Augustus_ The Life of Rome's First Emperor - Anthony Everitt [187]
When the fire had burned out, wine was poured over the embers. A priest purified those present from the taint of death by sprinkling water over them with a laurel or olive branch. The mourners were then dismissed, each of them saying “Vale” as he or she left the scene.
Eventually, only one person was left beside the ashes—Julia Augusta, widow and now daughter of the dead princeps. The old lady remained where she was for five days. Then, attended by leading equites, who were barefoot and wore unbelted tunics, she collected the bones and lodged them in the mausoleum.
INTO THE FUTURE
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Making a show of reluctance before the Senate, Tiberius assumed full powers and authority. Broadly, the new emperor maintained Augustus’ policies. However, the divine family became increasingly dysfunctional. Livia, or Julia Augusta as she now was, got on badly with her son once he became emperor. Although he admired her sagacity, he was irritated by the fact that she was credited with having made him emperor. In A.D. 26, Tiberius abandoned Rome for Capri off the Bay of Naples, where he spent the rest of his reign; his mother was probably one of the reasons for his second and final self-exile.
Germanicus was given a commission in the east, but died in A.D. 19 at the age of thirty-four, perhaps from poisoning (as usual, Livia was blamed). In A.D. 23 his contemporary, Tiberius’ son Drusus, also died; he may have been a victim of the emperor’s scheming favorite, Lucius Aelius Sejanus, but more probably of an epidemic raging in Rome that year.
The elder Julia did not long outlive her unforgiving father, dying in A.D. 14 at Rhegium. Postumus’ death removed her last hope of recall. According to Tacitus, Tiberius pitilessly “let her waste away to death, exiled and disgraced, by slow starvation. He calculated that she had been banished for so long that her death would pass unnoticed.”
The younger Julia never left her little island in the sun, and died some twenty years after her enraged grandfather had sent her there. Her lover, Silanus, was more fortunate. He was allowed to return to Rome in A.D. 20; Tiberius remarked quizzically that he was gratified that Silanus should return from his “pilgrimage to far lands.”
As for Ovid, Tiberius and Livia turned a deaf ear to his pleas for a reprieve. He cultivated the young Germanicus, but to no avail. In A.D. 17 he died among his barbarians at Tomis. He asked that he be buried near his beloved city, Rome, and one can hope, but without much confidence, that this last wish was granted.
Livia died in A.D. 29 at the considerable age of eighty-six. Tiberius outlasted her only by eight years, and expired old and lonely in his island retreat in A.D. 37. He was alleged to have spent his last years engaged in elaborate pedophiliac pursuits.
Germanicus’ son Gaius, nicknamed Little Boots, Caligula, by the troops when he was a small child, succeeded to the purple. Although intelligent, Caligula made poor decisions and almost certainly suffered from severe mental illness. Unkind gossip had it that he wanted to make his favorite horse a consul. He played practical jokes on his guards, who eventually lost their sense of humor and assassinated him, in A.D. 41.
For many years Drusus’ lame son, Claudius, continued to be ignored. He lived quietly and lazily, moving between a suburban mansion and a villa in the country. Augustus left him the insulting sum of four thousand sesterces in his will, and Tiberius declined to employ him. He divided his time between drinking and gambling with low-life acquaintances, and writing copiously. He published an autobiography, a defense of Cicero, and an authoritative history of the Etruscans.
Claudius was more or less forgotten until brought to court by the emperor Caligula, who treated him as an unpaid clown. When Caligula was assassinated, Praetorian Guardsmen found Claudius hiding behind a curtain in the palace, took him to their camp, and