Part 15

Livia's grudge against Agrippina seems to have been a continuation of the old discord between the Claudian and the Julian branches of the governing house. Each of these women had her adherents, who by their machinations and recriminations made peace an utter stranger in the imperial palace. Livia, however, possessed a threefold advantage over Agrippina: the latter was precluded by her nature from adopting against an enemy any nefarious design--a scruple of which history has been able to discover no trace in the conduct of the former lady; the Augusta was strongly supported in her dislike by the Emperor Tiberius; and Agrippina was away from Rome a great part of the time. She elected to accompany her husband, even on his most dangerous expeditions. On one occasion, when their lives were threatened by the mutinous legions and he urged her to depart to safer quarters, she proudly answered that, being the granddaughter of the deified Augustus, she was not so degenerate as to shrink from danger.

To what extent this animosity between the two ladies was carried it is difficult to determine. Some historians claim that it resulted in placing another awful crime to Livia's account. Germanicus died in Seleucia in the thirty-fourth year of his age, of some mysterious malady; and there were many who at once whispered that Livia had been the means of bringing about his death by poisoning. But there is no proof of this, and a careful study of the known facts causes it to seem improbable. There was no motive for such an act, beyond the fact that the husband of Agrippina was exceedingly popular with the army and the people; but this was offset by his undoubted and enthusiastic devotion to Tiberius. The facts, so far as they are now ascertainable, are these: Piso, who was Proconsul of Syria, was instigated by his wife Plancina to acts of disrespect and animosity against Germanicus and Agrippina. This woman, who was of an exceedingly masculine temperament,--as is shown among other things by her habit of taking part in the exercises of the cavalry,--was a great favorite with Livia and shared her closest confidence. Plancina is said to have kept about her a woman named Martina, who had an evil reputation as being expert in the use of poisonous drugs, but of whose existence nothing more is known than the little that is told in this connection, Germanicus, on his deathbed, declared that he was cut short in his career by the dark devices of a woman. The news of his decease did not affect Livia with the same degree of sorrow as it did the populace; which fact tended to strengthen suspicion in the minds of the latter. But all this proves nothing, even though Piso, despairing of acquittal, destroyed himself during his trial, after having written a letter protesting his innocence. Nor does the fact that Plancina was protected by Livia furnish any proof that the aged and much-maligned empress was guilty of instigating the crime, if crime it was.

Agrippina, after the body of her husband had been burned on the funeral pyre, set forth in the depth of winter on her journey to Rome with his ashes. At every port where the fleet touched she received a sad but an imposing ovation. All the friends of her husband crowded to Brundusium, where she was to disembark; but they could not agree as to whether she should be received in respectful silence or with some more demonstrative expression of their sympathy. Tacitus thus depicts the affecting scene: "Nothing was settled when the fleet came sweeping slowly in, not rigged out in sprightly fashion, but wearing the ensigns of sadness. When, however, the widow descended from the ship, bearing the funeral urn in her hand, accompanied by her two infants and with her eyes steadily fixed on the ground, one simultaneous groan burst from the entire assemblage." Neither Tiberius, nor Livia, nor Antonia, the mother of Germanicus, attended the funeral. Tacitus gives the reasons that were alleged, but does not decide which was nearest the truth. "Tiberius and Livia either thought public lamentation beneath their dignity, or else they feared lest if folk peered into their faces their hypocrisy would be discovered. Whether sickness detained Antonia, or overmuch sorrow and inability to go through the ceremony, is not known. I would rather believe that she was held back by Tiberius and Livia, who did not leave the palace, that they might seem to mourn in private."

Agrippina had been exhorted by her dying husband, "as she would cherish his memory, and for the sake of their children, to divest herself of her unyielding spirit, and humble herself to Fortune in the storm of her displeasure; and, on her return to the city, not to irritate, in a competition for the mastery, those who were more than a match for her." Such advice given to a Roman matron would have appeared unnecessary to the men of the old regime; but there was now a throne in Rome, and consequently women jostled each other for the place of power behind it.

Agrippina needed just such counsel; but her nature would not allow her to profit by it. Irreproachable in her life, her virtues were not beautified by the divine gift of good humor; and she possessed no philosophy. Her mind was of that sort, more common among women than men, in which an idea having once been entertained is henceforth unassailable and undetachable by reason. Than this class of mind there is nothing more exasperating in human knowledge, and it is not to be wondered at that she irritated Tiberius. These two angered each other on every occasion of their meeting: the emperor by his cruel persecution of Agrippina's friends, and she him both by her air of martyrdom and by her evident and constant suspicion that he was planning some nefarious project against herself.

