Claudius the God

ROBERT GRAVES

CLAUDIUS THE GOD

AND HIS WIFE MESSALINA

THE TROUBLESOME REIGN OF TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS CAESAR, EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS (BORN 10 B.C., DIED A.D. 54), AS DESCRIBED BY HIMSELF; ALSO HIS MURDER AT THE HANDS OF THE NOTORIOUS AGRIPPINA (MOTHER OF THE EMPEROR NERO) AND HIS SUBSEQUENT DEIFICATION, AS DESCRIBED BY OTHERS

First published by Arthur Barker 1934 Published in Penguin Books (Volumes I and II) 1943 New edition in one volume 1954 Reprinted 1956, 1957, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1975 (twice), 1976 (twice), 1977 (twice)

Copyright 1934 by Robert Graves, All rights reserved

Author's Note

THE `gold piece', here used as the regular monetary standard, is the Latin aureus, a coin worth 100 sestertii, or twenty-five silver denarli ('silver pieces') : it may be thought of as worth one pound sterling; or five (pre-war) American dollars. The `mile' is the 'Roman mile, some thirty paces shorter than the English mile. The. marginal dates have for convenience been given according to Christian reckoning: the Greek reckoning, used by Claudius, counted the years from the First Olympiad, which took place in 776 B.C. For convenience also; the most familiar geographical names have been used: thus `France', not `Transalpine Gaul', because France covers roughly the same territorial area and it would be inconsistent to call towns like Nimes and Boulogne and Lyons by their modem names - their classical ones would not be popularly recognized - while placing them in Gallic Transalpine or, as the Greeks called it, Galicia. (Greek geographical terms are most confusing: Germany was called `the country of the Celts'.) Similarly the most familiar forms of proper names have been used - 'Livy' for Titus Livius, 'Cymbeline' for Cunobelinus, `Mark Antony' for Marcus Antonius. Claudius is writing in Greek, the scholarly language of his day, which accounts for his careful explanation of Latin jokes and for his translation of a passage from Ennius quoted by him in the original.

Some reviewers of I, Claudius, the prefatory volume to Claudius the God, suggested that in writing it I had merely consulted Tacitus's Annals and Suetonius's Twelve Caesars, run them together, and expanded the result with my own `vigorous fancy'. This was not so; nor is it the case here. Among the Classical writers who have been borrowed from in the composition of Claudius the God are Tacitus, Dio Cassius, Suetonius, Pliny, Varro, Valerius Maximus, Orosius, Frontinus, Strabo, Caesar, Columella, Plutarch, Josephus, Diodorus Siculus, Photius, Xiphilinus, Zonaras, Seneca, Petronius, Juvenal, Philo, Celsus, the authors of the Acts of the Apostles and of the pseudo-gospels of Nicodemus and St James, and Claudius himself in his surviving letters and speeches. Few incidents here given are wholly unsupported by historical authority of some sort or other and I hope none are historically incredible. No character is invented. The most difficult part to write, because of the meagreness of contemporary references to it, has been Claudius's defeat of Caractacus. For a plausible view of British Druidism, too, I have had to help out the few Classical notices of it with borrowings from archaeological works, from ancient Celtic literature, and from accounts of modern megalithic culture in the New Hebrides, where the dolmen and menhir are still ceremonially used. ,1 have been particularly careful in my account of early Christianity to invent no new libels; but some old ones are quoted, for Claudius himself was not well-disposed to the Church and derived most of his information about near eastern religious matters from his old school-friend Herod Agrippa, the Jewish king who executed St James and imprisoned St Peter..

I again thank Miss Laura Riding for her careful reading of the manuscript and her many suggestions on points of literary congruity; and Aircraftman T. E. Shaw for reading the proofs. Miss Jocelyn Toynbee Lecturer in Classical History at Newnham College, Cambridge, has also given me help for which I am: most grateful; and I must acknowledge my indebtedness to Signor Arnaldo Momigliano's monograph on Claudius recently published in translation by the Oxford University Press.

Chapter 1

Two years have gone by since I finished writing the long story of how I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus. Nero Germanicus, the cripple, the stammerer, the fool of the family, whom none of his ambitious and bloody-minded relatives considered worth the trouble of executing, poisoning, forcing to suicide, banishing to a desert island or starving to death - which was how they one by one got rid of each other - how, I survived them all, even my insane nephew Gaius Caligula, and was one day unexpectedly: acclaimed Emperor by the corporals and sergeants of the Palace Guard. I ended the story at this dramatic point; which A.D. 41 was a most injudicious thing for a professional historian like myself to do. A historian has no business to break off at a moment of suspense. I should by rights have carried the story at least one stage farther. I should have told what the rest of the Army thought of the Palace Guard's most unconstitutional act, and what the Senate thought, and how they felt about accepting so unpromising a sovereign as myself, and whether bloodshed ensued, and what were the fates of Cassius Chaerea, Aquila, The Tiger - all officers of the Guard - and Vinicius, who was my niece's husband, and Caligula's other assassins. But, no, the last thing I wrote about was the very irrelevant train of thought that passed through my mind as I was being cheered round and round the Palace Court, seated uncomfortably on the shoulders of two Guards corporals, with Caligula's golden oak-chaplet set crooked on my head.

The reason that I did not take the story any farther was that I wrote it less as ordinary history than as a piece of special pleading - an apology for having ever allowed myself to become the monarch of the Roman world. You may recall, if you have read the story, that both my grandfather and my father were convinced Republicans and that I took after them; the reigns of my uncle Tiberius and of my nephew Caligula merely confirming my antimonarchical prejudices. I was fifty years old when I was acclaimed Emperor and at that age one does not lightly change one's political colour. So I wrote, in fact, to show how innocent I was of any desire to reign, and how strong was the immediate necessity for yielding to the caprice of the soldiers : to have refused would have meant not only my own death but that of my wife Messalina, with, whom I was deeply in love, and of our unborn child. (I wonder why it is that one feels so strongly about an unborn child?) I particularly did not want to be branded by posterity as a clever opportunist who pretended to be a fool, lying low and biding- his time until he got wind of a Palace intrigue against his Emperor, and then came boldly forward as a candidate for the succession.. This continuation of my story should serve as an apology for the crooked course that I have taken in my thirteen years of Empire. I hope, that is to say, to justify my seemingly inconsistent acts at different stages of my reign by showing their relation to the professed principles from which I have, I swear, never intentionally departed. If I cannot justify them, then I, hope at least to show the extraordinarily difficult-position in which I was placed, and leave my readers to decide what alternative course, or courses, remained for me to take.

So to pick up the thread. just where I dropped it. First let me repeat that things might have turned out considerably worse for Rome if Herod Agrippa, the Jewish king, had not happened to be here on a visit. He was the only man who really kept his head in the crisis of Caligula's assassination and saved the entire, audience of the Palatine Hill theatre from massacre by the German Household Battalion. It is a strange thing, but until almost the last page of my story my readers will not have come Across a single direct reference to Herod Agrippa's surprising history, though it intertwined closely with mine at several points. The fact was that to have done justice to his adventures, as worth reading about on their own account, would have meant making him too important a figure in the story I had to tell its chief centre of emphasis lay elsewhere. As it was, my story was constantly in danger of becoming burdened with matter of doubtful relevance. It was as well that I took this decision, because he does figure most importantly in what follows and I can now, without any fear of digressive irrelevance, tell the story of his life up to the point of Caligula's murder, and then continue it concurrently with my own until I reach his death. In this way there will be no such weakening of dramatic unity as would have occurred if I had spread the story over two books. I do not mean that I am a dramatic historian: as you have seen, I am rather wary of literary formalism. But as a matter of fact one could not possibly write about Herod without presenting the story in somewhat of a theatrical style. For this was how Herod himself lived - like the principal actor in a drama - and his fellow actors played up to him well throughout. His was not a drama in the purest classical tradition, although his life was finally cut off in classical tragic style by the conventional divine vengeance for the conventional Greek sin of arrogance - no, there were too many un-Greek elements, in it. For instance, the God who inflicted, the vengeance on him was not one of the urbane Olympian community: he was perhaps the oddest deity that you could find anywhere in my extensive dominions, or out of them, for that matter, a God of whom no image is in existence, whose name his devout worshippers are forbidden to pronounce (though in his honour they clip their foreskins and practise many other curious and barbarous rites),, and who is said to, live alone, at Jerusalem, in an ancient cedar chest lined with-badger-skins dyed blue and to refuse to have anything to do with any other deities in the world or even to acknowledge the existence of such. And then there was too much farce mixed up with the tragedy to have made it a fit subject for any Greek dramatist of the Golden Age to handle. Imagine the impeccable Sophocles faced with the problem of dealing in a serious poetical vein with Herod's debts! But, as I was saying, I must now tell you at some length what I did not tell you before; and the best plan would be to finish off the old history here and now before getting into my stride with the new.

