure has become a dangerous means toward ambition. The slave may gain power over a senator, thus over the ordinary citizen, and at last justice is subverted. I know these things, which your laws would hope to prevent.

Yet you, yourself, could not wish to have these laws enforced universally, with the rigor that law must be enforced. Such an enforcement would be disastrous to yourself, and to many of your most loyal friends. And though those who know your purpose understand that you intend to define a spirit and an ideal, the mass of your enemies will not understand this; and you may discover that your laws against adultery may be put to even more corrupt use than that which they were designed against.

For no law may adequately determine a spirit, nor fulfill a desire for virtue. That is the function of the poet or the philosopher, who may persuade because he has no power; the power you have (which, as I have said, you have used so wisely in the past) cannot legislate against the passions of the human heart, however disruptive to order those passions may be.

Nevertheless, I shall write the choral hymn for the celebration, and I shall take pride in the task. I share your concern and your hope, though I fear the means you have taken to fulfill them. I have been wrong in the past; I hope that I am wrong now.

XI. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)

In this island prison, my life over, I wonder without caring at things I might not have wondered at, had that life not come to an end.

Downstairs in her little bedroom, my mother is asleep; our servant does not stir; even the ocean, which usually whispers against the sand, is still. The midday sun burns upon the rocks, which absorb the heat and throw it back into the air, so that nothing-not even a vagrant gull-will move in its heaviness. It is a powerless world, and I wait in it.

It is odd to wait in a powerless world, where nothing matters. In the world from which I came, all was power; and everything mattered. One even loved for power; and the end of love became not its own joy, but the myriad joys of power.

I was married to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa for nine years; and according to the world's understanding of such matters, I was a good wife. During his lifetime I gave four children into his hands, and gave one more after his death. They were all his children, and three of them-since they were male-might have mattered to the world. As it turned out, none of them did.

It was, I believe, the birth of my two sons, Gaius and Lucius, that gave me the first real taste of that most irresistible of all passions, the passion for power. For Gaius and Lucius were immediately adopted by my father, it being understood that in the event of his death, first my husband and then one or the other of my sons would succeed as Emperor and First Citizen of the Empire of Rome. At the age of twenty-one I discovered that I was, except for Livia herself, the most powerful woman in the world.

It is empty, the philosophers say; but they have not known power, as a eunuch has not known a woman, and thus can look upon her unmoved. In my life I could never understand my father not apprehending that joy of power by which I learned to live, and which made me happy with Marcus Agrippa, who (as Livia often said in her bitterness) might as well have been my father.

I have often wondered how I might have managed the power I had, had I not been a woman. It was the custom for even the most powerful of women, such as Livia, to efface themselves and to assume a docility that in many instances went against their natures. I knew early that such a course was not possible for me.

I remember once that my father upbraided me for speaking in what he thought to be an unwomanly and arrogant tone to one of his friends, and I replied that though he might forget that he was the Emperor, I would not forget that I was the Emperor's daughter. It was a retort that gathered some currency in Rome. My father seemed amused by it, for he repeated it often. I do not believe he understood what I meant.

I was the Emperor's daughter. I was wife to Marcus Agrippa, who was my father's friend; but before and after that, I was the Emperor's daughter. It was accepted by all that my duty was to Rome.

Yet there was a part of me which, as year followed year, I came to know with increasing intimacy; it was a part that refused that duty, knowing it was a duty without reward…

A moment ago I wrote of power, and of the joy of power. I think now of the devious ways in which a woman must discover power, exert it, and enjoy it. Unlike a man, she cannot seize it by force of strength or mind or desire; nor can she glory in it with a man's open pride, which is the reward and sustenance of power. She must contain within her such personages that will disguise her seizure and her glory. Thus I conceived within myself, and let forth upon the world, a series of personages that would deceive whoever might look too closely; the innocent girl who did not know the world, upon whom a doting father lavished a love he could not give elsewhere; the virtuous wife, whose only pleasure was in her duty toward her husband; the imperious young matron, whose whim became the public's wish; the idle scholar, who dreamed of a virtue beyond Roman duty, and fondly pretended that philosophy might be true; the woman who, late in life, discovered pleasure, and used men's bodies as if they were the luxurious ointments of the gods; and who herself at last was used, to the intensest pleasure she had ever known…

I was twenty-one years of age when my father decreed the centennial festival to commemorate the founding of Rome, and I had given birth to my second son. My father and my husband were the chief worshipers at the festival, and made many sacrifices to those gods whose descendants are said to have established our city. It fell to me and Livia to preside equally at the banquet of the hundred matrons; I sat on the throne of Diana, and Livia across from me on the throne of Juno; and we received the ritual worship. I saw the faces of the richest and most influential women in Rome look up at me; I knew that many of them were married to enemies of my father who would have murdered him, were they not afraid. They looked at me with that odd expression that goes with the recognition of power; it was not love, nor respect, nor hatred, nor even fear. It was something that I had not seen before, and I felt for a moment that I had just been born.

Within a few weeks after the festival, my husband was to travel upon a variety of missions to the East-to the provinces of Asia Minor; to Macedonia, where my own father had spent his boyhood; to Greece; to Pontus and Syria, and wherever necessity might take him. It was, of course, contrary to all custom that I should accompany him; and until the festival, it had not occurred to me that I might do so, in defiance of custom.

But I did accompany him, despite the anger and persuasions of my father. I remember that my father said: "No wife has ever followed a proconsul and his soldiers into foreign lands; that is a task for freedwomen and prostitutes."

And I replied: "I would know, then, if you prefer me to appear a prostitute before my husband, or be a prostitute in Rome."

I intended the remark flippantly, and my father received it so; but I remember that it occurred to me afterward that it might not have been a joke; and I wondered if I had not been more serious than I had thought. In any event, my father relented; I joined my husband's retinue, and for the first time in my life, with my children and my servants, I crossed the borders of my native land.

From Brindisi to Apollonia, we crossed that little stretch of sea where the Adriatic empties into the Mediterranean; landing at Apollonia, we visited the sites where my husband and my father had companioned when they were boys. It was an easy and pleasant time, but I was eager to go onward, to places more strange and untrodden by Roman feet. From Apollonia we traveled northward through Macedonia to the new territories of Moesia, as far as the River Danube; and I saw strange people, who upon the approach of our carriages and horses, dodged like animals back into the forest, and would not be enticed into the open; they spoke in strange tongues, and many were dressed in the furs of wild animals. And I saw the bleak lives of the soldiers who had the misfortune to be stationed at this outpost of the Empire. They seemed strangely contented, and my husband spoke to them as if theirs were the most natural way of life that he could imagine. I had difficulty remembering that much of his life had been spent thus, in the days before I was born.

After the inspection of the Danube stations, we turned southward, somewhat hurriedly; for the autumn was upon us, and we wished to escape the rigors of a northern winter. I was beginning to regret my decision to accompany Marcus Agrippa, and to long for the comforts of Rome.

But we rested at Philippi, and my spirits raised. My husband showed me the places where he had done battle with the forces of Brutus and Cassius, and told me the tales of those days; and then we made our way leisurely to the shores of the Aegean, and sailed upon that blue water among the islands; and the weather warmed as we went southward.

And I began to know why the gods had sent me upon this journey, far from the city of my birth.