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I was in my middle fifties when the burden of empire was laid upon me. Naturally I looked for assistance; to my regret I failed to find it. Nobody who has not been responsible for the administration of such a vast and unwieldy body as the Roman Empire can imagine the demands it makes. Augustus had frequently complained of his labours; but, unlike me, he had sought his position. He was a man who would have been lost without power. I am different and not a day passed when I did not groan at my responsibilities, when I did not look back with nostalgia to the years of my retirement on Rhodes and forward with longing to the day when I could relinquish the reins and be myself again.
The hope was vain. I knew that from the start. I had accepted a commission which I could not lay down.
Livia did not understand my repugnance. She assailed me with suggestions and advice, warnings and encouragement. I grew to dread the sound of her voice, the announcement of her arrival, the summons to her house.
I felt myself alone. A few weeks after Augustus' death, while I was still wrestling with the consequences of my inheritance, Julia died on the island of Pandateria to which her father had consigned her. We had had no communication for years; what could we have said to each other? Could I have apologised for the destruction of her life which had not been my work? Could she have brought herself to ask my forgiveness? Nevertheless 1 ordered that her ashes be brought back to her father's mausoleum. I owed her that, but I made certain that they would be consigned there secretly and without ceremony. Hoping to please me, the Governor of North Africa, Lucius Nonias Asprenas, arranged for the execution of Julia's lover, Sempronius Gracchus, who had spent fourteen years imprisoned on the African island of Cercina. He thought to please me by this action, but the only pleasure I derived was in the news that Gracchus had died in a manner more worthy of his ancestors than he had lived. These two deaths drew a line under the past.
Yet the past would not let go. Germanicus had resumed war with the Germans. I approved this for two reasons: it was necessary to strengthen the Rhine frontier, and it would be good for the lately mutinous legions to be engaged in real soldiering. Moreover, there was a case for reminding the Germans of the power of Rome, for they were still flushed by their triumph over Varus six years previously.
Germanicus therefore advanced deep into the forests and, driving the divided enemy before him, approached the Teutoberg Wood where Varus had been destroyed. They came to the defeated general's first camp, and then to a half-ruined breastwork where the remnants of the legions had fought. The day was wet and windy, as it had been then. Around them the desolate marshes mocked the ambition of mortals. Beyond a shallow ditch were whitening bones, ghastly in the failing light, which showed where Romans had fallen; there were little heaps where scattered troops had come together and made a last stand. Fragments of spears, abandoned armour, and horses' limbs lay about, and there were skulls fastened to tree-trunks by the barbarians. They even found the altars at which Roman officers had been slaughtered in a parody of religious ceremonies.
My nephew gave orders that the bones should be interred, an order which I subsequently and naturally approved. He cut the first turf himself, even though, as a member of the ancient priesthood of Augurs, he should not have handled objects belonging to the dead, as he did. Nevertheless I approved this also; it showed a proper reverence. I was less pleased to be informed by Friso that Germanicus had not only lamented the long years in which the bodies had lain unburied, but had added that the failure to make the attempt to penetrate the forests to accord them decent burial was, as he put it, 'shameful'. He had little idea of course of the extent of the disaster and of the difficulties I had experienced in trying to restore a modicum of stability on the Rhine frontier, or of the impossibility, in the circumstances of the time, of doing what he thought ought to have been done.
Some of those who heard his words were shocked to realise the limits of his understanding, and disapproved his implied criticism of my own conduct, which, for my part, I attributed to his youth rather than to any more sinister cause.
His ambitions were, however, worrying. He believed that it was desirable that we should bring all the Germans residing to the west of the Elbe within the empire. I could understand the attraction of the proposal, for I had felt it myself, years ago. Both Augustus and I had become convinced of its impracticality. We feared too that the conditions were such that any commander might experience the same fate as Varus, a fate which Germanicus himself only narrowly escaped the following year.
