Page 62 of Agrippa

From: Augustus

To: Agrippa

Alban Mount

Kalends of November

My dear old friend,

The worst has happened. I can hardly write for grief.

Marcellus is dead.

Poor Julia is a widow at sixteen.

There is pestilence in Rome, so I have been keeping clear of the city, staying out here in the hills. Marcellus, with the vainglory of youth, ignored all warnings. That, I am told, is what killed him, less than a week ago. Perhaps it is true, but my mind is filled with dark suspicions I dare not confide in a letter, even to you.

Livia is jubilant, although she tries to hide it. Tiberius mopes around as usual.

All my plans are broken. The new consuls are to be Aeserninus – an old follower of Lepidus, which tells you all you need to know – and Arruntius, a good man whom you will remember from Actium. But both are weak politically, and with Marcellus now gone, I fear all manner of plots are forming against me.

Will you board the ship I have sent to convey this letter and hurry back to Italy at once? I do not order this, but I ask you in remembrance of all our years together.

Rome needs your strength and wise counsel.

And I need my friend.

It was the most remarkable letter I had ever received from him. If I did not have it here before me now, I would say I must have imagined it. The news it contained was dramatic enough – Marcellus dead at nineteen! I cannot say I wept at that. But even more shocking to me than the content was the tone. I had never heard Augustus sound so querulous.

All my plans are broken …

I felt as though he had reached out his hand over hundreds of miles and grasped me by the shoulder.

My resentment of him vanished at that moment.

I looked around my comfortable room, in my comfortable house, on my comfortable island, and realised I was living a comfortable death.

I summoned my staff and ordered them to prepare to leave.

I gave the villa to my companion as a reward for her kindness and left that same day.

Our voyage across the Aegean in the depths of winter was the most brutal I ever endured. For days on end, in that limitless, dark and heaving expanse, with the wind roaring all around us, not once did we glimpse another ship. The mast snapped, and when we reached the Greek mainland, we had to put into a harbour for repairs and to allow the crew to rest. Thereafter, we dared not risk the open sea. Instead, we followed the coast, making it a much longer journey than if we had steered a direct course, so that it was not until the end of February that we finally reached Brundisium.

I sent a message ahead to Augustus reporting that I had landed, then set out as fast as I could towards Rome.

I found him about a week later waiting for me in his villa on the Alban Mount. The grounds as usual swarmed with his Praetorian Guard. He said nothing as I walked in, but rose from his chair and advanced rapidly towards the centre of the room. Flinging out his arms, he embraced me longer and more tightly than he usually did, patting my back repeatedly before he released me. His body felt thin yet strong. He had plainly recovered his health.

As we separated, I looked around and remarked how quiet and empty the large house seemed.

He explained that Livia was in Rome with her sons and that the newly widowed Julia had gone back to her mother’s.

I said I had expected to find him with Maecenas, at least.

– I’m not sure I entirely trust Maecenas any more.

I laughed. I thought it was a joke.

– If you don’t trust Maecenas, who do you trust?