“I don’t want this, Caesar.”
“I know. Nevertheless, it is already being done. I’ve sent for them and they should be here any moment. Burgundinus is preparing proper quarters for them—a sitting room, two sleeping cubicles, a schoolroom, and a private garden. I believe the suite was young Hortensius’s. Tomorrow I’ll personally buy a pedagogue for them, while Burgundinus goes around to Nero’s house to gather up their stuff. I’m sure there will be toys they’d hate to part with, as well as clothes and books. Though I will not take their present pedagogue, even if they are strongly attached to him. I mean to break them of their dislike for us, and that is better done under the aegis of strangers.”
“Why can’t you put them with Scribonia and little Julia?”
“Because that is a house of women, a species they are not used to. Nero didn’t have a woman in his house, even a laundress,” said Octavian. He went to kiss her, but she jerked her head away. “Don’t be silly, dear, please. Accept your fate as gracefully as Caesar’s wife should.”
Her mind was racing to get ahead of his. How extraordinary, that he should set his heart on her sons! For he had, that was patent. So, loving him—and understanding that her future depended on him—she shrugged her shoulders, smiled, and kissed him of her own volition.
“I suppose I needn’t see a great deal of them,” she said.
“As much and as little as a good Roman mother ought. When I am out of Rome, I expect you to take my place with them.”
The boys arrived stiff and tearless, no red rims around their eyes to suggest that they had already wept themselves dry. Neither remembered his mother, neither had seen their stepfather, even in the Forum; Nero had kept them at home under strict supervision.
Tiberius was black of hair and eye, had an olive skin and quite regular features; he was tall for his age, but painfully thin. As if, thought Octavian, he didn’t get enough exercise. Drusus was adorable; that he went straight to Octavian’s heart lay in his likeness to his mother, though his eyes were bluer. A riot of black curls, a full mouth, high cheekbones. Like Tiberius, he was tall and thin—did Nero never let his children run around, get some muscle on their bones?
“I am sorry for your tata’s death,” Octavian said, unsmiling, striving to look sincere.
“I’m not,” said Tiberius.
“Nor am I,” said Drusus.
“Here is your mama, boys,” Octavian said, at a loss.
They bowed, eyes busy.
To Tiberius, this man and woman seemed friendly and relaxed, not at all what he had imagined after so many years of listening to his father talk about them with so much loathing. Had Nero been kind and approachable, his sentiments would have soaked into this older boy; instead, they had seemed unreal. Hurting from a savage beating, concealing both his tears and his sense of injustice, Tiberius would wish, wish, wish for liberation from his awful father, a man who drank too much wine and had forgotten he was ever a boy himself. Now liberation had come, though in the short hours since Nero’s body had been discovered, Tiberius had expected to go from the frying pan into the fire. Instead, he found Octavian especially nice, perhaps because of his alien fairness, those enormous, tranquil grey eyes.
“You’ll have your own rooms,” Octavian was saying, smiling now, “and a terrific garden to play in. You must learn, of course, but I want you to have plenty of time to run around. When you’re older, I’ll take you with me if I travel—it’s important that you see the world. Will you like that?”
“Yes,” said Tiberius.
“Your face is creaky,” said Livia Drusilla, drawing him close. “Does it ever smile, Tiberius?”
“No,” he said, finding her smell exquisite and her roundness hugely comforting. He pushed his head against her breasts and shut his eyes the better to feel her, suck in that flowery scent.
Time for Drusus, who was gazing at Octavian as if at a bright gold statue. Squatting down to his level, Octavian stroked his cheek, sighed, winked away tears. “Dear little Drusus,” he said, dropped to his knees and cuddled the child. “Be happy with us!”
“It’s my turn, Caesar,” Livia Drusilla said, but didn’t let go of Tiberius. “Come, Drusus, let me hold you.”
But Drusus clung to Octavian for comfort, refused to go.
