I Am Livia Read online

  As a gift after I conceived, Tiberius Nero had bought me two little twin boys, pretty Syrians, named Talos and Antitalos. It was a fashion to keep such children as pets and allow them to walk around naked, and train them to sing and tell jokes. They were fascinated by the chick and helped me care for it—keeping it in a small wooden crate in a corner of the atrium and feeding it worms from the garden. They even gave it a name—Aquila, “Eagle”—certainly a grand name for a chicken.

  One morning, when the chick was past a month old and had begun to sprout feathers, Antitalos pointed at its head and said, “Look, Mistress.”

  I could see tiny red bumps on the chick’s head, and my heart soared. I knew I would bear a son.

  Tiberius Nero was as overjoyed as I was, though he pretended skeptical reserve and suggested we fatten the chick—now a little rooster—for the cook pot. I gasped, “You want to eat Aquila?”

  For a while, I would not part with Aquila at all. Eventually, though, his crowing proved irritating. Tiberius Nero owned several farms outside the city, and we sent the rooster to one of these, with strict instructions it was never to be eaten but used for siring more chickens.

  When I was in the seventh month of my pregnancy, a letter came from Father. Mother read it first, while I sat beside her watching her face. I saw her eyes light up, and when she handed the waxed tablet to me, I read the letter eagerly. It was brief. Father told us that a brave army of over a hundred thousand men had gathered around Brutus, and they looked forward to reclaiming Rome. We must keep up our courage, pray to the gods, and await a joyous reunion.

  The messenger could not tarry long. Mother and I rushed to compose short letters to Father. I wrote, Beloved and revered Father, in just a few months I pray you will hold a newborn grandson in your arms, in a free Republic. And we will all be together and never part again.

  Full of hope, I had no trouble drifting off to sleep that night. But then I had a nightmare. I found myself in the middle of a battlefield, surrounded on all sides by men locked in armed struggle. Two caught my eye. They thrust and parried with huge, glinting swords. I could not see their faces, but though I did not know who the men were, I feared for them both. I shouted, “Stop! Stop!” but they did not hear me. As they fought, I could only watch, sick with horror. Finally, one man lunged with his sword, and the other warrior fell to the ground. I cried out, ran and knelt beside him, and stared up at the man who had slain him. It was my father, who looked at me with stony eyes and said in a contemptuous voice, “A wife should weep for her husband.” I gazed down at the warrior he had killed. I expected to see Tiberius Nero.

  The man’s face was like a death mask, frozen, icy cold, but not a corpse’s face, nothing as human as that. It was not Tiberius Nero. The dead man was young Caesar. As soon as I saw who it was, I began to shriek and rend my garments.

  When I awoke, my cheeks were wet with tears. I lay in the darkness, Tiberius Nero snoring beside me, and understood something that I had not allowed myself to know before: I would mourn Caesar if he died in battle. Even though he was my father’s enemy, even after the proscriptions. And there was another searing truth, plain in the dream, that I had not previously faced. When the two armies met, it was almost certain that either my father or Caesar would not survive. There was not enough room in the world for men like Father and Brutus and for Antony and Caesar.

  I did not know if my nightmare contained any true prophecy. Perhaps a priest of Apollo could have interpreted my dream to me, but I had no desire to confide it to anyone. The self-knowledge it brought me made me feel like a traitor in my heart. I loved my father. But if Caesar died in the coming battle, I would weep.

  It was almost November. Soon my child would be born. Heavy and sluggish, I often lay on my bed fully clothed during daylight hours, and sometimes dozed off. I woke one day from a nap, a couple of hours past noon, jarred out of sleep by shouts coming from outside the house. I could not make out the words. It sounded as if two or three men were arguing in the street.

  The shouts continued and grew louder. What did this signify? My mouth went dry with fear. I had to push on the bed with both hands to get myself up since my belly was so huge. I slipped my feet into sandals and went to the atrium.