There could be no doubt about his ardour, more concerning his judgment. It seemed strange too when reports came of the prominent part his wife, my former stepdaughter Agrippina, was playing behind the scenes. She was unnaturally conspicuous.
I had asked Sejanus to make a tour of inspection of the northern frontier in order to establish the truth, or otherwise, of what was said. For security reasons, I told him to report to me in person. If there was something untoward afoot, it was better that he should not, for his own sake, commit his suspicions to writing. Sejanus came to me straight from the road, without even pausing to bathe, and lay (as was his wont) stretched out on a couch, his thighs flecked with mud. 'They're up to something,' he said. 'What do you mean?'
'Wish I knew, wish I could say exactly. There's a strange mood in the army, not exactly elation, such as you might expect after victory, more as if they are nerving themselves for something big and dangerous. Of course Agrippina can't stand me, so I don't make much of her rudeness to me. She has always looked at me as if I were a bad smell. But Friso told me that, when her husband was on campaign, she acted as commander-in-chief, every order was referred to her. Your letter of congratulation was suppressed. Instead she personally thanked the men for what they had done on behalf of the Roman state and Germanicus, no mention of you. When you add to that the accounts I received of how she went round visiting the sick and wounded, how she dispensed presents of money, food and wine, and of how she took little Caligula with her everywhere, and seemed to be trying to inspire a personal loyalty among the soldiers, well… I know what conclusions I draw.' 'Let me hear them.'
He pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen over his eyes, and smiled. 'I'm not sure that I dare.' 'What do you mean?'
'Look,' he said, 'I owe everything to you. I'm very conscious of that. And I know you have an affection for me, and I'm utterly loyal to you. I've got to be, apart from anything else, for I am committed to you. You understand that, don't you?' 'I look on you as a son and my dearest friend.'
'That's just as well,' he said, 'because if I had any doubt about your feeling for me, I would be afraid to express my opinion, even though it is my duty to do so. I believe that Germanicus and Agrippina are playing the part of Caesar, and have cast you as Pompey. They think that if they can attach the legions to themselves, personally, they can defy you, and even seize the throne.' 'I don't like that word,' I said. 'Very well, then, power…' 'But why should they…?' I broke off. He smiled again. 'You don't mean that,' he said. 'You know better…' I could not meet his eye. 'I am grateful,' I said. 'Grateful and terrified…'
'I accept the gratitude. Remember this. Augustus had you adopt Germanicus as your heir, but you have your own son Drusus. Your nephew can't forget that…' Sejanus had used a potent word to waken my fears: the name of Caesar terrifies all Romans. Caesar, the destroyer of liberty, the man who unleashed civil war on Rome. Of course Caesar was, in reality, more than that and less than that. He was perhaps an instrument of history, for, in the circumstances, there would have been civil war even without his ambition. And that ambition, one may say now, was not entirely selfish (though my mother would disagree). It is even possible to maintain that Caesar had some sort of vision of regeneration, that, in some sense, he perceived, even if only dimly, how the state had to be reformed. Nevertheless, whatever one grants him, and none denies him genius, Caesar the wolf, the destroyer, the rebel who would make himself king, is still the figure who fills one's eye.
Rome has never recovered from the catastrophe into which his ambition plunged the state. I who now, by a stroke of irony, find myself his heir, know that better than anyone. I am the most unfortunate of men: a reluctant ruler who despises those he rules. Caesar let slip the dogs of war, of civil war, the worst of wars; his murderers and his heirs fought another, a bloody and divisive series of wars. Augustus emerged sole victor, and set himself to repair the state. Sometimes he deceived himself that he had in fact done so. In his heart he knew better, as Livia knows, and as I try all too often to hide from myself. Behind the facade of Republican respectability which he erected, he established the ultimate reality: power breeding fear. And I have inherited that reality, that power and that fear. I hoped to reanimate the Republican spirit, and found it corrupted by fear.
On the surface things are different. We debate in the Senate with a degree of freedom. The law-courts operate according to ancient practice. Elections are held. Armies are banished from Italy (except for the
