Augustus (24 page)

In fact, Sextus received him coolly and was slow to grant him an audience; doubtless he was considered something of an embarrassment. Soon he and Livia set off again, this time to Greece. But what to do now? Antony was no more interested than Sextus in having anything to do with this undependable nobleman. He sent Tiberius to Sparta, which had long been in the Claudian
clientela
. Here the family at last received a warm welcome. However, some unrecorded danger arose, and a hurried departure once more became necessary. According to Suetonius, Livia and the baby nearly lost their lives when, fleeing by night, they ran into a sudden forest fire and were encircled by it. In this mysterious incident, Livia’s hair caught fire and her dress was scorched.

At the Treaty of Misenum, Sextus eventually placed Tiberius’ name on the list of exiles to be restored, and so, at long last, he, Livia, and little Tiberius were allowed to abandon their nomadic life. At some point in the late summer of 39
B.C.
, they returned to Rome. They found themselves in comparatively reduced circumstances. As an exile and opponent of the Triumvirate, Tiberius had forfeited his property, including the grand house on the Palatine. The deal struck at Misenum promised only to return one quarter of it.

It was at or about this moment of bittersweet celebration that Livia learned that she was pregnant again. It would be unwise to conclude from this that she was content with her lot. Livia must have felt that she had done her best for her husband under extremely trying, even harrowing, circumstances. It was time she looked out for herself.

It is easy in the light of hindsight to criticize Tiberius’ behavior. Many of his contemporaries in the ruling class faced the same dilemmas and were equally uncertain and inconsistent in their responses. Where, they wondered desperately, were the old, fixed points of guidance in a political landscape made unrecognizable by successive earthquakes?

Where Livia was concerned, Octavian was determined to let nothing stand in his way. He met her very soon after her return to Rome; indeed, she may have been introduced to him by Scribonia. He quickly made up his mind to marry her, and she decided equally quickly to say yes. Tiberius complaisantly agreed to a divorce.

It is likely that, soon after the
depositio barbae,
in late September or early October, Octavian and Livia became engaged. It was a slightly scandalous event, but a grand betrothal banquet was held. Like other fashionable people of the time, Livia owned little slave boys called
deliciae,
or darlings (often Syrians or Africans), who ran around naked and amused people with their chatter. Like court jesters, they had license to say the unsayable. On this occasion, one of these boys saw Livia and Octavian sharing a dining couch and Tiberius lying on another alongside a male guest. He went up to Livia and said: “What are you doing here, mistress? For your husband [pointing to Tiberius] is over
there
.”

The couple paused before translating their engagement into marriage. The problem was Livia’s unborn child by Tiberius. Octavian went to consult the appropriate religious authority, the
pontifices:
could he marry Livia while she was pregnant?

The
pontifices
offered their seal of approval and it seems that Livia now moved in with Octavian in his house on the Palatine. However, the wedding did not take place until after the birth of her second child, who was born on January 14 and given the
praenomen
Drusus.

People suspected that he was the product of adultery with his step-father. This was obviously wrong, for Octavian had not met Livia when she conceived in the spring of 39. Nevertheless, the story was too good to disbelieve, and Suetonius records that the following epigram went the rounds:

How fortunate those parents are for whom

Their child is only three months in the womb.

The birth of Drusus cannot have been a very difficult one, for three days later the couple wed. The Roman marriage ceremony, a changeless ritual, dramatized the bride’s removal from her father’s house to the groom’s. Livia’s father was dead; apparently, Tiberius gave her away. She must have spent the night before the wedding at his home.

On the day itself, Livia gathered her hair in a crimson net and put on an unhemmed tunic, secured at the waist by a woolen girdle tied with a double knot. Over this she wore a saffron-colored cloak; she was shod in saffron-colored sandals and fastened a metal collar around her throat. Her hair was protected by six pads of artificial hair separated by narrow bands; a veil of flaming orange covered the top half of her face. It was crowned by a wreath of verbena and sweet marjoram.

In this spectacular outfit, Livia stood surrounded by family and friends and greeted the groom when he arrived with his people. An animal sacrifice to the gods was then offered (probably a pig, although it could have been a ewe or even an ox).

Livia then said to Octavian, in an age-old formula,
“Ubi tu es Gaius, ego Gaia”
—“Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia.”

This was the heart of the ritual, and everyone present shouted
“Feliciter,”
“Congratulations.”

Octavian now led Livia in a street procession from Tiberius’ house to his own, not a long journey as they both lived on the Palatine Hill. Flute players led the way, followed by five torchbearers. As they walked along, people sang cheerfully obscene songs. Three boys whose parents were still alive accompanied the bride; one held a torch of hawthorn twigs and the other two took Livia by the hand.

On reaching her new home, garlanded with flowers for the occasion, Livia was obliged to conduct an inconvenient and messy ritual: she wound wool around the doorposts and coated them with lard or (harder to find, one would imagine) wolf’s fat. Then, men who had been married only once lifted her through the front door; this was to avoid the risk of her tripping on the threshold, a very bad omen. They were followed by three bridesmaids, two of whom carried the symbols of domestic virtue, a distaff and spindle for home weaving.

After a wedding breakfast and some more rude songs, Livia was led to the bridal bed. Octavian took off her cloak and untied the girdle, after which the wedding guests made their excuses and left.

The law gave the
paterfamilias
absolute authority over his children, so the little Tiberius, a toddler of three, stayed behind with his father. Octavian also handed over the newborn Drusus. Livia’s feelings about this are unknown, but a story told about her suggests that her attention was fixed, rather, on the future splendor of her position.

