I, Claudius

Robert Graves

I, Claudius

AUTHOR'S NOTE

THE "gold piece", here used as the regular monetary standard, is the Latin aureus, a coin worth one hundred sestertii or twenty-five silver denarii ("silver pieces"): it may be thought of as worth roughly one pound sterling, or five American dollars.

The "mile" is the Roman mile, some thirty paces shorter than the English mile.

The marginal dates have for convenience been given according to Christian reckoning: the Greek reckoning, used by Claudius, counted the years from the First Olympiad, which took place in B.C. 776. For convenience also, the most familiar geographical names have been used: thus "France", not "Transalpine Gaul", because France covers roughly the same territorial area and it would be inconsistent to call towns like Nîmes and Boulogne and Lyons by their modern names--their classical ones would not be popularly recognised--while placing them in Gallia Transalpina or, as the Greeks called it, Galatia. (Greek geographical terms are most confusing: Germany was "the country of the Celts".) Similarly the most familiar forms of proper names have been used--"Livy" for Titus Livius,

"Cymbeline" for Cunobelinus, "Mark Antony" for Marcus Antonius.

It has been difficult at times to find suitable renderings for military, legal and other technical terms. To give a single instance, there is the word "assegai".

Aircraftman T.E. Shaw (whom I take this opportunity of thanking for his careful reading of these proofs) questions my use of "assegai" as an equivalent of the German framed or pfreim. He suggests "favelin". But I have not adopted the suggestion, as I have gratefully adopted others of his, because I need "javelin" for

"pilum", the regular missile weapon of the disciplined Roman infantryman; and

"assegai" is more savage sounding. "Assegai" has had a three-hundred year currency in English and acquired new vigour in the nineteenth century because of the Zulu wars. The long-shafted iron-headed “frames” was used, according to Tacitus, both as a missile and as a stabbing weapon. So was the assegai of the Ama-Aaro warriors, with whom the Germans of Claudius' day had culturally much in common. If Tacitus' statements, first as to the handiness of the “frames” at close quarters, and then as to its unmanageability among trees, are to be reconciled, the Germans probably did what the Zulus did--they broke off the end of the “frames”

long shaft when hand-to-hand fighting started. But it seldom came to that, for the Germans always preferred strike-and-run tactics when engaged with the better-armed Roman infantryman.

Suetonius in his “Twelve Caesars” refers to Claudius' histories as written "ineptly" rather than "inelegantly". Yet it certain passages of the present work are not only ineptly written but somewhat inelegantly too--the sentences painfully constructed and the digressions awkwardly placed--this is not out of keeping with Claudius' literary style as exhibited in his Latin speech about the Aeduan franchise, fragments of which survive. The speech is, indeed, thickly strewn with inelegancies of this sort, but then it is probably a transcription of the official shorthand record of Claudius' exact words to the Senate--the speech of a tired man conscientiously extemporising oratory from a paper of rough notes. “I, Claudius”

is a conversational piece of writing; as Greek, indeed, is a far more conversational language than Latin. Claudius' recently discovered Greek letter to the Alexandrians, which may however be partly the work of an imperial secretary, reads much more easily than the Aeduan speech.

For help towards Classical correctness I have to thank Miss Eirlys Roberts; and for criticism of the congruity of the English, Miss Laura Riding.

I

I, TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DRUSUS NERO GERMANICUS This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius"

or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius", am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament"

from which I have never since become disentangled.

This is not by any means my first book: in fact literature, and especially the writing of history--which as a young man I studied here at Rome under the best contemporary masters--was, until the change came, my sole profession and interest for more than thirty-five years. My reader must not therefore be surprised at my practised style.

[It is indeed Claudius himself who is writing this book, and no mere secretary of his, and not one of those official annalists, either, to whom public men are in the habit of communicating their recollections, in the hope that elegant writing will eke out meagreness of subject-matter and flattery soften vices.]

In the present work, I swear by all the Gods, I am my own mere secretary, and my own official annalist: I am writing with my own hand, and what favour can I hope to win from myself by flattery? I may add that this is not the first history of my own life that I have written. I once wrote another, in eight volumes, as a contribution to the City archives. It was a dull affair, by which I set little store, and only written in response to public request. To be frank, I was extremely busy with other matters during its composition, which was two years ago. I dictated most of the first four volumes to a Greek secretary of mine and told him to alter nothing as he wrote (except, where necessary, for the balance of the sentences, or to remove contradictions or repetitions). But I admit that nearly all the second half of the work, and some chapters at least of the first, were composed by this same fellow Polybius (whom I had named myself, when a slave-boy, after the famous historian) from material that I gave him. And he modelled his style so accurately on mine that, really, when he had done, nobody could have guessed what was mine and what was his.

It was a dull book, I repeat. I was in no position to criticize the Emperor Augustus, who was my maternal granduncle, or his third and last wife, Livia Augusta, who was my grandmother, because they had both been officially deified and I was connected in a priestly capacity with their cults; and though I could have pretty sharply criticised Augustus' two unworthy Imperial successors, I refrained for decency's sake. It would have been unjust to exculpate Livia, and Augustus himself, in so far as he deferred to that remarkable and--let me say at once--abominable woman, while telling the truth about the other two, whose memories were not similarly protected by religious awe.

I let it be a dull book, recording merely such uncontroversial facts as, for example, that So-and-so married So-and-so, the daughter of Such-and-such who had this or that number of public honours to his credit, but not mentioning the political reasons for the marriage nor the behind-scene bargaining between the families. Or I would write that So-and-so died suddenly, after eating a dish of African figs, but say nothing of poison, or to whose advantage the death proved to be, unless the facts were supported by a verdict of the Criminal Courts. I told no lies, but neither did I tell the truth in the sense that I mean to tell it here.

When I consulted this book to-day in the Apollo Library on the Palatine Hill, to refresh my memory for certain particulars of date, I was interested to come across passages in the public chapters which I could have sworn I had written or dictated, the style was so peculiarly my own, and yet which I had no recollection of writing or dictating. If they were by Polybius they were a wonderfully clever piece of mimicry (he had my other histories to study, I admit), but if they were really by myself then my memory is even worse than my enemies declare it to be.

Reading over what I have just put down I see that I must be rather exciting than disarming suspicion, first as to my sole authorship of what follows, next as to my integrity as an historian, and finally as to my memory for facts. But I shall let it stand; it is myself writing as I feel, and as the history proceeds the reader will be the more ready to believe that I am hiding nothing--so much being to my discredit.

This is a confidential history. But who, it may be asked, are my confidants?

My answer is: it is addressed to posterity. I do not mean my great-grandchildren, or my great-great-grandchildren: I mean an extremely remote posterity.

Yet my hope is that you, my eventual readers of a hundred generations ahead, or more, will feel yourselves directly spoken to, as if by a contemporary: as often Herodotus and Thucydides, long dead, seem to speak to me. And why do I specify so extremely remote a posterity as that? I shall explain.

I went to Cumae, in Campania, a little less than eighteen years ago, and visited the Sibyl in her cliff cavern on Mount Gaurus. There is always a Sibyl at Cumae, for when one dies her novice-attendant succeeds; but they are not all equally famous. Some of them are never granted a prophecy by Apollo in all the long years of their service. Others prophesy, indeed, but seem more inspired by Bacchus than by Apollo, the drunken nonsense they deliver; which has brought the oracle into discredit. Before the succession of Deiphobe, whom Augustus often consulted, and Amalthea, who is still alive and most famous, there had been a run of very poor Sibyls for nearly three hundred years. The cavern lies behind a pretty little Greek temple sacred to Apollo and Artemis--Cumae was an Aeolian Greek colony. There is an ancient gilt frieze above the portico ascribed to Daedalus, though this is patently absurd, for it is no older than five hundred years, if as old as that, and Daedalus lived at least eleven hundred years ago; it represents the story of Theseus and the Minotaur whom he killed in the Labyrinth of Crete. Before being permitted to visit the Sibyl I had to sacrifice a bullock and a ewe there, to Apollo and Artemis respectively. It was cold December weather.

The cavern was a terrifying place, hollowed out from the solid rock, the approach steep, tortuous, pitch-dark and full or bats. I went disguised, but the Sibyl knew me. It must have been my stammer that betrayed me. I stammered badly as a child and though, by following the advice of specialists in elocution, I gradually learned to control my speech on set public occasions, yet on private and unpremeditated ones, I am still, though less so than formerly, liable every now and then to trip nervously over my own tongue: which is what happened to me at Cumae.

I came into the inner cavern, after groping painfully on all-fours up the stairs, and saw the Sibyl, more like an ape than a woman, sitting on a chair in a cage that hung from the ceiling, her robes red and her unblinking eyes shining red in the single red shaft of light that struck down from somewhere above. Her toothless mouth was grinning.

There was a smell of death about me. But I managed to force out the salutation that I had prepared. She gave me no answer. It was only some time afterwards that I learned that this was the mummified body of Deiphobe, the previous Sibyl, who had died recently at the age of one hundred and ten; her eyelids were propped up with glass marbles silvered behind to make them shine. The reigning Sibyl always lived with her predecessor. Well, I must have stood for some minutes in front of Deiphobe, shivering and making propitiatory grimaces--it seemed a lifetime. At last the living Sibyl, whose name was Amalthea, quite a young woman too, revealed herself. The red shaft of light failed, so that Deiphobe disappeared--somebody, probably the novice, had covered up the tiny red-glass window--and a new shaft, white, struck down and lit up Amalthea seated on an ivory throne in the shadows behind. She had a beautiful, mad-looking face with a high forehead and sat as motionless as Deiphobe. But her eyes were closed. My knees shook and I fell into a stammer from which I could not extricate myself.

"O Sib... Sib... Sib... Sib... Sib..." I began.

She opened her eyes, frowned and mimicked me: "O Clau... Clau... Clau,..."

That shamed me and I managed to remember what I had come to ask. I said with a great effort: "O Sibyl: I have come to question you about Rome's fate and mine."

Gradually her face changed, the prophetic power overcame her, she struggled and gasped, there was a rushing noise through all the galleries, doors banged, wings swished my face, the light vanished, and she uttered a Greek verse in the voice of the God:

Who groans beneath the Punic Curse

And strangles in the strings of purse,

Before she mends must sicken worse.

Her living mouth shall breed blue flies,

And maggots creep about her eyes.

No man shall mark the day she dies.

Then she tossed her arms over her head and began again: Ten years, fifty days and three,

Clau--Clau--Clau--shall given be

A gift that all desire but he.

To a fawning fellowship

He shall stammer, cluck and trip,

Dribbling always with his lip.

But when he's dumb and no more here,

Nineteen hundred years or near,

Clau--Clau--Claudius shall speak clear.

The God laughed through her mouth then, a lovely yet terrible sound--hoi hoi hoi... I made obeisance, turned hurriedly and went stumbling away, sprawling headlong down the first flight of broken stairs, cutting my forehead and knees, and so painfully out, the tremendous laughter pursuing me.

Speaking now as a practised diviner, a professional historian and a priest who has had opportunities of studying the Sibylline books as regularised by Augustus, I can interpret the verses with some confidence: By the Punic Curse the Sibyl was referring plainly enough to the destruction of Carthage by us Romans.

We have long been under a divine curse because of that. We swore friendship and protection to Carthage in the name of our principal Gods, Apollo included, and then, jealous of her quick recovery from the disasters of the Second Punic war, we tricked her into fighting the Third Punic War and utterly destroyed her, massacring her inhabitants and sowing her fields with salt. "The strings of purse" are the chief instruments of this curse--a money-madness that has choked Rome ever since she destroyed her chief trade rival and made herself mistress of all the riches of the Mediterranean. With riches came sloth, greed, cruelty, dishonesty, cowardice, effeminacy and every other un-Roman vice.

What the gift was that all desired but myself--and it came exactly ten years and fifty-three days later--you shall read in due course. The lines about Claudius speaking clear puzzled me for years but at last I think that I understand them. They are, I believe, an injunction to write the present work. When it is written, I shall treat it with a preservative fluid, seal it in a lead casket and bury it deep in the ground somewhere for posterity to dig up and read. If my interpretation be correct it will be found again some nineteen hundred years hence. And then, when all other authors of to-day whose works survive will seem to shuffle and stammer, since they have written only for to-day, and guardedly, my story will speak out clearly and boldly. Perhaps on second thoughts, I shall not take the trouble to seal it up in a casket: I shall merely leave it lying about. For my experience as a historian is that more documents survive by chance than by intention. Apollo has made the prophecy, so I shall let Apollo take care of the manuscript.

As you see, I have chosen to write in Greek, because Greek, I believe, will always remain the chief literary language of the world, and if Rome rots away as the Sibyl has indicated, will not her language rot away with her? Besides, Greek is Apollo's own language.

I shall be careful with dates (which you see I am putting in the margin) and proper names. In compiling my histories of Etruria and Carthage I have spent more angry hours than I care to recall, puzzling out in what year this or that event happened and whether a man named So-and-so was really So-and-so or whether he was a son or grandson or great-grandson or no relation at all. I intend to spare my successors this sort of irritation. Thus, for example, of the several characters in the present history who have the name of Drusus--my father; myself; a son of mine; my first cousin; my nephew--each will be plainly distinguished wherever mentioned. And, for example again, in speaking of my tutor, Marcus Porcius Cato, I must make it clear that he was neither Marcus Porcius Cato, the Censor, instigator of the Third Punic war; nor his son of the same name, the well-known jurist; nor his grandson, the Consul of the same name, nor his great-grandson of the same name, Julius Caesar's enemy; nor his great-great-grandson, of the same name, who fell at the Battle of Philippi; but an absolutely undistinguished great-great-great-grandson, still of the same name, who never bore any public dignity and who deserved none. Augustus made him my tutor and afterwards schoolmaster to other young Roman noblemen and sons of foreign kings, for though his name entitled him to a position of the highest dignity, his severe, stupid, pedantic nature qualified him for nothing better than that of elementary schoolmaster.

To fix the date to which these events belong I can do no better, I think, than to say that my birth occurred in the 744th year after the foundation of Rome by Romulus, and in the 767th year after the First B.C. 10 Olympiad, and that the Emperor Augustus, whose name is unlikely to perish even in nineteen hundred years of history, had by then been ruling for twenty years.

Before I close this introductory chapter I have something more to add about the Sibyl and her prophecies. I have already said that, at Cumae, when one Sibyl dies another succeeds, but that some are more famous than others. There was one very famous one, Demophile, whom Aeneas consulted before his descent into Hell.

And there was a later one, Herophile, who came to King Tarquin and offered him a collection of prophecies at a higher price than he wished to pay; when he refused, so the story runs, she burned a part and offered what was left at the same price, which he again refused. Then she burned another part and offered what was left, still at the same price--which, for curiosity, this time he paid. Herophile's oracles were of two kinds, warning or hopeful prophecies of the future, and directions for the suitable propitiatory sacrifices to be made when such and such portents occurred. To these were added, in the course of time, whatever remarkable and well-attested oracles were uttered to private persons. Whenever, then, Rome has seemed threatened by strange portents or disasters, the Senate orders a consultation of the books by the priests who have charge of them and a remedy is always found. Twice the books were partially destroyed by fire and the lost prophecies restored by the combined memories of the priests in charge. These memories seem in many instances to have been extremely faulty: this is why Augustus set to work on an authoritative canon of the prophecies, rejecting obviously uninspired interpolations or restorations. He also called in and destroyed all unauthorised private collections of Sibylline oracles as well as all other books of public prediction that he could lay his hands upon, to the number of over two thousand. The revised Sibylline books he put in a locked cupboard under the pedestal of Apollo's statue in the temple which he built for the God close to his palace on the Palatine Hill. A unique book from Augustus' private historical library came into my possession some time after his death. It was called "Sibylline Curiosities: being such prophecies found incorporated in the original canon as have been rejected as spurious by the priests of Apollo". The verses were copied out in Augustus' own beautiful script, with the characteristic mis-spellings which, originally made from ignorance, he ever afterwards adhered to as a point of pride.

Most of these verses were obviously never spoken by the Sibyl either in ecstasy or out of it, but composed by irresponsible persons who wished to glorify themselves or their houses or to curse the houses of rivals by claiming divine authorship for their own fanciful predictions against them. The Claudian family had been particularly active, I noticed, in these forgeries. Yet I found one or two pieces whose language proved them respectably archaic and whose inspiration seemed divine, and whose plain and alarming sense had evidently decided Augustus--his word was law among the priests of Apollo--against admitting them into his canon.

This little book I no longer have, but I can recall almost every word of the most memorable of these seemingly genuine prophecies, which was recorded both in the original Greek, and (like most of the early pieces in the canon) in rough Latin verse translation. It ran thus:

A hundred years of the Punic Curse

And Rome will be slave to a hairy man,

A hairy man that is scant of hair,

Every man's woman and each woman's man.

The steed that he rides shall have toes for hooves.

He shall die at the hand of his son, no son,

And not on the field of war.

The hairy one next to enslave the State

Shall be son, no son, of this hairy last.

He shall have hair in a generous mop.

He shall give Rome marble in place of clay

And fetter her fast with unseen chains,

And shall die at the hand of his wife, no wife,

To the gain of his son, no son.

The hairy third to enslave the State

Shall be son, no son, of his hairy last.

He shall be mud well mixed with blood,

A hairy man that is scant of hair.

He shall give Rome victories and defeat

And die to the gain of his son, no son--

A pillow shall be his sword.

The hairy fourth to enslave the State

Shall be son, no son, of his hairy last

A hairy man that is scant of hair,

He shall give Rome poisons and blasphemies

And die from a kick of his aged horse

That carried him as a child.

The hairy fifth to enslave the State,

To enslave the State, though against his will,

Shall be that idiot whom all despised.

He shall have hair in a generous mop.

He shall give Rome water and winter bread,

And die at the hand of his wife, no wife,

To the gain of his son, no son.

The hairy sixth to enslave the State

Shall be son, no son, of this hairy last.

He shall give Rome fiddlers and fear and fire.

His hand shall be red with a parent's blood.

No hairy seventh to him succeeds

And blood shall gush from his tomb.

Now, it must have been plain to Augustus that the first of the hairy ones, that is, the Caesars (for Caesar means a head of hair), was his grand-uncle Julius, who adopted him. Julius was bald and he was renowned for his debaucheries with either sex; and his war-charger, as is a matter of public record, was a monster which had toes instead of hooves. Julius escaped alive from many hard-fought battles only to be murdered at last, in the Senate House, by Brutus. And Brutus, though fathered on another, was believed to be Julius' natural son: "Thou too, child!" said Julius, as Brutus came at him with a dagger.

Of the Punic Curse I have already written. Augustus must have recognized in himself the second of the Caesars. Indeed he himself at the end of his life made a boast, looking at the temples and public buildings that he had splendidly reedified, and thinking too of his life's work in strengthening and glorifying the Empire, that he had found Rome in clay and left her in marble. But as for the manner of his death, be must have found the prophecy either unintelligible or incredible: yet some scruple kept him from destroying it.

