Chapter XIX
XIX
Augustus granted me general proconsular power for a term of five years, but no specific command. The arrangement suited us both. He could say that I was away on a confidential special mission. I could escape the poisonous swamp of Rome.
To maintain the fiction, I was provided with a small flotilla of triremes and liburnians, which I boarded in the harbour of Brundisium at the end of July. I took with me half a dozen slaves, including a cook and a doctor, a freedman who served as my secretary, and a couple of staff officers.
The captain asked me where I wished to go.
I called for a map of the eastern Mediterranean.
My first thought had been to head for Athens.
But that would be full of Roman magistrates and traders, whereas I sought solitude.
In the end, I settled on the island of Lesbos, for no better reasons than that it was reasonably remote, I had never been there before, and I had heard it was pleasant.
At the age of forty, for the first time in my life, I was running away from a fight. Travel was what I craved. Movement. A changing view. Anything to distract me from my thoughts, which had become unhealthily dark and brooding.
I stood at the stern and watched the coast of Italy dwindle and disappear.
I had not set foot on a warship since my return from Actium eight years earlier.
Immediately I felt my spirits start to revive.
Now that I look back, I can see that water was the element in which I was always most at home – aqueducts, bathhouses, fountains, but most of all the sea.
That long voyage over the calm summer waves, around the coast of Greece and up through the islands and into the Aegean, was a balm to my soul, and by the time we reached Lesbos, I was fully restored.
It was a beautiful place. I could picture myself living there for years.
I bought a villa in the island’s main town of Mytilene, looking out over the busy harbour, so there was always something to see.
The heat of summer was passing. The climate was mild.
I spent my days digging a new drainage system in the garden, planting an olive grove, building a loggia and reading books on travel and history.
I even hired a tutor to improve my Greek.
I met a woman in the town, a young widow whose name I shall not record because she is still alive, and she became my companion, running the household and sharing my meals. For exercise, I hiked into the mountains, often pitching a tent in the wilderness and sleeping out on my own.
When the winter began and brought rain, I changed my routine and began walking through the town. I pulled up my hood as a precaution, but nobody recognised me.
And thus the months passed pleasantly.
There are two harbours in Mytilene, linked by a bridge.
The one to the south, on the mainland where I lived, is used by merchant vessels and fishermen.
The one to the north is situated on an island and has deeper water, suitable for warships.
For the early part of my stay, it was empty.
But one day in November, I noticed that three triremes had moored overnight.
Curiosity got the better of me, and I crossed the bridge for a closer look.
The quayside was thronged with sailors. I missed the companionship of the legions. It was nostalgic to wander among them, listening to their talk. Suddenly I heard my name being called.
I turned to see a man coming down a gangplank.
He was the captain of one of the triremes.
It turned out he had fought under my command as a young sailor at Actium, and still recognised me after all these years.
He was most deferential, to the extent that he got down on his knees.
I hastily pulled him to his feet. He took me on board, poured some wine, and we had a pleasant conversation about old times.
I asked what had brought the squadron to Lesbos. He told me there had been fighting in the region. The governor of Macedonia, Marcus Primus, had attacked the kingdom of the Odrysians, a hundred miles to the north. I expressed surprise.
– But the Odrysians are our allies. We have a treaty with them.
The captain shrugged. Such matters were above him.
So, I thought, Marcellus has had his war after all.
But thankfully I was now out of it. What strategies or conspiracies lay behind the fighting were no more my concern than they were the captain’s.
After confiding in him that I was living on Lesbos incognito, and asking him not to mention that he had seen me, I walked back to the villa for my dinner, and thought no more about it.
This much I have learned at the end of a long life. Our past will always find us, no matter how hard we try to hide from it.
One morning a few weeks later, at the beginning of January, I went out onto the terrace and saw that a new trireme had put into the island harbour. The previous squadron had long since gone. It was moored alone.
The sight was somehow ominous. I felt a tightening in my chest. I sensed the ship was a harbinger of bad news.
