Augustus

  Yes, my wife is a remarkable woman; I suppose I have been more fortunate than most husbands. She was quite beautiful when she was a young woman, and she has remained handsome in her age. We loved each other for only a few years after our marriage, but we remained civil; and I believe that at last we have become something like friends. We understand each other. I know that deep within her Republican heart she has always felt that she married beneath her station, that she traded the dignity of an ancient title for the brute power of one whose authority was undeserved by his more humble name. I have come to believe that she did so for the sake of her first-born son, Tiberius, of whom she has always been inexplicably fond and for whom she has had the most tenacious ambition. It was this ambition that caused the first estrangement between us, an estrangement that grew so deep that at one period of our lives I spoke to my wife only of topics upon which I had made careful notes, so that we might not have to undergo the additional burden of misunderstanding, real or imagined.

  And yet in the long run, despite the difficulties it caused between Livia and me, that ambition has worked for the benefit of my authority and Rome. Livia was always intelligent enough to know that her son’s succession depended upon my undisputed retention of power, and that he would be crushed if he were not bequeathed a stable Empire. And if Livia is capable of contemplating my death with equanimity, I am sure that she will contemplate her own in a like manner; her real concern is for that order of which we both are mere instruments.

  So in deference to that concern for order which I share, and in preparation for this voyage, three days ago I deposited at the Temple of the Vestal Virgins four documents, which are to be opened and read to the Senate only upon the occasion of my death.

  The first of these was my will, which bequeaths to Tiberius two-thirds of my personal property and wealth. Though Tiberius does not need it, such a bequest is a necessary gesture to an adequate succession. The remaining portion—except for minor provisions for the citizens and various relatives and friends—goes to Livia, who will also by this document be adopted into the Julian family and be allowed to assume my titles. The name will not please her, but the titles will; for she will understand that her son will gain stature by her possession of the titles, and that her ambition will be that much more easily fulfilled.

  The second was a set of directions for my funeral. Those who must put themselves in charge of that matter will no doubt exceed my instructions, which are lavish and vulgar enough to begin with; but such excesses invariably please the people, and thus are necessary. I comfort myself with the knowledge that I shall not have to be witness to this last display.

  The third document was an account of the state of the Empire; the number of soldiers on active duty, the amount of money that is (or should be) in the treasury, the financial obligations of the government to provincial leaders and private citizens, the names of those administrators who are fiscally and otherwise responsible—all such matters that must be made public for the safety of order and the prevention of corruption. In addition, I appended to this account some rather strong suggestions to my successor. I advised against extending Roman citizenship so capriciously or widely as to weaken the center of the Empire; I advised that all men in high administrative positions be employed by the government at a fixed salary, so that temptation to undue power and corruption might be lessened; and at last I charged that under no circumstances should the frontiers of the Empire be extended, but that the military be employed solely to defend the established borders, especially against the German barbarians, who seem never to tire of their senseless adventures. I do not doubt that this advice will in the long run be ignored; but it will not be ignored for a few years, and I shall at least have left my country that poor legacy.

  And finally I gave into the keeping of those estimable ladies in their temple a statement setting forth an account of all my acts and services to Rome and its Empire, with directions that this statement be engraved upon bronze tablets and attached to the columns that so ostentatiously rear themselves outside that even more ostentatious mausoleum that I have decreed will hold my ashes.

  I have a copy of this document before me now, and from time to time I glance at it, as if it were written by someone else. During its composition, I found it necessary upon occasion to refer to a number of other works, so distant in time were some of the events that I had to record. It is remarkable to have grown so old that one must depend upon the work of others to search into one’s own life.

  Among the books that I consulted were that Life of me which you wrote when you first came to Rome, those portions of our friend Livy’s history of the Founding of the City which concerns itself with my early activities, and my own Notes for an Autobiography—which, after all these years, seems also to be the work of someone other than myself.

  If you will forgive me for saying so, my dear Nicolaus, all these works seem to me now to have one thing in common: they are lies. I trust that you will not too literally apply this remark to your own work; I believe you know what I mean. There are no untruths in any of them, and there are few errors of fact; but they are lies. I wonder if during your recent years of study and contemplation in the quiet of your far Damascus you have come to understand this also.

  For it seems to me now that when I read those books and wrote my words, I read and wrote of a man who bore my name but a man whom I hardly know. Strain as I might, I can hardly see him now; and when I glimpse him, he recedes as in a mist, eluding my most searching gaze. I wonder, if he saw me, would he recognize what he has become? Would he recognize the caricature that all men become of themselves? I do not believe that he would.