Who the hairy third and the hairy fourth and the hairy fifth were this history will plainly show; and I am indeed an idiot if, granting the oracle's unswerving accuracy in every particular up to the present, I do not recognise the hairy sixth; rejoicing on Rome's behalf that there will be no hairy seventh to succeed him.

II

I CANNOT REMEMBER MY FATHER, WHO DIED WHEN I WAS an infant, but as a young man I never lost an opportunity of gathering information of the most detailed sort about his life and character from every possible person--senator, soldier or slave--who had known him. I began writing his biography as my apprentice-task in history, and though that was soon put a stop to by my grandmother, Livia, I continued collecting material in the hope of one day being able to finish the work. I finished it, actually, just the other day, and even now there is no sense in trying to put it into circulation. It is so republican in sentiment that the moment Agrippinilla--my present wife--came to hear of its publication every copy would be suppressed and my unfortunate copying-scribes would suffer for my indiscretions.

They would be lucky to escape with their arms unbroken and their thumbs and index-fingers unlopped, which would be a typical indication of Agrippinilla's displeasure. How that woman loathes me!

My father's example has guided me throughout life more strongly than that of any other person whatsoever, with the exception of my brother Germanicus.

And Germanicus was, all agree, my father's very image in feature, body (but for his thin legs), courage, intellect and nobility; so I readily combine them in my mind as a single character. If I could start this story fairly with an account of my infancy, going no farther back than my parents, I would certainly do so, for genealogies and family histories are tedious. But I shall not be able to avoid writing at some length about my grandmother Livia (the only one of my four grandparents who was alive at my birth) because unfortunately she is the chief character in the first part of my story and unless I give a clear account of her early life her later actions will not be intelligible. I have mentioned that she was married to the Emperor Augustus: this was her second marriage, following her divorce by my grandfather. After my father's death she became the virtual head of our family, supplanting my mother Antonia, my Uncle Tiberius (the legal head) and Augustus himself--to whose powerful protection my father had committed us children in his will.

Livia was of the Claudian family, one of the most ancient of Rome, and so was my grandfather. There is a popular ballad, still sometimes sung by old people, of which the refrain is that the Claudian tree bears two sorts of fruit, the sweet apple and the crab, but that the crabs outnumber the apples. Among the crab sort the balladist reckons Appius Claudius the Proud who put all Rome in a tumult by trying to enslave and seduce a free-born girl called Virginia, and Claudius Drusus who in republican days tried to make himself King of all Italy, and Claudius the Fair, who, when the sacred chickens would not feed, threw them into the sea, crying "Then let them drink", and so lost an important sea-battle. And of the former sort the balladist mentions Appius the Blind, who dissuaded Rome from a dangerous league with King Pyrrhus, and Claudius the Tree-trunk who drove the Carthaginians out of Sicily, and Claudius Nero (which in the Sabine dialect means The Strong) who defeated Hasdrubal as he came out of Spain to join forces with his brother, the great Hannibal.

These three were all virtuous men, besides being bold and wise. And the balladist says that of the Claudian women too, some are apples and some are crabs, but that again the crabs outnumber the apples.

My grandfather was one of the best of the Claudians.

Believing that Julius Caesar was the one man powerful enough to give Rome peace and security in those difficult times, he joined the Caesarean party and fought bravely for Julius in the Egyptian War. When he suspected that Julius was aiming at personal tyranny, my grandfather would not willingly further his ambitions in Rome, though he could not risk an open breach. He therefore asked for and secured the office of pontiff and was sent in that capacity to France to found colonies of veteran soldiers there.

On his return after Julius' assassination he incurred the enmity of young Augustus, Julius' adopted son, who was then known as Octavian, and of his ally, the great Mark Antony, by boldly proposing honours for the tyrannicides.

He had to flee from Rome. In the disturbances that followed he sided now with this party and now with that according as the right seemed to lie here or there.

At one time he was with young Pompey, at another he fought with Mark Antony's brother against [B.C. 41] Augustus at Perusia in Etruria. But convinced at last that Augustus, though bound by loyalty to avenge the murder of Julius, his adopted father--a duty which he ruthlessly performed--was not tyrant-hearted and aimed at the restoration of the ancient liberties of the people, he came over to his side and settled at Rome with my grandmother Livia, and my uncle Tiberias, then only two years old. He took no more part in the Civil Wars, contenting himself with his duties as a pontiff.

My grandmother Livia was one of the worst of the Claudians. She may well have been a re-incarnation of that Claudia, sister of Claudius the Fair, who was arraigned for high treason because once when her coach was held up by a street crowd she called out, "If only my brother was alive! He knew how to clear crowds away. He used his whip." When one of the Protectors of the People ["tribunes", in Latin] came up and angrily ordered her to be silent, reminding her that her brother, by his impiety, had lost a Roman fleet: "A very good reason for wishing him alive," she retorted. "He might lose another fleet, and then another. God willing, and thin off this wretched crowd a little." And she added: "You're a Protector of the People, I see, and your person is legally inviolable, but don't forget that we Claudians have had some of you protectors well thrashed before now, and be damned to your inviolability."

That was exactly how my grandmother Livia spoke at this time of the Roman people. "Rabble and slaves! The Republic was always a humbug. What Rome really needs is a king again." That at least is how she talked to my grandfather, urging him that Mark Antony, and Augustus (or Octavian, I should say), and Lepidus (a rich but unenergetic nobleman), who between them now ruled the Roman world, would in time fall out; and that, if he played his hand well, he could use his dignity as a pontiff and the reputation for integrity which was conceded him by all factions as a means to becoming king himself. My grandfather replied sternly that if she spoke in this strain again he would divorce her; for in the old style of Roman marriage the husband could put his wife away without a public explanation, returning the dowry that had come with her--but keeping the children. At this my grandmother was silent and pretended to submit, but all love between them died from that moment. Unknown to my grandfather, she immediately set about engaging the passions of Augustus.

This was no difficult matter, for Augustus was young and impressionable and she had made a careful study of his tastes: besides which, she was by popular verdict one of the three most beautiful women of her day. She picked on Augustus as a better instrument for her ambitions than Antony--Lepidus did not count--and that he would stick at nothing to gain his ends the proscriptions had shown two years before, when two thousand knights and three hundred senators belonging to the opposing faction had been summarily put to death, by far the greatest number of these at Augustus' particular instance. When she had made sure of Augustus she urged him to put away Scribonia--a woman older than himself, whom he had married for political reasons--telling him that she had knowledge of Scribonia's adultery with a close friend of my grandfather's. Augustus was ready to believe this without pressing for detailed evidence. He divorced Scribonia, though she was quite innocent, on the very day that she bore him his daughter, Julia, whom he took [B.C. 38] from the birth-chamber before Scribonia had as much as seen the little creature, and gave to the wife of one of his freedmen to nurse. My grandmother--who was still only seventeen years old, nine years younger than Augustus--then went to my grandfather and said, "Now divorce me. I am already five months gone with child, and you are not the father. I made a vow that I would not bear another child to a coward, and I intend to keep it." My grandfather, whatever he may have felt when he heard this confession, said no more than "Call the adulterer here to me and let us discuss the matter together in private." The child was really his own, but he was not to know this, and when my grandmother said that it was another's he believed her.

My grandfather was astonished to find that it was his pretended friend Augustus who had betrayed him, but concluded that Livia had tempted him and that he had not been proof against her beauty; and perhaps Augustus still bore a grudge against him for the unlucky motion that he had once introduced in the Senate for rewarding Julius Caesar's assassins. However it may have been, he did not reproach Augustus. All that he said was: "If you love this woman and will marry her honourably, take her; only let the decencies be observed." Augustus swore that he would marry her immediately and never cast her off while she continued faithful to him; he bound himself by the most frightful oaths. So my grandfather divorced her. I have been told that he regarded this infatuation of hers as a divine punishment on himself because once in Sicily at her instigation he had armed slaves to fight against Roman citizens; moreover, she was a Claudian, one of his own family, so for these two reasons he was unwilling to show her public dishonour. It was certainly not for fear of Augustus that he assisted in person at her marriage a few weeks later, giving her away as a father would his daughter and pining in the wedding hymn. When I consider that he had loved her dearly and that by his generosity he risked the name of coward and pander, I am filled with admiration for his conduct.

But Livia was ungrateful--angry and ashamed that he seemed to take the matter so calmly, giving her up tamely as if she were a thing of little worth. And when her child, my father, was born three months later she was deeply vexed with Augustus' sister Octavia, Mark Antony's wife--these were my two other grandparents--because of a Greek epigram to the effect that parents were fortunate who had three-months' children; such short gestation had hitherto been confined to cats and bitches. I do not know whether Octavia was truly the author of this verse, but, if she was, Livia made her pay dearly for it before she had done. It is unlikely that she was the author, for she had herself been married to Mark Antony while with child by a husband who had died; and, in the words of the proverb, cripples do not mock cripples. Octavia's was, however, a political marriage and legalised by a special decree of the Senate; it was not brought about by passion on one side and personal ambition on the other. If it is asked how it happened that the College of Pontiffs consented to admit the validity of Augustus' marriage with Livia, the answer is that my grandfather and Augustus were both pontiffs, and that the High Pontiff was Lepidus, who did exactly what Augustus told him.

As soon as my father was weaned Augustus sent him back to my grandfather's house, where he was brought up with my uncle Tiberius, the elder by four years. My grandfather, as soon as the children reached the age of understanding, took their education in hand himself, instead of entrusting it to a tutor, as was already the general custom.

He never ceased to instill in them a hatred of tyranny and a devotion to ancient ideals of justice, liberty, and virtue.

My grandmother Livia had long grudged that her two boys were out of her charge--though indeed they visited her daily at Augustus' palace, which was quite close to their home on the Palatine Hill--and when she found in what way they were being educated she was greatly annoyed.

My grandfather died suddenly while dining [B.C. 33] with some friends, and it was suspected that he had been poisoned, but the matter was hushed up because Augustus and Livia had been among the guests.

In his will the boys were left to Augustus' guardianship.

My uncle Tiberius, aged only nine, spoke the oration at my grandfather's funeral.

Augustus loved his sister Octavia dearly and had been much grieved on her account when, soon after her marriage, he learnt that Antony, after starting out for the East [i9] to fight a war in Parthia, had stopped on the way to renew his intimacy with Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt; and still more grieved at the slighting letter that Octavia had received from Antony when she went out to help him Ac next year with men and money for his campaign. The letter, which reached her when she was half-way on her journey, ordered her coldly to return home and attend to her household affairs; yet he accepted the men and money.

Livia was secretly delighted at the incident, having long been assiduous in making misunderstandings and jealousies between Augustus and Antony, which Octavia had been as assiduous in smoothing out. When Octavia returned to Rome, Livia asked Augustus to invite her to leave Antony's house and stay with them.

She refused to do so, partly because she did not trust Livia and partly because she did not wish to appear a cause of the impending war. Finally Antony, incited by Cleopatra, sent Octavia a bill of divorce and declared war on Augustus. This was the last of the Civil Wars, a duel to the death between the only two men left on their feet--if I may use the metaphor--after an all-against-all sword-fight in the universal amphitheatre.

Lepidus was still alive, to be sure, but a prisoner in all but name, and quite harmless--he had been forced to fall at Augustus' feet and beg for his life. Young Pompey, too, the only other person of importance, whose fleet had tor a long time commanded the Mediterranean, had by now been defeated by Augustus, and captured and put to death by Antony. The duel between Augustus and Antony was short. Antony was totally defeated in the sea battle off Actium, in Greece. He fled to Alexandria [B.C. 31], and there took his own life--as did Cleopatra, too.

Augustus assumed Antony's Eastern conquests as his own and became, as Livia had intended, the sole ruler of the Roman world. Octavia remained true to the interests of Antony's children--not only his son by a former wife, but actually his three children by Cleopatra, a girl and two boys--bringing them up with her own two daughters, one of whom, Antonia the younger, was my mother. This nobility of mind excited general admiration at Rome.

Augustus ruled the world, but Livia ruled Augustus. And I must here explain the remarkable hold that she had over him. It was always a matter of wonder that there were no children of the marriage, seeing that my grandmother had not shown herself unfruitful and that Augustus was ‘reported to be the father of at least four natural children, besides his daughter Julia, who there is no reason for doubting was his own daughter. He was known, moreover to be passionately devoted to my grandmother. The truth will not easily be credited. The truth is that the marriage was never consummated. Augustus, though capable enough with other women, found himself as impotent as a child when he tried to have commerce with my grandmother.

The only reasonable explanation is that Augustus was, at bottom, a pious man, though cruelty and even ill-faith had been forced on him by the dangers that followed his granduncle Julius Caesar's assassination. He knew that the marriage was impious: this knowledge, it seems, affected him nervously, putting an inner restraint on his flesh.

My grandmother, who had wanted Augustus as an instrument of her ambition rather than as a lover was more glad than sorry for this impotence. She found that she could use it as a weapon for subjecting his will to hers. Her practice was to reproach him continually for having seduced her from my grandfather, whom she protested that she had loved, by assurances to her of deep passion and by secret threats to him that if she were not given up he would be arraigned as a public enemy. [This last was perfectly untrue.] Now look, she said, how she had been tricked! The passionate lover had turned out to be no man at all; any poor charcoal-burner or slave was more of a man than he! Even Julia was not his real daughter, and he knew it. All that he was good for, she said, was to fondle and fumble and kiss and make eyes like a singing eunuch.

It was in vain that Augustus protested that with other women he was a Hercules. Either she would refuse to believe it or she would accuse him of wasting en other women what he denied her. But that no scandal of this should go about she pretended on one occasion to be with child by him and then to have a miscarriage. Shame and unslakable passion bound Augustus closer to her than if their mutual longings had been nightly satisfied or than if she had borne him a dozen fine children. And she took the greatest care of his health and comfort, and was faithful to him, not being naturally lustful except of power; and for this he was so grateful that he let her guide and rule him in all his public and private acts. I have heard it confidently stated by old palace officials that, after marrying my grandmother, Augustus never looked at another woman. Yet all sorts of stories were current at Rome about his affairs with the wives and daughters of notables; and after his death, in explaining how it was that she had so complete a command of his affections, Livia used to say that it was not only because she was faithful to him but also because she never interfered with his passing -love-affairs. It is my belief that she put all these scandals about herself in order to have something to reproach him with.

If I am challenged as to my authority for this curious history I will give it.

The first part relating to the divorce I heard from Livia's own lips in the year she died. The remainder, about Augustus' impotence, I heard from a woman called Briseis, a wardrobe-maid of my mother's, who had previously served my grandmother as a page-girl, and being then only seven years old had been allowed to overhear conversations that she was thought too young to understand. I believe my account true and will continue to do so until it is supplanted by one that fits the facts equally well. To my way of thinking, the Sibyl's verse about "wife, no wife"

confirms the matter. No, I cannot close the matter here. In writing this passage, with the idea, I suppose, of shielding Augustus' good name, I have been holding something back which I shall now after all set down. Because, as the proverb says,

"truth helps the story on". It is this. My grandmother Livia ingeniously consolidated her hold on Augustus by secretly giving him, of her own accord, beautiful young women to sleep with whenever she noticed that passion made him restless. That she arranged this for him, and without a word said beforehand or afterwards, forbearing from the jealousy that, as a wife, he was convinced that she must feel; that everything was done very decently and quietly, the young women

[whom she picked out herself in the Syrian slave-market--he preferred Syrians]

being introduced into his bedroom at night with a knock and the rattle of a chain for signal, and called away again early in the morning by a similar knock and rattle; and that they kept silence in his presence as if they were succubi who came in dreams--that she contrived all this so thoughtfully and remained faithful to him herself in spite of his impotence with her, he must have considered a perfect proof of the sincerest love. You may object that Augustus, in his position, might have had the most beautiful women in the world, bond or free, married or unmarried, to feed his appetite, without the assistance of Livia as procuress. That is true, but it is true nevertheless that after his marriage to Livia he tasted no meat, as he once said himself, though perhaps in another context, that she had not passed as fit for eating.

Of women, then, Livia had no cause to be jealous, except only of her sister-in-law, my other grandmother, Octavia, whose beauty excited as much admiration as her virtue.

Livia had taken malicious pleasure in sympathising with her over Antony's faithlessness. She had gone so far as to suggest that it had been largely Octavia's own fault in dressing in so modest a way and behaving with such decorum. Mark Antony, she pointed out, was a man of strong passions, and to hold him successfully a woman must temper the chastity of a Roman matron with the arts and extravagances of an Oriental courtesan. Octavia should have taken a leaf from Cleopatra's book: for the Egyptian, though Octavia's inferior in looks and her senior by eight or nine years, knew well how to feed his sensual appetite.

"Men such as Antony, real men, prefer the strange to the wholesome."

Livia finished sententiously, “They find maggoty green cheese more tasty than freshly pressed curds."

"Keep your maggots to yourself!” Octavia flared at her.

Livia herself dressed very richly and used the most expensive Asiatic perfumes; but she did not allow the least extravagance in her household, which she made a boast of running in old-fashioned Roman style. Her rules were: plain but plentiful food, regular family worship, no hot baths after meals, constant work for everyone, and no waste. "Everyone" was not merely the slaves and freedmen but every member of the family. The unfortunate child •"Wj 3*.'

Julia was expected to set an example of industry. She led a very weary life.

She had a regular daily task of wool to card and spin, and cloth to weave, and needlework to do, and was made to rise from her hard bed at dawn, and even before dawn, in the winter months, to be able to get through it. And because her stepmother believed in a liberal education for girls, she was set, among other tasks, to learn the whole of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey by heart.

Julia had also to keep a detailed diary, for Livia's benefit, of what work she did, what books she read, what conversations she had, and so on: which was a great burden to her. She was allowed no friendships with men, though her beauty was much toasted. One young man of ancient family and irreproachable morals, a Consul's son, was bold enough to introduce himself to her one day at Baize on some polite pretext, when she was taking the half-hour's walk allowed her by the seaside, accompanied only by her duenna. Livia, who was jealous of Julia's good looks, and of Augustus' affection for her, had the young man sent a very strong letter, telling him that he must never expect to hold public office under the father of the girl whose good name he had tried to besmirch by this insufferable familiarity. Julia herself was punished by being forbidden to take her walk outside the grounds of the villa. About this time Julia went quite bald. I do not know whether Livia had a hand in this: it seems not improbable, though certainly baldness was in the Caesar family. At all events, Augustus found an Egyptian wig-maker who made her one of the most magnificent fair wigs that was ever seen, and her charms were thus rather increased than diminished by her mischance; she had not had very good hair of her own. It is said that the wig was not built, in the usual way, on a base of hair net but was the whole scalp of a German chieftain's daughter shrunk to the exact size of Julia's head and kept alive and pliant by occasional rubbing with a special ointment. But I must say that I don't believe this.

Everyone knew that Livia kept Augustus in strict order and that, if not actually frightened of her, he was at any rate very careful not to offend her. One day, in his capacity as Censor, he was lecturing some rich men about allowing their wives to bedizen themselves with jewels, "For a woman to overdress," he said, "is unseemly. It is the husband's duty to restrain his wife from luxury."