  Mother and Tiberius Nero stood there. Mother had her fist pressed to her teeth, and her expression was all desolation. When she saw me, she spoke in a controlled voice. “Livia, come here and sit.” She led me to a couch and sat beside me. Tiberius Nero came and sat on the other side of me.

  “If it were possible to keep what has happened from you until your son is born, we would do it,” Mother said. “But it’s not possible, so you must hear it. You must keep calm, lest you injure the child. Do you understand me, Livia?” Just at the last, a tremor came into her voice. “Will you be calm?”

  “I will be calm,” I said.

  Mother tried to speak again, but instead choked and shut her eyes.

  Tiberius Nero gripped my hand. “Word’s come—it’s not by an official dispatch, you understand, just a man on a horse racing here with the news. But I think he’s telling the truth. And the news is being shouted through the streets now. The armies met at Philippi in Greece. Antony and Caesar won the battle. Dearest, remember that I’m Antony’s friend, and we’re perfectly safe.”

  I looked at Mother. “Is Father alive?”

  She shook her head.

  I pressed my face against her shoulder. I wept, and Mother wept too. Inside myself, a voice screamed, Father! Father! Father! I had never known such tearing grief. But I did not cry out, and I did not rend my garments. My mother had said I must contain myself, for the sake of my son.

  Later, reassured by my self-control, Tiberius Nero told me all he knew about the battle and its outcome. He said that Antony alone had led the forces that opposed Brutus, for illness had come upon Caesar—dropsy—and swollen with fluid, unable to rise from his cot, he had taken no part in the fighting.

  After the battle was over, Brutus quoted some poetry about virtue and the caprices of fortune, then got a soldier to hold a sword so he could run upon it.

  Tiberius Nero volunteered nothing about Father’s death. But I had to know how he had died. I steeled myself and asked, “Did Father survive the battle too?”

  “Yes,” my husband said gently.

  “Did he die by his own hand?” I asked the question in a quiet, composed voice, so that Tiberius Nero would not hold back the truth.

  “He fell on his sword,” Tiberius Nero said.

  No one who fought for the Republic died a more exalted and noble death.

  On the day when we learned the outcome of the Battle of Philippi, grief settled in my heart that would never leave entirely; I would carry it until the day of my own death. And there was guilt also. When I urged my husband to ally himself with Antony, I betrayed my father. I could argue that I had not changed his fate one iota. But I had done what he never would have: chosen safety over honor.

  Mother, Secunda, and I put on the white garb of women’s mourning, but we did not have Father’s body to tend and could not even expect it would be treated with honor by the victors. That deepened our grief.

  When word of Philippi’s aftermath trickled back to Rome and came to Tiberius Nero’s ears, I insisted on knowing what was happening, however awful it might be. I learned that after the battle, Caesar Octavianus, still so sick he could barely walk, sat in a curule chair of office and, with Antony, judged those who had surrendered. Every one of Julius Caesar’s assassins who was taken alive was executed. No matter how they pleaded for mercy, young Caesar always spoke the same words: “You must die.” He and Antony looked on as prisoners were thrown on the ground and decapitated.

  That Caesar wanted to put all his “father’s” assassins to death surprised no one. The savagery of his manner was the shock. One poor man begged Caesar to at least allow him a decent burial. Caesar said, �
�Take that up with the crows.”

  The bodies of the dead were burned in piles like the carcasses of foundered cattle.

  Young Caesar ordered one of his own bodyguards, a veteran of Julius Caesar’s Gallic wars, to cut Brutus’s head from the corpse. On his instruction, this soldier galloped to Rome, carrying the head, stopping only to change horses. When he reached the city, the veteran rode his horse into the Forum, straight up to the statue of Julius Caesar that had been erected on young Caesar’s order. “See this vengeance, O gods!” he shouted. He threw the head down at the statue’s feet.

  Now when I remembered the attraction I had felt for Caesar Octavianus, I recoiled. But strangely enough, I still could not help putting myself in his place. I felt in my viscera what Caesar must have felt, when his body failed him just before the great battle to avenge the man he called Father. He saw himself transformed again into the boy he had been, too sickly to hope to play a man’s role in the world. I imagined his unbearable humiliation. Perhaps this had helped to fuel the rage he displayed after the battle.

