That September—the year was 39
B
.c—Augustus returned to Rome from a quick survey of his new possessions in Gaul, and for the first time set eyes on Livia.
She was now just seventeen, and pregnant with her second child. Augustus didn't mind. She was, of course, married. Augustus didn't care. Four years of war and power had turned a stripling into an emperor who knew what he wanted the moment he saw it. He wanted Livia. The husband was a nuisance, but Augustus knew how to handle him.
The only real obstacle was Roman law—Augustus was not yet powerful enough to flout it at will. So he sent up a question to the High Pontiffs for decision: Would it be lawful if a pregnant wife should be divorced by her husband and marry another man while still carrying the first man's child? The High Pontiffs knew very well what answer Augustus wanted; they gave it. Oh, yes, perfectly legal. Of course, if the woman wasn't
sure
she was pregnant it would be illegal—for then there would be doubt, and therefore a cloud on the paternity
of the child. But Livia was sure; in fact, she was six months gone; so the High Pontiffs had no objection at all. Tiberius the Eider had none either; he promptly divorced Livia and even refunded her dowry, paying it over to Augustus.
There was only one other htde obstacle—Augustus was also married. It didn't matter. Her name was Scribonia and he had married her for political reasons (she was related to the Sicilian sailor, Sextus Pompey); but Sextus was under control and besides Scribonia nagged. Augustus divorced her. She was pregnant too; the divorce and the delivery occurred on the same day; the baby was a girl, named Julie.
So Livia went to the home of Augustus to live, leaving Tiberius with his father. Three months later her baby was born
—a boy, named Drusus—and promptl
y sent back to Tiberius the Elder by Livia's new husband. He might be tyrant enough to take a man's wife, but not his son.
III
What was he like, this Augustus whose shadow spread over the whole Roman world?
He was of average height, to begin with—the ordinary Roman stood five feet four, and Augustus was just a trifle taller than that. He was well proportioned and blond, with eyebrows that made a bar across the top of his Roman nose and eyes that were bright and lucid. Augustus was vain of his eyes. It was his conceit that they blazed with a godlike fire. Flatterers blinked and turned their heads when he looked at them, pretending to be dazzled; that pleased him.
Across the chest and diaphragm of Augustus seven birthmarks reproduced the constellation of the Great Bear (what we call the Big Dipper). Time diminished his handsomeness. One eye lost its sight, teeth decayed, a weakness of his left leg made him limp, horny patches blemished his skin. But he
was always graceful and always
serene. Once that saved his life. A Gaul came to Augustus' camp to murder him, looked on that tranquil face and, defeated, turned away.
When Augustus looked on Livia, six months big with child, and found her fair enough to steal away from her husband, he was twenty-four years old and time had not touched him. By Roman standards he was a remarkably handsome man. He knew it.
He had been married twice before. First he married Claudia, the stepdaughter of his ally Mark Antony. But Claudia was very young even for those times; Augustus quarreled with Claudia's mother and divorced the child without consummating the marriage. Then he wed Scribonia, who had herself been married twice before and came with a child by one of her husbands, but who had the virtue of being related to Sextus Pompey. A queer Roman, Pompey hated the land, almost forgot the Latin tongue, thought himself the child of the sea-god Neptune, and spent his years and his fleets trying to teach landlubbers that naval power was supreme.
At twenty-four Augustus had already had six years of great power.
Lord Acton said: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It was particularly true in Rome. In those times it was impossible for
any Roman to achieve and keep gr
eat power except through the exercise of great cruelty.
Augustus was a wise and mighty prince. His name has come down in history as one who was known for his courtesies and for policies that made the world a safer and better place to live in. It is also true that the armies that gave him Rome were paid with the blood of innocents and babes.
Armies needed money. To get that money, the Triumvirate of Augustus, Lepidus, and Mark Antony had to take it from those who had it. The cities in the Roman colonies within Italy were their first targets; the Triumvirs levied brutal taxes and exacted impossible tributes. Some Asian cities were ordered to pay ten years' taxes in advance and the order was enforced by the swords of the legions. Taxes were already high; the tenfold imposition was almost unbearable; what made it even worse was that some of the cities had been occupied by Cassius or Brutus and had already given the other side a ten-year advance. Municipal treasuries were emptied; that wasn't enough, so all municipal properties were auctioned off; that wasn't enough, so the estates and treasures of individual citizens were requisitioned and sold. And as even that was sometimes not enough, freeborn Romans were sold into slavery by their own city fathers to raise the money to pay the impossible taxes.
In Rome, there were many wealthy men who had sided with the Republicans. These came next. It was the law that a traitor to the state should, among other punishments, have all his property seized. Sometimes the heirs of the doomed men might contest such a seizure; so where the traitors had heirs, the Triumvirs slew the heirs too—even when the heirs were small children.
Augustus did not fall behind his co-rulers. He could not afford to, with half a million soldiers on his personal payroll. Indeed, he exceeded even Antony in his single-minded attention to getting the ultimate drop of blood. Augustus put even his own guardian on the proscribed list.
It was not even necessary to be rich to earn the wrath of Augustus. Troops that broke in battle learned to fear him; he had no patience with defeat; he lined the beaten soldiers up and executed every tenth one. Augustus tolerated not even the suspicion of enmity. His suspicion was his proof. He had a knight named Pinarius executed because, while Augustus was making a speech, Pinarius listened all too attentively—worse, made notes on a wax tablet, for heaven knew what purpose. Augustus had him knifed. Even Maecenas, Augustus' lifelong friend, thought him too harsh. There was a day when Augustus sat surrounded by a throng of accusers and witnesses, trying case after case, finding every defendant guilty and sentencing every convict to death. It was too much for Maecenas; he scribbled "Stop it, Butcher!" on a tablet and threw it in the Emperor's lap.
