IV The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
In my life, I had three husbands, none of whom I loved…
Yesterday morning, not knowing what I wished to say, I wrote those words; and I have been pondering what they might mean. I do not know what they mean. I only know that the question occurred to me late in my life, at a time when it no longer mattered.
The poets say that youth is the day of the fevered blood, the hour of love, the moment of passion; and that with age come the cooling baths of wisdom, whereby the fever is cured. The poets are wrong. I did not know love until late in my life, when I could no longer grasp it. Youth is ignorant, and its passion is abstract.
I was betrothed first when I was fourteen years of age to my cousin, Marcellus, who was the son of my father's sister Octavia. It was perhaps a measure of my ignorance, and the ignorance of all women, that such a marriage seemed to me perfectly ordinary at the time. Ever since I could remember, Marcellus had been a familiar part of our household, along with the other children of Octavia and Livia; I had grown up with him, but I did not know him. Now, after nearly thirty years, I have hardly a memory of what he was like or even of his physical appearance. He was tall, I believe, and blond in the Octavian way.
But I remember the letter my father sent informing me of the betrothal. I remember the tone of it. It was almost as if he were writing to a stranger; his tone was pompous and stiff, and that was unlike him. He wrote from Spain, where for nearly a year he had been engaged in putting down the border insurrections, a mission upon which Marcellus, though only seventeen years of age, had accompanied him. Persuaded (he said) by Marcellus's fortitude and loyalty, and concerned that his daughter be placed in the care of one whose worth was beyond dispute, he had determined that this marriage was in the best interests of myself and of our family. He wished me happiness, regretted that he would not be in Rome to take his proper part in the ceremony, and said that he was asking his friend Marcus Agrippa to take his place; and told me that Livia would inform me further upon what was expected of me.
At the age of fourteen, I believed myself to be a woman; I had been taught to believe so. I had studied with Athenodorus; I was the daughter of an Emperor; and I was to be married. I believe I behaved in a most urbane and languid fashion, until the urbanity and languidness became almost real; I had no apprehension of the world that I was beginning to enter.
And Marcellus remained a stranger. He returned from Spain, and we spoke distantly, as we always had done. The arrangements for the wedding proceeded as if neither of us was involved in our fates. I know now, of course, that we were not.
It was a ceremony in the old fashion. Marcellus gave me a gift, before witnesses, of an ivory box inlaid with pearls from Spain, and I received it with the ritual words; the night before the wedding, in the presence of Livia and Octavia and Marcus Agrippa, I bade farewell to the toys of my childhood, and gave those that would burn to the household gods; and late that night Livia, acting as my mother, braided my hair into the six plaits that signified my womanhood, and fastened them with the bands of white wool.
I went through the ceremony as if through a dream. The guests and relatives gathered in the courtyard; the priests said the things that priests say; the documents were signed, witnessed, and exchanged; and I spoke the words that bound me to my husband. And in the evening, after the banquet, Livia and Octavia, according to ceremony, dressed me in the bridal tunic and led me to Marcellus's chamber. I do not know what I expected.
Marcellus sat upon the edge of the bed, yawning; the bridal flowers were strewn carelessly upon the floor.
"It is late," Marcellus said, and added in the voice he had used toward me as a child; "get to bed."
I lay beside him; I imagine I must have been trembling. He yawned once more, turned upon his side away from me, and in a few moments was asleep.
Thus did my wifehood begin; and it did not change substantially during the two years of my marriage to Marcellus. As I wrote earlier, I hardly remember him now; there is little reason why I should.
V. Letter: Livia to Octavius Caesar in Spain (25 B. c.)
To her husband, Livia sends affectionate greetings. I have followed your instructions; your daughter is married; she is well. I hasten over this bare information so that I might write of the matter that is of more immediate concern to me: the state of your health. For I have heard (do not ask the source of my information) that it is more precarious than you have let me know; and thus I begin to apprehend the urgency you have felt in seeing your daughter safely married, and am therefore more ashamed than I might have been of my opposition to the marriage, and I sorrow at the unhappiness that that opposition must have caused you. Please be assured now that my resentment is gone, and that at last my pride in our marriage and our duty has laid to rest my maternal ambitions for my own son. You are right; Marcellus carries the name of the Claudian, the Julian, and the Octavian tribes, whereas my Tiberius carries the name only of the Claudian. Your decision is, as usual, the intelligent one. I forget sometimes that our authority is more precarious than it seems.
I implore you to return from Spain. It is clear that the climate there encourages those fevers to which you are subject, and that in such a barbaric place you cannot receive proper care. In this your physician agrees with me, and adds his professional supplication to my affectionate one.
Marcellus returns to you within the week. Octavia sends her love, and asks that you guard the safety of her son; your wife also sends her love, and her prayers for your recovery, and for the well-being of her son Tiberius. Please return to Rome.
VI. Letter: Quintus Homtius Flaccus to Publius Vergilius Maro, at Naples (23 B. c.)
My dear Vergil, I urge you to come to Rome with all possible speed. Ever since his return from Spain, our friend's health has declined; and now his condition is exceedingly grave. The fever is constant; he cannot rise from his bed; and his body has shrunken so that his skin seems like cloth upon frail sticks. Though we all put on cheerful countenances, we have come to despair of his life. We do not deceive him; he, too, feels that his life draws to a close; he has given to his co-consul his records of the army and of revenue, and has given to Marcus Agrippa his seal, so that there might be an adequate succession of his authority. Only his physician, his intimate friends, and his immediate family are allowed in his presence. A great calm has come upon him; it is as if he wishes to savor for the last time all that he has held dearest to his heart.
Both Maecenas and I have been staying here at his private house on the Palatine, so that we might be near him when he wishes aid or comfort. Livia attends him meticulously and with the dutifulness that he so admires in her; Julia laughs and teases him, as he so enjoys, when she is in his presence, and weeps most pitifully when she is out of his sight; he and Maecenas speak fondly of the days of their youth; and Agrippa, strong as he is, can hardly keep his composure when he speaks to him.
Though he would not impose himself and though he does not say so, I know that he wants you here. Sometimes, when he is too weary to converse with his family, he asks me to read to him some of those poems of ours that he has most admired; and yesterday he recalled that happy and triumphant autumn, only a few years ago, when he returned from Samos, after the defeat of the Egyptian armies, and we were all together, and you read to him the completed Geor?ics. And he said to me, quite calmly and without pity of self: "If I should die, one of the things that I shall most regret is not having been able to attend the completion of our old friend's poem upon the founding of our city. Do you think it would please him to know this?"