So here finally begins:

THE STORY OF HEROD AGRIPPA

Herod Agrippa was, you, must understand, no blood-relation or connexion by marriage of the great Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus's general, who married his only daughter Julia and became by her the grandfather of my nephew Gaius Caligula and my niece Agrippinilla. Nor -was he a freedman of Agrippa's: though you might have, guessed that too, for in Rome it is the custom of slaves when liberated to assume their former master's surname byway of compliment. No, it was like this: he was named in memory of this same Agrippa, recently dead, by his grandfather, Herod the Great, King of the Jews. For this remarkable and terrible old man owed his throne as much to his interest with Agrippa as to Augustus's patronage of him as a useful ally in the Near East.

The Herod family originally came from Edom the hilly country lying between Arabia and Southern Judaea: it was not a Jewish family. Herod the Great, whose mother was an Arabian, was given the governorship of Galilee by Julius Caesar at the same time as his father was given that of Judaea. His age was then only fifteen. He got into trouble almost at once for putting Jewish citizens to death without trial, while repressing banditry in his district, and was brought up before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish supreme court. He showed great arrogance on this occasion; appearing before the judges in a purple gown and surrounded by armed soldiers, but forestalled the verdict by secretly leaving Jerusalem. The Roman Governor of Syria to whom he then went, for protection gave him a new appointment in that province, the governorship of a district near Lebanon. To cut a long story short; this Herod the Great; whose father had meanwhile died of poison, was made King of the Jews by the joint order of my grandfather Antony and my grand-uncle Augustus (or Octavian, as he was then called), and ruled for thirty years, with severity and glory, over dominions that were constantly being enlarged by Augustus's bounty. He married no less than ten wives in succession, among them being two of his own nieces, and finally died, after several ineffectual attempts at suicide, of perhaps the most painful and disgusting disease known to medical science. I never heard that it had any name but Herod's Evil or that anyone else had ever suffered from it before him, but the symptoms were a ravenous hunger followed by vomiting, a putrescent stomach, a corpse-like breath, maggots breeding in the privy member, and a constant watery flow from the bowels. The disease caused him intolerable anguish and inflamed to madness an already savage nature. The Jews said that it was their God's punishment for Herod's two incestuous marriages. His first wife had been Mariamne, of the famous Maccabee family of Jews, and Herod had been passionately in love with her. But once, when he left Jerusalem to meet my grandfather Antony at Laodicea in Syria, he gave his Chamberlain secret orders that if he should fall a victim to the intrigues of his enemies, Mariamne should be put to death, to keep her from falling into, Antony's hands; and he did: the same on a later occasion when he went to meet Augustus at Rhodes. (Both Antony and Augustus had bad reputations as sensualists.) When Mariamne found out about these secret orders she naturally became resentful and said things in the presence of Herod's mother and sister which she would have been wiser to have left unsaid. For they were jealous of Mariamne's power over Herod and repeated her words to him as soon as he returned, at the same time accusing her of having committed adultery in his absence as an act of spite and, defiance - they named the Chamberlain as her lover. Herod had them both executed. But afterwards he was overtaken by such extreme grief and remorse that he fell into a fever which nearly killed him; and when he recovered, his temper was so gloomy and ferocious that the slightest suspicion would lead him to execute even his best friends and nearest relatives. Mariamne's eldest son was one of the many victims of Herod's rage: he and his brother were put to death on a charge instigated by a half-brother, whom Herod afterwards also, put to death, of plotting against their father's life. Augustus commented wittily on these executions: `I would rather be Herod's pig than Herod's son.' For Herod, by religion a Jew, was not permitted to eat pork, and his pigs could therefore be expected to live to a comfortable old age. This unfortunate prince, Mariamne's eldest son, was the father of my friend Herod Agrippa, whom Herod the Great sent to Rome as soon as he had orphaned him, at the age of four, to be brought up at Augustus's court.

Herod Agrippa and I were exact contemporaries and had a good deal to do with each other through my dear friend Postumus, Agrippa's son, to whom Herod Agrippa naturally attached himself. Herod was a very handsome boy and was one of Augustus's favourites when he came to the cloisters of the Boys' College to play at taws and leap-frog and ducking stones. But what a little rogue he was! Augustus had a favourite dog, one of the big bushytailed temple watch-dogs from Adranos near Etna, who would obey nobody in the world but Augustus, unless Augustus definitely told him: `Obey Such-and-Such until I call you again.' The brute would then do as he was told but with unhappy yearning looks towards Augustus as he walked away. Somehow little Herod managed to entice this dog when it was thirsty into drinking a basin of very strong wine, and made him as tipsy as any old soldier of the Line on the day of his discharge. Then he hung a goat-bell on his neck, painted his tail saffron-yellow and his legs and muzzle purple-red, tied, pigs' bladders to his feet and the wings of a goose to his shoulders, and set him loose in the Palace Court. When Augustus missed his pet and called `Typhon, Typhon, where are you?' and this extraordinary-looking animal wobbled through the gate. Towards him, it was one of the most ludicrous moments in the so-called Golden Age of Roman history.

But it happened on the All Fools Festival in honour of the God Saturn; so Augustus had to take it, in good part. Then Herod had a tame snake which he taught to catch mice and which he used to keep under-his gown in school-hours: to amuse his friends when the master's back was turned. He was such a distracting influence that in the end he was sent to study with me under Athenadorus, my old white-bearded tutor from Tarsus. He tried his schoolboy, tricks on Athenodorus, of course, but Athenodorus took them in such good part and I sympathized so little with them; because I loved Athenodorus, that he soon stopped. Herod was a brilliant boy with a marvellous memory and a peculiar gift for languages. Athenodorus once told him: `Herod, some day, I foresee, you will be called upon to, occupy a position of the highest dignity in your native land. You must live every hour of your youth in preparation for that call. With your talents you may in the end become as powerful a ruler as-your grandfather Herod.'

Herod replied: 'That is all very well, Athenodorus, but I have a large, bad family. You cannot possibly conceive what a cut-throat crew they are, the greatest rogues that you could meet in a year of travel; and since my grandfather died eight years ago they have not improved' in the least, I am told. I can't expect to live six months if I am forced to return to my country. (That's what my poor father said when he was being educated here at Rome in the household of Asinius Pollio. And my uncle Alexander, who was with him, said the same. And they were right.) My uncle the King of Judaea is old Herod reborn, but, mean instead of magnificent in his vices; and my uncles Philip and Antipas are a brace of - foxes.'

`Single virtue is proof against manifold vice, my princeling,' said Athenodorus. `Remember that the Jewish nation is more fanatically addicted to virtue than any other nation in the world if you show yourself: virtuous they will be behind you as one man.'

Herod answered: `Jewish virtue does not agree any too well with Graeco-Roman virtue, such as you teach it, Athenodorus. But many thanks for your prophetic words. You can count on me once I am king to be a really good king; but until I am on the throne I cannot afford to be any more virtuous than the rest of my family.'

As for Herod's character, what shall I say? Most men - it is my experience - are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted. They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any length of time ignoble mediocrities. But a few men remain always true to a single extreme character: these are the men who leave the strongest mark on history, and I should divide them into four classes. First there are the scoundrels with stony hearts, of whom, Macro, the Guards Commander under Tiberius and Caligula, was an outstanding example. Next come the virtuous men with equally stony hearts, of whom Cato the Censor, my bugbear, was an outstanding example. The third class are the virtuous men with golden hearts, such as old Athenodorus and my poor murdered brother Germanicus. And last and most rarely found are the scoundrels with golden hearts, and of these Herod Agrippa was the most perfect instance imaginable. It is the scoundrels with the golden hearts, these anti-Catos, who make the most valuable friends in time of need. You expect nothing from them. They. are entirely without principle, as they themselves acknowledge, and only consider their own advantage. But go to them when in desperate trouble and say, `For God's sake do so-and-so for me,' and they will almost certainly do it - not as a friendly favour but, they will say, because it fits in with their own crooked plans; and you are forbidden to thank them. These anti-Catos are gamblers and spendthrifts; but that is at least better than being misers. They also associate constantly with drunkards, assassins, crooked business men, and procurers; yet you seldom see them greatly the worse for liquor themselves, and if they arrange an assassination you may be sure that the victim will not be greatly mourned, and they defraud the rich defaulters rather than the innocent and needy, and they consort with no woman against her will. Herod himself always insisted that he was congenitally a rogue. To which I would reply, `No, you are a fundamentally virtuous man wearing the mask of roguery.' This would make him angry. A month or two before Caligula's death we had a conversation of this sort. At the end of it he said, `Shall I tell you about yourself?' `There's no need,' I answered, `I'm the Official Fool of the Palace.' `Well,' he said, `there are fools who pretend to be wise men and wise men who pretend to be fools, but you are the first case I have encountered of a fool pretending to be a fool. And one day you'll see, my friend, what sort of a virtuous Jew you are dealing with.'