There lacked not ambitious men at the time who were ready to gather around the noble widow on the pretence of siding with her in her complaints against the emperor; they even sought to raise a party for the advantage of her children. She probably lent herself to some extent to these schemes, but not in sufficient degree to bring upon herself the violence of the suspicious and resentful Tiberius. Nevertheless, all her sons perished, except Caligula, whom a destiny unkind to the Roman people protected from the fate of his brothers.

Sejanus, the all-powerful favorite of the emperor, adroitly fanned the ever-smoldering animosity which naturally existed between Tiberius and Agrippina. He warned her to beware of poison, after having informed Tiberius that the matron suspected that the emperor had designs on her life. So, when the emperor politely handed her fruit, calling her attention to its excellence, she silently passed it to the slaves. "Can I avoid," he exclaimed to Livia, "treating this woman with harshness, when she accuses me to my face of seeking to poison her?"

The favorite Sejanus aimed at removing every heir to the imperial throne, in order that at the death of Tiberius he might rule in name, as he already did in effect. To achieve this end, he first seduced Livilla, the wife of the son of Drusus Tiberius; then he procured by her means the death of Drusus and asked Livilla in marriage. This the emperor refused. At length,--not, however, until after Agrippina's sons had been destroyed,--Antonia, the mother of Livilla, was constrained to write to Tiberius of the conspiracy of Sejanus, and by her means he was brought to justice. Livilla was starved to death by the command of her mother.

Livia seems to have been at all times an obedient and submissive wife. She was honored by the confidence of her husband. She shared in the knowledge of his deepest political projects, and her advice was asked in regard thereto. But there is no indication that she ever sought to dictate. It was otherwise, however, with Tiberius. Whether Livia considered that a mother's prerogative was more commanding than that of a wife, or that a larger share of the rule might be claimed by her on account of the fact that she had secured it for Tiberius, certain it is that the latter found there was not enough room for himself and the Augusta in the imperial palace. Suetonius informs us that on one occasion, when Tiberius had haughtily objected to his mother's sharing the government with him, Livia produced some letters which Augustus had written to her complaining of the pride and arrogance of Tiberius. The discovery that his mother had treasured these letters against him for so many years so wounded the emperor that he immediately left the city, and he never again saw his mother except for a few hours on one occasion.

It is said that during her last days, when there was little more to hope for and nothing else to do, Livia strove to defend Agrippina from the machinations of Sejanus and the hatred of Tiberius. For twenty years she had done somewhat to relieve the hardship of her daughter-in-law Julia's exile; but she never sought to have her recalled. Tacitus says that, having secretly overthrown her stepchildren in their prosperity, it was her custom to make an open show of compassion toward them in their adversity.

Livia the Augusta died in A.D. 29, at the age of eighty-five. The verdict of the historian is that she had been a stepmother to the commonwealth of Rome; and this perhaps expresses her politics better than any other term that could be employed. A faithful wife, a fond mother, she had relentlessly witnessed the removal of every obstacle in the way of Tiberius. For the sake of her son, she had done and suffered everything; for the people, she had done nothing. Her powerful influence had at all times been directed by her emotions; and if we should carry the study to the end of the Empire, bringing into review all the consorts and female associates of the emperors, this would still be the summary of the story of the Roman woman in politics.

Tiberius refused to permit the apotheosis of Livia; but after his death the highest honors which a superstitious people could devise were paid to her memory. Claudius caused her to be deified, and the worship of Livia was constituted one of the functions of the Vestals. An idealized statue of her was placed in the temple of Augustus. Medals were impressed with the image of her head, and it was ordered that when the women of Rome had occasion to swear, it should be "By Livia."

On the whole, the Roman people, who understood Livia's character better than it is possible for us to do at this late day, judged her very kindly. Her virtues, which were conjugal and domestic, were always popularly respected, though not generally followed. Her pride and cruel vices were readily condoned, because they were considered indispensable to the policy of rulers. Her husband was a successful statesman; he maintained his position on the throne and accomplished much for the best interests of the Empire. Livia was a successful politician; she kept the people enamored of her supremacy, but furthered no interests save those of herself and her son.

Soon after the death of Livia, Agrippina was banished to the island of Pandataria, where her mother Julia had been confined for so many repentant years. It seems that her redoubtable spirit would not allow her to submit to this tyranny without a struggle; and so brutal were the soldiers in enforcing the emperor's command upon her who had once been known as "The Mother of the Camps," that she lost the sight of one of her eyes. After four years of miserable exile, she ended her life in the "high Roman manner" by voluntary starvation.

