I Am Livia (8 page)

In keeping with their policy of honoring Julius Caesar’s memory, most of the Senate joined the procession taking his niece Atia’s body to the Field of Mars. My mother, sister, and I walked beside Father and Tiberius Nero. Father spoke to me in a voice so low I could barely hear it above the wails of the hired mourners who led the cortege. “Your mother has repeated to me what young Caesar said to you. I’m not surprised that he has no love for those who killed his own kin. It doesn’t surprise me either that he spoke to you with boyish bravado.”

“I don’t think it was just bravado,” I said. “You should have seen the look on his face.”

Father gave a snort of amusement. “I’m sure that boy can look very fierce, talking to a girl he wants to impress.”

“Father, how can it make sense to give him the right to raise an army?”

“Cicero has spent many hours in young Caesar’s company and has come to the conclusion that he is a loyal son of the Republic.”

“What if Cicero is a fool?”

“Cicero,” Father said with asperity, “is considered the wisest man in Rome. I was appalled by the lack of respect you showed him when he dined with us. But your mother says she discussed that subject with you, and so I don’t need to.”

“Father—”

“That’s all I wish to say. Let’s both be quiet now and honor the dead.”

At the Field, I stood with my family to the side, at the front edge of the great crowd, as Atia’s body, draped in a shroud, was reverently lifted and set on a pile of wood. The air was thick with the smell of incense. Priests chanted, and the hired mourners continued their loud wailing and tore at their clothes. At first I did not see young Caesar because a dozen men wearing wax masks, portraying his mother’s illustrious ancestors, blocked my view.

There was a hush. The men in masks moved out of the way, and young Caesar approached his mother’s pyre, a flaming torch in his hand.

I could see his face clearly in profile. He looked very pale and grim in his black-dyed toga. Beside him stood a woman, his elder by a few years, with fair hair and pretty features, surely his sister.

What I felt made no sense. I could summon up no wariness when I looked at Caesar. My heart went out to him. I wished that, instead of being in my place with my family, I could go and stand beside him.

He touched the torch to his mother’s pyre, which burst into flames. He stepped back and for a few moments stood like a statue, still holding the torch, watching the smoke rise. Then he did something that people might have thought odd, if anyone but me had noticed it. He turned his head and looked toward the place, some yards from him, where senators and their families stood. His gaze moved over the throng, as if he were seeking someone. Our eyes met.

I felt as if through the force of my own emotion I had somehow reached out and touched him, and impelled him to look at me.
We held each other’s gaze for a long moment.

He broke off the contact, threw the torch into the flames, and stood in the smoky haze watching the pyre burn. He was still there, watching as a filial son should, when my family and I left the Field.

Afterward, Caesar Octavianus and Cicero continued their public love affair. Caesar told one and all that Cicero stood in the place of a father to him. Cicero made a series of speeches in which he attacked Mark Antony not only as a public figure but as a man, accusing him of corruption and every conceivable sexual filthiness. On the other hand, he praised Caesar, calling him “this heaven-sent youth.” “It is my solemn promise to you,” he told the Senate, “that he will always be what he is today—the kind of citizen we have all prayed for.”

With Cicero’s endorsement, Caesar was named a propraetor of Rome. He continued to expand his army, acting fully within the law, and after the turn of the year, he marched off to help save Decimus Brutus from Mark Antony. The force that went against Antony included Caesar’s own soldiers and a larger army, under command of the two newly chosen consuls.

In April, they met Antony in battle. Both consuls were killed. Caesar fought well despite his inexperience. Routed, Antony and his army fled.

Caesar now led the consular army as well as his own force. The Senate sent him a dispatch, ordering him to turn command over to Decimus Brutus. He wrote back courteously explaining why that was impossible—many of the soldiers were veterans of Julius Caesar’s army; they could hardly be expected to follow the lead of one of his assassins.