  If he meant for men to call him merciless rather than say he was a weakling, he managed that very well. He performed only one clement act. Tiberius Nero came rushing home to bring me the news. Seeing my stricken face—what could I expect but word of another enormity?—he blurted, “No, for once I bring you some comfort. Truly. An unbelievable thing has happened—but my source is irreproachable.”

  I sat in my sewing room, where, with the heart to do almost nothing, I accomplished little work these days. I slipped my needle into the cloth for a tiny tunic I had been trying to make for my coming child. “What has happened?”

  “Caesar gave your father a funeral.”

  I rose. “What?”

  “He gave him a perfectly proper military funeral, with sacrifices and incense, and legions lined up in rows to do him honor. He lit his funeral pyre himself.”

  “Did he say why he treated my father differently?”

  Tiberius Nero shook his head.

  Caesar had informed me that I could expect repayment of a debt. When he avenged his “father,” he demonstrated to all Rome that he paid back debts with interest. I was sure he gave Father a funeral for my sake. This did not make me think well of him. It was just knowledge I could not escape.

  “I heard Caesar has recovered from his illness,” Tiberius Nero said. “What a pity, eh?”

  “A pity,” I echoed.

  I wondered what had become of Marcus Brutus’s wife, Portia. She had ardently espoused the Republican cause and encouraged her husband in the course he had taken. The day after we heard news of my father’s funeral, word came of her fate. Often when a man is impelled by honor to take his own life, his wife will do the same. And so Portia did, most painfully, jamming a hot coal down her throat. When I heard of this, fear tugged at me. What if my mother should also resolve to die?

  What anchored Mother to life was my pregnancy. She was aware, as all women are, that first births are very dangerous. As the moment for my baby’s birth approached, Mother did not treat me with any new warmth. But she hovered over me as she never had before, prepared special foods that were supposed to be particularly nourishing for women facing childbirth, and hung an amulet round my neck that she had worn when she gave birth to her children.

  I felt the first pangs of labor early in the morning a fortnight after I heard the news of my father’s death. What I learned on the birthing chair was this: my body’s capacity for pain. The midwife, Mother, and Secunda all stayed in the room with me. They wiped my face with cool water, and they murmured encouraging words. But they could not ease my agony or make the baby come forth. I did not call on Diana or any other god or goddess; they all seemed so far off. I felt I had only my own strength to rely on as I pushed and pushed, gripping the arms of the mahogany chair. I knew if I won the struggle I would live, and my son would live. Otherwise we would both die.

  When the day had waned and come again, sunlight slanting in through the bedchamber windows, and still the baby had not been born, I saw grave looks on my mother’s and the midwife’s faces. As for Secunda, she had already begun to cry.

  I was beginning to lose my battle, that was plain. Something in me revolted at this thought. I would not lose. Would not. I said to myself that when the sharpest pains came again I would push with all my might, while I still had strength left to make this attempt, push and push and push and hold back nothing, and not cease until the baby was born. Live or die: I would stake everything on one toss of the dice. As soon as the pain came, I did just as I resolved, biting on the strip of leather the wet nurse had given me, refusing to scream. I felt my insides being torn asunder. I did not know I had won my battle until I heard the midwife cry, “A son! And he is perfect!”

  What more honored estate can there be for a woman in this world than to be mother to a son? But I was too exhausted to feel triumphant.

  Later, I held my son in my arms and counted his fingers, almost suspiciously. Five on each hand. I told myself that proved he was perfect, just as the midwife had said. They say every child looks beautiful to his own mother, but the truth is, he did not seem beautiful to me. His tiny, wrinkled red face reminded me of a peevish little old man. Yet I loved him.

  We hired a woman named Rubria, whose own baby had died, to serve as wet nurse for the child. Right after the birth, of course, the midwife had laid the swaddled baby at Tiberius Nero’s feet, and he—exultant—had lifted it in his arms, signifying his decision to rear, rather than expose it. I have never known a wealthy father to cast out of doors a healthy, legitimate child, even a girl.

