I. Statement: Hirtia to Her Son, Quintus, Velletri (2 B. c.)
I am Hirtia. My mother, Crispia, was once a slave in the household of Atia, wife to Gaius Octavius the Elder, niece to Julius Caesar the God, and mother to that Octavius whom the world knows now as Augustus. I cannot write, so I speak these words to my son Quintus, who manages the estates of Atius Sabinus in Velletri. He writes these words so that our posterity may know of the time before them, and of the part their ancestors had in that time. I am in my seventy-second year, and the end of my life comes toward me; I wish to say these words before the gods close my eyes forever.
Three days ago my son took me into Rome, so that before my eyes dimmed beyond sight I might look again upon the city that I remembered from my youth; and there an event befell me which raised memories of a past so distant that I thought I could never return to it. After more than fifty years, I saw again that one who is now master of the world and who has more tides than my poor mind can remember. But once I called him "my Tavius," and held him in my arms as if he were my own. I shall speak later ofthat; now I must say my memories of an earlier time.
My mother was born a slave in the Julian household. She was given to Atia first as a playmate, and then as a servant. But even when she was young, she was granted her freedom for faithful service, so that she might, in the law, marry the freed-man Hirtius, who became my father. My father was overseer of all the olive groves on the Octavian estate at Velletri; and it was in a cottage near the villa, on the hill above the groves, that I was born, and where I lived in the kindness of that household for the first nineteen years of my life. Now I have returned to Velletri; and if the gods are willing, I shall die in that cottage in the contentment of my childhood.
My mistress and her husband did not stay often at the villa; they lived in Rome, for Gaius Octavius the Elder was a man of importance in the government of those days. When I was ten years old, my mother informed me that Atia had given birth to a son; and because he was sickly, she decided that he would spend his infancy in the country air, away from the stench and smoke of the city. My mother had recently given birth to a stillborn child, and could nurse her mistress's son. And as my mother took a child to her breast as if it were her own, so did my young heart, which was beginning to stir toward the dream of motherhood.
As young as I was, I washed his body; swaddled him; held his tiny hand when he took his first steps; saw him grow. In my childhood game of motherhood, he was my Tavius.
When that one whom I then called Tavius was five years old, his father returned from a long stay in the land of Macedonia and visited with his family for a few days; he planned to move southward to another of his residences in Nola, where we were to join him for the winter season. But he became suddenly ill, and died before we could take the journey; and my Tavius lost the father whom he had never known. I held him in my arms to comfort him. I remember that his little body quivered; he did not cry.
For four more years he remained in our care, though a teacher was sent from Rome to attend him; and occasionally his mother visited. When I was in my nineteenth year, my mother died; and my mistress Atia-who after her time of mourning and in her duty had married again-decided that her son must return to Rome so that he might begin to prepare himself for manhood. And in her kindness and for the safety of my future, Atia gave into my keeping a portion of land sufficient to keep me from ever living in want; and for the well-being of my person, she gave me in marriage to a freedman of her family, who had a modest but safe prosperity in a flock of sheep that grazed in the mountain country near Mutina, north of Rome.
Thus I went from my youth and became a woman, and in the way of things had to say good-by to the child I had pretended was mine. The days of play were over for me; yet it was I who wept when I had to take leave of Tavius. As if I were the child who needed comfort, he embraced me, and told me he would not forget me. We vowed that we would see each other again; we did not believe that we would. And so the child that had been my Tavius went his way to become the ruler of the world, and I found the happiness and purpose for which the gods had destined me.
How might an ignorant old woman understand greatness in one whom she has known as an infant, as a toddling child, as a boy who ran and shouted with his playmates? Now everywhere outside of Rome, in the villages and towns of the countryside, he is a god; there is a temple in his name in my own town of Mutina, and I have heard that there are others elsewhere. His image is on the hearths of the country folk throughout the land.
I do not know the ways of the world or of the gods; I remember a child who was almost my own, though not born of my body; and I must say what I remember. He was a child with hair paler than the autumn grain; a fair skin that would not take the sun. At times he was quick and gay; at other times quiet and withdrawn. He could be made quickly angry, and as easily removed from that anger. Though I loved him, he was a child like any other.
It must be that even then the gods had given him the greatness that all the world has learned; but if they had, I swear he did not know it. His playmates were his equals, even the children of the lowest slaves; he gave as he received in his tasks or his play. Yes, the gods must have touched him, and yet in their wisdom prevented him from knowing; for I heard in later years that there were many portents at his birth. It is said that his mother dreamed that a god in the form of a serpent entered her, and that she conceived; that his father dreamed that the sun rose from the loins of his wife; and that miracles beyond understanding took place all over Italy at the moment of his birth. I say only what I have heard, and speak of the memories of those days.
