When he turned, at last, I swear there were tears in his eyes.

  'Forget them,' he said. 'Forget the past, it's not important. What I did was necessary. Virgil, please! I need you to justify me, not for my own sake but for Rome's.'

  Maecenas, I noticed, had turned away and was examining another of the paintings: Priam and Achilles. He might have been distancing himself from Octavian's plea, but I suspect that, like me, he was merely embarrassed.

  Octavian and I stared at each other for a long time. Then I lowered my eyes.

  'Very well, Caesar,' I said. 'I can't promise you the future, but you will have your Aeneid.'

  56.

  I did not begin the Aeneid at once. Before a word could be written, I had an immense amount of planning – and thinking – to do.

  Had Octavian not specified Aeneas, I would have chosen him myself. Although he has no direct connection with Rome, his son Iulus is the ancestor of the Julian clan, to which Octavian belongs. More, Aeneas has an impeccable Homeric pedigree, and so using him enabled me to make explicit the necessary link between Homer and Italy, the old world and the new.

  Aeneas's story, too, fits. Together with his aged father, he flees from Troy at the gods' bidding, to found a new and better state in the west. After undergoing many dangers, he reaches Carthage, where he is detained by the beautiful Queen Dido. Caught between love and duty, he hesitates; but duty triumphs, and he sails on, to Italy. There he is greeted by the king, Latinus, as the prophesied leader from overseas who will marry his daughter and make his kingdom great.

  Latinus's daughter has, however, been promised to another man, Turnus. Turnus persuades the Italians to fight against Aeneas and his Trojans. Finally Aeneas is victorious. Trojans and Italians are united as brothers, and the gods' purpose fulfilled.

  You see the possibilities: the underlying themes of divine intent, piety, religious obedience and the conflict between duty and self-interest that were so germane to Octavian's purpose. You see also the sheer scale of the thing: Octavian was demanding that I become no less than a second Homer. What his Iliad and Odyssey had been to two hundred generations of Greeks, my Aeneid would be for Rome. Through me, Octavian and what he was striving to create was to be made immortal: the divine yardstick against which all future behaviour would be measured.

  Do you wonder that I felt inadequate?

  Had I been Octavian's man, body and soul, the task would have been awesome enough. As it was, I was fettered by my own reservations, my own opinions of Octavian as an individual. And, as any poet will tell you, a fettered poet is no poet at all, let alone a second Homer.

  I must make my position clear, even at the risk of repeating myself, for clarity here is vital. First of all, I was convinced – am convinced – that what Octavian was attempting was right, totally right; that he had heaven's mandate to build a new world. And I still hope so, although now I am no longer so sure. If it had been possible, I would have given him my full support, unreservedly. But that I could not do. If I had tried, the poetry would have run slack and sour, become second-rate, useless. I could only try to compromise, to retreat into poetic allusion and allegory. My true opinions would be there, embedded in the poem, couched in terms that were unambiguous if looked at sideways with a biased eye, but which otherwise could be dismissed as embellishments or poetic fancies.

  This sounds complicated, I know, yet I cannot put it any more simply and retain the sense. Let me, instead, give you an example.

  I had promised Octavian that I would remove the lines at the end of my Georgics in praise of Gallus. In the event, I replaced them with a passage on the death of Orpheus.

  You know the story, of course. Orpheus's wife Eurydice is bitten by a snake and dies. Orpheus, the divine singer, goes down to Hades to bring her back. His song drags tears even from the iron eyes of Pluto, god of the dead; and he is permitted to lead back his wife, on condition that he does not look at her until they regain the upper world. At the very edge of Pluto's kingdom, Orpheus turns, and loses Eurydice for ever. Orpheus then takes to the woods, lamenting his wife. He offends the Bacchants, the savage women-followers of Dionysus, and they tear him to pieces. His scattered body drifts down the River Strymon; yet still he sings, mourning for his lost wife.

