I, Claudius

  My old sergeant rushed forward. "All is lost, Caesar," he shouted. "The enemy has crossed the river at Cologne—three hundred thousand strong. They're out to sack Lyons—then they'll cross the Alps and sack Romel"

  Nobody believed this nonsensical story but Caligula. He turned yellow with fear, dived from the platform, grabbed hold of a horse, tumbled into the saddle and was out of the camp like a flash. A groom galloped after him and Caligula called back to him, "Thank God I still hold Egypt. I’ll be safe there at least. The Germans aren't sailors."

  How everyone laughed! But a colonel went after him on a good horse and caught him before very long. He assured Caligula that the news was exaggerated. Only a small force, he said, had crossed the river and had been beaten back: the Roman bank was now quite clear of the enemy. Caligula stopped at the next town and wrote a dispatch to the Senate, informing them that all his wars were now successfully over and that he was coming back at once with his laurel-garlanded troops. He blamed those cowardly stay-at-homes most severely for having, from all accounts, lived life in the City just as usual—theatres, baths, supper-parties—while he had been undergoing the severest hardships of campaign. He had eaten, drunk and slept no better than a private soldier.

  The Senate was puzzled how to pacify him, being under strict orders from him to vote him no honours on their own initiative. They sent him an embassy, however, congratulating him on his magnificent victories and begging him to hasten back to Rome where his presence was so sadly missed. He was dreadfully angry that no triumph had been decreed him even in spite of his orders, and that he was not referred to as Jove in the message but merely as the Emperor Gaius Caesar. He rapped his hand on his sword pommel and shouted: "Hasten back? Indeed I will, and with this in my hand."

  He had made preparations for a triple triumph: over Germany, over Britain and over Neptune. For British captives he had Cymbeline's son and his followers, to which were added the crews of some British trading vessels whom he had detained at Boulogne. For German captives he had three hundred real ones and all the tallest men he could find in France, wearing yellow wigs and German clothes and talking together in a jargon supposed to be German.

  But, as I say, the Senate had been afraid to vote him a formal triumph, so he had to be content with an informal one. He rode into the City in the same style as he had ridden across the bridge at Bais, and it was only on the intercession of Caesonia, who was a sensible woman, that he refrained from putting the entire Senate to the sword. He rewarded the people for their alms-giving generosity to him in the past by showering gold and silver from the Palace roof. But he mixed red-hot discs of iron with this largesse, to remind them that he had not yet forgiven them for their behaviour in the amphitheatre. His soldiers were told that they could make as much disturbance as they pleased and get as drunk as they liked at the public expense. They took full advantage of this licence, sacking whole streets of shops and burning down the prostitutes' quarter. Order was not restored for ten days.

  This was in September. While he was away the workmen had been busy on the new temple on the Palatine Hill at the other side of the Temple of Castor and Pollux on the New Palace. An extension had been made as far as the Market Place. Caligula now turned the Temple of Castor and Pollux into a vestibule for the new temple, cutting a passage between the statues of the Gods. "The Heavenly Twins are my doorkeepers," he boasted. Then he sent a message to the Governor of Greece to see that all the most famous statues of Gods were removed from the temples there and sent to him at Rome. He proposed to take off their heads and substitute his own. The statue he most coveted was the colossal one of Olympian Jove. He had a special ship built for its conveyance to Rome. But the ship was struck by lightning just before it was launched. Or this, at least, was the report—I believe really, that the superstitious crew burned it on purpose. However, Capitoline Jove then repented of his quarrel with Caligula [or so Caligula told us] and begged him to return and live next to him again. Caligula replied that he had now practically completed a new temple; but since Capitoline Jove had apologised so humbly he would make a compromise—he would build a bridge over the valley and join the two hills. He did this: the bridge passed over the roof of the Temple of Augustus.

