When they learned that I was the slave of a Caesar, and Little Boots at that, they bent more attentive ears. Finally they summoned an officer, but he too was skeptical.
"Please," I begged, "only ask the Emperor if he will see me."
At last he assented. It was fully ten minutes before he returned. "The Emperor will see you," he said, but before I was admitted I was carefully searched for dagger or poison. Tiberius was still at his morning meal when I was conducted into his presence. I approached and stood before him. I did not kneel. I am the greatgrandson of Cingetorix. That, I never forget. Tiberius eyed me with a half-amused, half-quizzical expression.
"What trouble are you in now?" he asked. So he remembered me! As little as I admire Caesars, I was thrilled.
"I am in no trouble, Caesar," I replied. "I have a message for you that no other must hear," and I glanced at the slaves and freedmen about him.
Perhaps some of these were already planning his assassination! The thought gave me strength to insist upon telling my story to none other than Tiberius.
The Emperor frowned. I thought that he was going to refuse my request. "You have befriended me on several occasions," I reminded him. "Once you saved my life. I am here to make a return in kind."
He seemed to grasp the gravity of that which had brought me, a slave, upon so hazardous an errand, for it would indeed have been hazardous to have intruded upon Caesar on some trivial pretext. He signed for the others in the room to leave; then he turned again to me. "What is your message?" he asked.
I repeated to him, word for word, that which I had heard the previous evening from the balcony overlooking the peristyle of Agrippina's palace. "For this I shall die when Agrippina learns what I have done," I said. "I only ask of Caesar that he will demand that I be accorded a humane death-not crucifixion."
"Agrippina will never know," he said, "nor will you ever be crucified while Tiberius lives. Go now, and never repeat to another that which you have told me."
I hurried home, and, so fortunate was I, that I am sure no one knew that I had left the palace that morning.
Tiberius struck quickly. That very day Titius Sabinus was arrested and confessions were wrung from several of the Emperor's freedmen, doubtless by torture. Trial, condemnation, and execution of Sabinus followed immediately. The Senate and the people were shocked by the revelations of the trial. Perhaps they did not like Tiberius, but they knew that to exchange him for the weak-minded Nero and the vindictive Agrippina would make conditions infinitely worse.
In thanking the Senate for its prompt action in condemning Sabinus, Tiberius said, "I live a life of fear and solicitude, being in constant apprehension of the plots of my adversaries," and though he did not name these adversaries, all Rome knew that he meant Agrippina and Nero.
At last the wily Sejanus felt that the power of Agrippina had received a mortal blow, and he came out into the open with a public statement which he would not previously have dared make: "The State is torn into two factions precisely as though we were in a condition of civil war, and one of these factions calls itself the party of Agrippina. It is high time that energetic action should be taken against certain of the heads of this party, so as to abate some of the mischief they are working." Lucius Aelius Sejanus was preparing to strike!
It was in this year that Sejanus persuaded Tiberius to retire to the island of Capri, nor was this difficult as the aging emperor was tired of the plotting and intriguing of his enemies, of the immorality and corruption of Rome, and had long looked forward to the time that he might retire to the quiet and peace of his beloved island. From Capri he issued his imperial decrees during the last eleven years of his reign, and never again set foot within the gates of Rome.
The Emperor took with him a few Romans of high rank, but most of his companions in self-exile were literary and learned men, mostly Greeks, in whose cultured society Tiberius found his greatest happiness, a fact which amply refutes the hideous calumnies spread against him by the mad Agrippina and her party and which are still current even today. The very vileness of the accusations against his morality prove their falseness. For twenty-four years Tiberius had lived in the limelight of immoral, intriguing, scandal-loving Rome, twelve of those years as emperor, where his every act was watched by the jealous eyes of unscrupulous enemies; yet never in all that time was a breath of scandal attached to his name. How ridiculous it is to assume that by moving to Capri he should, in one short year and at the age of sixty-eight, have become a vile, degenerate monster!
