A Poem of Consolation (Consolatio ad Liviam) (Mozley)

O THOU who didst long seem blest, called but of late '‘the mother of the Neros,” now is the half of that title thine no more ; now art thou reading a sad plaint to Drusus’ memory, now hast thou but one to call thee "mother” ; neither does thy affection distract thee between love for two, nor hearing the word “son” dost thou ask “which.” And does any dare to tell thee the conditions of mourning? does any check the tears upon thy face ? Alas ! how easy it is, though this sorrow has touched all, to speak brave words in another’s grief! “ Lightly, be sure, has the thunderbolt touched thee, that by thy calamities thou mayst be able to be more stouthearted.” A youth is dead, whose life was a pattern that all might reverence ; great in arms was he, and great in peace. He wrested of late from the foe their Alpine hiding-places, and won renown, sharing with his brother the captaincy of the war ; he crushed the fierce tribe of Suevi and the untamed Sicambri, and turned their barbarous backs to flight, and won for thee, O Roman, a triumph before unknown, and extended thy sway to new lands. Ignorant of thy destinies thou wert preparing, O mother, to pay thy vows to Jove, to pay thy vows to the armed goddess, and to heap with gifts our sire Gradivus, and all the gods whom ’’tis right and dutiful to worship ; thy mother’s mind was brooding on the sacred triumph : perchance thou wert even thinking on the chariot. A funeral must thou lead in place of the sacred triumph, and the pyre awaits Drusus before the citadel of Jove. Thou didst picture him returned, and cherished in thy heart the joys he bade thee feel, and already he stood victorious before thine eyes. “ Soon will he come ; soon will the throng behold me giving thanks, soon must I bear gifts for my Drusus’ safety. I shall go forth to meet him, and through the cities I shall be called fortunate ; his neck will I embrace and kiss his mouth and eyes. Even so will he be, so will he meet me, and so kiss me ; such tale will he tell, thus will I accost him first. ” Great are the joys thou art cherishing ; unhappiest of women, put aside false hopes, cease to tell joyful tidings of thy Drusus. That achievement of Caesar, the one half of your hopes, has perished ; undo, Livia, thy undeserving locks. What now avails thy character, thy whole life chastely lived, thy having so pleased so mighty a lord ? And what with chastity to have crowned such a sum of dignities that it is the last among thy praises ? What avails it to have kept thy mind upright against thy age, and to have lifted thy head clear of its vices? To have harmed none, yet to have had the power to harm, and that none feared thy might ? That thy power strayed not to the Campus or the Forum, and that thou didst order thy house within the bounds permitted thee ? Ay, verily o’er such lives too Fortune’s injustice reigns ; here too she rides her shifting wheel; here too is she felt : lest anything escape her insatiate grasp, she rages, and everywhere makes injustice justice for herself. Forsooth, if Livia alone had been immune from grief, then Fortune’s realm had suffered ! What if she had not so borne herself in all her ways that her blessings stirred no envy ? Think too of Caesar’s house, which surely should have been exempt from death and higher than human ills. He, our guardian, set consecrated on the highest citadel, was worthy to regard the affairs of men from a place of safety, nor to be wept for by his own, nor that any of his own should weep, nor to endure himself what we, the common folk, endure ; we have seen him mourning for his sister’s offspring snatched away : that grief, as in Drusus’ case, Was shared by all ; he buried Agrippa in thy sepulchre, Marcellus, and already that place held his two sons-in-law ; scarce was the tomb’s door fast closed upon Agrippa’s corpse, lo ! his sister receives the rites of death. Lo ! thrice has the tribute been paid, and Drusus, the latest loss, is the fourth to draw tears from mighty Caesar. Shut now, ye Fates, shut the tomb too oft unlocked ! more already than is right has that house of yours been opened. Drusus, thou goest ; and fruitlessly is thy name called for the last time let this be the last complaining for thy fate. Sorrow for thee can fill whole ages, and take rank as a mighty mourning : many men Were lost in thee, nor wert thou, so great a multitude of virtues, the only one in whom all excellence was found, nor was any mother more fruitful than thine, who alone by two births brought forth so many virtues. Alas ! where is that pair well-matched in every excellence, devotion of heart to heart and love undoubted? We beheld Nero dazed by his brother’s death, and weeping pale-faced with dishevelled hair, unlike himself in his grief-proclaiming countenance ; alas, how that grief was shown in every line ! Yet thou didst see thy brother in death’s last hour, and he saw thy tears, and dying he felt thy breast pressed close to his, and kept his eyes fixed upon thy face, his eyes, all but merged in darksome death, his eyes, soon to be closed by his brother’s hand. But thy unhappy mother neither imprinted her last kisses nor cherished the cold limbs in her trembling bosom ; she caught not the flying life on open lips set near to thine, nor scattered her shorn tresses o’er thy limbs. In her absence wert thou torn away, while savage war detained thee, more useful to thy country, Drusus, than to thyself. She melts away, as melt the soft snows, what time the suns and zephyrs smite them, and the spring is warm; of thee she complains, of thy misfortune and her slighted vows, and blames her years as one who has lived too long. Even so in the shady woods the Daunian bird, now gentle at last,’ laments the Thracian Itys, even such the plaints that o’er the windy seas the piping Halcyons utter to the unhearing waves ; so, beating plumy bosoms with new wings, did ye chant together of Oeneus son, ye unexpected birds ; so Clymene wept so Clymene’s daughters, when the stricken youth fell from his father’s chariot on high. Sometimes she makes her tears congeal and harden, restrains them, and, braver than her eyes, drives them within, just quivering to fall : yet forth they hurst, and once more flood her lap and bosom, pouring out from laden and ne’erfailing eyelids. Weeping gains strength from tarrying ; the stream flows fuller, if even a brief delay has held it hack.

