In the morning he sent for Caligula and his grandson, Tiberius Gemellus. Caligula was the first to arrive in the chamber where the grand old man lay dying. As always, I had accompanied my master, but I stood outside the doorway as Caligula approached the bedside, and I easily overheard the conversation that ensued.
"My son," said Tiberius, "although Gemellus is nearer to myself than you are, yet both of my own choice and in obedience to the gods, I commend the Empire of Rome into your hands. I earnestly charge you to love and protect Gemellus as though he were your own son."
Caligula, whose back was toward me, muttered something which I could not quite catch, and then Gemellus came. Tiberius, his voice growing steadily weaker, spoke to him for a few moments, then sank back upon his pillows. I thought that he had died, and so did the boys. Gemellus ran from the apartment to summon aid, but Caligula remained, hovering above Tiberius like an unclean vulture.
Presently Caligula turned away and left the room, and I followed him into the corridors where he was surrounded by courtiers, who hastened to him to congratulate him. There was no word of regret at the death of Tiberius upon the lips of Caligula nor upon those of any other there, though the corridors were filled with men upon whom he had heaped honors and favors. Into the midst of all this unseemly gaiety burst Evodius, the most trusted of Tiberius's freedmen, to announce that the Emperor had recovered from his faint and desired food. It was with difficulty that I suppressed a smile as I saw the expressions on the faces of the courtiers change from ingratiating smiles to sheer terror. Even Caligula appeared frightened. If Tiberius recovered, he might be punished for this breach of decency.
Summoning Macro, he hastened to return to the bedside of the Emperor; and again I accompanied him and stood just outside the doorway. Poor Evodius, unfortunately for himself, entered with Caligula and Macro.
Tiberius was breathing weakly as the two men leaned above him while Evodius stood just behind them. I saw Macro whisper to Caligula, who tried to get the signet ring from the dying man's finger. Tiberius clenched his fist to prevent it, and Caligula threw a pillow over his face and reaching beneath held the old man's throat until he expired. These things I saw with my own eyes, but I hastened away from that doorway as quickly as I could, lest Caligula should know what I had seen. That I had acted with rare judgment was demonstrated almost immediately, as Caligula ordered that Evodius be crucified at once, after having his tongue cut out.
Thus died the man whom I believe to have been the greatest emperor ever to rule over Rome; thus came to the throne one of the worst.
Chapter XVI
A.U.C.790-791 [A.D. 37-38]
LIFE NOW became a very different thing for me from what it ever had been before.
My master was master of the world. Subject to his slightest caprice, he held the life of every man, woman, and child throughout the Empire in the hollow of his hand. Sycophants, who would not have wiped their feet on me before the death of Tiberius, fawned upon me, for they knew that I had been the constant companion of Caesar since his infancy. They knew that he trusted me and they thought that I had far more influence with him than I actually did; no one could influence the mad mind of Caligula toward anything that was good or decent. I might have influenced him for ill, but I was never so inclined. Gifts were showered upon me, but I refused them all-not, I am free to admit, through any scruples or fine sentiments, but rather because I knew that I should be expected to give for value received and that eventually that would lead to my undoing.
In a moment of rare generosity, Caligula offered to set me free, but after thanking him, I told him that I would rather be the slave of Caesar than a freedman. He took this as a compliment, for which I was thankful. However, my real reason for declining freedom was entirely different. Free or slave, I should still be at the mercy of the slightest whim of a youth who was already displaying many signs of insanity that were apparent to one as close to him as was I. As a freedman, I might arouse the jealousy of those who had seen the freedmen of Tiberius elevated to posts of importance and thus have enemies awaiting the opportunity to bring about my undoing. As a slave, none would be jealous of me. With the death of Tiberius I had lost the one and only man to whom I could look for protection were my life threatened. Now I must depend solely upon my own wits.