Apparently, when she was returning shortly after the wedding to a house she owned at Veii a few miles from Rome, an eagle flew by and dropped into Livia’s lap a white pullet it had just pounced on. Noticing that it held in its beak a laurel twig with berries on it (the laurel was a sign of victory, and generals wore a laurel wreath at their triumphs), she decided to keep the bird for breeding and to plant the twig. Soon the pullet raised such a brood of chickens that the house became known as Ad Gallinas Albas, White Poultry, and the twig grew so luxuriantly that Octavian plucked laurels from it for his official wreaths.

Five years later, in 33
B.C.,
if she had not negotiated their earlier return, Livia was able to reclaim her sons, for her former husband died, from what cause is unknown—his last stroke of bad luck.

Octavian’s political situation was by no means secure, but he had managed to hold on to the gains of the Treaty of Brundisium. Through cold-blooded courage he had survived the anger of the mob and of the soldiers, his two fundamental bulwarks. The agreement at Misenum had settled nothing, but had at least won him a breathing space and measurably weakened Sextus’ position. His willingness to risk his life was a sign of a growing self-confidence, of a conviction that he was owed respect for his achievements as much as for his inheritance.

Octavian’s marriage is the first occasion for which we have evidence when he gave priority to his feelings. The union had its political importance, too. Livia was one of many exiles who had gathered around the last forlorn hope of the defeated Republic, Sextus Pompeius, given up on him, and returned home to Rome. That she was willing to wed the Republic’s archenemy is interesting evidence that the ruling class was beginning to reconcile itself to an altered world.

X

FIGHTING NEPTUNE

38–36
B.C.

However, the most important development by far was the defection of Sextus’ admiral Menodorus, who was in Sardinia. The former pirate was losing confidence in his master’s strategic ability and long-term chances of survival. Menodorus delivered to Octavian Sardinia and Corsica, three legions, and some light-armed troops.

Treaty or no treaty, here was an opportunity to dispose of Sextus. But before he showed his hand, Octavian sought help from Antony, whom he asked to visit Italy for consultations. He sent for an army from Agrippa, who had succeeded Calenus as proconsul in Gaul, commissioned warships at Ravenna, and arranged for other necessities of war to be assembled on the eastern and western coasts of Italy at Brundisium and Puteoli.

Unfortunately, Antony opposed hostilities with Sextus. He turned up at Brundisium on a mutually appointed date in 38
B.C.
, but to his annoyance found no Octavian. After waiting for a short time, he left, but wrote to his fellow triumvir, strongly counseling against war.

It is not clear what Octavian meant by the snub. The most benign, and not implausible, explanation is that he was detained by his military preparations (perhaps, too, he was not unhappy to delay Antony’s Parthian plans). However, it is rather more probable that Octavian was yielding to an unusual bout of overconfidence. With Menodorus at his side, he was privy to all Sextus’ secrets. On reconsideration, he could do perfectly well without Antony’s advice or assistance.

Octavian’s plan was to defeat Sextus at sea and then ferry troops from Italy to occupy Sicily. He would launch a two-pronged attack. One fleet would sail south from Puteoli; it would be led by Gaius Calvisius Sabinus, once an officer of Julius Caesar and one of a new breed of politicians from the provinces, who in the previous year had been the first-ever non-Latin consul. He was one of the two senators who had sought to protect Caesar on the Ides of March. Calvisius shared the command with Menodorus. The other fleet, for which Octavian appointed himself admiral, would set out from Tarentum and approach Sicily from the east.

In classical times, the sea was a frightening place. Ships were vulnerable to bad weather and sailing was avoided so far as possible during the winter months. Roman war fleets mainly consisted of rowing galleys, many of them triremes and quinqueremes. We do not know exactly how they worked. A trireme either had three banks of oars, or one bank with the oars grouped together in threes with one man per oar. It displaced about 230 tons and was nearly 150 feet long. Quinqueremes probably had one bank of oars with five men pulling each oar. There were up to 150 rowers; they were often non-Romans, though they were not, as in Hollywood films, slaves chained to their oars. Every ship had a captain, or trierarch; a helmsman; and a
hortator,
or encourager, who set the rowing rate. Under oar, a trireme was capable of bursts of speed—between seven and ten knots.

Warships had brass battering rams on their prows, and the usual tactic was to ram the side of an enemy ship. The Romans tended to fight sea battles as if they were on land. A grappling device was invented, the
corvus
or crow, which enabled soldiers to board the enemy ship and take it over. If boarding was impractical, it was possible to destroy galleys by using flaming projectiles to set them afire.

Triremes and quinqueremes found it hard to cope with storms. Their high bows made them difficult to hold into the wind. A large rectangular sail midships and one or more small ones were used during ordinary voyages, but square-rigging made it extremely difficult to gain headway against a wind. When waves hit such vessels beam-on (that is, from the side), they became hard to maneuver and were prone to being swamped or capsizing, although, being of fairly light wooden construction, they seldom sank completely.

Sextus learned of the desertion of Menodorus when the enemy fleets were under way. He immediately dispatched the old pirate Menecrates to confront Menodorus with most of his ships, and decided to await Octavian, whom he judged to be the lesser threat, off Messana (today’s Messina) in the narrow straits between Sicily and mainland Italy.

Menecrates found Menodorus and the Roman admiral Calvisius off Cumae on the Campanian coast and had the better of the engagement, although he himself was wounded and died. When dusk fell the two fleets separated, and Sextus’ ships returned to port at Messana without following up their victory.