  In any event, my dear Nicolaus, the completion of these four documents and their deposition in the Temple of the Vestal Virgins may be the last official acts that I shall have to perform; I have in effect relinquished my power and my world, as I drift now southward toward Capri, and drift more slowly toward that place where so many of my friends have gone before me; and at last I may have a holiday that will not be disturbed by a sense of anything left undone. For the next few days at least, no messenger will rush to me with news of a new crisis or a new conspiracy; no senator will importune my support for a foolish and self-serving law; no lawyers will plead before me the cases of equally corrupt clients. My only duties are to this letter that I write, to the great sea that so effortlessly supports our frail craft, and to the blue Italian sky.

  For I travel nearly alone. Only a few oarsmen are aboard, and I have given orders that they shall not work at their stations except in the event of a sudden squall; a few servants lounge at the stern of our craft and laugh lazily; and near the prow, always observing me carefully, is a new young physician that I have employed, one Philippus of Athens.

  I have outlived all my physicians; it is some comfort to me to know that I shall not outlive Philippus. Moreover, I trust the boy. He seems to know very little; and he has not yet been a doctor long enough to have learned the easy hypocrisy that deludes his patients and at the same time fills his own purse. He offers no remedy for my disease of age, and does not subject me to those tortures for which so many so eagerly pay. He is a little nervous, I think, knowing himself to be in the presence of one whom he too solemnly considers the Emperor of the world; yet he is not obsequious, and he looks after my comfort rather than what another might think of as my health.

  I tire, my dear Nicolaus. It is my age. The vision in my left eye is nearly gone; yet if I close it, I can see, to the east, the soft rise of the Italian coast that I have loved so well; and I can discern, even in the distance, the shapes of particular cottages and even make out the movement of figures upon the land. In my leisure I wonder at the mysterious lives that these simple folk must lead. All lives are mysterious, I suppose, even my own.

  Philippus is stirring and looking at me apprehensively; it is clear that he wants me to cease what he takes to be work rather than pleasure. I shall forestall his ministrations, desist for a while, and pretend to r
est.

  At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the Republic, which had been oppressed by the tyranny of faction. For this service the Senate, with complimentary resolutions, enrolled me in its order, in the consulship of Gaius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius, and gave me at the same time consular precedence in voting and the authority to command soldiers. As propraetor it ordered me, along with the consuls, “to see that the Republic suffered no harm.” In the same year, moreover, as both consuls had fallen in war, the people elected me consul and a triumvir for settling the constitution.

  Those who slew my father I drove into exile, punishing their deed by due process of law; and afterward when they waged war upon the Republic I twice defeated them in battle. . . .

  Thus begins that account of my acts and services to Rome of which I wrote you earlier this morning. During the hour or so that I lay on my couch and pretended to doze, thus affording Philippus some respite from his concern, I thought again of this account, and of the circumstances under which it was composed. It shall be engraved upon bronze tablets and attached to those columns that mark the entrance to my mausoleum. Upon those columns there will be sufficient space for six of these tablets, and each of the tablets may contain fifty lines of about sixty characters each. Thus the statement of my acts must be limited to about eighteen thousand characters.

  It seems to me wholly appropriate that I should have been forced to write of myself under these conditions, arbitrary as they might be; for just as my words must be accommodated to such a public necessity, so has my life been. And just as the acts of my life have done, so these words must conceal at least as much truth as they display; the truth will lie somewhere beneath these graven words, in the dense stone which they will encircle. And this too is appropriate; for much of my life has been lived in such secrecy. It has never been politic for me to let another know my heart.

  It is fortunate that youth never recognizes its ignorance, for if it did it would not find the courage to get the habit of endurance. It is perhaps an instinct of the blood and flesh which prevents this knowledge and allows the boy to become the man who will live to see the folly of his existence.

  Certainly I was ignorant that spring when I was eighteen years of age, a student at Apollonia, and got the news of Julius Caesar’s death. . . . Much has been made of my loyalty to Julius Caesar; but Nicolaus, I swear to you, I do not know whether I loved the man or not. The year before he was killed, I had been with him on his Spanish campaign; he was my uncle, and the most important man I had ever known; I was flattered at his trust in me; and I knew that he planned to adopt me and make me his heir.

  Though it was nearly sixty years ago, I remember that afternoon on the training field when I got the news of my Uncle Julius’s death. Maecenas was there, and Agrippa, and Salvidienus. One of my mother’s servants brought me the message, and I remember that I cried out as if in pain after I read it.

