"They have stopped beating him," I said. "Listen! He has stopped screaming."
"The guards do not beat a corpse," said the woman, "nor does a corpse scream."
"You mean that they have beaten him to death?"
She nodded.
I felt very depressed, but not because of the death of the brute. Everything here was depressing, and the future looked as black as the depths of a German forest at night. Presently another guard came to our dungeon. "Where is the brat who was brought in here a little while ago?" he demanded.
As no one else spoke, I said, "Do you mean me?"
He looked all around the gloomy, sunless hole. "As you're the only brat here," he said, "I must mean you. What is your name? The baboon who brought you in forgot to register your name."
I did not answer at once. I was thinking. When I had first been arrested, I had determined not to divulge my name because that would mean that I should be returned to Agrippina, and this time she would certainly have me killed. But now the matter appeared to me in a slightly different light. If I remained here, I should be starved and abused and doubtless end up on a cross beside the Via Flaminia. If I were returned to the house of Antonia, either Germanicus or Little Boots might save me.
"Well?" demanded the guard. "Are you going to tell me your name, or shall I have to beat it out of you?" "My name," I said, "is Britannicus Caligulae Servus."
A sudden hush fell upon the room. A slave of the imperial house is a person of importance. The slave of a Caesar is not to be treated lightly by the common herd; no, not even by a citizen of Rome.
The guard blew up like an overheated boiler. "What?" he bellowed. "If you are lying, may the gods help you."
"I am not lying."
"Then why didn't you say who you were before?"
"No one asked me."
"That fool baboon!" ejaculated the guard. I guessed that he referred to the Arch, and I mentally applauded the description.
"Come with me," said the guard. "The entire city watch and half the Praetorian Guard are searching the city for you."
When I entered the house of Antonia a half hour later the demesne was preternaturally quiet. I had been praying that Little Boots would be screaming, but he wasn't. Two centurions and a tribune of the Praetorian Guard escorted me into the atrium; a moment later Agrippina joined us. When her eyes fell on me, she voiced a cry of horrified disgust.
"Is this he?" asked the tribune.
"Where have you been and what have you been doing, you horrible little barbarian?" demanded Agrippina.
"I have been in prison," I said.
"Well, get up to Caligula's room at once and let him see you. Then throw those filthy garments away and bathe yourself. Ugh!"
In the room of Little Boots, I found Germanicus sitting staring at the child in a helpless sort of way. Little Boots sat on his bed with his eyes closed and his mouth wide open, apparently emitting noiseless screams: his body was racked by them.
When Germanicus saw me, he looked astonished; but he also looked relieved. He turned to Little Boots. "Open your eyes," he said. "Britannicus is here."
Little Boots opened his eyes, and when he saw me, he closed his mouth. But when he had had a better look at me, he opened it again, this time in wonder.
"What happened to you? Where have you been?" he croaked in an almost inaudible voice. I gathered immediately that he had yelled so long and so loud that he had practically lost it.
"I had a fight and I went to prison," I explained.
"Why did you have a fight?" he asked.
"A boy spit on me."
"I could have advised him differently," said Little Boots. Germanicus grinned. "Why did you run away, Britannicus?" he asked.
"I was afraid that Agrippina would think that I pushed the baby into the pool and that she would have me beaten to death or crucified," I explained. "Now, I have to go and bathe and put on clean clothes," I added. "Agrippina told me to."
"Come right back and tell me about the fight," said Little Boots.
Germanicus walked out onto the balcony with me. He laid his hand very kindly upon my shoulder. "Do not run away again," he said. "Agrippina will not have you beaten to death or crucified; nor shall anyone else. I will see that no harm comes to you."
Germanicus may have been dumb, but he was a good scout.
Chapter V
A.U.C.770 [A.D. 17]
MUCH of great importance to a boy of eleven had transpired in A.U.C. 770, and there were even greater adventures to come; but for various reasons I shall have to skim over this and some subsequent years. In the first place, I traveled so much and saw so many strange and wonderful sights that the picture of those years is rather blurred in my memory, like a mural, faded and defaced through long years: only the highlights remain at all clear. Then, too, I was absorbed in my studies, which continued throughout all our peregrinations. But this loss to posterity is chargeable mostly to that human atrocity, Little Boots.
