Augustus

CHAPTER FIVE

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

I knew Livia's strength, and I knew the necessity of my father's policy. Livia's ambition for her son was the most steadfast and remarkable one that I have ever known; I have never understood it, and I suspect that I never shall. She was a Claudian; her husband before my father, whose name Tiberius retained, had been a Claudian. Perhaps it was the pride in that ancient name that persuaded her of Tiberius's destiny. I have thought, even, that she might have been more fond of her former husband than she pretended, and saw the memory of him in her son. She was a proud woman; and I have suspected from time to time that she felt that in some indefinable way she had been demeaned by taking to her bed my father, whose name at that time certainly was not so distinguished as her own.

My father had dreamed that Marcellus, his sister's son, would succeed him; thus, he betrothed me to him. Marcellus died. And then he dreamed that Agrippa would succeed him, or at least would bring one of my sons (whom my father had adopted) to a point of sufficient maturity to adequately carry on his duties. Agrippa died, and my sons were still children. No male of the Octavian line remained, and there was no one else whom he could trust or over whom he had sufficient power. There was only Tiberius, whom he detested, though he was his stepson.

Shorriy after the death of Marcus Agrippa, the inevitability of what I had to do began to work inside me like an infected wound whose existence I would not admit. Li via smiled at me complacently, as if we shared a secret. And it was not until I was near the end of my year of mourning that my father summoned me to tell me what I already knew.

He met me himself at the door, and dismissed the servants who had accompanied me. I remember the quietness of the house; it was late in the afternoon, but no one seemed about, except my father.

He led me across the courtyard to the little cubicle off his bedroom that he used as an office. It was very sparsely furnished, with a table and a stool and a single couch. We sat and talked for a while. He asked about the health of my sons, and complained that I did not bring them to visit him often enough. We talked of Marcus Agrippa; he asked me if I still grieved for him. I did not answer. There was a silence. I asked:

"It is to be Tiberius, isn't it?"

He looked at me. He breathed deeply, and let his breath out, and looked at the floor. He nodded.

"It is to be Tiberius."

I knew it was to be, and-had known; yet a shock like fear went through me. I said:

"I have obeyed you in all things since I can remember. It has been my duty. But in this I find myself near to disobedience."

My father was silent. I said:

"You once made me compare Marcus Agrippa to some of my friends of whom you disapproved. I joked, but I did compare; and you must know the outcome of that comparison. I ask you now to compare Tiberius to my late husband, and ask yourself how I might endure such a marriage."

He lifted his hands, as if to fend off a blow; still he did not speak. I said:

"My life has been at the service of your policy, of our family, and of Rome. I do not know what I might have become. Perhaps I might have become nothing. Perhaps I might-" I did not know what to say. "Must I go on? Will you not give me rest? Must I give my life?"

"Yes," my father said. He still did not look at me. "You must."

"Then it is to be Tiberius."

"It is to be Tiberius."

"You know his cruelty," I said.

"I know," my father said. "But I know too that you are my daughter, and that Tiberius would not dare to harm you. You will find a life beyond your marriage. In time, you will grow used to it. We all grow used to our lives."

"There is no other way?"

My father rose from the stool upon which he had been seated and paced restlessly across the floor. I noticed that his limp had grown more pronounced.

"If there was another way," he said at last, "I would take it. There have been three plots against my life since the death of Marcus Agrippa. They were foolishly conceived and ill managed, and therefore easy to discover and deal with. I have been able to keep them secret. But there will be others." His clenched fist struck his open palm softly, three times. "There will be others. The old ones will not forget that an upstart rules them. They will forgive neither his name nor his power. And Tiberius-"

"Tiberius is a Claudian," I said.

"Yes. Your marriage will not guarantee the safety of my authority, but it will help it. The nobility will be a little less dangerous if they believe that one of their own, one who has the Claudian blood, might succeed me. At least it will give them the possibility of patience."

"Will they believe that you would make Tiberius your successor?"

"No," my father said in a low voice. "But they would believe that I might make a Claudian grandson my successor."

Until that moment, although I had accepted the idea of the marriage as inevitable, I had not accepted its actuality.

I said: "So I am once again to be the brood sow for the pleasure of Rome."

"If it were only myself," my father said. He turned his back to me. I could not see his face. "If it were only myself, I would not ask this of you. I would not allow you to marry such a man. But it is not only myself. You have known that from the beginning."

"Yes," I said. "I have known that."

