So we were married. The night before the wedding I sat late over the wine with my friend Gnaeus Piso, a man who has ever been ready to match me bottle for bottle. Piso, as a member of a family almost as distinguished as my own, would later be my colleague in the consulship. We shared more than a taste for good liquor, for, like me, he was a stern critic of the vices of our age, and yearned for the virtue of the free state. A realist however, he recognised that the great days were departed. He had – and indeed, I trust, still has – a talent for making the tart and pertinent observation which had pleased me from the first days of our acquaintance.
"Well, Tiberius," he said that night, "Heracles himself might shrink from the task thrust upon you." "Heracles' own matrimonial history was unhappy."
"Most people would call you a lucky man, of course. She's not only the Princeps' daughter, but also the most beautiful and seductive woman in Rome." "She was faithful, I think, to Agrippa." Piso laughed. "There's faithfulness and then there's fidelity," he said. "What do you mean? It's unlike you to play with words."
"When you are faced with women like Julia, what else is there to do with them?" "I don't understand you, and I think I am happy not to."
"Tiberius, we both know Julia. We have both known Julia. Don't forget that I was once on Marcellus' staff… and, old friend, when that pretty boy was alive, what were you to Julia? Can you control her now?" I pushed the wine-flask in his direction. "What would you advise?"
"I would advise you not to be in your present position. Seeing as you are, and there's no help for it, then there are only two things to be done. First, you must insist that she accompanies you to the armies, so that she is at least under your eye. Second, keep her in pig. A flighty woman can be anchored only in that way." I swallowed my wine, and made a face.
"You're forgetting," I said, "that my mother was in just that condition when the Princeps seduced her."
"The situations," I continued, after a pause during which silence and uncertainty filled the room, "are not, of course, analogous. If my stepfather was not yet Princeps and Augustus, he was nevertheless triumvir. There is no one today with that glamour of power…"
"Yes, and Livia was already a woman celebrated for her virtue. As you say, the situations are not analogous…" I had not seen Julia for more than two years, and we had held no communication concerning the decision made for our future. I had therefore no idea whether she approved the marriage. In recent years she had shown no sign of the desire she had felt for me when we were young, and I could not believe that I would have been her choice. Iullus Antonius was, of course, a liar, but the confidence with which he had spoken of Julia's feeling for him had been convincing. On the other hand, Julia had always disliked Vipsania and would be pleased to have triumphed over her. These reflections made me nervous, and my evening with Piso had left me ill at ease. I steadied myself with a jug of wine before the ceremony, and then, to ward off criticism from Livia, and perhaps Julia herself – though hers would rather take the form of mockery – I sweetened my breath with a handful of violet pastilles.
My mother summoned me to her apartments. I found her alone, which pleased me, for I had feared that my stepfather would be there too. Then I realised that he would be unwilling to confront me till the marriage had been celebrated: in case I dug my heels in. (He has often remarked on my resemblance to a mule: a poor joke in present circumstances, I thought.) Livia kissed me on the forehead. "This is a solemn moment for you, my son," she said.
"Mother, there's no need for dissimulation when we are alone. I take it we are alone – no spies concealed in waiting, no informers behind the screens?" She snapped her fingers.
"There's no need to take that tone, Tiberius. I can see you are still displeased. Well, sulk if you must but I'm glad that you have the sense to go through with it. I was going to commend you on your sense of duty. Here, come and sit beside me and listen to what I have to say. What have you been eating? There's a nasty smell on your breath."
"Violet pastilles, Mother. My doctor recommends them for heartburn." "I see. Well, that doesn't matter. You're not making some joke when you mention heartburn, are you?" "No, Mother."