  Now consider Gallus, in the light of the story. Gallus, too, is a poet, a singer. He, too, offends a pitiless god and is destroyed because of it, although his poems survive him. Finally, as a signpost to the reader, I tamper with the myth itself. My hero, at this point, is a certain Aristaeus, who has lost his bees through Orpheus's anger. The original fault – I say – lay with this Aristaeus: it was because he was pursuing Eurydice, intent on rape, that she stood on the snake. Now, anyone with a knowledge of myth will realise that this is nonsense. Traditionally, Aristaeus had no connection whatsoever with Eurydice's death, or with the Orpheus myth.

  You see now, I hope, what I mean. On the surface, a pretty story with a learned allusion (did Aristaeus try to rape Eurydice? Does Virgil know something we don't? What a clever chap he is!). Nothing overt, nothing explicitly stated. Yet the truth is there, and – if you have the key – it is completely unambiguous.

  The dangers, of course, were obvious. I knew that if Octavian ever found out I could expect no mercy. Nevertheless, the Aeneid could be written in no other way, and the Aeneid was more important, in the end, than either my own life or Octavian's pride. I counted on three things. One, that I could keep the more obviously-critical passages from Octavian until the work was finished; two, Octavian's own vanity, which would recognise the surface praise but not the underlying criticism; and three, the eventual complicity of Maecenas. He, I was sure, would miss nothing.

  In choosing this path, I was consciously charting a course between Scylla and Charybdis. Perhaps I was wrong. Certainly my decision has been the death of me. Never mind. I have done all I could, and if in the end it has not been enough, I am too tired, now, to care.

  . . .

  Let me tell you, before I close this chapter, what happened to Gallus. Let me tell it quickly, as a surgeon hurries through an operation to spare his patient what pain he may.

  Octavian recalled him to Rome, where he was charged with maladministration. A deluge of sycophantic accusations followed. He was deprived, by decree of the Senate, of his property and condemned to exile. Octavian stood aside: debarred from intervening, he said, by the harsh moral demands of his high office. In despair, Gallus took his own life. I was with him when he died, and closed his eyes before going back to my books, and the task of immortalising his murderer.

  You see, now, how difficult it was for me to write my Aeneid, and to give Octavian the future he so badly needs?. Death, when it comes to me, will not be unwelcome. Nor will it be undeserved.

  57.

  Little remains to tell, now, except for the end.

  The remaining years were, for me, a period of growing disillusionment. Perhaps I had unconsciously hoped for too much. Perhaps I had hoped for the Golden Age to be ushered in to the blare of trumpets, and for all my doubts to be magically resolved. It did not happen like that. Of course it did not, although I wished it to, above all else: we are all children still, and love to believe in fables.

  After Actium, Octavian was everyone's hero. He had united Italy and given her, for the first time, a sense of identity. His lavish spending on public works, funded from the spoils of his Egyptian war, had made him popular with the common people. Better still, he had brought peace. Most of the legions had been disbanded, and the doors of the Temple of Janus, which always stand open in time of war, had been closed for the first time in living memory. Rome was poised on the threshold of an age of peace and prosperity such as she had never known in the course of her history.

  Then, amid the glory and the trumpets and the quiet peace that followed them, people began to compare Octavian with Caesar. Like Caesar, he had been voted honour after honour. Like Caesar, he held the supreme power and backed it with his armies.

  Caesar, in the end, had failed. Was Octavian simply another Caesar?

  Octavian was well aware of the dangers. By holding on to the highest public office of consul and depriving the leading families of their traditional rights, he had set himself on the same fatal course as the dead dictator. There had been one conspiracy already – that of young Lepidus – and there would be others. Somehow he had to find a way of retaining power while seeming to give it away.

  He solved the problem at the start of his seventh consulship. In a 'surprise' speech perfect in its hypocrisy he restored the Republic to the care of the Senate. Then he allowed his friends, with carefully-scripted spontaneity, to vote him back the powers he had laid down, in a different form. I will not go into details; they are complicated, and do not matter much to my story. Suffice it to say that, although I approved the necessity of his action, I was sickened by the form it took; and I remembered the trials of Milo and Cotta.