My father spoke as if he were talking to himself. "You have your children by a good man. That will comfort you. You will remember your husband through the children that you have."

We talked longer that afternoon, but I cannot remember what was said. I believe that a numbness must have come over me, for I remember feeling nothing after the first rush of bitterness. Yet I did not dislike my father for doing what he had to do; I should no doubt have done the same thing, had I been in his position.

Nevertheless, when the time came for me to leave, I asked my father a question. I did not ask it angrily, or in bitterness, or even in what might have seemed pity for myself.

"Father," I asked, "has it been worth it? Your authority, this Rome that you have saved, this Rome that you have built? Has it been worth all that you have had to do?"

My father looked at me for a long time, and then he looked away. "I must believe that it has," he said. "We both must believe that it has."

I was in my twenty-eighth year when I was married to Tiberius Claudius Nero. Within the year I had performed my duty, and delivered a child that bore the Claudian and Julian blood. It was a duty that both Tiberius and I found difficult to fulfill; and even that difficulty, it turned out, was in vain. For the child, a boy, died within a week after its birth. Thereafter, Tiberius and I lived apart; he was abroad much of the time, and I discovered again a way of life in Rome.

II. Letter: Publius Ovidius Naso to Sextus Prop er tins (10 B. c.)

Why do I write you the news of this place to which, you have made clear, you intend never to return? In which, you assure me, you no longer have the slightest interest? Is it that I distrust your resolve? Or do I hope merely (and in vain, no doubt) to shake it? In the five or six years that you have absented yourself from our city, you have written exactly nothing; and though you profess to be content with the rural charms of Assisi, and with your books, I cannot easily believe that you have forsaken the Muse whom once you served so well. She waits for you in Rome, I am sure; and I hope that you will return to her.

It has been a quiet season. A lovely lady (whose name you know, but which I shall not mention) has been absent from our circles for more than a year now, which absence has diminished our joy and our humanity. Widowed young, she was persuaded to remarry; and we all know that her new marriage has caused her great unhappiness. Though an important man, her husband is the dourest and least affable man you can imagine; he has no taste for happiness, and cannot endure it in another. He is relatively young-perhaps thirty-two or three-yet except for his appearance, one might take him for a graybeard, he is so irascible and disapproving. He is, I suppose, the kind of man that was common in Rome some fifty or sixty years ago; and he is admired by many of the "older families" simply because ofthat. No doubt he is a man of principle; yet I have observed that strong principle, coupled with a sour disposition, can be a cruel and inhuman virtue. For with that one can justify nearly anything to which the disposition leads him.

But we hope for the future. The lady of whom I have spoken, recently gave birth to a son who died within the week of his birth; the husband, it is understood, will absent himself from Rome on some business on the northern frontiers; and perhaps once again we shall have in our midst her whose wit, gaiety, and humanity may lead Rome out of the dull hypocrisy of its past.

I shall not subject you, my dear Sextus, to one of my disquisitions; but it seems to me more nearly true, as the years pass, that those old "virtues," of which the Roman professes himself to be so proud, and upon which, he insists, the greatness of the Empire is founded-it seems to me more and more that those "virtues" of rank, prestige, honor, duty, and piety have simply denuded man of his humanity. Through the labors of the great Octavius Caesar, Rome is now the most beautiful city in the world. May not its citizens now have the leisure to indulge their souls, and thus lead themselves, like the city in which they live, toward a kind of beauty and grace they have not known before?

III. Letter: Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso to Tiberius Claudius Nero, in Pannonia (9 B. c.)

My dear friend, I include herewith those reports you have asked me to gather. They come from a variety of sources, which for the time being I shall not name, in the unlikely event that eyes other than your own might see this. In some cases I have transcribed the reports verbatim; in others I have summarized. But the pertinent information is here; and you may be assured that the original documents are safe in my possession, in the event that you might, at a later time, wish to use them.

These reports cover the period of one month, November.

On the third day of this month, between the tenth and eleventh hours of the day, a litter borne by the slaves of Sempronius Gracchus arrived at the lady's residence. The litter was evidently expected, for the lady emerged quickly from her house, and was borne across the city to the villa of Sempronius Gracchus, where a large party was assembled. During the banquet, the lady shared Gracchus's couch; they were observed to carry on a long and intimate conversation. No report of the substance of this conversation is available. A good deal of wine was consumed, so that by the end of the banquet many of the guests were inordinately gay. The poet Ovid read for their entertainment a poem of his that fit the occasion, which is to say one that was suggestive and improper. After this reading, a troupe of mimes performed The Adulterous Wife, but more brazenly than is usual. There was music afterward. At some time during the musical performance, people began to drift out of the hall; among these were the lady in question and Sempronius Gracchus. The lady was not seen again until near dawn, when she was observed entering the litter that had waited for her outside Sempronius Gracchus's residence. Thence she was transported to her home.