When Postumus had been banished Herod attached himself to Castor, my uncle Tiberius's son, and the two became known as the rowdiest young blades in the City. They were always drinking and,-if the stories told of them were true, spent the greater part of their nights climbing in and out of windows and having tussles with night-watchmen and jealous husbands and angry fathers of respectable households. Herod had inherited a good deal of money from his grandfather, who died when he was six years old, but ran through it. quickly as soon as he had the handling of it. Presently he was forced to borrow. He borrowed first from his noble friends, myself among them, in a casual way that made it difficult for us to press him for repayment. When he had exhausted his credit in this way he borrowed from rich knights, who were flattered to give him accommodation because of his intimacy with the Emperor's only son; and when they became anxious about the repayment he made up to Tiberius's freedmen who handled Imperial accounts and bribed them to give him loans from the Treasury. He always had a story ready about his golden prospects - he had been promised this or that Eastern kingdom or was to inherit so many hundred thousands of gold pieces from an old senator now at the point of death. But at last, at the age of thirty-three or so, he began to approach the end of his inventive resources; and then Castor died (poisoned by his wife, my sister Livilla, as we learned some years later) and he was obliged to give his creditors leg-bail. He would have appealed personally to Tiberius for assistance, but Tiberius had made a public statement to the effect that he did not wish ever again to see any of his dead son's friends, `for fear of his grief reviving'. That only meant, of course, that he suspected them of participation in the plot against his life which Sejanus, his chief minister, had persuaded him that Castor was contriving.

Herod fled to Edom, the home of his ancestors, and took refuge in a ruined desert fortress there. It was, I think, his first visit to the Near East since his childhood. At this time his uncle Antipas was Governor (or Tetrarch as the title was) of Galilee with Gilead. For the dominions of Herod the Great had been divided up between his three surviving sons: namely, this Antipas, his brother Archelaus, who became King of Judaea with Samaria; and his younger brother Philip, who became Tetrarch of Bashan, the country lying east of Galilee across the Jordan. Herod now pressed his devoted wife Cypros, who had joined him in the desert, to appeal on his behalf to Antipas. Antipas was not only Herod's uncle but also his brother-in-law, having married his beautiful sister Herodias the divorced wife of another of his uncles. Cypros would not consent to this at first, because the letter would have to be addressed to Herodias, who had Antipas completely under her thumb, and she had recently quarrelled with Herodias, during the latter's visit to Rome, and sworn never to speak to her again. Cypros protested that she would far rather stay in the desert among their barbarous but hospitable kinsfolk than humiliate herself before Herodias. Herod threatened to commit suicide by leaping from the battlements of the fortress, and actually persuaded Cypros that he was sincere, though I am sure that no man ever lived who was less suicidally inclined than Herod. So she wrote the letter to Herodias after all.

Herodias was much flattered by Cypros's acknowledgement that she had been in the wrong throughout the quarrel and persuaded Antipas to invite Herod and her to Galilee. Herod was made a local magistrate (with a small yearly pension) at Tiberias, the capital town which Antipas had built in honour of the Emperor. But he soon quarrelled with Antipas, an indolent, miserly fellow, who made him feel too keenly the obligations under which he was now laid. `Why, nephew, you owe your daily food and drink to me,' said Antipas one evening at a banquet to which he had invited Herod and Cypros at Tyre, where they had all gone for a holiday together, 'and I wonder that you presume to argue with me.' Herod had been contradicting him on a point of Roman Law.

Herod replied, `Uncle Antipas, that is exactly the sort of remark I should have expected you to make.'

`What do you mean, sirrah?' asked Antipas, angrily.

`I mean that you are no more than a provincial boor,' replied Herod, `as lacking in manners as you are ignorant of the principles of law which govern the Empire, and as ignorant of these principles of law as you are stingy with your money.'

`You must be drunk, Agrippa, to talk to me like this,' stuttered Antipas, very red in the face.

'Not on the sort of wine that you serve out, Uncle Antipas. I have more regard for my kidneys than that. Where in the world do you manage to lay hands on such filthy brew as this? It must take a lot of ingenuity to find it. Perhaps, it's salvage, from that long-sunken vessel that they were raising in the harbour yesterday? Or do you scald out the lees from empty wine jars with boiling camel-stale and then run the mixture into that beautiful golden mixing-bowl of yours?'

After that, of course, he and Cypros and the children had to hurry down to the docks and jump aboard the first out-going ship. It happened to take them north to Antioch, the capital city of Syria, and here Herod presented himself before the Governor of the province, by name Flaccus, who treated him very kindly for my mother Antonia's sake. For you will be surprised to hear that my mother, that virtuous woman, who set her face resolutely against extravagance and disorderliness in her own household, had taken a great liking to this scapegrace. She felt a perverse admiration for his dashing ways, and he used often to come to her for advice and with an air of sincere repentance give her a full account of his follies. She always professed herself shocked by his revelations but certainly derived a deal of pleasure from them and was much flattered by his attentiveness. He never asked her for any loans of money, or not in so many words, but she used voluntarily to lend him quite large sums from time to time on promise of good behaviour. Some of it he paid back. It was really my money, and Herod knew it, and used afterwards to come and thank me profusely as if I were the actual giver. I once suggested to my mother that she was perhaps a little over-liberal to Herod; but she flew into a rage and said that if money had to be wasted she would rather see it wasted in decent style by Herod than diced away by me in low pot-houses with my disreputable friends. (I had had to conceal the dispatch of a large sum of money to help my brother Germanicus pacify the mutineers on the Rhine; so I had pretended that I had lost it by gambling.) I remember once asking Herod whether he did not sometimes grow impatient with my mother's long discourses to him about Roman virtue. He said, `I greatly admire your mother, Claudius, and you must remember that I am still an uncivilized Edomite at heart, and that it is therefore a great privilege to be instructed by a Roman matron of the highest blood and of such unblemished character. Besides, she talks the purest Latin of anyone in Rome. I learn more from your mother, in a single one of her lectures, about the proper, placing of subordinate phrases and the accurate choice of adjectives, than I would from attending a whole course of expensive lectures by a professional grammarian.'

This Governor of Syria, Flaccus, had served under my father and so had come to have a-great admiration for my mother, who always accompanied him on his campaigns. After my father's death he made my mother an offer of marriage, but she refused him, saying that, though she loved him as a very dear friend and would continue; to do so, she owed it to her glorious husband's memory never to marry again. Besides, Flaccus was many years her junior and there would have been unpleasant talk if they had married. The two carried on a warm correspondence for a great many years until Flaccus died, four years before my mother. Herod knew about this correspondence and gained Flaccus's goodwill by frequent references to my mother's nobility of soul and beauty and kindliness. Flaccus himself was no moral paragon: he was famous at Rome as the man who once, challenged by Tiberius at a banquet, matched him cup for cup throughout one day and two whole nights of uninterrupted drinking. As a courtesy to his Emperor he let Tiberius drain the last cup at dawn of the second day and so come, off victorious; but Tiberius was plainly exhausted and Flaccus, according to witnesses, could have continued at least an hour or two longer. So Flaccus and Herod got on very well together. Unfortunately Herod's younger brother Aristobulus was also in Syria and the two were not friends; Herod had obtained some money from him once, promising to invest it for him in a trading venture to India, and had afterwards told him that the ships had gone to the bottom. But it turned out that not only had the ships not gone to the bottom, but they had never sailed. Aristobulus complained to Flaccus about this swindle, but Flaccus said that he was sure that Aristobulus was mistaken about his brother's dishonesty and that he did not wish to take sides in the matter or even to act as adjudicator. However, Aristobulus kept a close watch on Herod, aware that he needed money badly and suspecting that he would get it by some sort of sleight of hand: he would then blackmail him into paying the trading debt.

