Chapter XVII
XVII
This morning I asked my doctor for the truth about my illness. He is supposed to be one of the best in Italy. Livia recommended him.
He hummed and hawed, said my heart was strong, my fever had come down a little, that for a man of fifty I was generally in excellent condition.
But my leg, I said – look at it! It is swollen black, and now the blackness has spread above my knee!
The whole limb stinks of rot. I can hardly abide to be in the same room as myself!
I know death when I see it – I’ve spent half my life staring it in the face.
Tell me honestly, how long before this thing kills me?
For the first time he dared to meet my gaze, although his eyes were shifty and full of fear.
A week, he answered. Maybe longer. Possibly less.
I’d have sent him packing with a kick up his fat Greek backside if I’d had the strength to get out of bed.
So there it is – the mortal sentence that awaits us all.
I can’t say it frightens me. I have always lacked the imagination to waste my time worrying about oblivion.
A man dies while on campaign. His comrades divide his kit.
The march goes on. Eventually their turn will come as well.
What more is there to say? I suppose this is one reason why I was a successful soldier.
To be unafraid of death does bestow a certain advantage.
Still, it is curious to think that it has come to me first, even though Augustus was the one who was always sick.
Ah, Augustus! You are in Greece, which almost certainly means I shall never see you again. You would have to sprout wings to get home in time to say goodbye. Mind you, you’re supposed to be the son of a god, so perhaps you will.
I have just written to Livia, informing her of my condition and asking her to let you know.
Italy is secure. The borders are quiet. There is no need for you to hurry home. But even after all these years, ambitious men still lurk in the shadows who could try to take advantage of my disappearance. Therefore, I have requested that Livia not breathe a word to anyone apart from you.
Especially not to Julia.
I could not bear to have her see me in such a state. Let her and the children remember me as I was.
In the meantime, I must get a move on with my memoir, while I still can.
A few months after acquiring his new title, Augustus left for Gaul and Spain. On the eve of his departure, he asked to see me. He told me he intended to take Livia with him, along with Tiberius and Marcellus. He wanted to give the boys some military experience.
– If anything happens to me, you are to have control of the state. My wishes are all set out in my will. I don’t want to make it public in advance. That would only create jealousy and intrigue. It doesn’t mean I am reneging on my undertaking to you, though, you understand.
I told him I was sure he would return safe and sound, so the issue would not arise. Any fighting was likely to be localised to a couple of rebellious tribes, and his health had much improved of late.
– You are right. I seem to have outgrown my youthful maladies.
I did not see him again for more than two years – a period I shall describe only briefly, given that my time is now so short.
I lived with Claudia in a marriage that was neither happy nor unhappy. Young as she was, her noble birth meant she was bred to the part of playing a consul’s wife. She graciously entertained official guests and presided with impeccable dignity over the various religious rites reserved for women.
I could not abide staying for long in a house that was haunted by the ghosts of Pompey and Antony.
Instead, I bought a new estate outside the city walls, on the slopes of the Vatican Hill.
Here, in time, Claudia gave birth to our daughters, Marcella and Marcellina.
She lived at one end of the villa with the girls, and I at the other.
I saw much of my other two daughters, by Caecilia, and Octavia came often with all her various infants, so that the house and gardens were generally filled by childish noise.
Claudia and I never quarrelled. Each of us was faithful to the other. There are worse things in married life than boredom. Besides, I had much to occupy me beyond my home.
With the encouragement of Augustus, I had embarked upon an extensive programme of public works on the Field of Mars.
Back then, this was still mostly grassland and swamp.
I sank concrete piers into the Tiber and built a triple-arched bridge across it to improve the area’s connection to the city.
I made a bonfire of the old sheep pens that had been used ever since the foundation of the Republic to channel the voters on election day and laid down paving stones to create a huge new rectangular voting area, a thousand feet long and four hundred wide, surrounded by a covered colonnade to protect the citizens from the rain and sun.