Two days before the Ides of this month, the lady entertained a group of her friends on her own responsibility. Among the male visitors were Sempronius Gracchus, Quinctius Crispinus, Appius Claudius Pulcher, and Cornelius Scipio; among the lesser guests were the poet Ovid and the Greek Demosthenes, the son of the actor and recently a citizen of Rome. The drinking of wine began early, shortly before the tenth hour, and continued late into the night. Though some of the guests left after the first watch, a larger number remained; and these late stayers, led by the lady, quit the rooms and the gardens, and made their way into the city, coming to a halt in their litters among the walks and buildings of the Forum. Though the Forum was nearly deserted at that hour, yet a small number of townspeople and tradesmen and police observed the party, and may be persuaded to testify, if the need arises. The drinking of wine continued, and that Demosthenes, the son of the actor, for the entertainment of the partygoers, delivered a mock oration from the rostrum beside the Senate House. It was extempore, and no copy could be made; but it seemed to burlesque the kind of speech that the Emperor has often delivered from the same spot. After the speech, the party disbanded; and the lady returned to her home, accompanied by Sempronius Gracchus. It was nearing dawn.

For the next six days nothing untoward occurred in the lady's activities. She attended an official banquet at the home of her parents; with her mother, she sat with the four elder Vestal Virgins at the theater; she attended the Plebeian Games, and remained circumspectly in the box with her father and his friends, among whom were the consul of the year, Quinctius Crispinus, and the proconsul Julius Antonius.

On the fourth day after the Ides, she was guest of honor at the villa of Quinctius Crispinus at Tivoli. She was accompanied on her journey to Tivoli by Sempronius Gracchus and Appius Claudius Pulcher and a retinue of servants. The weather being mild, the entertainment was held out-of-doors; and it continued far into the night. There was much wine, there were male and female dancers (who did not confine their performances to the theater on the grounds, but danced, nearly naked, among the guests, who wandered about the grounds), and musicians who played Greek and Eastern music. At one time, a number of guests (the lady in question among them), both male and female, plunged into the swimming pool; and though the torchlight was dim, it could be seen that they had divested themselves of their clothing, and were swimming freely together. After the swimming, the lady was seen to retreat into the wooded part of the garden with the Greekling Demosthenes; they did not return for several hours. The lady stayed at the villa of Quinctius Crispinus for three days, and each evening was much the same as the other.

I trust, my dear Tiberius, that these reports will be of use to you. I shall continue to gather the information that you require, in as discreet a manner as I can. And you may depend upon me in any eventuality.

IV. Letter: Livid to Tiberius Claudius Nero, in Pannonia (9 B. c.)

You are to obey me in this, and you are to obey me at once. You are to destroy all the "evidence" that you have so painstakingly gathered, and you are to inform your friend Calpurnius that he is to do nothing more of this nature in your behalf.

What, may I ask, did you propose to do with this "evidence" you think you have? Do you propose to use it for a divorce? And if so, is the cause that your "honor" has been sullied? or do you dream that you will advance our cause by means of this divorce? In any of these fancies you are in error, and seriously so. Your "honor" will not be sullied as long as you remain abroad, for it will be clear to everyone that your wife is not under your control in such a circumstance, especially since you are serving your country and your Emperor; if on the other hand it comes to light that you have been gathering "evidence" and withholding it until a propitious time, then you will seem a fool, and all the honor that you may have gained shall have been lost. And if you dream that you advance yourself by insisting upon a divorce, you shall be mistaken again. Once such a step is taken, you will have no connection to that power we both have dreamed of; your wife may be "disgraced," but you will have gained nothing from that; you shall have lost the beginning that we have made.

It is true that at the moment it seems you have no chance to fulfill our mutual ambition; at the moment, even Julius Antonius, the son of my husband's old enemy, has been advanced beyond you, and is as close to the accession of power as you are. Except for your name. My husband is old, and we cannot be sure of what the future will bring. Our weapon must be patience.

I know that your wife is adulterous; it is likely that my husband knows it also. Yet if you invoke those laws which he has made, and force him to punish his daughter by them, he will never forgive you; you might as well never have sacrificed your personal life in the first place.

