Page 50 of Agrippa

As we passed through the gate, and the crowds got their first glimpse of Caesar and roared their approval, the noise hit our faces like the blast from a furnace, and I wondered what I had let myself in for.

That first triumph was to celebrate the victory in Illyricum, now five years in the past. On the second day, we reassembled to celebrate Actium.

This time, as I trudged behind Caesar and those assorted children and watched them bask in adulation for what was my achievement, I cannot pretend I was not resentful. Why should I deny it, after all these years? Would it have diminished Caesar’s glory in the smallest degree to have given me just one of his triumphs? Instead, that walk to the Temple of Jupiter felt like a kind of humiliation. I could not shake off the sensation that I was a captive being paraded behind his conqueror. The onlookers warmly applauded me. A few even shouted out that the day should have been mine. But I pretended not to hear, and continued walking with a measured tread, my gaze fixed firmly in front, on the arses of Caesar’s horses.

The third day was devoted to the conquest of Egypt, and this was the greatest spectacle of them all – wagonloads of Cleopatra’s treasure, a tableau depicting her suicide, prisoners in chains, and those wretched children of hers that Caesar had permitted to live, unlike Caesarion – her twins by Antony and their six-year-old son. All were paraded past the cheering Romans.

As I had played no part in the victory, I did not take part in this final procession but watched it from the crowd.

Caesar wasted no time in consolidating his power.

He had returned from Egypt so laden with gold he was able to announce to an immense crowd in the Forum that he would give every male Roman, man and boy, a bounty of four hundred sesterces – which in those days, for the average citizen, amounted to around half a year’s pay. The legionaries would each receive a thousand.

The doors of the Temple of Janus, always left open in time of war, were for the first time in decades officially closed in a great ceremony of national thanksgiving.

Rome was finally at peace.

Having settled matters with the people and the army, he turned his attention to the Senate. At the start of our joint consulship, he burned all Antony’s correspondence and promised there would be no retribution for past disloyalty. He and I were appointed censors, with the power to reconstruct the Senate. Two hundred names were removed from the roll and replaced by men who owed everything to him. To prevent insurrection in the provinces, no senator was allowed to leave Italy without his permission. Those who were expelled from the Senate went quietly.

He doubled the pay of his Praetorian Guard and stationed two thousand of them in the city for his protection, and another two thousand outside Rome to be summoned in case of a serious threat. They were not needed.

The only questions that remained to be settled were his formal title and the legal extent of his powers.

In the midst of all this, I married Claudia Marcella.

As her uncle, and the head of the family, Caesar again took charge of the arrangements. The ceremony was held in his house, which was filled with his relations.

I went alone.

I had known most of the guests for many years. But it is one thing to observe a family from the outside and another thing to join it.

I remember being startled at the sight of so many children all together. Apart from Caesar’s daughter, Julia, and Livia’s two sons, Tiberius and Drusus, there were no fewer than eleven accompanying Octavia – her two girls by her first husband, together with her son, Marcellus, who had been born after his father’s death; her two children by Mark Antony and his three offspring by his earlier wives, whom she had cared for while he was in Egypt; and most extraordinary of all, his three surviving children by Cleopatra, who only a few days earlier had been paraded through Rome as captives, and whom Octavia had persuaded Caesar to let her bring into her household.

This act of kindness was typical of her generous nature. I had known and admired her for years. Both her former husbands were dead, and I would happily have married her, which would have made me Caesar’s brother-in-law. But she was past the age when it was likely or even safe for her to become pregnant. And although he had never said as much, I knew it was part of Caesar’s dynastic calculations that I should sire yet more infants, preferably sons, to add to this imperial brood of future consuls and generals.

As he took me round the room to introduce me, it crossed my mind that I had become in his eyes something like a stallion to be paraded at a stud farm.

My bride was twenty. I was thirty-four. Her life had not been easy. Her father had died when she was a child, and she had witnessed Antony’s treatment of her mother at first hand, as the family trailed back and forth between Rome and Athens, until finally her stepfather had thrown them all out of his house. Siblings can become unusually close in such circumstances, when they are obliged to look after one another, and I noticed how Marcellus rarely left his sister’s side, and that when he looked at me, he did not trouble to hide his resentment.

Of Claudia herself, I had no complaints, except that we had nothing at all in common. In manner and appearance she took after her mother – handsome, dutiful, polite, reserved. She seemed neither enthusiastic at the prospect of marrying me nor particularly unhappy. I suppose for her it was simply one more disruption she had to put up with in her turbulent life.

As a wedding present, Caesar gave us Antony’s old house, formerly Pompey’s mansion, with the ships’ rams set in the walls – the place where we had first confronted Antony to demand the dictator’s legacy all those years ago.

After the ceremony had concluded and we had exchanged an unexpectedly passionate kiss, Caesar presided over a banquet of seven tables laid out in our honour. I was placed beside Claudia at one end of his table, while at the other he shared a couch with Maecenas’s wife, Terentia.

Poor Maecenas! I can see his stricken expression even now as he watched them flirting with one another. At the end of the meal, after Caesar had raised a toast to our marriage and happiness, they slipped away together on the pretext of visiting his library, and did not return for another half-hour.

Livia glanced at me and briefly raised her eyebrows, but made no comment.

Caesar would settle for nothing less than absolute power for life. But he felt it would be an insult to his dignity to be seen to ask for it. He spent some months considering this problem before devising a solution that perfectly displayed his cunning and taste for drama.

At the start of our second term as consuls, he stood up in the Senate and made a surprise announcement.

– Conscript Fathers, throughout my life I have laboured long and hard to restore our Republic. As I look across our mighty nation, I see an empire prosperous and at peace for the first time in my life, and I feel my work is done. No man here can deny that I have earned a rest. Accordingly, I now, today, lay down the burden of my offices and retire entirely from all public duties. I leave you in the safe hands of my valiant nephew, Agrippa. No doubt you will quickly appoint a replacement for me as a suffect consul from among your number. He will have my absolute support. Farewell, gentlemen, and may the gods bless Rome.

With these words, or something like them – I am quoting from memory – he gestured to me to take his place, descended from the dais, walked the length of the aisle to the doors where his guards were waiting and disappeared.

The reaction at first was stupefied silence, followed by a rising babble of excited conversation as the senators turned to one another and asked if they could believe what they had just heard, and finally pandemonium as the truth sank in. One after another they stood to demand that I should go to Caesar at once and plead with him to change his mind. I made a careful note of their names, and also – more importantly for future reference – of all those who remained silent. I promised to do as they asked.