Page 70 of Agrippa

After Augustus had gone, I reproached her bitterly for giving away our sons without discussing it with me or putting up a fight. She laid her hand on my arm.

– Well then go to him, Agrippa, and tell him you refuse. But you and I both know you cannot do that. He would never forget such an insult. You might even risk a civil war, which you would lose, and the only people who would benefit would be Livia and Tiberius. Does it really matter so much if they are known as Gaius and Lucius Caesar? They will still be your flesh and blood.

She was right. I could not refuse, for the sake of both my family and the country, and over the following days I managed to swallow my pride. But the day of the adoption ceremony was a humiliation for me. A praetor officiated, and the boys were legally transferred to Augustus for the price of a copper coin, which he touched symbolically three times on a pair of scales.

Lucius was a babe in arms, but Gaius was old enough to know that something strange was going on and asked me what was happening.

I told him he would understand when he was older.

Not long after it was done, I went to see Augustus and said I wished to leave Rome for a couple of years.

It was an unexceptional proposal. To administer the empire, one or other of us had to reside in either the western or the eastern provinces for an extended period. Having lately been in Gaul and Spain, I suggested I travel with Julia and our children to the east, where I could attend to his interests in Syria.

He agreed that such a visit was necessary. His only reservation was that he did not want his sons to be away from Italy for so long. But I flatly denied his request that I should leave them behind, and after a brief discussion, and seeing that I was not to be persuaded, he reluctantly gave his blessing.

XXI

Julia had never left Italy before. Indeed, she had barely left Rome, except for spring vacations on the Bay of Naples. She wanted to see more of the world, and I wanted to show her the places that meant most to me, where I had spent so many years and fought so many battles.

After saying goodbye to our families, we set out for Brundisium in good spirits, along that familiar endless road – Julia and me and our three children, their domestic slaves and ours, my staff officers and secretaries, two cooks, three doctors, twelve lictors carrying the symbols of my proconsular imperium, a thousand legionaries acting as our bodyguard, a cavalry escort, and a baggage train consisting mostly of Julia’s belongings.

She had never been to sea before either. Fortunately, the spring weather was fine. We made an easy passage across the Adriatic to Apollonia, accompanied in the middle part of the voyage by dolphins, to her delight and that of the elder children. We stayed in the Citadel, and I showed her the room where her father and I had been dining when we learned the news of Caesar’s assassination. In that curious way of memories, it seemed both long ago and yet close enough to be yesterday.

From Apollonia we sailed down the coast to Corfu, to the spot where Augustus and I had rendezvoused – he with the legions, I with the navy – months before the decisive engagement with Antony and Cleopatra.

I fear I must have talked too much of my old adventures. As our voyage continued towards Actium, I gave Julia over the course of several days a full description of the battle, using pieces of her jewellery to represent the position of the warships, and for the first time I thought I saw a tremor of boredom flicker across her face.

We anchored at the scene of the battle and were rowed ashore towards Nicopolis, the city Augustus had founded to commemorate our victory. I remember a wind was blowing off the sea, and I turned my face to it and inhaled the strong, cool breeze of my old ally the Iapyx.

Memories flooded back.

A delegation of the town’s councillors was waiting at the quayside. They gave us a tour and proudly showed off their fine new buildings, including the stadium where Augustus had decreed that games should be held every five years on the anniversary of the battle. The climax of the visit was a walk up to the headland, accompanied by my lictors, to see the Temple of Apollo Aktios, close to the site of our old camp.

Here a monument had been built with a platform facing out to sea from which visitors could view the stretch of water on which the fate of the world had been decided. Behind it was a long wall into which were set the captured beaks of thirty-five of Antony’s warships. Above these, running from one end to the other, was an inscription.

IMPERATOR CAESAR, SON OF THE DIVINE JULIUS, FOLLOWING THE VICTORY IN THE WAR WHICH HE WAGED ON BEHALF OF THE REPUBLIC IN THIS REGION, WHEN HE WAS CONSUL FOR THE FIFTH TIME AND IMPERATOR FOR THE SEVENTH TIME, AFTER PEACE HAD BEEN SECURED ON LAND AND SEA, CONSECRATED TO NEPTUNE AND MARS THE CAMP FROM WHICH HE SET FORTH TO ATTACK THE ENEMY, NOW ORNAMENTED WITH NAVAL SPOILS

Julia and I studied it for a while. Finally she turned to me with a smile and an expression of mock puzzlement.

– How very odd! He doesn’t even mention you. And yet from what you said, I thought it was you who won the battle here?

I should have smiled with her. Augustus was already being hailed as a god, especially in the east, and gods don’t share the credit for their wonders with us mere mortals. And in defence of Julia’s teasing, she was young and had no idea of the ghosts that haunted me on that windswept clifftop.

But to see history carved in stone and my name obliterated was hard to stomach.

I turned on my heel and walked away without another word.

I say I walked, although limped would be a better word. My leg was now causing me serious pain, and it is from this incident that I date the beginning of the troubles in our marriage.

I mostly blame myself. I was too immersed in the past. My illness was making me short-tempered and withdrawn, and Julia was no longer excited by the novelty of long days at sea. She was bored, without suitable company of her own age, and began to spend more time with some of the young officers on my staff. I decided not to object. It was a relief to see her happy. I knew I could trust them not to let any flirtation go too far. They were too frightened of me for that.

In search of a cure for my affliction, we interrupted our voyage eastwards to stop off at Epidaurus on the eastern coast of the Peloponnese. This has long been renowned as the birthplace of Apollo’s son Asclepius, the god of healing, a shrine to which invalids flock from all over the world in the hope of finding a cure. My soldiers made a camp nearby, Julia and I took a villa with the children, and I submitted myself to the local Greek doctors.

I prefer to forget all the tortures they inflicted, which they were pleased to call treatments. The worst was a bath of hot vinegar into which I had to plunge my leg three times a day. It gave me a new respect for Augustus. How much he had endured over the years, and what willpower he had shown to overcome his physical weakness and reach the summit. I realised too, even more clearly, how essential I had been to his ambitions – a friend at his side whom he trusted, who could act, as it were, as his muscle. He had supplied the cunning. I had supplied the body – even to the extent of fathering his sons.

Neither of us would have got so far on his own. But together we had proved impossible to stop.

Despite my scepticism, the soakings in vinegar, although they did not cure me, did at least provide some temporary relief. Henceforth, the pain and swelling would come and go without warning. I donated money to set up a monument to Asclepius, and at the end of the month we resumed our journey.