In the Capitol Museum there is a seated figure of Agrippina. It is one of the noblest pieces of statuary in the world. In it is seen none of that feminine sweetness which endeared the young wife of Germanicus to the hearts of the Roman legions; but there is that proud consciousness of moral dignity which Livia could not rival and that imperial manner which Tiberius could not cow. It is a sad, strong-hearted woman. One could fancy that a composite of all the noblest Roman matrons might have made just such a picture. Or it might be the goddess Roma, in whose personification are included the femininity of her daughters and also the sternness of her sons.

In the daughter of Germanicus we have another Agrippina, who was a much more adroit politician than her mother. She was shrewder even than Livia, and more unprincipled; and was favored beyond parallel in position, for she was daughter by adoption of Tiberius, mother of Nero, sister of Caligula, and wife of Claudius. The last mentioned relation gave her a much more effective position of vantage than Livia had enjoyed--first, on account of Claudius's incapacity, and also because the Romans had allowed themselves to drift further away from the old republican ideas. Hereafter we shall study the character of Agrippina and shall be compelled to place her among those notorious women who helped to make the Neronian age the most corrupt period in the world's history. Here we notice but briefly her political ambitions. She managed the emperor, securing with slight persuasion the appointment or the dismissal of the most important State officers. She established colonies in her own name. Nor was she satisfied to remain merely the power behind the throne. When Caractacus the British king was carried prisoner to Rome, and for his courageous bearing gained for himself his wife and his brothers from the emperor, the prisoners did homage not only to Claudius, but also to Agrippina. The empress occupied a second throne and received an equal share of the gratitude of the prisoners and the plaudits of the people. Here was seen, as Tacitus remarks, a spectacle strange and unauthorized by any former custom. A woman had never before presided over the Roman ensigns. Agrippina boldly claimed to be a partner in the Empire which her ancestors had wrested from the ancient republican suffrage.

It was with Agrippina the Second as it had been with Livia, every political aspiration was concentrated upon one object--the elevation of her own son to the imperial rule, and all the activities emanating from her energetic, resourceful nature were employed in hewing a path for Nero's advancement. Woe befell the persons who stood in that path or seemed likely at any time to have it in their power and inclination to impede that advancement. They were ruthlessly cut down in that unrelenting manner of which only an ambitious woman is capable. There were no public works, nothing broad-minded, no thought of the common good: the sole motif of the Roman woman in politics was personal preferment.

_VIII_

THE ROMAN WOMAN IN LITERATURE

There was in ancient Rome a street called Argiletus, which we learn from Martial was occupied principally by booksellers. Here those works which are cherished not alone for their antiquity, and some others possibly as good but which in the misfortunes of many centuries have disappeared, were bought fresh from their authors' hands and sold to the eager lovers of literature. Here, when a new piece by Virgil or Horace was announced, the reading public would flock, urged by the most commendable form of curiosity known to the cultured human mind. Here hundreds of scribes were employed in the multiplication of copies of those classics over which in later days have labored scores of generations of youthful students, with deep regret that those classics were not written in their own mother tongue. Those shops, or _taberna libraria_, were the lounging places of the famous men who created this literature and of those who did good service to posterity by constituting themselves the patrons of the geniuses of their age, who otherwise would have been as indigent and as barren as are the neglected authors of our own times. The men and women who received an ancient author in the name of a poet are entitled to receive a poet's reward. In the shops of Secundus and the Sosii brothers, the literati of Rome and their admirers gathered to indulge in that most fascinating of all conversational intercourse: book talk.

While it is probable that the presence of women was not so marked and frequent in these haunts of the cultured fraternity as it is in the book shops and publishing houses of modern times, this does not signify that the ladies of Rome did not take a deep and influential interest in literature. Did not Augustus dedicate a public library in the name of his sister Octavia? There was in the Roman world a reading public so great as to appear to us nothing less than marvellous in view of the lack of the printing press; but slaves who could be set to copying were plentiful, and if a lady wished a copy of the poems of Propertius or Catullus she could procure it for a small sum in the street Argiletus, or she could borrow it from a friend and have it transcribed at home.

Great attention was paid to the education of girls in Greek and Latin literature. Even those of the poorer class received this instruction; for such an accomplishment, especially if assisted by personal attractions, often availed in place of a rich dowry to secure a desirable match. Women also were not rare who, like Sempronia, could write verses of sufficient merit to be mentioned by the serious historians of their times, though unfortunately their productions have not been preserved to us. Mommsen, commenting on the flood of literature which characterized the period of the commencement of the Empire, assures us that "The female world also took a lively part in these literary pursuits; the ladies did not confine themselves to dancing and music, but by their spirit and wit ruled conversation and talked excellently on Greek and Latin literature; and when poetry laid siege to a maiden's heart, the beleaguered fortress not seldom surrendered likewise in graceful verses. Rhythm became more and more the fashionable plaything of the big children of both sexes."