We must bide our time. If Julia is to bring disgrace upon herself, she must do it herself; you must not be involved in any way, and you will be able to remain uninvolved only if you are careful to stay abroad. I urge you to lengthen your business in Pannonia as long as you reasonably can. So long as you remain away from your household, and away from Rome, our cause remains alive.

V. Letter: Marcelin to Julia (8 B. c.)

Julia, dear, please come to our house next Wednesday for dinner, and a simple entertainment afterward. Some of your friends (who are also our friends, I might add) will be there-certainly Quinctius Crispinus, perhaps others. And of course you are to bring anyone you wish.

I'm so?lad that we've become friends again, after all these years. I often remember our childhoods, with such fondness- all those children! And the games we played! You, and poor Marcellus, and Drusus, and Tiberius (sorry!) and my sisters-I can't even remember them all now… Do you remember that even Julius Antonius lived with us for a while, after his father's death? My mother cared for him when he was little, even though he was not her own. And now Julius is my husband. It's a strange world. We have so many things to reminisce about.

Oh, my dear, I know it was I who caused the estrangement between us. But I did feel awkward when my uncle (your father!) forced Marcus Agrippa to divorce me so that he could marry you. I know you had nothing to do with it-but I was young, and felt that never would I have a husband so important as Marcus was. And I did resent you, though I knew that you were not at fault. But things work out for the best, I've always believed; and perhaps Uncle Octavius is wiser than we know. I am well pleased with Julius. Oh, to tell the truth, Julia, I am more pleased with him than I was with Marcus Agrippa. He is younger and more handsome, and nearly as important as Marcus was. Or he will be, I'm sure. My uncle seems very fond of him.

Oh, I do chatter on, don't I? I'm still the chatterbox. We don't change very much, do we, over the years? I do hope I haven't offended you by anything I've said. I may not be any wiser than I used to be, but I'm older; and I have learned that it's foolish for women to hold their marriages against each other. They have nothing to do with us, really, have they? At least, so it seems to me.

Oh, you must come to our party. Everyone will be devastated if you do not. Shall I have some of my servants call for you? Or had you rather come by your own means? Do let me know.

And bring whomever you like-though there will be some very interesting people here. We understand your situation perfectly

VI Letter: Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso to Tiberius Claudius Nero, in Germany (8 B. c.)

I hasten to write you, my friend, before you get the news elsewhere and move without the knowledge that ought to determine any action. I have spoken to your mother; and despite our recent disagreement about the "reports" I have been sending you, we are, I believe, in full agreement about what you should do now. You must understand that she cannot speak directly; she will in no way betray the trust of her husband, nor will she recommend in secret what she could not do openly.

Within a few days you will receive a message from your stepfather in which you will be offered the consulship for next year. You may be pleased to know that I will be offered the co-consulship. In ordinary times, and under ordinary circumstances, this might have been thought of as a triumph; but neither the times nor the circumstances are ordinary, and it is essential that you act with the utmost caution.

You must, of course, accept the consulship; it would be unthinkable to refuse it, and disastrous to any future ambition you might have.

But you must not stay in Rome. Your stepfather's aim, of course, is to see that you do. But you must not. Before you leave Germany for the inauguration here, you must arrange your affairs so that it will become absolutely necessary for you to return there as soon as you possibly can. If you have no one you can trust, you must deliberately put your armies in a dangerous position, so that you must return to remedy the danger. I am sure you will be able to arrange something.

I shall now attempt to explain the reasons to justify this seemingly strange course that you must take.

Your wife continues to live as she has done for more than a year. She is openly contemptuous of your marriage contract, and careless of your reputation. Her father must know something of her conduct, yet he does nothing to prevent it- whether out of policy, or affection, or blindness, I do not know. Despite the marriage laws (or perhaps because the Emperor himself inaugurated them), no one quite dares to be the public informer. Everyone knows that the laws are not enforced, and knows it would be inexpedient to insist upon their enforcement now, especially when they would be enforced against one so powerful and popular as your wife.

For she is powerful; and she is popular. Whether by design or accident (and I suspect the former), she has gathered into her circle some of the most powerful younger people in Rome. And it is here that the danger lies.

Those with whom she now regularly and most intimately consorts are your most dangerous enemies, and that they may also oppose the Emperor does not diminish the threat to your position. It does, in fact, enhance that threat.