And now I must tell of that meeting which raised these thoughts in my head.
My son Quintus wanted me to see the great Forum where he often went to take care of business matters for his employer; and so he aroused me at the first hour of the day, so that we could walk the streets before they were crowded. We had seen the new Senate House, and were walking up the Via Sacra toward the Temple of Julius Caesar, which was white as mountain snow in the morning sunlight. I remembered that once when I was a child I had seen this man who has become a god; and I wondered at the greatness of that world of which I had been a part.
We paused for a moment to rest beside the temple. In my age I tire easily. And as we rested, I saw walking up the street toward us a group of men whom I knew to be senators; they wore the togas with the purple stripes. In their midst was a slight figure, bowed as I am bowed, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and with a staff in one hand. The others seemed to be directing their words toward him. My eyes are weak; I could not make out his features; but some power of knowledge came upon me, and I said to Quintus:
"It is he."
Quintus smiled at me, and asked: "It is who, Mother?"
"It is he," I said, and my voice trembled. "It is that master of whom I have spoken, who once was in my care."
Quintus looked at him again, and took my arm, and we went closer to the street so that we could watch his passing. Other citizens had noticed his approach, and we crowded among them.
I did not intend to speak; but as he passed, those memories of my childhood came up within me, and the word was spoken.
"Tavius," I said.
The word was hardly more than a whisper, but it was said as he passed me; and the one whom I had not intended to address paused and looked at me as if he were puzzled. Then he gestured to the men around him to remain where they were, and he came up to me.
"Did you speak, old mother?" he asked.
"Yes, Master," I said. "Forgive me."
"You said a name by which I was known as a child."
"I am Hirtia," I said. "My mother was your foster nurse when you were a child in Velletri. Perhaps you do not remember."
"Hirtia," he said, and he smiled. He came a step nearer, and looked at me; his face was lined and his cheeks sunken, but I could see that boy I had known. "Hirtia," he said again, and touched my hand. "I remember. How many years…"
"More than fifty," I said.
Some of his friends approached him; he waved them away.
"Fifty," he said. "Have they been kind to you?"
"I have raised five children, of whom three live and prosper. My husband was a good man, and we lived in comfort. The gods have taken my husband, and now I am content that my own life draws to an end."
He looked at me. "Among your children," he said, "were there daughters?"
I thought it a strange question. I said: "I was blessed only with sons."
"And they have honored you?"
"They have honored me," I said.
"Then your life has been a good one," he said. "Perhaps it has been better than you know."
"I am content to go when the gods call me," I said.
He nodded, and a somberness came upon his face. He said with a bitterness I could not understand: "Then you are more fortunate than I, my sister."
"But you-" I said, "-you are not like other men. In the countryside your image protects the hearth. And at the crossroads, and in the temples. Are you not happy in the honor of the world?"
He looked at me for a moment, and did not answer. Then he turned to Quintus, who stood beside me. "This is your son," he said. "He has your features."
"It is Quintus," I said. "He is manager of all the estates of Atius Sabinus at Velletri. Since I was widowed, I have been living with Quintus and his family there. They are good people."
He looked at Quintus for a long time without speaking. "I did not have a son," he said. "I had only a daughter, and Rome."
I said, "All the people are your children."
He smiled. "I think now I would have preferred to have had three sons, and to have lived in their honor."
I did not know what to say; I did not speak.
"Sir," my son said; his voice was unsteady. "We are humble people. Our lives are what they have been. I have heard that today you speak to the Senate, and thus give to the world your wisdom and your counsel. Beside yours, our fortune is nothing."
"Is it Quintus?" he said. My son nodded. He said: "Quintus, today in my wisdom, I must counsel-I must order the Senate to take from me that which I have loved most in this life." For a moment his eyes blazed, and then his face softened, and he said: "I have given to Rome a freedom that only I cannot enjoy."
"You have not found happiness," I said, "though you have given it."
"It is the way my life has been," he said.
"I hope that you become happy," I said.
"I thank you, my sister," he said. "There is nothing that I can do for you? "
"I am content," I said. "My sons are content."
He nodded. "I must perform this duty now," he said; but for a long while he was silent, and did not turn away. "We did see each other again, as we promised long ago."
"Yes, Master," I said.
He smiled. "Once you called me Tavius."
"Tavius," I said.