A year or so later there was a boundary dispute between Sidon and Damascus; and the Damascenes, knowing how much Flaccus had come to depend on Herod for advice in arbitrating on matters of this sort - because of Herod's remarkable command of languages and his capacity, inherited no doubt from his grandfather Herod, for sifting the contradictory evidence given by Orientals - sent a secret deputation to Herod offering him a large sum of money, I forget how much, if he would persuade Flaccus to give a verdict in their favour. Aristobulus found out about this, and when the case was over, settled in favour of Damascus by the persuasive pleading of Herod, he went to Herod and told him what he knew, adding that he now expected payment of the shipping debt. Herod was so angry that Aristobulus was lucky to escape with his life. It was quite clear that he could not be frightened into paying back a single penny, so Aristobulus went to Flaccus and told him about the bags of gold that would shortly be arriving for Herod from Damascus. Flaccus intercepted them at the City gate and then sent for Herod, who, in the circumstances, could not deny that they were sent in payment for services rendered in the matter of the boundary dispute. But he put a bold face on it and begged Flaccus not to regard the money as a bribe, for he had, while giving evidence in the case, kept strictly to the truth: Damascus had justice on its side. He told Flaccus, too, that the Sidonians had also sent him a deputation whom he had dismissed, telling them that he could do nothing to help them, for they were in the wrong.

`I suppose Sidon didn't offer you so much money as Damascus,' sneered Flaccus.

`Please do not insult me,' Herod virtuously replied.

I refuse to have justice in a Roman court bought and sold like merchandise.' Flaccus was thoroughly vexed.

`You judged the case yourself, my Lord Flaccus,' said Herod.

`And you made a fool of me in my own court,' Flaccus raged. 'I have done with you. You can go to Hell for all I care, and by the shortest road.'

`I am afraid that it will be the Taenaran road,' said Herod, `for if I die now I won't have a farthing in my purse to pay the Ferryman.' (Taenarum is the southermost promontory of the Peloponnese, where there is a short cut to Hell which avoids the River Styx. It was by this way that Hercules dragged the Dog Cerberus to the Upper World. The thrifty natives of Taenarum bury their dead without the customary coin in the mouth, knowing that they will not need it to pay Charon their ferryfare.) Then Herod said, `But, Flaccus, you must not lose your temper with me. You know how it is. I didn't think that I was doing wrong: It is difficult for an Oriental like myself, even after nearly thirty years of City education, to understand your noble Roman scruples in a case of this sort. I see the matter in this light: the Damascenes were employing me as a sort of lawyer in their defence, and lawyers at Rome are paid enormous fees and never keep nearly so close to the truth, when presenting their cases, as I did. And certainly I did the Damascenes a good service in presenting their case so lucidly to you. So what harm could there have been in taking the money, which they quite voluntarily sent me? It's not as though I publicly advertised myself as having influence with you. They flattered and surprised me by suggesting that it might be so Besides, as the Lady Antonia, that most extraordinarily wise and beautiful woman, has frequently pointed out to me

But it was no use appealing even to Flaccus's regard for my mother. He gave Herod twenty-four hours law and said that if at the end of that time he was not well on his way out of Syria he would find himself up before the tribunal on a criminal charge.

Chapter 2

HEROD asked Cypros, `Where in the world are we to go now?'

Cypros answered miserably: `So long as you don't ask me to humble myself again by writing begging letters that I would almost rather die than write, I don't care where we go. Is India far enough away from our creditors?'

Herod said, `Cypros, my queen, we'll survive this adventure as we have survived many others and live to a prosperous and wealthy old age together. And I give you my solemn word that you'll have the laugh against my, sister Herodias before I have finished with her and her husband.'

'That ugly harlot,' Cypros cried with truly Jewish indignation. For, as I told you, Herodias had not only committed incest by marrying an uncle but had divorced him in order to marry her richer and more powerful uncle Antipas. The Jews could make certain allowances for the incest, because marriage between uncle and niece was a common practice among Eastern royal families - the Armenian and Parthian royal families especially - and the family of Herod was not of Jewish origin. But divorce was regarded with the greatest disgust by every honest Jew (as, formerly, by every honest Roman) as being shameful both to the husband and to the wife; and nobody who had been under the disagreeable necessity of getting divorced would consider it the first step towards remarriage. Herodias had, however, lived long enough at Rome to be able to laugh at these scruples. Everyone at Rome who is anyone gets divorced sooner or later. (Nobody, for instance, could call me a profligate, and yet I have divorced three wives already and may come to divorcing my fourth.) So Herodias was most unpopular in Galilee.

Aristobulus went to Flaccus and said 'In recognition of my services,, Flaccus, would you perhaps be generous enough to give me that confiscated money from Damascus? It would, almost cover the debt that Herod owes me - the shipping fraud that I told you about some months ago.'

Flaccus said: `Aristobulus, you have done me no service at all. You have been the cause of a breach between me and my ablest adviser, whom I miss more than I can tell you. As a matter of governmental discipline I had to dismiss him, and as a matter of honour I cannot recall him; but if you had not brought that bribe to light nobody would have been any the wiser and I would still have had Herod to consult on complicated local questions which absolutely baffle a simple-minded Westerner like myself. It's in his blood, you see. I have, in point of fact, lived far longer in the East than he has, but he instinctively knows in cases where I can only clumsily guess.'

`What about myself?' asked Aristobulus. `Perhaps I can fill Herod's place?'

`You, little man?' Flaccus cried contemptuously. `You haven't the Herod touch. And, what's more, you'll never acquire it. You know that, as well as I do.'

`But the money?' asked Aristobulus.

`If it's not for Herod, still less is it for you. But to avoid all ill-feeling between you and me I am going to send it back to Damascus.' He actually did this. The Damascenes thought that he must have gone mad.

After a month or so Aristobulus, being out of favour at Antioch, decided to settle in Galilee, where he had an estate. It was only a two-days journey from here to Jerusalem, a city which he liked to visit on all the important Jewish festivals, being more religiously inclined than the rest of his family. But he did not wish to take all his money with him to Galilee, because if he happened to quarrel with his uncle Antipas he might be forced to go away in a hurry, and Antipas would be just so much the richer. He therefore decided to transfer most of his credit from a banking firm at Antioch to one at Rome and wrote to me as a trustworthy family friend, giving me authority to invest it in landed property for him as opportunity should present itself.

Herod could not return to Galilee: and he had also quarrelled with his uncle Philip, the Tetrarch of Bashan, over a question of some property of his father which Philip had misappropriated; and the Governor :of Judaea with Samaria - for Herod's eldest uncle, the King, had been removed for misgovernment some years previously and his kingdom proclaimed a Roman province - was Pontius Pilate, one of his creditors. Herod did not wish to retire permanently to Edom - he was no lover of deserts and. his chances of a welcome in Egypt by the great Jewish colony at Alexandria were inconsiderable. The Alexandrian Jews are very strict in their religious observances, almost stricter than their kinsmen at Jerusalem,' if that were possible, and Herod from living so long at Rome had fallen into slack habits, especially in the matter of diet. The Jews are forbidden by their ancient law-giver Moses, on hygienic grounds, I understand, to eat a variety of ordinary meat foods: not merely pork - one could make a case against pork, perhaps - but hare and rabbit, and other perfectly wholesome meats. And what they do eat must be killed in a certain way. Wild duck that has been brought, down by a sling-stone, or a fowl that has had its neck wrung, or venison got by bow and arrow, are forbidden them. Every animal that they eat must have had its throat cut and have been allowed to bleed to death. Then, too, they must make every seventh day a day of absolute rest: their very household servants are forbidden to do a stroke of work, even cooking or stoking the furnace. And they have days: of national mourning in commemoration of ancient misfortunes, which often clash with Roman festivities. It had been impossible for Herod while he was living at Rome to be at the same time both a strict Jew and a popular member of high society; and so-he had preferred the contempt of the Jews to that of the Romans. He decided not to try Alexandria or waste any more of his time in the Near East, where every door seemed closed to him. He would either take refuge in Parthia, where the king would welcome him as a useful agent in his designs against the Roman province of Syria, or he would return to Rome and throw himself upon my mother's protection: it might be just possible to explain away the misunderstanding with Flaccus., He rejected the idea of Parthia, because to go there would mean a complete breach with his old life, and he had greater confidence in the power of Rome than in that of Parthia; and besides it would be rash to try to cross the Euphrates the boundary between Syria and Parthia - without money to bribe the frontier guards, who were under orders to allow no political refugee to pass. So he finally chose Rome.

