I, Claudius - Robert Graves [7]
On his return after Julius' assassination he incurred the enmity of young Augustus, Julius' adopted son, who was then known as Octavian, and of his ally, the great Mark Antony, by boldly proposing honours for the tyrannicides.
He had to flee from Rome. In the disturbances that followed he sided now with this party and now with that according as the right seemed to lie here or there. At one time he was with young Pompey, at another he fought with Mark Antony's brother against Augustus at Perusia in Etruria. But convinced at last that Augustus, though bound by loyalty to avenge the murder of Julius, his adopted father—a duty which he ruthlessly performed—was not tyrant-hearted and aimed at the restoration of the ancient liberties of the people, he came over to his side and settled at Rome with my grandmother Livia, and my uncle Tiberias, then only two years old. He took no more part in the Civil Wars, contenting himself with his duties as a pontiff.
My grandmother Livia was one of the worst of the Claudians. She may well have been a re-incarnation of that Claudia, sister of Claudius the Fair, who was arraigned for high treason because once when her coach was held up by a street crowd she called out, "If only my brother was alive! He knew how to clear crowds away. He used his whip." When one of the Protectors of the People ["tribunes", in Latin] came up and angrily ordered her to be silent, reminding her that her brother, by his impiety, had lost a Roman fleet: "A very good reason for wishing him alive," she retorted. "He might lose another fleet, and then another. God willing, and thin off this wretched crowd a little." And she added: "You're a Protector of the People, I see, and your person is legally inviolable, but don't forget that we Claudians have had some of you protectors well thrashed before now, and be damned to your inviolability."
That was exactly how my grandmother Livia spoke at this time of the Roman people. "Rabble and slaves! The Republic was always a humbug. What Rome really needs is a king again." That at least is how she talked to my grandfather, urging him that Mark Antony, and Augustus (or Octavian, I should say), and Lepidus (a rich but unenergetic nobleman), who between them now ruled the Roman world, would in time fall out; and that, if he played his hand well, he could use his dignity as a pontiff and the reputation for integrity which was conceded him by all factions as a means to becoming king himself. My grandfather replied sternly that if she spoke in this strain again he would divorce her; for in the old style of Roman marriage the husband could put his wife away without a public explanation, returning the dowry that had come with her—but keeping the children. At this my grandmother was silent and pretended to submit, but all love between them died from that moment. Unknown to my grandfather, she immediately set about engaging the passions of Augustus.
This was no difficult matter, for Augustus was young and impressionable and she had made a careful study of his tastes: besides which, she was by popular verdict one of the three most beautiful women of her day. She picked on Augustus as a better instrument for her ambitions than Antony—Lepidus did not count—and that he would stick at nothing to gain his ends the proscriptions had shown two years before, when two thousand knights and three hundred senators belonging to the opposing faction had been summarily put to death, by far the greatest number of these at Augustus' particular instance. When she had made sure of Augustus she urged him to put away Scribonia—a woman older than himself, whom he had married for political reasons—telling him that she had knowledge of Scribonia's adultery with a close friend of my grandfather's. Augustus was ready to believe this without