Speaking of the harbour, Vitellius said to me one day: ‘A republic can never hope to carry through public works on so grand a scale as a monarchy. All the grandest constructions in the world are the work of Kings or Queens. The walls and hanging gardens of Babylon. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The Pyramids. You have never been to Egypt, have you? I was stationed there as a young soldier and, ye Gods, those Pyramids! It is impossible to convey in words the crushing sense of awe with which they overwhelm everyone who sees them. One first hears about them at home, as a child, and asks: “What are the Pyramids?” and the answer is, “Huge stone tombs in Egypt, triangular in shape, without any ornaments on them: just faced with white stucco.” That doesn’t sound very interesting or impressive. The mind makes “huge” no huger than some very big building with which one happens to be familiar – say the Temple of Augustus yonder or the Julian Basilica. And then again, visiting Egypt, one sees them at a great distance across the desert, little white marks like tents, and says: “Why, surely that’s nothing to make a fuss about!” But, Heavens, to stand beneath them a few hours later and look up! Caesar, I tell you, they are incredibly and impossibly huge. It makes one feel physically sick to think of them as having been built by human hands. One’s first sight of the Alps was nothing by comparison. So white, smooth, pitilessly immortal. Such a terrific monument of human aspiration – –’
‘And stupidity and tyranny and cruelty,’ I broke in. ‘King Cheops, who built the Great Pyramid, ruined his rich country, bled it white and left it gasping; and all to gratify his own absurd vanity and perhaps impress the Gods with his superhuman power. And what practical use did this Pyramid serve? Was it intended as a tomb to house Cheops’s corpse for all eternity? Yet I have read that this absurdly impressive sepulchre has long been empty. The invading Shepherd Kings discovered the secret entrance, rifled the inner chamber, and made a bonfire of proud Cheops’s mummy.’
Vitellius smiled. ‘You haven’t seen the Great Pyramid or you wouldn’t talk like that. Its emptiness makes it all the more majestic. And as for use, why, it has a most important use. Its pinnacle serves as a mark of orientation for the Egyptian peasants when the yearly Nile flood subsides and they must mark out their fields again in the sea of fertile mud.’
‘A tall pillar would have served just as well,’ I said, ‘and two tall pillars, one on each bank of the Nile, would have been still better; and the cost would have been negligible. Cheops was mad, like Caligula; though apparently he had a more settled madness than Caligula, who always did things by fits and starts. The great city that Caligula planned, to command the Great St Bernard Pass on the Alps, would never have got very far towards completion, though he had lived to be centenarian.’
Vitellius agreed. ‘He was a jackdaw. The nearest he ever came to raising a Pyramid was when he built that out-size ship and stole the great red obelisk from Alexandria. A jackdaw and a monkey.’
‘Yet I seem to remember that you once adored that jackdaw-monkey as a God.’
‘And I gratefully remember that the advice and example came from you.’
‘Heaven forgive us both,’ I said. We were standing talking outside the Temple of Capitoline Jove, which we had just been ritually purifying, because of the recent appearance, on the roof, of a bird of evil omen. (It was an owl of the sort we call ‘incendiaries’ because they foretell the destruction by fire of any building on which they perch.) I pointed across the valley with my finger. ‘Do you see that? That’s part of the greatest monument ever built, and though monarchs like Augustus and Tiberius have added to it and kept it in repair, it was first built by a free people. And I have no doubt that it will last as long as the Pyramids, besides having proved of infinitely more service to mankind.’
‘I don’t see what you mean. You seem to be pointing at the Palace.’
‘I am pointing at the Appian Way,’ I replied solemnly. ‘It was begun in the Censorship of my great ancestor, Appius Claudius the Blind. The Roman Road is the greatest monument ever raised to human liberty by a noble and generous people. It runs across mountain, marsh, and river. It is built broad, straight, and firm. It joins city with city and nation with nation. It is tens of thousands of miles long, and always thronged with grateful travellers. And while the Great Pyramid, a few hundred feet high and wide, awes sight-seers to silence – though it is only the rifled tomb of an ignoble corpse and a monument of oppression and misery, so that no doubt in viewing it you may still seem to hear the crack of the taskmaster’s whip and the squeals and groans of the poor workmen struggling to set a huge block of stone into position – –’ But in this unpremeditated gush of eloquence I had forgotten the beginning of my sentence. I broke off, feeling foolish, and Vitellius had to come to the rescue. He threw up his hands, shut his eyes, and declaimed: ‘Words fail me, my Lords. Nothing that I might utter could possibly match the depth of my feelings in this matter.’ We both laughed uproariously at this. Vitellius was one of the few friends I had who treated me with the right sort of familiarity. I never knew whether it was genuine or artificial; but if artificial, it was so good an imitation of the real thing that I accepted it at its face value. I should never perhaps have called it in question if his former adoration of Caligula had not been so well acted, and if it had not been for the matter of Messalina’s slipper. I shall tell you about this.