And did he get there safely? You shall hear. He had not even enough ready money with him to pay for his sea-passage - he had been living on credit at Antioch and in great style; and though Aristobulus offered to lend him enough to take him as far as Rhodes, he refused to humble himself by accepting it. Besides, he could not risk booking his passage on a vessel sailing down the Orontes, for fear of being arrested at the docks by his creditors. He suddenly thought of someone from whom he could perhaps raise a trifle, namely, a former slave of his mother's whom she had bequeathed in her will to my mother Antonia and whom my mother had liberated and set up as a corn-factor at Acre, a coastal city somewhat south of Tyre: he paid her a percentage of his earnings and was doing quite well. But the territory of the Sidonians lay between and Herod had, as a matter of fact, accepted a gift from the Sidonians as well as from the Damascenes; so he could not afford to fall into their hands. He sent a trustworthy freedman of his to borrow from this man at Acre and himself escaped from Antioch in disguise, travelling east, which was the one direction that nobody expected him to take, and so eluding pursuit. Once in the Syrian desert he made a wide circuit towards the south, on a stolen camel, avoiding Bashan, his uncle Philip's tetrarchy, and Petraea (or, as some call it, Gilead, the fertile Transjordan an territory over which his uncle Antipas ruled as well as over Galilee), and skirting the farther end of the Dead Sea. He came safely to Edom, where he was greeted warmly by his wild kinsmen, and waited in the same desert fortress as before for his freedman to come with the money. The freedman succeeded in borrowing the money - 20,000 Attic drachmae: as the Attic-drachma is worth rather more than the Roman silver piece, this came to-something over 900 gold pieces. At least, he had given Herod's note of hand to that amount, in exchange;: and would have arrived with the 20,000 drachmae complete if the corn-factor at Acre had not deducted 2,500, of which he accused Herod of having defrauded him some years previously. The honest freedman was afraid that his master would be angry with him for not bringing the whole amount, but Herod only laughed and said: 'I counted on that twenty-five hundred to, secure me the balance of the twenty thousand. If the stingy fellow had not thought that he was doing a smart trick in making my note of hand: cover the old debt he would never have dreamed of lending me any money at all; for he must know by now what straits I am in.' So Herod gave a great feast for the tribesmen and then made cautiously for the port of Anthedon, near the Philistine town of Gaza, where the coast begins; curving west towards Egypt. Here Cypros and her children were waiting in disguise on board the small trading-vessel in which they had sailed from Antioch and which had been chartered to take them on to Italy by way of Egypt and Sicily. Affectionate greetings between all members of the family thus happily reunited were just being exchanged when a Roman sergeant and three soldiers appeared alongside in a rowing-boat with a warrant for Herod's arrest. The local military governor had signed this warrant, the reason for which was the non-payment to the Privy Purse of a debt of 12,000 gold pieces.

Herod read the document and remarked to Cypros: `I take this as a very cheerful omen. The Treasurer has scaled down my debts from forty thousand to a mere twelve. We must give him a really splendid banquet when we get back to Rome. Of course, I've done a lot for him since I have been out in the East, but twenty-eight thousand is a generous return.'

The sergeant interposed, `Excuse me, Prince, but really you can't think about banquets at Rome until- you have seen the Governor here about this debt. He has orders not to let you sail until it's paid in full.'

Herod said: 'Of course I shall pay it. It had quite escaped my memory. A mere trifle. You go off now, in the rowing-boat, and tell His Excellency the Governor that I am entirely at his service, but that his kind reminder of my debt to the Treasury has come a little inconveniently. I have just been joined by my devoted wife, the Princess Cypros, from whom I have been parted for over six weeks. Are you a family man, Sergeant? Then you will understand how earnestly we two desire to be alone together. You can leave your two soldiers on board as a guard if you don't trust us. Come again in the boat in three or four hours time and we'll be quite ready to disembark. And here's an earnest of my gratitude.' He gave the sergeant 100 drachmae; upon which the sergeant, leaving the guard behind, rowed ashore without further demur. An hour or two later it was dusk and Herod cut the cables of the vessel and stood out to sea. He made as if to sail north towards Asia Minor but soon changed his course and turned south-west. He was making for Alexandria, where he thought he might as well try his luck with the Jews.

The two soldiers had been suddenly seized, trussed up, and gagged by the crew, who had engaged them in a game of dice; but Herod released them as soon as he was sure that he was not being pursued and said that he would put them safe ashore at Alexandria if they behaved sensibly.. He only stipulated that on his arrival there they should pretend to be his military bodyguard for a day or two; and promised in return to pay their passage back to Anthedon. They agreed hastily, terrified of being thrown overboard if they displeased him.

I should have mentioned that Cypros and the children had been helped out of Antioch by a middle-aged Samaritan called Silas, Herod's most faithful friend. He was a gloomy-looking, solidly-built fellow with an enormous square-cut black beard, and had once, served in the native cavalry as a troop commander. He had been awarded two military decorations for his services against the Parthians. Herod had on several occasions offered to have him made a Roman citizen, but Silas had always refused the honour on the ground that if he became a Roman he would be obliged to shave his chin in Roman fashion, and that he would never consent to do that. Silas was always giving Herod good advice, which he never took, and whenever Herod got into difficulties used to say: `What did I tell you? You should have listened to what I said.' He prided himself upon his bluntness of speech, and was sadly wanting in tact. But Herod bore with Silas because he could, be trusted to stand by him through thick and thin. Silas had been his only companion during the first flight to Edom, and again but for Silas the family would never have escaped from Tyre the day: that Herod insulted Antipas. And at Antioch it had been Silas who had provided Herod with his disguise for escaping from his creditors, besides, protecting Cypros and the children and finding the vessel for them. When things were really bad Silas was at his best and cheerfullest, for then he knew that Herod would need his services and would give him an opportunity for saying, `I am entirely at your disposal, Herod Agrippa, my dear friend, if I may call you so. But if you had taken my advice this would never have occurred.' In times of prosperity he always grew more and more gloomy, seeming to look back with a sort of regret, to the bad old days of poverty and disgrace; and even encouraging them to return by his warnings to Herod that if he continued in his present course (whatever it might be) he would end as a ruined man. However, things were bad enough now to make Silas the brightest of companions. He cracked jokes with the crew and told the children long complicated stories, of his military adventures. Cypros who usually resented Silas's tediousness, now felt ashamed of her rudeness to this golden-hearted friend.

`I was brought up with a Jewish prejudice against Samaritans,' she told Silas, `and you must forgive me, if it has taken all these years forme to

overcome it.'

`I must ask your forgiveness too, Princess,' Silas replied 'forgiveness, I mean, for my bluntness of speech. But such is my, nature. I must take the liberty of saying that if your Jewish friends and relatives were in general a little less upright and a. little more charitable I should like them better. A cousin of mine was once riding on business from Jerusalem to Jericho. He came upon a poor Jew lying wounded and naked in the hot sun by the roadside. He had been set, on by bandits. My cousin cleansed his wounds and bound them up as best he could and then took him on his beast to the nearest inn, where he paid in advance for his room and his food for a few days the inn-keeper insisted on payment in advance - and then visited him on his way back from Jericho and helped him to get home. Well, that was nothing: we Samaritans are made that way. It was all in a day's work for my cousin. But the joke was that three or four well-to-do Jews a priest among them whom my cousin had met riding towards him just before he came on the wounded man, must have actually seen him lying by the roadside; but because he was no relation of theirs they had left him there to die and ridden on, though he was groaning and calling out for help most pitifully. The innkeeper was a Jew too. He told my cousin that he quite understood the reluctance of these travellers to attend to the wounded man: if he had died on their hands they would have become ritually unclean from touching a corpse, which would have been a great inconvenience to themselves and their families. The priest, the innkeeper explained, was probably on his way to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple: he, least of all, could risk pollution. Well, thank God, 'I am a Samaritan, and a man with a blunt tongue. I say what I think. I - '

Herod interrupted, 'My dear Cypros, isn't that a most instructive story? And if the poor fellow had been a Samaritan he wouldn't have had enough money to make it worth the bandits while to rob him.'