Still animated by that strange excess of generosity, Caligula elevated Tibur to the rank of tribune of the Praetorian Guard and placed him in command of the troops stationed at the palace. He could not have made a better selection. Tibur had married the daughter of a Greek woman who kept an eating house in the city-the same woman in whose home he had once planned to hide me. She and her daughter were virtuous and respectable women, and after his marriage, Tibur gave up his loose friends and forswore those periodic drunken orgies from which he used to return looking as though he had been shot from a ballista into a rubbish pile.
During the first months of Caligula's reign, he lived up to the fondest hopes of the Senate and the people. He released political prisoners from prison and exile; he exhibited great deference to the wishes of the Senate; he sponsored public games with lavish prodigality, and gave liberal largess to the troops; then he suffered the worst epileptic attack he had ever endured.
I was with him at the time of the seizure, and I was with him when he regained consciousness. If a man's eyes are the windows of his soul, I pray that you may never look at the soul of a madman through such terrible eyes as were bent upon me then. Terrible as they were, there was a question in them, and I knew that my life hung upon the answer that seemed expected of me.
"Caesar fainted," I said. "He is all right now. I think that perhaps it was something he ate at dinner."
Caligula nodded. I had said the right thing.
"I believe that you should rest now and try to sleep," I said.
He turned over on his side, hiding his face from me. There was a half-smothered sound from his pillow. Was it a sob?
Caligula was confined to his bed for some time, and the Senate and the people were plunged into despair. They did not know what I knew-that the emperor of Rome was a madman. I knew it, because between long spells of depression and moroseness he used to rave to me of the plans he would execute as soon as he was up and about again: he would condemn all senators to death; he would have himself deified and temples should be erected throughout the Empire where he might be worshiped. There was much more, but presently I came to believe that they were only the ravings of a maniac that would soon be forgotten. Not all of them were.
During his illness I was delegated to convey to him the sad news of the sudden and unexpected death of his wife, Junia Claudilla. I sought to temper the blow as adroitly as I might, but it was a waste of effort and sympathy.
"Excellent!" he exclaimed. "I had been hoping that she would die; it saves me the necessity of finding the means to remove her."
I was shocked, but his next remark shocked me even more. "I shall now marry Drusilla," he announced.
"But Drusilla is your sister," I said.
"She is more than that," he replied. "She is a goddess and I am a god. It is only right and fitting that such a holy union should be consummated and the divine blood of the Julii forevermore remain uncontaminated by admixture with the blood of mortals. Am I a lesser creature than the kings of Egypt who ever married their sisters?" The teachings of Herod Agrippa were bearing fruit.
While I was shocked, I was not wholly surprised, as it had long been apparent to the members of the household that he was infatuated with Drusilla, with whom, as with his other sisters, he had had sexual relations since boyhood. I recalled that years before, Antonia had caught him in bed with one of them. However, I imagine that the old lady was not too greatly surprised, as incest seems to have been one of the prerogatives of the Caesars.
During the four years that we had been at Capri, I had not, of course, seen Attica. We had carried on a most unsatisfactory and one-sided correspondence, but at least we had kept in touch with one another. As a sl
ave in the imperial household I frequently found those willing to carry a letter to Rome for me, but Attica was less fortunately situated. Caesonia had married a man of no importance and was no longer living in the home of her father, so that it was only upon rare occasions that Attica could find a bearer for her letters. Quite often it was Numerius who found the means to dispatch her letters to me. Attica wrote me of his many triumphs in the Circus, and I occasionally had a letter from Numerius himself, often describing some unusually thrilling race, but always one in which he had been defeated. He never wrote of his triumphs. In one letter he assured me that he had not attempted to press his suit for Attica's hand during my absence from Rome and would not until I returned. "Then," he wrote, "you will have to look to your laurels." It is needless to say that Numerius was not a Roman.
At the first opportunity after our return to Rome, I went to see Attica. During the four years that I had been absent from home she had not changed, unless it were to become more beautiful; nor had she changed at all in the lack of importance that she seemed to place upon the, to me, all-important subject of love.
