Chapter XIII
XIII
Following the victory in Sicily, in November Caesar and I returned to Rome together.
The Senate had awarded him an ovation, and he entered the city to applause from the entire population – the man who had finally cleared the seas of pirates!
He allowed me to ride behind him. After processing in triumph to the Capitoline Hill, he sacrificed to Jupiter.
A naked statue of him, heroically endowed, was raised high on a column in the forum.
I did not begrudge him his day of glory.
He was graciously generous to me. He created a unique military decoration, a golden wreath called the naval crown, that I was permitted to wear on special occasions.
A silver coin was minted in my honour. He also gave me estates in Sicily, which yielded an enormous income, on the usual condition that they would revert to him in the event of my death.
I was glad to be home after so many months away. In my absence, Caecilia had given birth to another daughter. We named her Attica in honour of her grandfather.
Caesar had also hoped to come back to a child, but Livia’s baby was stillborn. And that was not the only family trouble that awaited him.
I was lying on the nursery floor a few days after our return, playing with Agrippina beside her sleeping sister’s crib, when a slave entered with a message from Caesar summoning me urgently to his house.
I found him closeted with Maecenas and Livia, who was reclining on a couch, still pale from the loss of blood she had suffered during her confinement.
Most surprising was the presence of Octavia, who was supposed to be in Athens with Mark Antony.
Her eyes were red from crying. At the sight of me, she began again.
Caesar put his arm around her shoulders.
– Compose yourself, my dearest, and tell Agrippa what you’ve just told us.
She bowed her head.
– Antony has sent me away!
Her story came out slowly, broken by bouts of weeping.
The gist of it was that to begin with the marriage had been happy, or so she had thought.
They had lived together in Athens for several years, and she had given birth to two daughters.
But a month ago he had sent her packing back to Rome, along with her three children by Marcellus and his own three by his previous wives.
He excused his desertion by saying he needed to go to Egypt to mount an expedition against the Parthians.
Wishing to comfort her, I said that surely that was a plausible reason. A military campaign was no place for a wife and children. She shook her head miserably.
– No, he has gone back to Cleopatra, I am sure of it.
Throughout our marriage she was always sending him gifts and messages and portraits of their children.
Sometimes, when he was drunk, he told me he still loved her.
He wouldn’t even let me stay in Athens while he went to Egypt. He wanted me as far away as possible.
Maecenas, the original instigator of the marriage, quickly pointed out that he hadn’t actually divorced her.
– That must be significant. Clearly he doesn’t dare antagonise you, Caesar, by formally breaking your alliance.
– But this is even worse! He has insulted my sister, which is an insult to me. Either I do nothing about it and look weak, or I complain and threaten retaliation and then take the blame if it turns into another war. What do you say, Agrippa?
The idea that he might seriously contemplate going to war over such a matter filled me with alarm.
– Roman has fought Roman almost continuously for thirteen years. The people are sick of such endless slaughter. They will not forgive you if you start it all again.
The silence that followed was broken by Livia.
– You should go to Egypt, Octavia, no matter what he says. Shame him into taking you back.
– That is unthinkable! I would sooner divorce him.
– No doubt you would, but I fear that would be bad politics. If there is any divorcing to be done, he must be the one to do it, not you. Go to Egypt and force him to make the choice. Let the people see what he’s like.
Poor Octavia. She looked to her brother to save her from such a humiliation, but I could see that the idea impressed him.
– You wouldn’t need to go immediately. Winter is a bad time to travel. Rest here and wait until the spring. I’ll write to him in the meantime, and hopefully he will see sense. But if he doesn’t, Livia’s plan sounds a good one.
And he smiled at his wife with something that for him was always more powerful than affection – respect.
After a summer away fighting, I would have preferred to stay at home with my young family for at least a few more months.
But Caesar needed a reason to keep his immense army together in case he had to fight Antony.
And he was determined to prove he was capable of leading men into battle. For this, he needed me.
