neither of us willing it – drifted into misunderstandings and suspicions. There is no need for them. You know I detest talk of the imperial succession, since it is a matter for the Senate as to who should hold the first place in the Republic. But I know that there must be a Princeps, and that he must come from our family. Don't you realise that I see your sons, Nero and Drusus, as my immediate heirs? I am an old man, almost seventy, and few summers remain to me. Can't we set aside our animosities and be friends?'
I stretched out my hand to her, but she shrank from its touch. Nevertheless I felt that my words had moved her, and waited for a reply. She was silent a long time. Then she said:
'I am so miserable, so alone, neglected and misunderstood. And I am lonely. You cannot imagine how lonely I have been since my husband was torn from me. Not a night has passed that I have not wept to feel his place empty beside me. My youth is fleeing, and I see only a dark future. Help me, Tiberius, let me marry again. Indeed, I beg you to choose me a husband. I am still young enough. Marriage… marriage is the only respectable consolation open to me. Surely Rome contains men who would be proud to marry Germanicus' widow and become the father of his children…?' 'Don't you see,' Sejanus said, 'she is laying a trap for you? Her appeal to your pity is only a device. If you choose a husband acceptable to her, you immediately raise up a rival to yourself. And if your choice settles on one whom she rejects, this will be further evidence of your persecution. She will say that you are insulting the memory of Germanicus by proposing a husband unworthy of her rank and his reputation.'
Sejanus knew Agrippina well, better than I. I had thought her sincere in her request. Even now, I sometimes wonder if she was in truth sincere when she asked me; it seemed that her distress was genuine. And indeed I still believe it was. Yet she was torn by conflicting desires. I was moved by her emotion, wary of her volatile passions. We understand our own natures but little, and then usually in retrospect; the spontaneity of speech and action puzzles our understanding. It is not therefore strange that other people should be so unfathomable in their inconsistency.
I put myself about to do as she had asked. I selected two candidates, both worthy men of good family, both distinguished for public service, both trustworthy. Either would have made a distinguished husband; either would have been seen as an acceptable successor to Germanicus by any unprejudiced critic. I shall not name either, because I have no wish to reveal to the future shame of their family how contemptuously Agrippina responded to their names. One was 'a sack of dung'; the other 'a servile coward to whom Germanicus would not have given the time of day'. Both judgments were absurd. But what could I do, especially when she accused me – as Sejanus had predicted – of having chosen them merely to insult her? That was not my intention, though I grant that it might appear so in the case of the second candidate, for Sejanus told me subsequently that the man was one of young Nero's lovers. But I was ignorant of that when I recommended him.
8
In my sixty-ninth year I left Rome. I hope never to see the city again. It has become ugly to me. I could not attend the Senate without experiencing nausea, occasioned by my awareness of that body's degeneracy. A day spent there – no, even a morning – left me oppressed with an intolerable heaviness, a lassitude, the sensation that I had lost all sense of freedom, that I was seized with painful and disabling cramps, even to the point of paralysis. The smell of the place disgusted me; it reeked of decomposition. I was smothered with words. In all talk, I reflected, there is a grain of contempt. Whatever we have words for, that we have already gone beyond. Language, even the language of poets in the modern world, serves only what is average, mediocre, communicable. I felt a profound desire to escape all that and, in escaping, to resume my long-abandoned search for something beyond daily existence, mere existence, for something which might justify its tedium.
The value of anything does not lie in whatever one attains by it, but in what one pays for it – what it costs us. My assumption of the imperial role cost me happiness, even self-respect, for, in the shifts and manoeuvres necessary to maintain my authority, I abandoned any sense of my own virtue. I had become the slave of Augustus' legacy. Perhaps I might even in old age achieve freedom. I removed to Capri. Why that island? Because it pleased me. Simply that? Because I could settle on it as my abode without the agony of introspection and self-justification. Because of the colour of the sea.
Sejanus approved my choice. He said: 'You will be safe there. There is only one landing-stage.'
I told the Senate I should communicate by letter and that they should consider Sejanus my mouthpiece. But I was not rash enough to grant him the maius imperium, which I alone possessed. I would not put that temptation before him, nor make him such a mark for the envy of others. He threw back his head and laughed when I explained my reasons.
'Is it any wonder,' he said, 'that I have served you so long and with such content?' 'You old fox,' he said later.
I trusted Sejanus, but I no longer found any pleasure in his company. That was another reason for my departure from Rome. His presence no longer invigorated me. He was a middle-aged man, with a bald spot, running to fat, and dominated by ambition, a calculating man, without that blithe acceptance of being in which I had taken such delight. I embraced him on embarkation, and said to myself, 'It's over. I no longer need Sejanus, except in a political sense.' But there, thanks to my abdication, I needed him more than ever. Augustus had left me a villa which I immediately occupied. But I set myself to build a new villa, to my own taste, higher up the mountain.
'Why have you come here?' Sigmund asked. 'Is it rest you seek, master?'
'No,' I said, though I longed for rest, 'beauty. In the end only beauty offers consolation. The only rest is to be found in the experience of beauty. I don't say 'contemplation', because that is passive. The experience of beauty must be active.' The poor boy looked at me, and shook his head. I invited some old friends to accompany me: Marcus Cocceius Nerva, an ex-consul; Curtius Atticus, the distinguished knight; and my mathematical philosopher, Thrasyllus. I took also the Greek freedman Philip, and of course Sigmund. It was a small household, and such as I trusted would not weary me with importunate demands. There was no point in going to say goodbye to my mother; she no longer recognised anyone, but would sit and rail and weep for death. I prayed that she would soon be released, and in fact this happened within six months of my departure. Those first months were the happiest I had known since I left Rhodes. The sea air let me breathe more easily, and in the early morning, before the heat of the day caused me to surrender my terrace to the lizards, I felt ten years younger. Best of all was the awareness of freedom. Of course I was still bound to my official boxes. Not a day passed that did not require me to take twenty decisions concerning the welfare of the empire, or write twenty letters. But I was able to do so, calmly, without the agitation of spirit which had so disturbed me in Rome, without the pressing consciousness of a greedy and untrustworthy humanity, without the fear that I was doing nothing more than shore up a barrier against the corruption of the age; for, strange to say, all that oppressiveness and disquiet were lifted from me. Others sensed my unwonted contentment.
'It is as if the world stops at the water's edge,' Atticus said, 'and yet I feel as if the world is waiting for some great sign, as if we had reached a stage of history pregnant with possibility.'
'That is as true now as at any time in the history of our people,' I replied. In the late afternoon I would sometimes have myself rowed out into the bay. I kept my gaze on those rocks where Philip's uncle by marriage had encountered his Siren lover. But the rocks were deserted and there was no music in my ears. Nevertheless somewhere, I knew, the Sirens rested, nursing promises of bliss.
One day a wind blew up, and the boat was unable to make its way round a headland. Instead we found ourselves forced back to land. An opening yawned before us, and our helmsman steered towards it. For a moment my bodyguard shifted his hand to his sword-hilt, but I smiled and told him there was no danger. 'Where are we going?' I asked.
'I am going to show Caesar one of the wonders of the island,' said the helmsman, and guided the little boat under a shelf of rock and into a cave. All at once the world and daylight disappeared, and we found ourselves in a twilight that was intensely blue. The water lapped against the boat, and shimmered caerulean, shot with violet streaks. The walls glistened a deep azure, and the bubbles of the water sparkled darker than any sky or sea that yet remained blue, with little gleams of ruby red and emerald. The boat paused in the middle of the violet water that was as still as a summer lake. There was silence. An air of freedom from earthly concerns breathed over me. 'This is peace.'
