Country, I wander beyond all of their precincts, and let
Various breezes carry me where they will. And at last-soft,
Distant, and sweet-sounds come: oboe and tambour and flute;
Music of laughter; the wind; bird songs; leaves rustling in twilight.
Now it's my hearing that leads; I have to follow, so that
Eyes may glimpse what the music has promised. And suddenly,
Open before me, a stream, gushing with springs that invade
Cavern and grotto, and idly meander through lilies that tremble
As if suspended in air; surely, I say to myself,
Surely there dwells here divinity-one that I haven't before known.
Nymphs in their gossamer gowns celebrate spring and the night;
Yet, above all, high, radiant in beauty, a Goddess, to whom turn
All eyes. Worshiped in joy, prayed to by gaiety, she smiles,
Brightening the twilight, more gently than does our Aurora; her beauty
Outshines that of the high Juno. I think: It's a new
Venus come down from her high place; no one has seen her before, yet all
Know they must worship her. Hail, Goddess! we leave the old Gods
Safe in their groves. Let them scowl at the world, let them scold who will listen;
Here a new season is born; here a new country is found,
Deep in the soul ofthat Rome we loved of old. We must welcome the new, and
Live in its joy, and be gay; soon will the night come on; soon,
Soon we will rest. But for now we are granted this beauty around us,
Granted this Goddess who gives life to this sacred grove.
VI. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
My husband died on the evening of Sempronius Gracchus's party; I would not have seen him, even if I had left as my father wanted. My father traveled all night without pausing, and arrived at Puteoli the next day to find his oldest friend dead. It is said that he looked at the body of my husband almost coldly, and did not speak for a long time. And then with that cold efficiency of his he spoke to Marcus Agrippa's aides, who were putting on their shows of grief. He ordered the body prepared for the procession that would return to Rome; he had word sent back to the Senate to direct the procession; and-still without rest-he accompanied the body of Marcus Agrippa on its slow and solemn journey back to Rome. Those who saw him enter the city said that his face was like stone as he limped at the head of the procession.
I was, of course, present at the ceremonies in the Forum, where my father delivered the funeral oration; and I can attest to his coldness there. He spoke before the body of Marcus Agrippa as if it were a monument, rather than what remained of a friend.
But I can also attest to what the world did not know. After the ceremony was over, my father retired to his room in his private house on the Palatine, and he saw no one for three days, during which time he took no food. When he emerged, he appeared to be years older; and he spoke with an indifferent gentleness that he had never had before. With the death of Marcus Agrippa, there was a death within him. He was never quite the same again.
To the citizens of Rome, my husband left in perpetuity the gardens he had acquired during the years of his power, the baths he had built, and a sufficient amount of capital to maintain them; in addition, he left to every citizen one hundred pieces of silver; to my father he left the rest of his fortune, with the understanding that it was to be used for the benefit of his countrymen.
I thought myself cold, for I did not grieve for my husband. Beneath the ritual show of grief demanded by custom, I felt- I felt almost nothing. Marcus Agrippa was a good man; I never disliked him; I was, I suppose, fond of him. But I did not grieve.
I was in my twenty-seventh year. I had given birth to four children, and was pregnant with a fifth. I was a widow for the second time. I had been a wife, a goddess, and the second woman of Rome.
If I felt anything upon the occasion of my husband's death, it was relief.
Four months after the death of Marcus Agrippa, I gave birth to my fifth child. It was a boy. My father named the child Agrippa, after its father. He would, he said, adopt the child when it came of an age. It was a matter of indifference to me. I was happy to be free of a life that I had found to be a prison.
I was not to be free. One year and four months after the death of Marcus Agrippa, my father betrothed me to Tiberius Claudius Nero. He was the only one of my husbands whom I ever hated.
VII. Letter: Livia to Tiberius Claudius Nero, in Pannonia (12 B. c.)
You are, my dear son, to follow my advice in this matter. You are to divorce Vipsania, as my husband has ordered; and you are to marry Julia. It has been arranged, and I have had no small part in the arrangement. If you wish to be angry at any for this turn of events, I must receive a part ofthat anger.
It is true that my husband has not honored you by adoption; it is true that he does not like you; it is true that he has sent you to replace Agrippa in Pannonia only because there is no one else readily available whom he can trust with the power; it is true that he has no intention of allowing you to succeed him; it is true that you are, as you have said, being used.
It does not matter. For if you refuse to allow yourself to be used, you will have no future; and all my years of dreaming of your eventual greatness will have been wasted. You will live out your life obscurely, in disfavor and contempt.
I know that my husband wishes only for you to act as nominal father to his grandsons, and that he hopes that one or the other of them may be made ready to succeed him, when they are old enough. But my husband's health has never been robust; one cannot know how much longer the gods will allow him to live. It is possible that you may succeed him, beyond his wishes. You have the name; you are my son; and I shall inevitably inherit some power, in the unhappy event of my husband's death.
You dislike Julia; it does not matter. Julia dislikes you; it does not matter. You have a duty to yourself, to your country, and to our name.
You will know in time that I am correct in this; and in time your anger will abate. Do not put yourself in the danger that your impetuosity might invite. Our futures are more important than our selves.
CHAPTER FIVE
I. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
I knew Livia's strength, and I knew the necessity of my father's policy. Livia's ambition for her son was the most steadfast and remarkable one that I have ever known; I have never understood it, and I suspect that I never shall. She was a Claudian; her husband before my father, whose name Tiberius retained, had been a Claudian. Perhaps it was the pride in that ancient name that persuaded her of Tiberius's destiny. I have thought, even, that she might have been more fond of her former husband than she pretended, and saw the memory of him in her son. She was a proud woman; and I have suspected from time to time that she felt that in some indefinable way she had been demeaned by taking to her bed my father, whose name at that time certainly was not so distinguished as her own.
My father had dreamed that Marcellus, his sister's son, would succeed him; thus, he betrothed me to him. Marcellus died. And then he dreamed that Agrippa would succeed him, or at least would bring one of my sons (whom my father had adopted) to a point of sufficient maturity to adequately carry on his duties. Agrippa died, and my sons were still children. No male of the Octavian line remained, and there was no one else whom he could trust or over whom he had sufficient power. There was only Tiberius, whom he detested, though he was his stepson.
Shorriy after the death of Marcus Agrippa, the inevitability of what I had to do began to work inside me like an infected wound whose existence I would not admit. Li via smiled at me complacently, as if we shared a secret. And it was not until I was near the end of my year of mourning that my father summoned me to tell me what I already knew.
