Page 46 of Agrippa

The truth is, Livia was not a woman in the normal sense, any more than Maecenas was a man. (The family name for her in later years – whispered behind her back because they were all so frightened of her – was ‘Ulysses in a skirt’.) I was not frightened of her myself, but I was content to let her and Maecenas do the flattering and the scheming, for which I lacked both the patience and the guile.

A few days after my return to the city, Maecenas invited me to dinner. I wanted Caecilia to accompany me, but she did not trust him and said that we would only be talking politics, which she detested, so I went alone.

He had, like me, grown rich in Caesar’s service. He now had a fine house high on the crest of the Esquiline Hill set amid extensive gardens. A fountain gently splashed inside the atrium to soothe him when he could not sleep. The mosaic floors and frescoes were exquisite. He had become a dedicated collector – of statues, paintings, furniture, glassware, books, and above all, people. He kept half a dozen musicians, who were already playing when I arrived, and a stable of poets, two of whom, Publius Vergilius Maro and Quintus Horatius Flaccus, were to become quite famous. Both were present at the dinner.

The greatest surprise was that he had also acquired a wife, Terentia, whom he had married earlier in the year. She was as striking in appearance as Livia, only younger, with thick black hair tied up and skin as smoothly white as the marble nymphs that adorned his dining room. He lay on the couch beside her, and rarely took his hands off her all evening, constantly stroking her and feeding her morsels from the table, as if he could not believe such a prize had fallen into his possession. It was said he took her to bed with him every night, although there was never to be any sign of children. But now I am gossiping as much as he did, so I shall leave it at that.

The exquisite food was his native Etruscan – duck, boar, deer, doves, fox – as was the wine, which was superb. After we had eaten and drunk until we could stuff ourselves no more, Maecenas called upon his tame poets to perform. Vergil went first and read out a lot of dull stuff about farming, followed by Horatius, whose verses were as filthy as anything I had ever heard in an army camp, and therefore far more to my taste, although I would hardly have called them poetry. We all applauded, and the two authors congratulated one another on the brilliance of their respective compositions with elaborate insincerity. Poets, I have noticed, are more like politicians than they care to admit.

Once the musicians had played and the dancers performed, Maecenas insisted on showing me his gardens. It was too dark to see much. He wanted an excuse for a private talk. Beneath us, the lights of the city flickered in the valley like the fires of an encamped army, and the sounds of the night, of barking dogs and occasional shouts, carried up on the still night air.

I complimented him on the charms of his wife and his fine establishment, and he remarked how far we both had come since he struggled to teach me Greek hexameters in the schoolroom. I said I was still in need of lessons. He lapsed into silence, and I sensed he had something he wanted to raise with me but was uncertain how to proceed. It was a while before he spoke.

– I assume you have no doubts that Caesar will defeat Antony.

– None. It is merely a matter of time.

– Exactly my opinion. Unfortunately, I fear that is when our problems will really start.

I laughed, and said that surely the worst of the dangers would lie behind us. He shook his head.

– No, it may look peaceful down there, but don’t be fooled. Behind closed doors, my spies assure me plots are forming. The patricians detested the old Caesar, they loathe the new one, and they hate the two of us most of all – a pair of parvenus who have usurped their power. I trust you are well guarded.

– I have a couple of officers living in my house, nothing more.

– You should bring in some of your most loyal men to protect you. I go nowhere without a dozen mercenaries. It would be an obvious move for them, to strike at Caesar by killing us.

He made me promise to do as he asked. Then he glanced around and lowered his voice.

– I don’t say this lightly, but you do realise that if anything should happen to Caesar, you would have to take control of Rome? You are the general the legions most respect. Only you have the authority and the military ability to prevent the whole edifice collapsing.

I said I was flattered, but I was sure it would not come to that.

– Well, let us hope not. But his health has always been fragile, and he is bound to be exposed to some danger in Egypt, even if he stays well behind the lines. You must not take any risks with your own safety. And if the worst should come to the worst – I love him, may the gods protect him – I trust you will rely on me to help you, just as I have helped Caesar?

There was an insinuation in his tone I did not care for. He seemed to be offering me a deal. The whole conversation had a smack of conspiracy. I said stiffly that it was getting late, and it was time for me to leave. He backtracked immediately, said he hoped he had not offended me, and that he would be grateful if I did not repeat his remarks to Caesar.

I assured him I would keep the matter between us, then wished him goodnight. I remember I walked home alone through the deserted streets, occasionally looking over my shoulder and hurrying past the narrow alleys. His warning had had its effect.

The new session of the Senate met on the first day of January.

I judged it wise to let the junior consul, Crassus, perform the traditional ceremonies and make the opening speech. I sat in Caesar’s curule chair beside the dais, listening as he talked, staring straight ahead and feeling the eyes of half the senators upon me – me, Agrippa the plebeian, promoted out of nowhere, saying nothing, holding all the power they thought was rightfully theirs. The resentment was tangible.

I felt more exposed than I had on any battlefield. Maecenas was not even a member of the Senate, and Livia of course was barred from entry because of her sex. My guards were all outside, and it crossed my mind more than once that I might easily suffer the dictator’s fate, surrounded by petitioning senators thrusting their daggers into me. I decided to get out of Rome as soon as possible.

At the end of the session, I sought out Maecenas. A slight chill had descended upon our relations since our conversation in his garden. Nevertheless, I gave him Caesar’s signet ring and asked him to take charge of all administrative matters. Then I left for the Bay of Naples to attend to the urgent business of the demobbed legionaries and the construction of the aqueduct.

It proved to be a better year than I had expected, living far away from the city, mostly in the open, riding back and forth from one end of the line to the other, supervising the building work under the clear blue Mediterranean sky and its circling golden eagles. If you could not always see one of the twenty enormous work gangs, sited three miles apart, you could not escape the sound of them – the sawing and the digging and the pickaxes ringing on rock and the endless trundling of ox carts bringing fresh materials.

Who pauses in the bathhouse or while drinking at a fountain to consider what lies behind it? A conduit buried three feet beneath the earth, five feet high and three feet wide, built of brick, with a vaulted roof – tall enough for a maintenance man to walk along it – and walls of waterproof cement, applied in layers that take three months to dry and then must be polished to a mirror finish to allow the water to flow freely. Imagine the labour that is required, the skill needed to maintain a constant gradient across a sixty-mile line. And this does not take account of the arcades required to cross the valleys, and the thousands of tons of lead and miles of terracotta pipes that are used for the siphons.

People remember battles, but that aqueduct I built in Campania, and the others I shall leave behind me in Rome, Gaul and Germania, I count as victories as great as Actium.

Throughout this time, I kept in touch with Caesar by a regular exchange of dispatches.

He insisted on using a simple cipher, shifting each letter a place further on in the alphabet. It would not have fooled an expert code-breaker for a moment, but I suppose it was effective in baffling any casual busybody who was able to glance at our correspondence.

I keep those letters with my other papers. I consulted them this morning to aid my memory. I have them before me now.