At length, when her tears allowed, thus dolefully she began, though sobbing checked her in midutterance ; “ O son, brief fruit, and half the fortune of a twofold birth, glory of thy aged mother, O son, where art thou? No more a twofold birth,’ no more ‘ one-half its fortune,’ yet still the glory of thy aged mother, where art thou? Ah, late so mighty, where art thou ? to the flame and to the pyre art thou borne. Are these the gifts prepared for thy return ? Deservedst thou thus to meet thy mother’s eyes, deserved I thus to behold thee on thy return ? If Caesar’s consort may speak thus, I doubt now whether to think the gods are great. For what sin have I done ? what powers, what gods have I failed to win by my devotion? Is this piety’s reward ? I clasp lifeless limbs, and flame and pyre devour this very womb. Can I bear to see thee lying there, cursed that I am ? will my hands bring themselves to anoint thee, O my son? Now for the last time do I grasp thee and behold thee, wretched that I am ? and stroke thy hands and set my lips to thine? Now first art thou seen as consul and as victor by thy mother ? Is it so, is it so thou bringest me home (woe is me !) these mighty names ? The rods that I see for the first time, I see when thou art dead; I see them reversed, significant of evil. Who would believe it ? can this be the gladdest day that has dawned for thy mother, that whereon she sees her son in highest honour? Can I be no longer blest ? can the half of the Neros now be taken from me, Drusus renowmed for the name of his mother’s sire ? Can he be mine no more, nor make me any more a parent? Am I no more the mother of Drusus? lives he now no more? No more, when it is told me that victorious Nero is at hand, shall I be able to say, ‘ Is it the elder or the other that is here ? ’ I have touched the depths : I hold the rights of a mother from one alone ; of one alone is it the gift that nevertheless I am not called childless. Ah, wretched me ! I am afraid, a chill runs through my bones : naught can I surely call any more my own. Lo ! he was mine : he bids me fear for his brother ; now fear I all things ; ere now I was braver. At least, O Nero, may I die before thee, mayst thou shut my eyes, and may thy devoted mouth receive this life.’- Ah, would that one hand of Drusus and one hand of his brother could set and close my eyelids ! This at least is possible — in this tomb shall we be laid together, Drusus, nor buried shalt thou go to the sires of old ; I shall be mingled with thee, ashes with ashes, bone with bone; Fate with swift wheel spin that day!”

This and more does she say : tears follow her words, and flow unavailing o’er the face that late lamented. Nay, too, the corpse, hardly, ay hardly given up to his mother, almost, O Livia, lacked its proper rites. For the whole host was resolved to lay its chief on the pyre to burn in the harness wherein he perished ; but his brother against their will snatched away the sacred body, and gave Drusus (or all that he could give to his native land. Drusus’ funeral train proceeds through the Roman towns (ah, dreadful thought !), through which he was to pass in triumph, through which he had come after crushing Rhaetian arms ; how unlike, alas ! was this march to that ! The consul enters a mourning city with broken rods : what should the vanquished do when the conqueror enters thus ? With mournful wailing resounds the house whereon its master had joyfully vowed to fix the arms his hand had won. The City groans, and puts on one countenance of woe — be such, I pray, the aspect of our foes ! In uncertainty they close their houses and tremble throughout the city ; hither and thither they go in fear, openly and in secret they make moan. ’I he Courts are silent, and the laws unchampioned are mute and still; no purple is seen in all the Forum. The gods are hidden in their temples, nor show their faces at this unrighteous death, nor demand the incense needed by the pyre ; they lurk obscure in their shrines, and feel shame to look on the faces of their worshippers, in fear of the hatred they have earned. And a man of the people had devoutly raised to the high stars his timid hand, in his needy son’s behalf, and now was about to pray; “But why,” he said, “should I credulously make vain vows to gods who are not ? Livia moved them not, even Livia, in behalf of Drusus : shall I be the chiefest care of Mighty Jove?” He spoke, and in anger left his vows unuttered, and hardened his soul and abandoned all his prayer.

