Chapter XVI #3
I remember being startled at the sight of so many children all together.
Apart from Caesar’s daughter, Julia, and Livia’s two sons, Tiberius and Drusus, there were no fewer than eleven accompanying Octavia – her two girls by her first husband, together with her son, Marcellus, who had been born after his father’s death; her two children by Mark Antony and his three offspring by his earlier wives, whom she had cared for while he was in Egypt; and most extraordinary of all, his three surviving children by Cleopatra, who only a few days earlier had been paraded through Rome as captives, and whom Octavia had persuaded Caesar to let her bring into her household.
This act of kindness was typical of her generous nature.
I had known and admired her for years. Both her former husbands were dead, and I would happily have married her, which would have made me Caesar’s brother-in-law.
But she was past the age when it was likely or even safe for her to become pregnant.
And although he had never said as much, I knew it was part of Caesar’s dynastic calculations that I should sire yet more infants, preferably sons, to add to this imperial brood of future consuls and generals.
As he took me round the room to introduce me, it crossed my mind that I had become in his eyes something like a stallion to be paraded at a stud farm.
My bride was twenty. I was thirty-four. Her life had not been easy.
Her father had died when she was a child, and she had witnessed Antony’s treatment of her mother at first hand, as the family trailed back and forth between Rome and Athens, until finally her stepfather had thrown them all out of his house.
Siblings can become unusually close in such circumstances, when they are obliged to look after one another, and I noticed how Marcellus rarely left his sister’s side, and that when he looked at me, he did not trouble to hide his resentment.
Of Claudia herself, I had no complaints, except that we had nothing at all in common.
In manner and appearance she took after her mother – handsome, dutiful, polite, reserved.
She seemed neither enthusiastic at the prospect of marrying me nor particularly unhappy.
I suppose for her it was simply one more disruption she had to put up with in her turbulent life.
As a wedding present, Caesar gave us Antony’s old house, formerly Pompey’s mansion, with the ships’ rams set in the walls – the place where we had first confronted Antony to demand the dictator’s legacy all those years ago.
After the ceremony had concluded and we had exchanged an unexpectedly passionate kiss, Caesar presided over a banquet of seven tables laid out in our honour. I was placed beside Claudia at one end of his table, while at the other he shared a couch with Maecenas’s wife, Terentia.
Poor Maecenas! I can see his stricken expression even now as he watched them flirting with one another. At the end of the meal, after Caesar had raised a toast to our marriage and happiness, they slipped away together on the pretext of visiting his library, and did not return for another half-hour.
Livia glanced at me and briefly raised her eyebrows, but made no comment.
Caesar would settle for nothing less than absolute power for life. But he felt it would be an insult to his dignity to be seen to ask for it. He spent some months considering this problem before devising a solution that perfectly displayed his cunning and taste for drama.
At the start of our second term as consuls, he stood up in the Senate and made a surprise announcement.
– Conscript Fathers, throughout my life I have laboured long and hard to restore our Republic.
As I look across our mighty nation, I see an empire prosperous and at peace for the first time in my life, and I feel my work is done.
No man here can deny that I have earned a rest. Accordingly, I now, today, lay down the burden of my offices and retire entirely from all public duties.
I leave you in the safe hands of my valiant nephew, Agrippa.
No doubt you will quickly appoint a replacement for me as a suffect consul from among your number.
He will have my absolute support. Farewell, gentlemen, and may the gods bless Rome.
With these words, or something like them – I am quoting from memory – he gestured to me to take his place, descended from the dais, walked the length of the aisle to the doors where his guards were waiting and disappeared.
The reaction at first was stupefied silence, followed by a rising babble of excited conversation as the senators turned to one another and asked if they could believe what they had just heard, and finally pandemonium as the truth sank in.
One after another they stood to demand that I should go to Caesar at once and plead with him to change his mind.
I made a careful note of their names, and also – more importantly for future reference – of all those who remained silent. I promised to do as they asked.
I then suspended the sitting and went straight to Caesar’s house.
Of course, it was a ruse, and a most effective one. As we sat talking in his atrium with Maecenas, Livia and that arch-survivor Plancus, who was in on the plot, a commotion in the street outside signalled that the Senate had arrived en masse to beg him to return.
Caesar sent one of his officers to tell them that he was resting and would be grateful if they dispersed, which reluctantly they did.
What would we have done if they had accepted his resignation?
We had made no contingency plans for that.
I suppose he would have found some excuse to return and restore order and would then have purged all those who had tried to seize control.
In the end, the issue never arose. Even those among his opponents who guessed his withdrawal was a sham were forced to stare briefly into the abyss of a future without Caesar and realise that it would be chaos.
He left them to dwell on the prospect for another day, and then sent me back to summon the Senate for an emergency session to debate their response.
I called on Plancus to speak first.
He reported that he had consulted Caesar, who had reluctantly agreed to return on the following conditions.
That whereas the Senate would continue to draw lots among themselves to decide the governors of the proconsular provinces of Africa, Asia, Greece, Sicily, Sardinia, Crete and various other unimportant territories, Caesar for the next ten years would have complete control of Spain, Gaul, Cilicia, Cyprus and Egypt, together with all their income, the power to decide who governed them, and responsibility for their defence.
As these were the provinces where the bulk of the legions were stationed, it meant that he would have effective control of the army.
As to the question of his title, Plancus said that Caesar was content to remain merely the first citizen, but that he, Plancus, was sure the Senate would agree that this was hardly adequate.
We had toyed with the idea of naming him after the founder of the city, but Caesar had decided that Romulus was too redolent of monarchy, and had settled instead on the dignified honorific of Augustus – ‘the Revered One’ – close to, but not quite, divine.
The proposal that he should be awarded the title in perpetuity was accepted with no votes against.
Caesar had been waiting nearby with his bodyguard.
I went to fetch him. Together we entered the chamber to a standing ovation.
I stopped to let him go ahead of me. Caesar walked calmly to the dais and stood for a while modestly acknowledging the cheers, pointing to this senator and that whom he recognised, smiling and nodding to them.
Then he held up his hands for silence and settled himself in his chair.
The Senate moved on to discuss other business. Nothing more was said about the matter, and in this way, on a quiet winter’s afternoon, Rome’s ancient Republic died – without protest, violent overthrow or fighting in the streets. Most people did not even notice, let alone care.
From that day onwards, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus became known simply as Augustus, a presence as inescapable throughout the world as air.
His name was minted on the coinage and carved into stone on ten thousand statues, buildings, fountains and bridges.
It was appended to statutes and proclamations.
It was inserted into all the official prayers of the state religious cults, and it became customary – or at any rate, wise – for ordinary citizens to honour it with a libation before every domestic meal.
Eventually, even the calendar was adjusted around it, so that henceforth events were spoken of as having occurred in such-and-such a year of Augustus.
Thus time itself was conquered, and gradually my old friend ceased to be a man, or even a monarch, and became instead an epoch.