When a delegation from Decimus Brutus arrived in his camp, wishing to negotiate an accommodation and suggesting a meeting between the two commanders, young Caesar explained that this was impossible too. Decimus Brutus had participated in the murder of his great-uncle and adoptive father. “Nature forbids me either to set eyes on or talk to Decimus Brutus. Let him seek his own safety.”

In other words, tell Decimus Brutus to run for his life.

Decimus was caught between Caesar’s forces and those of Mark Antony. His soldiers began to desert. He and a little band of loyalists tried to escape to Macedonia, where Republican forces had begun to gather under the leadership of Marcus Brutus. They were captured by a tribe of Gallic savages.

The Gauls, fearful of Roman power, sent word to Antony, asking what they should do with their prisoners. Antony said to kill them. So the savages whooped with pleasure and hacked them to death.

Caesar had secured the loyalty of eight legions, fifty thousand men. A deputation of four hundred centurions from his forces arrived in Rome. They put two demands before the Senate. For Caesar’s soldiers, they required a bonus in gold. For their commander, they demanded the consulship.

Tiberius Nero tried to talk sense to them. The centurions, men of plebeian background raised to positions of authority because of their judgment and courage, heard him out because they respected him as a soldier. For the Senate, they had only contempt. “They said the Senate has done nothing for the common people, ever,” Tiberius Nero told me. “They worshipped Julius Caesar and insist that young Caesar is the one great hope for Rome’s future. I couldn’t change their opinions.”

The next day, several centurions addressed the Senate. One of them pulled out his sword. “Make Caesar consul, or we’ll get the consulship for him with this,” he said.

The Senate ordered the centurions to go back to Caesar and tell him that his demands had been rejected. Soon after, we learned that Caesar Octavianus was marching on Rome.

It was winter. The days were short. Caesar’s army approached the city.
We had a family dinner, my mother, my father, Tiberius Nero, and me. Secunda was at the table too. Her lower lip trembled. I wondered how much she understood of what was happening. Perhaps only enough to be afraid.

“Cicero urges negotiation,” Father said. “But the boy has already said there’s nothing to negotiate.”

Mother gestured for a slave to serve the second course and fill our wine cups. “Not the ordinary wine,” she said. “Bring in the Judean vintage.” She gave my husband a tense smile. “Our son-in-law is here, after all.”

“Thank you, Alfidia,”
Tiberius Nero said. “But really, the ordinary stuff is good enough for me.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Negotiation would be pointless,”
Tiberius Nero said to my father. “The wonder is Cicero is not ashamed to show his face.”

“He was misled by a scoundrel,” Father said. The scoundrel he meant was Caesar.

“I hope the chicken is well done enough,” Mother said.

The slave came back with the Judean wine and poured some into each of our cups. The second course was served. Even in these circumstances, Mother had ordered the cook to prepare roast tuna in a mint-and-vinegar sauce, as well as baked chicken. There was also a dish of lentils with coriander. But none of us were hungry.

“It’s very good chicken, Mother,” Secunda said. She looked as if she might cry.

“I don’t suppose there is still time for us to leave the city,” Mother said to Father. “It’s too late for that, I suppose?”

“Much too late,” Father said. “All the roads are clogged. Decent people are being set upon by thugs as they try to escape from Rome with their goods. And Caesar’s army is rapidly advancing toward the city. It’s more dangerous to go than to stay.”

“I see,” Mother said.

We were quiet for a while, doing our best to down our dinner.

I had known for two months that I was with child, and my husband fervently hoped I would give birth to a son. Every morning I rose to vomit my insides out. A hostile army approached Rome; and the child in my belly made me feel even more vulnerable than I might have otherwise.

“I don’t see how it’s possible to make a stand,”
Tiberius Nero said. “With what troops?”

“Are you suggesting capitulation?” Father said. “Has it really come to tha
t
?”

“What’s the alternative?”

Father ran his hand over his face.

Would the Senate put up a fight when Caesar tried to enter the city? Everyone knew who would win such a fight. And then what—when the battle was over? Would Caesar order the execution of all men allied with the killers of his adoptive father? Might he wreak revenge on their families?

What if it came to the wors
t
?

