We proceeded on foot down from the Palatine, along the Sacred Way, round the base of the Capitol, all the time through throngs of the happy and sweaty crowd. The loudest cheers were reserved for my boys, Gaius and Lucius, who, having no known foibles, were free from the affectionate ribaldry directed at Tiberius and myself by veterans who had served under us. But there was another reason for the cheers which greeted the boys: Gaius and Lucius were recognized by all as the hope for the future; they would themselves provide and guarantee Rome's continued victory and the lasting peace. Their eyes shone as brightly as the sun as they delighted in their reception; it was in that day and hour that they first tasted glory.
Celebrations continued for several days in the city, but our own were cut abruptly short. News was brought from the north that, in returning from his campaigning, Drusus had suffered a severe fall in a river crossing. He had caught a fever and was gravely ill. Livia's grief and alarm were terrible to see; she snatched Drusus' wife Antonia to her bosom, and I saw what I had never seen in our thirty years of marriage, tears spring into her eyes, and run unrestrained by pride down her cheeks, which were themselves pale. Horrified at this sight, I knew there was nothing I could do to comfort her, but called Tiberius to me. I told him to ride at once, with no ceremony or delay, to his brother's bedside.
'As soon as you are there, write to us, that we may have some reliable knowledge. I have never seen your mother so afflicted.' The letter from Tiberius was brief indeed: I arrived here to find my poor brother barely conscious. He recognized me, commended his children to me, expressed his love and gratitude to his mother and yourself, and died before nightfall. It was as if he had been waiting my arrival in order to die. It seems that his horse slipped in the river, and fell on top of him, crushing his ribs and breaking a thigh. Men have survived worse injuries, but it is the will of the Gods. I shall accompany the body to Rome. I pictured Tiberius tramping by the side of the bier, down the dusty roads of Gaul, into the high Alpine passes, cool even in September noon, descending to the rich plain of the Po valley, skirting the Apennines, and at last coming in sight of the city. The stamp and shuffle of the march, the creak of the wagons and the long silence in his heart. 'We are the Gods' sport,' I had heard Tiberius say. Would he not believe that even more thoroughly now?
As for me, I wept for Drusus, but no tears of mine could assuage his mother's grief. A mother's love for her son is something more profound than any other love between man and woman. There is no pride of conquest in it. And Drusus had been a warm and loving son.
His ashes were laid in the family mausoleum, and I could not escape the reflection that the two most brilliant men of the younger generation, Drusus and Marcellus, would never fulfil their promise. My heart ached to think of the sad waste.
Fortunately Drusus and Antonia had had three children, and so Antonia was not left without consolation. I assured her that I would do whatever was in my power to care for them.
Many drown in the sea that surges round the shipwreck of old age. Maecenas died the following year. Our ways had drifted apart, for I had found it hard to forget what he had said to me on that occasion when we had talked of Julia's marriage, and, though I offered to go to see him on his deathbed, my olive branch (as I thought it) was rejected. Yet there was something of his old wit and panache in the terms of his reply: 'Maecenas, weak with fever, wasted with disease, and now incontinent, has no wish to meet Caesar on even more unequal terms than usual. Let us delay our next encounter till we both find ourselves in Pluto's realm, whither I hasten to prepare your couch.' It was like Maecenas not to be able to maintain his third-person formality to the end of the sentence.
With his departure went the last companion of my great adventure, for even Livia did not know me till I was established. It was perhaps memory of these salad days that persuaded Maecenas to name me as his heir.
The poet Horace did not survive his patron by more than a few weeks. I never felt for Horace as I did for Virgil, for there was little sense of the uncanny in him, little sense that he brought us mere mortals intimations of the divine purpose. But I liked him; he was a man with whom one could be easy, content with little, a strange contrast to Maecenas, and yet the affection between them ran deep. Virgil had promised the inauguration of a golden age. The air was chill with death.
TEN
I myself supervised the boys' education. I saw to it that they studied mathematics, philosophy, rhetoric, literature; that they grew adept in martial exercise and equitation. I took direct charge myself of their political education, devising a number of Socratic dialogues for their instruction. I had come to admit to myself precisely what I was doing: I was training the rulers of the Republic. Some may see in this a primarily dynastic pre- occupation. There were, I knew, those who grumbled that I was treating my grandsons as princes. I ignored the slander. Those who uttered it were ignorant of the nature of Republican government. Precisely because a Republic permits more liberty than a monarchy may, so for that very reason it is the more essential that its leaders be thoroughly educated and taught the principles of political ratiocination: for a Republic is more easily swayed by sentiment than by reason.
Among the doubters was Tiberius. He wrote me several carefully worded letters from his lonely frontier outpost (to which Julia, distressed by the death of their child, had no longer the heart to accompany him, the place being, as she told me, full of wretched memories). He acknowledged my care for his stepsons, but protested that I should remember they were as yet untried.
I knew that of course. It was my intention that they should receive trial soon, for I was aware how debilitating the life of Roman society could be even for ardent youth, and I was determined that they should not frequent the society that circled round their mother.
There were many eager to natter them, and the Senate even passed a resolution permitting Gaius to hold the consulship when he was fifteen. That was too early, and I quashed the proposal though it pleased me to see the esteem in which the boys were held.
That year Tiberius was accorded a Triumph for his work on the northern frontiers and his tribunician powers were renewed for five years. Though I was distressed by the apparent coolness between him and Julia – it was reported to me that they never addressed one another in private -1 could not avoid satisfaction at the unfolding of my plans. 'I am worried about Tiberius,' Livia said.
'But why? I don't understand. He is surely a notable success. Our greatest general, consul for the second time, my trusted partner…' Livia sighed and looked away from me.
'You will never understand him,' she said, 'your natures are so different.'
'Perhaps that is so. Nevertheless Tiberius and I are in constant correspondence, as you know, when he is away from Rome, and I have had several long discussions with him. He is always lucid and level-headed, eminently sensible. I don't understand why you should be worried.'
'You have always seen just what you want to see, and the habit has been growing on you. As for Tiberius, when you talk to him, what does he reveal of his sentiments, of what he feels in his heart? He denies entry even to me. I love Tiberius, husband, second only to you, and indeed more deeply in that different way, with that intense responsibility which mothers feel towards their sons. And he withdraws from me. I see only what flickers on the surface of the waters, nothing of the dark swirling currents below. But I know three things: first, he has never recovered from Drusus' death…' 'Ah, which of us has?'
'For Drusus was his only confidant. Much I have known of Tiberius throughout his life, I have learned by way of Drusus. Second, Tiberius' pride is a fearful and secret thing such as we can never measure, for you have no pride of that sort and no understanding of it. Third, allied to this pride, runs a deep resentment…' 'Resentment?' I cried. 'What has Tiberius to resent…?' Livia smiled, 'Resentment,' she said, 'is an inborn quality.' Was she warning me, or merely expressing her own doubts and fears?
It mattered little, I reflected. There was work for Tiberius to do. Whatever the difference between us, we had this in common: that neither had ever shirked a job. A renewal of unrest in Armenia demanded the presence of a strong man in the East. Tiberius' prestige was high there. The legions would be reassured by his arrival. I therefore summoned him before me, and invited him to take up this command, with a grant of full imperium.
'I am offering you,' I said, 'exactly what Agrippa had. And the job is even more urgent and demanding now.'
He stood before me long, lanky and balding, his eyes a little bloodshot, as if he had drunk deeply the night before. (It was his only vice: fortunately one the troops admired; they used to call him Biberius Caldius Mero).* He