"Good-by, Hirtia," he said. "This time, perhaps we shall-"
"We shall not meet again," I said. "I go to Velletri, and I shall not return to Rome."
He nodded, and he put his lips to my cheek, and he turned away. He walked slowly down the Via Sacra to join those who waited for him.
These words I have spoken to my son, Quintus, on the third day before the Ides of September. I have spoken them for my sons and for their children, now and to come, so that for as long as this family endures it might know something of its place in the world that was Rome, in the days that are gone.
II. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
Outside my window, the rocks, gray and somber in the brilliance of the afternoon sun, descend in a huge profusion toward the sea. This rock, like all the rock on this island of Pandateria, is volcanic in origin, rather porous and light in weight, upon which one must walk with some caution, lest one's feet be slashed by hidden sharpnesses. There are others on this island, but I am not allowed to see them. Unaccompanied and unwatched, I am permitted to walk a distance of one hundred yards to the sea, as far as the thin strip of black-sand beach; and to walk a like distance in any direction from this small stone hut that has been my abode for five years. I know the body of this barren earth more intimately than I have known the contours of any other, even that of my native Rome, upon which I lavished an intimacy of almost forty years. It is likely that I shall never know another place.
On clear days, when the sun or the wind has dispersed the mists that often rise from the sea, I look to the east; and I think that I can sometimes see the mainland of Italy, perhaps even the city of Naples that nestles in the safety of her gentle bay; but I cannot be sure. It may be only a dark cloud that upon occasion smudges the horizon. It does not matter. Cloud or land, I shall not approach closer to it than I am now.
Below me, in the kitchen, my mother shouts at the one servant we are allowed. I hear the banging of pots and pans, and the shouting again; it is a futile repetition of every afternoon of these years. Our servant is mute; and though not deaf, it is unlikely that she even understands our Latin tongue. Yet inde-fatigably my mother shouts at her, in the unflagging optimism that her displeasure will be felt and will somehow matter. My mother, Scribonia, is a remarkable woman; she is nearly seventy-five, yet she has the energy and the will of a young woman, as she goes about setting in some peculiar order a world that has never pleased her, and berating it for not arranging itself according to some principle that has evaded them both. She came with me here to Pandateria, not, I am sure, out of any maternal regard, but out of a desperate pursuit of a condition that would confirm once again her displeasure with existence. And I allowed her to accompany me out of what I believe was an appropriate indifference.
I scarcely know my mother. I saw her upon few occasions when I was a child, even less frequentiy when I was a girl, and we met only at more or less formal social gatherings when I was a woman. I was never fond of her; and it gives me now some assurance to know, after these five years of enforced intimacy, that my feeling for her has not changed.
I am Julia, daughter of Octavius Caesar, the August; and I write these words in the forty-third year of my life. I write them for a purpose of which the friend of my father and my old tutor, Athenodorus, would never have approved; I write them for myself and my own perusal. Even if I wished it otherwise, it is unlikely that any eyes save my own shall see them. But I do not wish it otherwise. I would not explain myself to the world, and I would not have the world understand me; I have become indifferent to us both. For however long I may live in this body, which I have served with much care and art for so many years, that part of my life which matters is over; thus I may view it with the detached interest of the scholar that Athenodorus once said I might have become, had I been born a man and not the daughter of an Emperor and god.
– Yet how strong is the force of old habit! For even now, as I write these first words in this journal, and as I know that they are written to be read only by that strangest of all readers, myself, I find myself pausing in deliberation as I seek the proper topic upon which to found my argument, the appropriate argument itself, the constitution of the argument, the effective arrangement of its parts, and even the style in which those parts are to be delivered. It is myself whom I would persuade to truth by the force of my discourse, and myself whom I would dissuade. It is a foolishness, yet I believe not a harmful one. It occupies my day at least as fully as does the counting of the waves that break over the sand upon the rocky coast of this island where I must remain.
Yes: it is likely that my life is over, though I believe I did not fully apprehend the extent to which I knew the truth ofthat until yesterday, when I was allowed to receive for the first time in nearly two years a letter from Rome. My sons Gaius and Lucius are dead, the former of a wound received in Armenia and the latter of an illness whose nature no one knows on his way to Spain, in the city of Marseilles. When I read the letter, a numbness came upon me, which in a removed way I judged to have resulted from the shock of the news; and I waited for the grief which I imagined would ensue. But no grief came; and I began to look upon my life, and to remember the moments that had spaced it out, as if I were not concerned. And I knew that it was over. To care not for one's self is of little moment, but to care not for those whom one has loved is another matter. All has become the object of an indifferent curiosity, and nothing is of consequence. Perhaps I write these words and employ the devices that I have learned so that I may discover whether I may rouse myself from this great indifference into which I have descended. I doubt that I shall be able to do so, any more than I should be able to push these massive rocks down the slope into the dark concern of the sea. I am indifferent even to my doubt.