As you well know, the power that you have is in your following, which is largely made up of families such as mine, who are (in your stepfather's words) the "old Republicans." We are rich, we are ancient, and we are closely knit; but it has been the policy for nearly thirty years to see to it that our public power is limited.

I fear that the Emperor wants you to return as a kind of buffer between the factions-his own, and that of the younger people, of whom Julia is an especial favorite.

If you return and allow yourself to be placed between them, you will, quite simply, be chewed up. And then you will be spit out. And your stepfather will have eliminated a dangerous rival, without having appeared to have lifted a hand. More importantly, he will have discredited an entire faction, without having elevated another. For as long as the faction of the young is fond of his daughter, he trusts that the danger that confronts him is negligible.

But you will be destroyed.

Consider the possibilities.

First: The Claudians and their followers may, under our leadership, gain enough power to turn the Empire back to the course it once followed, and to reinstitute the values and ideals of the old days. This is highly unlikely, but I grant that it is possible. But even if we are able to do so, then we will in all likelihood have united against us both the New People of your stepfather, and the New Young. I think we both would shudder at the consequences of such a unification.

Second: If you remain in Rome, your wife will continue to work against your interests-whether out of design or whim does not matter. She will do so. It is clear that she considers that her power comes from the Emperor, not from your name or station. She is the Emperor's daughter. You would be powerless against her will, and would be made to seem foolish if you set yourself against that will and did not prevail.

Third: Her continued life of dissipation and self-indulgence will, among both your friends and your enemies, offer continued occasion for gossip. Were you to act against this life of hers and insist upon a divorce, it would bring a scandal upon the Octavian house, it is true; it would also gain you the eternal despite of the Emperor and those who support him. If you do not act against her behavior, you will seem a weakling; you may even be accused of complicity in her law-breaking.

No, my dear Tiberius, you must not return to Rome with any intention of remaining here, while things are as they are. It is fortunate that I have been made co-consul with you. While you are away, you may be sure that I will protect your interests. It is ironic that I, unworthy as I am, shall be able to do so with more safety and more effectiveness than you might be able to do. It is a most depressing commentary upon the course that our lives have taken us.

Your mother sends her love to you. She will not write until you have received the message from the Emperor. Though she does not say so, I have good reason to believe that she supports me in this most urgent advice that I have given you.

VII. Letter: Nicolaus of Damascus to Strabo of Amasia (7 B. c.)

For the past fourteen years, I have been content to live in Rome, first in the service of Herod and Octavius Caesar, and then in the service and friendship of Octavius Caesar alone; as you may have inferred from my letters, I had begun to think of this city as my home. I have broken most of my ties abroad; and since the deaths of my parents, I have felt no desire or necessity to return to the land of my birth.

But in a few days I shall be entering my fifty-seventh year; and during the last few months-perhaps it is longer-I have come to feel less and less that this is my homeland. I have come to feel that I am a stranger in this city that has been so kind to me, and in which I have been on the most intimate terms with some of the greatest men of our time.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but there seems to me an air of ugly unrest in Rome; it is not that uncertain restlessness that you must have known in the early days of Octavius Caesar's power, nor the restless excitement that infected me when I first came here fourteen years ago.

Octavius Caesar has brought peace to this land; not since Actium has Roman raised sword against Roman. He has brought prosperity to the city and the countryside; not even the poorest of the people wants for food in the city, and those in the provinces prosper from the beneficences of Rome and Octavius Caesar. Octavius Caesar has brought liberty to the people; no longer need the slave live in fear of the arbitrary cruelty of his master, nor the poor man fear the venality of the rich, nor the responsible speaker fear the consequences of his words.

And yet there is an ugliness in the air which, I fear, bodes ill for the future of the city, the Empire, and the reign of Octavius Caesar himself. Faction is ranged against faction; rumors abound; and no one seems content to live in the comfort and dignity which their Emperor has made possible. These are extraordinary people… It is as if they cannot endure safety and peace and comfort.

So I shall leave Rome, this city that has been my home for so many rich years. I shall return to Damascus, and live out the days that remain to me among my books and whatever words I may write. I shall leave Rome in sorrow and love-without anger or recrimination or disappointment. And I realize as I write these words that I really am saying that I shall leave my friend, Octavius Caesar, with these feelings within me. For Octavius Caesar is Rome; and that, perhaps, is the tragedy of his life.