If it can be shown that the law of the "survival of the fittest" operates with any degree of inevitability in the preservation of books, we shall be obliged to conclude that few of the writings that owed their existence to the lady authors of ancient Rome were remarkable for their merit. It is difficult even to indulge a natural desire to be gallant by assuming that to the accidents of time may be attributed the loss of much that was worthy of preservation; for the number of female writers who are mentioned in contemporary works as having attained to any great degree of excellence in authorship is remarkably limited. Some, however, there are. Pliny says: "Pompeius Saturninus has lately read to me some letters he says are from his wife. I fancied myself listening to Plautus or Terence in prose. Whether they are his wife's, as he affirms, or his own, as he denies them to be, he is entitled to equal credit: in the one case, for producing such compositions; in the other, for transforming his wife, a mere girl when he married her, into such a learned and finished woman." Martial also tells of a young woman who, he says, had the eloquence of Plato, the austerity of the Porch, and composed verses worthy of a chaste Sappho. Sidonius Apollinaris recites a list of Latin poetesses; but of them all there is only one whose work may be read at the present time. We do not refer to Balbilla, who wisely engraved her verses and also her genealogy upon the leg of the statue of Memnon; the fact that these have endured is attributable solely to the lasting nature of the medium upon which they were written.

Sulpicia, the only Roman poetess whose work is still extant and well authenticated, lived in the time of the Emperor Domitian. She came of a famous patrician family, many members of which had been able men of affairs in their time. She was a great and highly respected friend of the poet Martial, to whose two epigrams on herself and her husband we are indebted for almost all that we know of this talented woman. Her husband's name was Calenus; and with him she lived for fifteen years, in a felicity of reciprocated conjugal affection which, notwithstanding the degeneracy of the age, seems to have been ideal. Martial bears testimony not only to her surpassing ability as a votary of the poetic muse, but also to the fact that in her life and character she exemplified a purity such as would beautify any age or society.

There is in existence but one poem known to have been written by Sulpicia; it was called forth by an act of tyranny which she rebuked with as much beauty as spirit. During the reign of Domitian, the philosophers were banished from Rome by edict of the emperor. Those against whom this measure was particularly directed were of the Stoic school; this fact helps to explain the cause of their expulsion and also the poem which Sulpicia wrote upon the occasion. Their tenets inculcated an independence of thought and manner which was entirely at variance with that servility which could allow the people to rest peacefully under the despotism of such a ruler as was Domitian. The philosophers were considered, and probably justly so, a menace to the government of the tyrant. Whether Sulpicia was directly connected with these people and whether she was included in the edict of banishment, we do not know; in any case, it is quite clear that her sympathies were entirely with the expelled philosophers. Her satire on this incident bewails the weakness that had evidently fallen upon the Roman race, causing men to submit so easily to such tyranny as that to which her friends were subjected. She asks if "the Father of the Gods" is about to allow the Romans to revert to primeval barbarism, "to stoop again to acorns and the pure stream"; or if he has forsaken them for the care of other nations. She declares that "adversity alone is salutary for a State," "for when the love of country urges them to defend themselves by arms, and to regain their wives, held prisoners with their household gods, they combine like wasps when their home and citadel is assaulted." Then she implores her divine patroness that at least her husband may not be unwilling to abandon this inglorious ease and to leave Rome and its vicinity, since all the good and estimable have been driven from it. The poem is a noble, high-spirited production; and it proves Sulpicia to have been a woman of extraordinary intelligence and a fearless exponent of principles and ideas which the majority of men in her time found it more convenient to forget.

Sulpicia was also the author of a poem on conjugal affection which is most highly commended by Martial; but unfortunately it has been lost. Indeed, from the reference in the beginning of her satire to her "thousand sportive effusions," we gather that she was a prolific writer and that all her poetry was not of the philosophic or didactic kind.

With this brief reference to Sulpicia, our account of woman's creative participation in Roman literature must end for want of material. The real part which the women of the Roman world played in the formation of the literature of their time must be sought rather in the view which the authors present of their character and the inspiration which the poets drew from their love and friendship. That is to say, we meet the Roman woman in the poetic art of her nation as the model and also as the motive, but not as the artist. But it is very essential that we should give attention to both these phases of feminine life. Hitherto we have dealt only with historic personages, and those of the highest class; to obtain a complete view of the Roman woman, it is necessary to see her in that broader light in which she is sketched by the makers of other literature than history. And in order that our attention may not be confined to the women of one class, we must take notice of those ladies of whom the poets sing and to whom they address their effusions.