Carried away by his own eloquence he unfortunately added: "I sometimes have occasion to admonish my own wife about this." There was a delighted cry from the culprits. "Oh, Augustus," they said, "do tell us in what words you admonish Livia. It will serve as a model for us." Augustus was embarrassed and alarmed.

"You mis-heard me," he said, "I did not say that I had ever had occasion to reprimand Livia. As you know well, she is a paragon of matronly modesty. But I certainly would have no hesitation in reprimanding her, were she to forget her dignity by dressing, as some of your wives do, like an Alexandrian dancing-girl who has by some queer turn of fate become an Armenian queen-dowager." That same evening Livia tried to make Augustus look small by appearing at the dinner table in the most fantastically gorgeous finery she could lay her hands on, the foundation of which was one of Cleopatra's ceremonial dresses. But he got well out of an awkward situation by praising her for her witty and opportune parody of the very fault he had been condemning Livia had grown wiser since the time that she had advised my grandfather to put a diadem on his head and proclaim himself king. The title "king" was still execrated at Rome on account of the unpopular Tarquin dynasty to which, according to legend, the first Brutus [I call him this to distinguish him from the second Brutus, who murdered Julius] had put an end--expelling the royal family from the City and becoming one of the first two Consuls of the Roman Republic.

Livia realised now that the title of king could be waived so long as Augustus could control the substantial powers of kingship. By following her advice he gradually concentrated in his single person all the important Republican dignities. He was Consul at Rome, and f when he passed on the office to a reliable friend he took in exchange the "High Command"--which, though nominally on a level with the consulship, ranked in practice above this or any other magistracy.

He had absolute control of the provinces, too, and power to appoint the provincial governors-general, together with the command of all armies and the right of levying troops and of making peace ^ [*5] or war. In Rome he was voted the life-office of People's Protector, which secured him against all interference with his authority, gave him the power of vetoing the decisions of other office-holders and carried with it the inviolability of his person. The title "Emperor", which once merely meant "field-marshal" but has recently come to mean supreme monarch, he shared with other successful generals.

He also had the Censorship, which gave him authority over the two leading social orders, those of Senators and Knights; on the pretext of moral shortcomings he could disqualify any member of either order from its dignities and privileges--a disgrace keenly felt. He had control or the Public Treasury: he was supposed to render periodic accounts, but nobody was ever bold enough to demand an audit, though it was known that there was constant juggling between the Treasury and Privy Purse.

Thus he had the command of the armies, the control of the laws--for his influence on the Senate was such that they voted whatever he suggested to them--the control of public finances, the control or social behaviour, and inviolacy of person. He even had the right of summarily condemning any Roman citizen, from ploughman to senator, to death or perpetual banishment. The last dignity that he assumed was that of High Pontiff, which gave him control of the entire religious system. The Senate were anxious to vote him whatever title he would accept, short of King: they were afraid to vote him the kingship for fear of the people.

His real wish was to be called Romulus, but Livia advised him against this.

Her argument was that Romulus had been a king and that the name was therefore dangerous, and further that he was one of the Roman tutelary deities and that to take his name would seem blasphemous. But her real feeling was that it was not a grand enough tide.

Romulus had been a mere bandit-chieftain and was not among the first rank of the Gods. On her advice he therefore signified to the Senate that the title Augustus would be agreeable to him. So they voted him that. "Augustus" had a semi-divine connotation, and the common title of King was nothing by comparison.

How many mere kings paid tribute to Augustus! How many were marched in chains in Roman triumphs! Had not even the High King of remote India, hearing of Augustus' fame, sent ambassadors to Rome, begging for the protection of his friendship, with propitiatory presents of remarkable silks and spices; and rubies, emeralds and sardonyx; and tigers, then for the first time seen in Europe; and the Indian Hermes, the famous armless boy, who could do the most extraordinary things with his feet? Had not Augustus put an end to that line of kings in Egypt that went back at least five thousand years before the foundation of Rome? And at that fateful interruption of history what monstrous portents had not been seen? Had there not been flashes of armour from the clouds and bloody rain falling? Had not a serpent of gigantic size appeared in the main street of Alexandria and uttered an incredibly loud hiss? Had not the ghosts of dead Pharaohs appeared? Had not their statues frowned? Had not Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, uttered a bellow of lamentation and burst into tears? This was how my grandmother reasoned with herself.

Most women are inclined to set a modest limit to their ambitions; a few rare ones set a bold limit. But Livia was unique in setting no limit at all to hers, and yet remaining perfectly level-headed and cool in what would be judged in any other woman to be raving madness. It was only little by little that even I, with such excellent opportunities for observing her, came to guess generally what her intentions were. But even so, when the final disclosure came, it came as a shock of surprise. Perhaps I had better record her various acts in historical sequence, without dwelling on her hidden motives. On her advice, Augustus prevailed on the Senate to create two new Divinities, namely, the Goddess Roma, who represented the female soul of the Roman Empire, and the Demigod Julius, the warlike hero who was Julius Caesar in apotheosis. [Divine honours had been offered to Julius, in the East, while he was still alive; that he had not refused them was one of the reasons for his assassination.]

Augustus knew the value of a religious bond to unite the provinces with the City, a bond far stronger than one based merely on fear or gratitude. It sometimes happened that after long residence in Egypt or Asia Minor even true-born [27!

Romans turned to the worship of the gods they found there and forgot their own, thereby becoming foreigners in all but name. On the other hand Rome had imported so many religions from the cities she had conquered, giving alien deities, such as Isis and Cybele, noble temples in the City--and not merely for the convenience of visitors--that it was reasonable that she should now, in fair exchange, plant gods of her own in these cities. Roma and Julius, then, were to be worshipped by such provincials as were Roman citizens and wished to be reminded of their national heritage.

The next step that Livia took was to arrange for delegations of provincials not fortunate enough to possess full citizenship to visit Rome and beg to be given a Roman God whom they might worship loyally and without presumption. On Livia's advice Augustus told the Senate, half jokingly, that these poor fellows, while obviously they could not be allowed to worship the superior deities, Roma and Julius, must not be denied some sort of God, however humble. At this, Mascenas, one of Augustus' ministers, with whom Augustus had already discussed the advisability of taking the name of Romulus, said: "Let us give them a God who will watch over them well. Let us give them Augustus himself." Augustus appeared somewhat embarrassed but admitted that Maecenas' suggestion was a sound one. It was an established custom among Orientals, and one which might well be turned to Roman profit, to pay divine honours to their rulers; but since it was clearly impracticable for Eastern cities to worship the whole Senate in a body, putting up six hundred statues in each of their shrines, one way out of the difficulty, certainly, was for them to worship the Senate's chief executive officer, who happened to be himself. So the Senate, feeling complimented that each member had in him at least one six hundredth part of divinity, gladly voted Mascenas' motion, and shrines to Augustus were immediately erected in Asia Minor. The cult spread, but at first only in the frontier provinces, which were under the direct control of Augustus, not in the home provinces, which were nominally under the control of the Senate, not in the City itself.

Augustus approved of Livia's educative methods with Julia and of her domestic arrangements and economies.

He had simple tastes himself. His palate was so insensitive that he did not notice the difference between virgin olive oil and the last rank squeezings when the olive-paste has gone a third time through the press. He wore homespun clothes. It was justly said that. Fury though Livia was, but for her unwearying activity Augustus would never have been able to undertake the immense task he set himself of restoring Rome to peace and security after the long disasters of the Civil Wars--in which he himself had, of course, played so destructive a part.

Augustus' work filled fourteen hours a day, but Livia's, it was said, filled twentyfour. Not only did she manage her huge household in the efficient way I have described, but she bore an equal share with him in public business. A full account of all the legal, social, administrative, religious and military reforms which they carried out between them, to say nothing of the public works which they undertook, the temples which they redeified, the colonies they planted, would fill many volumes. Yet there were many leading Romans of the elder generation who could not forget that this seemingly admirable reconstitution of the State had only been made possible by the military defeat, secret murder or public execution of almost every person who had defied the power of this energetic pair. Had their sole and arbitrary power not been disguised under the forms of ancient liberty they would never have held it long. Even as it was, there were no less than four conspiracies against Augustus' life by would-be Brutuses.

III

THE NAME "LIVIA" IS CONNECTED WITH THE LATIN WORD which means Malignity. My grandmother was a consummate actress, and the outward purity of her conduct, the sharpness of her wit and the graciousness of her manners deceived nearly everybody. But nobody really liked her: malignity commands respect, not liking. She had a faculty for making ordinary easy-going people feel acutely conscious in her presence of their intellectual and moral shortcomings .1

must apologise for continuing to write about Livia, but it is unavoidable; like all honest Roman histories this is written from "egg to apple": I prefer the thorough Roman method, which misses nothing, to that of Homer and the Greeks generally, who love to jump into the middle of things and then work backwards or forwards as they feel inclined. Yes, I have often had the notion of re-writing the story of Troy in Latin prose for the benefit of our poorer citizens who cannot read Greek; beginning with the egg from which Helen was hatched and continuing, chapter by chapter, to the apples eaten for dessert at the great feast in celebration of Ulysses'

home-coming and victory over his wife's suitors. Where Homer is obscure or silent on any point I would naturally draw from later poets, or from the earlier Dares whose account, though full of poetical vagaries, seems to me more reliable than Homer's, because he actually took part in the war, first with the Trojans, then with the Greeks.

I once saw a strange painting on the inside of an old cedar chest which came, I believe, from somewhere in Northern Syria. The inscription, in Greek, was

"Poison is Queen", and the face of Poison, though executed over a hundred years before Livia's birth, was unmistakably the face of Livia. And in this context I must write about Marcellus, the son of Octavia by a former husband. Augustus, who was devoted to Marcellus, had adopted him as his son, giving him administrative duties greatly in advance of his years; and had married him to Julia. The common opinion at Rome was that he intended to make Marcellus his heir.

Livia did not oppose the adoption, and indeed seemed genuinely to welcome it as giving her greater facility for winning Marcellus' affection and confidence. Her devotion to him seemed beyond question. It was by her advice that Augustus advanced him so rapidly in rank; and Marcellus, who knew of this, was duly grateful to her.

Livia's motive in favouring Marcellus was thought by a few shrewd observers to be that of making Agrippa jealous.

Agrippa was the most important man at Rome after Augustus: a man of low birth, but Augustus' oldest friend and most successful general and admiral. Livia had always hitherto done her best to keep Agrippa's friendship for Augustus. He was ambitious, but only to a degree; he would never have presumed to contend for sovereignty with Augustus, whom he admired exceedingly, and wanted no greater glory than that of being his most trusted minister. He was, moreover, over-conscious of his humble origin, and Livia, by playing the grand patrician lady, always had the whip-hand of him. His importance to Livia and Augustus did not, however, lie only in his services, his loyalty and his popularity with the commons and the Senate.

It was this; by a fiction which Livia herself had originally created, he was supposed to hold a watching brief for the nation on Augustus' political conduct. At the famous sham-debate staged in the Senate, after the overthrow or Antony, between Augustus and his two friends, Agrippa and Maecenas, Agrippa's part had been that of counselling him against assuming sovereign power; only to let his objections be overruled by the arguments of Maecenas and the enthusiastic demands of the Senate. Agrippa had then declared that he would faithfully serve Augustus so long as the sovereignty was wholesome and no arbitrary tyranny.

He was thenceforth popularly looked to and trusted as a buttress against possible encroachments of tyranny; and what Agrippa let pass, the nation let pass.

It was now thought by these same shrewd observers that Livia was playing a very dangerous game in making Agrippa jealous of Marcellus, and events were watched with great interest.

Perhaps her devotion to Marcellus was a sham and her real intention was that Agrippa should be goaded into putting him out of the way. It was rumoured that a devoted memoei of Agrippa's family had offered to pick a quarrel with Marcellus and kill him: but that Agrippa, though he was no less jealous than Livia had intended him to be, was too honourable to accept such a base suggestion.

It was generally assumed that Augustus had made Maiocflus his chief heir and that Marcellus would not only inherit his immense wealth but the monarchy--for how else can I write of it but as that?--into the bargain. Agrippa therefore let it be known that while he was devoted to Augustus and had never regretted his decision to support his authority, there was one thing that he would not permit, as a patriotic citizen, and that was that the monarchy should become hereditary. But Marcellus was now almost as popular as Agrippa, and many young men of rank and family to whom the question “Monarchy or Republic?" seemed already an academic one tried to ingratiate themselves with him, hoping for important honours from him when he succeeded Augustus. This general readiness to welcome a continuance of the monarchy seemed to please Livia, but she privately announced that, in the lamentable case of the death or incapacity of Augustus, the immediate conduct of State affairs, until such time as further arrangements should be made by decrees of the Senate, must be entrusted to hands more experienced than those of Marcellus. Yet Marcellus was such a favourite of Augustus that, though Livia's private announcements usually ended as public edicts, nobody paid much attention to her on this occasion; and more and more people courted Marcellus.

The shrewd observers wondered how Livia would meet this new situation; but luck seemed to be with her. Augustus caught a slight chill which took an unexpected turn, with fevers and vomiting: Livia prepared his food with her own hands during this illness, [B.C. 23] but his stomach was so delicate that he could keep nothing down. He was growing weaker and weaker and felt at last that he was on the point of death. He had often been asked to name his successor, but had not done so for fear of the political consequences, and also because the thought of his own death was extremely distasteful to him. Now he felt that it was his duty to name someone, and asked Livia to advise him. He said that sickness had robbed him of all power of judgment; he would choose whatever successor, within reason, she suggested. So she made the decision for him, and he agreed to it. She then summoned to his bedside his fellow-Consul, the City magistrates and certain representative senators and knights.

He was too weak to say anything but handed the Consul a register of the naval and military forces and a statement of the public revenues, and then beckoned to Agrippa and gave him his signet ring; which was as much as to say that Agrippa was to succeed him, though with the close co-operation of the Consuls. This came as a great surprise.

Everyone had expected that Marcellus would be chosen.

And from this moment Augustus began mysteriously to recover: the fever abated and his stomach accepted food. The credit for his cure went, however, not to Livia who continued attending to him personally, but to a certain doctor called Musa who had a harmless fad about cold lotions and cold potions, Augustus was so grateful to Musa for his supposed services that he gave him his own weight in gold pieces, which the Senate doubled. Musa was also, though a freedman, advanced to the rank of knight, which gave him the right to wear a gold ring and become a candidate for public office; and a still more extravagant decree was passed by the Senate, granting exemption from taxes to the whole medical profession.

Marcellus was plainly mortified at not being declared Augustus' heir. He was very young, only in his twentieth year. Augustus' previous favours had given him an exaggerated sense both of his talents and of his political importance. He tried to carry the matter off by being pointedly rude to Agrippa at a public banquet. Agrippa with difficulty kept his temper; but that there was no sequel to the incident encouraged Marcellus' supporters to believe that Agrippa was afraid of him. They even told each other that if Augustus did not change his mind within a year or two Marcellus would usurp the Imperial power. They grew so rowdy and boastful, Marcellus doing little to check them, that frequent clashes occurred between them and the party of Agrippa. Agrippa was most vexed by the insolence of this young puppy, as he called him--he who had borne most of the chief offices of state and fought a number of successful campaigns. But his vexation was mixed with alarm. The impression created by these incidents was that Marcellus and he were indecently wrangling as to who should wear Augustus' signet ring after he was dead.

He was ready to make almost any sacrifice to avoid seeming to play such a part. Marcellus was the offended and [33] Agrippa wished to put the whole burden on him. He decided to withdraw from Rome. He went to Augustus and asked to be appointed Governor of Syria. When Augustus asked him the reason for his unexpected request he explained that he thought he could, in that capacity, drive a valuable bargain with the King of Parthia. He could persuade the King to return the regimental Eagles and the prisoners captured from the Romans thirty years before, in exchange for the King's son whom Augustus was holding captive at Rome. He said nothing about his quarrel with Marcellus. Augustus, who had himself been greatly disturbed by it, torn between old friendship for Agrippa and indulgent paternal love for Marcellus, did not allow himself to consider how generously Agrippa was behaving, for that would have been a confession of his own weakness, and so made no reference to the matter either. He granted Agrippa’s request with alacrity, saying how important it was to get the Eagles back, and the captives--if any of them were still alive after so long--and asked how soon he would be ready to start. Agrippa was hurt, misunderstanding his manner.

He thought that Augustus wanted to get rid of him, really believing that he was quarrelling with Marcellus about the succession. He thanked him for granting his request, coldly protested his loyalty and friendship, and said that he was ready to sail the following day.

He did not go to Syria. He went no farther than the island of Lesbos, sending his lieutenants ahead to administer the province for him. He knew that his stay at Lesbos would be read as a sort of banishment incurred because of Marcellus. He did not visit the province, because if he bad done so it would have given the Marcellans a handle against him: they would have said that he had gone to the East in order to gather an army together to march against Rome. But he flattered himself that Augustus would need his services before long; and fully believed that Marcellus was planning to usurp the monarchy. Lesbos was conveniently near Rome. He did not forget his commission: he opened negotiations, through intermediaries, with the King of Parthia but did not expect to conclude them for a while.

It takes a deal of time and patience to drive a good bargain with an Eastern monarch.

Marcellus was elected to a City magistracy, his first official appointment, and made this the occasion for a magnificent display of public Games. He not only tented in the theatres themselves, against sun and rain, and hung them with splendid tapestries but made a gigantic multicoloured marquee of the whole Market Place. The effect was very gorgeous, particularly from the inside when the sun shone through. In this tent-making he used a fabulous amount of red, yellow and green cloth, which when the Games were over was cut up and distributed to the citizens for clothes and bed-linen. Huge numbers of wild beasts were imported from Africa for the combats in the amphitheatre, including many lions, and there was a fight between fifty German captives and an equal number of black warriors from Morocco. Augustus himself contributed lavishly towards the expenses; and so did Octavia, as Marcellus' mother. When Octavia appeared in the ceremonial procession she was greeted with such resounding applause that Livia could hardly restrain tears of anger and Jealousy.

Two days later Marcellus fell sick. His symptoms were precisely the same as those of Augustus in his recent illness, so naturally Musa was sent for again. He had become excessively rich and famous, charging as much as a thousand gold pieces for a single professional visit, and making a favour of it at that. In all cases where sickness had not taken too strong a hold on his patients his mere name was enough to bring about an immediate cure. The credit went to the cold lotions and cold potions, the secret prescriptions for which he refused to communicate to anyone.

Augustus' confidence in Musa's powers was so great that he made light of Marcellus' sickness and the Games continued. But somehow, in spite of the unremitting attention of Livia and the very coldest lotions and potions that Musa could prescribe, Marcellus died. The grief of both Octavia and Augustus was unbounded and the death was mourned as a public calamity. There were, however, a good many level-headed people who did not regret Marcellus' disappearance.

There would certainly have been civil war again between him and Agrippa if Augustus had died and he had attempted to step into his place: now Agrippa was the only possible successor. But this was reckoning without Livia, whose fixed intention it was, in the event of Augustus' death--Claudius, Claudius, you said that you would not mention Livia's motives but only record her acts--whose fixed intention it was, in the event of Augustus' death, to continue ruling the Empire through my uncle Tiberius, with my father in support. She would arrange for them to be adopted as Augustus' heirs.

