For what I must reveal to you touches upon both your public and your private self, and in such a way that I fear they cannot be separated, one from the other.
When at first you commissioned me to investigate those rumors which you judged to be so persistent as to be disturbing, I must confess that I thought you overly concerned; rumor has become a way of life in Rome, and if one spent his time investigating all that he hears, he would have not a moment for any other business that ought to occupy him.
So, as you know, I began the investigation with a great deal of skepticism. Now I am grieved to tell you that your apprehensions were right, and that my skepticism was mistaken. The matter is even more alarming than you initially suspected, or could imagine.
There is a conspiracy; it is a serious one; and it has gone a long way toward its completion.
I shall report my findings as impersonally as I can, though you must understand that my feelings protest against the coldness of my words.
Some seven or eight years ago-the year that he was consul -I relinquished to the service of Julius Antonius, as a librarian, a slave whom I had some time earlier freed, one Alexas Athenaeus. Alexas was and is an intelligent man, and he has remained loyal to me through the years; he is, I am sure, a friend. When he learned of the investigation that I was conducting, he came to me in a highly distraught state, bringing with him certain documents removed from the secret files of Julius Antonius, and a most disturbing series of revelations.
There is, incontrovertibly, a plot against the life of Tiberius. The conspirators have enlisted the support of certain factions around Tiberius in his retirement on Rhodes. He is to be murdered in the manner that Julius Caesar was murdered, and it is to be made to appear that it is an authentic uprising against the authority of Rome. Upon this pretext of danger it is planned that an army will be raised under the auspices of the senator and exconsul Quinctius Crispinus, an army whose ostensible purpose is to protect Rome, but whose actual purpose is to assume power for that faction of conspirators. If you oppose the raising of this army, you will be made to seem either cowardly or indifferent; if you do not oppose it, your position and your person may be in danger, to say nothing of the orderly future of Rome.
For there is strong evidence that a direct attempt will be made upon your life at the same time that the plan against Tiberius is carried out.
The conspirators are: Sempronius Gracchus, Quinctius Crispinus, Appius Pulcher, Cornelius Scipio-and Julius Antonius. I know that the last name will cause you particular pain. I thought that Julius was my friend, and I thought that he was yours. He is not.
But this is not the end of my report.
Alexas Athenaeus also informs me that, unknown to Julius Antonius, there has been insinuated into his household a slave who is in actuality an agent of Tiberius. This agent is privy to the conspiracy; indeed, it was something that Tiberius's agent let drop that first aroused Alexas's suspicions. And the agent has been reporting directly to Tiberius about this affair. And from all that I can gather, Tiberius has a plan, too.
He apparently has as much proof of the conspiracy as I have; and he intends to use that proof. He intends to expose the plot in the Senate, using as his spokesman the senator and his former co-consul, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso. Calpurnius will insist upon a trial for high treason; the Senate will be forced to accede; and Tiberius will then raise an army in Rhodes and return to Rome, ostensibly to protect you and the Republic. He will be a popular hero; and you will be made to seem a fool. Your power will be lessened; Tiberius's will be increased.
And there is yet one other thing-and this is the most painful-that I must report.
I am sure that for the past several years, since the absence of Tiberius Claudius Nero, you have not been wholly unaware of the activities of your daughter. I am sure that, out of pity for her condition and affection for her person, you have, as it were, looked the other way-as have most of your friends and even some of your enemies. But it becomes clear from the documents that I have in my possession that Julia has been intimate with each of the conspirators; and her lover of the past year has been Julius Antonius.
If this matter becomes public, it will almost certainly be made to seem that Julia herself is a part of the conspiracy; and Tiberius may well have in his possession papers more damaging even than we imagine.
In any public disclosure of the plot, she will inevitably be implicated; and she is likely to be implicated so deeply that she will be found as guilty of treason as any of the conspirators. It is no secret that she hates Tiberius, and it is no secret that she loves Julius Antonius.
The documents to which I have referred are safe in my possession. No eyes have seen them save mine and Alexas Athenaeus (and, of course, the conspirators), and no other eyes shall. They remain for you to use, however you may judge best.
Alexas Athenaeus is in hiding; the documents that he has taken from the household of Julius Antonius are sure to be missed, and he is in fear of his life. He is a most remarkable man; I trust him. He has assured me that, despite his loyalty to Julius Antonius, he reveres the Emperor and Rome more. He will testify, if need be. But I make a personal plea. If it is necessary to put him to torture to validate his testimony, please arrange it so that it is a ritual torture rather than an actual one. I trust the man implicitly, and he has lost nearly everything by his revelation.
My dear friend, I should have preferred to take my life than to be the one to impart this information. But I could not do so. The safety of your person and the safety of Rome must take precedence over what now seems would be the comfort of my own death.
I await whatever orders you may give me.
VI. The Journal of Julia, Pandateria (A.D. 4)
It is autumn in Pandateria. Soon the winds from the north will sweep down upon this bare place. They will whistle and moan among the rocks, and the house in which I live, though of this native stone, will tremble a little in the blast; and the sea will beat with a seasonal violence against the shores… Nothing changes here except the seasons. My mother still shouts at our servant and directs her indefatigably-though it seems to me that in the last month or so she has become a bit more feeble. I wonder if she, too, will die upon this island. If so, it will be her choice; I have none.
I have not written in this journal for nearly two months; I had thought that I had no more to tell myself. But today I was allowed to receive another letter from Rome, and it contained news that reawakened memories of the days when I lived; and so I speak once more to the wind, which will carry my words away in the mindless force of its blowing.
When I wrote of Julius Antonius, it occurred to me that it was an appropriate moment to cease these entries into a journal that sprawls itself out to no end. For if for a year or so Julius Antonius brought me alive into the world, he also thrust me into this slow death of Pandateria, where I may observe my own decay. I wonder if he foresaw what might happen. It does not matter. I cannot hate him.
Even at the moment when I knew that he had destroyed us both, I could not hate him.
And so I must write of one more thing.
In the consulships of Octavius Caesar, the August, and Marcus Plautius Silvanus, I, Julia, daughter of the Emperor, was accused before the Senate convening in Rome of adultery, and hence of the abrogation of the marriage and adultery laws that my father had passed by edict some fifteen years before. My accuser was my father. He went into great detail about my transgressions; he named my lovers, my places of assignation, the dates. In the main, the details were correct, though there were a few unimportant names that he omitted. He named Sempronius Gracchus, Quinctius Crispinus, Appius Pulcher, Cornelius Scipio, and Julius Antonius. He described drunken revels in the Forum and debaucheries upon the very rostrum from which he had first delivered his laws; he spoke of my frequentation of various houses of prostitution, implying that out of perversity I sold myself to anyone who would have me; and he described my visits to those unsavory bath establishments which permitted mixed bathing and encouraged all manner of licentiousness. These were exaggerated, but there was enough truth in them to make them persuasive. And at last he demanded that, in accordance with his Julian Laws, I be exiled forever from the precincts of Rome, and requested the Senate to order me placed on this Island of Pandateria, to live out the rest of my life in contemplation of my vices.