I am Julia, daughter of Gaius Octavius Caesar, the August, and I was born on the third day of September in the year of the consulship of Lucius Marcius and Gaius Sabinus, in the city of Rome. My mother was that Scribonia whose brother was father-in-law to Sextus Pompeius, the pirate whom my father destroyed for the safety of Rome two years after my birth…
That is a beginning of which even Athenodorus, my poor Athenodorus, would have approved.
III. Letter: Lucius Varius Rufus to Publius Vergilius Maro, from Rome (39 B. c.)
My dear Vergil, I trust that your illness does not progress, and that the warmth of the Neapolitan sun has indeed bettered the state of your health. Your friends send their best wishes, and have charged me to assure you that our well-being depends upon your own; if you are well, so are we. Your friends also have charged me to convey to you our regrets that you could not attend the banquet at the home of Claudius Nero last night, a celebration from whose effects I am just this afternoon beginning to recover. It was an extraordinary evening, and it may beguile you from your discomfort if I give you some account of it.
Do you know Claudius Nero, your would-be host? He speaks of you with some familiarity, so I suspect that you have at least met him. If you do know him, you may remember that only two years ago he was in exile in Sicily for having opposed our Octavius Caesar at Perusia; now he has apparently renounced politics, and he and Octavius seem to be the best of friends. He is quite old, and his wife, Livia, seems more nearly his daughter than his spouse-a fortunate circumstance, as you shall shortly understand.
It turned out to be a literary evening, though I doubt that Claudius planned it that way. He is a good fellow, but he has little learning. It soon became clear that Octavius was really behind it all, and that Claudius was, as it were, the pseudo-host. The occasion was designed to honor our friend Pollio, who will at last give to the Roman people that library he has been promising, so that learning may flourish even among the common people.
It was a mixed gathering, but, as it turned out, a rather fortunate one. Most were our friends-Pollio, Octavius and (alas!) Scribonia, Maecenas, Agrippa, myself, Aemilius Macer; your "admirer" Mevius, who no doubt wangled the invitation from Claudius, who knew no better than to invite him; one whom none of us knew, an odd little Pontene from Amasia called Strabo, a sort of philosopher, I believe; for embellishment, several ladies of quality, whose names I cannot recall; and to my surprise (and I suspect to your pleasure) that rather blunt but appealing young man whose work you have been kind enough to admire, your Horace. I believe that Maecenas was responsible for his invitation, despite the rudeness he suffered at Horace's hands several months ago.
I must say that Octavius was in extraordinary good spirits, almost loquacious, despite the usual long face that Scribonia wore. He has just returned from Gaul, you know, and perhaps the rather severe months there have made him hungry for civilized company; moreover, it seems now that the difficulties with both Marcus Antonius and Sextus Pompeius are in abeyance, if not finally settled. Or perhaps his gaiety had its source in the presence of Claudius's wife, Livia, to whom he seems to have taken a strong fancy.
In any event, Octavius insisted upon playing the part of the wine-master, and mixed the wine much more strongly than he usually does, with nearly equal parts of water, so that even before the first course arrived most of us were a little tipsy. He insisted that Pollio, rather than himself, be placed at the position of honor beside Claudius; while he chose to recline at the inferior position at the table, with Livia beside him.
I must say that Octavius and Claudius were exceedingly civilized toward each other, given the circumstances; one would almost think that they had reached an understanding. Scribonia sat at the other table, gossiping with the ladies and glowering at the table where we sat-though the gods know why she should glower. She dislikes the marriage as much as Octavius does, and there is no secret about the fact that a divorce will be effected as soon as Octavius's child is born… What games they must play, those who have power in the world! And how ludicrous must they seem to the Muses! It must be that those who are nearest to the gods are most at their mercy. We are most fortunate, my dear Vergil, that we need not marry to ensure our posterity, but can make the children of our souls march beautifully into the future, where they will not change or die.
Claudius serves a good table, I must say-a very decent Campanian wine before the meal, and a good Falernian afterwards. The meal was neither ostentatiously elaborate nor affectedly simple: oysters, eggs, and tiny onions to begin; roast kid, broiled chicken, and grilled bream; and a variety of fresh fruits.
