I, Claudius

  But he soon quarrelled with Jove and was heard to threaten him angrily: "If you can't realise who's master here I'll pack you off to Greece." Jove was understood to apologise, and Caligula said: "Oh, keep your wretched Capitoline Hill. I'll go to the Palatine. It's a much finer situation. I'll build a temple there worthy of myself, you shabby old belly-rumbling fraud." Another curious thing happened when he visited the temple of Diana in company with a former governor of Syria called Vitellius. Vitellius had done very well out there, having surprised the King of Parthia, who was about to invade the province, by a forced march across the Euphrates. Caught on ground unfavourable for battle the Parthian King was obliged to sign a humiliating peace and give his sons up as hostages. I should have mentioned that Caligula had the eldest son as a prisoner with him in his chariot when he drove across the bridge. Well, Caligula was jealous of Vitellius and would have put him to death if Vitellius had not been warned by me [he was a friend of mine] what to do. A letter from me was waiting for him at Brindisi when he arrived, and as soon as he reached Rome and was admitted to Caligula's presence he fell prostrate and worshipped him as a God.

  This was before the news of Caligula's Divinity was officially known, so Caligula thought it was a genuine tribute.

  Vitellius became his intimate friend and showed his gratitude to me in many ways. As I was saying, Caligula was in Diana's temple talking to the Goddess—not the statue but an invisible presence. He asked Vitellius whether he could see her too, or only the moonlight. . Vitellius trembled violently, as if in awe, and keeping his eyes fixed on the ground said: "Only you Gods, my Lord, are privileged to behold one another."

  Caligula was pleased. "She's very beautiful, Vitellius, and often comes to sleep with me at the Palace."

  It was about this time that I got into trouble again. I thought at first that it was a plot of Caligula's to get rid of me. I am still not so sure that it was not. An acquaintance of mine, a man I used to play dice with a good deal, forged a will and took the trouble to forge my seal to it as witness.

  Luckily for me he had not noticed a tiny chip on the edge of the agate seal-gem, which always left its mark on the wax. When I was suddenly arrested for conspiracy to defraud and brought to Court, I bribed a soldier to carry a secret appeal to my friend Vitellius, begging him to save my life as I had saved his. I asked him to hint about the chip to Caligula, who was judging the case, and to have a genuine seal of mine ready for Caligula to compare with the forged one. But Caligula must be encouraged to find the difference for himself and to take all the credit. Vitellius managed the affair very tactfully. Caligula noticed the chip, boasted of his quickness of eye and absolved me with a stern warning to be more careful in future about my associates. The forger had his hands cut off and hung around his neck as a warning. If I had been found guilty I would have lost my head. Caligula told me so at supper that night.

  I replied; "Most merciful God, I really don't understand why you trouble so much about my life."

  It is the nature of nephews to enjoy an uncle's flattery.

  He unbent a little and asked me, with a wink to the rest of the table, "And what precise valuation would you put on your life tonight, may I ask?"

  "I have worked it out already: one farthing."

  "And how do you arrive at so modest a figure?"

  "Every life has an assessable value. The ransom that Julius Caesar's family actually paid the pirates who had captured him and threatened to kill him—though they asked a great deal more than this at first—was no more than twenty thousand in gold. So Julius Caesar's life was actually worth no more than twenty thousand. My wife Elia was once attacked by footpads, but persuaded them to spare her life by handing over an amethyst brooch worth only fifty. So Elia was worth only fifty. My life has just been saved by a chip of agate weighing, I should judge, no more than the fortieth part of a scruple. That quality of agate is worth perhaps as much as a silver-piece a scruple.

  The chip, if one could find it, which would be difficult, or find a buyer, which would be still more difficult, would therefore be worth one fortieth part of a silver piece, or exactly one farthing. So my life is also worth exactly one farthing—"

  "—If you could find a buyer," he roared, delighted with his own wit. How everybody cheered, myself included! For a long time after this I was called "Teruncius" Claudius at the Palace, instead of Tiberius Claudius. Teruncius is Latin for farthing.