The walls were lined with paintings and marble carvings.
Maecenas, among others, loaned bronze statues of Pan and Achilles and similar inspiring figures to decorate the walkways.
The elections might not carry much importance any more, but their appearance at least was magnificent.
I built a basilica of Neptune to honour our naval victories and decorated it with frescoes depicting scenes from the legend of Jason and the Argonauts.
Next to this, I erected a public gymnasium, with an exercise hall and a courtyard, and a magnificent bathhouse, with an indoor pool and sweating rooms heated day and night by furnaces.
To supply it with water, I began construction of yet another aqueduct, the Aqua Virgo, named after the maiden who led my surveyors to its source, a plentiful local spring that rises eight miles east of Rome.
And I built the Pantheon, to honour the gods and heroes of ancient legend, with an immense self-supported roof designed to resemble the heavens, a miracle of engineering made possible by binding the concrete with the light, frothy pumice stone that is found in such profusion in the countryside around Vesuvius.
Never was I more content than when I was poring over plans with my architects on a building site, standing outside in sun and rain, watching our ideas take solid form.
I loved to jump down into the trenches with their smell of freshly dug earth and help lift timber, or find some excuse to climb the bending ladders, the higher the better, to lay a course of bricks.
Often I would return home in the darkness at the end of the day with dirt under my fingernails, my legs caked in dried mud, my limbs aching from the exertion.
We laboured hard through all four seasons to have the city transformed by the time Augustus returned from Spain, where he had successfully subdued two rebellious tribes.
We had still not entirely completed the work when I received news that he had fallen gravely ill again.
Just now, I laid my hands on the letter he sent me.
It was composed in the port of Tarraco, on the eastern coast of Spain, in the third autumn of his rule.
I had forgotten that rather than dictate it, he wrote it out himself, I assume to avoid the prying eyes of his wife as much as those of his secretaries.
It must have cost him some effort. Ever since school, he had been proud of his elegant handwriting.
Here, in contrast, the words are shaky, the lines slanting down from left to right.
Tarraco
Kalends of October
Secret
Greetings, my dear Agrippa.
We spoke too soon about my illness! The gods have punished my complacency.
It has returned, even worse than before – the sweats, the swelling, the weakness in my limbs, the headaches, the whole thing.
Livia and my doctors insist it would be fatal for me to attempt to return to Italy until I am strong enough for a sea voyage.
As I am unsure when that will be – or even if it will be – I must now put in train my plans for the succession.
I am sending Marcellus and Tiberius back to Rome.
Both acquitted themselves well as military tribunes in the campaigns against the Cantabri and the Astures.
But everything I have seen has strengthened my conviction that it is Marcellus who will make the better ruler.
I have therefore decided he should marry my daughter, and so be seen publicly as my heir, and the sooner the better.
Livia of course opposes the match. Normally she is wiser than any man, but her maternal devotion to Tiberius knows no limits and blinds her to his faults.
Yes, I agree, he is physically strong, capable and brave.
Unfortunately, he is also prone to angry moods and fits of melancholy that wipe away his virtues.
Try as I might, I cannot like him. I am sure the people will never follow him.
I had hoped to give Julia away myself, but that is impossible.
So I would like you, my oldest friend, to do the honours on my behalf – and quickly, as soon as Marcellus arrives in Rome, just in case the worst happens.
You should inform Octavia of my wishes, and Julia’s mother.
I suppose to explain my absence you will have to mention my illness, but play it down and tell them to keep it to themselves.
I shall let you know when I am well enough to travel.
Pray for me.
I was alarmed by what I read. The great buildings I had erected seemed suddenly to tremble on their foundations.
They had been designed to symbolise a new era of stability and glory.
But without Augustus they felt more like an act of hubris – an invitation to the gods to withdraw their favour from Rome.
That night I had a dream in which I wandered through them, and they had all become ruins, draped with ivy, full of weeds.