He also wanted – assuming Antony defeated the Parthians – to show that he too could vanquish an enemy other than Romans. He settled on an invasion of Illyricum, even though we had no quarrel with the local tribes and they had never attacked us.
If my health was strong enough, I would now describe the fighting in Illyricum.
But I fear my time is short, and in any case the battles and the marches and the ambushes all run together in my memory.
Let me record merely that Caesar made sure to expose himself to danger, which put paid to any lingering rumour that he was a physical coward.
He also showed himself a harsh disciplinarian.
On one occasion a cohort panicked and ran after a night-time attack, and he ordered its decimation.
Fifty men were beaten to death in front of their comrades. There was no desertion after that.
At the end of two campaigning seasons, Caesar was finally able to inform the Senate that he had won an overwhelming victory, and was awarded a triumph.
In fact, we had stirred up an enduring enmity among the tribes in the region that meant they would never be peaceful again – hence the reason I had to go back again this year.
War always breeds more war.
It was while we were fighting in Illyricum that poor Octavia was sent on her journey to confront Antony.
Caesar and Maecenas made sure her departure was as public as possible.
She travelled with two cohorts of cavalry, two thousand Praetorian Guards, and a wagon train of supplies and pack animals for Antony’s Parthian campaign.
But when she reached Athens, she found a letter from her husband forbidding her to proceed any further.
After a few miserable weeks in Greece hoping he might relent, she returned to Rome in a worse state than when she had left, for now her humiliation was known to all.
This suited Caesar very well. Octavia was a popular figure with the citizens of Rome.
The spectacle of her reappearance in the city with eight children, three of them not even hers, attracted widespread sympathy.
There was much resentment against Antony and his Egyptian mistress, which Caesar and Maecenas were diligent in spreading.
Caesar had now taken the consulship for the second time, and asked me what office I would like to hold in the coming year.
I wanted a break from the army and told him I would like to be appointed aedile, responsible for the upkeep and amenities of the city – generally considered a thankless and expensive task, usually undertaken by a man at the start of his career.
As I had already held the two most senior magistracies of urban praetor and consul, he was puzzled why I should request what would seem a demotion.
I answered truthfully that after the construction of the Portus Julius I had acquired a taste for building rather than destruction, and that now, thanks to him, I had the money to afford it. He saw the political benefits and approved my request.
It was now sixteen years since his great-uncle had crossed the Rubicon and started the first of our endless civil wars.
Hundreds of thousands had died. The damage and misery that had been inflicted were visible everywhere in the capital city.
The streets were potholed, the buildings dilapidated, the place was filthy.
It was my dream not simply to restore but to improve it.
I had already consulted Auctus, my old chief engineer, and together we began a great programme of public works.
First we repaired the cloaca maxima, the ancient sewer and storm drain that runs for a mile beneath the city centre and discharges into the River Tiber.
Parts of it were five hundred years old and falling down.
We cleared the blockages and fixed the walls and roof.
When the work was done, I had myself rowed along its entire length in a barge lined with flaming torches so that I could inspect the brickwork and manholes.
Once I was satisfied that the cloaca could cope with the additional flow, I turned my attention to the supply of fresh water.
I renovated the three main aqueducts – the Marcia, the Appia and the Vetus – and built an entirely new one, diverting several springs in the hills near Tusculum.
It ran for twelve miles, mostly underground, entered the city along the Servian Wall, crossed an arched span over the Via Tiburtina and finally disgorged into a reservoir near the Colline Gate.
I named it the Aqua Julia in honour of Caesar, and he presided over the sacrifices at the opening ceremony.
In the space of a year, I dug seven hundred wells and one hundred and thirty reservoirs, built half a dozen bathhouses – for both men and women, and free of charge at least one day per week – installed five hundred drinking fountains, and beautified it all with three hundred bronze and marble statues and four hundred marble columns.
Finally I laid on fifty-nine days of chariot races, theatrical performances and games in the Circus Maximus.