After the inspection of the Danube stations, we turned southward, somewhat hurriedly; for the autumn was upon us, and we wished to escape the rigors of a northern winter. I was beginning to regret my decision to accompany Marcus Agrippa, and to long for the comforts of Rome.
But we rested at Philippi, and my spirits raised. My husband showed me the places where he had done battle with the forces of Brutus and Cassius, and told me the tales of those days; and then we made our way leisurely to the shores of the Aegean, and sailed upon that blue water among the islands; and the weather warmed as we went southward.
And I began to know why the gods had sent me upon this journey, far from the city of my birth.
4
I. Letter: Nicolaus of Damascus to Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, from Jerusalem (14 B.C.)
For the past three years, I have, in my letters to you, wondered why our friend Octavius Caesar insisted that I accompany Marcus Agrippa and his wife on this long Eastern tour; for it is clear that my connection with Herod is, in itself, not sufficient to justify my long absence from Rome. I now begin to understand his reasons; and before you know them, you shall wonder at my writing to you, in your retirement, rather than to Octavius Caesar himself. But if you will attend me, you will gradually begin to understand.
I write you from Jerusalem, where a few months ago Marcus Agrippa and Julia came with me, upon the invitation of Herod, who offered us a rest from our travels. Agrippa’s stay in Jerusalem was limited, however; for no sooner had he arrived than word came of serious disturbances in the Bosporus. The old King, faithful to Rome, is dead; and his young wife, Dynamis, imagining herself no doubt a northern Cleopatra, but perhaps unmindful of that unhappy lady’s fate, has allied herself with a barbarian named Scribonius; and in defiance of Roman policy, has declared herself, with her lover, to be the ruler of her husband’s kingdom. Indeed, it is rumored that she, at the instigation of her lover, had a hand in her own husband’s death. In any event, Marcus Agrippa, knowing that this kingdom is the last bulwark against the northern barbarians, determined to go there and put down the revolt; this he is now in the process of doing, with ships and men provided by Herod.
It was, of course, impossible for Julia to accompany him. She showed no real desire to do so; but neither would she accept Herod’s plea that she remain in Jerusalem until her husband rejoined her, nor did she show any inclination to return to Rome. Rather, despite our entreaties, she gathered her retinue, and upon departure of her husband northward, she herself departed for Greece, and for those islands to the north from which she and her husband were recently returned. I have received some alarming news from that part of the world, where she now is; and that news, my dear Maecenas, is the occasion for this letter.
For the past two years, during their leisurely journey southward among the Aegean islands and the coastal cities of Greece and Asia, both Marcus Agrippa and Julia have been received with the honors due the representatives of the Emperor Octavius Caesar and Rome. But in especial Julia, since she is the daughter of the Emperor, has been the recipient of that sort of adulation of which only the island and Eastern Greeks are capable.
The adulation began in an ordinary enough way. At Andros, in honor of her visit, a statue in her likeness was erected; the inhabitants of Mytilene, on the Island of Lesbos, hearing of the homage given by the inhabitants of Andros, constructed a larger statue, in the twin likeness of Julia and the goddess Aphrodite; and thereafter, as island and city learned of the approach of Julia and Agrippa, the ceremonies became more and more extravagant, until at last Julia came to be regarded as the goddess Aphrodite herself, returned to earth, and came to be worshiped (at least ritually) by the people.
I am sure that you will agree that in all this extravagancy, ludicrous as it may appear to civilized men, there is nothing really very harmful; for in these public demonstrations, the Greeks were witty enough to have modified these odd ceremonies so that they might offend no one, and so that they might appear almost Romanized.
But in the midst of all this, something rather extraordinary has begun to happen to the person of Julia, of whom I have been (as you know) rather fond. It is almost as if she has begun to take on some of the attributes of that personage to whom she has been ritually likened; she has become imperious and indifferently arrogant, as if she indeed were not truly mortal.
This has for some time been my impression of her character; but I have just received news from Asia which sadly confirms what had been uncertain.
The report is that Julia, having spent the day in Ilium wandering among the ruins of the ancient site of Troy, attempted to cross the Scamander River by night. By some circumstance that is not clear, the raft bearing Julia and her attendants was overturned, and all were swept downstream. It was, no doubt, a near thing for all of them. In any event, she was finally rescued (by whom, it is not clear); but in her anger at the villagers who, she charges, did not attempt to rescue her, and in the name of her husband, Marcus Agrippa, she imposed upon the village a fine of one hundred thousand drachmas, which would amount to nearly a thousand drachmas for each of them. It is a heavy fine, indeed, for poor people, many of whom would not see a thousand drachmas in a lifetime of labor.
It is said that these villagers, though they heard the cries for help, came to the bank of the river, and watched, and would not attempt the rescue. I believe that this is probably a true account of the incident. Nevertheless, despite what might seem the obvious guilt of the villagers, I shall intercede. I shall ask a favor of Herod (who owes me several), and request that he persuade Marcus Agrippa to remit the fine. I shall do so, not out of pity for the villagers, but out of apprehension for the safety of the house of Octavius Caesar.