Marcellus' death left Julia free for Tiberius to many, and all would have gone well with Livia's plans had there not been a dangerous outbreak of political unrest at Rome, the mob clamouring for a restoration of the Republic.

When Livia tried to address them from the Palace steps they pelted her with rotten eggs and filth. Augustus happened to be away on a tour of the Eastern provinces, in company with Maecenas, and had reached Athens when the news arrived. Livia wrote shortly and in haste that the situation in the City could not be worse and that Agrippa's help must be secured at any price. Augustus at once summoned Agrippa from Lesbos and begged him, for friendship's sake, to return with him to Rome and restore public confidence. But Agrippa had been nursing his grudge too long to be grateful for this summons. He stood on his dignity. In three years Augustus had" written him only three letters and those in a hard official tone; and after Marcellus' death should certainly have recalled him. Why should he help Augustus now? It was Livia, as a matter of fact, who had been responsible for this estrangement; she had miscalculated the political situation by dropping Agrippa too soon. She had even hinted to Augustus that Agrippa, though absent in Lesbos, knew more than most people about Marcellus' mysterious and fatal illness; someone, she said, had told her that Agrippa, when he heard the news, had shown no surprise and considerable complacence. Agrippa told Augustus that he had been so long away from Rome that he was out of touch with City politics and did not feel capable of undertaking what was asked of him.

Augustus, fearing that Agrippa, if he went to Rome in his present mood, would be more inclined to put himself forward as a champion of popular liberties than to support the Imperial government, dismissed him with words of gracious regret and hurriedly summoned Maecenas to ask his advice. Maecenas wanted permission to talk to Agrippa freely on Augustus' behalf and undertook to find out from him exactly on what terms he would do what was wanted of him. Augustus begged Maecenas for God's sake to do so, "as quick as boiled asparagus" [a favourite expression of his]. So Maecenas took Agrippa aside and said: "Now, old friend, what is it that you want? I realise that you think you have been badly treated, but I assure you that Augustus has a right to think himself equally injured by you.

Can't you see how badly you behaved towards him, by not being frank? It was an insult both to his justice and to his friendship for you. If you had explained that Marcellus' faction put you in a very uncomfortable position and that Marcellus himself had insulted you--I swear to you that Augustus never knew about this until just the other day he would have done all in his power to right matters. My frank opinion is that you have behaved like a sulky child--and he has treated you like a father who won't be bullied by that sort of behaviour. You say that he wrote you very cold letters. Were your own, then, written in such affectionate language? And what sort of a good-bye had you given him? I want to mediate between the two of you now, because if this breach continues it will be the ruin of us all. You both love each other dearly, as it is only right that the two greatest living Romans should. Augustus has told me that he is ready, as soon as you show your old openness to him, to renew the friendship on the same terms as before, or even more intimate ones."

"He said that?"

"His very words. May I tell him how grieved you are that you offended him, and may I explain that it was a misunderstanding--that you left Rome, thinking that he was aware of Marcellus' insult to you at the banquet? And that now you are anxious, on your side, to make up for past failures in friendship and that you rely on him to meet you half-way?"

Agrippa said: "Maecenas, you are a fine fellow and a true friend. Tell Augustus I am his to command as always."

Maecenas say: "I shall tell him that with the greatest pleasure. And I shall add, as my own opinion, that it would [37] not be safe to send you back to the City now. to restore order, without some outstanding mark of personal confidence."

Then Maecenas went to Augustus. "I smoothed him down nicely. He'll do anything you want. But he wants to believe that you really love him, like a child jealous of his father's love for another child. I think that the only thing that would really satisfy him would be for you to let him many Julia."

Augustus had to think quickly. He remembered that Agrippa and his wife, who was Marcellus' sister, had been on bad terms ever since the quarrel with Marcellus, and that Agrippa was supposed to be in love with Julia. He wished Livia were present to advise him, but there was no escape from an instant decision: if he offended Agrippa now he would never recover his support. Livia had written "at any price": so he was free to make what arrangements he pleased.

He sent for Agrippa again, and Maecenas staged a dignified scene of reconciliation. Augustus said that if Agrippa would consent to marry his daughter, it would be proof to him that the friendship which he valued before any other in

‘the world was established on a secure foundation. Agrippa wept tears of joy and asked pardon for his shortcomings. He would try to be worthy of Augustus' loving generosity.

Agrippa returned to Rome with Augustus, and immediately divorced his wife and married Julia. The marriage was so popular and its celebration so magnificently lavish that the political disturbances immediately subsided.

Agrippa won great credit for Augustus, too, by [B.C. 21 carrying through the negotiations for the return of the Eagle standards, which were formally handed over to Tiberius as Augustus' personal representative. The Eagles were sacred objects, more truly sacred to Roman hearts than any marble statues of Gods. A few captives returned, too, but after thirty-two years of absence they were hardly worth welcoming back; most of them preferred to remain in Parthia, where they had settled down and married native women.

My grandmother Livia was far from pleased with the bargain made with Agrippa--the only cheerful side of 4 CLAUDIUS [38] which was the dishonour done to Octavia by the divorce of her daughter. But she concealed her feelings. It was nine years before Agrippa's services could be B.C. 12] spared. Then he died suddenly at his country house. Augustus was away in Greece at the time, so there was no inquest on the body. Agrippa left a large number of children behind him, three boys and two girls, as Augustus' heirs-at-law; it would be difficult for Livia to set their claims aside in favour of her own sons.

However, Tiberius married Julia, who had made things easy for Livia by falling in love with him, and begging Augustus to use his influence with Tiberius on her behalf.

Augustus consented only because Julia threatened suicide if he refused to help her. Tiberius himself hated having to marry Julia, but did not dare refuse. He was obliged to divorce his own wife, Vipsania, Agrippa's daughter by a former marriage, whom he passionately loved. Once when he met her accidentally afterwards in the street he followed her with his eyes in such a hopeless longing way that Augustus, when he heard of it, gave orders that, for decency's sake, this must not happen again. Special look-outs must be kept by the officers of both households to avoid an encounter. Vipsania married, not long afterwards, an ambitious young noble called Callus. And before I forget it, I must mention my father's marriage to my mother, Antonia, the younger daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia.

It had taken place in the year of Augustus' illness and Marcellus' death.

My uncle Tiberius was one of the bad Claudians. He was morose, reserved and cruel, but there had been three people whose influence had checked these elements in his nature. First there was my father, one of the best Claudians, cheerful, open and generous; next there was Augustus, a very honest, merry, kindly man who disliked Tiberius but treated him generously for his mother's sake; and lastly there was Vipsania. My father's influence was removed, or lessened, when they were both of an age to do their military service and were sent on campaign to different parts of the Empire. Then came the separation from Vipsania, and this was followed by a coolness with Augustus, who was offended by my uncle's ill-concealed distaste for Julia. With {39} these three influences removed he gradually went altogether to the bad.

I should at this point, I think, describe his personal appearance. He was a tall, dark-haired, fair-skinned, heavily built man with a magnificent pair of shoulders, and hands so strong that he could crack a walnut, or bore a tough skinned green apple through, with thumb and forefinger.

If he had not been so slow in his movements be would have made a champion boxer: he once killed a comrade in a friendly bout--bare-fisted, not with the usual metal boxing-gloves--with a blow on the side of the head that cracked his skull. He walked with his neck thrust slightly forward and his eyes on the ground.

His face would have been handsome if it had not been disfigured by so many pimples, and if his eyes had not been so prominent, and if he had not worn an almost perpetual frown. His statues make him extremely handsome because they leave out these defects. He spoke little, and that very slowly, so that in conversation with him one always felt tempted to finish his sentences for him and answer them in the same breath.

But, when he pleased, he was an impressive public speaker.

He went bald early in life except at the back of his head, where he grew his hair long, a fashion of the ancient nobility. He was never ill.

Tiberius, unpopular as he was in Roman society, was nevertheless an extremely successful general. He revived various ancient disciplinary severities, but since he did not spare himself when on campaign, seldom sleeping in a tent, eating and drinking no better than the men and always charging at their head in battle, they preferred to serve under him than under some good-humoured, easy-

going commander in whose leadership they did not have the same confidence.

Tiberius never gave his men a smile o a word of praise and often overmarched and overworked them. "Let them hate me," he once said, "so long as they obey me."

He kept the colonels and regimental officers in as strict order as the men, so there were no complaints o his partiality. Service under Tiberius was not unprofitable he usually contrived to capture and sack the enemy's camp and cities. He fought successful wars in Armenia, Parthia Germany, Spain, Dalmatia, the Alps, and France.

My father was, as I say, one of the best Claudians. He was as strong as his brother, far better looking, quicker of speech and movement and by no means less successful as a general. He treated all soldiers as Roman citizens and therefore as his equals, except in rank and education. He hated having to inflict punishment on them: he gave orders that as far as possible all offences against discipline should be dealt with by the offender's own comrades, whom he assumed to be jealous for the good name of their section or company. He gave it out that if they found that any offence was beyond their corrective powers, for he did not allow them to kill a culprit or incapacitate him for his daily military duties, it should be referred to the regimental colonel; but so far as possible he wished his men to be their own judges. The captains might flog, by permission of their regimental colonels, but only in cases where the offence, such as cowardice in battle or theft from a comrade, showed a baseness of character that made flogging appropriate; but he ordered that a man once flogged must never afterwards serve as a combatant, he must be degraded to the transport or clerical staff. Any soldier who considered that he had been unjustly sentenced by his comrades or his captain might appeal to him; but he thought it unlikely that such sentences would need to be revised. This system worked admirably, because my father was such a fine soldier that he inspired the troops to a virtue of which other commanders did not believe them capable. But it can be understood how dangerous it was for troops who had been handled in this way to be commanded afterwards by any ordinary general. The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again. There was always trouble when troops who had served under my father happened to be drafted for service under my uncle. It happened the other way about too: troops who had served under my uncle reacted with scorn and suspicion to my father's disciplinary system. Their custom had been to shield each other's crimes and to pride themselves on their cunning in avoiding detection; and since under my uncle a man could be flogged, for example, for addressing an officer without being first addressed, or for speaking with too great frankness, or for behaving independently in any way, it was an [41] honour rather than a disgrace for a soldier to be able to show the marks of the lash on his back.

My father's greatest victories were in the Alps, France, the Low Countries, but especially in Germany, where his name will, I think, never be forgotten. He was always in the thick of the fighting. His ambition was to perform a feat which had only been performed twice in Roman history, namely, as general to kill the opposing general with his own hands and strip him of his arms. He was many times very close to success but his prey always escaped him.

Either the fellow galloped off the field or surrendered instead of fighting, or some officious private soldier got the blow in first. Veterans telling me stories of my father have often chuckled admiringly: "Oh, Sir, it used to do our hearts good to see your father on his black horse playing hide-and-seek in the battle with one of those German chieftains. He'd be forced to cut down nine or ten of the bodyguard sometimes, tough men too, before he got near the standard, and by then the wily bird would be flown.

The proudest boast of men who had served under my father was that he was the first Roman general who had marched the full length of the Rhine from Switzerland to the North Sea.

IV

MY FATHER HAD NEVER FORGOTTEN MY GRANDFATHER'S teaching about liberty. As quite a small boy he had fallen foul of Marcellus, five years his senior, to whom Augustus had given the title "Leader of Cadets". He had told Marcellus that the title had been awarded to him only for a specific occasion [a sham-fight called "Greeks and Trojans" fought on Mars Field between two forces of mounted cadets, the sons of knights and senators] and that it did not carry with it any of the general judicial powers which Marcellus had since assumed; and that, for himself, as a free-born Roman, he would not submit to such tyranny.

He reminded Marcellus that the opposing side in the sham fight had been led by Tiberius, and that Tiberius had won the honours of the engagement. He challenged Marcellus to a duel. Augustus was very much amused when he heard the story and for a long time never referred to my father except playfully as "the free-born Roman".

Whenever he was in Rome now my father chafed at the growing spirit of subservience to Augustus that he everywhere encountered, and always longed to be back in arms.

While acting as one of the chief City magistrates during an absence of Augustus and Tiberius in France he was disgusted by the prevalence of place-hunting and political jobbery. He privately told a friend, from whom I heard it years later, that there was more of the old Roman spirit of liberty to be found in a single company of his soldiers than in the whole senatorial order. Shortly before his death he wrote Tiberius a bitter letter to this effect from a camp in the interior of Germany. He said that he wished to Heaven that Augustus would follow the glorious example of the Dictator Sulla, who, when sole master of Rome after the first Civil Wars, all his enemies being either subjugated or pacified, had only]

paused until he had settled a few State matters to his liking before laying down his rods of office and becoming once more a private citizen. If Augustus did not do the same pretty soon--and he had always given out that this was his ultimate intention--it would be too late. The ranks of the old nobility were sadly thinned: the proscriptions and the Civil Wars had carried away the boldest and best, and the survivors, lost among the new nobility--nobility indeed!--tended more and more to behave like family slaves to Augustus and Livia.

Soon Rome would have forgotten what freedom meant and would fall at last under a tyranny as barbarous and arbitrary as those of the East. It was not to forward such a calamity that he had fought so many wearisome campaigns under Augustus' supreme command. Even his love and deep personal admiration for Augustus, who had been a second father to him, did not prevent him from expressing these feelings. He asked Tiberius' opinion: could not the [43] two of them together persuade, even compel, Augustus to retire? "If he consents I shall hold him in a thousand times greater love and admiration than formerly; but I am sorry to say that the secret and illegitimate pride that our mother Livia has always derived from her exercise of supreme power through Augustus will be the greatest hindrance that we are likely to encounter in this matter."

By ill-luck the letter was delivered to Tiberius while he was in the presence of Augustus and Livia. "A despatch from your noble brother!" the Imperial courier called out, handing it to him. Tiberius, not suspecting that there was anything in the letter that should not be communicated to Livia and Augustus, asked permission to open and read it at once. Augustus said: "By all means, Tiberius, but on condition that you read it aloud to us." He motioned the servants out of the room. "Come, let us lose no time, what are his latest victories? I am impatient to hear. His letters are always well written and interesting, much more so than yours, my dear fellow, if you'll pardon me for making the comparison."

Tiberius read out the first few words and then grew very red. He tried to skip over the dangerous part, but found that there was little but danger throughout the letter, except just at the end where my father complained of giddiness from a head-wound and told of his difficult march to the Elbe. Curious portents had occurred lately, he wrote.

A most extraordinary display of shooting stars, night after night; sounds like the lamenting of women from the forest; and two divine youths on white horses in Greek, not German, dress, had suddenly ridden through the middle of the camp at dawn. Finally, a German woman of more than mortal size had appeared at his tent door and spoken to him in Greek, telling him to advance no further because fate ruled against it. So Tiberius read a word here and there, stumbled, said that the writing was illegible, started again, stumbled again and finally excused himself.

"What's this?" said Augustus. "Surely you can make out more than that."

Tiberius pulled himself together. "To be honest. Sir, I can, but the letter does not deserve reading. Evidently my brother was not well at the time of writing it."

Augustus was alarmed. "He is not seriously ill, I hope?"

But my grandmother Livia, as if her mother's anxiety for once overrode good manners--though of course she guessed at once that there was something in the letter that Tiberius was afraid to read because it reflected either on Augustus or herself--snatched it from him. She read it through, frowned grimly and handed it to Augustus, saying: "This is a matter which only concerns you. It is not my business to punish a son, however unnatural, but yours as his guardian and as the head of the State."

Augustus was alarmed, wondering what in the world could be amiss. He read the letter, but it seemed to call for disapproval rather as something which had outraged my grandmother than as something written against himself.

Indeed, except for the ugly word "compel", he secretly approved of the sentiments expressed in the letter, even though the insult to my grandmother reflected on himself, as having been persuaded by her against his better judgment.

The Senate were certainly becoming shamefully obsequious in their manners towards him and his family and staff. He disliked the situation as much as my father, and it was true that as long ago as before the defeat and death o{ Antony he had publicly promised to retire when no public enemy remained in the field against him; and he had several times since referred in his speeches to the happy day when his task would be done. He was weary now of perpetual State business and perpetual honours: he wanted a rest and anonymity. But my grandmother would never allow him to give up: she would always say that his task was not half accomplished yet, that nothing but civil disorder could be expected if he retired now. "Yes, he worked hard, she owned, but she worked still harder and with no direct public reward. And he must not be simple-minded: once out of office and a mere private citizen he was liable to impeachment and banishment, or worse; and what of the secret grudges that the relations of men whom he had killed or dishonoured bore against him? As a private citizen he would have to give up his bodyguard as well as his armies. Let him accept another ten years of office and at the end of them, perhaps, things might have changed for the better. So he always gave in and continued ruling. He [45] accepted his monarchial privileges in instalments. He was voted them for five or ten years at a stretch, usually ten.

My grandmother looked hard at Augustus when he had finished reading the unlucky letter. "Well?" she asked.

"I agree with Tiberius," he said mildly. "The young man must be ill. This is the derangement of overstrain.

You notice the final paragraph where he mentions the results of his head-wound and seeing those visions--well, that proves it. He needs a rest. The natural generosity of his soul has been perverted by the anxieties of campaign.

Those German forests are no place for a man sick in mind, are they, Tiberius? The howling of wolves gets on one's nerves the worst, I believe: the lamenting of women he talks about was surely wolves. What about recalling him, now that he has given these Germans such a shaking as they'll never forget? It would do me good to see him back here at Rome again. Yes, we must certainly have him back.

You'll be glad, dearest Livia, to have your boy again, won't you?"

My grandmother did not answer directly. She said, still frowning; "And you, Tiberius?"

My uncle was more politic than Augustus. He knew his mother's nature better. He answered: "My brother certainly seems ill, but even illness cannot excuse such unfilial behaviour and such gross folly. I agree that he should be recalled to be reminded of the heinousness of having entertained such base thoughts about his modest, devoted and indefatigable mother, and of the further enormity of committing them to paper and sending them by courier through unfriendly country. Besides, the argument from the case of Sulla is childish. As soon as Sulla was out of power the Civil Wars began again and his new constitution was overturned." So Tiberius came quite well out of the affair, but much of his severity against my father was genuine, for landing him in so embarrassing a position.

Livia was choking with rage against Augustus for allowing insults to her to go by so easily, and in her son's presence too. Her rage against my father was equally violent.

She knew that when he returned he was likely to carry into execution his plan for forcing Augustus to retire. She also saw that she would never now be able to rule through Tiberius--even if she could assure the succession tor him--so long as my father, a man of enormous popularity at Rome and with all the Western regiments at his back, stood waiting to force the restoration of popular liberties.

And supreme power for her had come to be more important than life or honour; she had sacrificed so much for it.

Yet she was able to disguise her feelings. She pretended to take Augustus'

view that my father was merely sick, and told Tiberius that she thought his censure too severe.

She agreed, however, that my father should be recalled at once. She even thanked Augustus for his generous extenuation of her poor son's fault and said that she would send him out her own confidential physician with a parcel of hellebore, from Anticyra in Thessaly, which was a famous specific for cases of mental weakness.