After the meal, Octavius proposed that we toast the Muses, and that we converse upon their separate functions; and argued briefly with himself as to whether we should drink individual toasts to the ancient three or to the more recent nine; and finally, after pretending a great struggle, decided upon the latter.
"But," he said, and glanced, smiling, at Claudius, "we must honor the Muses to this extent; we must not allow them to be soiled by any mention of politics. It is a subject that might embarrass us all."
There was general, if nervous, laughter; and I suddenly realized how many enemies, past and potential, were in the room. Claudius, whom Octavius had exiled from Italy less than two years before; Pollio himself, our guest of honor, who was an old friend of Marcus Antonius; our young Horace, who only three years ago had fought on the side of the traitor Brutus; and Mevius, poor Mevius, whose envy ran so deep that no man might be spared from the treachery of his flattery, or vice versa.
Pollio, being the guest of honor, began. With an apologetic bow to Octavius, he chose to extol the ancient Muse of Memory, Mneme; and likening all mankind to a single body, he went on to compare the collective experience of mankind to the mind of that body; and thence rather neatly (though obviously) he spoke of the library which he was establishing in Rome as if it were the most important quality of the mind, memory; and concluded that the Muse of Memory presided over all the others in a beneficent reign.
Mevius gave a tremulous sigh and said to someone in a loud whisper: "Beautiful. Oh, how beautiful!" Horace glanced at him, and raised a dubious eyebrow.
Agrippa addressed himself to Clio, the Muse of History; Mevius whispered loudly something about manliness and bravery; and Horace glowered at Mevius. Upon my turn, I spoke of Calliope-rather badly, I fear, since I could not allude to my own work upon the slain Julius Caesar, even though it is a poem, without trespassing upon Octavius's interdiction against politics.
It was all rather dull, I fear, though Octavius, reclining with Livia seated beside him in the torchlight, seemed pleased; it was his animation and gaiety that made possible what otherwise would have been impossible.
He assigned to Mevius (rather obviously, I thought, though Mevius was too full of himself to notice) that Thalia who is the Muse of Comedy; and Mevius, delighted to be singled out, launched into a long, farcical account (stolen, I believe, from Antiphanes of Athens) about the upstarts of old Athens-slaves, freedmen, and tradespeople-who presumed to set themselves upon a level with their social betters; who wangled invitations to the homes of the great, and gorged themselves at their tables, abusing the kindness and generosity of their noble hosts; and how Thalia, the goddess of the comic spirit, to punish such interlopers, called down upon them certain afflictions, so that their class might be distinguished, and so that the nobility might be protected. Some, Mevius said, she made dwarfs, and gave thatches of hair like the hay in which they were born, and afflicted with the manners of the stable. And so on, and so on.
It became quickly clear that Mevius was attacking your young friend Horace, though for what reason none was quite sure. And no one knew precisely how to behave; we looked at Octavius, but his face was impassive; we looked at Maecenas, who seemed unconcerned. None would look at Horace, except myself, who was seated next to him. His face was pale in the flickering light.
Mevius finished and sat back, satisfied that he had flattered a patron and destroyed a possible rival. There was a murmur. Octavius thanked him, and said:
"Now who shall speak for that Erato who is the Muse of Poetry?"
And Mevius, raised by what he thought was his success, said: "Oh, Maecenas, of course; for he has courted the Muse and won her. It must be Maecenas."
Maecenas waved languidly. "I must decline," he said. "These last months, she has wandered from my gardens… Perhaps my young friend Horace will speak for her."
Octavius laughed, and turned toward Horace with perfect civility. "I have met our guest only this evening, but I will presume upon that slight acquaintance. Will you speak, Horace?"
"I will speak," Horace said; but for a long time he was silent. Without waiting for a servant, he poured himself a measure of unmixed wine, and drank it at once. And he spoke. I give you his words as I remember them.
