Page 45 of Agrippa

– Even so, the cost! Three million per mile for labour and materials – you’re looking at a hundred and eighty million sesterces, minimum.

– I can find you the money.

I pointed out on the plans that if we ran spurs from the aqueduct, as well as supplying the naval base we could provide eight other towns with running water – Pompeii, Nola, Acerrae, Atella, Naples, Baiae, Cumae and Puteoli. I would insist the councils of each made a financial contribution. The rest of the money I would put in myself.

All of us wish to leave some mark upon the world, engineers more than most. Here, I told him, was an opportunity to tame Mother Nature and harness her most precious resource for the benefit of a quarter of a million of our fellow Romans in Campania. The aqueduct would still be running a thousand years after he and I were dead.

I knew he would be unable to resist. After his usual humming and hawing, he started to show some interest, despite himself.

– When would you want to start?

– At once.

Together we bent over the map.

We agreed to divide the sixty-mile line into twenty sections of three miles. Each section would have a workforce of two thousand men, housed in camps on site. Of course, the logistics were daunting. But this was a Roman army, I said, with all its equipment and expertise – wagons, tents, tools, carpenters, engineers – disciplined and used to living in the open. We would simply make war upon a different kind of enemy.

Auctus undertook to send down every expert he could spare from the aqueduct department to oversee construction. Bricks, timber and lead we would source locally. The ingredients of hydraulic concrete would lie everywhere around us.

By the end of the morning, the matter was settled, and after a glass of wine to toast the future, I went off to visit the person I suspected was the true source of power in the city.

Livia.

I took her some letters that Caesar had entrusted to me to deliver to her personally. They included his will, which he wanted her to deposit with the Vestal Virgins. I could have broken the seal and read the contents, then resealed it with his ring. No one would have been any the wiser. But he trusted me, so I did not.

She professed herself delighted to see me, and called in her elder son, Tiberius, to present him to me. He was still betrothed to my daughter, Agrippina. Livia was proud of him, and determined that one day he would be a great soldier, worthy of his station. She asked me to tell him the story of the Battle of Actium.

He was a few days short of his eleventh birthday, big for his age, broad-shouldered, somewhat gloomy and surly, even at that age – a typical Claudian. I did not relish the thought of him as my son-in-law. I described the fighting as vividly as I could, conjuring heroism out of slaughter and being careful to give most of the credit to his stepfather. But Livia was not fooled. After he had gone back to his lessons, she congratulated me on what she said everyone knew was entirely my victory.

– Unfortunately, that made it imperative that Caesar should be seen to go to Egypt and deal with Antony on his own. Too many people think he can only win a war when you do the fighting.

I realised then that my suspicion was correct.

– You advised him not to take me?

– When he is away from Rome, he relies on me to be his eyes and ears. I warned him what was being said behind his back. I gave him my opinion. Also, someone had to bring Antony’s army back to Italy and demob his legions. There was no one else we could trust.

I found it hard to suppress my irritation that a woman hundreds of miles away from the fighting was meddling in the high command. I observed in a cold voice that while I understood the logic behind the decision, it was a pity that he should be doing what I did best, while I had to do what he was most brilliant at – politics.

– Oh, if it’s politics you’re worrying about, don’t be concerned. I can tell you exactly how to arrange things in Rome. The more urgent question is what should be done with Antony’s legions.

I explained my plan to set them to work building a great aqueduct in Campania. They would be paid for their work. They would live in tents, so there would be no immediate need to find them land. Construction would take at least a year. During that time, we could try to locate areas in the south where they could settle permanently.

Her agile mind saw the advantages at once – ‘killing two birds with one stone’, as she put it – simultaneously occupying discontented men and producing an aqueduct that would enhance Caesar’s popularity in the south. Doubtless there would be opposition in the Senate – there always was – but it was nothing, she said, that could not be handled. And for the next half-hour, she gave me an intelligence briefing on the Roman elite: who was loyal, who needed to be watched, who appeased, who promoted, who crushed.

– The consul alongside the absent Caesar will be Crassus, grandson of the consul who lost his army in Parthia. We need to be wary of him. He is ambitious and able, and dreams of military glory to avenge his ancestor – in short, a threat. We can buy him off with the governorship of Macedonia in the summer and send him out early. Once he’s gone, we have the power to appoint suffects to replace him for the remainder of the year. Most men want the consulship only for the glory of saying they held the office rather than to actually do anything with it. We should elevate three, to serve two months apiece. I recommend Vetus, who was governor of Nearer Gaul; Saenius, who is a useful tool; and Cicero.

– Cicero?

– Yes, the old man’s son.

– Cicero’s son would take office from Caesar, even though Caesar had his father killed?

Livia rarely laughed – so rarely I can still remember the few occasions when she did. This was one of them.

– Of course he’ll do it. It will be a gesture of reconciliation on our side, and of acceptance of the new order on his. He’ll cause you no trouble – half the time he’s drunk in any case. The important thing is to give the Senate the illusion they’re still important. Leave them to me and Maecenas. You deal with the legions.

You may wonder why I allowed myself to be talked to in such a way by a woman.