The physician set out the next day in company with the courier who took Augustus' letter. The letter was one or friendly congratulation on his victories and sympathy for his head-wound; it permitted him to return to Rome, but in language which meant that he must return whether he wished to come or not.

My father replied a few days later with thanks for Augustus' generosity. He replied that he would return as soon as his health permitted, but that the letter had reached him the day after a slight accident: his horse had fallen under him at full gallop, rolled on his leg and crushed it against a sharp stone. He thanked his mother for her solicitude, for the gift of the hellebore and for sending her physician, of whose services he had immediately availed himself. But he feared that even his well-known skill had not kept the wound from taking a serious turn.

He said finally that he would have preferred to stay at his post but that Augustus'

wishes were his commands; and repeated that as soon as he was well again he would return to the City.

He was at present encamped near the Thuringian Saal.

On hearing this news, Tiberius, who was with Augustus and Livia at Pavia, instantly asked leave to attend his brother's sick-bed. Augustus granted it and he mounted his cob and galloped off north, with a small escort, making for the quickest pass across the Alps. A five hundred mile journey lay before him but he could count on frequent relays of [47] horses at the posting-houses and when he was too weary for the saddle he could commandeer a gig and snatch a few hours'

sleep in it without delaying his progress. The weather favoured him. He went over the Alps and descended into Switzerland, then followed the main Rhine road, not having yet stopped for as much as a hot meal, until he reached a place called Mannheim. Here he crossed the river and struck north-east by rough roads through unfriendly country. He was alone when he reached his destination on the evening of the third day, his original escort having long fallen out, and the new escort which he had picked up at Mannheim not having been able to keep up with him either. It is claimed that on the second day and night he travelled just under two hundred miles between noon and noon. He was in time to greet my father but not in time to save his life; for the leg by now was gangrened up to the thigh. My father, though on the point of death, had just sufficient presence of mind to order the camp to pay my uncle Tiberius the honours due to him as an army commander.

The brothers embraced and my father whispered, "She read my letter?"

"Before [B.C. 9] I did myself," groaned my uncle Tiberius.

Nothing more was said except by my father, who sighed, "Rome has a severe mother: Lucius and Gaius have a dangerous stepmother." Those were his last words, and presently my uncle Tiberius closed his eyes.

I heard this account from Xenophon, a Greek from the island of Cos, who was quite a young man at this time. He was my father's staff-surgeon and had been much disgusted that my grandmother's physician had taken the case out of his hands. Gaius and Lucius, I should explain, were Augustus' grandchildren by Julia and Agrippa. He had adopted them as his own sons while they were still infants.

There was a third boy, Postumus, so called because he was born posthumously; Augustus did not adopt him too, but left him to carry on Agrippa's name.

The camp where my father died was named "The Accursed" and his body was carried in a marching military procession to the army's winter quarters at Mainz on the Rhine, my uncle Tiberius walking all the way as chief mourner. The army wished to bury the body there, but he brought it back for a funeral at Rome where it was burnt on a monstrous pyre in Mars Field. Augustus himself pronounced the funeral oration, in the course of which he said, "I pray the gods to make my sons Gaius and Lucius as noble and virtuous men as this Drusus and to vouchsafe to me as honourable a death as his."

Livia was not sure how far she could trust Tiberius. On his return with my father's body his sympathy with her had seemed forced and insincere, and when Augustus wished himself as honourable a death as my father's she saw a brief half-smile cross his face. Tiberius who, it appears, had long suspected that my grandfather had not died a natural death, was resolved now not to cross his mother's will in anything. Dining so often at her table he felt himself completely at her mercy. He worked hard to win her favour.

Livia understood what was in his mind, and was not dissatisfied. He was the only one who suspected her of being a poisoner, and would obviously keep his suspicions to himself. She had lived down the scandal of her marriage with Augustus and was now quoted in the City as an example of virtue in its strictest and most disagreeable form. The Senate voted that four statues of her should be set up in various public places; this was by way of consoling her for her loss. They also enrolled her by a legal fiction among the "Mothers of Three Children".

Mothers of three or more children had special privileges under Augustus'

legislation, particularly as legatees--spinsters and barren women were not allowed to benefit under wills at all and their loss was the gain of their fruitful sisters.

Claudius, you tedious old fellow, here you have come to within an inch or two of the end of the fourth roll of your autobiography and you haven't even reached your birthplace. Put it down at once or you'll never reach even the middle of your story. Write, "My birth occurred at Lyons in France, on the first of August, a year before my father's death." So. My parents had had six children before me but as my mother always accompanied my father on his campaigns a child had to be very hardy to survive. Only my brother Germanicus, five years older than myself, and my sister Livilla, a year older than myself, were living: both inherited my father's magnificent constitution. I did not. [49]

I nearly died on three occasions before my second year and, had not my father's death brought the family back to Rome, it is most unlikely that this story would have been written.

V

AT ROME WE LIVED IN THE BIG HOUSE WHICH HAD BElonged to my grandfather and which he had left in his will to my grandmother. It was on the Palatine Hill, close to Augustus' palace and the temple of Apollo built by Augustus, where the library was, and not far from the temple of Castor and Pollux.

[This was the old temple, built of timber and sods, which sixteen years later Tiberius replaced, at his own expense, with a magnificent marble structure, the interior painted and gilded and furnished as sumptuously as a rich noblewoman's boudoir. My grandmother Livia made him do this to please Augustus, I may say.

Tiberius was not religious-minded and very stingy with money.] It was healthier on that hill than down in the hollow by the river; most of the houses there belonged to senators, I was a very sickly child--"a very battleground of diseases", the doctors said--and perhaps only lived because the diseases could not agree as to which should have the honour of carrying me off. To begin with, I was born prematurely, at only seven months, and then my foster-nurse's milk disagreed with me, so that my skin broke out in an ugly rash, and then I had malaria, and measles which left me slightly deaf in one ear, and erysipelas, and colitis, and finally infantile paralysis which shortened my left leg so that I was condemned to a permanent limp.

Because of one or other of these various illnesses I have all my life been so weak in the hams that to run or walk long distances has never been possible for me: a great deal of my travelling has had to be done in a sedan-chair. Then there is the appalling pain that catches me often, after eating, in the pit of my stomach. It has been so bad that on two or three occasions, if my friends had not intervened, I would have /plunged a carving-knife [which I madly snatched up] into the place of torment I have heard it said that this pain, which they call "the cardiac passion", is worse than any other pain known to man except the strangury. Well, I must be thankful, I suppose, that I have never had the strangury.

It will be supposed that my mother Antonia, a beautiful and noble woman brought up to the strictest virtue by her mother Octavia, and the one passion of my father's life, would have taken the most loving care of me, her youngest child, and even made a particular favourite of me in pity for my misfortunes. But such was not the case. She did all for me that could be expected of her as a duty, but no more. She did not love me. No, she had a great aversion to me, not only because of my sickliness but also because she had had a most difficult pregnancy of me, and then a most painful delivery from which she barely escaped with her life and which left her more or less an invalid for years.

My premature birth was due to a shock that she got at the feast given in honour of Augustus when he visited my father at Lyons to inaugurate the "Altar of Roma and Augustus" there: my father was Governor of the Three Provinces of France, and Lyons was his headquarters. A crazy Sicilian slave who was acting as waiter at the feast suddenly drew a dagger and flourished it in the air behind my father's neck. Only my mother saw this happening.

She caught the slave's eye and had presence of mind enough to smile at him and shake her head in deprecation, signing to him to put the dagger back. While he hesitated two other waiters followed her glance and were in time to overpower and disarm him. Then she fainted and immediately her pains began. It may well be because of this that I have always had a morbid fear of assassination; for they say that a pre-natal shock can be inherited. But of course there is no real reason for any pre-natal influences to be mentioned. How many of the Imperial family have died a natural death?

Since I was an affectionate child my mother's attitude [5i] caused me much misery. I heard from my sister Livilla, a beautiful girl but cruel, vain and ambitious--in a word a typical Claudian of the bad variety--that my mother had called me "a human portent" and said that when I was born the Sibylline books should have been consulted. Also that Nature had begun but never finished me, throwing me aside in disgust as a hopeless start. Also that the ancients were wiser and nobler than ourselves: they exposed all weakly infants on a bare hillside for the good of the race.

These may have been embroideries by Livilla on less severe remarks--for seven-months' children are very horrible objects--but I know that once when my mother grew angry on bearing that some senator had introduced a foolish motion in the House she burst out: "That man ought to be put out of the way! He's as stupid as a donkey--what am I saying? Donkeys are sensible beings by comparison--he's as stupid as... as... Heavens, he's as stupid as my son Claudius!"

Germanicus was her favourite, as he was everyone's favourite, but so far from envying him for the love and admiration that he won wherever he went I rejoiced on his behalf. Germanicus pitied me and did the most he could to make my life happier, and recommended me to my elders as a good-hearted child who would repay generous and careful treatment. Severity only frightened me, he would say, and made me more sickly than I need be. And he was right. The nervous tic of my hands, the nervous jerking of my head, my stammer, my queasy digestion, my constant dribbling at the mouth, were principally due to the terrors to which, in the name of discipline, I was subjected. When Germanicus stood up for me my mother used to laugh indulgently and say, "Noble heart, find some better object for your overflow!" But my grandmother Livia's way of talking was:

"Don't be a fool, Germanicus.

It he reacts favourably to discipline, we shall treat him with the kindness he deserves. You're putting the cart before the horse." My grandmother seldom spoke to me and when she did it was contemptuously and without looking at me, mostly to say, "Get out of this room, child, I want to be in it." If she had occasion to scold me she never did so by word of mouth but sent a short, cold note. For example: "It has come to the knowledge of the Lady Livia that the boy Claudius has been wasting his time mooning about the Apollo Library. Until he can profit from the elementary text-books provided for him by his tutors it is absurd for him to meddle with the serious works on the Library shelves. Moreover his fidgeting disturbs genuine students.

This practice must cease."

As for Augustus, though he never treated me with calculated cruelty, he disliked having me in the same room with him as much as my grandmother did.

He was extraordinarily fond of little boys [remaining to the end of his life an overgrown boy himself], but only of the sort that he called "fine manly little fellows", such as my brother Germanicus and his grandchildren, Gains and Lucius, who were all extremely good-looking. There were a number of sons of confederate kings or chieftains, kept as hostages for their parents' good behaviour--from France, Germany, Parthia, North Africa, Syria--who were educated with his grandchildren and the sons of leading senators in the Boys' College; and he often came into the cloisters there to play at taws, or knucklebones, 01 tag. His chief favourites were little brown boys, the Moors and Parthians and Syrians: and those who could rattle away happily to him in boyish talk as if he were one of themselves. Only once did he try to master his repugnance to me and let me into a game of taws with his favourites. but it was so unnatural an effort that it made me more than usually nervous--and I stammered and shook like a mad thing. He never tried again. He hated dwarfs and cripples and deformities, saying that they brought bad luck and should be kept out of sight. Yet I could never find it in my heart to hate Augustus as I came to hate my grandmother, for his dislike of me was without malice and he did what he could to master it: and indeed I must have been a wretched little oddity, a disgrace to so strong and magnificent a father and so fine and stately a mother.

Augustus was a fine-looking man himself, though somewhat short, with curly fair hair that went grey only very late in his life, bright eyes, merry face and upright graceful carriage.

I remember once overhearing an elegiac epigram that he [53] made about me, in Greek, for the benefit of Athenodorus, an old Stoic philosopher, from Tarsus in Syria, whose simple serious advice he often asked. I was about seven years old and they came upon me by the carp-pool in the garden of my mother's house. I cannot remember the epigram exactly, but the sense of it was: "Antonia is old-fashioned: she does not buy a pet marmoset at great expense from an Eastern trader. And why? Because she breeds them herself." Athenodorus thought for a moment and replied severely in the same metre: "Antonia, so far from buying a pet marmoset from Eastern traders, does not even cosset and feed with sugar-plums the poor child of her noble husband." Augustus looked somewhat abashed. I should explain that neither he nor Athenodorus, to whom I had always been represented as a half-wit, guessed that I could understand what they were saying.

So Athenodorus drew me towards him and said playfully in Latin: "And what does young Tiberius Claudius think about the matter?" I was sheltered from Augustus by Athenodorus' big body and somehow forgot my stammer. I said straight out, in Greek: "My mother Antonia does not pamper me, but she has let me learn Greek from someone who learned it directly from Apollo." All I meant was that I understood what they were saying. The person who had taught me Greek was a woman who had been a priestess of Apollo on one of the Greek islands but had been captured by pirates and sold to a brothel-keeper in Tyre. She had managed to escape, but was not permitted to be priestess again because she had been a prostitute. My mother Antonia, recognizing her gifts, took her into the family as a governess. This woman used to tell me that she had learned directly from Apollo, and I was merely quoting her: but as Apollo was the God of learning and poetry my remark sounded far wittier than I intended. Augustus was startled and Athenodorus said: "Well spoken, little Claudius: marmosets don't understand a word of Greek, do they?" I answered; "No, and they have long tails, and steal apples from the table."

However, when Augustus began eagerly questioning me, taking me from Athenodorus' arm, I grew self-conscious and stammered as badly as ever. But from thenceforth Athenodorus was my friend.

There is a story about Athenodorus and Augustus which does great credit to both. Athenodorus told Augustus one day that he did not take nearly enough precaution about admitting visitors to his presence; one day he would get a dagger in his vitals. Augustus replied that he was talking nonsense. The next day Augustus was told that his sister, the Lady Octavia, was outside and wished to greet him on the anniversary of their father's death. He gave orders for her immediate admittance. She was an incurable invalid when this happened--it was the year she died--and was always carried about in a covered sedan. When the sedan was brought in, the curtains parted and out sprang Athenodorus with a sword, which he pointed at Augustus' heart.

Augustus, so far from being angry, thanked Athenodorus and confessed that he had been very wrong to treat his warning so casually.

One extraordinary event in my childhood I must not forget to record. One summer when I was just eight years old my mother, my brother Germanicus, my sister Livilla, and I were visiting my Aunt Julia in a beautiful country-house close to the sea at Antium. It was about six o'clock in the evening and we were out taking the cool breeze in a vineyard. Julia was not with us, but Tiberius' son, that Tiberius Drusus whom we afterwards always called "Castor", and Postumus and Agrippina, Julia's children, were in the party. Suddenly we heard a great screeching above us. We looked up and saw a number of eagles fighting. Feathers floated down. We tried to catch them. Germanicus and Castor each caught one before it fell and stuck it in his hair.

Castor had a small wing feather, but Germanicus a splendid one from the tail. Both were stained with blood. Spots of blood fell on Postumus' upturned face and on the dresses of Livilla and Agrippina. And then something dark dropped through the air. I do not know why I did so, but I put out a fold of my gown and caught it. It was a tiny wolf-cub, wounded and terrified. The eagles came swooping down to retrieve it, but I had it safe hidden and when we shouted and threw sticks they rose baffled, and flew screaming off. I was embarrassed. I didn't want the cub.

Livilla grabbed at it, but my mother, who looked very [55] grave, made her give it back to me. "It fell to Claudius/' she said. "He must keep it."

She asked an old nobleman, a member of the College of Augurs, who was with us, "Tell me what this portends."

The old man answered, "How can I say? It may be of great significance or none."

"Don't be afraid. Say what it seems to mean to you-"

"First send the children away," he said.

I do not know whether he gave her the interpretation which, when you have read my story, will be forced on you as the only possible one. All I know is that while we other children kept our distance--dear Germanicus had found another tail-feather for me, sticking in a hawthorn bush, and I was putting it proudly in my hair--Livilla crept up inquisitively behind a rose-hedge and overheard something.

She interrupted, laughing noisily: "Wretched Rome, with him as her protector! I hope to God I'll be dead before then!"

The

Augur

turned

on her and pointed with his finger.

"Impudent girl," he said, "God will no doubt grant your wish in a way that you won't like!"

"You're going to be locked up in a room with nothing to eat. Child," said my mother. Those were ominous words too, now I come to recall them. Livilla was kept in bounds for the rest of her holidays. She revenged herself, on me, m a variety of ingeniously spiteful ways. But she could not tell us what the Augur had said, because she had been bound by an oath by Vesta and our household gods never to refer to the portent either directly or in a roundabout way, in the lifetime of anyone present. We were all made to take that oath. Since I have now for many years been the only one left alive of that party--my mother and the Augur, though so much older, surviving all the rest--I am no longer bound to silence. For some time after this I often caught my mother looking curiously at me, almost respectfully, but she treated me no better than before.

I was not allowed to go to the Boys’ College, because the weakness of my legs would not let me take part in the gymnastic exercises which were a chief part of the education, and my illnesses had made me very backward in lessons, and my deafness and stammer were a handicap. So I was seldom in the company of boys of my own age and class, the sons of the household slaves being called in to play with me: two of these. Gallon and Pallas, both Greeks, were later to be my secretaries, entrusted with affairs of the highest importance. Gallon became the father of two other secretaries of mine, Narcissus and Polybius. I also spent much of my time with my mother's women, listening to their tails; as they sat spinning or carding or weaving. Many of them, such as my governess, were women of liberal education and, I confess, I found more pleasure in their society than in that of almost any society of men in which I have since been placed: they were broadminded, shrewd, modest, and kindly.

My tutor I have already mentioned, Marcus Porcius Cato who was, in his own estimation at least, a living embodiment of that ancient Roman virtue which his ancestors had one after the other shown. He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about. He boasted particularly of Cato the Censor, who of all characters in Roman history is to me perhaps the most hateful, as having persistently championed the cause of "ancient virtue" and made it identical in the popular mind with churlishness, pedantry and harshness. I was made to read Cato the Censor's self-glorifying works as text-books, and the account that he gave in one of them of his campaign in Spain, where he destroyed more towns than he had spent days in that country, rather disgusted me with his inhumanity than impressed me with his military skill or patriotism. The poet Virgil has said that the mission of the Roman is to rule; "To spare the conquered and with war the proud, To overbear." Cato overbore the proud, certainly, but less with actual warfare than with clever management of inter-tribal jealousies in Spain; he even employed assassins to remove redoubtable enemies. As for sparing the conquered, he put multitudes of unarmed men to the sword even when they unconditionally surrendered their cities, and he proudly records that many hundreds of Spaniards committed suicide, with all their families, rather than taste of Roman vengeance.

Was it to be wondered that the tribes rose again as soon as they could get a few

[57] arms together, and that they have been a constant thorn in our side ever since?

All that Cato wanted was plunder and a triumph: a triumph was not granted unless so-and-so many corpses--I think it was five thousand at this time--could be counted, and he was making sure that no one would challenge him, as he had himself jealously challenged rivals, for having pretended to a triumph on an inadequate harvest of dead.