"You all know the story of the Greek Orpheus of whom our absent Vergil has written so beautifully-son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope, whom the god honored by the presence of his manhood, and inheritor of the golden lyre which sent forth light into the world, making even the stones and trees glimmer in a beauty not apprehended before by man. And you know of his love for Eurydice, of which he sang with such purity and grace that Eurydice thought herself to be part of the singer's own soul and came to him in marriage, at which Hymen wept, as if at a fate no one could imagine. And you know, too, how Eurydice at last, wandering foolishly beyond the precincts of her husband's magic, was touched by a serpent that came out of the bowels of the earth, and dragged from the light of life into the darkness of the underground-where Orpheus in his despair followed, having bound his eyes against a dark that no man can imagine. And there he sang so beautifully and gave such light to the darkness, that the very ghosts shed tears, the wheel upon which Ixion whirled in terror stilled; and the demons of the night relented, and said that Eurydice might return with her husband to the world of light, upon the condition that Orpheus remain blindfolded and not look back upon the wife who followed him…
"The legend does not tell us why Orpheus broke the vow; it tells us only that he did, that he saw where he had been, and saw Eurydice drawn back into the earth, and saw the earth close around her so that he could not follow. And legend tells of how thereafter Orpheus sang his sorrow, and how the maidens who had lived in light only and could not imagine where he had been, came to him and offered themselves to beguile him from his knowledge; and how he refused them, and how in their anger then they shouted down his song, so that its magic could not stay them, and in their mania tore his body apart, and cast it in the River Hebrus, where his severed head continued to sing its wordless song; and the very shores parted and widened so that the singing head might be borne in safety out to the landless sea… This is the story of the Greek Orpheus which Vergil has told us, and to which we have listened."
A silence had come upon the room; Horace dipped his cup into the jar of wine and drank again.
"The gods in their wisdom," he said, "tell us all of our lives, if we will but listen. I speak to you now of another Orpheus- not the son of a god and goddess, but an Italian Orpheus whose father was a slave, and whose mother had no name. Some, no doubt, would scoff at such an Orpheus; but they would scoff who have forgotten that all Romans are descended from a god, and bear the name of his son; and from a mortal woman, and wear her humanity. Thus even a dwarf who wears upon his head a thatch of hay may have been touched by a god, if he springs from the earth that Mars loved… This Orpheus of whom I speak received no golden lyre, but only a poor torch from a humble father who would have given his life that his son might be worthy of his dream. Thus was this young Orpheus in his childhood shown the light of Rome, equally with the sons of the rich and mighty; and in his young manhood, at the cost of his father's substance was shown too the source of what was said to be the light of all mankind that came from the mother city of all knowledge, Athens. Thus his love was no woman; his Eurydice was knowledge, a dream of the world, to which he sang his song. But the world of light that was his dream of knowledge became eclipsed by a civil war; and forsaking the light, this young Orpheus went into the darkness to retrieve his dream; and at Philippi, almost forgetting his song, he fought against one whom he thought to represent the powers of darkness. And then the gods, or the demons-he knows not which, even now-granted him the gift of cowardice, and bade him flee the field with the power of his dream and knowledge intact, and bade him not to look back upon what he fled. But like the other Orpheus, just as he was safely escaped, he did look back; and his dream vanished, as if a vapor, into the darkness of time and circumstance. He saw the world, and knew he was alone- without father, without property, without hope, without dreams… It was only then that the gods gave to him their golden lyre, and bade him play not as they but as he wished. The gods are wise in their cruelty; for now he sings, who would not have sung before. No Thracian maidens blandish him, nor offer him their charms; he makes do with the honest whore, and for a fair price. It is the dogs of the world that yap at him as he sings, trying to drown his voice. They grow in number as more he sings; and no doubt he, too, will suffer to have his limbs torn from his body, even though he sing against the yapping, and sing as he is carried to that sea of oblivion which will receive us all… Thus, my masters and my betters, I have told you a tedious story of a local Orpheus; and I wish you well with his remains."
My dear Vergil, I cannot tell you how long the silence lasted; and I cannot tell you the source ofthat silence, whether it was shock or fear, or whether all (like myself) had been entranced as if by a true Orphic lyre. The torches, burning low, flickered; and for a moment I had the odd feeling that we all, had, indeed, been in that underground of which Horace had been speaking, and were emerging from it, and dared not look back. Mevius stirred, and whispered fiercely, knowing that he would be heard by whom he intended:
"Philippi," he said. "Power of darkness, indeed! Is this not treason against the triumvir? Is this not treason?"
Octavius had not moved during Horace's recital. He raised himself on his couch and sat beside Livia. "Treason?" he said gently. "It is not treason, Mevius. You will not speak so again in my presence." He rose from his couch and crossed over to where Horace sat. "Horace, will you permit me to join you?" he asked.
Our young friend nodded dumbly. Octavius sat beside him, and they spoke quietly. Mevius said no more that night.
Thus, my dear Vergil, did our Horace, who has already endeared himself to us, find the friendship of Octavius Caesar. All in all, it was a successful evening.