  Nine days after the birth, as custom required, we held a naming ceremony for the baby. The celebration was a small one, since Father was so recently dead. There sat Mother, Secunda, and I in our white mourning clothes, trying to balance grief and happiness. Tiberius Nero hung a child’s protective amulet—a bulla—on the baby’s cradle. Our guests applauded, which made the baby wake up and wail. I rocked him, but could not soothe him. Finally, Mother lifted him, and little Tiberius Claudius Nero quieted in her arms.

  Mother put the baby back in the cradle. “You feel quite well now, don’t you, Livia? No signs of fever? No weakness?”

  “Mother, I’m fine.”

  She brushed my hair back from my face. “Always so messy. Ah well, life goes on.”

  I went to bed rather late that night and also slept late, long after Tiberius Nero and the rest of the household were up. A knock on the bedchamber door roused me. I opened it to find Antiope, the maid who waited on my mother, looking anxious. She said she had repeatedly knocked on the door of Mother’s bedchamber and was concerned that Mother did not answer.

  I raced to Mother’s bedchamber. Before I threw the door open, I suspected what awaited me there. Mother lay across her bed, dressed just as she had been for yesterday’s ceremony. Her head rested on a pillow. Her legs were crossed at the ankles. The folds of her stola were carefully arranged. There was a smear of yellow across her lips, and in her hand she clutched the kind of vial used to hold expensive perfume. Her eyes, wide open, gawked at the ceiling.

  A waxed tablet with writing on it lay on the stool at the foot of her bed. I snatched it up with desperate eagerness, as if words could somehow make everything right.

  Livia, I have gone to join your father. The loss of our property has played only a minor part in my decision. Certainly I have no desire to be a burden to you or your husband. But I have chosen this course because it pays the greatest honor to your father and our marriage. I am sure you have enough daughterly reverence that you would not dream of questioning the rightness of my action.

  Secunda is to get my emerald necklace, which I promised her; you may divide the rest of my jewelry with her as you think just.

  I forbid you to follow my example, and hope I need not remind you of your responsibilities to your husband and your son.
/>   I had received the news of my father’s death calmly; Mother was there to order me to be calm. She was not here now. I sank down on my knees, howled like an animal, and tore at my clothes.

  Tiberius Nero came running. It was a long time before he could get me up on my feet. He made me down a sleeping draught, and I soon fell into a stupor. I think my husband was afraid that if he did not give me the draught I would do myself harm.

  December is the most joyous month of the year, the time of the Saturnalia, of games and feasting, and at the end of the month, new year’s presents. Fresh grief at this time walls you off from everyone. With so many people dead in the proscriptions and in battle, the revels that year had a forced quality, but one still heard music in the streets and smelled honey cakes and spiced wine. When I had to go anywhere, I kept the curtains of my litter closed. Young as I was, I did not know that mourning passes, and was as defenseless before grief as the young usually are.

  I did not take much pleasure even in my son. I felt terrified if he so much as sneezed. What if I lost him as I had lost my parents?

  Soon it was time for me to take up my duties as a wife again. They were less onerous than they had once been. Tiberius Nero’s ardor in the bedchamber had lessened. I suspected that he began seeking other women during my pregnancy, and having fallen into this habit, he never stopped. For men of the nobility this was expected, conventional behavior. It still would have upset me, if I had loved him.

  I no longer had the illusion that my marriage might help save the Republic. The Republic was quite dead. Antony, Lepidus, and Caesar had carved up the empire between them. Antony was in the east, Lepidus in North Africa, and Caesar remained in Italy.

  Tiberius Nero was named a praetor. Lucius Antony stayed in Rome, having been chosen consul. People said that Lucius could almost be taken for his brother’s less competent and vital twin; he had the same tall, husky build and fleshy face as Mark Antony. He would frequently dine at my home, and then he and my husband would withdraw to confer for long hours.