  For his worship he had to have priests. He was his own High Priest and his subordinates were myself, Caesonia, Vitellius, Ganymede, fourteen ex-Consuls and his noble friend the horse Incitatus. Each of these subordinates had to pay eighty thousand gold pieces for the honour. He helped Incitatus to raise the money by imposing a yearly tribute in his name on all the horses in Italy: if they did not pay they would be sent to the knackers. He helped Caesonia to raise the money by imposing a tax in her name on all married men for the privilege of sleeping with their wives. Ganymede, Vitellius and the others were rich men; though in some instances they had to sell property at a loss to get the hundred thousand in cash at short notice, they still remained comfortably off. Not so poor Claudius.

  Caligula's previous tricks in selling me sword-fighters, and charging me heavily for the privilege of sleeping and boarding at the Palace, had left me with a mere thirty thousand in cash, and no property to sell except my small estate at Capua and the house left me by my mother. I paid Caligula the thirty thousand and told him the same night at dinner that I was putting up all my property for sale at once to enable me to pay him the remainder when I found a buyer. "I've nothing else to sell," I said. Caligula thought this a great joke. "Nothing at all to sell? Why, what about the clothes you're wearing?"

  By this time I had found it wisest to pretend I was quite half-witted. "By Heaven," I said. "I forgot all about them.

  Will you be good enough to auction them for me to the company? You're the most wonderful auctioneer in the world. I began stripping off all my clothes until I had on nothing but a table-napkin which I hastily wrapped round my loins. He sold my sandals to someone for a hundred gold pieces each, and my gown for a thousand, and so on, and each time I expressed my boisterous delight. He then wanted to auction the napkin. I said, "My natural modesty would not prevent me from sacrificing my last rag, if the money it brought in helped me to pay the rest of the fee. But in this case, alas, something more powerful even than modesty prevents me from selling."

  Caligula frowned. "What's that? What's stronger than modesty?"

  "My veneration for yourself, Caesar. It's your own napkin. One that you had graciously set for my use at this excellent meal."

  This little play only reduced my debt by three thousand.

  But it did convince Caligula of my poverty.

  I had to give up my rooms and my place at table, and lodged for a time with old Briseis, my mother's former maid, who was caretaker of the house until it found a buyer. Calpurnia came to live with me there, and would you believe it, the dear girl still had the money which I had given her instead of necklaces and marmosets and silk dresses, and offered to lend it to me. And what was more, my cattle hadn't really died as she pretended, nor had the ricks burned. It was just a trick to sell them secretly at a good price and put the money aside for an emergency. She paid it all over to me—two thousand gold pieces—together with an exact account of the transactions signed by my steward. So we managed pretty well. But to keep up the pretence of absolute poverty I used to go out with a jug every night, using a crutch instead of a sedan-chair, and buy wine from the taverns.

  Old Briseis used to say, "Master Claudius, people all think that I was your mother's freedwoman. It isn't so. I became your slave when you first grew up to be Master, and it was you who gave me my freedom, not she, wasn't it?"

  I would answer, "Of course, Briseis. One day I'll nail that lie in public." She was a dear old thing and entirely devoted to me. We lived in four rooms together, with an old slave to do the porter's work, and had a very happy time, all
considered.

  Caesonia's child, a girl, was born a month after Caligula married her. Caligula said that this was a prodigy. He took the child and laid her on the knees of the statue of Jove—this was before his quarrel with Jove—as if to make Jove his honorary colleague in fatherhood, and then put her in the arms of Minerva's statue and allowed her to suck at the Goddess' marble breast for awhile. He called her Drusilla, the name that his dead sister had discarded when she became the Goddess Panthea. This child was made a priestess too. He raised the money for the initiation fee by making a pathetic appeal to the public, complaining of his poverty and the heavy expenses of fatherhood, and opening a fund, called The Drusilla Fund. He put collecting boxes in every street marked "Drusilla's Food", "Drusilla's Drink" and "Drusilla's Dowry", and nobody dared pass by the Guards posted there without dropping in a copper or two.