"I've never liked your jokes. I don't understand them, but there's always been a cruel streak in your idea of humour. However, that's neither here nor there. But I wanted to speak to you before this marriage takes place, since I know you don't like it. Well, I confess I don't like it myself. Julia and I are opposites. That's all there is to it. I can't think of a single matter on which we have ever thought the same. Not even Augustus, for I love him for what he is and she only cares for him on account of what he has to give her. And now he is giving her you, my son, and I am not certain that that is what she wants. So I see trouble ahead…" "In that case, Mother…"
"No, don't interrupt. You are wondering why in the end I have approved the marriage. I say in the end because whether you believe me or not – and you have never believed anything that ran counter to your ingrained opinions, I know that well – I have to tell you I opposed it as long as I could. I told Augustus Vipsania made you happy. I even admitted that I was jealous of her as mothers often are of their sons' wives. But… no good. The fact is that you are a sacrifice to reason of state. Your domestic happiness is being sacrificed to necessity. And necessity imposes its own rules. Julia must have a husband, and the boys must have a father, and her nature is such that it must be a man who is thoroughly admirable, honourable and reliable. That is why you have been compelled to act dishonourably towards Vipsania that you may act honourably in the interests of Rome. People like us cannot live by private impulses for we cannot live private lives."
"I understand that, Mother…" and I did. Political imperatives make sense to me. If that hadn't been true, I would have fought harder. "I am only sorry," I said, "that it should have to be me…" "There was no one else…"
Was the same thought in both our minds? That Drusus could have been chosen? If so, I didn't raise the question. I had always understood that Drusus was different, that he would not be asked to make the same sacrifice of personal interest that was regularly demanded of me. Drusus was different. Everybody liked him. I was devoted to him myself. He was, to use a weak word, nice. But he was nice perhaps because he had never been emotionally challenged. Livia had kept her relationship with him a happy, sunny one. Augustus smiled when he appeared.
Besides, Drusus was married to Antonia, Octavia's daughter, and, even apart from my stepfather's feeling for his sister, her daughter was not expendable as my poor Vipsania was. No, Drusus was safe. I did my best. I have nothing with which to reproach myself. For a moment I was even optimistic. For a little time it seemed as if it might work, as if we could live in afternoon contentment.
Julia bestowed her most radiant smile on me. When we were alone, she murmured, as she had used to do, "Old bear, old bear" and stroked my cheeks with fingers light as a flower's touch… "What a hard face, old bear, grizzled and weatherbeaten…" She kissed my lips.
"Like Agrippa's," she said. "How strange it will be. Like going back in time and yet coming full circle…"
She slipped out of her shift and stood before me in her full ripe loveliness. Moonlight streaked into the room, casting a silvery-gold sheen over her flesh. She knelt before me and thrust her hands under my tunic.
It is night as I write this. I can hear the waves break on the rocks below and silence rises from the town and I see again Julia's upturned face, lips open, and a dewiness under her eyes. She breathed desire, and I was afraid lest I should not be able to satisfy her. She drew me to the bed… "Come, husband, come, old bear, you delighted me once, and I…" she nuzzled me, "Tiberius, Tiberius, Tiberius…" "Tiberius, Tiberius, Tiberius…" I was always anxious. Even when I believed I was giving her pleasure, I was anxious, alert for the comparisons I was certain filled her mind… Even when she cried out in ecstasy, my mind seemed to remain apart, and I asked myself whether she was simulating her joy. Did she try too? I believe she did. I must believe she did. Now that I have nothing urgent to do, I spend hours casting back over my life, weighing my own behaviour and that of others. Too many hours perhaps, for such introspection can become a disease, a potent drug. There are times, however, when I imagine that Julia snatched at the opportunity afforded her by our marriage as a means of escaping the imperatives of her own nature, which she knew well, and sometimes (I think) feared. Like all who experience a strong impulse towards dissipation, a nostalgia for whatever is base and filthy in human existence, she was torn between that attraction and a longing to live a virtuous life, an intermittent longing certainly but one none the less strong for being frequently in abeyance. She lusted after the manifold pleasures of the senses, seeking satisfaction in extremity, yet ever aware of how she received from her debasement diminishing returns. In her best hours she appeared to me as a godlike child of nature, spontaneous, bountiful, joy-giving and joy-enhancing. Yet there was always a desperation in her happiness, as if she pursued pleasure to flee a vision of emptiness. She filled her life with sensation in order not to be compelled to gaze upon a vision of insignificance. Finding no sure foothold in experience, she experienced a sharp and recurrent apprehension that nothing mattered. "We live, we die, and that's that," she said. "Why live except to prolong and intensify pleasure…?" But, when she spoke like that, I seemed to see a dark river mist surround her, chilling the blood and obscuring the future.