  But at that first moment, Nicolaus, I felt nothing; it was as if the cry of pain issued from another throat. Then a coldness came over me, and I walked away from my friends so that they could not see what I felt, and what I did not feel. And as I walked on that field alone, trying to rouse in myself the appropriate sense of grief and loss, I was suddenly elated, as one might be when riding a horse he feels the horse tense and bolt beneath him, knowing that he has the skill to control the poor spirited beast who in an excess of energy wishes to test his master. When I returned to my friends, I knew that I had changed, that I was someone other than I had been; I knew my destiny, and I could not speak to them of it. And yet they were my friends.

  Though I probably could not have articulated it then, I knew that my destiny was simply this: to change the world. Julius Caesar had come to power in a world that was corrupt beyond your understanding. No more than six families ruled the world; towns, regions, and provinces under Roman authority were the currencies of bribery and reward; in the name of the Republic and in the guise of tradition, murder and civil war and merciless repression were the means toward the accepted ends of power, wealth, and glory. Any man who had sufficient money could raise an army, and thus augment that wealth, thereby gaining more power, and hence glory. So Roman killed Roman, and authority became simply the force of arms and riches. And in this strife and faction the ordinary citizen writhed as helplessly as the hare in the trap of the hunter.

  Do not mistake me. I have never had that sentimental and rhetorical love for the common people that was in my youth (and is even now) so fashionable. Mankind in the aggregate I have found to be brutish, ignorant, and unkind, whether those qualities were covered by the coarse tunic of the peasant or the white and purple toga of a senator. And yet in the weakest of men, in moments when they are alone and themselves, I have found veins of strength like gold in decaying rock; in the cruelest of men flashes of tenderness and compassion; and in the vainest of men moments of simplicity and grace. I remember Marcus Aemilius Lepidus at Messina, an old man stripped of his titles, whom I made publicly to ask forgiveness for his crimes and beg for his life; after he had done so in front of the troops that he had once commanded, he looked at me for a long moment without shame or regret or fear, and smiled, and turned from me and strode erectly toward his obscurity. And at Actium, I remember Marcus Antonius at the prow of his ship looking at Cleopatra as her own fleet departed leaving him to certain defeat, knowing at that moment that she had never loved him; and yet upon his face was an expression almost womanly in its wise affection and forgiveness. And I remember Cicero, when at last he knew that his foolish intrigues had failed, and when in secret I informed him that his life was in danger. He smiled as if there had been no strife between us and said, “Do not trouble yourself. I am an old man. Whatever mistakes I have made, I have loved my country.” I am told that he offered his neck to his executioner with that same grace.

  Thus I did not determine to change the world out of an easy idealism and selfish righteousness that are invariably the harbingers of failure, nor did I determine to change the world so that my wealth and power might be enhanced; wealth beyond one’s comfort has always seemed to me the most boring of possessions, and power beyond its usefulness has seemed the most contemptible. It was destiny that seized me that afternoon at Apollonia nearly sixty years ago, and I chose not to avoid its embrace.

  It was more nearly an instinct than knowledge, however, that made me understand that if it is one’s destiny to change the world, it is his necessity first to change himself. If he is to obey his destiny, he must find or invent within himself some hard and secret part that is indifferent to himself, to others, and even to the world that he is destined to remake, not to his own desire, but to a nature that he will discover in the process of remaking.

  And yet they were my friends, and dearest to me at the precise moment when in my heart I gave them up. How contrary an animal is man, who most treasures what he refuses or abandons! The soldier who has chosen war for his profession in the midst of battle longs for peace, and in the security of peace hungers for the clash of sword and the chaos of the bloody field; the slave who sets himself against his unchosen servitude and by his industry purchases his freedom, then binds himself to a patron more cruel and demanding than his master was; the lover who abandons his mistress lives thereafter in his dream of her imagined perfection.

  Nor do I exempt myself from this contrariness. When I was young, I would have said that loneliness and secrecy were forced upon me. I would have been in error. As most men do, I chose my life then; I chose to enclose myself in the half-formed dream of a destiny no one could share, and thus abandoned the possibility of that kind of human friendship which is so ordinary that it is never spoken of, and thus is seldom cherished.

  One does not deceive oneself about the consequences of one’s acts; one deceives oneself about the ease with which one can live with those consequences. I knew the consequences of my decision to live within myself, but I could not have foreseen
the heaviness of that loss. For my need of friendship increased to the degree that I refused it. And I believe that my friends—Maecenas, Agrippa, Salvidienus—never could fully understand that need.

  Salvidienus Rufus, of course, died before he could have understood it; like myself, he was driven by energies of youth so remorseless that consequence itself became nothing, and the expense of energy became its own end.

  The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he once dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself.

  I have played these roles in my life; and if now, when I come to the final one, I believe that I have escaped that awkward comedy by which I have been defined, it may be only the last illusion, the ironic device by which the play is ended.