Shortly after Tiberius sailed for Capri, there occurred that which augured ill for the future welfare of Rome, though little could any of those who witnessed it have guessed the bloody tragedies it portended. It was the luncheon hour in the palace of Agrippina. Caligula, Agrippina Minor, Drusilla, and Julia were eating with their mother. Another slave and I were the only others in the dining room at that time. Suddenly, without warning, Caligula gasped, choked, and slipped from his chair to the floor. I had been standing directly behind him, and I succeeded in catching him in my arms and breaking the fall, so that his head did not strike the hard marble of the floor. He stiffened convulsively, choking horribly, white froth upon his lips. Agrippina rushed to his side. "A doctor! " she called to the other slave. "Summon a doctor!"
The other three children were terrified and began to cry. Agrippina sent them from the room.
Caius Caesar Caligula had suffered his first epileptic stroke!
It was not of long duration. It was over before the doctor arrived, and I had carried his limp form to his room. When the doctor came, Agrippina dismissed him. "Caius Caesar slipped from his chair," she told the doctor, "and I thought that he had hurt himself; but it was nothing. He is all right now."
When the doctor had left, she summoned me and the other slave who had witnessed the attack. She glared at us from those eyes which could be so terrible. "You have seen the crosses upon the Via Flaminia," she said. "You know that sometimes the tongues of those who talk too much are cut out before they are crucified. Remember, then, that you saw nothing unusual at luncheon today."
Why she didn't have us killed at once, I shall never know; but what she said to us preserved the secret of Caligula's first attack of the falling sickness quite as effectively. I very much doubt that the story of that first attack ever is recorded in history or elsewhere, other than in these notes of mine which are written in a sort of Notae Tironianae which only I can decipher. Caligula was morose, moody, and depressed for weeks after this seizure. I often detected Agrippi na watching him fearfully, and I think that Caligula noticed this, too, for he became very short and irritable with her. The home had never been a pleasant one; now it was worse. I wished that I might get out of it. Agrippina Minor did two years later. She got married. This was in 781. The creature was thirteen when she was married to Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, "a man of singular ferocity of temper." Some of the stories that circulated about him in Rome suggest that, if not a madman, he certainly was not wholly sane. Two incidents which lend color to my conviction occurred some ten years after his marriage. During his attendance on Caius Caesar, he killed a freedman of his own for refusing to drink as much as he ordered him; and once upon the Appian road, he suddenly whipped his horses and purposely drove his chariot over a poor boy, crushing him to death.
I only mention the man at all because the fruit of his marriage with Agrippina Minor was another male in whose veins flowed the blood of the divine Julians-a taint which placed him in line for accession to the throne. Of him, Ahenobarbus is supposed to have said: "Nothing but what is detestable and pernicious to the public can spring from me and Agrippina." He may not have said this, and probably did not; but if he did, he was a prophet of the first order who knew whereof he spoke.
Chapter XV
A.U.C.782-790 [A.D. 29-37]
THE YEAR 782 was one of tragedy for the family of Germanicus. Livia, the mother of Tiberius, died; though by some she was believed to have been the mortal enemy of Agrippina and
her house, her fully warranted suspicions of the aims of Sejanus had led her to urge upon Tiberius the wisdom of leniency toward Nero and his mother, for, after all, they were of the imperial family, and the proud Livia could not endure the thought of an upstart such as Sejanus supplanting them.
But with the death of Livia, the last barrier to the ambitions of the favorite was removed, and he struck quickly. Playing upon the fears of the aging emperor, he persuaded him to write to the Senate, complaining of the actions of Agrippina and Nero.
The Senate was thrown into consternation. Nero Caesar had been named by Tiberius as his successor. Those of the Senate who took action against him and his mother could expect no mercy should he ever come to the throne. They did nothing.
While they were deliberating, Agrippina and her party organized a demonstration. A mob surrounded the Curia in which the Senate sat, shouting that the letter from Capri was a forgery uttered by Sejanus to effect the destruction of the house of Germanicus. The crowd milled about, carrying statues and busts of Agrippina and her children and screaming threats and insults at the Senate; and the Senate was cowed. I was one of that organized "popular demonstration." I had been detailed to carry a statue of the odious Agrippina Minor; but at the first opportunity, when I thought no one was looking, I tossed it into an alleyway.
