Tiberius Read Online Free

not very beautiful, but she was blonde and she had personality. And brains. She conquered her conqueror at first sight; instantly she became his mistress; soon thereafter the mother of his twin children; even, a few years later, his wife. However, before that happened Antony had to get rid of the present incumbent, and that was bad politics for she was Octavia, the sister of Augustus. From Rome Augustas wrote Antony a testy letter. Antony replied:
    What has come over you? Do you object to my sleeping with Cleopatra? But we are married; and it is not even as though this were anything new. . . . And what about you? Are you faithful to Livia? My congratulations if, when this letter arrives, you have not been in bed with Tertullia, or Terentilla, or Rufilla, or Salvia Titisenia—or all of them.
    Augustus was not amused. He was hardly thirty, but he had become rather stuffy. And he had also come to believe that power could not be shared; it was nonsense to have Rome divided. Only one man could rule it. That man should be himself.
    At about this time the father of young Tiberius, now nine years old, died. The ex-husband of Livia had got off very well from the civil wars, all things considered, and he knew it He had lost his wife, but he had kept his life and his property; it was the part, of intelligence to keep away from the limelight until things quieted down. He did. But before things were quiet he was dead. His sons, nine-year-old Tiberius and five-year-old Drusus, went to live with their mother in the home of Augustus. Tiberius performed the last duties toward his father; in the Forum, with his father's body on a bier before him, the boy delivered the customary funeral oration. He spoke well, but that was to be expected. Even while still with his father Tiberius had the best of teachers, the finest Greek literary men and the most outstanding Roman rhetoricians.
    Afterward there were all those tutors and many more. Tiberius was perhaps the best-educated boy in the Empire. The Emperor had only one child—his daughter Julia, born a few months before Tiberius' brother. The three children played together and took part in the family ceremoni als togeth er; when a temple was dedicated, a religious ceremony observed, a victory celebrated, the whole family of Augustus was expected to participate. Even the stepsons. Augustus' home had become the hub of Rome, and those who lived in it were always on display.
    But Julia, being female, was not expected to study as hard as the boys. The tutors were for Tiberius and Drusus—and for their cousin Marcellus, the son of Augustus' sister Octavia (by her first husband, not by Mark Antony); Roman family relationships are complicated. The boys studied hard, according to their various personalities: Tiberius seriously, Drusus sweetly, Marcellus under compulsion, for he was a cheerful extrovert. It had already occurred to Augustus that the Empire was a bequeathable piece of property. As these boys were his closest of kin in the next generation, it might very well go to one of them, or to all three; and Augustus was determined that they should be ready for it.
    However, in order for him to have an Empire to bequeath it was necessary to make sure it was his.
    Augustus waged a few little wars to put his affairs in order. Old Lepidus, the third and least member of the Triumvirate, showed a disposition to become more important; but Augustus put a stop to that in a short skirmish. Then Sextus Pompey, the Sicilian sailor, became a very serious annoyance. All Rome lived off the imports of food from Africa (it was beneath the dignity of Roman landowners to grow grain), and the ships passed perilously near Sicily, where Sextus Po m pey's fleets could pounce on them. Sextus Pompey's fleets did.
    He was strange even for a highborn Roman—wore sea-green robes instead of white edged with purple, called himself the descendant of Neptune, the Sea God, even pretended to have forgotten how to speak Latin. Augustus