At Alexandria Herod, accompanied by Cypros, the children, and the two soldiers, went to the chief magistrate of the Jewish colony there - or Alabarch, as he was called. The Alabarch was answerable to the Governor of Egypt for, the good behaviour of his co-religionists. He had to see that they paid their taxes regularly and refrained from street riots with the Greeks and from other breaches of the peace. Herod greeted the Alabarch suavely and presently asked him for a loan of 8,000 gold pieces, offering in exchange to use his influence at the Imperial Court on behalf of the Alexandrian Jews.' He said that the Emperor Tiberius had written asking him to come to Rome immediately to advise him on Eastern affairs and that in consequence he had left Edom, where he was visiting his cousins, in a great hurry and with very little money in his purse for travelling expenses. The Roman bodyguard seemed to the Alabarch to furnish impressive proof of the truth of Herod's story, and he considered that it would indeed be very useful to have an influential friend at Rome. There had been riots lately in which the Jews had been the aggressors and had done serious damage to Greek property. Tiberius might feel inclined to curtail their privileges, which were considerable.

Alexander the Alabarch was an old friend of my family's. He had acted as steward of a large property at Alexandria which had been left to my mother in my grandfather Mark Antony's will and which Augustus, for my grandmother Octavia's sake, had allowed her to inherit, though he cancelled most of the other bequests. My mother brought this property as a dowry to my father when she married him, and it then went to my sister Livilla, who brought it as a dowry to Castor, Tiberius's son, when she married him; but Livilla soon sold it, because she led an extravagant life and needed the, money, and the Alabarch lost the management of it. After this, correspondence between him and my family gradually ceased; and though my mother had used her interest with Tiberius to raise him to his present dignity and might be supposed to be well-disposed towards him. still, the Alabarch was not sure how far he could count on her support if he became involved in any political trouble. Well, he knew that Herod had once been an intimate friend of the family, and so would have lent him money very readily had he been sure that Herod was still on good terms with us; but he could not be sure.. He questioned Herod about my mother; and Herod, who had foreseen the situation very clearly and had been clever enough not to be the first to mention her name, answered that she was in the best of health and spirits when she last wrote. He had brought with him, as if accidentally, a cordial letter from her, written to him just before he left Antioch, in which she included a budget of detailed family news. He handed it to the Alabarch to read and the Alabarch was even more impressed by it than by the bodyguard. But the letter concluded with the hope that Herod was now at last settled down to a useful political life on the staff of her esteemed friend Flaccus, and the Alabarch had just heard from friends at Antioch that Flaccus and Herod had quarrelled, and besides he could not be sure that Tiberius had really written the letter of invitation - which Herod had not offered to show him. He could not make up his mind whether to lend the money or not. However, he had just decided to do so, when one of the kidnapped soldiers, who understood a little Hebrew, said, `Give me only eight gold pieces, Alabarch, and I'll save you eight thousand.'

`What do you mean, soldier?' asked the Alabarch.

`I mean that this man's a swindler and a fugitive from justice. We are not his bodyguard, but two men whom he has kidnapped. There's an Imperial warrant out for his arrest because of a big debt at Rome.'

Cypros saved the situation by falling at the Alabarch's feet and sobbing, `For the sake of your old friendship with my father Phasael have mercy on me and my poor children. Do not condemn us to beggary and utter destruction. My dear husband has committed no fraud. The substance of what he has told you is perfectly true, though perhaps he has slightly coloured the details. We are indeed on our way to Rome, and owing to recent political changes we have the most golden expectations there; and if you lend us just enough money to help us out of our present difficulties, the God of our fathers will reward you a thousandfold. The debt on account of which my dear Herod was so nearly arrested is a legacy of his improvident youth. Once arrived at Rome he will soon find honourable means of repaying it. But to fall into- the hands of his enemies in the Syrian Government would be his ruin and the ruin of my children and myself.'

The Alabarch turned towards Cypros, whose fidelity to Herod in his misfortunes almost brought tears to his eyes, and asked, kindly but cautiously, `Does your husband observe the Law?'

Herod saw her hesitate a little and spoke for himself. `You must remember, sir, that I am an Edomite by blood: You cannot reasonably expect as much from an Edomite as from a Jew. Edom and Jewry are blood-brothers through our common ancestor, the patriarch Isaac; but before any Jew congratulates himself on God's peculiar favour to his nation let him remember how Esau, the ancestor of Edom, was tricked of his birthright and of his father's blessing by Jacob, the ancestor of Jewry. Drive no hard bargains with me, Alabarch. Show more compassion to a distressed and improvident Edomite than old Jacob did, or, as the Lord my God lives, the next spoonful of red lentil porridge that you put into your mouth will surely choke you. We have lost our birthright to you and with it God's peculiar favour, and in return we demand from you such generosity of heart as we ourselves have never failed to show. Remember Esau's magnanimity when, meeting, Jacob by chance at Peniel, he did not kill him.'

`But do you observe the Law?' asked the Alabarch, impressed by Herod's vehemence and unable to contradict his historical references.

'I am circumcised, and so are my children, and I and my whole household have always kept the Law revealed to your ancestor Moses as strictly as our difficult position as Roman citizens and our imperfect consciences as Edomites have allowed us.'

`There are no two ways of righteousness,' said the Alabarch stiffly. `Either the Law is kept, or it is broken.'

`Yet I have read that the Lord once permitted Naaman, the Syrian proselyte, to worship in the Temple of Rimmon by the side of the King, his master,' said Herod. `And Naaman proved a very good friend to the Jews, did he not?'

At last the Alabarch said to Herod: `If I, lend you this money will you swear in the name of the Lord -- to whom be Glory Everlasting - to keep His Law as far as in you lies, and cherish His People, and never by sins of commission or omission offend against His Majesty?'

`I swear by His most Holy Name,' said Herod, 'and let my wife Cypros and my children be my witnesses, that I will henceforth honour Him with all my soul and with all my strength and that I will constantly love and protect His People. If ever wittingly I blaspheme from hardness of heart, may the maggots that fed upon my grandfather Herod's living flesh so feed upon mine and consume me utterly!'

So he got the loan. As he told me afterwards, `I would have sworn anything in the world only to lay my hands on that money, I was so hard pressed.'

But the Alabarch made two further conditions. The first was that Herod should now be paid only the equivalent, in silver, of 4,000 gold pieces and receive the rest of the money on his arrival in Italy. For he did not yet trust Herod entirely. He might have thoughts of going off to Morocco or Arabia with the money. The second condition was that Cypros should take the children to Jerusalem to be educated as good Jews there under the guardianship of the Alabarch's brother-in-law, the High Priest. To this Herod and Cypros agreed, the more cheerfully as they knew that no good-looking boy or girl in high Roman society was safe from Tiberius's unnatural lusts. (My friend Vitellius, for example, had had one of his sons taken away from him to Capri, under the pretence that he would be given a liberal education there, and put among the filthy Spintrians, so that the boy's whole nature became warped. The name 'Spintrian' has stuck to him all his life, and a worse man I do not know.) Well, they decided that Cypros would rejoin him at Rome as soon as she had settled the children safely at Jerusalem.

What had made Herod come to Alexandria to borrow money from the Alabarch was the rumour that his freedman had brought with him from Acre of the fall of. Sejanus. At Alexandria it had been fully confirmed. Sejanus had been my uncle Tiberius's most trusted minister but had conspired with my sister Livilla to kill him and usurp the monarchy. It was my mother who discovered the plot and warned Tiberius; and Tiberius, with the help of my nephew Caligula and the stony-hearted villain Macro, soon managed to bring Sejanus to book. It was then discovered that Livilla had poisoned her husband Castor seven years previously and that Castor had, after all, never been the traitor to his father that Sejanus had represented him as being. So naturally Tiberius's strict rule against the reappearance in his presence of any of Castor's former friends must now be considered cancelled; and my mother's patronage was more valuable than ever before. Had it not been for this news Herod would not have wasted his time and dignity by trying to borrow from the Alabarch. Jews are generous but very careful. They lend to their own needy fellow-Jews if they have fallen into misfortune through no fault or sin of their own, and they lend without charging any interest, because that is forbidden in their Law: their only reward is a feeling of virtue. But they will lend nothing to any non-Jew, even if he is dying of starvation, still less to any Jew who has put himself outside the congregation, as they call it, by following un-Jewish customs in foreign lands - unless they are quite, sure that they will get some substantial return for their generosity.