The next day, the conspiritors were gathered in the palace of Agrippina, congratulating themselves upon the success of their coup and making plans for Agrippina and Nero to hasten to the Rhine and place themselves at the head of the legions quartered there, that they might march on Rome and wrest the throne from Tiberius; but Sejanus had not been sleeping. In the midst of the gay and hopeful conspiracy, a detachment of the Praetorian Guard burst into the palace and placed Agrippina and Nero under arrest.
Agrippina was stunned, and for a moment she was speechless; then she turned to the others in the room and said, "This cannot be. The soldiers who fought under Germanicus and the populace of Rome who loved him will not permit this final indignity to be heaped upon his widow and his son." She did not burst into the tirade of invective that might have been expected, and she moved with great dignity, surrounded by the guard, which treated her with all respect. Nero blustered a little and made silly threats of what he would do when he was emperor, but presently they were gone, and the other conspiritors were scurrying off-rats deserting the doomed ship. I never saw either Agrippina or Nero Caesar again.
The hush they left behind them remained upon the house. Drusilla and Julia wept. Caligula sat staring at Drusus, who looked frightened, as did his wife. They knew that Sejanus had struck. Would Drusus be next? The other Julia, Nero's wife, showed no emotion. Perhaps she was glad to be rid of a brainless, dissolute, unfaithful husband. The trial of Agrippina and Nero was conducted with the utmost fairness in a court presided over by Lucius Piso, a magistrate of unquestioned probity. The evidence against them was so conclusive as to leave to the court no alternative but to condemn them.
Agrippina was imprisoned in an imperial villa at Herculaneum and Nero was sent to one of the Ponza isles. Caligula and his sisters, Drusilla and Julia, went to live with their grandmother, Antonia, and, of course, I went with my master.
Before the sentence of banishment was made final, Tiberius went to Herculaneum to talk with Agrippina that he might convince himself of the reality of her guilt. The Emperor was a kindly man who had showered favors upon the family of Germanicus and even sought to excuse and forgive the wretched return of ingratitude that Agrippina had vouchsafed him.
Here was such an opportunity as only a madwoman could have cast aside, but instead of attempting to make her peace with Tiberius, Agrippina flew into a fury, reproaching and reviling him. So violent did she become that it was necessary for a centurion to restrain her, from which arose the story, improbable in the extreme, that Tiberius had caused one of her eyes to be beaten out.
Now, Tiberius had no recourse but to confirm the sentence of the court, and Agrippina was removed to Ponza as a prisoner of the state.
Our life in the home of Antonia was very dull. Caligula was now seventeen and starting to follow in the dissolute footsteps of his divine brothers. He seemed to be wholly lacking in the commonest decencies of normal men, showing absolutely no interest in the fate of his brother or his mother. Of the former he remarked that "if Tiberius were not an old fool he would have had him destroyed immediately."
Drusus Caesar could not conceal his evident gratification at the removal of Nero from his path to the throne. He was now next in line of accession, and he had but to await the death of the ailing Tiberius to become emperor of Rome. He could not await the natural outcome of events but must needs carry on the conspiracy against the life of Tiberius. Perhaps he was spurred on by fear of the machinations of Sejanus, which had already laid low his mother and his brother and might be expected to reach out and gather him in next; and if he held this fear, it was well grounded, for Sejanus was not idle.
