I, Claudius - Robert Graves [39]
No, it was because he was unable to check the excesses of his wife and yet was distressed that Augustus was condoning them, for so he believed; and since he did not wish to antagonise Gaius and Lucius, her sons, by asking Augus: us for leave to divorce her, there was no course open for him but to withdraw decently from the scene.
This talk about Tiberius was wasted on Augustus, who threw a fold of his robe over his head and groped his way to the passage leading to his bedroom, where he locked himself in and was seen by nobody, not even by Livia, for ? our whole days, during which time he took no food or irink, nor any sleep, and what was still stronger proof—if any was required—of the violence of his grief, went all that time unshaved. Finally he pulled the string which ran through a hole in the wall and tinkled a little silver bell in Livia's room. Livia came hurrying to him with a face of loving concern, and Augustus, not yet trusting his voice, wrote down on his wax-tablet the single sentence, in Greek: "Let her be banished for life, but do not tell me where." He handed Livia his seal-ring so that she might write letters to the Senate by his authority, recommending the banishment. [This seal, by the way, was the great emerald cut with the helmeted head of Alexander the Great from whose tomb it had been stolen, along with a sword and breast-plate and other personal trappings of the hero. Livia insisted on his using it, in spite of his scruples—he realised how presumptuous it was—until one night he had a dream in which Alexander, frowning angrily, hacked off with his sword the finger on which he wore it.
Then he had a seal of his own, a ruby from India, cut by the famous goldsmith Dioscurides, which all his successors have used as the token of their sovereignty.]
Livia wrote the recommendation for banishment in very strong terms. It was composed in Augustus' own literary style; which was easy to imitate because it always sacriEced elegance to clarity—for example, by a determined repetition of the same word, where it occurred often in a passage, instead of hunting about for a synonym or periphrasis [which is the common literary practice]. And he had a tendency to over-prepositionalize his verbs. She did not show the letter to Augustus but sent it direct to the Senate, who immediately voted a decree of perpetual banishment.
Livia had listed Julia's crimes in such detail and had credited Augustus with such calm expressions of detestation for them that she made it impossible for him ever afterwards to change his mind and ask the Senate to cancel their decision. She did a good piece of business on the side, too, by singling out for special mention as Julia's partners in adultery three or four men whom it was to her interest to ruin. Among them was an uncle of mine, Lulus, a son of Antony, to whom Augustus had shown great favour for Octavia's sake, raising him to the Consulship. Livia, in naming him in her letter to the Senate, strongly emphasized the ingratitude that he had shown his benefactor and hinted that he and Julia were conspiring together to seize the supreme power. lulus committed suicide. I believe that the charge of conspiracy was groundless, but as the only surviving son of Antony, by his wife Fulvia—Augustus had put Antyllus, the eldest, to death immediately after his father's suicide, and the other two, Ptolemy and Alexander, his sons by Cleopatra, had died young—and as an ex-Consul and the husband of Marcellus' sister, whom Agrippa had divorced, he seemed dangerous. Popular discontent with Augustus often expressed itself in a wish that it had been Antony who had won the Battle of Actium.
The other men whom Livia accused of adultery were banished.
A week later Augustus asked Livia whether "a certain decree" had been duly passed—for he never mentioned Julia by name again and seldom even by a roundabout