When I received the letter in which Augustus told me of what had happened, enclosing a copy of the police report, Julia was already doomed. I had only to read the catalogue of her noble lovers again to realise this. It was a political scandal of the first order, as well as a sexual one. Augustus gave no hint in his letter that he now understood my ulterior motive in retiring. On the other hand he did not upbraid me for having done so, so perhaps he guessed.
I could not know how far things had gone while the letter was on its way. Naturally I was also alarmed to think that I had despatched Sejanus with a missive which would compromise me, and might destroy him. I wondered what he had done, was doing, would do, with it. But that was beyond my control, though I wrote to him urging caution in 'that matter of which you know' – in itself perhaps a compromising phrase. Meanwhile it was my duty to do whatever I could to rescue Julia from the consequences of her folly. I therefore wrote to Augustus. My wife, suffering perhaps from a species of desperation that can, my doctors tell me, afflict women as they approach middle-life, has behaved in a manner which is worse than foolish. The peculiarly public nature of her conduct must touch the bounds of forgiveness, for, as Princeps, you can hardly fail to interpret it as a public challenge to the admirable legislation you have caused to be passed. Yet I appeal to you, in your public and private capacity, to show clemency. Clemency would become you both as father of our country, and as father of your unfortunate daughter. I would beg you to consider that my own absence, the result of my intense weariness of spirit and body, and of my desire to allow Gaius and Lucius to flourish, may have contributed to my wife's aberrations. Clemency is good in itself. The harsh letter of justice will be like a knife which you yourself drive into your own heart… I paused there. There was a further sentence which I knew I ought to write. My gorge rose at the thought of doing so – I gazed with melancholy at the tranquil beauty of my garden -and did what I had to do… I live in contented exile, remote from public affairs and from the hurly-burly of the city, in an atmosphere free from temptation to excess, ideally suited to the cultivation of a philosophic mind. May I suggest therefore that you command Julia to return to her husband? It was beyond me to do more than make the flat suggestion, to supplement the recommendation with entreaties which could not be other than insincere, for the thought of Julia again invading the life I had so carefully reconstructed revolted me. Augustus' reply was brief: I have received your letter and noted its contents. The course you urge is impractical. When a woman has once become a whore, she is like a dog which has taken to worrying sheep: beyond cure. As her husband you have failed to exercise proper control in the past; I see no reason to suppose you would be more successful in the future. I am therefore arranging for you to divorce her. I do not wish to hear the wretched woman's name from you again… Julia endured no public trial. Judgment descended on her secretly, implacably, stunningly. Her freedwoman Phoebe, a partner in her licentiousness, hanged herself. Julia endured. She was despatched to the island prison of Pandateria, and forbidden wine and male company. Meanwhile retribution was enacted on her lovers. Iullus Antonius was put to death; the others condemned to perpetual exile. I am told that Antonius died in ignoble fashion; the news did not surprise me. He was a man animated by vanity, rather than pride. I found myself agreeably indifferent to Julia's fate. She, after all, had first rejected me. Sejanus wrote to me to say that, in view of what he had discovered on arrival in Rome, he had deemed it wise to destroy my communication. He kissed my hands, and remained my loving and obedient servant. I approved his prudence, and besought him to pay me another visit. Meanwhile I advised him to pursue his military and legal studies with assiduity. 'One cannot reach the highest without industry. Therefore, I urge you, in Vergil's words, 'O beautiful boy, trust not too much to complexion'. Study hard therefore, and in the words of another, inferior poet, 'So may the nymphs give thee water to assuage thirst'. Meanwhile, you are aware of my gratitude and good wishes. Though I have withdrawn from public life, I retain influence and friends, and would wish you to regard me henceforth as your father, patron and friend…' Since Julia abandoned me I had felt myself to be, in a profound yet uncertain sense, a superfluous man. Now, in solitude, I brooded on the strangeness of our marriage and of her fate. She had brought her misfortunes on herself; yet she had done so in the same blithe and regardless manner that had twice, for periods of my life, delighted and enflamed me. And now that fire was extinguished, utterly. Even my resentment of her infidelity, and of the shame she had brought on me, withered. It was almost as if she had never existed. There are loves of which one retains a fragrant and nostalgic memory. Such had been mine for Vipsania. I never thought of her without tenderness, but then I rarely thought of her. She had simply belonged to a stage of my life from which I was separated by the welter of events, so that it was as if our love had belonged to two quite different people. My love for Julia had been more intense, as my emotions had been less pure. I knew now that I had been awaiting her disgrace as after days of steamy weather you expect a thunderstorm. And her disgrace had done the work of the thunder. I felt free to live again.