  Caligula dearly loved his little Drusilla, who turned out as precocious a child as he had himself been. He took delight in teaching her his own "immovable rigour", beginning the lessons when she was only just able to walk and talk. He encouraged her to torture kittens and puppies and to fly with her sharp nails at the eyes of her little playmates.

  "There can be no reasonable doubt as to your paternity, my pretty one," be used to chuckle when she showed particular promise. And once in my presence he bent down and said slyly to her: "And the first full-sized murder you commit, Precious, if it's only your poor old grand-uncle Claudius, I'll make a Goddess of you."

  "Will you make me a Goddess if I kill Mamma?" the little fiend lisped. "I hate Mamma."

  The gold statue for his temple was another expense. He paid for it by publishing an edict that he would receive New-Year's gifts at the main gate of the Palace. When the day came he sent parties of Guards out to herd the City crowds up the Palatine Hill at the sword-point and make them shed every coin they had on them into great tubs put out for the purpose. They were warned that if they tried to dodge the Guards or hold back a single farthing of money they would be liable to instant death. By evening two thousand huge tubs had been filled.

  It was about this time that he said to Ganymede and Agrippinilla and Lesbia: "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you idle drones. What do you do for your living?

  You're mere parasites. Are you aware that every man and woman in Rome works hard to support me? Every wretched baggage-porter gladly pays me one-eighth of his wage, and every poor prostitute the same."

  Agrippinilla said: "Well, brother, you have stripped us of practically all our money on one pretext or another.

  Isn't that enough?"

  "Enough? Indeed it isn't. Money inherited is not the same as money honestly earned. I'm going to make you girls and boys work."

  So he advertised in the Senate, by distributing leaflets, that on such and such a night a most exclusive and exquisite brothel would be opened at the Palace, with entertainment to suit all tastes provided by persons of the most illustrious birth. Admission, only one thousand gold pieces. Drinks free. Agrippinilla and Lesbia, I am sorry to say, did not protest very strongly against Caligula's disgraceful proposal, and indeed thought that it would be great fun. But they insisted that they should have the right of choosing their own customers and that Caligula should not take too high a commission on the money earned. Much to my disgust I was dragged into this business, by being dressed up as the comic porter. Caligula, wearing a mask and disguising his voice, was the bawd-master, and played all the usual bawd-master tricks for cheating his guests of their pleasure and their money. When they protested, I was called upon to act as chucker-out. I am strong enough in the arms, stronger than most men, I may say, though my legs are very little use to me; so I caused a great deal of amusement by my clumsy hobbling and by the unexpectedly heavy drubbing I gave the guests when I managed to get hold of them.

  Caligula declaimed in a theatrical voice, the lines from Homer: ''Vulcan with awkward grace his office plies And unextinguished laughter shakes the skies.''

  This was the passage in the First Book of the Iliad where the lame God goes hobbling about Olympus and the other Gods all laugh at him. I was lying on the floor pounding Lesbia's husband with my fists—it wasn't often that I got such a chance of paying back old scores—and raising myself up I said: ''Then from his anvil the lame craftsman rose. Wide, with distorted legs, oblique, he goes'', and staggered over to the refreshment table. Caligula was delighted and quoted another couple of lines which occur just before the "unextinguished laughter" passage: ''If you submit, the Thunderer stands appeased, The Gracious God is willing to be pleased.''

  This was how he came to call me Vulcan, a title that I was glad to win, because it gave me a certain protection against his caprices.

  Caligula then quietly left us, removed his disguise and reappeared as himself, coming in from the Palace courtyard by the door where he had posted me. He pretended to be utterly surprised and shocked at what was going oa and stood declaiming Homer again—Ulysses' shame and anger at the behaviour of the palace-women: As thus pavilioned in the porch he lay, Scenes of lewd loves his wakeful eyes survey; Whilst to nocturnal joys impure repair With wanton glee, the prostituted fair.

  His heart with rage this new dishonour stung, Wavering his thought in dubious balance hung.

  Or, instant should he quench the guilty Same With their own blood, and intercept the shame; Or to their lust indulge a last embrace, And let the peers consummate the disgrace; Round his swoln heart the murmurous fury rolls; As o'er her young the mother-mastiff growls, And bays the stranger groom: so wrath compress'd Recoiling, mutter'd thunder in his breast.

