'Sorry, I'm sure then. As I was saying, I introduced one of my contacts into his household. You don't mind, do you, that I act on my own initiative in such matters? I'll buzz round and get a report from him straightaway . . .'
'Be careful, Timotheus. There must be no connection between me and this investigation.'
'Trust me for that. I'll be as quiet and circumspect as a mouse.'
I was troubled. My health remained poor, and I had to be bled several times that autumn to draw off fevered blood. In my disordered state I was prey to alarms. It seemed that the stability I had sought for Rome was not yet achieved. Livia said to me, 'Take care. There are whispers, husband, and where there are whispers, daggers glint in the candle-light.' That remark astonished me; it was unlike Livia to use melodramatic language.
I brooded on death, as I awaited the report Timotheus was preparing. Julia came to me with complaints against her husband. 'He's so conceited, and he easily shows he has little time for me.' I begged her to be patient and dutiful. I had passed legislation which would permit Marcellus to be elected aedile that year and to stand for the consulship (to which he would of course be elected) ten years before the statutory age. To appease Livia I arranged that Tiberius and Drusus should also be eligible for office five years before they were of age. Livia was barely appeased, but, since Marcellus was my chosen heir, I could hardly permit them to assume equality. That would have made dissension certain.
Maecenas told me that Agrippa was irked by my promotion of Marcellus. 'He feels that the boy will usurp his place in the State,' he warned me. I put the matter to Agrippa, assuring him that he was my closest companion, and would always remain so.
'But Marcellus is my daughter's husband,' I said. 'You cannot wonder that I wish to advance him. Besides, he's your brother-in-law too.'
Yes,' he said, 'and your fellow-consul stands in that relation to Maecenas.'
Relations between Agrippa and Maecenas had deteriorated. We had shared the great adventure of our youth, but the memory was not strong enough to enable them to overcome their growing distrust. Each man had hardened in his character, and each found the other antipathetic. It was not the least of the distresses of that difficult year.
Report from Timotheus: agent of the Private Office: to Caesar Augustus: Confidential.
The consul Terentius Varro Murena: The consul is punctilious in the exercise of his official functions. No one has heard him breathe a word of disaffection in public. He has few dealings with his sister Terentia, and has never been known to dine in the house of his brother-in-law Maecenas. The fact that he spent a week last August staying in Maecenas' villa near Cerveteri may be of significance. But Maecenas was not there at the time, though on both the preceding and subsequent weeks he is reported as having sacrificed at his family's ancestral tombs in the vicinity.
Acting on instructions receiv
ed I inserted an agent into Mur
ena's household in the days following my discussion with the Princeps. I had of course done likewise as soon as Murena's consulship was announced. Unfortunately, my first agent fell foul of the consul's major-domo, and was dismissed for alleged drunkenness and insubordination. (N. B. I have since arranged that this first agent be transferred to the galleys where there is no danger that he will disclose the instructions he received by way of me.) His replacement was a Greek boy, it being reported that Murena's tastes were so inclined. (It is recognized that there is some hazard in employing such an agent, if only because circumstances may arise in which he begins to feel an affection for his subject/nominal master, and thus be himself tempted to disloyalty. In this case however it was judged that the danger was slight. That judgement was based on observation of the character of the agent employed.) The introduction was successful. The agent soon caught his master's eye and was promoted to act as cup-bearer at private supper parties. Despite this, these supper parties seem to have been decorous affairs. There is no reason to doubt the agent's report. Indeed he complained with a visible degree of pique of the tepidity of the subject's interest, the subject doing no more than caress him negligently . . .
'What a sink of iniquity,' Agrippa said. 'How can you bear to employ such people?'
'Come,' I replied, 'it was yo
u yourself who introduced Timo
theus to my notice.'
'Doesn't make him stink less.'
'Never mind. Read on. You will find what follows more interesting, more to your taste and to the point.'
'Bloody little catamites. I'd send the whole shooting-match to the Rhine frontier.'
'I doubt if that would secure us against the Germans. Do read on and stop grumbling.'
The agent reports that these supper parties were exclusively male. He found them serious affairs, and was at first puzzled by the tenor of the conversation. He has been regrettably less than completely efficient in obtaining a full list of names of those who attended the parties, of which he attended six in the course of a fortnight. At all of them he and other servants were excluded when the main part of the meal had been concluded. On three occasions he waited at the door for more than three hours between the time of his dismissal and the departure of the guests.
Three men, besides the consul, are reported as having been ever-present. They have been identified as: Fannius Caepio, Lucius Primus, and G. Aemilius Scaurus.
Notes on the above: Fannius Caepio is the nephew of C. Fannius who served with Sextus Pompey in Sicily, and accompanied him after his defeat there to Asia. It is not recorded how he died, but neither is there any record of him after Pompey's death. Fannius Caepio was brought up by his mother, whose own father was killed fighting alongside C. Cassius at Philippi. There is therefore on both sides of the family a history of disaffection. The young Fannius Caepio - he is in his early twenties - has expressed disdain of those who accept public office 'in the Republic as now constituted'. Is this in itself not a treasonable offence, or at least an insult to the Senate and magistrates? In character, he is violent, ill-tempered, high-spoken, and given to gaming and wine.
Lucius Primus is the half-brother of M. Primus, recently disgraced proconsul of Macedonia. Though L. Primus is reported as being of timid, even cowardly, disposition, he resents his half-brother's condemnation. He has been heard to say that it is proof that Rome suffers an Oriental despotism.