It was my custom, after I had learned to write, to make notes upon my wax tablets of various happenings of interest and later to transfer them to papyrus rolls, filling in minor details and recording my personal reactions to such occurrences as had been of sufficient importance to arouse any reactions. I was very proud of the result; I felt that I was becoming a man of letters. But as many of my observations related to members of the imperial family and, therefore, were seldom complimentary, I devised something in the nature of a code, or crude shorthand, based on that developed by Marcus Tullius Tiro, the private secretary of Cicero, which was known as Notae Tironianae. No one but myself could read these notes. If Agrippina had ever read them, I believe that not even Germanicus and Little Boots together could have saved me from ornamenting the Via Flaminia.
To make doubly sure, I kept my papyrus rolls hidden; but one day, when we were voyaging from Rome to Capri, Little Boots discovered them. When he found that he could not read them all and that I refused to read them to him, he threw two rolls overboard into the Mediterranean. It took all the self-control I possessed to restrain myself from pitching Little Boots in after them. So this accounts for the sketchiness of some years of these memoirs.
However, it is still of A.U.C. 770 that I am now writing, the year which marked the turning point in the affairs of Agrippina, granddaughter of Emperor Augustus, and inaugurated that series of tragedies which eventually placed Little Boots upon the throne of Rome.
Shortly after his triumph, Germanicus was entrusted with a mission of high importance and ordered to Syria, where, as the representative of Tiberius, he would wield imperial power over all of the eastern provinces. Agrippina was delighted, since it would permit her to play the role of an empress, a role for which she considered herself divinely fitted. Nero, Drusus, and Little Boots were beside themselves with excitement at the prospect of the long voyage and dreams of adventure in the fabulous lands of the East; nor was I any less intrigued. That obnoxious creature, Agrippina Minor, was too young to have any opinion whatever on the subject; and if she had, it would doubtless have been that she could bawl just as irritatingly in the East as elsewhere.
"We're going in a big trireme," announced Little Boots. "I heard Papa say so. Perhaps we shall be attacked by pirates. My august ancestor, Caius Julius Caesar, for whom I am named, was once captured by pirates and held for a ransom of twenty silver talents; but he considered this an unworthy amount for a person of his importance and insisted upon paying them twenty-five talents."
Personally, I thought this nothing to brag about. Had one of my ancestors been such a silly ass, I should have kept pretty quiet about it. It seemed to me that twenty thousand denarii, which was, I imagine, about the value of twenty silver talents in the time of Julius, was considerably more than any Caesar was ever worth. Were I asked to pay twenty thousand denarii for all the Romans in the world, I should feel that I had been grossly overcharged. I felt that they might be worth one sestertium a dozen as fertilizer, but I thought it best to keep this estimate to m
yself.
Since we had returned to Rome, Little Boots had been permitted to visit the Praetorian Camp quite often with a tutor and a retinue of slaves and freedmen, as it was a part of the policy of Agrippina to foster the affections and loyalty of the imperial troops, which had been manifested to so great an extent in the camps in Germany that the legionaries had threatened to mutiny if their idol were taken from them. It is certain that the rough soldiers idolized the little Caesar to whom they had given the name of Caligula, and Agrippina was shrewd enough to encourage this sentiment for political reasons. To the end, she always aspired to rule Rome: first, as the wife of Germanicus and later as the mother of an emperor; and the love and loyalty of the legions of Rome were a long step in that direction.
Little Boots and I, however, were not politically minded: the purpose and depths of our intrigues were to see Tibur. Fortunately for me, my young master shared my affection for the ex-gladiator; and when I reminded him that our projected journey would mean the end of our association with Tibur, he announced that he would not go to Syria.
"Don't make me laugh," I said. "If Agrippina says you are going to Syria, you are going to Syria."
"I'll yell," he threatened. "I'll yell all the way to Syria."