For Julia had not spent the day as an innocent tourist at Ilium; and her crossing the Scamander was not an innocent return to her quarters.
I spoke earlier of those public ceremonies—part religious, part political, and part social—in which Julia was elevated upon the throne of Aphrodite. By dwelling upon them, I suppose I have been putting off speaking of another kind of ceremony that is not public, but which is secret and unknown and somewhat frightening to this age of enlightenment.
There is a secret cult among these island and Eastern Greeks which worships a goddess whose name (at least to all those who are not initiates) is unknown. She is said to be the goddess of all gods and goddesses; her power is beyond the power of all the other gods conceived by mankind. Upon certain occasions, the power of this goddess is celebrated by rituals—though what they are no one knows, since the cult is shrouded in the secrecy of its fervor or its shame. But no secret is absolute; and in my travels I have heard enough of this cult to fill me with a revulsion at its nature and an apprehension of its consequences.
It is a female cult; and though there are priests, they are castrates who at one time allowed themselves to be used as sacrificial victims to the goddess. These victims are chosen by the priestesses—it is said that sometimes the priestesses choose their own sons as victims, since within their peculiar doctrine such a victim is the most honored and fortunate of men. He must be under the age of twenty; he must be virginal; and he must be a willing victim.
I do not know the precise nature of the rite; but I have heard, myself, from afar, the flute music and the chants in the sacred groves where the rites are performed. It is said that for three days the initiates and the members of the cult “purify” themselves by abstinence from all fleshly things; it is said, further, that when the rites begin the celebrants intoxicate themselves by dancing, by singing, and the drinking of certain libations—whether of wine or some more mysterious substance, no one knows. Then, when the celebrants are in a frenzy induced by their music and dancing and strange drink, the ceremony begins. One of several sacrificial victims is brought before the woman who has been chosen as the ritual incarnation of the Great Goddess. Save for the fur of some wild animal tied loosely about his waist, he is naked; he is bound to a cross made of some sacred wood from the tr
ees by the grove, by wrist and foot, with lengths of laurel wreath. After he has been placed before the goddess, the celebrants dance about him; it is said that they fling their own clothing from their bodies in their frenzy as they dance. Then the goddess approaches the boy and with the sacred knife loosens the fur that hides his nakedness; and when she finds a victim that pleases her, she cuts the laurel that constrains him, and leads him to a cave in the sacred grove, which has been prepared for the “marriage” of the goddess and the mortal.
The marriage is supposed to be a ritual marriage; but it is a female cult, and secret, and sanctioned neither by law nor public custom. The goddess and her victim remain unseen in the cave for three days; it is said that the goddess uses her victim in whatever way pleases her; food and drink are put at the entrance of the cave, and those celebrants on the outside indulge in whatever lust or perversity that their frenzy leads them to.
After three days, the goddess and her mortal lover emerge from the cave, and cross a body of water to another sacred grove, which becomes the Island of the Blessed; and there the mortal lover becomes immortal, at least in the barbaric minds of the celebrants.
It is known to all that from Ilium to Lesbos this cult prevails, and that it numbers among its members those who belong to the richest and most cultivated families in that part of the world. When Julia’s raft was upset, she was returning from such a rite as I have described, completing the prescribed ritual, crossing to the Island of the Blessed. She had been the incarnation of the goddess. And the villagers, in their abhorrence of such dark practices, could not overcome their fear of these strange beings, who (they thought) lived in a world beyond their comprehension and experience. I cannot allow the fine levied upon them to stand; for if I do, the secrecy (which now protects Julia, the unknowing Marcus Agrippa, Octavius Caesar, and even Rome itself) may be broken.
And beyond the vile practices which are rumored, there is another that is even more serious; the members of the cult are required to abjure all authority beyond the dictates of their own desires, and have no allegiance to any man, or law, or mortal custom. Thus, not only is the license of immorality encouraged— but murder, treason, and all other conceivable unlawful acts.
My dear Maecenas, I trust that now you understand why I could not write the Emperor; why I cannot speak to Marcus Agrippa; why I must burden you with this problem, even in your retirement from public affairs. You must find a way to persuade your friend and master to force Julia to return to Rome. If she is not now corrupted beyond retrieval, she will be soon, if she remains in this strange land that she has discovered.
II. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
I have never known why my father ordered me, in terms that I could not disobey, to return to Rome. He never gave me a reason sufficient to justify the strength of his command; he merely said that it was unseemly that the wife of the Second Citizen be so long absent from the people who loved her, and that there were certain social and religious duties that only I and Livia could perform. I did not believe that that was the true reason for my recall, but he did not allow me to question him further. But he could not fail to know that I had resented my return; it seemed to me then that I was being exiled from the only life in which I had ever been myself, and that I was to spend my days performing a kind of duty in which I no longer could see any meaning.