The crowd rush forward, and with tears bedewing their cheeks tell of the consul’s death and the public loss. All eyes are the same, there is an equal harmony of weeping ; we knights are all present at the funeral rites : every age is there, young men and old alike lament, Ausonian matrons and Ausonian daughters. Before the sad image of its chief is borne the victorious laurel owed to the temples. High -blooded youths vie in bearing the burden of the bier, and in offering willing necks for the duty. With voice and tears, O Caesar, thou didst praise thy foster-son, though sorrow checked the course of thy sad words. Thou didst ask a like death for thyself (though the gods averted the omen) did thy fates but suffer thee to die. But to thee heaven is owing; thee the great hall of eager Jove, strong in the thunderbolt, will welcome. What he sought — that his deeds should please thee — that he won ; in thy praise he wins great recompense for death. Armed cohorts duly pay reverence to the pyre, horsemen and infantry perform the obsequies of their chief. With a shout they call thee, and once again, and again the last time of all, but their voices re-echo back from yonder hills. Father Tiber himself shuddered in his yellow waves, and from midstream raised his cloudy head. Then with huge hand he lifted from his cerulean face the tresses interwoven with willow and reed and moss and sent forth streams of tears from brimming eyes ; the deep channel scarce holds the added waters. Already was he resolved to extinguish the flames upon the pyre with the impact of the stream, and left the corpse unharmed ; he was checking his waters, and staying their course to the sea, that he might flood the pyre with his whole river; but Mavors in his neighbouring shrine, near dweller to the Campus, spoke thus, his own cheeks also wet: “Though anger becomes rivers, yet, Tiber, keep thou still ; not to thee, not to any is it given to conquer Fate. He died my votary : among arms and swords he died, a captain in his country’s service ; his cause is forgotten in his death. Such tribute as I could pay, I have paid : the victory has been won ; gone is the author of the work, yet the work remains. Once did I assail Clotho and her two sisters, who draw with sure thumb the inexorable threads, that Remus, Ilia’s son, and his brother, founder of the City, might by some way escape the depths below. Of the three one said to me: ‘Take that part of the gift which is given thee ; one of the two shall be according to thy prayer. He to thee is promised, to Venus hereafter Caesars twain : these gods alone are owed by Martian Rome.’ Thus sang the goddesses ; and thou, O Tiber, struggle not in vain, nor with thy river stay the flames, nor spoil the last honours of the dead youth. Go now, glide on thy way with unchecked current.” He obeys, and lengthwise unfolds his watery mass, and enters his house wrought out of hanging rock. The flame long hesitating to touch the sacred head strayed slowly yet beneath the standing pyre. At length it embraced the timber and gained nourishment, and towered o’er the foliage and licked the stars of heaven, even as it glowed on the hills of Oeta, of Herculean fame, when the limbs of the god who lay there were consumed. Burning, alas ! is the hero’s comeliness, his noble beauty, his kindly features ; burning is that vigour, those victorious hands, the chieftain’s eloquent mouth, his breast, that great and spacious home of wisdom. In those same flames burn the hopes of many ; that pyre holds his unhappy mother’s flesh and blood. The chieftain’s deeds will live, and the hard-won glory of his exploits ; this abides, this alone escapes the greedy pyres. It will be a part of history, and will be read in every age, and will be a theme for writers and lor poets. And on the Rostra shalt thou stand, glorious with thy roll of honours, and we shall be called the cause of thy death, O Drusus.

But for thee, Germania, no right of pardon remains ; thou shalt atone hereafter, barbarian, by thy death. I shall see the necks of kings livid with chains, and ruthless fetters entwining cruel hands, and faces cowed at last, and the tears falling down unwilling, haughty cheeks. That threatening spirit, exulting in Drusus’ death, must be given to the executioner in the gloomy cell. I will stop, and leisurely with glad eyes gaze on naked bodies strewn on the unsightly roads. The day that brings so great a spectacle — let dewy Aurora speed it hither on her saffron car !

