me doubtfully. 'You can say anything before the boy,' Democritus said. So the man nodded and said there was a job on. 'What sort of a job?' says Democritus. 'A big one,' says the man. 'Can you read?' he says. 'Not so well,' says Democritus. 'Bugger that,' says the man. 'But I've friends as can,' says Democritus, not anxious to see the job slip away from us. 'That's all right then,' says the man, 'it's not a one-man job anyway.' 'So what is it then?' 'Well,' the man says, 'you know the Temple of Vesta?' 'Who doesn't? Not that any man's ever been in it,' says Democritus, laughing but really intrigued now, because it does sound like it's going to be big. 'Well, I don't,' says the man. 'I'm a Roman citizen, but I was born in a colony and I've never lived in Rome. I'm a soldier,' he said, 'from the East, and I don't know the city, else I'd do the job myself.' 'All right, then,' Democritus says, 'so what is it?' And then the man comes out straight. 'The General Mark Antony has deposited his will with the Vestals, and the man wants us to snitch it.' 'Why?' says Democritus, playing dumb, 'why and what's in it for us?' Well, to cut a long story short, what's in it for us sounds pretty good, but I understand you gentlemen want to know the why, and it seems from what I understood that this will was like to prove an embarrassment and so some of the General's friends, maybe the General himself, thought it best that it be got rid of…'
'All right,' Nerva said, 'we understand that. Didn't it occur to ycu that he had only to ask for its return? Why this elaborate burglary…?' The boy looked Nerva in the eye for the first time.
'Of course that struck us,' he said. 'We're not stupid, you know, sir. We asked him that very question. And he had an answer. He said that they'd chosen this method because the burglary was sure to be blamed on Caesar here, and that was the reason…'
Oh no, I thought to myself, Agrippa has overdone it. That's one refinement too many. Surely someone will see that if their burglary had been brought off, I would have been able to produce a will of some sort… my stomach twitched… but of course I was viewing the affair from a different angle; this possibility occurred to nobody else seemingly. Yet it was a possibility that must not be allowed to fester. Someone would spot the weak point in the story. 'This must be nonsense,' I said. 'I apologize, Nerva, for intervening in this cross-examination which you are conducting so ably and which has already elicited such interesting information, but this can't be right. There is a fundamental flaw in the boy's story. Surely, if the burglary had taken place successfully, and the burglary had been blamed on me – which…' I hesitated… 'is an impious thought profoundly offensive to me – such an attribution could only be convincing if I had had a will to produce. Otherwise the story would not hold water.'
The consulars frowned into the muddy pool. The boy turned his huge eyes on me.
'I thought of that too, General,' he said, 'and thinking my friend was being led into trouble, I even raised the point. The agent smiled and answered me in such a way as to leave no doubt that he was indeed your enemy. Then he furnished us with an explanation. You were indeed, after the burglary, to be supplied with the will – by a well-wisher. It was to be such that you could not resist publishing it. But Antony would have the real will, with the Vestals' seal, and the real will would be much more 'innocuous' – that was his word – than the one you would have published. Then, you see, he would have sent the real will to the Senate, or invited leading senators to examine it. You see, my lords, the whole purpose of the plot was not to get hold of the will at all, because, according to our information, it really is innocuous; the plot was aimed at Caesar here. Its intention was to discredit him. It would seem he had first committed an act of sacrilege by ordering the burglary, and then discovering that the will he had stolen didn't suit his purposes, had committed a second crime: forgery…'
I was amazed by the boy's talent. What's more, he was now evidently enjoying his role, playing the part of a man revelling in the release that comes from the self-abasement of confession. Moreover, I marvelled at the effect of this last speech. It was clear that the consulars were convinced it was true. It was therefore safe to confess myself staggered by the enormity of what had been revealed, and at a loss as to the appropriate action to be taken. I did so, and there was much shaking of heads. Only one consular, my wife's cousin Appius Claudius Pulcher, seemed doubtful still. He said he would like confirmation from the other members of the gang.
'Killed, resisting arrest,' Agrippa said. 'My police report they were a desperate crew. Only this little rat submitted at once, in tears and without a struggle.'
