I Am a Barbarian

  "There was also a drawing room with five couches and a book case; and a bathroom large enough for three couches, all of Tauromenian marble. There were many rooms for the soldiers and for the men who manned the pumps; and in addition to all that I have told you, there were on each side stalls for ten horses with rooms for the fodder of the horses, their harness, and the arms and furnishings of the horsemen and attendants.

  "Near the bow of the ship was a cistern containing two thousand measures of drinking water; and adjoining this a large pool filled with seawater, in which were great numbers of fish.

  "That, sonny, was a ship."

  I thought that Tibur was lying, but years later I read a similar description of the famous ship of Hiero I, Tyrant of Syracuse, and knew that Tibur was only repeating someone else's lie.

  As I stood there by the rail of the trireme, listening to Tibur, my eyes devoured the beautiful panorama of hills upon the farther side of the river; and then they fell to the yellow flood of the Tiber, rolling and twisting down to the sea like something uncleansome noisome, devouring snake, sinuous, silent, all-powerful, typifying the cruel empire of Rome that reached out to gather the whole world within its coils. Just then, moving slowly past me on the flood, I saw a naked human corpse, floating bottom up. "Look! " I cried to Tibur, and pointed.

  "Some poor devil, strangled and thrown down the Gemonian steps to be hooked and dragged to the Tiber," he said.

  "Why?" I asked.

  Tibur shrugged. "Some criminal, perhaps," he said, "or possibly one who was thought to have designs upon the Emperor. I doubt that it was a barbarian prisoner, as there has been no triumph since that of Germanicus."

  My heart stood still and I went suddenly cold. "Do they thus to those who follow in chains behind the chariot of the victor?" I asked through dry lips and a cleaving tongue.

  Tibur nodded. Now I knew what had become of my father and mother, and hatred of Rome and the Caesars surged through me-a great wave of bitterness that has never receded. I turned and walked away. I wanted to be alone; and, alone, I then dedicated my life to o ne purpose-vengeance: someday I would kill a Caesar.

  Chapter VI

  A.U.C.770-771-772-775 [A.D. 17-18-19-22]

  WE FLOATED down the Tiber, the rowers plying their oars but just sufficiently to give the ship steerageway, and then through the harbor at Ostia and out upon the blue Mediterranean. Here the two great, gorgeous sails were hoisted-square sails of an ivory color, bordered all around with a band of purple which carried a design; and almost the full width of each sail, a huge Roman eagle in purple. We must have been a gorgeous sight from a little distance, the sails bellying to the breeze, the three banks of great oars moving in perfect unison, the sunlight streaming down from a cloudless sky upon the metal and ivory and the gay colors of the hull, with our pennants and ensign streaming in the wind. It was a most auspicious beginning of a journey that was to end in tragedy.

  Everyone was gay and happy, even Agrippina. Germanicus, as usual, was kind to everybody. I did not wonder that people loved him. If he had only had a little more common sense! Already he was making plans, which in themselves were innocent enough, that were to further try the patience of Tiberius and fortify his convictions that Germanicus was to prove as little trustworthy a statesman as he had been a general.

  Instead of sailing directly and with all speed to his post, he stopped at the islands of Sicily and Crete for the purpose of sight-seeing, and then sailed on to Alexandria, which we reached after a protracted voyage of three weeks. In Egypt, we went up the Nile, visiting temples, tombs, the pyramids, and the Sphinx, which appeared to be a great lion with a human head. Germanicus was in his glory but Agrippina was grumbling again, for during our stop at Syracuse on the island of Sicily the first cloud had appeared upon the horizon of that strange peace that was far too marvelous to be true. Word had come to Syracuse that Tiberius had recalled Silanus from Syria and appointed Cnaeus Piso governor in his stead.

  "He has set Piso to spy upon you," I heard Agrippina say to Germanicus.

  "I think Tiberius wished only to give me an experienced administrator to work with me and share the responsibility," replied Germanicus.