Vitellius was going up a staircase at the Palace, one day in summer, in company with Messalina and myself, when Messalina said: ‘Stop a moment, please: I’ve lost my slipper.’ Vitellius quickly turned and retrieved it for her, handing it back with a deep obeisance. Messalina was charmed. She said, smiling: ‘Claudius, you won’t be jealous, will you, if I confer the Order of the Jewelled Slipper on this brave soldier, our dear friend Vitellius? He really is most gallant and obliging.’
‘But don’t you need the slipper, my dear?’
‘No, it’s cooler to go barefoot on a day like this. And I have scores of other pretty pairs.’
So Vitellius took the slipper and kissed it and put it in the pocket-fold of his robe, where he kept it continually; bringing it out to kiss once more when enlarging, in sentimental private talk with me, on Messalina’s beauty, brains, bounty, and on my extraordinarily good fortune in being her husband. It always brought a great sense of warmth to my heart and sometimes even tears to my eyes to hear Messalina praised. It was a constant wonder to me that she could care as much for a lame, pedantic, stuttering old fellow like myself as she swore she did; yet nobody, I argued, could pretend that she had married me for mercenary reasons. I was a bankrupt at the time, and as for the possibility of my ever becoming Emperor, it could surely never have occurred to her.
The harbour at Ostia was by no means my only great public work. The verse that the Sibyl of Cumae recited when I visited her once, in disguise, ten years before I became Emperor, prophesied that I should ‘give Rome water and winter bread’. The winter bread was a reference to Ostia, but the water meant the two great aqueducts I built. It is very curious about prophecies. A prophecy is made, perhaps, when one is a boy, and one pays great attention to it at the time, but then a mist descends: one forgets about it altogether until suddenly the mist clears and the prophecy is fulfilled. It was not until my aqueducts were completed and consecrated, and the harbour completed too, that I recalled the Sibyl’s verse. Yet I suppose that it had been at the back of my mind all the time, as it were the God’s whisper to me to undertake these great projects.
My aqueducts were most necessary: the existing water supply was by no means sufficient for the City’s needs, though greater than that of any other city in the world. We Romans love fresh water. Rome is a town of baths and fish-pools and fountains. The fact was that, though Rome was now served by no less than seven aqueducts, the rich men had managed to draw away most of the public water for their own use, getting permission to connect private reservoirs with the mains – their swimming-baths had to have fresh water every day, and their great gardens had to be watered – so that many o
f the poorer citizens were reduced in the summer to drinking and cooking with Tiber water, which was most unhealthy. Cocceius Nerva, that virtuous old man, whom my Uncle Tiberius kept by him as his good genius, and who eventually committed suicide – this Nerva, then, whom Tiberius had made his Inspector of Aqueducts, advised him to show his magnanimity by giving the City a water-supply worthy of its greatness; and reminded him that his ancestor Appius Claudius the Blind had won eternal fame for bringing the Appian Water into Rome, from eight miles away, by the City’s first aqueduct. Tiberius undertook to do as Nerva advised, but put the project off, and put it off again and again, as his way was, until Nerva’s death. Then he felt remorse and sent his engineers out to discover suitable springs, according to the rules laid down by the famous Vitruvius. Such springs must run strongly all the year round, and run clean and sweet, and not fur the pipes, and must have such an elevation that, allowing for the fall necessary to give the channel of the aqueduct its proper inclination, the water will enter the final reservoir at a height sufficient to allow of its distribution, by pipes, to the highest houses in Rome. The engineers had to go far a field before they came on water that answered their purpose: they found it eventually in the hills to the south-east of the City. Two copious and excellent springs called the Blue Spring and the Curtian Spring broke out near the thirty-eighth milestone on the Sublacentian Road: they could be run together as one. Then there was the New Anio stream which could be drawn upon at the forty-second milestone on the same road, but on the other side: that would have to be carried by a second aqueduct and would pick up another stream, the Herculanean, opposite the Blue Spring. They reported that the water from these sources fulfilled all the necessary conditions, and that there was no nearer supply that did so. Tiberius had plans for two aqueducts drawn out and called for estimates; but decided at once that he could not afford the work, and shortly afterwards died.’
Caligula, immediately on his accession, to show that he was of a more generous and public-spirited nature than Tiberius, began work on Tiberius’s plans, which were very detailed and good ones. He started well, but as his Treasury grew empty he could not keep it up and, taking his workmen from the most difficult parts (the great arched bridges, arch over arch in tiers, which carried the water across valleys and low ground), he put them to work on the easier levels where the channel ran round the slopes of hills or directly across the plain. He still could boast of rapid progress in terms of miles, and the expense was negligible. Some of the arches which he thus shirked building needed to be over 100 feet high. The first aqueduct, afterwards called the Claudian Water, was to be over forty-six miles long, of which ten miles were to run on arches. The second, called the New Anio, was to be nearly fifty-nine miles long, and fifteen miles or so were to run on arches. When Caligula quarrelled with the people of Rome, the time they made the disturbance in the amphitheatre and sent him running in fright out of the City, he made his quarrel an excuse for abandoning all work on the aqueducts. He took the workmen away and put them on other tasks, such as building his temple and clearing sites at Antium (his birthplace) for the erection of a new capital city there.
