my attempt at conciliation and my warning with only a brief note. You always were a prig, now you are stupid as well. You were always cold and self-regarding. Consider the brutality of your own conduct. I have been denied everything all my life, forced to live in accordance with the will of others. I've had enough of it. I'm living for myself now. I prefer it that way. You're a fool to think I am unhappy. And don't threaten me again. I have my own weapons. When I got this letter, I found in it something that compelled my pity, and softened my heart. I read misery between the lines. I hastened to her private apartments. The slave-girl who was tidying the room told me she had left that morning for a villa at Baiae, given her by her father as a wedding-present when she married Marcellus. 'Did she leave a message for me?' The girl blushed and stammered. 'Yes, my lord, but I don't dare to repeat it…' 'I see. Nothing written?' 'No, my lord.
12
Pride is a great silencer. It sealed my lips. I spoke to nobody of my distress, and no one could have guessed my state of mind from my demeanour. The letter which I sent after Julia, and of which I no longer possess a copy, was couched in language which could have offered no grounds for suspicion to any government agent who intercepted it. Circumspection in language is the price we pay for civil order.
My stepfather continued to honour me. I was awarded the tribunicia potestas, that rag torn from Republican days in which Augustus had dressed himself to disguise his despotism, in which Agrippa also had been clad; the tribuniciary power rendered my person inviolate, gave me authority in Rome, the power to introduce or to veto legislation, and lent my elevation a misleadingly popular touch. By his use of the tribunicia potestas Augustus had declared his difference from the common run of senators and was enabled to present himself (pose, some would say) as the defender and protector of the common people. Nothing, not even his command of the armies, so displeased men of Republican sentiments as his use of this rusty piece of the machinery of Republican government.
Yet though he honoured me publicly, and made it clear that I was Rome's premier general, there was no warmth in his commendation. I felt slighted. It was clear to me that he was ready to use me, and as ready to discard me when I had served my turn. That would happen when the boys, Gaius and Lucius, were grown-up. His partiality towards them was extreme. He was even prepared to cheat on their behalf. In a performance of the Troy Game, that simulacrum of war in which well-born youths are given the chance to prove their prowess, Augustus, who acted as a sort of referee of this mimic battle, called foul when a certain stocky and uncouth boy was sitting astride young Lucius and pummelling him in the face. There was nothing in the rules of the game which warranted his interference, and it was obvious that his action was provoked by his desire to save Lucius from the consequences of his own misjudgment. A beating would have done the boy no harm, and taught him much. Augustus' care for the boys has been as excessive as his unrestrained impulse to flatter them has been absurd. I am amazed that Lucius at least has survived this mixture of coddling and admiration, and become such a pleasant and likeable young man. But I am glad to say that my own son, Drusus, has escaped such spoiling and been reared more sensibly.
Augustus' fondness for the boys was grotesque. He never reproved them that I heard of, and told them time and again, in front of other people, that they represented the glorious future of Rome. 'Everything that I do is for your sakes,' I once heard him say, a sentiment that made nonsense of the great part of his life, and one that reflected ill on his conception of his duty to the Roman people. Of course he was right to encourage youth, and was especially proud of his establishment of Colleges of Youth in all the municipalities of Italy; but he took it too far in the case of his grandsons. I could scarcely believe it when he fondly told them, in my hearing, that at an appropriate date, he would encourage the Senate to accord them the title principes iuventutis – Princes of the Youth Movement. This was too much; it smacked of hereditary monarchy.
I expressed my indignation to my mother. She was spinning wool, an affectation, as I had often told her, and one naturally encouraged by her husband. He thought it made for good 'public relations' – a vile phrase he had learned from one of his Greek freedmen – to let it be known that his wife engaged in traditional domestic crafts like spinning and weaving. 'You don't really enjoy that, do you, Mother?'
'As a matter of fact I do. It's very soothing. Perhaps you should take it up yourself. You look strained.' 'No wonder.'
'But you are stupid to fight your father's love for those boys.' 'Do I have to remind you that I stand in the same relation to them myself as he does to me? They are not bad boys, but he is in danger of ruining them.'
'He is planning for the future, that's all. As we grow older, Tiberius, something strange happens to us. We find the horizon very short one day and stretching out illimitably the next. You can't blame Augustus for being concerned with what happens to the state when he has gone.'
'And have I no part in that? Is there no room for me in his plans?'
'Of course there is, of course you have. How could it be otherwise considering your age, achievement and station? Moreover, you might remember that I am capable of making my own plans and carrying them out. For example I am arranging that Gaius should marry your brother's daughter, little Livia Julia.' 'Very nice. That will maintain your influence, Mother.'
'Don't take that tone with me. I dislike it. I always have. And I know what it means. You are about to sink into a fit of sulks.'
'That's ridiculous. I'm concerned of course about my personal position.'
'You will be the first man in the state – when your stepfather dies.'
'He will live twenty years. And what will I be then? But I am not merely concerned with my own position. I disapprove fundamentally, Mother, of the direction in which things are tending. We are in danger of becoming like an eastern despotism, with a law of succession. It's not Roman.'
'Yes, Tiberius, you are a conservative. It is that which makes you unhappy. Well, I share your sentiments but I have the intelligence to know that things have to change if we want them to remain the same. And I know that Augustus' creation is good because unlike you I can remember the civil wars. Don't become like your father, Tiberius, a man for whom all virtue resided only in the past, who viewed the new world as something made for his personal distress.' 'There are times I sympathise with him.'
'You are foolish. Indeed you are more than foolish. I am glad you have come in this serious mood – not that your mood is often anything else. I am told that you and Julia no longer speak to each other, that you communicate only by letter. Is this true?' 'So you have been spying on us, Mother?' 'So it is true. Do you want to destroy everything?' I hesitated. It was tempting to answer in the affirmative.
'Julia and I have decided for the time being to go separate ways. That's all.'
'All? Do you understand what you are saying? That's all? Your wife is galloping towards public disgrace and you don't realise that you will be stained by it yourself?'
'My wife,' I said, 'will do as she chooses. She always has. I am powerless.' I retired to the baths. I sweated out my irritation and idled the afternoon away watching young men wrestle in the gymnasium. I dined at home, then sat drinking wine while a slave read to me from Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian war. 'Foolishness,' I said, and dismissed the man.
I drank wine and composed letters to Julia in my head which I knew I would never send. The dawn broke, cold, grey, unpromising. 1 staggered to my couch and slept badly. Augustus summoned me.
He jumped up with an expression of pleasure on his face when I entered; it must have cost him an effort, but of course he always took pleasure in his performance.
'My dear boy,' he said, 'your mother has been talking to me. She is worried. She says you have withdrawn from her. 'I see only what flickers on the surface of the waters, nothing of the dark swirling currents below.' Her precise words, I assure you… She believes, she tells me, that you have never recovered from Drusus, your dear dear brother's death.' He laid his hand on my sleeve. It hung there like a leech. 'Ah which of us has, which indeed…?'
Then his tone changed. It resumed that mastery which I have always respected as he outlined our strategical position. There was a new outbreak of unrest in Armenia – 'a country you handled with such deft efficiency in your youth, dear boy'. It was necessary to send a strong man to the East. He offered me the job… 'With maius imperium of course – overriding authority… I am offering you exactly what Agrippa had. And the job is even more
