Whatever Prince Andrew has done, the succession to our throne is secure. How envious the Roman emperor Augustus would have been! In vain did he offer rewards for faithful marriage and punishments for adultery and such like.
The mildest punishment was temporary expulsion from Roman territory; the harshest, banishment in perpetuity to an ‘island or oasis’, with loss of property and citizenship, and death for returning.
But Augustus’s only child, Julia, who had five children, took advantage of her husband’s lengthy spells abroad and had (it appears) many lovers, and even assignations in the middle of the forum. She explained the improbable fact that all her children were the very image of their father by pointing at her belly and saying: ‘I take on passengers only when the boat is full.’
She was banished to the island of Ventotene (west of Naples) in 2 BC for alleged adultery and immoral conduct, and her lover, Gracchus, to Kerkenna (an island east of Tunisia).
Ten years later, Julia’s daughter (Julia 2) was banished, for identical reasons, to Tremiti (Adriatic isles off central Italy). This became a famous scandal, because the popular poet Ovid was implicated in it. He talks vaguely of a ‘poem and a mistake’ as the reason for his exile to Tomis (Constanta) in Romania, never to return. His Tristia is the collection of poems that he sent back to Rome, bemoaning his fate.
What, then, of the imperial succession? Augustus’s wife Livia was determined that when Augustus died, her son Tiberius by a previous marriage would inherit the imperial throne, but the claims of the last child of the emperor’s daughter Julia 1, Agrippa Postumus, were also touted. A ghastly man, he had already been banished to Planasia (a small island between Italy and Corsica), where he was later assassinated.
Prince Andrew must consider how best he can redeem himself. Perhaps he might buy a deserted Scottish island, announce himself king and spend his life selflessly serving its inhabitants.
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