The documents to which I have referred are safe in my possession. No eyes have seen them save mine and Alexas Athenaeus (and, of course, the conspirators), and no other eyes shall. They remain for you to use, however you may judge best.
Alexas Athenaeus is in hiding; the documents that he has taken from the household of Julius Antonius are sure to be missed, and he is in fear of his life. He is a most remarkable man; I trust him. He has assured me that, despite his loyalty to Julius Antonius, he reveres the Emperor and Rome more. He will testify, if need be. But I make a personal plea. If it is necessary to put him to torture to validate his testimony, please arrange it so that it is a ritual torture rather than an actual one. I trust the man implicitly, and he has lost nearly everything by his revelation.
My dear friend, I should have preferred to take my life than to be the one to impart this information. But I could not do so. The safety of your person and the safety of Rome must take precedence over what now seems would be the comfort of my own death.
I await whatever orders you may give me.
VI. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
It is autumn in Pandateria. Soon the winds from the north will sweep down upon this bare place. They will whistle and moan among the rocks, and the house in which I live, though of this native stone, will tremble a little in the blast; and the sea will beat with a seasonal violence against the shores… Nothing changes here except the seasons. My mother still shouts at our servant and directs her indefatigably-though it seems to me that in the last month or so she has become a bit more feeble. I wonder if she, too, will die upon this island. If so, it will be her choice; I have none.
I have not written in this journal for nearly two months; I had thought that I had no more to tell myself. But today I was allowed to receive another letter from Rome, and it contained news that reawakened memories of the days when I lived; and so I speak once more to the wind, which will carry my words away in the mindless force of its blowing.
When I wrote of Julius Antonius, it occurred to me that it was an appropriate moment to cease these entries into a journal that sprawls itself out to no end. For if for a year or so Julius Antonius brought me alive into the world, he also thrust me into this slow death of Pandateria, where I may observe my own decay. I wonder if he foresaw what might happen. It does not matter. I cannot hate him.
Even at the moment when I knew that he had destroyed us both, I could not hate him.
And so I must write of one more thing.
In the consulships of Octavius Caesar, the August, and Marcus Plautius Silvanus, I, Julia, daughter of the Emperor, was accused before the Senate convening in Rome of adultery, and hence of the abrogation of the marriage and adultery laws that my father had passed by edict some fifteen years before. My accuser was my father. He went into great detail about my transgressions; he named my lovers, my places of assignation, the dates. In the main, the details were correct, though there were a few unimportant names that he omitted. He named Sempronius Gracchus, Quinctius Crispinus, Appius Pulcher, Cornelius Scipio, and Julius Antonius. He described drunken revels in the Forum and debaucheries upon the very rostrum from which he had first delivered his laws; he spoke of my frequentation of various houses of prostitution, implying that out of perversity I sold myself to anyone who would have me; and he described my visits to those unsavory bath establishments which permitted mixed bathing and encouraged all manner of licentiousness. These were exaggerated, but there was enough truth in them to make them persuasive. And at last he demanded that, in accordance with his Julian Laws, I be exiled forever from the precincts of Rome, and requested the Senate to order me placed on this Island of Pandateria, to live out the rest of my life in contemplation of my vices.
If history remembers me at all, history will remember me so.
But history will not know the truth, if history ever can.
My father knew of my affairs. They may have pained him, but he knew of them, and understood the reasons, and did not upbraid me unduly. He knew of my love for Julius Antonius; and I think, almost, he was happy for me.
In the consulships of Gaius Octavius Caesar and Marcus Plautius Silvanus, I was condemned to exile so that I would not be executed for high treason to the state of Rome.
It is autumn in Pandateria, and it was autumn that afternoon in Rome, six years ago, when my life ended. I had not heard from Julius Antonius in three days. Messages that I sent to his house were returned unopened; servants that I sent were refused admittance, and came back to me puzzled. I tried to imagine those things that one in love is wont to imagine, but I could not; I knew that something else was amiss, something more serious than what a jealous lover can raise to beguile and torture one's lover.
But I swear I did not know what it was. I did not suspect; or perhaps I refused to suspect. I did not even suspect when, on the afternoon of the third day of silence, a messenger and four guards appeared at my door to take me to my father. I did not even recognize the significance of the guards; I imagined that they were there as a ritual protection of my safety.
I was carried by litter through the Forum and up the Via Sacra and past the Imperial Palace and up the litde hill to my father's house on the Palatine. The house was almost deserted, and when the guards escorted me across the courtyard toward my father's study, the few servants who were around turned away from me, as if in fear. It was only then, I believe, that I began to suspect the seriousness of the matter.
When I was led into the room, my father was standing, as if awaiting me. He motioned the guards to leave; and he looked at me for a long while before speaking.
For some reason, I observed him very closely for those moments. Perhaps, after all, I did know. His face was lined, and there were wrinkles of weariness around those pale eyes; but in the dimness of the room, the face might have been that of him whom I remembered from my childhood. At last I said:
'What strangeness is this? Why have you brought me here?'
Then he came forward and very gentiy kissed me on the cheek.
'You must remember,' he said, 'that you are my daughter and that I have loved you.'
I did not speak.
My father went to the little desk in the corner of the room and leaned on it for a moment, his back toward me. Then he straightened, and without turning said to me:
'You know one Sempronius Gracchus.'
'You know that I do,' I said. 'You know him also.'
'You have been intimate with him?'
'Father-' I said.
Then he turned to me. In his face there was such pain that I could not bear to look. He said: 'You must answer me. Please, you must answer.'
'Yes,' I said.
'And Appius Pulcher.'
'Yes.'
'And Quinctius Crispinus and Cornelius Scipio?'
'Yes,' I said.
'And Julius Antonius.'
'And Julius Antonius,' I said. 'The others-' I said, 'the others do not matter. That was a foolishness. But you know that I love Julius Antonius.'
My father sighed. 'My child,' he said, 'this is a matter that has nothing to do with love.' He turned away from me once again and picked up some papers from his desk. He handed them to me. I looked at them. My hands were shaking. I had not seen the papers before-some letters, some diagrams, some that appeared to be timetables-but now I saw names that I knew. My own. Tiberius's. Julius Antonius's. Sempronius, Cornelius, Appius. And I knew then why I had been summoned before my father.
'Had you read those documents carefully,' my father said, 'you would know that there is a conspiracy against the government of Rome, and that the first step ofthat conspiracy is the murder of your husband, Tiberius Claudius Nero.' I did not speak.
'Did you know of this conspiracy?'
'Not a conspiracy,' I said. 'No. There was no conspiracy.'
'Did you speak to any of these-friends of yours about Tiberius?'