  "Bosh!" exclaimed Agrippina. "Piso never worked with anybody; he is arrogant and selfwilled, and his wife hates me. Mark my words, Tiberius is plotting your ruin. Don't be a fool. Get rid of the man."

  When they all finally got together in Syria, after Germanicus' sight-seeing trip had been cut short by a curt message of advice from the Emperor, Agrippina's strictures, insofar as they had applied to Piso and Plancina, appeared warranted. Piso was a bullheaded, egotistical ass, and Plancina, a spiteful, jealous, troublemaker. Tiberius had made a fatal error.

  Late in 771, another daughter was born to Agrippina. This rather cramped Agrippina's style for a few weeks, but she soon bounced back into the battle in full war paint.

  The new baby was named Julia Livilla. Why they should wish to perpetuate the name of a couple of family adulteresses was quite beyond my barbarian mind. It seemed a scurvy trick to play on an innocent infant who was probably doomed anyway to grow up to be an insane nymphomaniac without being branded at birth. As a matter of fact, after having been banished with her sister Agrippina Minor for plotting against Caligula after he came to the throne, her death was brought about by Messalina, wife of Claudius, the emperor who succeeded Caligula, in the same year that Caligula died. It is interesting to note that Messalina, one of the most notorious adulteresses of all time, should have caused Julia's destruction on the ground of adultery!

  How proudly will future Romans be able to point to their heritage. Epilepsy, insanity, scrofula, adultery, murder, and incest will be their inalienable, imperial legacies. The quarrel between Germanicus and Piso, fomented and fanned to white heat by Agrippina and Plancina, came to a head at Antioch, the capital of Syria, in 772, at which time Germanicus commanded Piso to leave the province; and shortly after, the latter set sail for Rome.

  Almost immediately thereafter, Germanicus was taken ill and died. I think that from that moment Agrippina's latent insanity became the sole activating agent of her life. "He was poisoned," she cried. "It is the work of Piso and Plancina, acting as the agents of Tiberius."

  Her loud accusations were those of a madwoman, for which an emperor less tolerant than Tiberius would have had her destroyed. She caused the body of Germanicus to be exposed naked in a public place to prove, by certain discolorations upon the body, that he had been poisoned; and, though no such proof developed, she clung to her morbid theory.

  I shall pass over the harrowing experience of the long journey back to Rome, during which we passed the ship bearing Piso back to Syria. Were I a Roman, I should still blush at the memory of the moments during which the two ships passed close to one another, when the principals aboard them screamed insults and accusations at one another. But I thank the gods that I am a barbarian and so feel no responsibility for the acts of Romans.

  I have digressed somewhat from the story of Little Boots, because the occurrences I have narrated bear directly upon his life and certainly at that time had a definite bearing upon his future, since the death of his father removed one more obstacle from his path toward the throne. It also certainly shed a light upon his character, he manifested absolutely no sorrow, and I really believe that Nero Caesar was pleased. Agrippina was heartbroken, for I am sure that she sincerely loved her husband-the one and only redeeming feature she possessed for me. In this grief, Agrippina and I for once agreed: I had lost a friend for whom I entertained real affection.

  For ten years we lived in Rome at the house of Agrippina, where Little Boots and I pursued our studies. Here, there was a fine library where I had access to the works of such men as Cicero (I doubt that Agrippina knew that his writings were there), the poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, and the historian Titus Livius. I also read in the Greek, the works of the philosopher Aristotle, the poet Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey prompted me to become a poet (which I never did
), the dramas of Aristophanes and Euripides, which determined me to be a dramatist (with identical results); but that which gave me the greatest pleasure of all was a study of the amazing works of Euclid, the great Greek geometrician. I think that these were among the happiest days that I ever spent in Rome.

