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5 - Livia and Tacitus' hate.

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

Livia and the hate of Tacitus
The 75 year old Augustus was now dead. Livia was left alone and she still had 15 year to live, fifteen year that were not very easy. Now her husband, a strong man who had always been master of the situation, was no more at her side. Now she was alone to withstand all the calumnies and the fantastic accusations that the faction adverse to the Iuli Claudi aspersed on her. As a first thing, notwithstanding their long marriage and the sure proof of their reciprocal love, her enemies were bold enough to assert that she had poisoned her husband.
For what is written in Dio’s history, a man who enjoyed to relate all these slanders, Livia planned this poisoning with great shrewdness and ability. For what the historian writes she went in the garden and here she brushed a perfect fig with the most mortal among her poisons. For Dio, she didn’t have any problem to find the one more appropriate among the ones she had. Dio seemed sure that Livia’s collection of poison was not only the more complete but also the best among what could be found in all the empire. To prepare a poisoned fruit directly on the tree had surely been the final touch: a real stroke of genius. Always for Dio, due the kind of the Iuli Claudi family, it was absolutely necessary not to arouse any suspicion. In such a group of poisoners and murderers as Livia and Tiberius were, no one who was in full possession of his faculties would have accepted a glass of water by their hand, not even in the desert: it would be much better to die of thirst!
But Livia, that Dio describes as very intelligent and very shrewd, found the way to avoid the obstacle. Who ever could suspect the danger hidden in a fine perfumed fruit hanging to his tree and still warm for the sun? And Augustus accepted with pleasure the offer, and not only this: as he never peeled the figs he swallowed the fruit just as it had been picked.
After this he died but not immediately. He did not fall down writhing among terrible aches. This would certainly have aroused some suspicions. No! Not anything of the kind! Livia was too sly to use such a primitive and brutal system She gave him a poison that would kill him slowly and without pain, a substance that would take some days to kill him. A real unique poison. On the other hand she had to have some regards for the companion of all her life, To kill him was all right, but to make him suffer, absolutely not!
Not one of her enemies remarked that to wait 52 years to poison the mate of her life was really to take it a little too easy. And over all what could have been he reason and what could have been the hurry that pushed Livia to rid herself of a 75 years old man? It would have been more easy and more convenient to wait that Augustus, old and always full of illnesses and aches as he was, died a natural death.
But no. For Tacitus all this had an explanation. Livia, it is true, waited quite a lot of time before doing it, but this was only because until then everything had worked the way she wanted and no danger was menacing the succession of Tiberius at the head of the empire. The two wicked persons – and for Tacitus such were mother and son - aspired very much to this succession, and Livia, who in all her life had done whatever she could to smooth the way for her son, craved for it. Thus – went on Tacitus – when there had been the danger that Augustus chose to give the succession to his grandchildren Gaius and Lucius Caesar the two young men quickly died and thus there were no more problems. Of course Tacitus did not remark the unimportant fact that the two brothers died very far away from Rome and Livia. But Tacitus didn’t want to reason on this and, forgetting these facts, was sure that Livia must have been responsible of their death. In his history he writes that:
“the two sons of Agrippa died either struck by a cruel fate or got rid by Livia’s snares”
And it is not difficult to realise which for him was the best solution.
Always for Tacitus, after having killed the two grandchildren, Livia and Tiberius had calmed down: the access to the throne was now sure, and at his point Tiberius chose to come back from Rodi. There still was another grandchild, Agrippa Postumus who was born after Agrippa’s death, but this unhappy boy had already been put out of play by Livia. As a matter of fact the historian writes:
“ The arts of Livia had at such a point subdued the quite old Augustus, to induce him to confine his last male grandson Agrippa Postumus in the island of Pianosa.”
It is also true, avow the historian,
“that also no shameful acts were ascribed to him, Agrippa was a man senselessly proud of his strength and absolutely devoid of good qualities, ,”.