  In gratitude for this proof of Octavian's respect for Republican tradition, the Senate of its own free will gave him a new name, Augustus. The name was ideal, and Octavian and Maecenas had gone to great pains in choosing it: it had connotations which bordered on the divine, and severed for all time the link between the imperfect warlord Caesar and the perfect helmsman of the Roman state. O brave new world! O godlike Augustus, who has restored on earth the golden days of Saturn, when truth and justice will reign forever!

  I am being unfair, I know. After all, what could I expect? I had prayed for stability, and now that I had it could only grumble. If hypocrisy is the price we must pay for stable government, then should we not pay it gladly? Perhaps all sound political systems depend, at base, on deception, even self-deception. I do not know. But it is one thing to be deceived unwittingly in a good cause, and another to recognise the deception and yet applaud the deceiver as divine.

  There occurred one more incident about this time which, I will not say increased my disillusionment, but certainly reminded me of my own ambivalent moral position. It had nothing to do with politics. It was completely personal.

  I was in Rome, staying with Maecenas while I gathered material for my Aeneid. We had just breakfasted, and I had made my excuses as usual and was preparing to go to my room to start work when he plucked at my sleeve.

  'Don't disappear straight away, Publius,' he said. 'I thought we might go on a little visit this morning. I know you're busy, but it won't take long.'

  'Where to?' I was not too well pleased: I had work to do, even if he had not.

  Maecenas shrugged.

  'Just a visit,' he said. 'Don't come if you don't want to.'

  I knew then that it was important. Maecenas is never offhand over trivia.

  'Very well,' I said. 'So long as it doesn't take all day.'

  'Oh, it's not far,' he assured me. 'Just round the corner. And I'm sure you'll enjoy it.'

  Had I known our destination, I would not have gone; would have begged him to forget the whole idea if he valued our friendship. As it was, I did not know until we arrived at what had been Proculus's house.

  Maecenas led the way up the familiar steps.

  'Who lives here?' I asked.

  He gave me a grin which I can only describe as mischievous.

  'Wait and see,' he said.

  His slave knocked on the door. I suppose I had half-expected Proculus's Helenus to open it, but of course the porter was a stranger: a young man in a green tunic. He bowed; and Maecenas, to my surprise, instead of asking if the master was at home walked straight through the lobby into the living- room and sat down in what had been Proculus's chair.

  'Well?' he said to me as I followed him in, totally bemused. 'Aren't you going to offer your first guest a drink?'

  I must have stared at him like an idiot, because he laughed suddenly, stood up and clapped me on the shoulder.

  'It's yours, you fool! Publius, it's your house! A little thank-you present from Augustus and myself.' And then, when I still said nothing: 'What's wrong? I thought you'd be pleased.'

  Of course, he could not have known. Proculus was already dead when we met, and after his death I had had no connection with the house. It was not Maecenas's fault. Yet I felt the irony keenly: Octavian had killed Proculus and taken his house. Now, not knowing its significance, he was giving it back to me. For services rendered.

  To Maecenas, it must have seemed as if I had gone mad. I left him standing and walked out, along the familiar corridor behind the living-room and into the study. Maecenas followed, a picture of innocent confusion. I stopped, and looked around me.

  'They've cleaned up the blood,' I said.

  'What blood? Publius, what's wrong with you? Don't you like it?'

  He was my friend. The gift was both honest and generous, and I knew I could never tell him.

  'It's very nice,' I said. 'Just what I've always wanted.'

  I spent the night in the study, on the couch where Proculus had died, hoping perhaps to make my peace with his ghost. But there were no ghosts, save within my own head.

  58.

