"There is no other way?"
My father rose from the stool upon which he had been seated and paced restlessly across the floor. I noticed that his limp had grown more pronounced.
"If there was another way," he said at last, "I would take it. There have been three plots against my life since the death of Marcus Agrippa. They were foolishly conceived and ill managed, and therefore easy to discover and deal with. I have been able to keep them secret. But there will be others." His clenched fist struck his open palm softly, three times. "There will be others. The old ones will not forget that an upstart rules them. They will forgive neither his name nor his power. And Tiberius-"
"Tiberius is a Claudian," I said.
"Yes. Your marriage will not guarantee the safety of my authority, but it will help it. The nobility will be a little less dangerous if they believe that one of their own, one who has the Claudian blood, might succeed me. At least it will give them the possibility of patience."
"Will they believe that you would make Tiberius your successor?"
"No," my father said in a low voice. "But they would believe that I might make a Claudian grandson my successor."
Until that moment, although I had accepted the idea of the marriage as inevitable, I had not accepted its actuality.
I said: "So I am once again to be the brood sow for the pleasure of Rome."
"If it were only myself," my father said. He turned his back to me. I could not see his face. "If it were only myself, I would not ask this of you. I would not allow you to marry such a man. But it is not only myself. You have known that from the beginning."
"Yes," I said. "I have known that."
My father spoke as if he were talking to himself. "You have your children by a good man. That will comfort you. You will remember your husband through the children that you have."
We talked longer that afternoon, but I cannot remember what was said. I believe that a numbness must have come over me, for I remember feeling nothing after the first rush of bitterness. Yet I did not dislike my father for doing what he had to do; I should no doubt have done the same thing, had I been in his position.
Nevertheless, when the time came for me to leave, I asked my father a question. I did not ask it angrily, or in bitterness, or even in what might have seemed pity for myself.
"Father," I asked, "has it been worth it? Your authority, this Rome that you have saved, this Rome that you have built? Has it been worth all that you have had to do?"
My father looked at me for a long time, and then he looked away. "I must believe that it has," he said. "We both must believe that it has."
I was in my twenty-eighth year when I was married to Tiberius Claudius Nero. Within the year I had performed my duty, and delivered a child that bore the Claudian and Julian blood. It was a duty that both Tiberius and I found difficult to fulfill; and even that difficulty, it turned out, was in vain. For the child, a boy, died within a week after its birth. Thereafter, Tiberius and I lived apart; he was abroad much of the time, and I discovered again a way of life in Rome.
II. Letter: Publius Ovidius Naso to Sextus Prop er tins (10 B. c.)
Why do I write you the news of this place to which, you have made clear, you intend never to return? In which, you assure me, you no longer have the slightest interest? Is it that I distrust your resolve? Or do I hope merely (and in vain, no doubt) to shake it? In the five or six years that you have absented yourself from our city, you have written exactly nothing; and though you profess to be content with the rural charms of Assisi, and with your books, I cannot easily believe that you have forsaken the Muse whom once you served so well. She waits for you in Rome, I am sure; and I hope that you will return to her.
It has been a quiet season. A lovely lady (whose name you know, but which I shall not mention) has been absent from our circles for more than a year now, which absence has diminished our joy and our humanity. Widowed young, she was persuaded to remarry; and we all know that her new marriage has caused her great unhappiness. Though an important man, her husband is the dourest and least affable man you can imagine; he has no taste for happiness, and cannot endure it in another. He is relatively young-perhaps thirty-two or three-yet except for his appearance, one might take him for a graybeard, he is so irascible and disapproving. He is, I suppose, the kind of man that was common in Rome some fifty or sixty years ago; and he is admired by many of the "older families" simply because ofthat. No doubt he is a man of principle; yet I have observed that strong principle, coupled with a sour disposition, can be a cruel and inhuman virtue. For with that one can justify nearly anything to which the disposition leads him.
But we hope for the future. The lady of whom I have spoken, recently gave birth to a son who died within the week of his birth; the husband, it is understood, will absent himself from Rome on some business on the northern frontiers; and perhaps once again we shall have in our midst her whose wit, gaiety, and humanity may lead Rome out of the dull hypocrisy of its past.
I shall not subject you, my dear Sextus, to one of my disquisitions; but it seems to me more nearly true, as the years pass, that those old "virtues," of which the Roman professes himself to be so proud, and upon which, he insists, the greatness of the Empire is founded-it seems to me more and more that those "virtues" of rank, prestige, honor, duty, and piety have simply denuded man of his humanity. Through the labors of the great Octavius Caesar, Rome is now the most beautiful city in the world. May not its citizens now have the leisure to indulge their souls, and thus lead themselves, like the city in which they live, toward a kind of beauty and grace they have not known before?
III. Letter: Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso to Tiberius Claudius Nero, in Pannonia (9 B. c.)
My dear friend, I include herewith those reports you have asked me to gather. They come from a variety of sources, which for the time being I shall not name, in the unlikely event that eyes other than your own might see this. In some cases I have transcribed the reports verbatim; in others I have summarized. But the pertinent information is here; and you may be assured that the original documents are safe in my possession, in the event that you might, at a later time, wish to use them.
These reports cover the period of one month, November.
On the third day of this month, between the tenth and eleventh hours of the day, a litter borne by the slaves of Sempronius Gracchus arrived at the lady's residence. The litter was evidently expected, for the lady emerged quickly from her house, and was borne across the city to the villa of Sempronius Gracchus, where a large party was assembled. During the banquet, the lady shared Gracchus's couch; they were observed to carry on a long and intimate conversation. No report of the substance of this conversation is available. A good deal of wine was consumed, so that by the end of the banquet many of the guests were inordinately gay. The poet Ovid read for their entertainment a poem of his that fit the occasion, which is to say one that was suggestive and improper. After this reading, a troupe of mimes performed The Adulterous Wife, but more brazenly than is usual. There was music afterward. At some time during the musical performance, people began to drift out of the hall; among these were the lady in question and Sempronius Gracchus. The lady was not seen again until near dawn, when she was observed entering the litter that had waited for her outside Sempronius Gracchus's residence. Thence she was transported to her home.
Two days before the Ides of this month, the lady entertained a group of her friends on her own responsibility. Among the male visitors were Sempronius Gracchus, Quinctius Crispinus, Appius Claudius Pulcher, and Cornelius Scipio; among the lesser guests were the poet Ovid and the Greek Demosthenes, the son of the actor and recently a citizen of Rome. The drinking of wine began early, shortly before the tenth hour, and continued late into the night. Though some of the guests left after the first watch, a larger number remained; and these late stayers, led by the lady, quit the rooms and the gardens, and made their way into the city, coming to a halt in their litters among the walks and buildings of the Forum. Though the Forum was nearly deserted at that hour, yet a small number of townspeople and tradesmen and police observed the party, and may be persuaded to testify, if the need arises. The drinking of wine continued, and that Demosthenes, the son of the actor, for the entertainment of the partygoers, delivered a mock oration from the rostrum beside the Senate House. It was extempore, and no copy could be made; but it seemed to burlesque the kind of speech that the Emperor has often delivered from the same spot. After the speech, the party disbanded; and the lady returned to her home, accompanied by Sempronius Gracchus. It was nearing dawn.