Add too the Ledaean brethren concordant stars, and the temples conspicuous in the Roman Forum. In how short a time did he fulfil the office of a leader, and by his services to his country died an old man ! Yet — woe is me ! — Drusus will never see his bounty, nor read his name upon the temple’s front. Often will Nero weeping humbly say ; “ Why brotherless, alas ! do I approach the brother gods ? ” Thou wast resolved, O Drusus, ne’er to return save victorious ; times such as these owed thee to us ; victorious thou wert. ’Tis a consul, a leader, a leader already victorious we have lost ! Lo ! in all Rome has mourning found a home. But his comrades are unsightly to behold with hair unkempt, a hapless crowd, but faithful to their Drusus. And one of them, stretching out his arms towards thee, cried : “ Why goest thou without me, why

What shall I say of thee, most worthy consort of thy Drusus, worthy daughter-in-law of Drusus’ mother? A pair well suited: the one a hero among youths, the other that hero’s darling, as she was his. Queen among women wert thou to him, and daughter of Caesar, nor seemedst thou less than the wife of mighty Jove. Thou wert his freely given, his last and only love, thou wert his pleasant repose from weary toil. Thy absence did he, dying, in his last words bewail, and his tongue, though cold, strove to pronounce thy name. Hapless one, thou receivest not him whom he himself did promise, not him who was sent forth : that spouse of thine returns not, nor can he tell thee of the Sicambri’s ruin, nor how the Suevi turned their backs to his swordsmen, nor of the rivers and the mountains and the mighty names of places, and of all the wonders that he saw in that new world. Cold he returns to thee, a lifeless corpse, and a couch is strewn for him to press without thee. Whither rushest thou, tearing thy hair and like to a mad woman? Whither hastenest ? Why marrest thou thy face with frenzied hand ? Such a sight was Andromache, when her husband bound all bloody to the axle frightened the galloping steeds ; such was Evadne, when Capaneus offered his unaffrighted countenance to be struck by the flashing brand. Why dost thou sadly pray for death, and embracing thy children hold the only pledges left thee in place of Drusus ? and now in thy dreams art haunted by false visions, and believest thou hast thy Drusus in thy arms? and suddenly dost feel with thy hand and hope he is thine once more, and search the desolate couch where once he lay ? He in the fields of bliss, if such belief is not vain, will be welcomed by his honoured forefathers, and, high renowned among his mother’s ancestors, and no less among his sire’s, will ride all golden in a four-horsed chariot, and in royal dress, proud in his ivory car, will have his temples bound with triumphal sprays. They will receive the hero who bears the standards of Germany and the illustrious fame of consular command, and they will rejoice in the well-won surname of their house, which alone he bore in triumph from the conquered foe. Scarce will they believe that so great achievement filled years so few, they will think a hero’s mighty deeds demand an ample space. These exploits will exalt him on high, these exploits, best of mothers, should have made thy sorrow less. O woman worthy of those men whom the age of gold brought forth, worthy of thy princely sons, thy princely consort, see what becomes the mother of Drusus and Nero’s mother, see from whose couch thou risest in the morning ! The same behaviour becomes not common folk and our country’s lights ; a special duty that house of thine doth owe. Fortune placed thee high, and bade thee guard an honoured station ; bear thy burden, Livia, to the end. Thou drawest to thee ears and eyes, we mark thy doings, nor can the voice a ruler’s mouth doth utter be concealed. Remain exalted and rise above thy grief, and keep (thou canst) a spirit aye unbroken. Can we find better patterns of virtues in thee than when thou dost the work of a Roman queen ? Fate awaits all ; all doth the greedy ferryman await, and the one bark that scarce holds all the crowd. Hither we all are bound, we hurry to one goal ; black Death summons all beneath its laws. Lo ! the prophets sing that destruction threatens sky and earth and sea, and that the triple fabric is doomed to fall : go now, and while so vast a ruin o’erhangs the world, bring back all eyes to thee alone and to thy loss ! Mightiest was he of youths, his people’s hope, while yet he lived, and supreme glory of the house that gave him birth ; but he was mortal, nor wert thou free from care while thy son waged valiant wars. Life is given to be used ; ’’tis lent to us without interest, nor to be paid back on any appointed day.