"Of course I love you," she said, but the light in her eyes was that of a sprite rather than of a nymph.
"Then, if you love me," I said, trying to ignore the implication of her elfin expression, "there is no reason why we should not be married at once. As the slave of the emperor, I am sure that I can get permission."
"But I love Numerius," she said. "I love ever so many people, but I cannot marry them all."
She saw that I was hurt, and she laid a hand gently upon my arm. "Please try to understand, dear Britannicus," she said. "I do not want to make a mistake that would ruin three lives. I am not yet sure."
I knew then what she meant: it was definitely between Numerius and me-and Numerius was my very good friend. I do not subscribe to the belief that all is fair in love and war. I am not a Roman.
A.U.C. 791 is a year that I would forget, but its horrors have burned themselves ineradicably upon my memory. From his illness, Caligula emerged a madman, and from being the idol of the people, he became a creature to be feared and loathed. He became subject to insomnia, and when he did sleep, his rest was disturbed by frightful dreams. Then he would sit up in bed and call for me, terrified by fearful hallucinations. Often he slept but three or four hours during the night, spending the rest of the time wandering through the palace, pacing the porticoes, awaiting the dawn, and always I must be with him.
During these long, tedious hours he rambled on continually and often incoherently, revealing mad, preposterous plans for the future. Many of these he forgot, but many he carried into execution.
Shortly after his convalescence he took Drusilla away from her husband, Cassius Longinus, and married her to a depraved creature named Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, from whom he almost immediately took her for himself, announcing that he proposed to marry her, although she was still the legal wife of Lepidus.
Rome, rotten as it was, was shocked, and indignation ran high. His act imperiled not only his own person but those of the entire imperial family, yet nothing could dissuade him. I was with him when his grandmother, Antonia, remonstrated with him regarding this and some of his other mad caprices, but he answered her contemptuously: "Everything is lawful to me, and I may do as I will to anyone."
Perhaps to show his displeasure at Antonia's interference and to flaunt his independence of her, he had her steward, Alexander Lysimachus, thrown into prison, notwithstanding the fact that Lysimachus had been a faithful friend of Germanicus, his father.
It was shortly after this that Antonia died, and the rumor circulated through Rome that Caligula had caused her to be poisoned. I do not know as to that, but I was with him in his dining hall when from a window he watched with utter indifference the burning of her body on the funeral pyre, after a funeral from which he had ordered all marks of honor to be omitted. But what else might be expected from one who had exhibited no sign of sorrow upon the tragic death of his own mother?
Now, on cameos and medals, the heads of Caligula and Drusilla appeared together. Plans for the marriage, which was to have been a most elaborate affair of a religious nature, were maturing.
"It is only fitting that it should be thus," said Caligula, "since a god is to wed a goddess, even as the great Jupiter wed his sister, Juno; and who can deny the divinity of the Julian family?" I can assure you that no one did, at least not in his presence. And then the unhappy Drusilla died-of shame, many believed. She was the sweetest of Agrippina's children and still little more than a child. She was but twenty when she died.
Caligula was inconsolable. The funeral that he decreed for her was of elaborate extravagance. He demanded that she be deified and worshiped. Temples and statues were to be erected to her and sacrifices made. Caligula did not attend the funeral but hurried off to his country villa at Alba, where he amused himself at dice and with singers and dancers; yet, more than ever in his life he had mourned another, I think that he mourned Drusilla. For some time he traveled through the cities of Italy and Sicily and let his hair and beard grow to evidence his grief.
Upon his return to Rome, Caligula adopted Tiberius Gemellus, the grandson of Tiberius, whom the dead emperor had decreed should be associated with Caligula in ruling the Empire; and on the same day, his nineteenth birthday, Gemellus assumed the toga of manhood.
It was obvious to me why the young emperor had adopted the youth, for thus he could deprive him of the rights decreed by Tiberius, since, as the boy's father, Caligula had all-embracing legal rights over him, even to the matter of his life. Nor did I have long to wait before events demonstrated that my deduction was well-founded.
