Free Tiberius by Allan Massie Page A

will assure us as to the future. When I first commanded an army, and was marching through Macedonia on my way to Syria, the altars consecrated by the victorious Caesareans at Philippi burst spontaneously into flames; was this not a sign that my fortune would be glorious?
    That thought perplexes me still, for I have abandoned ambition. Is it possible, I wonder, that the gods remain ambitious for me? Once at Padua, for instance, I visited Geryon's oracle: I was advised to throw golden dice into the fountain of Aponus, and, in fact, made the highest possible cast. Then, the day after I arrived in Rhodes, an eagle - a bird never before seen on this island — alighted on the roof of my house, remaining there seven nights. Was its arrival witness of a magnificent future, or did its departure suggest that glory had deserted me?
    Such questionings are foolish since only experience proves or disproves signs of this nature. Yet, on sleepless nights, I cannot help brooding on them.
    I brood on other matters too: on my few years of happiness for instance, which lasted from the date of Agrippa's marriage to Julia to the hour of my father-in-law's death. I felt secure then, my star in the ascendant. Vipsania grew ever dearer to me, we conversed about everything. I saw in the alliance of Augustus and Agrippa, who had been joined with my stepfather in the tribunician power, so that authority in the state was shared between them, a guarantee for the continuing peace and prosperity of Rome, a guarantee strengthened still more by Augustus' love for his grandchildren, Agrippa and Julia's sons and daughters. My own career blossomed. Together with my beloved brother Drusus, I pushed the frontier of the empire north of the Alps: forty-six tribes submitted to the rule of Rome. Augustus erected a trophy commemorating our achievement. In these happy years my son Drusus was born.
    Call no man happy till he is dead. The gods are jealous of our felicity. While I was in winter quarters on the Danube I received an anguished letter from my wife. She told me her father had died in his villa in Campania. He had been preparing to join the armies; it had been my pride and concern to see that they were in a state of readiness which he would approve. Vipsania had been with him when he passed into the shades. "He spoke of you near the end," she said. " 'Tiberius,' he said, 'will continue my work. He is a rock' ... so you see, my dear, that my father respected you as much as I love you, my dear husband . . ."
    I wept when I read those words; I am near to tears now as I remember them.
    Immersed in an arduous campaign, I had little time to appreciate the personal significance of Agrippa's death. Not even a letter from Vipsania some two months later alarmed me. "Everyone is worried about Julia," she wrote. "It is generally agreed that she must have a husband - and little Gaius and Lucius a father — but it is very difficult to think of anyone who might be suitable. Who can, after all, replace my father? Yet dear Julia's nature is such that she cannot remain single. Your mother is very anxious."
    I returned to Rome at the end of the campaigning season, though not before I had ensured that my men were well established in their winter quarters, and that sufficient stores had been accumulated to provision them throughout those months when transport is often difficult in the frontier regions. I had also laid down a training programme, for nothing is so demoralising for soldiers as idleness, and I had instructed my staff-officers to prepare for the next summer's campaign. I did not think of Agrippa while doing all this, but it was he who had taught me that nine-tenths of the science of war rests in adequate preparation. Nor did I give any thought to the problem Vipsania had adumbrated. Why should I have? It was no concern of mine.
    Rain was falling heavily as I came within sight of the city, and the steep road that leads from the Forum to the Palatine was awash with