Fortune ordains the time at her own unjust will : youths she carries off, the aged she supports ; her onset, when she makes it, is furious, through all the world her lightnings flash, and she triumphs blindly on blind steeds. Offend not with thy complaints the sway of the stern goddess, vex not the spirit of that powerful queen. Yet the same power. that at this one time has visited thee in wrath has oft been friendly and shown favour to thy fortunes. For that thou wert born in lofty state, blest with two sons, ay and made the partner of great Jove, that Caesar ever returned from mastering the world to thee, and with invincible might waged prosperous wars, that the Neros fulfilled thy hopes and mother’s prayers, that under either’s captaincy the foe was routed so oft — witness the Rhine and Alpine valleys and Isargus, whose waters the dark stain of gore discolours, and rapacious Danube, and the Dacian Apulian in his far-off world (for this foe Pontus is a very short march away), and the Armenian, ready to flee, and the Dalmatian, at last a suppliant, and the Pannonians scattered over their mountain summits, and the German world that Romans but late have known : see how many the merits that outweigh a single fault. Add that he died far away, nor had thine eyes to endure the sight of thy son’s eyes closing in death, and that (most gently thus doth sorrow steal into a sick mind) ’’twas with thine ears thou wast compelled to receive thy sorrows ; while amid long perils, the hearing of which kept thy mind anxious, fear anticipated thy mourning ; not abruptly did sorrow burst into thy heart, but by steps that fear had already made gentle. Jupiter before gave the baleful sign of bloody fate, when he assailed three temples with fire-bearing hand ; and on a night grave Juno’s shrine and that of fearless Minerva and the sacred palace of all-powerful Caesar were struck. Nay, stars also are said to have fled the sky, and Lucifer to have left his wonted path : Lucifer in all the world was seen of none, and the day came unheralded by any star : this gave warning that a star’s destruction threatened the earth, and that a noble light should be sunk in Stygian water's.

But thou who dost survive to console thy sorrowing mother, live, I pray, that she herself may see thy old age. Live long, and pass thy brother’s and thine own allotted years, and let thine aged mother live with her aged son. My prayer shall be fulfilled ; heaven, while it would fain excuse the past, will make all else happy after Drusus. Yet thou canst dare to indulge so violent a grief that thou refusest with unwise courage to take food. Scarce hadst thou been like to live for even a few hours, when Caesar brought thee succour against thy will ; he urged thee with prayers, and mingled claims of right therein, and pouring water he moistened thy parched throat. Nor had thy son less care to save his parent ; he made persuasive entreaty, and with good right. The merit of thy consort and of thy son hath reached to all : by the aid of thy consort and of thy son, O Livia, thou didst survive. Refrain at last thy tears ; they will not call him back whom once the ferryman has borne in the ghost-laden skiff.

For Hector all his many brothers, all his sisters wept, and his sire and wife and child Astyanax and aged mother : yet was he ransomed but for the pyre, and no ghost swam back across the Stygian pools. This befell Thetis also : Achilles the destroyer rests his charred bones upon the Ilian fields. For him Panope, his mother’s sister, loosed her cerulean hair, and swelled the boundless waters with her tears, and a hundred comrades of the goddess, and mighty Ocean’s aged spouse, and father Ocean, and Thetis before all ; but not Thetis herself nor all of them could change the stern laws of the greedy god. Why do I tell old stories here ? Octavia wept Marcellus, and each in the sight of the people did Caesar weep. But fixed and inevitable is death’s law, unswerving are the threads, not to be checked by any hand. He himself escaping (were it lawful) the misty shore of Acheron, would with brave mouth proclaim these words; ‘Why dost thou number years ? I have lived to a riper age than years can show. ’Tis deeds make old: these must thou number : with these was my life fulfilled, not with tardy years ; let a long old age befall my foes. This lesson my grandsires taught, and the Neros who were before them (both chieftains shattered the Punic hosts), this is the lesson of lofty Caesar’s house, that is mine through thee : such an end, O mother, was mine by right. Nor to those my merits (though by themselves they better please) has honour been wanting : thou seest my name decked with titles ; as ‘ consul ’ dost thou read of me, as conqueror of Germany, a world unknown, who died, alas ! in his country’s cause : my victorious temples are wreathed in Apollo’s laurel, and I have felt the obsequies of my own funeral, and the familiar solemn march of men, and the gifts of kings, and all the cities read upon their placards ; and with what dutifulness those youths carried me, who stood so nobly born before my pyre. Last, I have meed of praise from Caesar’s sacred lips, and drew tears from a god. And shall I need any’s pity ? Refrain at last thy weeping. This I ask, who am thy weeping’s cause. ” 'This does Drusus feel, if he feels aught in the shadows, nor believe thou less of so great a hero. Thou hast, and mayst thou ever have, I pray, a son who is a pattern to many ; may the elder part of thy offspring be preserved to thee. Thou hast a spouse, the guardian of mankind, and while he lives, it becomes not thy house, O Livia, to mourn.