me.
At the age of fourteen, I believed myself to be a woman; I had been taught to believe so. I had studied with Athenodorus; I was the daughter of an Emperor; and I was to be married. I believe I behaved in a most urbane and languid fashion, until the urbanity and languidness became almost real; I had no apprehension of the world that I was beginning to enter.
And Marcellus remained a stranger. He returned from Spain, and we spoke distantly, as we always had done. The arrangements for the wedding proceeded as if neither of us was involved in our fates. I know now, of course, that we were not.
It was a ceremony in the old fashion. Marcellus gave me a gift, before witnesses, of an ivory box inlaid with pearls from Spain, and I received it with the ritual words; the night before the wedding, in the presence of Livia and Octavia and Marcus Agrippa, I bade farewell to the toys of my childhood, and gave those that would burn to the household gods; and late that night Livia, acting as my mother, braided my hair into the six plaits that signified my womanhood, and fastened them with the bands of white wool.
I went through the ceremony as if through a dream. The guests and relatives gathered in the courtyard; the priests said the things that priests say; the documents were signed, witnessed, and exchanged; and I spoke the words that bound me to my husband. And in the evening, after the banquet, Livia and Octavia, according to ceremony, dressed me in the bridal tunic and led me to Marcellus's chamber. I do not know what I expected.
Marcellus sat upon the edge of the bed, yawning; the bridal flowers were strewn carelessly upon the floor.
'It is late,' Marcellus said, and added in the voice he had used toward me as a child; 'get to bed.'
I lay beside him; I imagine I must have been trembling. He yawned once more, turned upon his side away from me, and in a few moments was asleep.
Thus did my wifehood begin; and it did not change substantially during the two years of my marriage to Marcellus. As I wrote earlier, I hardly remember him now; there is little reason why I should.
V. Letter: Livia to Octavius Caesar in Spain (25 B. c.)
To her husband, Livia sends affectionate greetings. I have followed your instructions; your daughter is married; she is well. I hasten over this bare information so that I might write of the matter that is of more immediate concern to me: the state of your health. For I have heard (do not ask the source of my information) that it is more precarious than you have let me know; and thus I begin to apprehend the urgency you have felt in seeing your daughter safely married, and am therefore more ashamed than I might have been of my opposition to the marriage, and I sorrow at the unhappiness that that opposition must have caused you. Please be assured now that my resentment is gone, and that at last my pride in our marriage and our duty has laid to rest my maternal ambitions for my own son. You are right; Marcellus carries the name of the Claudian, the Julian, and the Octavian tribes, whereas my Tiberius carries the name only of the Claudian. Your decision is, as usual, the intelligent one. I forget sometimes that our authority is more precarious than it seems.
I implore you to return from Spain. It is clear that the climate there encourages those fevers to which you are subject, and that in such a barbaric place you cannot receive proper care. In this your physician agrees with me, and adds his professional supplication to my affectionate one.
Marcellus returns to you within the week. Octavia sends her love, and asks that you guard the safety of her son; your wife also sends her love, and her prayers for your recovery, and for the well-being of her son Tiberius. Please return to Rome.
VI. Letter: Quintus Homtius Flaccus to Publius Vergilius Maro, at Naples (23 B. c.)
My dear Vergil, I urge you to come to Rome with all possible speed. Ever since his return from Spain, our friend's health has declined; and now his condition is exceedingly grave. The fever is constant; he cannot rise from his bed; and his body has shrunken so that his skin seems like cloth upon frail sticks. Though we all put on cheerful countenances, we have come to despair of his life. We do not deceive him; he, too, feels that his life draws to a close; he has given to his co-consul his records of the army and of revenue, and has given to Marcus Agrippa his seal, so that there might be an adequate succession of his authority. Only his physician, his intimate friends, and his immediate family are allowed in his presence. A great calm has come upon him; it is as if he wishes to savor for the last time all that he has held dearest to his heart.
Both Maecenas and I have been staying here at his private house on the Palatine, so that we might be near him when he wishes aid or comfort. Livia attends him meticulously and with the dutifulness that he so admires in her; Julia laughs and teases him, as he so enjoys, when she is in his presence, and weeps most pitifully when she is out of his sight; he and Maecenas speak fondly of the days of their youth; and Agrippa, strong as he is, can hardly keep his composure when he speaks to him.
Though he would not impose himself and though he does not say so, I know that he wants you here. Sometimes, when he is too weary to converse with his family, he asks me to read to him some of those poems of ours that he has most admired; and yesterday he recalled that happy and triumphant autumn, only a few years ago, when he returned from Samos, after the defeat of the Egyptian armies, and we were all together, and you read to him the completed Geor?ics. And he said to me, quite calmly and without pity of self: 'If I should die, one of the things that I shall most regret is not having been able to attend the completion of our old friend's poem upon the founding of our city. Do you think it would please him to know this?'
Though I was hardly able to speak, I said, 'I am sure it would, my friend.'
He said, 'Then you must tell him so when you see him.'
'I shall tell him when you have recovered,' I said.
He smiled. I could not endure it longer. I made some apology, and went from his room.
As you can see, the time may be short. He is in no pain; he retains his faculties; but his will is dying with his body.
Within the week, if his condition does not improve, his physician (one Antonius Musa, whose abilities, despite his fame, I do not trust) is prepared to put into effect a final and drastic remedy. I urge you to attend him before that desperation is performed.
VII Medical Directive of Antonius Musa, the Physician, to His Assistants (23 B.C.)
The Preparation of the Baths. Three hundred pounds of ice, to be delivered to the residence of the Emperor Octavius Caesar, at the designated hour. This may be obtained from the storehouse of Asinius Pollio on the Via Campana. The ice is to be broken into pieces of the size of a tightly closed fist, and only those pieces that can be seen to be free of sediment are to be used. Twenty-five of these pieces are to be put into the bath, which will contain water to the depth of eight inches, where they shall be let to remain until all are melted.
The Preparation of the Ointment. One pint of my own powder, to which has been added two spoonfuls of finely ground mustard seed; which mixture is to be added to two quarts of the finest olive oil, which is to be heated just below the point of boiling, and then allowed to cool to the exact degree of body warmth.
The Treatment of the Patient. The patient is to be immersed fully, with the water covering every part of his body except the head, into the cold bath, where he is to remain for the length of time required to count slowly to one hundred. He is then to be removed and wrapped in the undyed blankets of wool, which have been heated over hot stones. He is to remain wrapped until he sweats freely, at which point the entirety of his body is to be anointed with the prepared oil. He is then to be returned to the cold bath, to which has been added sufficient ice to return it to its original coldness.
This treatment is to be repeated four times; then the patient will be allowed to rest for two hours. This routine of treatment shall be continued until the patient's fever subsides.
VIII. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
When my father returned home from Spain, I knew at once the reason for my marriage. He had not expected to survive even the journey to his family, so grave had been his illness in Spain; to insure my future, he gave me to Marcellus; and to insure the future of what he often called his 'other daughter,' he gave Rome to Marcus Agrippa. My marriage to Marcellus was largely a ritual affair; technically I became nonvirginal; but I was hardly touched by the union and I remained a girl, or nearly so. It was during the illness of my father that I became a woman, for I saw the inevitability of death and knew its smell and felt its presence.
I remember that I wept, knowing that my father would die, whom I had known only as a child; and I came to know that loss was the condition of our living. It is a knowledge that one cannot give to another.
Yet I tried to give it to Marcellus, since he was my husband and I had been taught my proper behavior. He looked at me in bewilderment, and then said that however unfortunate, Rome would endure the loss, since our