If it did, then I would go as a supplicant to Caesar, clasp his knees, and hope he remembered that I had once done him a kindness. I would beg for the lives of my father and my mother and my sister—and yes, even my husband. I would plead for my own life and that of my unborn child.

My father had an empty, wounded expression on his face. Perhaps he wished he could go back in time and relive the last year. Despite his keen intellect, he had followed Brutus’s lead and then Cicero’s, even when they acted foolishly. He was a loyal man who had put too much faith in the judgment of others. I could have wept for him.

I decided that if I survived I would never do what Father had done, never defer to anyone’s judgment or refuse to look clear-eyed at the world. I would never be so blind, never.

If I survived.

Y
ou were quiet at dinner,”
Tiberius Nero said when we arrived home. “It’s unlike you.”

“There are no words,” I said. “For a Roman to march on Rome, demanding to be consul! What kind of man could do such a thing?”

“Try not to distress yourself,”
Tiberius Nero said. “Think of the child.”

Think of the child.

I imagined afterward, that the baby, having received a hint of what the world was like, thought better of the idea of being born and declined to join the dance of folly. Tiberius Nero and I went to bed, and in the middle of the night I awoke in pain, as if someone were driving a knife into my belly. The miscarriage was an ugly, bloody business, and the midwife could do nothing to make it easier for me. For several days afterward, my husband and my father and mother feared that I would die. As for me, I never realized my danger but lay in a stupor of pain. Then I began to recover.

I had felt little pleasurable excitement anticipating the birth of my child, perhaps because I was sick so often or because of the worries that occupied my mind. Yet I felt the loss keenly, as if a part of me had been ripped away.

As I lay in bed, feverish and ill, I thought of how it would have been to hold my baby in my arms, to guide his steps as he grew. I imagined a son, a small boy running through the garden to me, shouting, “Mother!” and grieved for the child who would never be born.

I was still confined to bed when I learned that Caesar’s army had paused, a day’s march from Rome. He exchanged no messages with the Senate, made no threats. Silently, he waited.

The Senate capitulated and made Caesar consul.

I sat up in bed, my back resting against a pile of pillows. Tiberius Nero entered the bedchamber, dressed in his senator’s toga with its purple trim. He sat down on the bed beside me. For many nights, sleep had eluded him, and his eyes were hollow with exhaustion. But he gave me a reassuring smile.

So,
I thought.
We will all go on living
.

I struggled to frame a question that would not be humiliating for my husband to answer. “How did Caesar ac
t
?” I asked finally.

“Oh, he was very polite, very reasonable. No boyish arrogance—he could have been a fifty-year-old magistrate, the way he acted. He thanked us all for coming to the Appian Way to greet him and escort him into the city—”

“The whole Senate was there?”

“Yes, certainly. The whole Senate.”

My father too?
I almost asked. But Tiberius Nero had already said
The whole Senate.

“Well, we welcomed him warmly, of course. Many men kissed him on the cheek. I didn’t. Maybe I should have. Perhaps he’ll remember that I didn’t and hold it against me. But in any case, he said how moved he was by our wonderful welcome. He sacrificed at the Temple of Jupiter officially as consul. And then we escorted him to the Forum, to show himself to the people. All along the way, there were cheering throngs. He made a speech from the Rostra, quite a smooth speech, about what he intends to do.”

A consul’s role while in Rome was to preside over the Senate and carry out senatorial decisions. But everyone knew that with an army at his back, Caesar would do more than preside. He would dictate
.
W
ith the Senate’s acquiescence, he would do just as he wished.

“And what does he intend?” I asked in a taut voice.

“First, to set up tribunals to try the killers of his ‘father’—”

I clutched Tiberius Nero’s arm.

“No, dearest, he doesn’t mean the mere accomplices, just the men who actually wielded the knives. They’ve all left Rome anyway. There’ll be one-day tribunals, which will return a directed verdict—‘guilty, guilty, guilty.’ Brutus and the others will be condemned in absentia.”

“Not you and my father?”