  Caligula was now publicly Jove. He was not only Latin Jove but Olympian Jove, and not only that but all the other Gods and Goddesses, too, whom he had decapitated and reheaded. Sometimes he was Apollo and sometimes Mercury and sometimes Pluto, in each case wearing the appropriate dress and demanding the appropriate sacrifices. I have seen him go about as Venus in a long gauzy silk robe with face painted, a red wig, padded bosom and highheeled slippers. He was present as the Good Goddess at her December festival: that was a scandal. Mars was a favourite character with him, too. But most of the time he was Jove: he wore an olive-wreath, a beard of fine gold wires and a bright blue silk cloak, and carried a jagged piece of electrum in his hand to represent lightning. One day he was on the Oration Platform in the Market Place dressed as Jove and making a speech. "I intend shortly," he said, "to build a city for my occupation on the top of the Alps. We Gods prefer mountain-tops to unhealthy river-valleys.

  From the Alps I shall have a wide view of my Empire—France, Italy, Switzerland, the Tyrol and Germany. If I see any treason hatching anywhere below me, I shall give a warning growl of thunder so! [He growled in his throat.]

  If the warning is disregarded I shall blast the traitor with this lightning of mine, so! [He hurled his piece of lightning at the crowd. It hit a statue and bounced off harmlessly.]

  A stranger in the crowd, a shoemaker from Marseilles on a sight-seeing visit to Rome, burst out laughing. Caligula had the fellow arrested and brought nearer the platform, then bending down he asked frowning: "Who do I seem to you to be?"

  "A big humbug," said the shoemaker. Caligula was puzzled. "Humbug?" he repeated. "I a humbugl"

  "Yes," said the Frenchman, "I'm only a poor French shoemaker and this is my first visit to Rome. And I don't know any better. If anyone at home did what you're doing he'd be a big humbug."

  Caligula began to laugh too. "You poor half-wit," he said. "Of course he would be. That's just the difference."

  The whole crowd laughed like mad, but whether at Caligula or at the shoemaker was not clear. Soon after this he had a thunder-and-lightning machine made. He lit a fuse and it made a roar and a flash and catapulted stones in whatever direction he wanted. But I have it on good authority that whenever there was a real thunderstorm at night he used to creep under the bed. There is a good story about that. One day a storm burst when he was parading about dressed as Venus. He began to cry: "Father, Father. spare your pretty daughter!"

  The money he had won in France was soon spent and he invented new ways of increasing the revenue. His favourite one now was to examine judicially the wills of men who had just died and had left him no money: he would then give evidence of the benefits that the testators had received from him and declare that they had been either ungrateful or of unsound mind at the time of drawing their wills and that he preferred to think that they had been of unsound mind. He cancelled the wills and appointed himself principal heir. He used to come into Court in the early morning and write up on a blackboard the sum of money that he intended to win that day, usually two hundred thousand gold pieces. When he had won it, he closed the Court. He made a new edict one morning about the hours of business permitted in various sorts of shops. He had it written in very small letters on a tiny placard posted high on a pillar in the Market Place where nobody troubled to read it, not realising its importance. That afternoon his officers took the names of several hundred tradesmen who had unwittingly infringed the edict. When they were brought to trial he allowed any of them who could do so to plead in mitigation of sentence that they had named him as co-heir with their children. Few of them could.

  It now became customary for men with money to notify the Imperial Treasurer that Caligula was named in-their wills as the principal heir. But in several cases this proved unwis
e. For Caligula made use of the medicine chest that he had inherited from my grandmother Livia. One day he sent round presents of honied fruits to some recent testators. They all died at once. He also summoned my cousin, the King of Morocco, to Rome and put him to death, saying simply: "I need your fortune, Ptolemy."

  During his absence in France there had been comparatively few convictions at Rome and the prisons were nearly empty: this meant a shortage of victims for throwing to the wild beasts. He made the shortage up by using members of the audience, first cutting out their tongues so that they could not call out to their friends for rescue. He was becoming more and more capricious. One day a priest was about to sacrifice a young bull to him in his aspect of Apollo. The usual sacrificial procedure was for a deacon to stun the bull with a stone axe, and for the priest then to cut its throat. Caligula came in dressed as a deacon and asked the usual question: "Shall I?" When the priest answered, "Do so," he brought the axe down smash on the priest's head.

