A quiet night in with a book

My friend and colleague Mary Beard gave a firm 'this one not for me' response to the arrival on her desk of Matthew Dennison's biography of Livia, wife of Augustus. What was the point of it?

"Why do people imagine they can write biographies of individual Roman empresses, for whom there is almost no reliable evidence whatsoever? And when the blurb claims that it rests on "extensive new research", what do they mean by that ? What NEW research is there to do on Livia, the wife of the first Roman emperor Augustus? By a journalist whose last book was on one of Queen Victoria's daughters? I didn't stop long on this one, for fear of getting too cross -- or, to put it another way, of finding the crap ("Livia was beautiful" -- err well??) outweighing the facts/judicious argument."

So there. And on we went to the next offerings on the TLS classics shelf, perhaps to Sancifying Misandry, Goddess Ideology and the Fall of Man or Greek Vase-Painting and the Origins of VIsual Humour.

But then another friend and colleague, Erica Wagner, asked if I would write about Livia for The Times. It seemed churlish to reply only with what on earth could the point of the book be. So I began it in an armchair on a Sunday night, smiled a bit, felt mildly irritated, found myself learning one or two things that Professor Beard did not need to be told and felt that pleasant memory jolt when a forgotten story hoves back in to the head.

Is that enough of a point for a book?

I had forgotten, for example, that before he died Augustus had adopted his wife as his daughter, a formality, of course, but still a strange one. To be chosen as both wife and 'daughter' by the most powerful man of your time marks a certain distinction even if only of the 'why did they do that?' kind.

And then, to begin a bloodline of Roman emperors with the minimum genetic input from your all-powerful husband and 'father' may be considered a greater achievement still.  Of course, Livia's genetic responsibility for Tiberius, Claudius and Nero is not a newly discovered fact or a new interpreation in any way. But it is still an achievement that can gently wash over a reader like a late-night repeat of Timewatch (not illustrated here).

Maybe the 'point' comes in that category of 'truths worth repeating', a note that while it is normal to call the first five Roman emperors the 'Julio-Claudians', the imperial family tree shows little on the Julio side, the one that starts with the father of Julius Caesar, and much more on the Claudian, the side headed by Tiberius Claudius Nero, a man of whom few now have heard and few in his own lifetime esteemed very much either, a man who backed mostly losers in politics while being truly effective only in promoting his genes.

This first husband of Livia became father of Emperor Tiberius, grandfather of Emperor Claudius and great grandfather both of Emperor Nero and of Emperor Gaius Caligula (somewhere in the picture), the particularly crazed one who alone had significant Julian blood in his veins. In fact, in the field that counted most to a macho Roman this champion of lost causes was one of the most successful males of all time.

How long it took the young Livia to realise his limited usefulness in other respects is not clear and never will be. Perhaps it was when he backed both Julius Caesar’s murderers and avengers, or when he then supported the unsuccessful Mark Antony, or, a little later, when the family was on the run in Greece with a price on its heads. This was time when a ‘price on one’s head’ could be taken wholly literally, with sometimes a severed tongue and hand rewarded for extra impact.

 Everything certainly improved in 39 BC when 19-year-old Livia delivered her second child and immediately married the man who was pursuing, in rather different senses, both herself and her husband. The soon-to-be Emperor Augustus was happy to divorce his own pregnant wife, the mother of the daughter who alone would contribute to his genetic inheritance, and to take on Livia instead for a childless marriage that lasted 52 years. Tiberius Claudius Nero found his own name generously removed from the ‘Wanted’ lists.

 Dennison gives a bright account of this early and lesser known part of his story. It is a long time since I have followed it myself and I enjoyed doing so again even with a little dozing. After that it is a case of who poisoned whom and who has been unfairly maligning whom ever since? The ostensible  purpose of this book is to save Livia's reputation from hostile critics and Mary Beard is right enough in scenting that this is really no point at all. Two thousand years on, no reputable historians accept Livia's reputation as the evil genius of Robert Graves' I Claudius. TV viewers, if they care about the likely truth at all, are not demanding it from costume drama. While Dennison dissents with an unusually fierce loyalty from Graves' portrait of a poisoning plotter, citing centuries of anti-feminine bias that had begun even in his heroine's own lifetime, he is attacking a straw dog and for long periods rather too dutifully.

There is, indeed, nothing new to add. Augustus had a nephew, Marcellus, who might have been his successor had he not died in 23 BC. Yes, this was year of deadly plagues in Rome. Yes, this was a death that helped the claims of Livia's Tiberius. Yes, Livia was a keen gardener. And yes, gardeners were well placed to grow noxious herbs. Thus there was plenty of material for historians who disliked thrones with women close to them – and plenty more for later writers seeking a wicked stepmother story - and well, yes, and what else?

 In 9 BC Livia lost her second son, Drusus, after a riding accident. Tiberius's Julian rivals, male and female, seemed to disappear in less open ways, but only to those who wanted to believe so. Augustus’s daughter, Julia, who ‘looked down on Tiberius as an inferior’, in Tacitus’s words, was exiled for excessive adultery. Her sons, Lucius and Gaius, died far enough way from Rome to avoid easy charges against Livia but very conveniently for her dynastic aims. In Robert Graves’ version, taken from Dio Cassius, Livia eventually poisoned Augustus himself with a fig, fearing that he was preferring even the feeblest of Julia’s sons to her own. Dennison does not believe it. Fine. Before succumbing, however, Augustus did succeed in elevating his wife to the higher status of 'imperial daughter'. Strange that.

 

Comments

[Clayton Burns]

I have a question about the book by Robert Alter, \"Pen of Iron,\"
which I consider to be very interesting. First of all, I would like the Book Review to review its search arrangements. They seem a bit off to me, but perhaps they really make sense after all.

\"One unsettling symptom of the general problem [of the 'disappearance of a sense of style'] is that in the country's most influential reviewing platform, the 'New York Times Book Review,' when a critic singles out a writer for stylistic brilliance, it is far more often than not the case that the proffered illustrative quotation turns out
to be either flat and banal writing or prose of the most purple hue\" (Alter, 10). Now, just because Alter says so does not make it true.

Nonetheless, a deafened ear will analyze literature not well. Perhaps if the editor responded in detail after interviewing Alter to get more facts, that would be useful.

Alter writes perceptively of Faulkner's \"Absalom, Absalom!\" Perhaps he missed one sure indicator of lapses in reading skills, including sensitivity to style, in the Modern Library text--flip to the middle
of page 100 and you will see the disarray. For what seems now as if it (they) were centuries of stony sleep, Noel Polk has dodged his
responsibility to bring the state of this \"uncorrected text\" to the
attention of the public. And, Delbanco, anthologist, do not let any typos at all creep into \"Barn Burning.\"

Henry James. Style makes the man. What envy Joyce exhibited.
Cryptically. Some day the elemental fact will emerge that the
governess must have had an informant who told her about Peter Quint's death, because her account is so graphic. Therefore, it makes no sense to imagine that because the governess was able to describe Quint, he must have appeared to her as a ghost. (But not as the Ghost of Hamlet's father).

What the \"New York Times Book Review\" might do is assess the
literary criticism section in a good bookstore. Globally. What leaped out at me was \"Pen of Iron,\" the ongoing utility of the Gifford annotations on \"Ulysses,\" and the persistence of some poor criticism
by Harold Bloom--witness in \"The Western Canon\" his weird analysis
of \"The Tint I cannot take--is best--\".