Page 74 of Agrippa

– Those are the ashes of Marcellus. The first of us to go.

He pointed to the others.

– That is where I shall rest. There will be Livia. There will be Julia. There will be my sons when their time comes – hopefully many years from now. And there, my dear Agrippa, one day will be you.

It was not at all the resting place I wanted, entombed in that ugly mound of brick and soil beneath his gargantuan statue. I began to say that I had made other arrangements, that there was a spot on the Field of Mars I had long had in mind.

He would not hear of it.

– No, no, no, you are part of my family. I want you by my side for eternity. Besides, I shall need you to guard my back in the Underworld.

He punched my arm. A joke.

I thought, what does it matter anyway? Death is death. Dust is dust. I shall be beyond caring.

I said that of course, if that was what he desired, I would be honoured.

We walked away together then, down the darkened passage, and out into the noise and the light, and that was the last time I saw him.

XXII

It had been my intention to end my story there, for I had nothing else to tell, and I cannot abide long books that drag on to no purpose or try to end with some grand philosophical conclusion.

Augustus went off to Greece.

I continued to live with Julia as before and dared to hope the crisis in our marriage was behind us. She even became pregnant for the fifth time, much to her irritation.

Then came the trouble in Illyricum, and the necessity for me to leave her behind in Rome and travel north to deal with it.

The awful scene I witnessed on my return, of her and Tiberius together, I have already mentioned briefly. I shall not revisit it. It robbed me of my desire to live.

I do not repine. I have crammed more into my fifty years than most of the men I have met all put together. I have fought and I have built. I have known love and I will predecease my children, which is the greatest blessing that fate can bestow upon a parent. It is enough.

Yesterday morning, I gathered all the papers that comprise this memoir, set them in order and locked them in my iron-bound chest.

Then I summoned my staff, including my useless doctor, and told them it was my intention to kill myself by starvation, just as Atticus did when he could no longer bear his pain. Given my condition, I doubted it would take very long.

I handed over all the money I keep in the house, gave them a document freeing them from slavery, thanked them for their loyal service and told them to divide the cash as they thought fit. I instructed them not to bring me food or drink, and on no account to admit any visitors.

There were tears and pleas, which I ignored.

I ordered them to lock the door behind them.

I lay on my bed, and soon began to drift into a delirious state between waking and sleeping.

Hours passed.

I thought of my mother, and although I never knew what she looked like, I believed I saw her for the first time, a beautiful ethereal lady standing in the corner watching me. I thought of my father, and of Octavius when he was young, and of Caesar and Mark Antony, and of Caecilia, my first and greatest love, and of Julia and my eight children, and of some of the men I had fought beside and of some of the men I had killed. The room was filled with them all.

The light faded and it became dark, and then in the morning, when it started to get light again, I saw Livia sitting at the end of my bed, reading. I stirred, and she turned to look at me.

– Ah, so you’re awake.

She seemed more solid than the other phantoms who had visited me, and I asked if she was real. My voice was a croak. I had not taken any water for many hours. She gave me a pitying look.

– Of course I’m real. You wrote to me, remember, and asked me to tell Augustus you were dying. Did you think I would stay away? I was wondering what you had been doing all this time alone.

She continued reading at great speed, running her finger down the columns of writing.