he bungled the job and died slowly. Let him remain in peace; do not pursue these matters too far.
The matter of Cleopatra: (1) No, Octavius did not arrange her murder. (2) Yes, he did speak to her in Alexandria before she took her life. (3) Yes, he would have spared her life; he did not want her dead. She was an excellent administrator, and could have retained titular control of Egypt. (4) No, I do not know what went on in the interview at Alexandria; he has never chosen to speak of it.
The matter of Caesarion: (I) Yes, he was only seventeen years old. (2) Yes, it was our decision that he be put to death. (3) Yes, it is my judgment that he was the son of Julius. (4) No, he was not put to death because of his name, but because of his ambition, which was inarguable. I spoke to Octavius about his youth, and Octavius reminded me that he himself had been seventeen once, and ambitious.
The matter of Antyllus, the son of Marcus Antonius. Octavius had him put to death. He also was seventeen years of age. He was much like his father.
The matter of Octavius's return to Rome: (1) He was thirty-three years of age. (2) Yes, he received the triple triumph then, at the beginning of his fifth consulship. (3) Yes, that was the same year he fell ill, and we despaired again of his life.
You must, my dear Livy, forgive the curtness of my replies. I am not offended; I am only tired. I look back upon those days as if they happened to someone else, almost as if they were not real. If the truth were known, I am bored with remembering. Perhaps I shall feel better tomorrow.
BOOK II
CHAPTER ONE
I. Statement: Hirtia to Her Son, Quintus, Velletri (2 B. c.)
I am Hirtia. My mother, Crispia, was once a slave in the household of Atia, wife to Gaius Octavius the Elder, niece to Julius Caesar the God, and mother to that Octavius whom the world knows now as Augustus. I cannot write, so I speak these words to my son Quintus, who manages the estates of Atius Sabinus in Velletri. He writes these words so that our posterity may know of the time before them, and of the part their ancestors had in that time. I am in my seventy-second year, and the end of my life comes toward me; I wish to say these words before the gods close my eyes forever.
Three days ago my son took me into Rome, so that before my eyes dimmed beyond sight I might look again upon the city that I remembered from my youth; and there an event befell me which raised memories of a past so distant that I thought I could never return to it. After more than fifty years, I saw again that one who is now master of the world and who has more tides than my poor mind can remember. But once I called him 'my Tavius,' and held him in my arms as if he were my own. I shall speak later ofthat; now I must say my memories of an earlier time.
My mother was born a slave in the Julian household. She was given to Atia first as a playmate, and then as a servant. But even when she was young, she was granted her freedom for faithful service, so that she might, in the law, marry the freed-man Hirtius, who became my father. My father was overseer of all the olive groves on the Octavian estate at Velletri; and it was in a cottage near the villa, on the hill above the groves, that I was born, and where I lived in the kindness of that household for the first nineteen years of my life. Now I have returned to Velletri; and if the gods are willing, I shall die in that cottage in the contentment of my childhood.
My mistress and her husband did not stay often at the villa; they lived in Rome, for Gaius Octavius the Elder was a man of importance in the government of those days. When I was ten years old, my mother informed me that Atia had given birth to a son; and because he was sickly, she decided that he would spend his infancy in the country air, away from the stench and smoke of the city. My mother had recently given birth to a stillborn child, and could nurse her mistress's son. And as my mother took a child to her breast as if it were her own, so did my young heart, which was beginning to stir toward the dream of motherhood.
As young as I was, I washed his body; swaddled him; held his tiny hand when he took his first steps; saw him grow. In my childhood game of motherhood, he was my Tavius.
When that one whom I then called Tavius was five years old, his father returned from a long stay in the land of Macedonia and visited with his family for a few days; he planned to move southward to another of his residences in Nola, where we were to join him for the winter season. But he became suddenly ill, and died before we could take the journey; and my Tavius lost the father whom he had never known. I held him in my arms to comfort him. I remember that his little body quivered; he did not cry.
For four more years he remained in our care, though a teacher was sent from Rome to attend him; and occasionally his mother visited. When I was in my nineteenth year, my mother died; and my mistress Atia-who after her time of mourning and in her duty had married again-decided that her son must return to Rome so that he might begin to prepare himself for manhood. And in her kindness and for the safety of my future, Atia gave into my keeping a portion of land sufficient to keep me from ever living in want; and for the well-being of my person, she gave me in marriage to a freedman of her family, who had a modest but safe prosperity in a flock of sheep that grazed in the mountain country near Mutina, north of Rome.
Thus I went from my youth and became a woman, and in the way of things had to say good-by to the child I had pretended was mine. The days of play were over for me; yet it was I who wept when I had to take leave of Tavius. As if I were the child who needed comfort, he embraced me, and told me he would not forget me. We vowed that we would see each other again; we did not believe that we would. And so the child that had been my Tavius went his way to become the ruler of the world, and I found the happiness and purpose for which the gods had destined me.
How might an ignorant old woman understand greatness in one whom she has known as an infant, as a toddling child, as a boy who ran and shouted with his playmates? Now everywhere outside of Rome, in the villages and towns of the countryside, he is a god; there is a temple in his name in my own town of Mutina, and I have heard that there are others elsewhere. His image is on the hearths of the country folk throughout the land.
I do not know the ways of the world or of the gods; I remember a child who was almost my own, though not born of my body; and I must say what I remember. He was a child with hair paler than the autumn grain; a fair skin that would not take the sun. At times he was quick and gay; at other times quiet and withdrawn. He could be made quickly angry, and as easily removed from that anger. Though I loved him, he was a child like any other.
It must be that even then the gods had given him the greatness that all the world has learned; but if they had, I swear he did not know it. His playmates were his equals, even the children of the lowest slaves; he gave as he received in his tasks or his play. Yes, the gods must have touched him, and yet in their wisdom prevented him from knowing; for I heard in later years that there were many portents at his birth. It is said that his mother dreamed that a god in the form of a serpent entered her, and that she conceived; that his father dreamed that the sun rose from the loins of his wife; and that miracles beyond understanding took place all over Italy at the moment of his birth. I say only what I have heard, and speak of the memories of those days.
And now I must tell of that meeting which raised these thoughts in my head.
My son Quintus wanted me to see the great Forum where he often went to take care of business matters for his employer; and so he aroused me at the first hour of the day, so that we could walk the streets before they were crowded. We had seen the new Senate House, and were walking up the Via Sacra toward the Temple of Julius Caesar, which was white as mountain snow in the morning sunlight. I remembered that once when I was a child I had seen this man who has become a god; and I wondered at the greatness of that world of which I had been a part.
We paused for a moment to rest beside the temple. In my age I tire easily. And as we rested, I saw walking up the street toward us a group of men whom I knew to be senators; they wore the togas with the purple stripes. In their midst was a slight figure, bowed as I am bowed, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and with a staff in one hand. The others seemed to be directing their words toward him. My eyes are weak; I could not make out his features; but some power of knowledge came upon me, and I said to Quintus:
'It is he.'
Quintus smiled at me, and asked: 'It is who, Mother?'
'It is he,' I said, and my voice trembled. 'It is that master of whom I have spoken, who once was in my