Triumphs, by the way, have been a curse to Rome. How many unnecessary wars have been fought because generals wanted the glory of riding crowned through the streets of Rome with enemy captives led in chains behind them, and the spoils of war heaped on carnival wagons? Augustus realised this: on Agrippa's advice, he decreed that hence--forth no general, unless a member of the Imperial family, should be awarded a public triumph. This decree, published in the year that I was born, read as though Augustus were jealous of his generals, for by that time he had finished with active campaigning himself and no members of his family were old enough to win triumphs; but all if meant was that he did not wish the boundaries of the Empire enlarged any further, and that he reckoned that his generals would not provoke the frontier tribes to commit acts of war if they could not hope to be awarded triumphs by victory over them. None the less he allowed

"triumphal ornaments"--an embroidered robe, a statue, a chaplet, and so on--to be awarded to those who would otherwise have earned a triumph; this should be a sufficient incentive to any good soldier to fight a necessary war. Triumphs, besides, are very bad for military discipline. Soldiers get drunk and out of hand and usually finish the day by breaking up the wine-shops and setting fire to the oil-shops and insulting the women and generally behaving as if Rome were the city they had conquered, not some miserable log hut encampment in Germany or sand-burrowed village in Morocco. After a triumph celebrated by a nephew of mine, whom I shall soon be telling you about, four hundred soldiers and nearly four thousand private citizens lost their lives one way and another--five big blocks of tenements in the prostitutes' quarter of the City were burned to the I, C L A U D I V S [1;8] ground and three hundred wine-shops sacked, besides any amount of other damage.

But I was on the subject of Cato the Censor. His manual of husbandry and household economy was made my spelling book and every tune I stumbled over a word I used to get two blows; one on my left ear for stupidity, and one on my right for insulting the noble Cato. I remember a passage in the book which summed up the mean-souled fellow very well: "A master of a household should sell his old oxen, and all the horned cattle that are of a delicate frame; all his sheep that are not hardy, their wool, their very pelts; he should sell his old wagons and his old instruments of husbandry; he should sell such of his slaves as are old and infirm and everything else that is worn out or useless." For myself, when I was living as a country gentleman on my little estate at Capua, I made a point of putting my wornout beasts first to light work and then to grass until old age seemed too much of a burden to them, when I had them knocked on the head. I never demeaned myself by selling them for a trifle to a countryman who would work them cruelly to their last gasp. As for my slaves, I have always treated them generously in sickness and health, youth and old age and expected the highest degree of devotion from them in return. I have seldom been disappointed, though when they have abused my generosity I have had no mercy on them. I have no doubt old Cato's slaves were always falling sick, with the hope of being sold to a more humane master, and I also think it likely that he got, on the whole, less honest work and service out of them than I get out of mine. It is foolish to treat slaves like cattle.

They are more intelligent than cattle, capable besides of doing more damage in a week to one's property by wilful carelessness and stupidity than the entire price you have paid for them. Cato made a boast of never spending more than a few pounds on a slave: any evil-looking cross-eyed fellow that seemed to have good muscles and teeth would do.

How on earth he managed to find buyers for these beauties when he had quite finished with them I cannot say. From what I know of the character of his descendant, who was supposed to resemble him closely in looks--sandy-haired, green-eyed, harsh-voiced and heavily built--and in character, I guess that he bullied his poor neighbours into taking all his cast-off stuff at the price of new.

My dear friend Postumus, who was a little less than two years older than myself--the truest friend, except Germanicus, that I have ever had--told me that he had read in a contemporary book that old Cato was a regular crook besides being a skinflint: he was guilty of some very sharp practice in the shipping trade, but avoided public disgrace by making one of his ex-slaves the nominal trader. As Censor, in charge of public morals, he did some mighty queer things: they were allegedly in the name of public decency but really, it seems, to satisfy his personal spites.

On his own showing, he expelled one man from the order of senators because he had been "wanting in Roman gravity"--he had kissed his wife in daylight in his daughter's presence! When challenged by a friend of the expelled man, another senator, as to the justice of his decision and asked whether he himself and his wife never embraced except during the marital act, Cato replied hotly: "Never!"

"What,

never?"

"Well, a couple of years ago, to be frank with you, my wife happened to throw her arms around me during a thunderstorm which scared her, but fortunately nobody was about and I assure you it will be a long time before she does it again."

"Oh," said the senator, pretending to misunderstand him, for Cato meant, I suppose, that he had given his wife a terrible lecture for her want of gravity. "I'm sorry about that. Some women aren't very affectionate with plain-looking husbands, however upright and virtuous they may be. But never mind, perhaps Jove will be good enough to thunder again soon."

Cato did not forgive that senator, who was a distant relative. A year later he was going through the roll of senators, as his duty as Censor was, asking each man in turn whether he was married. There was a law, which has since lapsed, that all senators should be honourably married. The turn came for his relative to be examined, and Cato asked him in the usual formula, which enjoined the senator to answer "in his confidence and honesty". "If you have a wife, in your confidence and honesty, answer." Cato intoned in his raucous voice. The man felt a little foolish, because after Joking about Cato's wife's affection for Cato, he had found that his own wife had so far lost her affection for himself that he was now forced to divorce her. So to show good-will and turn the joke decently against himself he replied: "Yes, indeed, I have a wife, but she's not in my confidence any more, and I wouldn't give much for her honesty, either." Cato thereupon expelled him from the Order for irreverence.

And who brought the Punic Curse on Rome? That same old Cato who, whenever he was asked his opinion in the Senate on any matter whatever, would end his speech with:/"This is my opinion; and my further opinion is that Carthage should be destroyed: she is a menace to Rome,"

By harping incessantly on the menace of Carthage he brought about such popular nervousness that, as I have said, the Romans eventually violated their most solemn commitments and razed Carthage to the ground.

I have written about old Cato more than I intended, but it is to the point: he is bound up in my mind both with the ruin of Rome, for which he was just as responsible as the men whose "unmanly luxury," he said, "enervated the State,"

and with the memory of my unhappy childhood under that muleteer, his great-great-great-grandson. I am already an old man and my tutor has been dead these fifty years, yet my heart still swells with indignation and hatred when I think of him.

Germanicus stood up for me against my elders in a gentle persuasive way, but Postumus was a lion-like champion.

He seemed not to care a fig for anyone. He even dared to speak out straight to my grandmother Livia herself. Augustus made a favourite of Postumus, so for a while Livia pretended to be amused at what she called his boyish impulsiveness.

Postumus trusted her at first, being himself incapable of deceit. One day when I was twelve and he was fourteen he happened to be passing by the room where Cato was giving me my lessons. He heard the sound of blows and my cries for mercy and came bursting angrily in. "Stop beating him, at once!" he shouted.

Cato looked at him in scornful surprise and fetched me another blow that knocked me off my stool. Postumus said: "Those that can't beat the ass, beat the saddle."

[That was a proverb at Rome.] [61]

"Impudence, what do you mean?" roared Cato.

"I mean," said Postumus, "that you're revenging yourself on Claudius for what you consider a general conspiracy to keep you down. You're really too good for the job of tutoring him, eh?" Postumus was clever: he guessed that this would make Cato angry enough to forget himself. And Cato rose to the bait, shouting out with a string of old-fashioned curses that in the days or his ancestor, whose memory this stammering imp was insulting, woe betide any child who failed in reverence to his elders; for they dealt out discipline with a heavy hand in those days.

Whereas in these degenerate times the leading men of Rome gave any ignorant oafish lout [this was for Postumus] or any feeble-minded decrepit-limbed little whippersnapper [this was for me] full permission----Postumus interrupted with a warning smile: "So I was right. The degenerate Augustus insults the great Censor by employing you in his degenerate family. I suppose you have told the Lady Livia just how you feel about things?"

Cato could have bitten off his tongue with vexation and alarm. If Livia should hear what he had said, that would be the end of him; he had hitherto always expressed the most profound gratitude for the honour of being entrusted with the education of her grandchild, not to mention the free return of the family estates--confiscated after the Battle of Philippi, where his rather had died fighting against Augustus. Cato was wise enough or cowardly enough to take the hint, and after this my daily torments were considerably abated. Three or four months later, much to my delight, he ceased to be my tutor, on his appointment to the headmastership of the Boys' College. Postumus came under his tutelage there.

Postumus was immensely strong. At the age of not quite fourteen he could bend a bar of cold iron as thick as my thumb across his knee, and I have seen him walk around the playground with two boys on his shoulders, one on his back and one standing on each of his hands. He was not studious, but of an intellect far superior to Cato's, to say the least of it, and in his last two years at the College the boys elected him their leader. In all the school games he was "The King"--strange how long the word "king" has survived with schoolboys--and kept a stern discipline over his fellows. Cato had to be very civil to Postumus if he wanted the other boys to do what he wanted; for they all took their cue from Postumus.

Cato was now required by Livia to write her out half yearly reports on his pupils: she remarked that if she felt them to be of interest to Augustus she would communicate them to him. Cato understood from this that his reports were to be noncommittal unless he had a hint from her to praise or censure any particular boy. Many marriages were arranged while the boys were still at the College, and a report might be useful to Livia as an argument for or against some contemplated match. Marriages of the nobility at Rome had to be approved by Augustus as High Pontiff and were for the most part dictated by Livia. One day Livia happened to visit the College cloisters, and there was Postumus in a chair issuing decrees as the King. Cato noticed that she frowned at the sight. He was emboldened to write in his next report: "With great unwillingness but in the interests of virtue and justice, I am compelled to report that the boy Agrippa Postumus is inclined to display a savage, domineering and intractable temper." After this Livia behaved to him so graciously that his next report was even stronger. Livia did not show the reports to Augustus but kept them in reserve, and Postumus himself had no knowledge of them.

Under Postumus' kingship I had the happiest two years of my youth, I may say of my life. He gave orders to the other boys that I was to be freely admitted to games in the cloisters, though not a member of the College, and that he would regard any incivility or injury to me as incivility or injury to himself. So I took part in whatever sports my health allowed and it was only when Augustus or Livia happened to come along that I slipped into the background. In place of Cato I now had good old Athenodorus for my tutor. I learned more from him in six months than I had learned from Cato in six years. Athenodorus never beat me and used the greatest patience. He used to encourage me by saying that my lameness should be a spur to my intelligence. Vulcan, the God of all clever craftsmen, was lame too.

As for my stammer, Demosthenes the noblest [6?] orator of all time had been born with a stammer, but had corrected it by patience and concentration. Demosthenes had used the very method that he was now teaching me.

For Athenodorus made me declaim with my mouth full of pebbles: in trying to overcome the obstruction of the pebbles I forgot about the stammer and then the pebbles were removed one at a time until none remained, and I found to my surprise that I could speak as well as anyone. But only in declamations. In ordinary conversation I still stammered badly. He made it a pleasant secret between himself and me that I could declaim so well. "One day, Cercopithecion, we shall surprise Augustus," he would say. "But wait a little longer." When he called me Cercopithecion ["little marmoset"], it was for affection, not scorn, and I was proud of the name. When I did badly he would shame me by rolling out,

"Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, remember who you are and what you are doing."

With Postumus and Athenodorus and Germanicus as my friends I gradually began to win self-confidence.

Athenodorus told me, the very first day of his tutorship, that he proposed to teach me not facts which I could pick up anywhere for myself, but the -proper presentation of facts. And this he did. One day, for example, he asked me, kindly enough, why I was so excited: [A.D. 2] I seemed unable to concentrate on my task. I told him that I had just seen a huge draught of recruits parading on Mars Field under Augustus' inspection before being sent off to Germany, where war had recently broken out again. "Well," said Athenodorus, still in the same kindly voice, "since this is so much on your mind that you can't appreciate the beauties of Hesiod, Hesiod can wait until to-morrow. After all, he's waited seven hundred years or more, so he won't grudge us another day. And meanwhile, suppose you were to sit down and take your tablets and write me a letter, a short account of all that you saw on Mars Field; as if I had been five years absent from Rome and you were sending me a letter across the sea, say to my home in Tarsus. That would keep your restless hands employed and be good practice too." So I gladly scribbled away on the wax, and then we read the letter through for faults of spelling and composition. I was forced [64] to admit that I had told both too little and too much, and had also put my facts in the wrong order. The passage describing the lamentations of the mothers and sweethearts of the young soldiers, and how the crowd rushed to the bridgehead for a final cheer of the departing column, should have come last, not first. And I need not-have mentioned that the cavalry had horses: people took that for granted. And I had twice put in the incident of Augustus' charger stumbling: once was enough if the horse only stumbled once. And what Postumus had told me, as we were going home, about the religious practices of the Jews, was interesting, but did not belong here because the recruits were Italians, not Jews. Besides, at Tarsus he would probably have more opportunities of studying Jewish customs than Postumus had at Rome.

On the other hand I had not mentioned several things that he would have been interested to hear--how many recruits there were in the parade, how far advanced their military training was, to what garrison town they were being sent, whether they looked glad or sorry to go, what Augustus said to them in his speech.

Three days later Athenodorus made me write out a description of a brawl between a sailor and clothes dealer which we had watched together that day as we were walking in the rag-market; and I did much better. He first applied this discipline to my writing, then to my declamations, and finally to my general conversation with him. He took endless pains with me, and gradually I grew less scatter-brained, for he never let any careless, irrelevant, or inexact phrase of mine pass without comment.

He tried to interest me in speculative philosophy, but when he saw that I had no bent that way he did not force me to exceed the usual bounds of polite education in the subject. It was he who first inclined me to history. He had copies of the first twenty volumes of Livy's history of Rome, which he gave me to read as an example of lucid and agreeable writing. Livy's stories enchanted me and Athenodorus promised me that as soon as I had mastered my stammer I should meet Livy himself, who was a friend of his. He kept his word. Six months later he took me into the Apollo Library and introduced me to a bearded stooping [65] man of about sixty with a yellowish complexion, a happy eye and a precise way of speaking, who greeted me cordially as the son of a rather whom he had so much admired. Livy was at this time not quite half-way through his history, which was to be completed in one hundred and fifty volumes and to run from the earliest legendary times to the death of my father some twelve years previously. It was at this date that he had begun publishing his work, at the rate of five volumes a year, and he had now reached the date at which Julius Ceasar was born. Livy congratulated me on having Athenodorus as my tutor. Athenodorus said that I well repaid the pains he spent on me; and then I told Livy what pleasure I had derived from reading his books since Athenodorus had recommended them to me as a model for writing. So everybody was pleased, especially Livy. "What! Are you to be a historian too, young man?" he asked. "I should like to be worthy of that honourable name," I replied, though I had indeed never seriously considered the matter. Then he suggested that I should write a life of my father, and offered to help me by referring me to the most reliable historical sources. I was much flattered and determined to start the book next day. But Livy said that writing was the historian's last task: first he had to gather his materials and sharpen his pen.

Athenodorus would lend me his little sharp penknife, Livy joked. Athenodorus was a stately old man with dark gentle eyes, a hooked nose and the most wonderful beard that surely ever grew on human chin. It spread in waves down to his waist and was as white as a swan's wing. I do not make this as an idle poetical comparison for I am not the sort of historian who writes in pseudo-epic style, I mean that it was literally as white as a swan's wing. There were some tame swans on an artificial lake in the Gardens of Sallust, where Athenodorus and I once fed them with bread from a boat, and I remember noticing that his beard and their wings as he leaned over the side were of exactly the same colour.

Athenodorus used to stroke his beard slowly and rhythmically as he talked, and told me once that it was this that made it grow so luxuriantly. He said that invisible seeds of fire streamed off from his fingers, which were food for the hairs.

^66] This was a typical Stoic joke at the expense of Epicurean speculative philosophy.

Mention of Athenodorus' beard reminds me of Sulpicius, who, when I was thirteen years old, was appointed by Livia as my special history-tutor. Sulpicius had, I think, the most wretched-looking beard I have ever seen: it was white, but the white of snow in the streets of Rome after a thaw--a dirty greyish-white streaked with yellow, and very ragged. He used to twist it in his fingers when he was worried and would even put the ends in his mouth and chew them. Livia chose him, I believe, because she thought him the most boring man in Rome and hoped by making him my tutor to discourage my historical ambitions; for she soon came to hear of them. Livia was right: Sulpicius had a genius for making the most interesting things seem utterly vapid and dead But even Sulpicius' dryness could not turn me away from my work, and there was this about him, that he had a most extraordinary accurate memory For facts. If I ever wanted some out-of-way information, iuch for instance, as the laws of succession to the chieftainship among one of the Alpine tribes against whom my Father had fought, or the meaning and etymology of their outlandish battle-cry, Sulpicius would know what authority had treated of these points, in which book, and from which shelf of which case in which room of which library they were to be obtained. He had no critical sense and wrote -miserably, the facts choking each other, like Sowers in a seed-bed that has not been thinned out. But he proved an invaluable assistant when later I learned to use him as such instead of as a tutor; and he worked for me until his death it the age of eighty-seven, nearly thirty years later, his memory remaining unimpaired to the last, and his beard as discoloured and thin and disordered as ever.

VI

I MUST NOW GO BACK A FEW YEARS TO WRITE ABOUT MY uncle

Tiberius, whose fortunes are by no means irrelevant to this story. He was in an unhappy position, forced against his will to be continually in the public eye, now as general in some frontier-campaign, now as Consul at Rome, now as special commissioner to the prov[B.C. 6 inces; when all he wanted was a long rest and privacy. Public honours meant little to him, if only because they were awarded him, as he once complained to my rather, rather as being chief errand-boy to Augustus and Livia, than as one acting in his own right and on his own responsibility. Moreover, with the dignity of the Imperial family to maintain and Livia continually spying on him, he had to be very careful of his private morals.

He had few friends, being, as I think I have said, of a suspicious, jealous, reserved and melancholy temperament, and those rather hangers-on than friends, whom he treated with the cynical contempt that they deserved. And, lastly, things had gone from bad to worse between him and Julia since his marriage with her five years before. A boy had been born but he had died; and then Tiberius had refused to sleep with her ever again; for three reasons. The first was that Julia was by now getting middle-aged and losing her slender figure--Tiberius preferred immature women, the more boyish the better, and Vipsania had been a little wisp of a thing.

The second was that Julia made passionate demands on him which he was unwilling to meet and that she used to become hysterical when he repulsed her.

The third was that he found, after repulsing her, that she was revenging herself by finding gallants to give her what he withheld.

Unfortunately he could get no proof of Julia's infidelities apart from the evidence of slaves, for she managed things very carefully; and slave-evidence was not good enough to [68] offer Augustus as grounds for divorcing his beloved only daughter. Rather than tell Livia about it, however, for he mistrusted her as much as he hated her, he preferred to suffer in silence. It occurred to him that, if he could once get away from Rome and Julia, the chances were that she yould grow careless and Augustus would eventually find 3ut for himself about her behaviour.

His only chance of escape lay in another war breaking out somewhere on one of the frontiers important enough for him to be sent there in command. But no signs of war appeared in any quarter ind, besides, he was sick of fighting. He had succeeded my father in command of the German armies [Julia had insisted on accompanying him to the Rhine] and had now only been back in Rome for a few months: but Augustus had worked him like a slave ever since his return, giving rim the difficult and unpleasant task of investigating the idministration of workhouses and labour conditions generally in the poorer quarters of Rome. One day, in an unguarded moment, he burst out to Livia: "O mother, to be free, for only a few months even, from this intolerable life." She frightened him by making no answer and haughtily leaving the room, but later in the same day called him to her and surprised him by saying that she had decided to grant his wish and obtain temporary leave of reirement for him from Augustus. She took the decision partly because she wanted to put him under a debt of gratiude to her, and partly because she now knew about Julia's love-affairs and had the same idea as Tiberius about giving her rope and letting her hang herself with it. But her chief reason was that Postumus' elder brothers, Gaius and -. Lucius, were growing up and relations between them and heir stepfather Tiberius were strained.

