Page 69 of Agrippa

– You were not there.

I suppose no one had spoken to him in such a tone since we were last in Rome together. He was outraged.

– What is this? Suddenly you think you are too grand for public honours, is that it? You think they are beneath you? This is false modesty, Agrippa, the very worst kind of pride!

– I have brought back no prisoners to parade through the streets – they are all dead. There is no treasure to display – they were too poor. Believe me, such a triumph would have made a meagre spectacle, unworthy of us both.

– But I requested it personally from the Senate! Now everyone will see your refusal as a snub to me. ‘Look at Agrippa,’ they will say, ‘the loyal soldier, the humble citizen, for whom duty is its own reward, so unlike Augustus!’ Or worse, they will say I offered it and then secretly asked you not to accept it because I have always been jealous of your success.

He seemed to have forgotten he had done exactly that in the past.

– I am not responsible for what idiots go around saying. I am sorry if I have embarrassed or offended you. It did not occur to me. I have never been very good at politics.

– For someone who isn’t any good at politics, you have done remarkably well for yourself!

Gradually his anger began to subside from shouts to grumbling.

– Well, we shall have to give you something, otherwise it will look as if we have fallen out.

Not long afterwards, at his instigation, I was presented with a special decoration by the Senate, the corona muralis, a solid gold crown with four turrets, signifying that I had been the first man to scale the walls of an enemy fortress – a weighty trinket that meant nothing to me. I wore it in bed with Julia that night.

I knew Augustus resented his dependency upon me, just as I resented mine upon him. But by now, not only was his daughter married to me; my daughter Agrippina was married to his stepson Tiberius. We were locked in a familial embrace of iron from which escape was unthinkable, and so, like siblings who bicker and irritate one another from time to time, we were obliged always to make up again.

When Augustus’s proconsular powers were renewed for a further five years, so were mine. I possessed the same tribunician rights to introduce laws and summon public assemblies as he did. We met two or three times each week and divided the tasks between us. He concentrated on civil administration, the appointment of governors, treaties with foreign rulers, trade and financial matters. He had become even richer than before – Spain alone, now that it was pacified, produced seven tons of gold a year that went straight into his treasury.

I meanwhile took charge of the legions, both in Italy and in the main provinces. All promotions, from the highest grades to the lowest, passed through my office. I set the rates of pay, supplied the equipment, issued the manuals for training and tactics, built ships, raised fresh recruits and arranged the settlement of veterans on their retirement.

We enacted a new law. If a young man wished to embark on a public career, he was obliged first to do a period of service in the army, either as a military tribune or as a prefect in the auxiliary cavalry. Only then did he become eligible to stand for election as a magistrate. As Augustus and I appointed these young officers, in this way we controlled who was admitted to the Senate, and so ensured that it became ever more loyal to our regime.

In theory, we were equals. But as Augustus was Caesar’s legitimate heir, providing the dynastic link that held the state together, he was always the dominant partner. I took comfort from two facts: the first, private, that I was Caesar’s true son, whatever might be the legal case; and the second, public, that I was the father of Augustus’s grandson, Gaius, who was widely expected one day to succeed him. I loved that boy and was bringing him up with a tenderness that had never been shown to me by my so-called father, to be brave and honourable and fitted for the life of service that lay ahead of him.

Thus, I reasoned, whatever my current subservience, I would be victorious in the end.

And then, at the beginning of the year following my return to Rome, Julia announced she was pregnant again.

Delighted at the news and awash with money, Augustus proposed that he and I should resurrect the Century Games, traditionally held every hundred and ten years, but abandoned during the civil wars. The festival would acknowledge the blessing of Julia’s fertility by honouring the goddesses of childbirth, Ilythiae, and of motherhood, Terra Mater. It would also celebrate the enduring peace since the death of Antony and strengthen Augustus’s popularity with the public.

Because no one was left alive who had ever witnessed the ceremonies, or even heard about them from their parents, Augustus consulted the Sibylline Books to devise the spectacle – the sort of arcane superstitious ritual in which he delighted.

Beneath a full moon, as darkness fell on the last day of May, a huge crowd gathered beside the Tiber on the Field of Mars. The river was lit by a thousand torches. Attended by the College of Priests, Augustus sacrificed three lambs to the Fates and sprinkled their blood upon the altars. A giant bonfire was lit. The priests sang a hymn. By the light of the flickering flames, one hundred and ten matrons served a sacred banquet.

The following day, on the Capitol, my main part in proceedings began. I sacrificed two bulls to Jupiter, and on the next day, two cows to Juno. That night, Augustus offered the blood of a pregnant sow to appease the Great Mother. Twenty-seven boys and twenty-seven girls, whose parents were still living, formed a choir to sing the ‘Century Hymn’, specially composed by Maecenas’s pet poet, Horatius, calling on the gods to ‘prolong the glorious life of Rome’. And with that the ceremonies concluded.

Whether all this helped Julia in her pregnancy, I cannot say, but her health was blooming as she approached her full term – so much so that when in June I staged chariot races in the Circus Maximus, Augustus suggested that she should appear in his box. She was very heavy by this time, and uncomfortable in the summer heat, but it was in her nature to relish public adulation, and so she readily agreed.

Augustus was already seated alongside Livia, Tiberius, Agrippina and other members of his family when we entered the stadium to a blast of trumpets. A quarter of a million spectators jumped up from their benches to roar their approval as we made our way to the front of the box. I remember how each time Julia waved, she set them off again. And I remember how Livia, staring straight ahead, refused even to look at her, and clapped as slowly and softly as was humanly possible.

Four weeks later, Julia gave birth to our third baby – another boy.

Augustus attended the lustral ceremony without Livia. We named the infant Lucius, in honour of my supposed father, and it amused me to think of what that rabid old Republican would have made of the notion that another Lucius Vipsanius would one day be second in line to an imperial dynasty.

But I was not amused for long.

After the amulet had been presented, Augustus took Julia and me aside and informed us that he had made up his mind to adopt Lucius, and his elder brother Gaius, who was now an energetic three-year-old, as his own sons.

– Naturally they will continue to live in your household, but in this way the world will be in no doubt that Gaius is my heir, and if anything should happen to him, Lucius will take his place. I ask only to be consulted about their education and general upbringing. And of course, they will take the name Caesar.

Can you imagine the blow this was to me, the proud father of two healthy sons, to be told that legally they would no longer be mine? That my boys, the only things I had that Augustus did not, were to be taken from me by him? That he might make such a demand had never occurred to me. I was briefly struck dumb. It was Julia who, after a brief glance at me, forestalled my angry reply and said that we would be honoured by such a mark of favour.