Chapter 3

MY mother and I were unaware of Herod's return to Italy until one day a hurried note came from him, saying that he was coming to see us and adding darkly that he counted on our help to tide him over a great crisis of his fortunes. `If it's money that he wants,' I said to my mother, `the answer is that we have none.' And indeed we did not have any money, to throw away at this time,, as I have explained in my previous book. But my mother said: `It is very base to talk in that strain, Claudius. You were always a boor. If Herod needs money because he is in difficulties we must certainly raise money in some way or other: I owe it to the memory of his dead mother Berenice. In spite of her outlandish religious habits Berenice was one of my best friends. And such a splendid household manager, too!'

My mother had not seen Herod for some seven years and had missed him greatly. But he had been a most dutiful correspondent, writing to her about each of his troubles in turn and in such an amusing way, that they seemed the most delightful adventures that you would find anywhere in Greek story-books, instead of genuine troubles. Perhaps the gayest letter of all was the one that he wrote from Edom shortly after leaving Rome, telling how his sweet, dear, silly wife Cypros had discouraged him from, his leap from the fortress battlements. `She was quite right,' he concluded. `It was an excessively high tower.' A recent letter, also written from Edom, was in the same strain; it was while he was waiting for the money from Acre. He told of his shame at having sunk so low morally as to steal a Persian merchant's riding-camel. However, he wrote, shame had soon turned to a feeling of virtue for having done the owner so signal a service: the beast being apparently the permanent home of seven evil spirits, each worse than the last. The merchant must have, been incomparably relieved to have awakened one morning and found his treasured possession really gone, saddle, bridle, and all. It had been a most terrifying journey through, the Syrian desert, the camel doing its best to kill him at every dry water-course or narrow pass that they came to and even sneaking up at night to trample on his sleeping body. He wrote again from Alexandria to tell us that he had turned the beast loose in Edom, but that it had stalked him with a wicked look in its eye all the way down to the coast. `I swear to you, most noble and learned Lady Antonia, my; earliest friend and my most generous benefactress, that it was terror of that horrible camel rather than fear of my creditors that made me give the Governor the slip at Anthedon. It would certainly have insisted on sharing my prison cell with me if I had yielded to arrest.' There was a postscript: `My cousins of Edom were extraordinarily hospitable, but I must not allow you to carry away the impression that they were extravagant. They carry economy so far that they only put on clean linen on three occasions - when they marry, when they die, and when they raid a caravan which supplies them with clean linen free of charge. There is not a single fuller in the whole of Edom.' Herod naturally put the most favourable construction possible on his quarrel, or misunderstanding as he called it, with Flaccus. He blamed himself for his thoughtlessness and praised Flaccus as a man with almost too high a sense of honour, if that were possible certainly it was much too high for the people whom he governed to appreciate: they regarded him as an eccentric,

Herod now told us the parts, of his story that he had omitted from his letters, concealing nothing, or practically nothing, for he knew that this was the best way to behave with my mother; and he especially delighted her - though of course she pretended to be dreadfully shocked - with his story of the kidnapping of the soldiers and his attempt to bluff the Alabarch. He also described his voyage from Alexandria in a dangerous storm when everyone but himself and the captain had, so he said, been prostrated by seasickness for five days and nights. The captain had spent all his time weeping and praying, leaving Herod to navigate the vessel single-handed.

Then he went on: `When at last, standing in the forecastle of our gallant ship, which had now stopped its rolling and pitching, and heedless of the thanks and praises of the now convalescent crew, I saw the Bay of Naples stretched shining before me, its shores gleaming with beautiful temples and villas, and mighty Vesuvius towering above, and reeking with wisps of cloud, like a domestic hearth - I confess, I wept. I realized that I was coming home to my first and dearest homeland. I thought of all my beloved Roman friends from whom I had been so long parted, and especially of you, most learned and beautiful and noble Antonia - of you too, Claudius, naturally - how happy we would be to greet one another again. But first, it was clear, I had to establish myself decently. It would have been most unsuitable for me to have presented myself at your door like a beggar or poor client, asking for relief. As soon as we had landed and I had cashed the Alabarch's draft, which was on a Naples bank, I wrote at once to the Emperor, at Capri, begging to be allowed, the privilege of an audience. He granted it most graciously, saying that he was pleased to hear of my safe return, and we had a most encouraging talk together the next day. I am sorry to say that I felt bound to divert him - for he was in a rather morose, humour at first - with some Asiatic stories that I certainly would not injure your modesty by repeating here. But you know how it is with the Emperor: he has an ingenious mind and is very catholic in his tastes. Well, when I had told him a particularly characteristic story in that style he said, ‘Herod, you're a man after my own heart. I wish you to undertake an appointment of great responsibility - the tutoring of my only grandchild, Tiberius Gemellus, whom I have here with me. As an intimate friend of his dead father you will surely not refuse it, and I trust that the lad will take to you. He is, I am sorry to say, a sullen, melancholy little fellow and needs an open-hearted lively elder companion on whom to model himself.’

'I stopped the night at Capri, and by morning the Emperor and I were better friends than ever - he had disregarded his doctors' advice and drunk with me all night. I thought that my fortunes were restored at last, when suddenly the single horse-hair, by which the- sword of Damocles had so long been suspended over my unlucky head, contrived to snap. A letter arrived for the Emperor from that idiot of a Governor at Anthedon reporting that he had served a warrant on me for non-payment of a twelve-thousand debt to the Privy Purse and that I had "eluded arrest by an artifice" and had escaped, kidnapping two of his garrison, who had not yet returned and had probably been murdered. I assured the Emperor-that the soldiers were alive and that they had stowed away in my vessel without my knowledge and that no warrant had been served on me. Perhaps they had been sent to serve it, I said, but had decided to go for a holiday to Egypt. At all events we found them hiding in the cargo when we were half-way to Alexandria. I assured the Emperor that at Alexandria I had returned them at once to Anthedon for punishment.'

`Herod Agrippa,' said my mother severely, `that was a deliberate lie and I am most ashamed of you.'

`Not so ashamed as I have been of myself since, dear. Lady Antonia,' said Herod. `How often have you told me that honesty is the best policy? But in the East everyone tells lies and one naturally discounts nine-tenths of what one hears, and expects one's hearers to do the same. For the moment I had forgotten that I was back in a country where it is considered dishonourable to deviate a hair's breadth from the strict-truth

`Did the Emperor believe you?' I asked.

'I hope so, with all my heart,' said Herod. `He asked me, "But what about the debt?" I told him that it was a loan granted me in proper, form and on good security by the Privy Purse, and that if a warrant had been issued for my arrest' on that account it must have been that traitor Sejanus's doing: I would speak to the Treasurer at once and settle the matter with him. But the Emperor said: "Herod, unless that debt is paid in full within a week you shall not be tutor to my grandson." You know how strict he is about debts to the Privy Purse. I said in as casual a tone as I could command, that I would certainly pay it within three days. But my heart was like lead. And so I immediately wrote to you, my dear benefactress, thinking that perhaps ...'

My mother said again, `It was very, very wrong of you, Herod, to tell the Emperor such lies.'

'I know it, I know it,' said Herod, feigning deep repentance. `If you had been, in my position you would undoubtedly have told the truth:' but I lacked the courage. And, as I say, these seven years in the East away from you have greatly blunted my moral sensibilities.'

`Claudius,' said my mother with sudden resolution, `how can we raise twelve thousand in a hurry? What about the letter you had from Aristobulus this morning?'

By a pretty coincidence I had had a letter from Aristobulus only that morning asking me to invest some money for him in landed property, which was going cheap at that time, because of the scarcity of coin. He had enclosed a banker's draft for. 10,000. My mother told Herod about it.

`Aristobulus!' cried Herod. `How in the world did he rake ten thousand together? The unprincipled fellow must have been making use of his influence with Flaccus to take bribes from the natives.'

`I consider, in that case,' said my mother, `that he behaved very shabbily towards you in reporting to my old friend Flaccus that the Damascenes were sending you a present for having pleaded their cause so well. I should have thought better of Aristobulus than that. And now perhaps it would only be justice if that ten, thousand were used as a temporary - temporary, mind you, Herod - loan to help you on your feet again. There will be no difficulty about the remaining two thousand - will there, Claudius?'