This realisation perplexed me, for I had imagined myself possessed of a full and satisfying happiness, and had judged that this rested in my abandonment of ambition and my acceptance of the meaninglessness of life. Yet though that conviction had been confirmed by her misfortunes – for what life could in any scale of values be thought to have less significance than hers? – I was now assailed with a renewed dissatisfaction, occasioned, I had to conclude, by the sensation of liberty.
Absurd; hadn't the events in Rome confirmed my scornful judgment that liberty had been Augustus' principal victim?
I did not entirely escape the effects of Julia's ignominy. It was reported to me that when men mentioned my name in Rome they did so without respect. I was a figure who was receding into the past; of no account. Only a few old friends remained loyal. Sejanus was almost my only link with the younger generation. There was, however, one other, though tenuous: my stepson Lucius. Whereas his older brother Gaius ignored me completely, Lucius wrote to me on my birthday, sent me good wishes, thanked me for the presents I sent him – I sent presents to Gaius also at appropriate moments, but received no thanks, though the gifts were not returned. Lucius expressed his distress on his mother's account, though he was honest enough to add that he had always known she did not care for him. All I could say in reply was that, as far as I knew, he had nothing with which to reproach himself: barren comfort, for self-reproach needs no objective justification. It was ironic however that Julia's disgrace coincided with Lucius' own appointment, three years after his brother's, as a Prince of the Youth Movement. He was excited by this elevation; with good cause, for it confirmed that Augustus intended that the brothers should share in the government of the empire after his death, even perhaps in his old age. For the same reason it intensified the discontent in Rome which had already been fanned by the persecution of those old noble families which had supplied Julia with her paramours. My own son Drusus sent me only brief, occasional and uninformative letters; perhaps he felt that I had abandoned him, though I exercised such care for his education as was possible at a distance.
My mother remained my stay, supporter and source of news. She was displeased by the rapid elevation of Gaius and Lucius, all the more because they were not her blood relations. She did not dislike them for that reason, though she was certain that Augustus gravely overestimated their abilities. Her objections were primarily political. Despite being a woman, and subject to the characteristic prejudices of her gender, Livia possessed an acute understanding of the way things are done in the world. Augustus had owed much to her connections, more to her sagacity; but now he was, as she put it, 'blind with love for the boys as he was once before in the case of Marcellus'. Livia knew that the Roman nobility would rebel against the semblance of hereditary monarchy. She knew – none better – that her husband's claim to have restored the Republic was a figment; she realised that the secret would be out if power passed to Gaius and Lucius on account of their birth rather than their achievement. She urged restraint on Augustus and she urged me to return to Rome. Yet I still rebelled against doing so.
Then my tribunicia potestas lapsed, was not renewed. My legal authority evaporated. My person was no longer sacrosanct. I had become a mere nobleman, of fading distinction. At first I was not alarmed; it was, after all, what I had wanted.
Yet very soon I began to feel like a bird trapped in a room. It is free to fly, but yet confined. It flings itself against the windows, seeing an escape it cannot attain.
Gaius had been appointed to a command in the East, where new troubles were brewing on the Parthian frontier, since the death of King Tigranes of Armenia had encouraged the Parthians to meddle again in that turbulent country. It was a task likely to prove beyond a raw youth, and I wrote to my stepson offering him the benefit of my advice and reminding him of my experience in Armenian-Parthian affairs. He did not grant me the courtesy of a reply. Fortunately, young Sejanus was attached to his staff and ready to keep an eye on my interests. He reported that I was habitually referred to as 'the exile', and that my old enemy Marcus Lollius, whom Augustus had entrusted with the responsibility of supervising the Prince of the Youth Movement, lost no opportunity to denigrate me, and drip poison in an ear all too ready to receive it. Sejanus recommended that I pay my stepson (who was in reality my former stepson, since my divorce from his mother) a visit. I attended him on Samos. It was
