Augustus

Julia was forbidden to drink wine or enjoy any other luxury. Her aging mother, Scribonia, nobly volunteered to come and stay with her, but Julia was forbidden any male company, whether free or slave, except by Augustus’ special permission, and then only after he had been given full particulars of the applicant’s age, height, complexion, and any distinguishing marks on his body. The guards must have been male, but will not have strayed beyond the service block into the villa itself.

The public felt sorry for Julia, and pressure built for her pardon. “Fire will sooner mix with water than that she shall be allowed to return,” said the unforgiving princeps. In response, agitators, showing a nice sense of humor, threw lit torches into the river. When a people’s assembly called for her reprieve, he stormed: “If you ever bring up this matter again, may the gods afflict you with similar daughters or wives!”

After five years, Augustus relented to the extent that his daughter was moved to Rhegium, a Greek city on the toe of Italy where he had settled some veterans; they would be able to keep an eye on her. She was not allowed outside the city walls.

XXIII

THE UNHAPPY RETURN

2 B.C.–A.D. 9

He received a letter from his stepson asking leave to return to Italy, now that he was a private citizen, and visit his family whom he greatly missed. Tiberius claimed that the real reason for his departure had been to avoid the suspicion of rivalry with Gaius and Lucius; now that they were grown up and generally acknowledged as Augustus’ political heirs, his reason for staying away from Rome was no longer valid.

The plea was rejected, with a brutality that reveals pain. The princeps had not forgiven Tiberius for turning his back on him, and what he saw as his stepson’s duty. He wrote: “You should abandon all hope of visiting your family, whom you were so eager to desert.”

Augustus now faced a tricky problem in the east, where in 2 B.C. the already complicated situation in Armenia (which Tiberius had been expected to deal with before his resignation) had been complicated by the death, perhaps murder, of the Parthian monarch Frahâta. His son and successor, Frahâtak, took the opportunity to meddle in the buffer kingdom’s affairs. Unless some action was taken, Augustus saw a danger that Armenia would move out of the Roman and into the Parthian sphere of influence.

The princeps decided to dispatch a military expedition to Armenia, but, of course, the obvious candidate to lead it was no longer available. He hesitated for a time, uncertain what to do, but there was no alternative to overpromoting Gaius, now aged nineteen, and giving him the imperium Tiberius had forfeited.

Of course, Augustus had no intention whatever of launching a war under the generalship of an inexperienced boy, however dear to him, against a wily opponent. What he was looking for was a diplomatic solution. He attached Marcus Lollius to Gaius as comes et rector, “companion and guide”—two potentially incompatible roles. Lollius had suffered a minor military defeat in Gaul at the hands of German marauders, but retained the confidence of the princeps. His main weakness was greed; he had made himself a very rich man by despoiling any province to which he was assigned. That aside, he was a safe pair of hands.

Gaius made his base on the island of Samos. Tiberius, anxious to demonstrate his loyalty, visited to pay him a courtesy call; this stiff and proud man humbled himself by throwing himself at his stepson’s feet. Gaius gave him a chilly welcome, apparently on Lollius’ advice (presumably briefed by the princeps).

Augustus’ unease about his disgraced stepson was reinforced when he learned that some centurions of Tiberius’ appointment had been circulating mysterious messages to various people, which appeared to be incitements to revolution. He fired off a letter of complaint to Rhodes. Thoroughly alarmed, Tiberius answered with repeated demands that someone, of whatever rank, be appointed to stay with him on Rhodes and watch everything he said or did. To avoid any distinguished visitors, he spent all his time at his country place and took to wearing Greek clothes (a cloak and slippers) rather than a Roman toga.

Meanwhile, Gaius spent time traveling in leisurely fashion through the region and showing the flag. He seems to have acted partly as a general and partly as a tourist. According to Pliny, his imagination was “fired by the fame of Arabia”; in A.D. 1, the young commander, serving his consulship in absentia, marched south to look around and conducted some sort of campaign against the Nabataean Arabs.