It seems incredible that there can be a human being totally devoid of decency, of affection even for those of his own blood, in whose whole being there is no trace of the milk of human kindness; nor can there be. Such a creature is not human; it is a monster. Such was Caius Caesar Caligula, Emperor of Rome.
Tiberius Gemellus was a delicate boy who had suffered for some time from an infection of the lungs, which resulted in a cough that the physicians were unable to overcome and for the relief of which he took a concoction having a strong medicinal odor.
At dinner one night, Caligula detected the odor of this preparation on Gemellus' breath and immediately flew into a rage--doubtless simulated. "What!" he screamed at the unhappy boy. "You fear being poisoned at my table? You suspect me, and you take an antidote? You fool! What precautions could prevail against me, your father and your emperor?"
Gemellus tried to explain that it was only the odor of the medicine he took for his cough that Caligula detected, but the latter commanded silence and ordered him from the room. A momentary hush fell upon the company. I suppose that even the creatures with which Caligula surrounded himself had vestiges of mercy. They all knew that Tiberius Gemellus was a pleasant, harmless boy. Caligula looked quickly around at the faces of his guests, a questioning challenge in his eyes.
"You acted wisely, Caesar," said Macro, quickly. "He who would take an antidote for poison must be thinking of poison." The implication was quite obvious.
"I have long suspected him," chimed in another of the sycophants, and after that there was a chorus of revilement heaped upon the character of the defenseless boy. Caesar looked pleased.
Caligula had another of his sleepless nights. I was about dead for sleep myself when dawn broke; then the Emperor sent for Marcus Bibuli, a tribune of the Praetorian Guard, dismissing me after the man arrived. I did not hear the orders that Marcus Bibuli received from the Emperor, but afterward I learned of all that happened. Marcus went directly to the apartment of Tiberius Gemellus, where the lad was still in bed. "You have offended Caesar," said the tribune, "and he commands you to atone for the insult."
"I offered Caesar no insult," said Gemellus, "but if he imagines that I did, I shall be glad to atone. What does he want me to do?"
Marcus proffered his sword to the boy. "He wishes you to take your own life."
/> For a moment Gemellus was stunned. It was difficult for him to believe that such a cruel command had been issued even by the crazy Caligula, but then, he knew that Caligula was crazy. He must have known that it would be useless to plead. Perhaps he was too proud.
"I do not know how," he said, and knelt before the tribune, bending his neck to receive the blade: "Strike, Marcus!"
The tribune drew back, shaking his head. "None may do it but you," he said, "for no man may shed the sacred blood of the Caesars."
Gemellus arose and held out his hand for the sword. "Tell me how I may do it most quickly and with the least suffering," he said.
Marcus Bibuli showed him.
Thus died the grandson of the Emperor Tiberius, courageously, as befitted one of the blood of the great Claudian.
Chapter XVII
A.U.C.791-792 [A.D. 38-39]
WHILE WE had been yet in Capri, before the death of Tiberius, Caligula had carried on an affair with Ennia, the wife of Macro, the man who had befriended him and, I am quite certain, saved his life by interceding in his behalf with Tiberius. The old emperor, convinced of the insanity of Caligula, feared for the life of his grandson, Gemellus, and for the fate of Rome should Caligula come to the throne. I once overheard him say to Macro, when the latter was pleading Caligula's cause, "Caius is destined to be the destruction of me and of you all. I am cherishing a Hydra for the people of Rome and a Phaeton for all the world."
Caligula used to joke with me about Ennia. He thought that he was doing something very smart by seducing an older woman, the wife of one of Tiberius most trusted officers. "She thinks that by becoming my mistress," he told me, "she will acquire great power, something that all women desire. To bind her to me more closely, I have promised the fool that I will make her my empress when I become emperor." And so, after the death of Drusilla, Ennia looked to the Emperor to make good his promise; but she was doomed to disappointment.