"Antonia has to-day abstracted from his study what appears to be a notebook of historical material which he has been collecting for a life of his father; with it she found a painfully composed introduction to the projected work, which I send you herewith. You will observe that Claudius has singled out for praise his dear father's one intellectual foible--that wilful blindness of his to the march of time, the absurd delusion that the political forms that suited Rome when Rome was a small town at war with neighbouring small towns could be reestablished after Rome had become the greatest kingdom known since the days of Alexander, Look what happened when Alexander died and nobody could be found strong enough to succeed him as supreme monarch--why, the Empire simply fell to pieces.
But I should not waste my timeand yours in making historical platitudes.
Athenodorus and Sulpicius, with whom I have just had a conference, say that they had not seen this introduction until I showed it them and agree on its extreme inadvisability. They swear that they have never put any subversive ideas into his head, and suggest that he must have got them from old books. Personally I think that he inherited them--his grandfather had the same curious infirmity, you remember--and it is just like Claudius to have chosen that [137] one weakness to inherit and to have refused any legacy of physical or moral soundness! Thank God for Tiberius and Germanicus! There's no republican nonsense about them, so far as I know.
"Naturally I am instructing Claudius that he must desist from his biographical labours, saying that if he disgraces his father's memory by fainting at the solemn Games given in his honour, he is obviously unfit to write his life: let him find some other employment for his pen.
"LIVIA."
Ever since Pollio had told me about the poisoning of my father and grandfather I had been greatly perplexed. I could not make up my mind whether the old man had been talking senile nonsense, or joking, or whether he really knew something. Who but Augustus himself was sufficiently interested in the monarchy to have poisoned a nobleman merely because he believed in republican government? Yet I could not believe Augustus the murderer: poison was a mean way of killing, a slave's way, and Augustus would never have stooped to it.
Besides, he was not a hypocrite and when he talked about my father it was always with admiration and affection. I consulted two or three recent histories, but they told me nothing that I had not already hdard from Germanicus of the circumstances of my father's death.
It was only a couple of days before the Games that I happened to be talking to our porter, who had been my father's orderly throughout his campaigns, The honest fellow had been drinking rather too much, because my father's name was on everyone's lips at the time and his veterans had come in for a good deal of reflected glory.
"Tell me what you know of my father's death," I said boldly. "Were there any stories current in the camp that he met his death other than by accident?" He replied: "I wouldn't say it to anybody, sir, but yourself, but I can trust you, sir.
You're the son of your father and I never knew a man who didn't trust him. Yes, sir, there was a rumour going about and there was more in it than in most camp rumours. Your brave and noble father, sir, was poisoned, it's my sure belief. A certain Person, whose name I won't mention because you'll know it without my saying, was jealous of your father's victories and sent him an order of recall. That's not a story, or rumour, that's history. The order came when your father had broken his leg; not much of a damage either, and it was coming along well enough until that doctor fellow arrived from Rome, at the same time as the message, with his little bag of poisons in his hand. Who sent that doctor fellow? The same person who sent the message. Two and two's four, isn't it, sir? We orderlies wanted to kill that doctor fellow but he got back safe to Rome under special escort."
When I read my grandmother Livia's note telling me to desist from writing my father's life, my perplexity increased. Pollio could surely not have meant to point to my grandmother as the murderess of her former husband and her son? It was unthinkable. And what could have been her motive? Yet when I came to consider the matter I could more easily believe that it was Livia than that it was Augustus.
That summer Tiberius needed men for his East German war, and levies were called for from Dalmatia, a province that had lately been quiet and docile.
But when the contigent assembled it happened that the tax-collector was making his annual visit to those parts and exacting from the province not more than the sum fixed by Augustus but more than it could easily pay. There were loud protests of poverty. The tax-collector exercised his right of seizing good-looking children from the villages which could not pay and carrying them off to be sold as slaves.
The fathers of some of the children thus seized were members of the contingent and naturally made a great outcry. The entire force revolted, killing their Roman captains. A Bosnian tribe rose in sympathy and soon the whole of our frontier provinces between Macedonia and the Alps was in a blaze.
Fortunately Tiberius was able to conclude a peace with the Germans, at their instance not his own--and march against the rebels. The Dalmatians would not meet him in a pitched battle but broke up into small columns and carried on a skillful guerrilla warfare. They were lightly armed and knew the country well and when winter came even dared to raid Macedonia.
Augustus at Rome -could not appreciate the difficulties with which Tiberius had to contend and suspected him of purposely delaying operations for some secret private ends which he could not fathom. He decided to send out Germanicus, with an army of his own, to spur Tiberius to action.
Germanicus, who was now in his twenty-third year, had just entered, five years before the customary age, on his first City magistracy. The military appointment caused surprise: everyone expected Postumus to be chosen. Postumus had no magisterial appointment, but was busy on Mars Field training the recruits for this new army: he now bore the rank or regimental commander. He was three years younger than Germanicus, but his brother Gaius had been sent to govern Asia at the age of nineteen and had become a Consul in the year following.
Postumus was by no means less capable than Gaius, it was agreed, and, after all, he was Augustus' single surviving grandson.
My own feelings on hearing the news, which had not yet been made public, were torn between joy on Germanicus' account and sorrow on Postumus'. I went to find Postumus and arrived at his quarters in the Palace at the same time as Germanicus. Postumus greeted us both affectionately and congratulated Germanicus on his command.
Germanicus said: "It is because of this that I have come, dear Postumus.