Thus he didn’t look a dangerous rival and in fact from the few notices that we have about him, Agrippa Postumus was only a poor boy, in whose mind the madness was little by little becaming more evident, the same kind of madness that his brother Gaius had manifested just before his death, the fate that, as a tragic malediction, hit not only him but all of Giulia’s sons.
Velleius Paterculus, that in his history always writes exactly and synthetically the facts, paints a very clear picture of the kind of disorder which was destroying the mind of Agrippa Postumus, and the description is so accurate that we have the impression to read a diagnosis written by a psychiatrist.
“Agrippa, who had been adopted by his grandfather the same day in which he adopted Tiberius, after just two years began to show his true nature, and at this moment he much disgusted Augustus. The young man had become violent for a strange deformity of his mind and of his character; a strangeness that grew more serious with the passing of the days, and very soon brought him to the end that his madness had prefixed for him.”
The fact was so well known that when people discussed about Augustus’ succession, everyone agreed that Agrippa Postumus could never take the emperor’s place; everybody consented that he was a savage, full of hate and unsuitable to the command. But against all evidence Tacitus suspected that the old emperor could take in consideration to set him on the Caesar’s throne, and this when better than anybody else Augustus knew the limits of the poor madman, a boy that he had confined to Pianosa to avoid that he gave spectacle of himself and made people laugh and make fun of him.
Not stopping at this Tacitus then hinted that Livia informed of her husband’s plan, instead of laughing at the idea, was so preoccupied that she hurried to poison her husband. Always as Tacitus writes, not satisfied to kill Augustus, Livia made a carnage. Thus before poisoning her husband she killed Fabius Maximus, a patrician who had accompanied the emperor to his trip to Pianosa. It was whispered that Fabius Maximus’ wife, Marcia, a dear friend of Livia, told her everything about the meeting between grandfather and grandson and added very moving aspects of their reunion. With her Livia, most deceitful, hid her contrariety, but she immediately provided to eliminate the inconvenient test and, just after this, to kill Augustus. At last, when she was a widow, she finished the slaughtering with the assassination of Agrippa Postumus. A carnage deign of the Athrides.
But now is it possible to leave aside all those slanders and succeed in understanding who was the real Livia? Was she the loving wife, the earnest mother, the stern ward of the customs of a family which between dead people and mad ones was disgregating around her? Or was she the wicked calculating without scruples woman, the cold murderer described by Tacitus and Dio?
More than 2000years have passed and on her different truths have been presented to us, different as the night from the day, and among them we are obliged to opt which will be ours. But there is something not written. But solidly real on which we can base ourselves and form our opinion: an avowal which is really trustworthy.
This is the indirect testimony that Augustus gave us. The man that having had Livia near him for 52 years gave her all his esteem and love, and it is clear that he must have known her very well. Now, Augustus also if always frail had always had a very clear head and had always been a very good judge of characters, a truth amply proved by the fact that for his entourage he always picked the best men. Augustus then was not the man that could easily be deceived and not even duped by his adored wife. He was a very suspicious man and it was just this side of his character that had consented him to manoeuvre among the snares of his stormy epoch, had helped him to live all those long 75 years and to die in his bed.
Over everything else dying in one’s bed was a luxury that at those time didn’t occur very often, and certainly didn’t occur to whom didn’t beware of everybody: enemies, friends, lovers and even close relatives. Then if Augustus trusted Livia and was sure of her devotion and honesty I think that she must have been a very reliable person. She could also have been as Tiberius said – or better as Tacitus affirmed that Tiberius had said – a woman Ulysses but how many extremely good wives or mothers of all the times were not so? And how many have not been described so by their own children? They certainly were not less loved and they were a real benediction for their family.

Bibliography
scientific popularization
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, L'amore a Roma in Archeo, VII, 10 (92) October 1992, pp. 54-99

Books
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - Amori ed amanti tra la repubblica ed il principato, Editore. L’Erma di Bretschneider, Roma, 1992