Presently, a messenger appeared at my door carrying a letter addressed to me. It had a wax seal bearing the image of a sphinx. I recognised it at once.
I took the letter into my study and broke it open.
From: Augustus
To: Agrippa
Alban Mount
Kalends of November
My dear old friend,
The worst has happened. I can hardly write for grief.
Marcellus is dead.
Poor Julia is a widow at sixteen.
There is pestilence in Rome, so I have been keeping clear of the city, staying out here in the hills.
Marcellus, with the vainglory of youth, ignored all warnings.
That, I am told, is what killed him, less than a week ago.
Perhaps it is true, but my mind is filled with dark suspicions I dare not confide in a letter, even to you.
Livia is jubilant, although she tries to hide it. Tiberius mopes around as usual.
All my plans are broken. The new consuls are to be Aeserninus – an old follower of Lepidus, which tells you all you need to know – and Arruntius, a good man whom you will remember from Actium.
But both are weak politically, and with Marcellus now gone, I fear all manner of plots are forming against me.
Will you board the ship I have sent to convey this letter and hurry back to Italy at once? I do not order this, but I ask you in remembrance of all our years together.
Rome needs your strength and wise counsel.
And I need my friend.
It was the most remarkable letter I had ever received from him.
If I did not have it here before me now, I would say I must have imagined it.
The news it contained was dramatic enough – Marcellus dead at nineteen!
I cannot say I wept at that. But even more shocking to me than the content was the tone.
I had never heard Augustus sound so querulous.
All my plans are broken …
I felt as though he had reached out his hand over hundreds of miles and grasped me by the shoulder.
My resentment of him vanished at that moment.
I looked around my comfortable room, in my comfortable house, on my comfortable island, and realised I was living a comfortable death.
I summoned my staff and ordered them to prepare to leave.
I gave the villa to my companion as a reward for her kindness and left that same day.
Our voyage across the Aegean in the depths of winter was the most brutal I ever endured.
For days on end, in that limitless, dark and heaving expanse, with the wind roaring all around us, not once did we glimpse another ship.
The mast snapped, and when we reached the Greek mainland, we had to put into a harbour for repairs and to allow the crew to rest. Thereafter, we dared not risk the open sea.
Instead, we followed the coast, making it a much longer journey than if we had steered a direct course, so that it was not until the end of February that we finally reached Brundisium.
I sent a message ahead to Augustus reporting that I had landed, then set out as fast as I could towards Rome.
I found him about a week later waiting for me in his villa on the Alban Mount.
The grounds as usual swarmed with his Praetorian Guard.
He said nothing as I walked in, but rose from his chair and advanced rapidly towards the centre of the room.
Flinging out his arms, he embraced me longer and more tightly than he usually did, patting my back repeatedly before he released me.
His body felt thin yet strong. He had plainly recovered his health.
As we separated, I looked around and remarked how quiet and empty the large house seemed.
He explained that Livia was in Rome with her sons and that the newly widowed Julia had gone back to her mother’s.
I said I had expected to find him with Maecenas, at least.
– I’m not sure I entirely trust Maecenas any more.
I laughed. I thought it was a joke.
– If you don’t trust Maecenas, who do you trust?
– Nobody. Except you.
He took me out onto the terrace, where we could not be overheard, and ordered food and drink to be brought.
He instructed the slave who fetched it to taste each dish and sip the wine.
Only when the man had suffered no ill effects did he dismiss him, and even then, when he picked up a piece of fruit, he sniffed it and put it down again.
He noticed my surprise.
– I have learned to be careful. I saw Marcellus, sitting just where you are, only two days before he died. He seemed fit and healthy enough to me.
– I thought he died from the pestilence.
– So they say.
– You think he was poisoned?
– It is possible. He was taken so quickly. His doctors were appalled.
– But who would have done such a thing?
– Someone who was determined at all costs to prevent him becoming my successor. And we both know who that might be.
I replaced my own food on its plate.
– Livia?