'We may be thankful that he did,' Nerva said. 'Otherwise who knows what vile conclusions, damaging to the Republic, might have been drawn?'
The upshot was satisfactory. It was resolved that a motion be put to the Senate requiring the Vestals, in the name of the Senate and the Roman People, to broach convention and deliver to their keeping the Testament deposited there by Marcus Antonius, considering that they had reason to believe that the said Testament contained matter pertaining to the security and sovereignty of the Senate and the Roman People. Even the Vestals felt obliged to heed such a request, which they did, though adding a rider in which they proclaimed the reverence that should be due to testamentary documents lodged in their keeping – a reverence, I need hardly tell you, which I have never ceased to feel.
The publication of the will had the anticipated effect. It aroused fear and anxiety and rumours were soon rife that Antony intended to move the capital of the empire from Rome to Alexandria. There were spontaneous outbursts of popular feeling against Antony who had once been the people's darling. Now his house on the Aventine was fired by the mob. Everywhere one heard stories of his abject subjection to Cleopatra. It was said that he had walked in the train of her eunuchs, himself dressed in Egyptian robes and that he had taken part in the abominable rites with which the corrupt and decadent inhabitants of the Nile valley celebrate their loathsome gods.
No one dared to raise a voice in his defence, not even in the Senate. On the contrary, feeling ran so high against him that, without any necessary prompting on my part, he was divested of his imperium and deposed from the consulship for the following year to which he had already been elected. There was even a proposal that he should be named as a public enemy; but here I thought fit to intervene. I had no desire to enflame feeling further against Antony, not because I had developed any tenderness for him – apart from the remnants of the affection which he had always inspired in me, however reluctantly – but for a more politic reason. Four years earlier, after Pompey's defeat, I had formally declared the era of the civil wars concluded. I had no wish to suggest that it was being renewed. On the contrary, the war, now being prepared, was directed against an enemy of Rome, not against a fellow-citizen who wished to subvert the state. Our foe was Cleopatra. I was calling on all Italy to make a supreme effort in a Great Patriotic War.
Accordingly, I now prepared my master stroke. I called on the whole of Italy, the whole Western world, senators, troops and civilians, to swear an oath of loyalty to me in Rome's struggle against perfidious Egypt. None was compelled to take this oath. Indeed, mindful of Antony's presence in the ranks of the enemy, and mindful too of the solemn nature of personal obligations, I made it clear that those who felt such loyalties to Antony should be under no pressure; I even specifically exempted the city of Bologna, an old cliency of Antony's, and stated that I would not regard its loyalty to its old patron as an expression of disaffection to me or to Rome. It was said that such clemency and benignity exceeded anything displayed by Julius.
Because the oath was voluntary and because my cause was just, being the cause of Rome and Italy, the whole country spontaneously flocked to the special offices established in every municipality to assure me of their trust. Nothing in my life has given me more enduring pride than this. Even those colonies of veterans who had served under Antony took the oath. I may add that this was all done despite the necessity of imposing some of the severest taxation Rome and Italy had ever suffered; denied resources of the East, we found it necessary to impose an income tax of twenty-five per cent to pay for the war. But, since all knew that the war was just, and all hoped that a combined and cheerful effort could bring it to a speedy termination, even this tax was paid, though before its purpose was fully understood and before the oath-taking served to rally the mass of our countrymen to the cause, there were sporadic riots and disturbances in some of the provincial towns. I could understand and forgive these; no sensible man likes to pay taxes. It was soon realized however that this tax was necessary, and it was paid all the more willingly when men remembered the enormous contributions to the public Treasury I had made and was continuing to make from my own resources. Moreover, everyone knew that I lived simply and spent little on myself.
The triumvirate having been abolished, the Senate responded by granting me a right of command without limitation of function or command. The title of dictator had also been abolished, and I had no wish to revive it, for its associations were no longer those of the heroic past of the Republic; but in fact I now possessed all the powers of the dictatorship for an unlimited period. Yet it was important that these had been granted me not solely by the Senate but by the spontaneous confidence of all Italy.
Only one shadow was cast over my serenity. Livia, distressed beyond my understanding by the affair of the Vestal Virgins, still denied me the marriage bed. My love was deep enough to enable me to continue to respect her