So it fell to me to take up the work, which seemed to me one of first importance, where Caligula had abandoned it, though it meant having to concentrate on the more difficult stretches. If you wonder why the New Anio, though picking up the Herculanean stream close to the beginning of the Claudian Water, had to make a great circuit, instead of being run along the same arches, the answer is that the New Anio started at a much higher level and would have had too swift a flow if it had been brought down immediately to the Claudian Water. Vitruvius recommends an inclination of half a foot in 100 yards and the height of the New Anio did not allow it to join the Claudian Water, even on a higher tier of arches, until quite near the City, having travelled thirteen miles farther. In order to keep the water clean, there was a covered top to the channel with vent-holes at intervals to prevent bursts. There were also frequent large reservoirs through which the water passed, leaving its sediment behind. These reservoirs were also useful for purposes of irrigation, and amply paid for themselves by making it possible for the neighbouring landowners to put land under cultivation which otherwise would have been waste.
The work took nine years to complete, but there were no setbacks; and when it was finished it was among the chief wonders of Rome. The two waters entered the City by the Praenestine Gate, the New Anio above, the Claudian below, where a huge double arch had to be built to cross two main roads. The terminus was a great tower from which the water was distributed to ninety-two smaller towers. There were already some 160 of these small water-towers in existence at Rome, but my two aqueducts doubled the actual supply of water. My Inspector of Aqueducts now calculated the flow of water into Rome as equal to a stream thirty feet broad and six feet deep, flowing at the rate of twenty miles an hour. Experts and ordinary people agreed that mine was the best quality of water of any, except that brought by the Marcian Water, the most important of the existing aqueducts, which accounted for fifty-four of the towers and had been in existence for about 170 years.
I was very strict about the thieving of water by irresponsible persons. The chief thieving in the old days before Agrippa undertook the work of overhauling the whole water-system – he built two new aqueducts himself, one chiefly underground on the left bank of the Tiber – was done by deliberately punching holes in the main, or bribing the persons in charge of the aqueducts to do so, and making the damage look accidental; for there was a law giving people the right to casual water from leaks. This practice had lately started again. I reorganized the corps of aqueduct-workers and gave orders that all leakages were to be immediately repaired. But there was another kind of thieving going on too. There were pipes leading from the main to private water-towers built by the common subscriptions of wealthy families or clans. These pipes were made of lead and of a regulation size, so that no more water should be taken from the main than could flow through the pipe in its normal horizontal position; but by enlarging the pipe by pushing a stake through, lead being a very ductile metal, and furthermore inclining it from the horizontal, a much greater flow of water was obtained. Sometimes more impudent or powerful families substituted pipes of their own. I was determined to stop this. I had the pipes cast of bronze and officially stamped and so fixed to the main that they could not be declined without breaking them, and ordered my inspectors to visit the water-towers regularly to see that nothing was tampered with.
I might as well mention here the last of my three great engineering undertakings, the draining of the Fucine Lake. This lake, which lies some sixty miles due east of Rome under the Alban Hills, surrounded by marshes, is about twenty miles long and ten wide, though of no great depth. The project for draining it had long been discussed. The inhabitants of that part of the country, who are called Marsians, once petitioned Augustus about it, but, after due consideration, he turned down their request on the ground that the task was too laborious and that the possible results could not justify it. Now the question was raised again and a group of rich landowners came to me and volunteered to pay two-thirds of the expense of the drainage if I undertook to carry it out. They asked in return grants of the land that would be reclaimed from the marshes and from the lake itself when the water was drained off. I refused their offer, because it occurred to me that if they were willing to pay so much for the reclaimed land it was probably worth far more. The problem seemed a simple one. One had only to cut a channel three miles long through a hill at the south-west extremity of the lake, thus allowing the water to escape into the River Liris which ran on the opposite side of the hill. I decided to start at once.
The work began in the first year of my monarchy, but it was soon evident that Augustus had been right in not attempting it. The labour and expense of cutting through that hill was infinitely greater than my engineers had reckoned it would be. They came on huge masses of solid rock that had to be hacked away piece by piece, and the debris drag
ged off along the channel; and there were troubles with springs in the hill which kept bursting out and interfering with the work. In order to finish it at all I soon had to set 30,000 men working constantly at it. But I refused to be beaten: I hate throwing up a task. The channel was completed only the other day, after thirteen years’ labour. Soon I shall give the signal for opening the sluice-gates and letting out the lake-water.
Chapter 12
ONE day, just before Herod left Rome, he suggested that I should see a really good Greek doctor about my health; pointing out how important it was for Rome that I should take myself in hand physically. I had been showing signs of great fatigue lately, he said, as a result of the extraordinary long hours that I worked. If I did not either shorten these hours or put myself into a condition which would enable me to stand the strain better I could not expect to live much longer. I grew vexed and said that no Greek doctor had been able to cure me as a young man, though I had consulted many; and assured him that it was not only too late to do anything about my infirmities but that I had grown quite attached to them as an integral part of myself, and that I had no use for Greek doctors in any case.