Over dinner the astonished, vastly relieved new parents found out some of the reasons why the boys had survived Nero without becoming imbued with his hatred. The confidences were innocent, yet appalling; it had been a childhood of cold, impersonal, not always bearable inattention. Their pedagogue had been the least expensive one on Stichus’s books, so neither boy could read or write very well. Though he had not beaten them, he was instructed to report their offenses to their father, who took great pleasure in wielding a switch. The drunker he was, the worse the beating. They had no toys at all, which made Octavian weep; he had been inundated with toys by his doting mama, had the best of everything in Philippus’s house.
A cool and dispassionate man whom many called cold as ice, Octavian yet had a softer side that came to the fore whenever he was with children. Not a day went by when he was in Rome that he didn’t snatch a few moments to see little Julia, an enchanting child now six years old. And while he hadn’t yearned for sons—to do so would have been un-Roman—he had yearned for the company of children, a characteristic he shared with his sister, whose nursery often saw Uncle Caesar, who was funny, jolly, full of ideas for new games. Now, watching his stepsons over dinner, he could tell himself again how lucky he was. Tiberius was clearly going to belong to Livia Drusilla, who seemed to have lost her dislike for her firstborn entirely. Ah, but dear little Drusus! We have one each, thought Octavian, so happy he felt as if he might burst.
Even the dinner itself was a wonder to the boys, who ate ravenously, unconsciously revealing that Nero had rationed both the quality and the quantity of the food served to them. It was Livia Drusilla who cautioned against gorging, Octavian who urged them to try a little of this, a little of that. Luckily eyelids were drooping before the sweeties came in; Octavian carried Drusus and Burgundinus Tiberius to their sleeping cubicles, tucked them up warmly between down mattresses and down quilts; winter was still hanging on grimly.
“So how do you feel now, wife?” Octavian asked Livia Drusilla as they prepared to climb into their bed.
She squeezed his hand. “Much better—oh, so much better! I am ashamed that I didn’t try harder to visit them, but I never expected that Nero’s hatred of us wouldn’t impinge on his sons. How shabbily he treated them! Caesar, they are patrician! He had every opportunity to turn them into our implacable enemies, and what did he do? Flogged them into hating him. Didn’t care about their welfare—starved them, ignored them. I am very glad that he’s dead and we can look after our boys properly.”
“Tomorrow I have to conduct his funeral.”
She put his hand on one breast. “Oh, dear, I had forgotten! I suppose Tiberius and Drusus have to go?”
“I am afraid so, yes. I’ll give the eulogy from the rostra.”
“I wonder does Octavia have any black children’s togas?”
Octavian chuckled. “Bound to. I sent Burgundinus around to ask, at any rate. If she doesn’t have a couple in storage, he’ll buy them in the Porticus Margaritaria.”
Snuggling against him, she kissed his cheek. “You must have Julius’s luck, Caesar! Who could ever have predicted that our boys would be ripe for our plucking? Today we’ve gained two important allies for your cause.”
The day after the funeral Octavian took the boys to meet their cousins. Octavia, who had been at the funeral, was anxious to welcome them into the family fold.
Almost sixteen and on the verge of official manhood, Gaius Scribonius Curio was due to leave the nursery and become a contubernalis. A red-haired, freckled youth, he wanted to be Mark Antony’s cadet, but Antony had refused him. So he was to go to Agrippa. The elder of Antony’s two sons by Fulvia, Antyllus, was eleven, and already dying for a military career. The other
son, Iullus, was eight. They were handsome boys, Antyllus with his father’s reddish coloring, Iullus more like his ice-brown mother. Only in a household like Octavia’s could they have been reared so successfully, for both boys were impetuous, adventurous, and warlike. Octavia’s gentle yet firm hand kept them, as she put it with a laugh, “members of the gens humana.”