  Tibur was with us. The Emperor had had a detail from the Imperial Guard stationed at the house as a protection for Agrippina and her children (she insisted that they were there to spy on her and, perhaps, murder her), and Tibur was one of their number. His special duty was to watch over Little Boots, so he accompanied us wherever we went. When Little Boots was about ten he developed a passion for witnessing the bloody contests in the arena. No games were given that did not see Little Boots, Tibur, and me in the imperial loge, which we usually had pretty much to ourselves, as Tiberius loathed these spectacles and Agrippina seldom went anywhere. Nero and Drusus were occasionally present, and often Claudius, their uncle came.

  Claudius was a funny old duffer, something of a literary dilettante. He was inclined to make very poor jokes and laugh at them himself. Agrippina and her followers thought him stupid and made all kinds of fun of him, but possibly their ultimate contempt for him was due to the fact that he was only scrofulous instead of epileptic. Even Tiberius evidently considered him not entirely all there, as he studiously ignored him. All of this was to Claudius' advantage, as it postulated an inherent harmlessness which invited neither poison nor dagger. I think he wore it consciously as a buckler against these two decimators of the imperial family-and he had the last laugh, for they all died violent deaths; and Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus became emperor of Rome, he and all his names.

  I always liked the old fellow (he was only a little over thirty at this time, but he seemed old to me; and, perhaps, now that I am writing this, I think of him more in his later years, after he became emperor). He was simple and kindly; he called me neither slave nor barbarian, but treated me for what I was: an eager, intelligent boy. Sometimes at the games, Tibur would become so excited that it was with difficulty that he was persuaded not to jump down into the arena and show some inept contestant how most expeditiously to slay a lion or a fellow gladiator, and at such times his great bull's bellow would thunder out through the amphitheater like the voice of Jupiter Tonans as he voiced his execrations or advice.

  The audiences loved it and came to expect it, and the cheers that rang out for Tibur often drowned those intended for a victor. They watched Tibur's thumb, too, and when it pointed up, theirs pointed up, and when it pointed down, down went theirs and some poor devil received the death thrust.

  Sometimes, too, Drusus, the son of Tiberius, attended the games with his wife, Livilla, the sister of Germanicus; and there was often with them a man whom I greatly detested because we slaves often heard many things of which the general public, or even the Emperor, was not aware. This Lucius Aelius Sejanus was a suave sycophant who was rapidly worming his way into the good graces of the Emperor, and was, as we slaves knew, seeking to alienate the affections of Livilla.

  I am forced to accord this reptile mention in these memoirs, though his name befouls the papyrus upon which it is written, because more than any other, perhaps, he paved the way for Caligula's ascension of the throne, paved it with the corpses of those he struck down by intrigue and subornation. The bloody highway that stretched from his evil mind to the throne of Rome was not intended for the feet of Little Boots but for those of Sejanus, and I am confident that it was only the death of this man that saved Caligula from the fate of the others who stood in the path of the fellow's ambition.

  During these years we were often in the palace of Tiberius, who took considerable interest in the welfare of the children of Germanicus. The Emperor sought in many ways to demonstrate his sympathy for Agrippina and her family, notwithstanding the fact that he must have known well that she was constantly plotting against him, as nearly everybody else in Rome knew. A hundred times I have heard her, in the presence of a mixed company of patricians, freedmen, and even slaves, state her conviction, as though it were a proved fact, that Germanicus had been poisoned at the instigation of Tiberius and that no member of the divine Julian family was safe while he lived. Only an insane mind would have invited such risks, and only a very kindly and tolerant man would have endured her plotting and her insults for as long as did Tiberius.

  It has long been the fashion in Rome to vilify Tiberius and to charge him with all manner of cruel and inhuman acts. The seeds for these slanders were sown by a madwoman and her followers and taken up and spread by those myriad minds that feed on evil reports; but I may assure you, though I hold no love for any Caesar or other Roman, that there is little or no truth in most of the infamous charges laid against him and that Tiberius was by nature a noble character and a great emperor. He was unpopular with the masses because he did not love the bloody exhibitions in the circus and would not squander enormous sums for the free entertainment of the populace, for whose edification games lasting but three or four days might drain 500,000 sestertii from the public treasury. The patricians disliked him because of his unbending pride of birth and blood and his contempt for their fawning sycophancy. A slave in an imperial household knows more of history than the historians.