"That would make you hoarse," I said. "If you'd use your brains more and your mouth less, you could accomplish these things without so much noise."
"Be careful, slave!" he admonished. "Some day you may go too far. Don't forget, vile barbarian, that you address a Caesar."
"I only know that I address a spoiled brat," I said, "and if you don't lay off that 'slave' and 'vile barbarian' stuff, I'll tell Agrippina who put the frog in her bed. Now, if you'll quit calling names, I'll tell you how we can go to Syria and still see Tibur whenever we wish."
"That is silly," said Little Boots. "Nobody could see all the way from Syria to Rome, not even a Caesar."
"No, but we could take Tibur with us. All you have to do is tell Agrippina that you wish Tibur to accompany us and she'll tell Germanicus, and there you are!"
"I'm glad I thought of that," said Little Boots.
The day of our departure, filled with excitement, was one long to be remembered. We rode to the docks by the Campus Martius in such splendor as almost to rival a triumphal parade. Cavalry and cohorts of the Praetorian Guard preceded and followed us; senators, nobles, and knights accompanied us, some in chariots, some on foot; and the streets were lined with cheering thousands, for Germanicus and Agrippina were unquestionably the most popular people in the entire Roman empire-a sad commentary upon the intelligence of Romans.
The Campus Martius was jammed with humanity, its green turf trampled beneath myriad sandals. It is a large, level, alluvial plain lying along the banks of the Tiber and filled with theaters, baths, temples, and monuments of great size and beauty. The Romans seem to have an obsession for the colossal. Perhaps, because they are undersized themselves, it gives them a sense of vicarious grandeur to produce colossi; or it may be that thus they felt they were creating something-a nation which never created anything other than new means for destroying life, but copied everything from the Greeks, even to their gods, who were Greek gods with Latin names.
Coming down from the Palatine Hill, our procession passed the Forum on the right; then, turning from the Sacred Way, our route lay between the Temple of Saturn and the Basilica Julia and th us to the Campus Martius.
Riding in the carruca with me and several freedmen was Tibur, whose presence there attested the power of a Caesar, even a Caesar who was not yet six years old, quite proving Little Boots' oft repeated assertion that everything was in the power of a Caesar-some more of Agrippina's schooling.
This was the first time I had seen the Campus Martius, and I was impressed. Even great men from Greece and Egypt have raved over the beauty and magnificence of the buildings and monuments of the Campus Martius, so it is not strange that it filled the eyes of a little barbarian boy with wonder. I have always thought it far more magnificent than the Forum, possibly because of the vast expanse that it occupies, permitting each architectural gem to stand out alone without the distractions of nearby monuments to call attention from its beauty.
A multitude of people milled about, pressing forward eagerly to catch a glimpse of the members of the imperial family, so that it required more than two full cohorts of the Imperial Guard and the city watch to hold them in check. Never before had I seen so many people congregated, nor such diverse nationalities and clothing. There were tall, blond Gauls and swarthy Spaniards; black Ethiopians in long white garments; hairy Germans garbed in the skins of beasts; Greeks; Jews; bearded, burnoosed, darkvisaged men from the deserts of Arabia; in fact, representatives of all the races of the world that is the Roman Empire. There were Romans in short tunics belted at the waist; these were the plebs and the slaves, the latter in their distinctive white tunics. And in that great throng there were even the togas of the more prosperous, and people of nearly every nationality, women and children, as well as men. There were the hawkers and peddlers of sweets and cakes and fruit, crying their wares; and on the far outskirts of the crowd, little knots of people surrounded fakirs, jugglers, or other entertainers. It was, on the whole, a good-natured, well-behaved multitude, apparently as happy here and as well amused as though watching defenseless men being torn to pieces by wild beasts in the amphitheater.
I was so wide-eyed with wonder, bobbing my head from right to left and back again, trying to see everything at once, that Tibur's attention was attracted to me. "Never been here before, sonny?" he asked.
"Never. It's wonderful!"
"Well, that building on your left," he said, "is the Theater of Marcellus. Augustus built it about forty years ago in memory of his nephew who had died about ten years before, when he was twenty years old."