Q. Aemilius Scaurus is the nephew of the stepbrother of Sextus Pompey, Mam Aemilius Scaurus, whose life was spared and whose estates were restored after the Battle of Actium in which he was taken prisoner. Q. Aemilius Scaurus, who is also a connection of the disgraced former triumvir, M. Aemilius Lepidus, is known to be heavily in debt. He has been heard to say that 'only a real provincial governorship in the old style of the Republic can restore my fortunes . . .'
Agrippa looked up from his reading, 'What a shoddy gang.'
'They are all obviously traitors. Are they dangerous? That is the question.'
Conclusion: It is clear that these four have been taking soundings among their extensive connections and acquaintances. Though there is no
prima facie
evidence of conspiracy as yet, there is sufficiently strong ground for suspicion to justify intervention. Alternatively it is recommended that some of those who have attended only one supper party at the consul's, some of whom, it is presumed, have rejected overtures made to them, be questioned. A list is appended in appendix one.
'A sorry crew,' Agrippa said, looking over the list. 'Hardly a good man among them. No Marcus Brutus certainly.'
I was always irritated by Agrippa's respect for Brutus, but I let it pass.
'Appendix II is marked "for your eyes only",' Agrippa said.
'Read it if you like,' I said. 'I doubt if we shall have to act upon it. It contains proposals for the manufacture of evidence. Like all agents Timotheus loves to provoke what he thinks is merely dormant. You don't care for him, but he has not only relish for the game. He shows a remarkable aptitude. But, as I say, I don't think it will be necessary. One of these on that list will spill the beans. It's just a matter of whom he tries to implicate.'
'You've no doubt then that there is a conspiracy?' 'Oh none. One can't have, can one?' 'It could be just loose drunken talk. No more. I hate acting on reports from rats like Timotheus.' 'Unfortunately, rats deliver the best reports.' Agrippa bit his lip.
'Look,' I said, 'it's too much of a coincidence. Nevertheless we have to act carefully. That's why I have asked Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso to call on us. He should be here any minute.'
'Piso? Why him?'
'I'm going to need a new consular colleague, aren't I?' 'That old brute though?'
Agrippa's surprise was not itself surprising. Piso was an old enemy. A heavy dark bushy-eyebrowed man, he had joined Brutus and Cassius before Philippi and fought bravely there. He too had subsequently adhered to Sextus Pompey, but, on Pompey's defeat in Sicily, resigned himself to the extinction of the cause he had supported and retired to his estates in Latium. I had excluded him from my purge of the Senate because I admired his virtue, but he had refused my overtures and declined to return to public life. His self-regard was high; his consciousness of his own superior virtue great. He was in short a prig, and the man I needed. When he was shown in, I had wine set before him. (All the
Pisos are great drinkers, and most of them incapable of rational discourse without the aid of Bacchus.) He quaffed a glass.
'Falernian,' he said. 'On the thin side. My own wine is better.'
He looked at Agrippa.
'What's he doing here? I understood this was to be a private conversation.'
'Vipsanius Agrippa is my closest co-adjutor,' I replied, choosing an old-fashioned word, even one pedantically old-fashioned, to describe him. 'I have no secrets from him, and he is part of my privacy.'
'Hmphm,' he said, 'well, nobody can claim they knew his father.'
Such a remark could still make Agrippa bridle. I placed my hand on his sleeve.
'His deeds supply him with the glory ancestors reflect on others,' I said.
'Hmphm,' he said again. 'I like to know a man's ancestors when I deal with him. Well, you've dragged me here, Caesar, just when the new wine is ready. I hope you have a good reason. Why?'
I motioned to Agrippa to sit down and did so myself. 'Don't like this,' Piso grumbled. 'There's a whiff of a triumvirate in the air.'
'Those days are over,' I said. 'Nothing would distress me more than their return.'
Piso drank wine. It was very quiet, approaching noon, the sun hot for the time of year.
I said, 'Did you ever wonder why you escaped my purge of the Senate?'
'Hmphm,' he said. 'What if I said, "of course not"?'
'I would be disappointed in my judgement of your intelligence.'
'Ha!' he said. I found these grunts and ejaculations irritating, but naturally gave no sign of this. I waited for him to continue, but he remained silent, his eyes fixed on the wine.
I said, 'It was never my purpose to exclude honest men, such as act on principle.'
'Soft soap, Caesar. What do you want of me?'
'Marcus Primus . . .’ I
said.
'What of him?'
'You have followed his case, I take it. What was your judgement?'
'That he is a man whose own judgement is . . . faulty . . . The kind of man who doesn't know how to adapt to the prevailing wind.'
'Good,' I said. 'You talk as I thought you would, Piso, as a man of sense.' 'Soft soap again.'
'Piso,' I said, 'we are old opponents, but I respect you. I won't ask your opinion of me, because, to do so here and now, would be unfair. Nevertheless, I put a question to you, though it is not one that requires an immediate answer. I ask you to consider whether the state of Rome, the condition of the Republic, are not happier now than they were when we were young, even than when our fathers were young. We have peace, justice, and such liberty as is possible without endangering the stability of the State. I merely ask you to ponder this in your mind.'
Piso said nothing. I might not have spoken. He sat as if deaf to my words. It was possible of course that he was revolving them in his mind, even as he rolled the wine round in his cup.
Agrippa shifted his buttocks.
'There's a simple question,' he said. 'If some of your old . . . allies. . . approached you with a view to overturning the present state of things, even at the risk of a new civil war, what would you say?'
Piso poured more wine.
'Hmphm,' he said, 'what a question in this company.' 'Very well,' said Agrippa, 'has such an approach been made to you?'