Gaius, who was not a bad fellow at bottom [and neither was Lucius] had to some extent come to fill the place in Augustus' affections that Marcellus had once held. But he spoilt them both so shamelessly, in spite of Livia's warnings, that the wonder is that they did not turn out far worse than they did. They tended to behave insolently towards their elders, particularly men towards whom they knew Augustus would secretly like them to behave so, and to live with great extravagance. When Livia saw that it was [69] useless trying to keep Augustus'

nepotism in check she changed her policy and encouraged him to make greater favourites of them than ever. By doing so, and letting them know she was doing so, she hoped to gain their confidence.

She calculated, too, that if their self-importance was increased only a little more they would forget themselves and try to seize the monarchy for themselves.

Her spy-system was excellent and she would get wind of any such plot in good time to have them arrested. She encouraged Augustus to have Gaius elected Consul, for four years ahead, when he was only fifteen; though the youngest age at which a man could legally become Consul had been fixed by Sulla at forty-three, before which he had to fill three different magistratal offices of ascending importance. Later, Lucius was given the same honour. She also suggested that Augustus should present them to the Senate as "Leaders of Cadets". The title was not, as in the case of Marcellus, given them for a specific occasion only, but put them in a position of permanent authority over all their equals in age and rank. It seemed perfectly clear now that Augustus intended Gaius as his successor; so it was not to be wondered Jt that the' same sort of young noblemen as had boasted the untried powers of young Marcellus against the ministerial and military reputation of the veteran Agrippa now did the same for Agrippa's son Gaius against the veteran reputation of Tiberius, whom they subjected to many slights.

Livia intended Tiberius to follow the example of Agrippa. If he now retired, with so many victories and public honours to his credit, to some near-by Greek island and left the political field clear for Gaius and Lucius, this would create a better impression and win him far more popular sympathy than if he stayed behind to dispute it.

[The historical parallel would become still closer if Gaius and Lucius were to die during Tiberius' retirement and Augustus were to feel the need of his services again.] So she promised to prevail on Augustus to grant him indefinite leave of absence from Rome and permission to resign from all his offices; but to give him the honorary rank of Protector of the People--which would make him secure against assassination by Gaius, should Gaius think of removing him.

Livia found it extremely difficult to keep her promise, for Tiberius was Augustus' most useful minister and most successful general, and for a long time the old man refused to treat the request seriously. But Tiberius pleaded ill health and urged that his absence would relieve Gains and Lucius of much embarrassment: he admitted that he did lot get on well with them. Still Augustus would not listen.

Gaius and Lucius were mere lads, totally inexperienced as yet in war or statecraft, and would be of no service to him it all should serious disturbances break out in the City, in he provinces, or on the frontier. He realised, perhaps for he first time, that Tiberius was now his only stand-by in any such emergency. But he was irritated at having the realization forced on him. He refused Tiberius'

request md said that he would listen to no arguments. Since there vas no help for it, therefore, Tiberius went to Julia and old her with studied brutality that their marriage had be; ome such a farce that he could not bear to remain in the same house with her a day longer. He suggested that she should go to Augustus and complain that she had been ill-treated by her ruffianly husband and would not be happy until she had a divorce. Augustus, he said, was for family reasons unlikely, worse luck, to consent to the divorce, but would probably banish him from Rome.

He was ready even to go into exile rather than continue to live with her.

Julia decided to forget that she had ever loved Tiberius.

She had suffered much from him. Not only did he treat her with the greatest contempt whenever they were alone together, but he had by now begun cautiously experimenting in those ludicrously filthy practices which later made us name so detestable to all decent-minded people; and she had found out about it. So she took him at his word and complained to Augustus in far stronger terms than Tiberius

[who was vain enough to believe that she still loved him in spite of everything]

could have foreseen.

Augustus had always had great difficulty in concealing his dislike for Tiberius as a son-in-law--which had of course encouraged the Gaius faction--and now went storming up and down his study calling Tiberius all the names that he could lay his tongue on. But he nevertheless reminded lulia that she had only herself to blame for her disappointed ment in a husband about whose character he had never failed to warn her. And, much as he loved and pitied her, he could not dissolve the marriage. For his daughter and stepson to separate after a union that had been given such political importance would never do, and Livia would see the matter in the same light as himself, he was sureSo Julia begged that Tiberius should at least be sent away somewhere for a yeai or two, because at the moment she could not abide his presence within a hundred miles of her.

To this he eventually agreed, and a few days later Tiberius was on his way to the island of Rhodes, which be had, long before this, chosen as the ideal place for retirement. But Augustus, while granting him the rank of Protector, at Livia's urgent insistence, had made it plain that if he never saw his face again it would be no grief to him.

Nobody but the principals in this curious drama knew why Tiberius was leaving Rome, and Livia used Augustus' unwillingness to discuss the matter publicly, to Tiberius' advantage. She told her friends, "in confidence", that Tiberius had decided to retire as a protest against the scandalous behaviour of the party of Gaius and Lucius. She also said that Augustus had sympathised greatly with him, and had at first refused to accept hfs resignation, promising to silence the offenders; Tiberius had then insisted that he did not wish to make further bad blood between himself and his wife's sons, and had demonstrated the fixity of his purpose by going without food for four days. Livia kept up the farce by accompanying Tiberius to his ship at Ostia, the port of Rome, and beseeching him, in Augustus' name and her own, to reconsider his decision. She even arranged that all the members of her immediate family--Tiberius' young son Castor, and my mother, and Germanicus, Livilla and myself--should come along with her and increase the poignancy of the occasion by adding our pleas to hers. Julia did not appear, and her absence fitted in well with the impression that Livia was trying to create--that she had been siding with her sons against her husband. It was a ridiculous but well-staged scene. My mother played up well, and the three elder children, who had been carefully coached, really spoke their parts as if they meant them. I was bewildered and dumb until Livilla gave me a good pinching, at which I burst into tears and so did better than any of them. I was four years old when ill this happened, but I had turned twelve before Augustus was reluctantly compelled to recall my uncle to Rome, the political situation having by then greatly changed.

Now Julia deserves far greater sympathy than she has popularly won. She was, I believe, naturally a decent, goodhearted woman, though fond of pleasures and excitements, md the only one of my female relations who had a kindly word for me. I also believe that there were no grounds for the charges made against her many years later, of infidelity to Agrippa while she was married to him. Certainly all her three boys resembled him closely. The true story is as follows. In her widowhood, as I have related, she fell in love with Tiberius and persuaded Augustus to let her marry him. Tiberius, enraged at having had to divorce his own ivife for her sake, treated her very coldly. She was then imprudent enough to approach Livia, whom she feared but trusted, and ask her advice. Livia gave her a love-philtre, which she was to drink, saying that within a year it would make her irresistible to her husband, but that she must take it once a month, at full moon, and make certain prayers to Venus, saying nothing about it to a living soul, or the drug would lose its virtue and do her a great deal of harm.

What Livia very cruelly gave her was a distillation of the crushed bodies of certain little green flies, from Spain, ivhich so stimulated her sexual appetite that she became like a demented woman. [I will explain later how I came to learn all this.] For a while indeed she fired Tiberius' ippetite by the abandoned wantonness to which the drug irove her, against her natural modesty; but soon she wearied him and he refused to have any further marital commerce with her. She was forced by the action of the drug, which I suppose became a habit with her, to satisfy ner sexual cravings by adulterous intercourse with whatever young courtiers she could trust to behave with discretion she did this in Rome, I mean: in Germany and France she seduced private soldiers of Tiberius' bodyguard and even German slaves, threatening, if they hesitated, to accuse them of offering her familiarities and to have them t73] flogged to death. As she was still a fine-looking woman, they apparently did not hesitate long.

After Tiberius' banishment Julia grew careless, and all Rome soon came to know of her infidelities, Livia never said a word to Augustus, confident that in due time he would come to hear about them from some other quarter.

But Augustus' blind love for Julia was a by-word and nobody dared to say anything to him. After a time it was generally assumed that he could no longer be ignorant, and that his condonation of her behaviour was a further caution to silence. Julia's nocturnal orgies in the Market Place and on the Oration Platform itself had become a matter of grave public scandal, yet it was four years before so much as a rumour reached Augustus. Then he heard the whole story from none other than her sons, Gaius and Lucius, who came together into his presence and angrily asked him how long was he going to permit himself and his grandchildren to be disgraced. They understood, they said, that regard for the family's good name made him very patient with their mother, but surely there was a limit to his longsufferingi Were they to wait until she presented them with a litter of many-fathered bastard brothers before any official notice was taken of her pranks?

Augustus listened with horror and amazement and for a long time could do no more than gape and move his lips. When he found his voice it was to call in strangled tones for Livia. They repeated their story in her presence, and she pretended to sob, saying that it had been her greatest grief these three years that Augustus had deliberately shut his ears to the truth. Several times, she said, she had gathered up courage to speak to him, but it had been quite clear that he did not want to listen to a word she said. "I was confident that you really knew all about it and that the subject was too painful for you to discuss even with me...." Augustus, weeping, with his head between his hands, muttered that he had never heard the slightest whisper, or entertained the faintest suspicion that his daughter was not the chastest woman at Rome. Livia asked, why then did he suppose that her son Tiberius had gone into exile. For love of exile?

No, it was because he was unable to check the excesses of his wife and yet was distressed that Augustus was condoning them, [74] for so he believed; and since he did not wish to antagonise Gaius and Lucius, her sons, by asking Augus: us for leave to divorce her, there was no course open for him but to withdraw decently from the scene.

This talk about Tiberius was wasted on Augustus, who threw a fold of his robe over his head and groped his way to the passage leading to his bedroom, where he locked himself in and was seen by nobody, not even by Livia, for ? our whole days, during which time he took no food or irink, nor any sleep, and what was still stronger proof--if any was required--of the violence of his grief, went all that time unshaved. Finally he pulled the string which ran through a hole in the wall and tinkled a little silver bell in Livia's room. Livia came hurrying to him with a face of loving concern, and Augustus, not yet trusting his voice, wrote down on his wax-tablet the single sentence, in Greek: "Let her be banished for life, but do not tell me where." He handed Livia his seal-ring so that she might write letters to the Senate by his authority, recommending the banishment. [This seal, by the way, was the great emerald cut with the helmeted head of Alexander the Great from whose tomb it had been stolen, along with a sword and breast-plate and other personal trappings of the hero. Livia insisted on his using it, in spite of his scruples--he realised how presumptuous it was--until one night he had a dream in which Alexander, frowning angrily, hacked off with his sword the finger on which he wore it.

Then he had a seal of his own, a ruby from India, cut by the famous goldsmith Dioscurides, which all his successors have used as the token of their sovereignty.]

Livia wrote the recommendation for banishment in very strong terms. It was composed in Augustus' own literary style; which was easy to imitate because it always sacriEced elegance to clarity--for example, by a determined repetition of the same word, where it occurred often in a passage, instead of hunting about for a synonym or periphrasis [which is the common literary practice]. And he had a tendency to over-prepositionalize his verbs. She did not show the letter to Augustus but sent it direct to the Senate, who immediately voted a decree of perpetual banishment.

Livia had listed Julia's crimes in such detail and had credited [75] Augustus with such calm expressions of detestation for them that she made it impossible for him ever afterwards to change his mind and ask the Senate to cancel their decision. She did a good piece of business on the side, too, by singling out for special mention as Julia's partners in adultery three or four men whom it was to her interest to ruin. Among them was an uncle of mine, lulus, a son of Antony, to whom Augustus had shown great favour for Octavia's sake, raising him to the Consulship. Livia, in naming him in her letter to the Senate, strongly emphasized the ingratitude that he had shown his benefactor and hinted that he and Julia were conspiring together to seize the supreme power. lulus committed suicide. I believe that the charge of conspiracy was groundless, but as the only surviving son of Antony, by his wife Fulvia--Augustus had put Antyllus, the eldest, to death immediately after his father's suicide, and the other two, Ptolemy and Alexander, his sons by Cleopatra, had died young--and as an ex-Consul and the husband of Marcellus' sister, whom Agrippa had divorced, he seemed dangerous. Popular discontent with Augustus often expressed itself in a wish that it had been Antony who had won the Battle of Actium.

The other men whom Livia accused of adultery were banished.

A week later Augustus asked Livia whether "a certain decree" had been duly passed--for he never mentioned Julia by name again and seldom even by a roundabout expression, though she plainly was much in his thoughts.

Livia told him that "a certain person" had been sentenced to perpetual confinement on an island and was already on her way there. At this he seemed further downcast, that Julia had not done the one honourable thing left to her to do, namely to take her own life. Livia mentioned that Phcebe, who was Julia's lady-in-waiting and chief confidant, had hanged herself as soon as the decree of banishment had been published. Augustus said: "I wish to God I had been Phoebe's father." He delayed his public appearance for a further fortnight. I well remember that dreadful month. We children were all, by Livia's orders, made to wear mourning and not allowed to play or make a noise or even smile. When we saw Augustus again he looked ten w years older and it was months before he had the heart to visit the playground in the Boys' College or even to resume his daily morning exercise, which consisted of a brisk walk around the Palace grounds with a run at the end over a course of low hurdles.

Tiberius had the news about Julia sent him at once by Livia. At her prompting he wrote two or three letters to Augustus, begging him to forgive Julia, as he did himself, and saying that however badly she had behaved as a wife he wished her to keep all the property that he had at any time made over to her.

Augustus did not answer. He firmly believed that Tiberius' original coldness and cruelty to Julia, and the example of immorality he had given her, were responsible for her moral degeneration. So far from recalling him from banishment he refused even to renew his Protectorate when it came to an end the following year.

There is a soldiers' marching-ballad called The Three Griefs of Lord Augustus, composed in the rough tragicomic style of the camp, which was sung many years later by the regiments stationed in Germany. The theme is that Augustus grieved first for Marcellus, next for Julia, and the third time for the lost Eagles of Varus. Deeply for Marcellus' death, more deeply for Julia's disgrace, but most deeply of all for the Eagles, for with each Eagle had vanished a whole regiment of Rome's bravest men. The ballad laments in a number of verses the unhappy fate of the Nineteenth, Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Sixth Regiments which, when I was nineteen years old, were ambushed and massacred by the Germans in a remote marshy forest; and tells how, after the news of this unparalleled disaster reached him. Lord Augustus kept knocking his head against the wall: Lord Augustus each time bawling

As he fetched his head a crack,

"Varus, Varus, General Varus,

Give me my three Eagles back!"

Lord Augustus tore his bedclothes,

Blankets, sheet and counterpane.

"Varus, Varus, General Varus,

Give my Regiments back againi"

The next verses say that he never afterwards formed new regiments under the numbers of the three destroyed, but kept the gap in the Army List. He is made to swear that Marcellus' life and Julia's honour had been nothing to him by comparison with the life and honour of his soldiers, and that his spirit would have

"no more rest than a flea in an oven" until all three Eagles were recovered and safely laid in the Capitol. But though since then the Germans had been thrashed again and again in battle, nobody had been able to discover where the lost Eagles were "roosting"--the cowards kept them so closely hidden. That was how the troops belittled Augustus' grief for Julia, but it is my opinion that for every hour he grieved for the Eagles he must have grieved a full month for her.

He did not wish to know where she had been sent, because this would have meant that his mind would be continually turning there and he would hardly be able to restrain himself from taking ship and visiting her. So it was easy for Livia to treat Julia with great revengefulness. She was not allowed wine, cosmetics, fine clothes or luxuries of any sort and her guard consisted of eunuchs and very old men. She was allowed no visitors and was even set to work on a daily spinning task as in her schoolgirl days. The island was off the Campanian coast. It was a very small one and Livia purposely increased her sufferings by keeping the same guards there year after year without relief; they naturally blamed her for their banishment in that confined and unhealthy spot. The one person who comes well out of this ugly story is Julia's mother, Scribonia, whom it will be recalled Augustus had divorced in order to be able to marry Livia. Now a very old woman, who had lived in retirement for a number of years, she boldly went to Augustus and asked permission to share her daughter's banishment. She told him in Livia's presence that her daughter had been stolen from her as soon as born but that she had always worshipped her from a distance and, now that the whole world was set against her darling, she wished to show what true mother's love was. And in her opinion the poor child was not to blame: things had been made very difficult for her. Livia laughed contemptuously but must have felt [78] pretty uncomfortable.

Augustus, mastering his emotion, iigned that the request was granted.

Five years later, on Julia's birthday, Augustus asked Livia suddenly: "How big is the island?"

"Which island?" asked Livia.

"The island... where an unlucky woman is living."

"Oh, a few minutes' walk from end to end, I believe,"

Livia said with affected carelessness.

"A few minutes walk! Are you joking?" He had thought of her as an exile on some big island, like Cyprus or Lesbos or Corfu. After a while he asked: "What is it called?"

"It's

called

Pandatarial"

"What? My God, that desolate place? 0 cruel! Five years on Pandataria!"

Livia looked at him severely and said: "I suppose you want her back here at Rome?"

Augustus then went over to the map of Italy, engraved on a thin sheet of gold studded with small jewels to mark the cities, which hung on the wall of the room in which they were. He was unable to speak, but pointed to Reggio, a pleasant Greek town on the straits of Messina.

So Julia was sent to Reggio, where she was given somewhat greater liberty, and even allowed to see visitors--but a visitor had first to apply in person to Livia for permission. He had to explain what business he had with Julia, and fill in a detailed passport for Livia's signature, giving the colour of his hair and eyes and listing distinguishing marks and scars, so that only he himself could use it. Few cared to submit to these preliminaries. Julia's daughter Agrippina asked permission to go, but Livia refused out of consideration, she said, for Agrippina's morals. Julia was still kept under severe discipline and had no friend living with her, her mother having died of fever on the island.

Once or twice when Augustus was walking in the streets of Rome there were cries from the citizens: "Bring your daughter backl She's suffered enough!

Bring your daughter backl" This was very painful to Augustus, One day he made his police-guard fetch from the crowd two men who were shouting this out most loudly, and told them gravely that Jove would surely punish their folly by letting them be deceived and disgraced by their own wives and daugh[79] ters. These demonstrations expressed not so much pity for Julia as hostility to Livia, whom everyone justly blamed for the severity of Julia's exile and for so playing on Augustus' pride that he could not allow himself to relent.

As for Tiberius on his comfortably large island, it suited him very well for a year or two. The climate was excellent, the food good, and he had ample leisure tor resuming his literary studies. His Greek prose style was not at all bad and he wrote several elegant silly elegiac Greek poems in imitation of such poets as Euphorion and Parthenius. I have a book of them somewhere. He spent much of his time in friendly disputation with the professors at the university.