"It is beautiful," I said. "Augustus must have been very fond of him. Did you know him, Tibur?"
Tibur swore a great oath, but he laughed. "How old do you think I am, to have known a fellow who died fifty years ago?"
I had never given the matter any thought, but like most children I looked upon all adults as of tremendous age. "I don't know," I said.
Tibur pointed to a beautiful building on our right, a portico enclosing two temples. "I might have come nearer knowing the old woman that was erected to," he said. "She's been dead only twenty-eight years. I was one year old then."
"Who was she?" I asked.
"Octavia," he replied.
"Who was Octavia?"
"Anyone could tell you were a barbarian," sniffed Tibur. "Why she was sister to the Emperor Augustus; one of her husbands was an emperor, too, for a while. He skipped out and lived with a dame named Cleopatra, over in Egypt; she was a bad lot, from all they say. My father saw her when she came to Rome. He said she wasn't so much to look at. But she must have had something: two Caesars fell for her.
"Just back of the Portico of Octavia is the Circus Flaminius, and that building just ahead of us on the right, that's the Theater of Pompey; it seats about ten thousand people."
The theater itself was a beautiful building of stone, marble, and stucco. Clustered about it were temples, a portico, and a large hall where the Senate used to meet.
"That's where Julius Caesar was murdered," said Tibur. "Way off to the north there, do you see that big mound and statue beyond the baths of Agrippa?"
I told him that I did. It was a huge, conical mound of earth covered with evergreen trees and surmounting a base of sculptured marble. Upon its summit towered the statue of a man.
"That's the mausoleum of Augustus," explained Tibur. "That statue of the old boy is two hundred and twenty feet above the ground. In the base is a huge sepulchral chamber where his ashes lie and fourteen smaller chambers for the members of his family."
"A lot of building just for ashes," I commented. "Think of all the money and labor they spent on that."
Tibur looked at me in surprise. "That's a funny idea," he said, and scratched his head as though he was
giving the matter thought.
But now we had arrived at the dock, where a great trireme was tied up; and I was from that moment all eyes for the vessel that was to be my home for three long weeks. I had never seen so large a ship, and it did not seem possible to me that such a monster could float upon the water or that oars or sails could ever propel it to far-away Syria. Boy-like, I wanted to be all over the great ship the moment we came aboard, nor was it long before I had been into all parts of it from the benches of the galley slaves to the top of the tower on the foredeck from which the soldiers threw their weapons at the enemy in time of war, for this was a warship upon which we were to travel.
When we came aboard, the officers and men in full uniform and panoply were standing at attention and the imperial ensign was hoisted to the masthead. The two great square sails were furled then, but even so the ship made a brave show, painted in gay colors, its bronze beak gilded and above that the ivory embossed figurehead that was an image of its protecting deity.
After I had peeked into every room that was not locked and wondered at the magnificence of the ship, I came on deck again; and there I discovered Tibur leaning on the rail on the river side.
"What a wonderful ship!" I said to him.
"It is a good warship," he said, "but only a bulk compared with some others. I'll wager that Agrippina will grouse because it is not large or magnificent enough to suit her. She would wish such a ship as they say that Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, had built for him in ancient times."
"But how could a ship be more wonderful than this?" I demanded.
Tibur snorted deprecatingly. "It is but a rowboat by comparison. Why that ship of Hiero's had twenty banks of oars and three entrances. On each side of the middle entrance were thirty apartments for the men, each apartment provided with four couches. The supper room of the sailors was large enough for fifteen couches and had within it three chambers, each containing couches. All of these rooms had floors of mosaic work with all sorts of tessellated stones on which the entire story of the Iliad was depicted in a marvelous manner. Along the upper passageways was a gymnasium and also corridors with their appointments in all respects corresponding to the magnitude of the vessel. There were many gardens, containing all kinds of plants and shaded by roofs of lead or tile. There were also tents roofed with boughs of white ivy and vines, their roots in casks filled with earth. Close by these was a temple devoted to Venus, with three couches and a floor of agate and other beautiful stones of every sort that could be found in Sicily.