  "Poor, suffering heart", he cried, "support the pain Of wounded honour and thy rage restrain! Not fiercer woes thy fortitude could foil When the brave partners of thy ten-year toil Dire Polypheme devoured: I then was freed By patient prudence from the death decreed."

  "For ‘Polypheme' read Tiberius'," he explained. Then he clapped his hands for the Guard, who came running up at the double. "Send Cassius Chserea here at once!" Cassius was sent for and Caligula said: "Cassius, old hero, you who acted as my war-horse when I was a child, my oldest and most faithful family-friend, did you ever see such a sad and degrading sight as this? My two sisters prostituting their bodies to senators in my very Palace, my uncle Claudius standing at the gate selling tickets of admission!

  Oh, what would my poor mother and father have said if they had lived to see this day!"

  "Shall I arrest them all, Caesar?" asked Cassius, eagerly.

  "No, to their lust indulge a last embrace And let the peers consummate the disgrace," Caligula replied resignedly, and made mother-mastiff noises in his throat. Cassius was told to march the Guard off again.

  It was not the last orgy of this sort at the Palace and thereafter Caligula made the senators who had attended the show bring their wives and daughters to assist Agrippinilla and Lesbia. But the problem of raising money was becoming acute again and Caligula decided to visit France and see what he could do there.

  He first gathered an enormous number of troops, sending for detachments from all the regular regiments, and forming new regiments, and raising levies from every possible quarter. He marched out of Italy at the head of one hundred and fifty thousand men and increased them, in France, to a quarter of a million. The expense of arming and equipping this immense force fell on the cities through which he passed: and he commandeered the necessary food supplies from them too. Sometimes he went forward at a gallop and made the army march forty-eight hours or more on end to catch up with him, sometimes he went forward at the rate of only a mile or two a day, admiring the scenery from a sedan-chair carried on eight men's shoulders and frequently stopping to pick flowers.

  He sent letters ahead ordering the presence at Lyons, where he proposed to concentrate his forces, of all officials in France and the Rhine provinces who were over the rank of captain. Among those who obeyed the summons was Gaetulicus, one of my dear brother Germanicus' most valued officers, who had been in command of the four regiment
s of the Upper Province for the last few years. He was very popular among the troops because he kept up the tradition of mild punishments and of discipline based on love rather than on fear. He was popular with the regiments in the Lower Province too, commanded by his father-in-law Apronius—for Gaetulicus had married a sister of that Apronia whom my brother-in-law Plautius was supposed to have thrown out of the window. At the fall of Sejanus he would have been put to death by Tiberius because he had promised his daughter in marriage to Sejanus' son, but he escaped by writing the Emperor a bold letter. He said that so long as he was allowed to retain his command his allegiance could be counted on, and so could that of the troops. Tiberius wisely let him alone. But Caligula envied him his popularity and almost as soon as he arrived had him arrested.

  Caligula had not invited me on this expedition, so I missed what followed and cannot write about it in detail.

  All I know is that Ganymede and Gaetulicus were accused of conspiracy—Ganymede with designs on the monarchy, Gaetulicus with abetting him, and that both were put to death without trial. Lesbia and Agrippinilla [the latter's husband had lately died of dropsy] were also supposed to be in the plot. They were banished to an island off the coast of Africa near Carthage. It was a very hot, very arid island where sponge-fishing was the only industry, and Caligula ordered them to learn the trade of diving for sponges, for he said that he could not afford to support them longer. But before being sent to their island they had a task laid on them: they had to walk to Rome, all the way from Lyons, under an armed escort, and take turns at carrying in their arms the urn in which Ganymede's ashes had been put. This was a punishment for their persistent adultery with Ganymede, as Caligula explained in a loftily styled letter he sent the Senate. He enlarged on his own great clemency in not putting them to death. Why, they had proved themselves worse than common prostitutes: no honest prostitute would have had the face to ask the prices they asked, and got, for their debaucheries!