The study of Classical mythology amused him and he made an enormous genealogical chart, in circular form, with the stems raying out from our earliest ancestor Chaos, the father of Father Time, and spreading to a confused perimeter thickly strewn with nymphs and kings and heroes. He used to delight in puzzling the mythological experts, while building up the chart, with questions like: "What was the name of Hector's maternal grandmother?" and "Had the Chimasra any male issue?" and then challenging them to quote the relevant verse from the ancient poets in support of their answer. It was, by the way, from a recollection of this table, now in my possession, that many years afterwards my nephew Caligula made his famous joke against Augustus: "Oh, yes, he was my greatuncle. He stood in precisely the same relationship to me as the Dog Cerberus did to Apollo." As a matter of fact, now that I consider the matter, Caligula made a mistake here, did he not? Apollo's great-uncle was surely the monster Typhoeus who according to some authorities was the father, and according to others the grandfather of Cerberus.

But the early genealogical tree of the Gods is so confused with incestuous alliances--son with mother, brother with sister--that it may be that Caligula could have proved his case.

As a Protector of the People Tiberius was held in great awe by the Rhodians; and provincial officials sailing out to take up their posts in the East, or returning from there, always made a point of turning aside in their course and paying him their respects. But he insisted that he was merely a private citizen and deprecated any public honours paid to him. He usually dispensed with his official escort of yeomen. Only once did he exercise the judicial powers that his Protectorship carried with it: he arrested and summarily condemned to a month in gaol a young Greek who, in a grammatical debate where he was acting as chairman, tried to defy his authority as such. He kept himself in good condition by riding and taking part in the sports at the gymnasium, and was in close touch with affairs at Rome--he had monthly news-letters from Livia. Besides his house in the island capital he owned a small villa some distance from it, built on a lofty promontory overlooking the seaThere was a secret path to it up the cliff, by which a trusted freedman of his, a man of great physical strength, used to conduct the disreputable characters--prostitutes, pathics, fortune-tellers and magicians--with whom he customarily passed his evenings. It is said that very often there creatures, if they had displeased Tiberius, somehow missed their footing on the return journey and fell into the sea far below. I have already mentioned that Augustus refused to renew Tiberius' Protectorship when the five years expired.

It can be imagined that this put him in a very awkward position at Rhodes, where he was personally unpopular: the Rhodians seeing him deprived of his yeoman escort, his magisterial powers, and the inviolateness of his person, began to treat him first with familiarity and then with contumely. For example, one famous Greek professor of philosophy to whom he applied for leave to join his classes told him that there was no vacancy but that he could come back in seven days' time and see whether one had occurred.

Then news came from Livia that Gaius had been sent to the East as Governor of Asia Minor. But though not far away, at Chios, Gaius did not come and pay Tiberius the expected visit. Tiberius heard from a friend that Gaius believed the false reports circulating at Rome that he and Livia were plotting a military rebellion and that a member of Gaius' suite had even offered, at a public banquet at which everyone was somewhat drunk, to sail across to Rhodes and bring back the head of "The Exile". Gaius had told the fellow that he had no fear of "The Exile": [81] let him keep his useless head on his useless shoulders.

Tiberius swallowed his pride and sailed at once to Chios to make his peace with his stepson, whom he treated with a humility that was much commented upon.

Tiberius, the most distinguished living Roman, after Augustus, paying court to a boy not yet out of his teens, and the son of his own disgraced wife! Gaius received him coldly but was much flattered. Tiberius begged him to have no fears, for the rumours that had reached him were as groundless as they were malicious. He said that he did not intend to resume the political career which he had interrupted out of regard for Gaius himself and his brother Lucius: all that he wanted now was to be allowed to spend the rest of his life in the peace and privacy which he had learned to prize before all public honours.

Gaius, flattered at the chance of being magnanimous, undertook to forward a letter to Rome asking Augustus' permission for Tiberius to return there, and to endorse it with his own personal recommendation. In this letter Tiberius said that he had left Rome only in order not to embarrass the young princes, his stepsons, but that, now they were grown up and firmly established, the obstacles to his living quietly at Rome were no longer present; he added that he was weary of Rhodes and longed to see his friends and relations again, Gaius forwarded the letter with the promised endorsement. Augustus replied, to Gaius not to Tiberius, that Tiberius had gone away, in spite of the strong pleas of his friends and relations, when the State had most need of him; he could not now make his own terms about coming back. The contents of this letter became generally known and Tiberius' anxiety increased. He heard that the people of Nunes in France had overthrown the statues erected there in memory of his victories, and that Lucius too had now been given false information against him which he was inclined to believe. He removed from the city and lived in a small house in a remote part of the island, only occasionally visiting his villa on the promontory. He no longer took any care of his physical condition or even of his personal appearance, rarely shaving and going about in dressing-gown and slippers. He finally wrote a private letter to Livia, explaining his dangerous situation. He pledged himself, if she managed to secure permission for him to return, to be solely guided by her in everything so long as they both lived. He said that he addressed her not so much as his devoted mother but as the true, though so far unacknowledged, helmsman of the Ship of State.

This was just what Livia wanted; she had purposely refrained hitherto from persuading Augustus to recall Tiberius. She wanted him to become as weary of inaction and public contumely as he had previously been of action and public honour. She sent back a brief message A.D. 2] to say that she had his letter safe, and that it was a bargain. A few months later Lucius died mysteriously at Marseilles, on his way to Spain, and while Augustus was still stunned by the shock Livia began working on his feelings by saying how much she had missed the support of her dear son Tiberius all these years; for whose return she had not until now ventured to plead. He had certainly done wrong, but had also certainly learned his lesson by now and his private letters to her breathed the greatest devotion and loyalty to Augustus. Gaius, who had endorsed that petition for his return, would, she urged, need a trustworthy colleague now that his brother was dead.

One evening a fortune-teller called Thrasyllus, by birth an Arab, came to Tiberius at his house on the promontory.

He had been two or three times before and had made a number of very encouraging predictions, but none of these had yet been fulfilled. Tiberius, growing sceptical, told his freedman that if Thrasyllus did not entirely satisfy him this time he was to lose his footing on his way down the cliff. When Thrasyllus arrived, the first thing that Tiberius said was, "What is the aspect of my stars today?" Thrasyllus sat down and made very complicated astrological calculations with a piece of charcoal on the top of a stone table.

At last he pronounced, "They are in a most unusually favourable conjunction. The evil crisis of your life is now finally passing. Henceforth you are to enjoy nothing but good fortune."

"Excellent," said Tiberius, drily, "and now what about your own?"

Thrasyllu.'i made another set of calculations, and then looked up in real or pretended terror. "Great Heavens!" he exclaimed, "an appalling danger threatens me from air and water."

"Any chance of circumventing it?" asked Tiberius.

"I cannot say. If I could survive the next twelve hours, my fortune would be, in its degree, as happy even as yours; but nearly all the malevolent planets are in conjunction against me and the danger seems all but unavoidable. Only Venus can save me."

"What was that you said just now about her? I forget."

"That she is moving into Scorpio, which is your sign, portending a marvellously happy change in your fortunes.

Let me venture a further deduction from this all-important movement: you are soon to be engrafted into the Julian house, which, I need hardly remind you, traces direct descent from Venus, the mother of ^Eneas. Tiberius, my humble fate is curiously bound up with your illustrious one. If good news comes to you before dawn tomorrow, it is a sign that I have almost as many fortunate years before me as yourself."

They were sitting out on the porch and suddenly a wren or some such small bird hopped on Thrasyllus' knee and, cocking its head on one side, began to chirp at him.

Thrasyllus said to the bird, "Thank you, sisteri It came only just in time."

Then he turned to Tiberius: "Heaven be praised! That ship has good news for you, the bird says, and I am saved. The danger is averted."

Tiberius sprang up and embraced Thrasyllus, confessing what his intentions had been. And, sure enough, the ship carried Imperial dispatches from Augustus informing Tiberius of Lucius' death and saying that in the circumstances he was graciously permitted to return to Rome, though for the present only as a private citizen.

As for Gaius, Augustus had been anxious that he should have no task assigned to him for which he was not fitted, and that the East should remain quiet during his governorship. Unfortunately the King of Armenia revolted and the King of Parthia threatened to join forces with him; which put Augustus in a quandary.

Though Gaius had shown himself an able peace-time governor, Augustus did not believe him capable of conducting so important a war as this; and he himself was too old to go campaigning and had too many affairs to attend to at Rome, besides.

Yet he could not send out anybody else to take over the Eastern regiments from Gaius because Gaius was Consul and should never have been allowed to enter upon the office if he was incapable of high military command. There was nothing to be done but to let Gaius be and hope for the best.

Gaius was lucky at first. The danger from the Armenians was removed by an invasion of their Eastern border by a wandering tribe of barbarians. The King of Armenia was killed while chasing them away. The King of Parthia, hearing of this and also of the large army that Gaius was getting together, then came to terms with him: to the great relief of Augustus. But Augustus' new nominee to the throne of Armenia, a Mede, was not acceptable to the Armenian nobles, and when Gaius had sent home his extra forces as no longer necessary thsy declared war after all.

Gaius reassembled his army, and marched to Armenia, where a few months 6ter he was treacherously wounded by one of the enemy generals who had invited him to a parley. It was not a serious wound. He thought little of it at the time and concluded the campaign successfully. But somehow he was given the wrong medical treatment, and his health, which from no apparent cause had been failing him for the last two years, became seriously affected: he lost all power of mental concentration. Finally he wrote to Augustus for permission to retire into private life. Augustus A.D. 4] was grieved, but granted his plea. Gaius died on his way home. Thus of Julia's sons only fifteenyear old Postumus now remained and Augustus was so far reconciled to Tiberius that, as Thrasyllus foretold, he engrafted him into the Julian house by adopting him, jointly with Postumus, as his son and heir.

The East was quiet now for a time, but when the war that had broken out in Germany again--I mentioned it in connection with my schoolboy composition for Athenodorus--took a serious turn, Augustus made Tiberius armycommander and showed his renewed confidence in him by awarding him a ten years' Protectorship.

The campaign was a severe one and Tiberius handled it with his old force and [8?]

skill. Livia, however, insisted on his making frequent visits to Rome so as not to lose touch with political events there.

Tiberius was keeping his part of the bargain with her and allowed himself to be led by her in everything.

VII

I WENT BACK IN TIME A FEW YEARS TO TELL OF MY UNCLE Tiberius, but by following that history through until his adoption by Augustus, I have come out ahead of my own story. I shall try to devote these next chapters strictly to events that happened between my ninth and sixteenth years. Mostly it is a record of the betrothals and marriages of us young nobles. First Germanicus [B. C. i came of age--September the ^oth was his fourteenth birthday, but the coming-of-age celebrations always took place in March. As the custom was, he went out garlanded from our house on the Palatine, in the early morning, wearing his purple-bordered boy's dress for the last time. Crowds of children ran ahead, singing and scattering flowers, an escort of his noble friends walked with him, and an immense throng of citizens followed behind, in their degrees. The procession went slowly down the slope of the Hill, through the Market Place, where Germanicus was greeted uproariously. He returned the greeting in a short speech.

Finally the procession moved on up the slope of the Capitoline Hill. At the Capitol, Augustus and Livia were waiting to greet him, and he sacrificed a white bull in the temple there to Capitoline Jove, the Thunderer, and put on his white manly-gown for the first time. Much to my disappointment I was not allowed to come too. The walk would have been too much for me and it would have created a bad impression if I had been carried in a sedan.

All I witnessed of the ceremonies was his dedication, when he returned, of his boy's dress and ornaments to the household [86] gods; and the scattering ot cakes and pence to the crowd from the steps of the house.

A year later he married. Augustus did all he could by legislation to encourage marriage among men of family.

The Empire was very big and needed more officials and senior army officers than the nobility and gentry were able to supply, in spite of constant recruiting to their ranks from' the populace. When there were complaints from men of family about the vulgarity of these newcomers, Augustus used to answer testily that he chose the least vulgar he could End. The remedy was in their own hands, he said: every man and woman of rank should marry young and breed as large a family as possible. The steady decrease in the number of births and marriages in the governing classes became an obsession with Augustus.

On one occasion when the Noble Order of Knights, from whom the senators were chosen, complained of the severity of his laws against bachelors, he summoned the entire order into the Market Place for a lecture. When he had them assembled there he divided them up into two groups, the married and the unmarried. The unmarried were a very much larger group than the married and he addressed separate speeches to each group. He worked himself up into a great passion with the unmarried, calling them beasts and brigands and, by a queer figure of speech, murderers of their posterity. By this time Augustus was an old man with all the petulance and crankiness of an old man who has been at the head of affairs all his life. He asked them, had they an hallucination that they were Vestal Virgins? At least a Vestal Virgin slept alone, which was more than they did. Would they, pray, explain why instead of sharing their beds with decent women of their own class and begetting healthy children on them, they squandered all their virile energy on greasy slave-girls and nasty Asiatic-Greek prostitutes?

And if he were to believe what he heard, the partner of their nightly bed-play was more often one of those creatures of a loathsome profession whom he would not even name, lest the admission of their existence in the City should be construed as a condonation of it. If he had his way, a man who shirked his social obligations and at the same time lived a life of sexual debauch should be subject [87] to the same dreadful penalties as a Vestal who forgot her vows--to be buried ahve.

As for us married men, for I was among them by this time, he gave us a most splendid eulogy, spreading out his arms as if to embrace us. "There are only a very few of you, in comparison with the huge population of the City.

You are far less numerous than your fellows over there, who are unwilling to perform any of their natural social duties. Yet for this very reason I praise you the more, and am doubly grateful to you for having shown yourselves obedient to my wishes and for having done your best to man the State. It is by lives so lived that the Romans of the future will become a great nation. At first we were a mere handful, you know, but when we took to marriage and begot children we came to vie with neighbouring states not only in the manliness of our citizens but in the size of our population too. We must always remember this. We must console the mortal part of our nature with an endless succession of generations, like torch-bearers in a race, so that through one another we may immortalise the one side of our nature in which we fall short of divine happiness. It was for this reason chiefly that the, first and greatest God who created us divided the human race in two: he made one half of it male and the other half female and implanted in these halves mutual desire for each other, making their intercourse fruitful so that by continual procreation he might, in a sense, make even mortality immortal.

Indeed, tradition says that some of the Gods themselves are male and others female, and that they are all interrelated by sexual ties of kinship and parentage.

So you see that even among those beings who have really no need of such a device, marriage and the procreation of children have been approved as a noble custom."

I wanted to laugh, not only because I was being praised for what had been forced on me greatly against my will--I will soon tell you about Urgulanilla, to whom I was married at this time--but because the whole business was such an utter farce. What was the use of Augustus addressing us in this way, when he was perfectly well aware that it was not the men who were shirking, as he called it, but the women?

If he had summoned the women it is just possible that he might have accomplished something by talking to them in the right way.

I remember once hearing two of my mother's freedwomen discussing modern marriage from the point of view of a woman of family. What did she gain by it? they asked.

Morals were so loose now that nobody took marriage seriously any longer.

Granted, a few old-fashioned men re--spected it sufficiently to have a prejudice against children being fathered on them by their friends or household servants, and a few old-fashioned women respected their husbands' feelings sufficiently to be very careful not to become pregnant to any but them. But as a rule any goodlooking woman nowadays could have any man to sleep with whom she chose. If she did many and then tired of her husband, as usually happened, and wanted someone else to amuse herself with, there might easily be her husband's pride or jealousy to contend with. Nor in general was she better off financially after marriage. Her dowry passed into the hands of her husband, or her father-inlaw as master of the household, if he happened to be alive; and a husband, or father-in-law, was usually a more difficult person to manage than a father, or elder brother, whose foibles she had long come to understand. Being married just meant vexatious household responsibility. As for children, who wanted them? They interfered with the lady's health and amusement for several months before birth and, though she had a foster-mother for them immediately afterwards, it took time to recover from the wretched business of childbirth, and it often happened that her figure was ruined after having more than a couple. Look how the beautiful Julia had changed by obediently gratifying Augustus' desire for descendants. And a lady's husband, if she was fond of him, could not be expected to keep off other women throughout the time of her pregnancy, and anyway he paid very little attention to the child when it was born. And then, as if all this were not enough, fostermothers were shockingly careless nowadays and the child often died. What a blessing it was that those Greek doctors were so clever, if the thing had not gone too far--they could rid any lady of an unwanted child in two or three days and nobody be anv the worse or wiser. Of course [89] some ladies, even very modern ladies, had an old-fashioned hankering for children, but they could always buy a child for adoption into their husband's family, from some man of decent birth who was hard pressed by his creditors....

Augustus gave the Noble Order of Knights permission to marry commoners, even freedwomen, but this did not improve things very much.

Knights, if they married at all, married for rich dowries, not for children or for love, and a freedwoman was not much of a catch; and besides knights, especially those recently raised to the order, had strong feelings against marrying beneath them. In families of the ancient nobility the difficulty was still greater. Not only were there fewer women to choose from in the correct degree of kinship, but the marriage ceremony was stricter.

The wife was more absolutely in the power of the master of the household into which she married. Every sensible woman thought twice before committing herself to this contract, from which there was no escape but divorce; and after divorce it was difficult to recover the property that she had brought him as dowry.

In other than ancient noble families, however, a woman could many a man legally and yet remain independent, with control of her own property--if she cared to stipulate that she should sleep three nights of the year outside her husband's house; for this condition would interrupt his right over her as a permanent chattel.

Women liked this form of marriage for obvious reasons, the very reasons for which their husbands disliked it. The practice started among the lowest families of the City but worked upwards, and soon became the rule in all except the anciently noble families. Here there was a religious reason against it. From these families the State priests were chosen, and by religious law a priest had to be a married man, marriedin the strict form, and the child of a strict-form marriage too. As time went on suitable candidates for priesthood were increasingly difficult * to find.

Finally there were vacancies in the Colleges of Priests that could not be filled and something had to be done about it, so the lawyers found a way out. Women of rank were allowed, on contracting strict-form maniages, to stipulate that the complete sunender of themselves and property, XCLAUDIUS [9° “was "as touching sacred matters" and that otherwise they enjoyed all the benefits of free marriageBut that came later. Meanwhile the best that Augustus could do, apart from his legal penalization of bachelors and childless married men, was to put pressure on masters of households to marry off their young people [with instructions to increase and multiply] while they were still too young to realise to what they were being committed or to do anything but obey implicitly. To show a good example therefore, all we younger members of the families of Augustus and Livia were betrothed and married at the earliest possible age. It may sound strange, but Augustus was a great-grandfather at the age of fifty-four and a great-greatgrandfather before he died at the age of seventy-six; while Julia, as a result of her second marriage too, had a marriageable granddaughter before she was herself beyond child-bearing age. The generations somewhat overlapped in this way and the genealogical tree of the Imperial family became a rival in complexity to that of Olympus. This was not only because of the frequent adoptions and the marrying of members in closer degree of kinship than religious custom really permitted--for the Imperial family was by this time getting above the law; but because as soon as a man died his widow was made to marry again and always in the same small circle of relationship. I shall do my best now to straighten the matter out at this point, without being too long-winded.