  I was still living in poverty with Briseis and Calpurnia, for though I had no debts, neither had I any money except what little income came to me from the farm. I was careful to let Caligula know how poor I was and he graciously permitted me to remain in the Senatorial Order though I no longer had the necessary financial qualifications. But I felt my position daily more insecure. One midnight early in October I was awakened by loud knocking at the front door. I put my head out of the window. "Who's there?" I asked.

  "You're wanted at the Palace immediately."

  I said: "Is that you, Cassius Chaerea? Am I going to be killed, do you know?"

  "My orders are to fetch you to him immediately."

  Calpurnia cried and Briseis cried and both kissed me good-bye very tenderly. As they helped me to dress I hurriedly told them how to dispose of my few remaining possessions, and what to do with little Antonia, and about my funeral, and so on. It was a most affecting scene for all of us, but I did not dare prolong it. Soon I was hopping along at Cassius' side to the Palace. He said gruffly, "Two more ex-Consuls have been summoned to appear with you." He told me their names and I was still more alarmed. They were rich men, just the sort whom Caligula would accuse of a plot against him. But why me? I was the first to arrive.

  The two others came rushing in almost immediately after, breathless with haste and fear. We were taken into the Hall of Justice and made to sit on chairs on a sort of scaffold looking down on the tribunal platform. A guard of German soldiers stood behind us, muttering together in their own language. The room was in complete darkness but for two tiny oil lamps on the tribunal. The windows behind were draped, we noticed, with black hangings embroidered with silver stars. My companions and I silently clasped hands in farewell. They were men from whom I had had many insults at one time or another, but in the shadow of death such trifles are forgotten. We sat there waiting for something to happen until just before daybreak.

  Suddenly we heard a clash of symbols and the gay music of oboes. Slaves filed in from a door at the side of the tribunal, each carrying two lamps, which they put on tables at the side; and then the powerful voice of a eunuch began singing the well-known song, When the long watches of the night. The slaves retired. A shuffling sound was heard and presently in danced a tall ungainly figure in a woman's pink silk gown with a crown of imitation on its head. It was Caligula.

  The rosy-fingered Goddess then

  Will roll away the night of stars...

  Here he drew away the draperies from the window and disclosed the first streaks of dawn, and then, when the eunuch reached the part about the rosy-fingered Goddess blowing out the lamps one by one, brought this incident into the dance too. Puff. Puff. Puff.

  And where clandestine lovers lie

  Entangled in sweet passion's toils...

  From a bed which we had not noticed, because it was in an alcove, the Goddess Dawn then pulled out a girl and a man, neither of them with any clothes on, and in dumb show indicated that it was the time for them to part. The girl was very beautiful. The man was the eunuch who was singing. They parted in opposite directions as if profoundly distressed. When the last verse came: O Dawn, of Goddesses most fair, Who with thy slow and lovely tread Dost give relief to every care...

  I had the sense to prostrate myself on the ground. My companions were not slow in following my example. Caligula capered off the stage and soon afterwards we were summoned to breakfast with him. I said "O God of Gods, I have never in my life witnessed any dance that gave me such profound joy as the one I have just witnessed. I have no words for its loveliness."

  My companions agreed with me and said that it was a million pities that so matchless a performance had been given to so tiny an audience. He said, complacently, that it was only a rehearsal. He would give it one night soon in the amphitheatre to the whole City. I didn't see how he would manage the curtain-drawing effect in an open-air amphitheatre hundreds of yards long, but I said nothing about that. We had a very tasty breakfast, the senior ex-Consul sitting on the floor alternately eating thrush-pie and kissing Caligula's foot. I was just thinking how pleased Calpurnia and Briseis would be to see me back when Caligula, who was in a very pleasant humour, suddenly said: "Pretty girl, wasn't she, Claudius, you old lecher?"

  "Very pretty indeed, God."

  "And still a virgin, so far as I know. Would you like to marry her? You can if you like. I took a fancy to her for a moment, but it's a funny thing, I don't really like immature women.... Or any mature woman, for that matter, except Caesonia. Did you recognise the girl?"

