'You dare to make conditions to me?'
'Yes, after the twentieth cup; and it's a simple condition. After thirty-six years of neglect and aversion you surely don't expect me to do anything for you without making conditions, do you?'
She smiled. 'And what is this one simple condition?'
'There are a lot of things that I'd like to know about. I want to know, in the first place, who killed my father, and who killed Agrippa, and who killed my brother Germanicus, and who killed my son Drusillus....'
'Why do you want to know all this? Some imbecile hope of avenging their deaths on me?'
'No, not even if you were the murderess. I never take vengeance unless I am forced to do so by an oath or in self-protection. I believe that evil is its own punishment.
All I want now is just to know the truth. I am a professional historian and the one thing that really interests me is to find out how things happen and why.
For instance, I write histories more to inform myself than to inform my readers.'
'Old Athenodorus has had a great influence on you, I see.'
'He was kind to me and I was grateful, so I became a Stoic. I never meddled with philosophical argument-- that never appealed to me--but I adopted the Stoic way of looking at things. You can trust me not to repeat a word of what you tell me.'
I convinced her that I meant what I said, and so for four hours or more I asked her the most searching questions; and each question she answered without evasion and as calmly as if she had been some country steward relating the minor casualties of the farm-yard to the visiting owner.
Yes, she had poisoned my grandfather, and no, she had not [315] poisoned my father in spite of Tiberius' suspicions--it was a natural gangrene; and yes, she had poisoned Augustus by smearing poison on the figs while they were still on the tree; and she told me the whole Julia story as I have related it, and the whole Postumus story--the details of which I was able to check; and yes, she had poisoned Agrippa and Lucius, as well as Marcellus and Gaius, and yes, she had intercepted my letters to Germanicus, but no, she had not poisoned him--Plancina had done that on her own initiative--but she had marked him out for death as she had marked out my father, and for the same reason.
'What reason was that, Grandmother?'
'He had decided to restore the Republic. No, don't mistake me: not in a way which violated his oath of allegiance to Tiberius, though it meant removing me.
He was going to make Tiberius take the step himself voluntarily, and allow him all the credit for it, keeping in the background himself. He nearly persuaded Tiberius.
You know what a coward Tiberius is. I had to work hard and forge a lot of documents and tell a lot of lies to keep Tiberius from making a fool of himself. I even had to come to an understanding with Sejanus. This republicanism is a persistent taint in the family. Your grandfather had it.'
'I have it.'
'Still? That's amusing. Nero has it too, I understand. It won't bring him much luck. And it's no use arguing with you republicans. You refuse to see that one can no more reintroduce republican government at this stage than one can reimpose primitive feelings of chastity on modern wives and husbands. It's like trying to turn the shadow back on a sundial: it can't be done.'
She confessed to having had Drusillus throttled. She told me how close I was to death when I first wrote to Germanicus about Postumus. The only reason that she had spared me was that there was a possibility of my writing him information as to Postumus' whereabouts. The most interesting account she gave me was of her poisoning methods. I asked her Postumus' question--whether she favoured slow poisons or quick ones--and she answered without the least embarrassment that she preferred repeated doses of slow tasteless poisons which gave the effect of consumption. I asked how she managed to cover up her traces so well and how she managed to strike at such long distances: for Gaius had been murdered in Asia Minor, and Lucius at Marseilles.
She reminded me that she had never contrived a murder which might be held to benefit her directly and immediately. She had not, for instance, poisoned my grandfather' until some time after being divorced from him, nor had she poisoned any of her female rivals--Octavia or Julia, or Scribonia. Her victims were mostly people by whose removal her sons and grandchildren were brought closer to the succession. Urgulania had been her only confidant, and she was so discreet and skilful and-so devoted that not only was it most unlikely that the crimes they planned together would ever be detected but, even if they were, they would never have been brought home to her. The annual confessions made to Urgulania in preparation for the festival of the Good Goddess had been a useful means of removing several people who stood in the way of her plans. She explained this fully. It happened sometimes thaf confession was made not merely to adultery but to incest with a brother or son. Urgulania would declare that the only possible penance was the death of the man. The woman then pleaded, was there no other possible penance? Urgulania would then say that there was perhaps an alternative that the Goddess would permit. The woman could purify herself by assisting the Goddess' vengeance--with the help of the man who had caused her shame. For, Urgulania would tell her, a similarly detestable confession had been made some time before by another woman, who had however shrunk from killing her ravisher, and so the wretch was still alive, though the woman herself had suffered. The
'wretch' was successively Agrippa, Lucius, and Gaius.
Agrippa was accused of incest with his daughter Marcellina--whose unexplained suicide gave colour to the story; Gaius and Lucius of incest with their mother before her banishment--and Julia's reputation gave colour to this story too.
In each case the woman was only too glad to plan the murder and the man to execute it. Urgulania assisted with advice and suitable poisons. Livia's safety lay in the remoteness of the agent, who if he were to be suspected or even [^7]
taken red-handed could not explain his motive for the murder without further incriminating himself. I asked whether she had had no compunction about murdering Augustus and either murdering or banishing so many of his descendants. She said: 'I never for a moment forgot whose daughter I was.' And that explained a great deal. Livia's father, Claudian, had been proscribed by Augustus after the Battle of Philippi and had committed suicide rather than fall into his hands.
In short, she told me everything that I wanted to know except about the haunting of Germanicus' house at Antioch. She repeated that she had not ordered it and that neither Plancina nor Piso had told her anything about it and that I was in as good a position to clear up the mystery as she was. I saw that it was useless to press her further, so I thanked her for her patience with me and at last took the oath by my head to do all in my power to make her a Goddess.
As I was going she handed me a small volume and told me to read it when I was in Capua. It was the collection of rejected Sibylline verses that I have written about in the first pages of this story, and when I came across the prophecy called
'The Succession of Hairy Ones' I thought I knew why Livia had invited me to dinner and made me swear that oath. If I had sworn it. It all seemed like a drunken dream.
XXVI
SEJANUS COMPOSED A MEMORIAL TO TIBERIUS, BEGGING TO be
remembered if a husband for Livilla was being looked for; saying that he was only a knight, he was aware, but Augustus had once spoken of marrying his only daughter to a knight, and Tiberius at least had no more loyal subordinate than himself. He did not aim at senatorial rank but was content to continue in his present station as a sleepless sentinel for his noble Emperor's safety. He added that such a marriage would be a serious blow to Agrippina's party, who recognised him as their most active opponent.
They would be afraid to offer violence to Castor's surviving son by Livilla--young Tiberius Gemellus. The recent death of the other twin must be laid at Agrippina's door. Tiberius answered graciously that he could not yet give a favourable answer to the request, in spite of his great sense of obligation to Sejanus, He thought it unlikely that Livilla, both of whose previous husbands had been men of the highest birth, would be content for him to remain a knight; but if he were advanced in rank as well as being married into the Imperial family this would cause a great deal of jealousy, and so strengthen the party of Agrippina.
He said that it was precisely to avoid such jealousies that Augustus had thought of marrying his daughter to a knight, a retired man who was not mixed up with politics in any way.