  I find in my notes reference to a dinner given by Tiberius in A.U.C. 775, at which occurred an incident which clearly indicated the hold that Agrippina's delusions of persecution had taken upon her warped mind. It was at a little family dinner, an informal affair at which the guests were seated at the table in chairs instead of reclining on couches, as is the foolish and uncomfortable custom of the wealthy Romans when entertaining at the evening meal.

  Livia, the mother of the Emperor, was there, and Antonia, the mother of Germanicus, with Agrippina and her older children, Nero, Drusus, Caligula, and Agrippina Minor, who was then seven years old and quite as obnoxious as she had been at two when Caligula shoved her into the pool and she unfortunately failed to drown because of my ill-advised interference-an act which I have always regretted. As usual, I stood behind Caligula. I had taken the honors from him earlier in the day by solving a problem in geometry that had stumped him completely, and just before dinner I had bested him in a game of dice, winning one hundred sesterth from him. To satisfy his spite, he made me taste every dish that was served him before he would touch it.

  It was a poor joke at best and a scurvy reflection upon Tiberius. It was also extremely ill-timed, as a future occurrence quite conclusively demonstrated, but the Emperor really took it as a joke and poked fun at both Caligula and myself, telling me that he would have my statue erected in the Forum if I failed to survive the ordeal.

  During the entire meal, from gustatio to tertia cena, Agrippina never once spoke. She just sat there, sullen and glowering. After Tiberius had offered the mola salsa to the household gods, the pastry, confectionery, and fruit were served; and Tiberius selected an especially choice apple and graciously handed it to Agrippina.

  Without a word, she turned and passed it to a slave standing behind her chair. There was a moment of tense and terrible silence; then Tiberius turned to Livia. "Would it be any wonder," he said, "if I were to behave with severity toward one who thus publicly brands me a poisoner?"

  As a social affair, the remainder of the evening was not a success.

  Chapter VII

  A.U.C. 776 [A.D. 23]

  BY THE time I was seventeen years old, which event befell in the year 776, I felt very much a man; had I been the son of a Roman citizen, I should then have been invested with the toga virilis, the plain white garment of manhood. However, being a slave, I continued to wear the plain white tunic of a slave, nor did it seem at all probable that I should ever achieve the dignity of that heavy, uncomfortable, and ridiculous garment that even the noblest Romans laid aside with relief whenever etiquette or the caprice of an emperor permitted them to do so.

  In fact, Caligula had often told me that he would never free me, and as this would have been the first step towa
rd the possible attainment of citizenship, I felt that I had nothing to fear. I did not wish to be a citizen of Rome. I did not wish even to be a freedman. I was much better off as a slave. My only ambition along these lines was to return to Britannia and live again the happy, carefree life of a barbarian. I pined to hunt the boar and the bear, the wolf and the red deer in the oak forests of my native land, to feel again beneath my feet the reeling, swaying war chariot as it charged down upon the enemy, to smell leather and the sweat of horses and fighting men and to see blood flow in honest battle rather than in the cruel exhibitions of the amphitheater.

  Caligula was now eleven and had for some time ceased to demand my constant attendance upon him, so I now occasionally had some freedom of action. This was partially due to the fact that I had forged so far ahead of him in my studies that the comparison of my recitations with his proved embarrassing to him, with the result that he imperiously forbade my attendance at his sessions with his tutors. He gave as a reason that it was beneath his dignity to share his lessons with a slave.

  Taking advantage of my freedom, Agrippina often sent me upon errands. Her attitude toward me had gradually undergone a change. She had grown to tolerate me as an inescapable evil, much as might a man with the itch tolerate his affliction. The root of her animosity toward me could only have been jealousy of Caligula's dependence upon me, aggravated, perhaps, by a lack of servility upon my part which she doubtless thought ill-becoming in a slave. It did not concern her at all that I was the greatgrandson of Cingetorix, but it concerned me greatly.