  I have worked on my Aeneid for seven years. Since I began it, Rome has slipped back further and further into anarchy. To be fair, this is not altogether Octavian's fault. In a way, I would have been happier if it had been, if he had shown himself an unworthy tyrant. Call it, if you like, the fault of human nature and (how I dread the phrase!) the expression of divine will. Perhaps Horace is right, and the Golden Age is a myth, or lies in the far future. Perhaps the gods are playing with us, holding out their hands only to snatch them back as we reach for them. I do not know. But in the past few years there have been conspiracies, civil unrest, riots, bloodshed, just as there were before Octavian took all power to himself. Natural disasters, too, which would suggest that the gods are not, after all, on his side: three years ago the Tiber flooded, causing widespread destruction and bringing in its wake famine and pestilence. Pressure has been mounting on Octavian to become, like Caesar, sole consul, even dictator. Up to now he has resisted; but how long can that continue? How long, in fact, can Octavian himself continue? His health is bad; has always been bad. He has been near to death, as far as I know, at least twice, and there is no-one to follow him but Agrippa, who would be disastrous for Rome. If Octavian dies soon, as I think he must, the darkness will return, and human nature will reassert itself.

  What will be the good of my poems then? And what price their venal poet? Infamy? Or merely laughter?

  Softly, Virgil. Softly. What's done is done. Finish your tale, and let the future look after itself. You will have, at any rate, no part in it.

  I revealed my plans to no one, showed my growing poem to no one. Octavian was at first indulgent, then pressing, finally insistent, but there was little he could do. I never refused outright to let him read the manuscript – to do so would have aroused too many suspicions – but I dragged my heels as much as I dared, and read or sent to him only the most innocuous passages. Maecenas was more difficult. As a patron – and, more, as a friend – he had the right to my candour; but I could not strain his loyalty to that degree and (let me admit it) was not confident of his support. Fortunately, he was content with what I showed him, and did not press me further. I was helped, too, by the fact that latterly he and Octavian were not quite as close as they had been. Although the rift was political and did not concern me I was – perhaps selfishly – grateful for it. The strait between Scylla and Charybdis had become terribly narrow, and I no longer trusted myself as a pilot.

  The crisis came two months ago, in July of the present year. It was precipitated partly by my own stupidity and partly by the officiousness of my secretary Alexander.

  I have not mentioned Alexander, or indeed any of my slaves by name: it is curious that, considering how important a part they play in our daily lives, we hardly ever think of slaves as individuals, or even as people. Alexander was the gift of my friend Pollio who, after Actium, had retired to Rome and given up politics to pursue his literary studies. He had been with me for several years, and I trusted him implicitly: although a slave, he was highly educated (perhaps too much so for his own good, for he was a very vain young man) and had poetical aspirations.

  I was at my villa, working on the last book of the poem. Feeling a headache coming on (I have become increasingly susceptible to them, these last few years) I decided to take a break and walk for an hour or so by the seashore. Foolishly, I left the manuscript open on my desk, and the desk itself – with the rest of the work inside – unlocked. When I returned, Alexander met me at the door. He was smiling the particular smug smile he favours when he thinks he has done something clever.

  'Oh, you're back, sir?' he said. 'Cilnius Maecenas has been waiting for you for ages. You'd better go straight through.'

  A chill wind touched the nape of my neck.

  'Straight through where?' I said.

  Alexander frowned; as if anyone could be so stupid as not to follow his meaning.

  'To your study, of course. I showed him in there as soon as he arrived.'

  Why I did not slap his silly face, I do not know; but he saw my expression and stepped back.

  'Have I done something wrong, sir?' he said, mock-contrite. 'I'm ever so sorry.'

  'You fool,' I whispered. 'You bloody, bloody fool!'

  I crossed the lobby and threw open the study door.

  Maecenas was sitting at my desk, a scroll of the Aeneid in his hands. He looked up frowning as I came in.

  'I didn't expect you until tomorrow,' I said.

  'The roads were good.' He laid the scroll down. Our eyes met, and I knew that my secret was a secret no longer. 'Publius, what have you done?'

  I shrugged, tried to pass the thing off with a joke.

  'It serves you right. People who read other people's letters never hear any good of themselves.'

  'This,' he indicated the manuscript, 'is no letter. You've ruined us all, yourself included.'

  I sat down and clasped my hands to stop them shaking. I had dreaded this moment for years. Now that it had come, it brought with it a sense of unreality.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26