ordinary circumstances, this might have been thought of as a triumph; but neither the times nor the circumstances are ordinary, and it is essential that you act with the utmost caution.
You must, of course, accept the consulship; it would be unthinkable to refuse it, and disastrous to any future ambition you might have.
But you must not stay in Rome. Your stepfather's aim, of course, is to see that you do. But you must not. Before you leave Germany for the inauguration here, you must arrange your affairs so that it will become absolutely necessary for you to return there as soon as you possibly can. If you have no one you can trust, you must deliberately put your armies in a dangerous position, so that you must return to remedy the danger. I am sure you will be able to arrange something.
I shall now attempt to explain the reasons to justify this seemingly strange course that you must take.
Your wife continues to live as she has done for more than a year. She is openly contemptuous of your marriage contract, and careless of your reputation. Her father must know something of her conduct, yet he does nothing to prevent it- whether out of policy, or affection, or blindness, I do not know. Despite the marriage laws (or perhaps because the Emperor himself inaugurated them), no one quite dares to be the public informer. Everyone knows that the laws are not enforced, and knows it would be inexpedient to insist upon their enforcement now, especially when they would be enforced against one so powerful and popular as your wife.
For she is powerful; and she is popular. Whether by design or accident (and I suspect the former), she has gathered into her circle some of the most powerful younger people in Rome. And it is here that the danger lies.
Those with whom she now regularly and most intimately consorts are your most dangerous enemies, and that they may also oppose the Emperor does not diminish the threat to your position. It does, in fact, enhance that threat.
As you well know, the power that you have is in your following, which is largely made up of families such as mine, who are (in your stepfather's words) the 'old Republicans.' We are rich, we are ancient, and we are closely knit; but it has been the policy for nearly thirty years to see to it that our public power is limited.
I fear that the Emperor wants you to return as a kind of buffer between the factions-his own, and that of the younger people, of whom Julia is an especial favorite.
If you return and allow yourself to be placed between them, you will, quite simply, be chewed up. And then you will be spit out. And your stepfather will have eliminated a dangerous rival, without having appeared to have lifted a hand. More importantly, he will have discredited an entire faction, without having elevated another. For as long as the faction of the young is fond of his daughter, he trusts that the danger that confronts him is negligible.
But you will be destroyed.
Consider the possibilities.
First: The Claudians and their followers may, under our leadership, gain enough power to turn the Empire back to the course it once followed, and to reinstitute the values and ideals of the old days. This is highly unlikely, but I grant that it is possible. But even if we are able to do so, then we will in all likelihood have united against us both the New People of your stepfather, and the New Young. I think we both would shudder at the consequences of such a unification.
Second: If you remain in Rome, your wife will continue to work against your interests-whether out of design or whim does not matter. She will do so. It is clear that she considers that her power comes from the Emperor, not from your name or station. She is the Emperor's daughter. You would be powerless against her will, and would be made to seem foolish if you set yourself against that will and did not prevail.
Third: Her continued life of dissipation and self-indulgence will, among both your friends and your enemies, offer continued occasion for gossip. Were you to act against this life of hers and insist upon a divorce, it would bring a scandal upon the Octavian house, it is true; it would also gain you the eternal despite of the Emperor and those who support him. If you do not act against her behavior, you will seem a weakling; you may even be accused of complicity in her law-breaking.
No, my dear Tiberius, you must not return to Rome with any intention of remaining here, while things are as they are. It is fortunate that I have been made co-consul with you. While you are away, you may be sure that I will protect your interests. It is ironic that I, unworthy as I am, shall be able to do so with more safety and more effectiveness than you might be able to do. It is a most depressing commentary upon the course that our lives have taken us.
Your mother sends her love to you. She will not write until you have received the message from the Emperor. Though she does not say so, I have good reason to believe that she supports me in this most urgent advice that I have given you.
VII. Letter: Nicolaus of Damascus to Strabo of Amasia (7 B. c.)
For the past fourteen years, I have been content to live in Rome, first in the service of Herod and Octavius Caesar, and then in the service and friendship of Octavius Caesar alone; as you may have inferred from my letters, I had begun to think of this city as my home. I have broken most of my ties abroad; and since the deaths of my parents, I have felt no desire or necessity to return to the land of my birth.
But in a few days I shall be entering my fifty-seventh year; and during the last few months-perhaps it is longer-I have come to feel less and less that this is my homeland. I have come to feel that I am a stranger in this city that has been so kind to me, and in which I have been on the most intimate terms with some of the greatest men of our time.
Perhaps I am mistaken, but there seems to me an air of ugly unrest in Rome; it is not that uncertain restlessness that you must have known in the early days of Octavius Caesar's power, nor the restless excitement that infected me when I first came here fourteen years ago.
Octavius Caesar has brought peace to this land; not since Actium has Roman raised sword against Roman. He has brought prosperity to the city and the countryside; not even the poorest of the people wants for food in the city, and those in the provinces prosper from the beneficences of Rome and Octavius Caesar. Octavius Caesar has brought liberty to the people; no longer need the slave live in fear of the arbitrary cruelty of his master, nor the poor man fear the venality of the rich, nor the responsible speaker fear the consequences of his words.
And yet there is an ugliness in the air which, I fear, bodes ill for the future of the city, the Empire, and the reign of Octavius Caesar himself. Faction is ranged against faction; rumors abound; and no one seems content to live in the comfort and dignity which their Emperor has made possible. These are extraordinary people… It is as if they cannot endure safety and peace and comfort.
So I shall leave Rome, this city that has been my home for so many rich years. I shall return to Damascus, and live out the days that remain to me among my books and whatever words I may write. I shall leave Rome in sorrow and love-without anger or recrimination or disappointment. And I realize as I write these words that I really am saying that I shall leave my friend, Octavius Caesar, with these feelings within me. For Octavius Caesar is Rome; and that, perhaps, is the tragedy of his life.
Oh, Strabo, if the truth were known, I feel that his life is over; in these past few years he has endured more than any man ought to endure. His face has upon it the inhuman composure of one who knows his life is over, and who waits only upon the decay of the flesh which signifies that end.
I have never known a man to whom friendship meant so much; and I mean a friendship of a particular kind. His true friends were those whom he knew when he was young, before he gained the power that he now has. I suppose that one with power can trust only those whom he knew and could trust before he had power; or it may be something else… And now he is alone. He has no one.
Five years ago his friend, Marcus Agrippa, whom he had made his son-in-law, died in the loneliness of his return to Italy from a foreign land; and Octavius Caesar could not even bid him farewell. The year following, that good lady, his sister Octavia, died in the bitter isolation she had chosen away from the city and her brother, on a simple farm at Velletri. And now the last of his old friends, Maecenas, is dead; and Octavius Caesar is alone. No one from his youth remains alive, and therefore there is no one whom he feels that he can trust, no one to whom he can talk about those things that are nearest to him.
I saw the Emperor the week after Maecenas died; I had been in the country during the unhappy event, and I hurried back as soon as I learned of it. I tried to offer him my condolences.
He looked at me with those clear blue eyes that are so startlingly young in his lined face. There was a little smile on his lips.