IV. Letter: Mevius to Furius Bibaculus, from Rome (January, 38 B. c.)
My dear Furius, I really have not the heart to write you at any length about that disastrous evening at the home of Claudius Nero last September, the only pleasant aspect of which was the absence of our "friend" Vergil. But perhaps it is just as well; for certain events have transpired since that evening that make the whole affair even more ludicrous than it seemed then.
I don't really remember all who were there-Octavius, of course, and those odd friends of his: the Etruscan Maecenas, bejeweled and perfumed, and Agrippa, smelling of sweat and leather. It was ostensibly a literary evening, but my dear, to what low state have our letters fallen! Beside these, even that whining little fraud, Catullus, would have seemed almost a poet. There was Pollio, the pompous ass, to whom one must be pleasant because of his wealth and political power, and to whose works one must listen endlessly if one is foolish enough to attend his parties, stifling laughter at his tragedies and feigning emotion at his verses; Maecenas again, who writes lugubrious poems in a Latin that seems almost like a foreign tongue; Macer, who has discovered a Tenth Muse, that of Dullness; and that extraordinary little upstart, Horace, whom, you will be happy to hear, I rather effectively disposed of during the course of the evening. Garrulous politicians, luxuriant magpies, and illiterate peasants deface the garden of the Muses. It's a wonder that you and I can find the courage to persist!
But the social intrigues that evening were a good deal more interesting than the literary ones, and it is about that which I really want to write you.
We all have heard of Octavius's proclivities toward women. I really had not given the reports so much credence before that evening-he is such a pallid little fellow that one might think a glass of unmixed wine and a fervent embrace would send him lifeless to join his ancestors (whoever they might be)-but now I begin to suspect that there may be truth in them.
The wife of our host was one Livia, of an old and conservative Republican family (I have heard that her own father was slain by the Octavian army at Philippi). An extraordinarily beautiful girl, if you like the type-a modest and proper figure, blonde, perfectly regular features, rather thin lips, softly spoken, and so forth; very much the "patrician ideal," as they say. She is quite young-perhaps eighteen-yet she has already given her husband, who must be thrice her age, one son; and she was again rather visibly pregnant.
I must say, we all had had a great deal to drink; nevertheless, Octavius's conduct was really extraordinary. He mooned over her like a love-sick Catullus, stroking her hand, whispering in her ear, laughing like a boy (though of course he is really little more, despite the importance he has assigned to himself), all manner of nonsense; and all this wholly in view of his own wife (not that that really mattered, though she too is pregnant), and of Livia's husband, who seemed either not to notice or to smile benignly, like an ambitious father rather than a husband whose honor ought to have been offended. At any rate, at the time I thought little of it; I considered it rather vulgar behavior, but what (I asked myself) might one expect from the grandson of an ordinary small-town moneylender. If having filled one cart he wanted to ride in another that was full too, that was his business.
But now, four months after that evening, such an extraordinary scandal is buzzing over Rome that I am sure you would not forgive me if I failed to inform you of it.
Less than two weeks ago, his erstwhile wife, Scribonia, gave birth to a girl child-though it would seem that even the adoptive son of a god should have been able to manage a boy. On the same day of the birth, Octavius delivered to Scribonia a letter of divorce-which in itself was not surprising, the whole affair having been negotiated in advance, it is said.
But-and here is the scandal-in the week following, Tiberius Claudius Nero gave Li via a divorce; and the next day gave her (though pregnant still), and with a substantial dowry, to Octavius as wife; the whole affair was sanctioned by the Senate, priests made sacrifices, the whole foolish business.
How can anyone take such a man seriously? And yet they do.
V. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
The circumstances of my birth were known to all the world long before they were known to me; and when at last I had the age to comprehend them, my father was the ruler of the world, and a god; and the world has long understood that the behavior of a god, however odd to mortals, is natural to himself, and comes at last to seem inevitable to those who must worship him.
Thus it was not strange to me that Livia should be my mother, and Scribonia merely an infrequent visitor to my home-a distant but necessary relative whom everyone endured out of an obscure sense of obligation. My memories ofthat time are dim, and I do not fully trust them; but it seems to me now that those years were ordinarily pleasant. Livia was firm, majestic, and coldly affectionate; it was what I grew to expect.
Unlike most men of his station, my father insisted that I be brought up in the old way, in his own household, in the care of Livia rather than a nurse; that I learn the ways of the household -to weave and sew and cook-in the ancient manner; and yet that I be educated in the degree that would befit the daughter of an Emperor. So in my early years I wove with the slaves of the household, and I learned my letters, Latin and Greek, from my father's slave Phaedrus; and later I studied at wisdom under his old friend and tutor Athenodorus. Though I did not know it at the time, the most significant circumstance of my life was the fact that my father had no other children of his own. It was a fault of the Julian line.
