Chapter XII #2
When I called on Caesar, he expressed surprise to see me. Why had I come into the city unnoticed? What about my triumph?
I said it did not seem appropriate to hold a celebration when the people were hungry and we faced a continuing threat from Sextus.
– In any case, as you know, that kind of public ostentation has never been my style. The honour of serving you and my country is glory enough for me.
– Still, I wish you had spoken to me first. I would have tried to dissuade you.
He held out his arms.
– Come, let me embrace you, my oldest and dearest friend! My life has changed a lot since we last met.
He took me into the nursery and showed me his two new stepchildren, Livia’s sons by Claudius Nero – Tiberius, who was four years old, and Drusus, who was still a baby.
He sent a message to Scribonia and had a wet nurse bring over his own baby daughter, Julia, who was not yet one and living with her mother a few houses away.
He held her at arm’s length and threw her up in the air a couple of times. When she started to cry, he handed her back to her nurse and told her to take her away.
– The family, Agrippa – this is the foundation of Roman society. And you now have a daughter of your own, of course. Tell me about her.
As I described Agrippina in the lyrical terms of a first-time father, he ruffled Tiberius’s hair.
– Wonderful, wonderful. Here is a thought. I would like there to be some public gesture of recognition for your success in Gaul. As it cannot any longer be a triumph, let us announce instead the betrothal of Caesar’s stepson Tiberius to your Agrippina. Would you like that, Tiberius?
Tiberius nodded. I am sure he had no idea what it meant.
The suggestion caught me by surprise. I could hardly refuse, though, and neither did I wish to. I said it would be an honour to have our two families joined in such a way.
– Excellent. Let us find the boy’s mother and tell her the good news.
Livia was lying on a couch, reading, and rose when we came in.
Maecenas was right, I had never met her before. I certainly would have remembered her if I had. She possessed a doll-like beauty, but it was not that which made her so compelling, as I was to discover over the following years, when I came to know her better. It was the toughness of her character.
She had been born into one of the ancient clans, the Claudii, and had been always on the losing side during the civil wars.
Her father had committed suicide after Philippi.
Her first husband, Nero, who was also her cousin, had followed the rebel cause of Lucius and Fulvia.
After witnessing the massacre at Perusia, she had fled with him to the eastern Mediterranean, a pregnant teenager, where they had lived rough in the mountains, only narrowly escaping capture.
She once described to me how her dress and hair had been scorched by flames when the shepherd’s hut they were hiding in was set on fire, and how the crying of her baby, Tiberius, had almost given them away.
They had sought refuge with Sextus, and had only returned to Rome after the peace of Misenum.
Such was the determined survivor I met that winter’s afternoon – the only woman to whom I ever saw Caesar defer.
He introduced me as his oldest and closest friend and informed her that I had agreed to a match between Tiberius and Agrippina. She smiled and nodded in approval.
– I have heard a great deal about you, Agrippa. I will be honoured to have such a famous general related to my family. That was why I suggested it.
Caesar said the time had come to discuss the reason he had summoned me back to Rome. He ordered one of his secretaries to bring him maps of southern Italy. I assumed Livia would withdraw. Instead, once the charts were spread out, she joined us at the table.
Caesar described the chaotic sea battles of the summer and blamed his defeat on bad weather and the failure of Antony and Lepidus to come to his assistance.
Despite the presence of Livia, I decided to speak with my usual frankness.
– Be that as it may, Caesar – and I am sure the storms were fierce – the fact remains that we were beaten, and by a fleet manned by the dregs of the earth, who also faced the same storms as we did.
The root of our problem is that Sextus occupies Sicily.
It is unacceptable that a great empire should be held hostage by pirates occupying an island a mere four miles off its coast. The only way to put an end to these constant blockades and incursions is to drive him out of Sicily.
– That was what I was endeavouring to do!
– I understand, but to do it successfully, we need to employ the same principles on sea as we do on land – overwhelming force, professionalism and discipline.
In short, we need a whole new navy, properly trained.