Her own daughter, Marcella, was thirteen, menstruating, and promising to be a great beauty. Dark like her father, she had her own nature, which was flirtatious, haughty, and imperious. Marcellus was eleven, another darkly handsome child. He and Antyllus, his coeval, couldn’t bear each other, and fought tooth and nail; nothing Octavia could do succeeded in making them like each other, so whenever Uncle Caesar was in town, he was called upon to administer whacks on the palm with a ruler. Privately Octavian considered Marcellus far the more likeable of the two, for he had a calm temperament and a better mind than Antyllus. Cellina, Octavia’s younger girl by Marcellus Minor, was eight; she was golden-haired, blue-eyed, and very pretty. A strong likeness existed between her and little Julia, who was a regular tenant of the nursery, as Octavia and Scribonia were good friends. Antonia, aged five, had sandy hair and greenish eyes—no beauty, alas, since she had Antony’s nose and chin. Her nature had turned proud and aloof, and she considered her betrothal to Ahenobarbus’s son, Lucius, beneath her. Surely, she was heard to complain often, there was someone better? The youngest child of all, Tonilla, had auburn hair and amber eyes, though luckily her features were Julian rather than Antonian. In character she was turning out to be resolute, intelligent, and fierce.
Iullus and Cellina were much the same age as Tiberius, while Antonia and Drusus would shortly be six.
No matter what intrigues and squabbles occurred when this brood of children were not in Octavia’s presence, they were well-mannered and cheerful. It soon became apparent that Drusus liked three-year-old Tonilla much better than he liked the whining Antonia; he proceeded to take her under his wing and enslave her. Things were more difficult for Tiberius, who turned out to be a shy child, unsure of himself and incapable of conversation. The kindest of the Marcelli, Cellina befriended him immediately, seeming to sense his insecurities, while Iullus, discovering that Tiberius knew nothing of horse riding, dueling with a play sword, or the history of Rome’s wars, regarded him with visible contempt.
“Do you think you’ll enjoy visiting Aunt Octavia?” Octavian asked as he led the boys home via the Forum Romanum, where he was greeted on all sides and stopped every few feet by someone anxious to obtain a favor or impart a morsel of political gossip. The boys were dazzled, not only by this first trip into the city, but also by Octavian’s retinue: twelve lictors and a German guard. Despite the diatribes and maunderings against Octavian that their father had uttered over the years, it was clear in this one walk that Octavian—Caesar, they must learn to call him—was far more important than Nero.
Their new pedagogue was a free man, a nephew of Burgundinus named Gaius Julius Cimbricus. Like all the descendants of Divus Julius’s beloved Burgundus, he was immensely tall and muscular, a fair, round-faced man with a snub nose and pale blue eyes. He was with them now, pointing out this and that, things he considered worthy of the boys’ attention. There was much to like in him, and nothing to fear. Not only would he teach them in the schoolroom, he would also give them exercises to do in their garden, and, in time, instruct them in military exercises so that, when each boy turned twelve, he would be able to go to the Campus Martius for military exercises not quite unskilled.
“Do you think you’ll enjoy visiting your Aunt Octavia?” asked Octavian a second time.
“Yes, Caesar,” Tiberius said.
“Oh, yes!” cried Drusus.
“And do you think you’ll like Cimbricus?”
“Yes,” they chorused.
“Don’t let your shyness overwhelm you, Tiberius. As soon as you grow used to your new life, it will fade.” Octavian gave his stepson a conspiratorial grin. “Iullus is a bully, but once you get a bit of muscle on those long bones, you’ll wallop him.”
A very comforting thought; Tiberius looked up at Octavian and essayed his first smile.
“As for you, young man,” Octavian said to Drusus, “I don’t see any sign of shyness. You were quite right to prefer Tonilla to Antonia, but I hope later on that you can find things in common with Marcellus, even though he’s a bit older than you.”
Livia Drusilla greeted the boys with a kiss and sent them to the schoolroom with Cimbricus.
“Caesar, I’ve had a brilliant idea!” she cried as soon as they were alone.
“What?” he asked warily.
“A reward for Marcus Agrippa! Well, two rewards, actually.”
“Agrippa isn’t in it for reward, dearest.”
“Yes, yes, I know that! Still, he ought to have rewards—they will keep him tied to you as the years go on.”
“He will never not be tied, because the feeling comes from who and what he is.”
“Yes, yes, yes! But wouldn’t it be a great match for him, if he married Marcella?”
“She’s thirteen, Livia Drusilla.”
“Thirteen going on thirty, more like. In four more years she’ll be seventeen—old enough for marriage. Fewer and fewer of the Famous Families adhere to the old custom of keeping girls at home until they’re eighteen.”