Oh, Strabo, if the truth were known, I feel that his life is over; in these past few years he has endured more than any man ought to endure. His face has upon it the inhuman composure of one who knows his life is over, and who waits only upon the decay of the flesh which signifies that end.

I have never known a man to whom friendship meant so much; and I mean a friendship of a particular kind. His true friends were those whom he knew when he was young, before he gained the power that he now has. I suppose that one with power can trust only those whom he knew and could trust before he had power; or it may be something else… And now he is alone. He has no one.

Five years ago his friend, Marcus Agrippa, whom he had made his son-in-law, died in the loneliness of his return to Italy from a foreign land; and Octavius Caesar could not even bid him farewell. The year following, that good lady, his sister Octavia, died in the bitter isolation she had chosen away from the city and her brother, on a simple farm at Velletri. And now the last of his old friends, Maecenas, is dead; and Octavius Caesar is alone. No one from his youth remains alive, and therefore there is no one whom he feels that he can trust, no one to whom he can talk about those things that are nearest to him.

I saw the Emperor the week after Maecenas died; I had been in the country during the unhappy event, and I hurried back as soon as I learned of it. I tried to offer him my condolences.

He looked at me with those clear blue eyes that are so startlingly young in his lined face. There was a little smile on his lips.

"Well, our comedy is almost over," he said. "But there can be much sadness in a comedy."

I did not know what to say. "Maecenas," I began. "Maecenas-"

"Did you know him well?" Octavius asked.

"I knew him," I said, "but I do not think I knew him well."

"Few people knew him well," he said. "Not many liked him. But there was a time when we were young-Marcus Agrippa was young, too-there was a time when we were friends, and knew that we would be friends for as long as we lived. Agrippa; Maecenas; myself; Salvidienus Rufus. Salvidienus is dead too, but he died long ago. Perhaps we all died then, when we were young."

I became alarmed, for I had never heard my friend talk disconnectedly before. I said: "You are distraught. It is a heavy loss."

He said: "I was with him when he died. And our friend Horace was there. He died very quietly; he was conscious until the end. We talked about the old times together. He asked me to look out for Horace's welfare; he said that poets had more important things to do than to care for themselves. I believe Horace sobbed and turned away Then Maecenas said that he was tired. And he died."

"Perhaps he was tired."

He said: "Yes, he was tired."

There was a silence between us. And then Octavius said:

"And there will be another soon. Another who is tired."

"My friend-" I said.

He shook his head, still smiling. "I do not mean myself; the gods will not be so kind. It is Horace. I saw the look on his face afterward. Vergil, and then Maecenas, Horace said. He reminded me later that once, many years ago, in a poem-he was making a little fun of one of Maecenas's illnesses-and in the poem he said to Maecenas-can I remember it?-On the same day shall the earth be heaped upon us both. I make the soldier's vow-you lead, and we shall go together, both ready to slog the road that ends all roads, inseparable friends.’… I don't think that Horace will outlive him by many months. He does not wish to."

"Horace," I said.

"Maecenas wrote badly," Octavius said. "I always told him that he wrote badly."

… I could not comfort him. Two months later Horace was dead. He was discovered one morning by his servant, in his little house above the Digentia. His face was quiet, as if he were simply asleep. Octavius had his ashes interred beside those of Maecenas, at the farther end of the Esquiline hill.

The only one alive now whom he loves is his daughter. And I fear for that love; I fear most desperately. For his daughter seems to grow more careless of her position month by month; her husband will not live with her, but remains abroad, though he is consul for the year.

I do not believe that Rome can endure the death of Octavius Caesar, and I do not believe that Octavius Caesar can endure the death of his soul.

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

The way of life that I had in Rome, then, was a way of almost utter freedom. Tiberius was abroad, spending even the year of his consulship in Germany, organizing the outposts there against the encroachments of the barbarian tribes. Upon the few occasions that he had to return to Rome, he made a ritual visit, and quickly found business elsewhere.

The year after his consulship, my father, upon his own initiative, ordered a replacement for him on the German frontier, and ordered my husband to return to his duties in Rome. And Tiberius refused. It was, I thought, the most admirable thing he had ever done; and I almost respected him for his courage.

He wrote to my father indicating his refusal to pursue a public life, and expressing a desire to retire to the Island of Rhodes, where his family had extensive holdings, to devote the rest of his years to his private studies of literature and philosophy. My father pretended anger; I think that he was pleased. He imagined that Tiberius Claudius Nero had served his purpose.

I have often wondered what my life would have been like, had my husband meant what he wrote to my father.