And we need to base it permanently on the Mediterranean coast, not the Adriatic.
Brundisium is on the wrong side of Italy.
– We have Ostia.
– Ostia is four hundred and fifty miles from Sicily.
– Then where do you suggest?
– I was thinking last night of the area close to Misenum. It would cut the distance by almost half.
– Misenum? That tiny place? Its harbour is too small for anything larger than fishing boats!
– There are lakes close by, only a few hundred paces from the sea.
Do you remember I searched the area to find a place where you and Antony could negotiate the treaty with Sextus?
I would need to return with engineers and make a proper survey, but if we could dig a channel from the lakes through to the Mediterranean, we would create a natural harbour, well protected from any storms.
Caesar was sceptical. Even if the scheme was feasible, it would take years to finish, and then we would still need to build the warships to fill it.
And the cost! Where was he to find the money?
And the manpower? Yet the more objections he raised, the less certain he sounded.
Finally he turned to Livia and asked her what she thought.
– I think it is a conception on a massive scale, Caesar – worthy of the pharaohs, worthy of you.
And when it was put to him in those terms, and put by her, I knew he would agree.
As senior consul, I was required on the first of January to preside at the opening of the Senate.
As soon as the ceremony in the Temple of Jupiter was over, I took immediate leave of absence.
My duties devolved onto my consular colleague, a distant cousin of Antony’s.
He was a placeman, a nobody, a figurehead.
The important decisions would all be taken by Caesar.
I left for Misenum that same afternoon. I took with me L. Cocceius Auctus, my chief engineer from my time in Gaul, who had impressed me by the speed with which he had erected a temporary bridge across the Rhine.
History records many soldiers and statesmen but seldom mentions engineers.
Yet these are the men who really made Rome great.
They built the roads and the aqueducts that enabled the empire to spread.
Their incredible constructions brought undreamed-of wealth and comfort to the people.
Auctus was typical of their type – the sort of fellow to whom one gives an impossible task, who sucks his teeth and shakes his head and asks for an hour to think it over, and then returns with a solution.
When we arrived in Campania, I found my memory had been correct.
The coastal road from Neapolis to Misenum ran across a spit of land no more than fifty paces wide, separating the sea from the Lucrine Lake.
That lake itself might easily become a harbour.
But it was the much larger Lake Avernus, which lay a quarter of a mile further inland, that I coveted most. That could form a perfect natural inner port, protected from both the elements and enemy raiders.
Auctus and I, together with his surveyors, walked back and forth across the marshy land between the two lakes.
It would be a Herculean task, he said, to dig a canal from one to the other, as the channel would have to be wide enough and deep enough to allow the passage of large warships.
But eventually he conceded it could be done.
If I had to choose the single accomplishment of my life of which I am most proud, it would be what I did here.
I approached it as I would a military campaign.
I drew the workforce from slaves and the thousands of veterans who had been resettled nearby.
I created a tented army camp on site to house them.
Soon the area swarmed with a myriad of activity and looked, as Livia had observed, as the Valley of the Kings must have done when the pyramids were created.
I based myself in Caesar’s parents’ old villa in nearby Puteoli, and arranged for Caecilia and Agrippina to join me. They were happy as well as productive days.
Sextus’s ships often patrolled the Bay of Naples.
If he had got wind of what we were doing, he would surely have sent a task force to attack us.
Secrecy was therefore vital. The entrance to our site I kept invisible from the sea with a screen of trees, while Auctus dug a tunnel north from the Avernus to Cumae to bring in labour and supplies.
The gods have blessed that part of Italy close to Vesuvius with a reddish soil of remarkable properties.
When mixed with lime, sand and a little water, and pounded hard, it forms a hydraulic concrete called puteolanum that sets underwater as hard as rock.
We had no need for time-consuming bricklaying.
Using concrete poured into wooden shuttering, we were able to build harbour walls, quays, moles, piers, bridges, locks and jetties at great speed, all conjured out of the soil we walked on.