In any event, it was Nicolaus—that odd little Syrian Jew, of whom my father was unaccountably fond and whom he trusted —who delivered the message to me, traveling all the way from Jerusalem to find me at Mytilene on Lesbos.
I was angry, and I said to him: “I will not go. He cannot force me to return.”
Nicolaus shrugged. “He is your father,” he said.
“My husband,” I said. “I am with my husband.”
“Your husband,” Nicolaus said; “your husband is in the Bosporus. Your husband is your father’s friend. Your father is the Emperor. He misses you, I suspect. And Rome—it will be spring when we return.”
And so we set sail from Lesbos, and I watched the islands slip by, like clouds in a dream. It was my life, I thought, that slipped behind me; it was the life in which I had been a queen, and more than a queen. And as the days passed, and as we drew nearer to Rome, I knew that she who returned was not the same woman who had left, three years before.
And I knew that the life to which I returned would be different. I did not know how it would be so, but I knew that it would be. Not even Rome could awe me now, I thought. And I remember that I wondered if I would still feel like a child when I saw my father.
I returned to Rome in the year of the consulship of Tiberius Claudius Nero, the son of Livia and the husband of my husband’s daughter, Vipsania. I was twenty-five years of age. Who had been a goddess returned to Rome a mere woman, and in bitterness.
III. Letter: Publius Ovidius Naso to Sextus Propertius, in Assisi (13 B.C.)
Dear Sextus, my friend and my master—how do you thrive in that melancholy exile you have imposed upon yourself? Your Ovid beseeches you to return to Rome, where you are sorely missed. Things here are not nearly so gloomy as you may have been led to believe; a new star is in the Roman sky, and once again those who have the wit to do so may live in gaiety and pleasure. Indeed, during the past few months, I have concluded that I would be in no other time and in no other place.
You are the master of my art, and older than I—yet can you be sure that you are wiser? Your melancholy may be of your own constitution, rather than Rome’s making. Do return to us; there is pleasure yet, before the night comes down upon us.
But forgive me; you know that I am not suited for weighty talk, and once having begun cannot sustain it. I intended at the outset of this letter merely to tell you of a delightful day, hoping that I could persuade you by that to return to us.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the Emperor Octavius Caesar’s birth, and thus a Roman holiday; yet it began for me unpropitiously enough. I was in my office disgracefully early—at the first hour, no less, just as the sun was beginning to struggle up from the east through the forest of buildings that is Rome, bringing the city to its feet—for though one may not plead a case on such a holiday as this, one may have to do so the next day; and I had a particularly difficult brief to prepare. It seems that Cornelius Apronius, who has retained me, is suing Fabius Creticus for nonpayment for some lands, while Creticus is countersuing, claiming that the title to the lands is faulty. Both are thieves; neither has a case; thus the skill of the brief and the persuasion of the pleading are most important—as, of course, is the chance of magistrate.
In any event, I had been working all morning; marvelous lines kept popping into my head, as they always do when I am laboring at something that bores me; my secretary was particularly slow and fumbling; and the noise that came from the Forum grated against my ears much more fiercely than it should have done. I was becoming increasingly irritable, and for the hundredth time swore that I should give up this foolish career that in the long run will only give me riches I do not need and the dull distinction of senatorial office.
Then, in the midst of my boredom, a remarkable thing happened. I heard a clatter outside my door, and laughter; and though I heard no knock, my door burst open, and there stood before me the most remarkable eunuch I have ever seen—coiffed and perfumed, dressed in elegant silks, with emeralds and rubies on his fingers, he stood before me as if he were better than a freedman, better even than a citizen.
“This is not the Saturnalia,” I said angrily. “Who has given you leave to burst in upon me?”
“My mistress,” he said in a shrill, effeminate voice; “my mistress bids you attend me.”
“Your mistress,” I said, “may rot, for all I care. . . . Who is she?”
He smiled as if I were a slug at his feet. “My mistress is Julia, daughter of Octavius Caesar, the August, Emperor of Rome and First Citizen. Do you wish to know more, lawyer?”
I suppose I gaped at him; I did not speak.
&nbs
p; “You will attend me, I presume?” he said haughtily.
In an instant my irritation was gone. I laughed, and tossed the sheaf of papers I had been clutching toward my secretary. “Do the best you can with these,” I said. Then I turned to the slave who waited for me. “I will attend you,” I said, “wherever your mistress would have you lead me.” And I followed him out the door.
As is my wont, dear Sextus, I shall digress for a moment. In a casual way, I had met the lady in question a few weeks before, at a huge party given by that Sempronius Gracchus whom we both know. The Emperor’s daughter had returned only a month or so before from a long journey in the East, where she had accompanied her husband, Marcus Agrippa, on some business of his, and where Agrippa remains yet. I was anxious to meet her, of course; since her return, the fashionable people of Rome have been talking of nothing else. So when Gracchus, who seems to be on rather friendly terms with her, invited me, I of course quickly accepted.