They said of Augustus that he had prostituted himself to Julius Caesar for the sake of becoming his heir, and that he scorched the hair off his legs with hot walnut shells. They said he was the child of a monstrous union between his mother and a snake one night in the Temple of Apollo, and that the strange serpentine discoloration on his mother's skin that kept her from enjoying the baths was the proof of it.
They said that even in his old age he had a passion for deflowering young virgins, and they said that his loving Livia provided the virgins for him to deflower.
They said many things of Augustus which were not true. But a fact of Augustus
’
life which is true and cannot be forgotten is this: he and those about him built the mightiest and most durable empire the world has ever known.
The other great Roman of Tiberius' babyhood was that graceful blackguard, Mark Antony. Tiberius' father had made the mistake of picking Antony in the grand choosing-up of sides, but he was not alone. Antony had as many followers as Augustus; Antony had more of the habit of power, more of the experience of commanding troops in the field. When Julius Caesar was assassinated Augustus was only a boy of eighteen; Caesar named him his heir in his will (which was a terrible shock to Antony!), but as Augustus was not in Rome and Antony was, it was simple for the older man to step in as the assassinated Caesar's nearest and dearest.
By the time Augustus reached Rome, Mark Antony had solved a great many annoying little problems.
He had been broke; but there w
as plenty of money in Caesar's estate. He had been somewhat worried that the murderers would turn from Caesar to Caesar's friends.
At Caesar's funeral Mark Antony set the stage for such an orgy of grief and hysteria as Rome had seldom seen. He was a great stage manager; he had a wax image made of the murdered man, bleeding blood from twenty-three stab wounds. He set the waxwork corpse and the real one together in a
model of the Temple of Venus, an
d standing by the ivory bier he delivered his funeral oration so well that Rome went mad with sorrow and rage. The crowd set fire to the Temple; soldiers tossed their spears into the blaze, noble ladies contributed their outer garments, the mob ransacked nearby homes and temples for fuel. It was a lovely burning, and it frightened the wits out of the murderers. They fled, abandoning Rome to Mark Antony.
When Caesar was stabbed, Antony was not only penniless but he owed more than a million dollars. By the time Augustus c
ame to Rome to collect his inher
itance, Antony was out of debt and solvent. The estate? Antony was all regrets. Somehow or other, it was all gone—at least all that could quickly be converted into cash. More than that, where Antony had been the logical next target for the assassins, now he was the safest, most popular man in Rome. His friends were countless. That was easy to understand, for he had somehow managed to find (gossip said he placed them there himself) in Caesar's effects enough useful papers—appointments, nominations to office, deeds, warrants, and the like—to reward his loyal friends and make a host of new ones.
Undoubtedly young Augustus burned with questions about his estate, but the time was not ripe to ask them. He needed Antony as much as Antony needed him. Brutus and Cassius still lived; and it was not until the battle of Philippi that the last Republican banner came down. By then Augustus no longer needed
to ask
questions, for he knew all the answers. His fellow Triumvir was a scoundrel.
But such
a
charming one!
In his life he spent
four billion dollars.
It can't be said that he stole it, for a man can't steal that much money; the size of the amount changes the nature of the act. His first big acquisition was looting the coffers of Julius Caesar, but that was pennies compared to what he could get by looting the eastern world. For after Philippi, when the Triumvirate divided up the world, Mark Antony exercised the privilege of seniority and chose Rome's eastern possessions, the richest colonies and client kingdoms. He took Egypt, with its century-old stores of treasure; and he took Egypt's queen.
Most of Mark Antony's four billions were spent for essentials: pay for the troops, and the necessaries of war. There was quite
a
lot, though, that could be used on gracious living. In
this
Mark
Antony
was a specialist. He loved food, he loved comfort,
and
he loved women—yes, and boys were
all
right,
too;
Mark Antony
took
his fun where he found it.
None of these traits were unknown in Rome, or even much frowned on. Julius Caesar himself was called "the husband of every woman, and the wife of every man." The trouble with Mark Antony
was
that his habits were excessive. He kept a harem of
four
hundred inmates of mixed sexes and that was altogether too
many.
He mingled with a select circle of wealthy voluptuaries—they called themselves "the Inimitable Livers," which
is not a pun
in Latin
but
is
an apt
one indeed
in English. Antony's cooks prepared eight dinners each day; only one was eaten, but that one had to be exactly right. Antony could be harsh if a meal was spoiled; but he could also be most grateful when a meal was perfection. He gave his chef a villa as a reward for one meal. He was a man with a fastidious palate, and Egypt's queen—Cleopatra—knew how to please him.
The last of the Ptolemies was no more Egyptian than Antony; her blood was pure Greek, and she knew a lot about conquering Romans. (Julius Caesar had passed that way and left her a small proof of his affection in the form of a half-Roman son named Caesarion.) Cleopatra was not very beautiful, but she was blonde and she had personality. And brains. She conquered her conqueror at first sight; instantly she became his mistress; soon thereafter the mother of his twin children; even, a few years later, his wife. However, before that happened Antony had to get rid of the present incumbent, and that was bad politics for she was Octavia, the sister of Augustus. From Rome Augustas wrote Antony a testy letter. Antony replied:
What has come over you? Do you object to my sleeping with Cleopatra? But we are married; and it is not even as though this were anything new. . . . And what about you? Are you faithful to Livia? My congratulations if, when this letter arrives, you have not been in bed with Tertullia, or Terentilla, or Rufilla, or Salvia Titisenia—or all of them.