“No, certainly not. Didn’t I say how reasonable Caesar is? He asked us to allocate public funds for a statue of his great-uncle, to be built in the Forum, but only if we—the Senate, that is—thought it fitting. That statue will be built, believe me, posthaste.” Tiberius patted my hand. “The day after tomorrow, Caesar will march off, with his army—he’s up to eleven legions now, he happened to mention. He will defend the Republic from Antony, who—Caesar informed us—is a considerable threat to its stability. Gods above, we ate gall and wormwood, but Caesar has no plans to kill anybody, and he acted as if he couldn’t wait to leave town.”

“Who will govern here in Rome?”

“I’m sure Caesar will have picked men of his own to do that. And Livia, do you know what I found out today? The boy doesn’t shave yet. He’s very fair, and naturally not very hairy, so he’s only now getting much stubble on his chin. And he has new hair on his upper lip, I noticed. But he said he has sworn never to shave until he has avenged his so-called father. It will be a new experience for him—shaving.” My husband averted his face. “How the gods must be laughing at us.”

I ask myself now, was what I felt then for Caesar pure loathing? Did some part of me thrill to the audacity of what he had done? If so, I did not acknowledge the feeling. Caesar was a threat to all those I loved, and to everything my father had taught me to believe. I had reverence for the vision of the Republic that Father had shown me. In much of the world there were kings, and people bowed to the rule of one man
.
W
e in Rome had had a government based on law, in which the people elected magistrates, and from these magistrates senators were selected. The senators were once men who wished to serve the common good. I knew that the government had become corrupt, that over the last hundred years rich and powerful men had resorted to outright violence to subvert the people’s will, that the Senate had become a narrow, despised oligarchy. But, like my father, I had believed the Republic could be purified and once more be what it had been long ago. If Caesar had his way, that would never happen. I tried to consider him in that light, and only that light, not as a man I had felt drawn to but as a problem to be solved.

The next day, while tribunals met to obediently condemn Brutus and the rest, I summoned Caesar Octavianus into my presence. Oh, not the boy himself, but his phantom image. I sat, leaning against pillows in my bed, and imagined him, resplendent in his purple-edged consular toga, perching on the stool near my feet. I visualized him with his shining good looks, and added the new chin stubble and the hint of a moustache my husband had mentioned.

What do you want?
I asked him.

He answered,
Supreme power
.

What else?

I want to avenge my father.

Because you loved him so much?

They came at him, fifty against one, men who received only good from him. They stabbed him and stabbed him and stabbed him. Do you think I forget that?

Your great-uncle—

Young Caesar interrupted me.
Kindly do me the courtesy of calling him my father. Julius Caesar was the father I longed for. The father who begat me died before I could well remember him.

How strange it was. I felt no sympathy for Caesar Octavianus now, or so I believed. Yet there was an odd tie, as if I were able to sense his feelings.

I saw myself in Julius Caesar just as he saw himself in me,
the phantom said
. I did love him.

But it’s not all a matter of love with you. That’s not the only reason you seek revenge.

No, I have to avenge my father for my own credit. My soldiers will worship me less and hesitate to follow me if I don’t do it.

You are giving this matter of the tribunals a high priority. You want to appear to be acting within the law.

The phantom smiled.
Exactly.

You will convict Brutus and the rest, and then rush off to fight…Antony?

Caesar tilted his head and gaped at me.
Now why would I do that?

You said you would.

He laughed.
But Livia Drusilla, we both know I don’t always do what I say.

The armies of Caesar and Antony marched toward each other, Caesar coming from Rome, Antony from Gaul. They both stopped at the Lavinius River, and camped on opposite banks. In the middle of the river sat a tiny island, linked to both shores by bridges. Lepidus, a former consul, walked over to the island from Antony’s side of the river. This Lepidus had ranked next to Antony among Julius Caesar’s supporters. Now he dutifully searched for hidden weapons and lurking assassins.
When he found nothing, he waved his cloak, the agreed-upon signal. Caesar and Antony, alone and unarmed, crossed the bridges to the island.