I Am Livia Read Online Free PDF Page A

up Caesar’s bloody toga and moved the crowd to pity. He read Caesar’s will, which contained a bequest to each and every Roman citizen, moving the people to gratitude. He aroused in the multitude a fierce hatred for Caesar’s assassins.
    My father came home, grim-faced. He gave terse orders. An hour later, he, Mother, Secunda, and I, with a few of our most trusty servants, left Rome. We traveled by cart until the sun sank in the west. Father wanted us as far from the city as possible before night fell. We stayed in a roadside inn that night—Secunda and I shared a cramped bedchamber overrun with mice—and the next morning traveled on. We eventually reached Father’s estate in Tuscany.
    We learned later that the common people searched for Caesar’s assassins all through the city that night, carrying torches, vowing to burn them alive. They came upon a man who had the same name as one of the assassins. Disbelieving his protestations of innocence, they tore him limb from limb. They found none of the actual plotters. Marcus Brutus, Decimus Brutus, and the rest had fled the city. So had my betrothed, Tiberius Nero, who like Father had played no part in the actual assassination but was rumored to be allied with the killers.
    In our country villa, we waited to see what would happen next in Rome. I had always loved our Tuscan estate—being able to breathe sweet country air, wander among the olive groves, and watch ponies gambol in the fields. Now, with fear as my companion, I took pleasure in little. A month passed. Then Caesar’s killers reached an agreement with Antony. The men who had stabbed Caesar would be left unmolested. Antony would be named consul. He and the assassins would share in the government of Rome.
    As part of the accommodation, my father was made a senator. His birth and the governmental offices he had held would have qualified him for the Senate in ordinary times. Tiberius Nero—who, like my father, could claim descent from one of Rome’s noblest families, the Claudians—became a senator too.
    All would be well, Father assured us, as we ate dinner together in the villa’s well-appointed dining room.
    “I think we should stay in Tuscany,” Mother said.
    Father shook his head. “There will be a political struggle in the Forum and in the Senate for the fate of the Republic. I must be part of it.”
    “But Marcus—”
    “If things go badly, don’t you think they will hunt me down here?”
    Mother winced and said nothing.
    Father looked at me. “Livia, when we return to Rome, you will be married immediately.”
    I didn’t need to ask why. With matters in flux as they were, and danger all around, it had become doubly important for Father to bind Tiberius Nero to him.
    As we rode the cart back into Rome, I tried to gather my courage. I would become Tiberius Nero’s wife in a matter of days. After the wedding, if my father’s and husband’s political fortunes dipped…well, perhaps this unwanted marriage would not last very long.
    What had the plebeians wanted to do to Caesar’s killers? Immolate them. I prayed we were not going back to Rome to be murdered.

M y wedding took place soon after we returned to the city. It was early summer, the month of Junius. I remember the sticky heat. The atrium was crowded with dining couches and packed with friends of my father and of my husband-to-be.
    On awakening that morning, I had removed my bulla, the lucky amulet meant to keep me safe through my childhood, for from today on I was accounted a grown woman. I had bathed in rose water. For the first time in my life, my lips were rouged and my eyelids touched with kohl. My hair had been arranged in six locks tied with ribbons in the manner of a Vestal Virgin. My long tunica was of fine white muslin, my sandals of soft white leather trimmed with gold. I had on ruby earrings and a heavy gold necklace, gifts sent to me by my betrothed. I wore a diaphanous red silk veil and saw everything tinted scarlet.
    As I