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to be circumspect, to plan every action, to eschew all folly, especially such as you have been guilty of. You don't realise that the life of a public man, that is to say of anyone who belongs to the Roman noble class, is perilous. Do you think you are safe in a world in which Caesar, Antony, Pompey, Cicero, Marcus Brutus all found themselves powerless in the end against the malignity of fate? Can you imagine that? I took you for someone more intelligent."
    "But, Mother," I said. "I am protected surely. The love the Princeps bears you is my shield . . ."
    The irony in my tone annoyed her. Livia has always been sensitive to irony. She resents its assumption of superiority.
    "Of course he loves me," she said, "and I love him myself. That's not the point. We are not private people and we have different ambitions for our own children. Don't think the Princeps' love for me will protect you if you disturb his arrangements. He is quite capable of operating in a secret world from which I am excluded, and then of being full of regrets if his actions distress me. A dynast, a man of power like your father . . ."
    "My stepfather, Mother . . ."
    "Very well, your stepfather, if you insist, lives on two distinct planes, both real enough. There is the family man who is all concern and warm affection, and there is the politician who has no affections, no loyalty, no scruples. He loves his sister Octavia. That didn't prevent him from forcing her into marriage with Mark Antony, though he knew precisely how cruelly Antony would treat her. And, since you insist on it, remember always he is indeed your stepfather, not your father. He has no natural affection for you any more, since I am being frank, than I have for that little hussy, his daughter. Moreover, I must tell you that she is quite capable of destroying herself. I don't choose that she should pull you down with her . . ."
    I cannot of course be certain that, at this distance of time, my memory restores to me the precise words of our conversation. Our own past, it sometimes seems to me, is a species of dream, just as dreaming so often reveals to us glimpses of the future which we cannot recognise till we find ourselves enacting those heralded moments. Experience is like a journey along a foggy river valley: for brief moments the line of the hills may be seen; then the mist hides them. We never know quite where we are or what surrounds us. Even the sounds we hear are deceptive. Our life is composed of a series of illusions, some of which we dignify by the name reality, but our perceptions are never more truthful than the shadows flickering on the wall of Plato's cave.
    The successful man is often the sleepwalker. Augustus believed in his destiny. This freed him from the self-examination with which I have perplexed myself.
    What he remembers becomes true for him. I sit here wondering if I have only dreamed this conversation with my mother.
    But did I dream her last sentence?
    "Believe me, my son, your stepfather's love for me secures you no more protection than Thetis obtained for her beloved Achilles . . ."
    And if I dreamed it, wasn't my dream a true warning?
    4
    I entered public life in my twentieth year when I was elected quaestor. I had been granted the right to stand for each magistracy at five years below the legal limit. In retrospect I deplore this example of favouritism, though I am bound to point out that I was less favoured than Marcellus, who was excused ten years' seniority. Nevertheless, despite my disapproval, I understand Augustus' decision. Two reasons may be advanced. First, it is always difficult to find reliable men to undertake necessary work and it was natural for Augustus to seek them among the members of his own family, whom he believed he could trust. Second, as Agrippa remarked in his crude vernacular, "You young buggers are best kept busy. It keeps you out of mischief."
    The quaestorship was no empty honour. As every schoolboy knows, this office is an essential but