As the wily favorite had seduced the wife of that other Drusus, he was now engaged similarly with the wife of Drusus Caesar and not without success. The silly girl revealed to her paramour the details of her husband's conspiracy against the Emperor, and in the year 784 Drusus Caesar was confined in the subterranean prison beneath the palace of Tiberius on the Palatine. In the same year, Nero Caesar died on the prison isle to which he had been banished. The story circulated in Rome was that he starved himself to death to escape execution by the hand of a common jailer. Caius Caesar Caligula, an epileptic degenerate, was now the accepted heir to the throne of the Caesars, and immediately the sycophants began to fawn upon him-but they kept one eye on Sejanus. And well they might. The man had now removed every obstacle but one from his bloody path to the throne. I very much doubted that anything could save Caligula, but Antonia did save him. She, in common with all Rome, knew the hideous story of the poisoning of Drusus, the son of Tiberius, by his wife, Livilla, and Sejanus, her seducer; and she now sent all the details of that vile business to the Emperor.
Sejanus was arrested and condemned to death. His body was cast down the Gemonian steps, hooks were driven into the still warm flesh and the corpse was dragged about the city to be reviled and insulted by the populace. For three days the mangled mass was left to the bestial mob before it was thrown into the Tiber. Livilla, his accomplice, starved herself to death by the direction of her mother.
Two years later, in 786, Caligula assumed the manly toga at the age of twenty-one, and, according to Roman custom, he then shaved for the first time. It was in this year that he suffered his second attack of the falling sickness. He was about to retire, and I was alone with him in his room at the time. I attended him until the seizure was over. He was very weak and depressed. After a while he spoke: "The divine blood of the Julii!" His voice shook with loathing and contempt. Never before nor ever since did I hear a Julian speak in other than tones of reverence of the tainted blood that flowed in their veins.
Presently he looked at me, and there was a light in his eyes that might have made another tremble. "Nothing happened tonight," he said. "If you cannot remember that, perhaps you can remember the crosses beside the Via Flaminia."
"You do not have to threaten me, Caligula," I said. "I know where my loyalty lies."
He nodded. "I should not have doubted you, Britannicus," he said. "You have ever been loyal to me. I sometimes think that you are the only friend I have."
"Do not forget Tibur," I reminded him.
"Yes, good old Tibur," he said.
Neither of us ever mentioned the matter a gain.
Shortly after this, word came of the death of Agrippina. She had starved herself to death in her prison. I have never had any doubt but that by this time she was a hopeless maniac. Antonia and the girls wept for a while, but Caligula showed no sign of sorrow. I am sure that he felt none.
Following the death of Agrippina, Tiberius had Caligula brought to him at Capri, where the old emperor might have the young prince under his constant supervisio
n; and here he married him to Junia Claudilla, daughter of M. Junius Silanus. The next year, 787, witnessed the death of the profligate and insane Drusus Caesar in his prison on the Palatine. It is said that he was starved to death by order of Tiberius, but that I do not believe. The Emperor was neither a cruel nor a vindictive man. Had he been, he would have tortured and destroyed the entire family of Agrippina years before, for he surely was given sufficient cause.
At Capri was a Jewish chief, one Herod Agrippa a man twice the age of Caligula, into whose companionship the young prince was constantly thrown. I believe that many of Caligula's excesses after he became emperor were the result of the teachings of this man who schooled him in the diabolic machinery of Asiatic despotism.
In A.U.C. 790, in his seventy-eighth year, Tiberius, feeling that death would soon overtake him, traveled to Tusculum to visit Antonia, the grandmother of Caligula, doubtless for the purpose of advising her in what manner she should counsel her grandson when he succeeded to the throne.
During the return journey, he fell ill at Astura, not far from Antium, but he later recovered and proceeded to Circeii. It was evident to all of us who were in his entourage that the old emperor was failing rapidly, but he even attended festivities inaugurated in his honor at Cerceii, though he afterward suffered an abdominal attack.
At Misenum, he entertained at dinner in his usual gracious manner; while at table, Charicles, his physician, pretending to take his leave, felt the Emperor's pulse. Tiberius doubtless guessed what use Charicles would make of the information he had gained, and continued the entertainment as though to give the lie to the physician's fears-or hopes.
Tiberius was right: Charicles hastened to Macro the Praefect to inform him that Tiberius was close to death, and the word spread through the whole court. All was excitement. Messengers were dispatched to the armies to announce the death of the Emperor, but the Emperor did not die-that night.