  "No, Lord, I was only watching you, to tell the truth."

  "She's your cousin Messalina, Barbatus' daughter. The old pander didn't utter a word of protest when I asked for her to be sent along to me. What cowards they are, after all, Claudius!"

  "Yes, Lord God."

  "All right, then, I'll marry you two to-morrow. I'm going to bed now, I think."

  "A thousand thanks and homages. Lord." He gave me his other foot to kiss. Next day he kept his promise and married us. He accepted a tenth of Messalina's dowry as a fee but otherwise behaved courteously enough. Calpurnia had been delighted to see me alive again and had pretended not to mind about my marriage. She said in a business-like way: "Very well, my dear, I'll go back to the farm and look after things for you there again.

  You won't miss me, with that pretty wife of yours. And now you have money you'll have to live at the Palace again."

  I told her that the marriage was forced on me and that I would miss her very much indeed. But she pooh-poohed that: Messalina had twice her looks, three times her brains, and birth and money into the bargain. I was in love with her already, Calpurnia said.

  I felt uncomfortable. Calpumia had been my only true friend in all those four years of misery. What had she not done for me? And yet she was right: I was in love with Messalina, and Messalina was to be my wife now. There would be no place for Calpurnia with Messalina about.

  She was in tears as she went away. So was I. I was not in love with her, but she was my truest friend and I knew that if ever I needed her she would be there to help me. I need not say that when I received the dowry money I did not forget her.

  XXXIII

  MESSALINA WAS AN EXTREMELY BEAUTIFUL GIRL, slim and quick-moving with eyes as black as jet and masses of curly black hair. She hardly spoke a word and had a mysterious smile which drove me nearly crazy with love for her. She was so glad to have escaped from Caligula and so quick to realise the advantages that marriage with me gave her, that she behaved in a way which made me quite sure that she loved me as much as I loved her. This was practically the first time I had been in love with anyone since my boyhood; and when a not very clever, not very attractive man of fifty falls in love with a very attractive and very clever girl of fifteen it is usually a poor look-out for him.

  We were married in October. By December she was pregnant by me. She appeared very fond of my little Antonia, who was aged about ten, and it was a relief to me that the child now had someone whom she could
call mother, someone who was near enough to her in age to be a friend and could explain the ways of society to her and take her about, as Calpurnia had not been able to do.

  Messalina and I were invited to live at the Palace again.

  We arrived at an unfortunate time. A merchant called Bassus had been asking questions of a captain of the Palace Guards about Caligula's daily habits—was it true that he walked about the cloisters at night because he could not sleep? At what time did he do this? Which cloisters did he usually choose? What guard did he have with him? The captain reported the incident to Cassius and Cassius reported it to Caligula. Bassus was arrested and cross-examined. He was forced to admit that he had intended to kill Caligula but denied even under torture that he had any associates. Caligula then sent a message to Bassus' old father, ordering him to attend his son's execution. The old man, who had no notion that Bassus had been planning to assassinate Caligula or even that he had been arrested, was greatly shocked to find his son groaning on the Palace floor, his body broken by torture. But he controlled himself and thanked Caligula for his graciousness in summoning him to close his son's eyes. Caligula laughed. "Close his eyes indeed! He's going to have no eyes to close, the assassin! I'm going to poke them out in a moment. And yours too."

  Bassus' father said: "Spare our lives. We are only tools in the hands of powerful men. I'll give you all the names."

  This impressed Caligula, and when the old man mentioned the Guards' Commander, the Commander of the Germans, Callistus the Treasurer, Caesonia, Mnester, and three or four others, he grew pale with alarm. "And whom would they make Emperor in my place?" he asked. "Your uncle Claudius."

  "Is he in the plot too?"

  "No, they were merely going to use him as a figurehead." Caligula hurried away and summoned the Guards' Commander, the Commander of the Germans, the Treasurer and myself to a private room. He asked the others, pointing to me; "Is that creature fit to be Emperor?"