Tiberius. And overawed Tiberius! Power bent Death terrified, a Nero! What is our race, that any should look down on us and spurn us? Augustus, my benefactor, 1 have wronged thee! Livia, my mother, this one cruel deed was thine! To reign, forsooth, is a lovely thing. O womanly appetite! Who would have been before me, though the palace of Caesar cracked and split with emperors, while I, sitting in idleness on a cliff of Rhodes, eyed the sun as he svvang his golden censer athwart the heavens, or his image as it overstrode the sea?  have it before me; and, though it seems falling on me, I can smile at it just as I did from my little favourite skiff, painted round with the marriage of Thetis, when the sailors drew their long shaggy hair across their eyes, many a stadium away from it, to  mitigate its effulgence. These, too, were happy days: days of happiness like these I could recall and look back upon with unaching brow.O land of Greece! Tiberius blesses thee, bidding  o thee rejoice and flourish. Why cannot one hour, Vipsania, beauteous and light as we have led, return?

Vipsania. Tiberius! is it to me that you were speaking? I would not interrupt you ; but I thought 25 I heard my name as you walked away and looked up toward the East. So silent!

Tiberius. Who dared to call thee? Thou wert mine before the gods do they deny it? Was it my fault ?

Vipsania. Since we are separated, and for ever, O Tiberius, let us think no more on the cause of it. Let neither of us believe that the other was to blame: so shall separation be less painful.

Tiberius. O mother! and did I not tell thee what she was? patient in injury, proud in innocence,  serene in grief!

Vipsania. Did you say that too? But I think it was so: I had felt little. One vast wave has washed away the impression of smaller from my memory. Could Livia, could your mother, could she who was so kind to me.

Tiberius. The wife of Caesar did it. But hear me now; hear me: be calm as I am. No weaknesses are such as those of a mother who loves her only son immoderately; and none are so easily worked upon from without. Who knows what impulses she received? She is very, very kind; but she regards me only, and that which at her bidding is to encompass and adorn me. All the weak look after Power, protectress of weakness. Thou art a woman, O Vipsania! is there nothing in thee to excuse my mother? So good she ever was to me! so loving!

Vipsania. I quite forgive her: be tranquil, O Tiberius!

Tiberius. Never can I know peace never can I pardon any one. Threaten me with thy exile, thy separation, thy seclusion! Remind me that another climate might endanger thy health! There death met me and turned me round. Threaten me to take our son from us our one boy, our helpless little one him whom we made cry because we kissed him both together! Rememberest thou? Or dost thou not hear? turning thus away from me!

Vipsania. I hear; I hear! Oh cease, my sweet Tiberius! Stamp not upon that stone: my heart lies under it.

Tiberius. Ay, there again death, and more than death, stood before me. Oh, she maddened me,  my mother did, she maddened me she threw me to where I am at one breath. The gods cannot replace me where I was, nor atone to me, nor console me, nor restore my senses. To whom can I fly; to whom can I open my heart; to whom speak plainly? There was upon the earth a man I could converse with, and fear nothing; there was a woman, too, I could love, and fear nothing. What a soldier, what a Roman, was thy father, () my young bride! How could those who never saw him have discoursed so  rightly upon virtue!

Vipsania. These words cool my breast like pressing his urn against it. He was brave: shall Tiberius want courage?

Tiberius. My enemies scorn me. I am a garland  dropped from a triumphal car, and taken up and looked on for the place I occupied; and tossed away and laughed at. Senators! laugh, laugh! Your merits may be yet rewarded be of good cheer! Counsel me, in your wisdom, what services  I can render you, conscript fathers!

Vipsania. This seems mockery: Tiberius did not smile so, once. They had not then congratulated me.

Tiberius. And it was not because she was beautiful, as they thought her, and virtuous, as I know she is; but because the flowers on the altar were to be tied together by my heart-string. On this they congratulated me. Their day will come. Their sons and daughters are what I would wish them to  be: worthy to succeed them.

(...)

Selections from the "Imaginary conversations" of Walter Savage Landor (1899)

by Landor, Walter Savage, 1775-1864; Newcomer, Alphonso Gerald, 1864-1813 

Phot. Pixabay