Though I must have seen him seldom in those years, his presence was the strongest of any in my life. I learned my geography from his letters, which were read to me daily; they were sent in packets from wherever he had to be-in Gaul, or Sicily, or Spain; Dalmatia, Greece, Asia, or Egypt.
As I said, I must have seen him seldom; yet even now it seems that he was always there. I can close my eyes, and almost feel myself thrown into the air, and hear the ecstatic laughter of a child's safe terror, and feel the hands catch me from the nothingness into which I had been tossed. I can hear the deep voice, comforting and warm; I can feel the caresses upon my head; I can remember the games of handball and pebbles; and I can feel my legs strain up the little hills in the garden behind our house on the Palatine, as we walked to a point where we could see the city spread out like a gigantic toy beneath us. Yet I cannot remember the face, then. He called me Rome, his "Little Rome."
My first clear visual memory of my father came when I was nine years old; it was in his fifth consulship, and upon the occasion of his triple triumph for his victories in Dalmatia, Actium, and Egypt.
Since that time, there have been no such celebrations of military exploits in Rome; later my father explained to me that he had thought even the one in which he took part was vulgar and barbaric, but that it was politically necessary at the time. Thus, I do not now know whether the grandeur I saw then has been enhanced by its uniquity and its subsequent absence, or whether it was the true grandeur of my memory.
I had not seen my father for more than a year, and he had no chance to visit Rome before the ceremonial march into the city. It was arranged that Livia and I and the other children of the household should meet him at the city gates, where we were escorted by the senatorial procession and placed in chairs of honor to await his coming. It was a game to me; Livia had told me that we were going to be in a parade, and that I must remain calm. But I could not restrain myself from jumping from my chair, and straining my eyes to find the approach of my father down the winding road. And when at last I saw him, I laughed and clapped my hands, and would have run toward him; but I was restrained by Livia. And when he came near enough to recognize us, he spurred his horse ahead of the soldiers he was leading, and caught me in his arms, laughing, and then embraced Livia; and he was my father. It was, perhaps, the last time that I was able to think of him as if he were a father like any other.
For quickly he was moved away by the praetors of the Senate, who fastened about him a cloak of purple and gold and led him into the turreted chariot, and led Livia and me to stand beside him there; and the slow procession toward the Forum began. I remember my fear and disappointment; my father beside me, though he steadied me gently with his hand upon my shoulder, was a stranger. The horns and trumpets at the head of the procession sounded their battle calls; the lictors with their laureled axes moved slowly ahead; and we went into the city. The people crowded the squares where we passed and shouted so loudly that even the sound of the horns was muted; and the Forum where we halted at last swarmed with Romans, so that not a stone upon the ground could be seen.
For three days the ceremonies lasted. I spoke to my father when I could; and though Livia and I were at his side nearly all the time, during his speeches and the sacrifices and the presentations, I felt him drawn away from me into the world that I was beginning to see for the first time.
Yet he was gentle toward me all the time, and answered me when I spoke as if I mattered to him as much as I ever had. I remember once I saw drawn in one of the processions, on a cart gleaming with gold and bronze, the carven figure of a woman, larger than life, upon a couch of ebony and ivory, with two children lying on either side of her; their eyes were closed, as if in sleep. I asked my father who the lady was supposed to be, and he looked at me a long time before he answered.
"That was Cleopatra," he said. "She was Queen of a great country. She was an enemy to Rome; but she was a brave woman, and she loved her country as much as any Roman might love his; she gave her life so that she might not have to look upon its defeat."
Even now, after all these years, I remember the strange feeling that came over me upon hearing that name in those circumstances. It was, of course, a familiar name; I had heard it often before. I thought then of my Aunt Octavia, who in fact shared the responsibility of the household with Livia, and whom I knew had once been married to this dead Queen's husband, that Marcus Antonius who was also dead. And I thought of the children for whom Octavia cared and with whom I daily played and worked and studied: Marcellus and his two sisters, the fruit of her first marriage; the two Antonias who were the issue of her marriage to Marcus Antonius; Julius, who was the son of Marcus Antonius by an earlier marriage; and at last of that little girl who was the new pet of the household, the little Cleopatra, daughter of Marcus Antonius and his Queen.
But it was not the strangeness ofthat knowledge that caused my heart to come up in my throat. Though I did not have the words to say it then, I believe it occurred to me for the first time that even a woman might be caught up in the world of events, and be destroyed by that world.