She accompanied me, as Piso had recommended, to the armies. She delighted in the life of the camp, and was tireless and uncomplaining on the march. Men and officers adored her, they admired her high spirits and readiness to laugh at discomfort and the accidents inseparable from military life. I found my own popularity – never great, for I had always known that I gained respect rather than affection – grew on her account. To my surprise, Agrippa's widow was more at ease on campaign than Agrippa's daughter had been; for my dear Vipsania's private and retiring nature had been revolted by the inevitable brutality of army life. To some extent Julia shared her feelings, but, whereas Vipsania shrank from them, Julia spoke out against what seemed to her excessively stern punishment. Once I found her rubbing soothing ointment into the back of a soldier who had been flayed for indiscipline. I should have reproved her for her action, which would appear to the soldiers to call in question the justice of the man's punishment, but I could not bring myself to do so, even when the centurion who had flogged the man lodged a complaint.
In other respects the first years of our marriage were less satisfactory. I hesitate even in the privacy of this memoir to write of the intimate details of the bedchamber. It doesn't seem at all the right thing to do. And yet it is impossible to tell the truth about a marriage if one declines to do so, impossible even to confront it. Moreover, one cannot contemplate any marriage – such as, for example, that of Livia and Augustus – without wondering what happens in bed.
Julia never found difficulty in arousing me; yet even when excited to my most ardent, I remained timid, shy or indeed fearful of comparison. I could not then believe that I satisfied her. She flirted with the young officers on my staff and, watching her smile on them and rock with laughter at their callow jokes, I knew that they brought her gifts which I could never match. It went, I was sure, no further than flirtation, though some of the young men were head over heels in love with her. She liked it that way; their admiration delighted her. In the winters we went to the Dalmatian coast, and it was there that our child was conceived.
Something strange happened to me after the birth of our son. I fell in love with my wife. At first I wouldn't admit it even to myself. It seemed disloyal to my memory of Vipsania. Yet it happened, and it began when I saw her lying, exhausted but still radiant, with her hair spread out like a fan on the pillow behind her, and our infant in her arms. I had never thought of Julia as maternal – her attitude to her two boys, Gaius and Lucius, was off-hand and sceptical – she refused to agree with their grandfather's estimate of their abilities. But she cooed over little Tiberius (as she had insisted we call him), and, seeing them there, it came to me, "This thing is mine, this woman too is mine, the most desirable prize in Rome is mine, mine, and properly mine alone" and my heart overflowed with love. I fell on my knee at the bedside, seized her hand and covered it with kisses. I took her in my arms and embraced her, with a tender confidence and ardent desire I had never felt in my life before, not even for Vipsania. I was, that night and for months afterwards, a prince among men.
And Julia responded. That was the remarkable thing. We were, for a brief interlude, lost in each other, as, in mountain country, the clouds can all at once and without warning dispel from the peaks, leaving the wanderer bathed in golden and restoring light.
She said to me: "For the first time, old bear, I feel 1 am leading the right sort of life. You can't imagine the frustration I have endured. All my bad behaviour is the result of that frustration, and the boredom… Oh, how bored I have been! I was forced into marriage with Marcellus, then with Agrippa, oh, I know you admired him, but you can count yourself lucky you weren't his dutiful wife. My father wonders that I don't love Gaius and Lucius as he does, and he will be awfully jealous when he sees how 1 dote on little Tiberius. He doesn't understand: it's because that man was their father, and I can't look at them without hearing his voice droning on and on… Maybe I love you because you're so silent, old bear… All I have wanted was to have fun, and all my life my father has tried to squeeze that desire out of me."
She would talk like this, lying naked on our bed, and then she would stretch out her long leg and, with a suppleness that I found enchanting, paint her toenails shell-pink with a delicate brush. Or she would rest, warm and damp and relaxed and happy, in my arms, while her hair tickled my lips and my cheek, and she sank into sleep. Can life, I wondered, have more to offer than to lie thus, with the trusting and satisfied proof of manhood held in sleeping embrace? Can anything equal that drift into oblivion with your girl in your arms?
As I write these words I feel the renewal of desire, then regret and misery invade the defences I have so laboriously constructed.