“I’ll certainly consider it.”
“Then there’s Agrippa’s daughter, Vipsania. I know that when old Atticus dies, his fortune will go to Attica, but I hear tell that if Attica should die, his will stipulates that everything must go to Agrippa,” Livia Drusilla said eagerly. “That makes the child extremely eligible, and since Tiberius’s inheritance is so paltry, I think he should marry Vipsania.”
“He’s eight, and she’s not yet three.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Caesar, stop being so blockheaded! I am aware how old they are, but they’ll be grown up enough to marry before you can say Alammelech!”
“Alammelech?” he asked, mouth twitching.
“It’s a river in Philistia.”
“I know, but I didn’t know that you know.”
“Oh, go and jump in the Tiber!”
While his domestic existence was becoming more and more a joy to Octavian, his public and political doings were not bearing much fruit worth the picking. Monger rumors though they did, whisper calumnies against Mark Antony though they might, Octavian’s agents failed to sway those seven hundred senators in their conviction that Antony was the man to follow. They genuinely believed that he would soon return to Rome; indeed, he had to, if only to celebrate a triumph for his victories in Armenia. His letters from Artaxata had boasted of huge plunder, from solid gold statues six cubits high to chests of Parthian gold coins and literally hundreds of talents of rock lapis lazuli and crystal. He was bringing the Nineteenth Legion with him, and had already demanded that Octavian find land for them to retire on.
If Antony’s influence had extended no further than the Senate, it might have been overcome, but the entire First and Second Classes, many thousands of men engaged in some kind of business or other, swore by Antony’s brilliance, integrity, military genius. To make matters worse, tribute was coming into the Treasury at an ever-increasing rate, the publicani tax farmers and plutocrats of all description were buzzing around Asia Province and Bithynia like bees around flowers dripping nectar, and now it seemed there would be immense booty to add to the Treasury. The solid gold statue of Anaitis was to be Antony’s gift to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, but most of the other works of art, as well as the jewelry, would be sold. The general, his legates, and his legions would receive their legal shares, but the Treasury would get the rest. Though it was years since Antony had been in Rome for more than a few days—and the last visit of all had been four years ago—his popularity endured among the people who mattered. Did these people care about Illyricum? No, they didn’t. It held no promise of commercial activities, and few who lived in Rome and had villas in
Campania and Etruria cared a rush whether Aquileia was razed to the ground or Mediolanum flattened.
The only positive thing Octavian had managed to do was to make the name Cleopatra known to all Italia from highest to lowest. Of her, everyone believed the worst; the trouble was that they couldn’t be brought to see that she controlled Antony. Had the enmity between Octavian and Antony not been so well known, Octavian might have established his point, but everyone who liked Antony simply dismissed Octavian’s allegations as a part of that enmity.
Then Gaius Cornelius Gallus arrived in Rome. Good friend of Octavian’s though he was, this impoverished poet with a warlike streak had begged Octavian’s pardon and set out to serve as one of Antony’s legates just in time to miss the retreat from Phraaspa. So he had idled in Syria while Antony drank, using his time to compose lyrical, beautiful odes in the style of Pindar, and writing occasionally to Octavian. Bemoaning the fact that his purse was no heavier, he clung to Syria until Antony shook off the effects of the wine and marched for Armenia. His hatred of Cleopatra was hot and obdurate; no one rejoiced more than he did when she returned to Egypt and left Antony to do without her.
Thirty-four years old when he sought an interview with his erst-while friend Octavian, Gallus was extremely handsome in a rather cruel way that was more an accident of physiognomy than a character trait. His love elegies, Amores, had already made him famous, and he was an intimate of Virgil’s, with whom he had much in common racially; they were both Italian Gauls. He was not, therefore, a patrician Cornelius.
“I hope you can lend me some money, Caesar,” he said as he took the goblet of wine Octavian handed him. A rueful smile creased the corners of his splendid grey eyes. “I’m not on the cadge, exactly,” he continued. “It’s just that I spent what I had on buying swift passage from Alexandria to Rome, knowing that winter would make news of what happened in Alexandria slow in reaching Rome.”