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Page 47
Thus died the last woman of the house of Augustus, and, with the
exception of Livia, the most remarkable feminine figure in that family.
She died like a soldier, on duty and at her post, bravely defending the
social and political traditions of the Roman aristocracy and the
time-honored principles of Romanism against the influx of those new
forces of a later age which were seeking to orientalize the ancient
Latin republic. She died for her family, for her caste, and for Rome,
without even having the reward of being remembered with dutiful regard
by posterity; for in this struggle she had sacrificed not merely her
life, but even her honor and her fame. Such, furthermore, was the
common destiny of all the members of this family, and if we except
Livia and Augustus, the privileged pair who founded it, we are at a
loss to know whether to call it the most fortunate or the most unhappy
of all the families of the ancient world. It is impossible for the
historian who understands this terrible drama, filled with so many
catastrophes, not to feel a certain impression of horror at the
vindictive ferocity that Rome showed to this house, which, in order to
bring back Rome's peace and to preserve her empire, had been fated to
exalt itself a few degrees above the ordinary level of the ancient
aristocracy. Men and women, the young and the old, the knaves and the
large-hearted, the sages and the fools of the family, alike, all
without exception, were persecuted and plotted against. And again, if
we except the persons of the two founders, and those who, like Drusus
and Germanicus, had the good fortune to die young, Rome deprived them
all, deprived even Antonia, of either their life or their greatness or
their honor, and not infrequently it robbed them of all these three
together. Those who, like Tiberius and Agrippina, defended the ancient
Roman tradition, were hated, hounded, and defamed with a no less angry
fury than Caligula and Nero, who sought to destroy it. No one of them,
whatever his tendencies or intentions, succeeded in making himself
understood by his times or by posterity; it was their common fate to be
misunderstood, and therefore horribly calumniated. The destiny of the
women was even more tragic than that of the men, for the times demanded
from them, as a compensation for the great honor of belonging to this
privileged family, that they possess all the rarest and most difficult
virtues.
What was the cause of all this? we ask. How were so many catastrophes
possible, and how could tradition have erred so grievously? It is
almost a crime that posterity should virtually always have studied and
pondered this immense tragedy of history on the basis of the crude and
superficial falsification of it which Tacitus has given us. For few
episodes in general history impress so powerfully upon the mind the
fact that the progress of the world is one of the most tragic of its
phenomena. Especially is such knowledge necessary to the favored
generations of prosperous and easy times. He who has not lived in
those years when an old world is disappearing and a new one making its
way cannot realize the tragedy of life, for at such times the old is
still sufficiently strong to resist the assaults of the new, and the
latter, though growing, is not yet strong enough to annihilate that
world on the ruins of which alone it will be able to prosper. Men are
then called upon to solve insoluble problems and to attempt enterprises
which are both necessary and impossible. There is confusion
everywhere, in the mind within and in the world without. Hate often
separates those who ought to aid one another, since they are tending
toward the same goal, and sympathy binds men together who are forced to
do battle with one another. At such times women generally suffer more
than men, for every change which occurs in their situation seems more
dangerous, and it is right that it should be so. For woman is by
nature the vestal of our species, and for that reason she must be more
conservative, more circumspect, and more virtuous than man. There is
no state or civilization which has comprehended the highest things in
life which has not been forced to instil into its women rather than
into its men the sense for all those virtues upon which depend the
stability of the family and the future of the race. And for every era
this is a question of life and death. In such periods when one world
is dying and another coming to birth, all conceptions become confused,
and all attempts bring forth bizarre results. He who wishes to
preserve, often destroys, so that virtue seems vice, and vice seems
virtue. Precisely for this reason it is more difficult for a woman
than for a man to succeed in fulfilling her proper mission, for she is
more exposed to the danger of losing her way and of missing her
particular function; and since she is more likely to fail in realizing
her natural destiny, she is more likely to be doomed to a life of
misfortune.
Such was the fate of the family of Augustus, and such especially was
the fate of its women. The strangers who visit Rome often go out on
Sunday afternoons to listen to the excellent music that can be heard in
a room which is situated in one of the little streets near the Piazza
del Popolo and which used to be called the Corea. This hall was built
over an ancient Roman ruin of circular form which any one can still see
as he enters. That ruin is the entrance to the tomb which Augustus
built on the Flaminian Way for himself and his family. Nearly all of
the personages whose story we have told were buried in that mausoleum.
If any reader who has followed this history should one day find himself
at Rome, listening to a concert in that old Corea, which has now been
renamed after the Emperor Augustus, let him give a thought to those
victims of a terrible story of long ago, and may he remember that here,
where at the beginning of the twentieth century he listens to the flow
of rivers of sweet sound--here only, twenty centuries ago, could the
members of the family of Augustus find refuge from their tragic fate,
and after so much greatness, resolved to dust and ashes, rest at last
in peace.
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