The Course of Honour Read Online Free PDF

Macro himself then went to the Praetorian camp to assume command, confine the Guards to barracks and prevent a riot. Sejanus meanwhile discovered that the letter from Tiberius was a bitter denunciation of himself. Striding from the Temple, he was arrested by Laco, the Prefect of the Vigiles, and hustled off to the state dungeon on the Capitol. The Guards did riot, but it was soon controlled.
    Sejanus and his fellow conspirators were executed. The strangled body of Sejanus was dumped on the Gemonian Steps which led down from the Capitol, where it was abused by the public for three days before being dragged off with hooks and thrown like rubbish into the Tiber. His statues were torn down from the Forum and theatres. His children were killed too, the teenaged daughter being raped first, to spare the public executioner from the crime of killing a virgin. Rome had harsh rules, but they did exist.
    Antonia was acclaimed as the saviour of Rome and of the Emperor. Praising her role in uncovering the conspiracy, Tiberius offered her the title Augusta, with the formal honours of an empress. This she declined with the modesty her admirers would expect.
    From the middle of October until well into November no visitors were admitted to Livia’s House. Some normal life continued. A certainamount of correspondence had to be written, and the correct procedures of daily life were grimly observed. Meanwhile Antonia’s daughter, Livilla, had been brought to the house and consigned, with the Emperor’s permission, to her mother’s custody.
    Unlike previous errant daughters of the Imperial House, those who merely led scandalous, adulterous lives for their own pleasure, but who had refrained from poisoning the sons of emperors or letting themselves be manipulated into damaging the stability of Rome, Livilla was not to be exiled to a remote island or executed by soldiers. She had shamed the rigorous principles of her mother, Antonia, and those of her even more famously strict grandmother Octavia. She had been stupidly deceived by Sejanus. She had defiled the house of Augustus and dishonoured her own children, the grandchildren and rightful heirs of the Emperor. Her position saved her from the public executioner, yet her fate was merciless.
    Antonia took Livilla into her own house, locked her in a room alone, and left her there until she starved to death.

 
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    G rief and rejoicing each have their moments, and then fade. The screams and pleas for help from Livilla were reduced to weakening groans, then silence. Those who had been shaken by having to overhear what happened recovered as much as they ever would.
    Gradually the House of Livia relaxed, returning like Rome itself to what passed for normal domesticity. Certainly a shadow had been lifted from the Empire and the city was full of relief.
    Years passed. Nightmares ended. Individual lives improved. That was why, when the younger brother of Flavius Sabinus opened the door to a certain office in the administration sector on the Palatine nearly two years later, Caenis was singing.
    She was singing quite loudly because she thought there was nobody nearby. Besides, she liked to sing. Livia’s House would hardly be the place for it.
    She stopped abruptly.
    â€˜Hello!’ cried Vespasian. ‘You look very efficient!’
    He shouldered himself in. Caenis put on an expression of pious surprise. She had been aware that his posting to Thrace must have ended. She had somehow expected him.
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    Men of his status were not supposed to saunter into the imperial suites looking for female scribes. Completely unabashed, Vespasian took a good look round.
    Antonia had borrowed a large office for her copy clerks. She ran a frugal household and was more ruthless in seizing advantages than her sovereign reputation might suggest. Tiberius would once have been mean enough to demand rent even from a widowed relative, but no one had ever told him she was