`You forget that Herod still has eight thousand from the Alabarch, Mother. Unless he has already spent it. He'll be better off than we are if we entrust Aristobulus's money to him.'

Herod was warned that he must repay the debt within three months without fail or I would be guilty of a breach of fiduciary trust. I did not like the business in the least, but I preferred it to mortgaging our house on the Palatine Hill to raise the money, which would have been the only other course. However, everything turned out unexpectedly well. Not only was Herod's appointment as tutor to Gemellus confirmed, as soon as he had paid the Privy Purse the 12,000, but he also repaid me the whole amount of the Aristobulus loan two days before it was due and, besides that, a former debt of 5,000 which we had never expected to see again. For Herod, as Gemellus's tutor, was thrown a great deal into the company of Caligula, whom Tiberius, now seventy-five years old, had adopted as his son and who was his heir-presumptive. Tiberius kept Caligula very short of money, and Herod, after gaining Caligula's confidence by some fine banquets, handsome, presents and the like, became his accredited agent for borrowing large sums, in the greatest secrecy, from rich men who wanted to stand in well with the new Emperor. For Tiberius was not expected to live much longer. When Caligula's confidence in Herod was thus proved and a matter of common knowledge in financial circles, he found it easy to borrow money in his own name as well as in Caligula's. His unpaid debts of seven years before had mostly settled themselves by the death of the creditors: for the ranks of the rich had been greatly thinned by Tiberius's treason trials under Sejanus, and under Macro, Sejanus's successor, the same destructive process continued. About the rest of his debts Herod was easy enough in his mind: nobody would dare to sue a man who stood so high in Court favour as himself. He paid me back with part of a loan of 40,000 gold pieces which he had negotiated with a freedman of Tiberius's, a fellow who, as a slave, had been one of the warders of Caligula's elder brother Drusus, when he was starved to death in the Palace cellars. Since his liberation he had become immensely rich by traffic in high-class slaves - he would buy sick slaves cheap and doctor them back to health in a hospital which he managed himself - and was afraid that Caligula when he became Emperor would take vengeance on him for his ill-treatment of Drusus; but Herod undertook to soften Caligula's heart towards him.

So Herod's star grew daily brighter, and he settled several matters in the East to his entire satisfaction. For instance, he wrote to friends in Edom and Judaea and anyone to whom he now wrote as a friend was greatly flattered- and asked them whether they could provide, him with any detailed evidence of maladministration against the Governor who had tried to arrest him at Anthedon. He collected quite an imposing amount of evidence in this way and had it embodied in a letter purporting to come from leading citizens of Anthedon; which he then sent to Capri. The Governor lost his appointment. Herod paid back his debt in Attic drachmae to the corn-factor at Acre, less twice the amount which had been unwarrantably deducted from the money sent to him in Edom; explaining that these 5,000 drachmae which he was retaining represented a sum which the corn-factor had borrowed from the Princess Cypros some years back and had never returned. As for Flaccus, Herod made no attempt to be revenged on him, for my mother's sake; and Flaccus died shortly afterwards. Aristobulus he decided to forgive magnanimously, knowing that he must be feeling not only ashamed of himself but most vexed at his lack of foresight in antagonizing a brother now grown so powerful. Aristobulus could be made very useful, once he was properly chastened in spirit. Herod also revenged himself on Pontius Pilate, from whom the order for his arrest at Anthedon had originated, by encouraging some friends of his in Samaria to protest to the new Governor of Syria, my friend Vitellius, about Pilate's rough handling of civil disturbances there and to charge him with bribe taking. Pilate was ordered to Rome to answer these charges before Tiberius.

One fine spring day as Caligula and Herod were out riding together in an open coach in the. country near Rome, Herod remarked gaily, 'It is high time, surely, for the old warrior to be given his wooden foil.' By the old warrior he meant Tiberius, and by the wooden foil he meant the honourable token of discharge that worn-out sword-fighters are given in the arena. He added, 'And if you will pardon what may sound suspiciously like flattery, my dear fellow, but is my honest opinion, you will make a far finer showing at the game of games than he ever made.'

Caligula was delighted, but unfortunately Herod's coachman, overheard the remark, understood it, and stored it in his memory. The knowledge that he had power to ruin his master encouraged this turnip-witted fellow to attempt a number of impertinences towards him, which for a time, as it happened, passed unnoticed. But at last he took it into his head to steal some very fine embroidered carriage-rugs and sell them to another coachman whose master lived at some distance from Rome. He reported that they had been accidentally ruined by the leakings of a tar-barrel through the planks of the stable-loft, and Herod was, content to, believe him; but one day, happening to go for a pleasure-drive with the knight to whose coachman they had been sold, he found, them tucked about his knees. And so the theft came out. But the knight's coachman gave the thief timely-warning and he ran away, at once to avoid punishment. His original intention had been to face Herod, if he were found out, with the threat to reveal to the Emperor what he had overheard. But he lost courage when the appropriate moment came, suddenly realizing that Herod was quite capable of killing him if he tried blackmail and of producing witnesses that the blow had been struck in self-defence. The coachman was one of those people whose-muddled minds get everyone into trouble, themselves most of all.

Herod knew the fellow's probable haunts in Rome and, not realizing what was at stake, asked the City officers to arrest him., He was found and brought up in court on a charge of theft, but claimed the privilege as a freedman of appealing to the Emperor instead of being summarily sentenced. He added: `I have something to tell the Emperor which concerns his personalsecurity it

is what I, once heard when driving a coach on the road to Capua. The magistrate had no alternative but to send him under armed escort to Capri.

From what I have already told you about the character of my uncle Tiberius you will perhaps be able to guess what course he took when he read the magistrate's report. Though he realized that the coachman must have overheard some treasonable remark of Herod's, he did not yet wish to know precisely what it was: Herod obviously was not the sort of man to make any very dangerous statement in a coachman's hearing. So he kept the coachman in prison, unexamined, and instructed young Gemellus, now about ten years old, to keep a sharp watch on his tutor and to report any; word or action of his that seemed to have any treasonable significance. Herod meanwhile grew anxious at Tiberius's delay in examining the coachman and talked the matter over with Caligula. They decided that nothing had been said by Herod, on the occasion to which the coachman was apparently referring, that could not be explained away. If Herod himself pressed for an investigation, Tiberius would be the more likely to take his word that the `wooden foil' was intended literally. For Herod would say that they had been discussing Yellow Legs, a famous swordfighter who had since retired, and that he had merely been congratulating Caligula on his fencing abilities.

Herod then noticed that Gemellus was behaving in a most suspicious manner - eavesdropping and turning up at his apartments at curious times. It was clear that Tiberius had set him to work. So he went once more to my mother and explained the whole case, begging her to press for a trial of the coachman, on his behalf. The excuse was to be that he wished to see the man well punished for his theft and for his ingratitude, Herod having voluntarily given him his freedom from slavery only the year before. Nothing was to be said about the man's intended revelations. My mother did as Herod asked. She wrote to Tiberius and, after the usual long delay, back came a letter. It is now in my possession, so that I can quote the very words. For once Tiberius went straight to the point.

`If this coachman means to accuse Herod Agrippa falsely of some treasonable utterance or other in order to cover his own misdoings, he has suffered enough for that folly by his long confinement in my not very hospitable cells at Misenum. I was thinking of letting him go with a caution against appealing to me in future, when about to be sentenced in the lower courts for a trivial offence like theft. I am too old and too busy to be bothered with such frivolous appeals. But if you force me to investigate the case and it turns out that a treasonable utterance was in fact made, Herod will regret having brought the matter up; for his desire to see his coachman severely punished will have brought a very severe punishment upon himself.'

This letter made Herod all the more anxious to have the man tried, and in his own presence. Silas, who had come to Rome, dissuaded him from this, quoting the proverb: `Don't tamper with Camarina'. (Near Camarina, in Sicily, was a pestilent marsh which the inhabitants drained for hygienic reasons. This exposed the city to attack: it was captured and destroyed.) But Herod would not listen to Silas; the old fellow had been growing very tiresome after five years of unbroken prosperity. Soon he heard that Tiberius, who was at Capri, had given orders for the big villa at Misenum, the one where he afterwards died, to be made ready to receive him. He, immediately arranged to go down to that neighbourhood himself, with Gemellus, as a guest of Caligula, who had a villa close by at Bauli; and in the company of my mother, who was, you will recall, grandmother both to Caligula and to Gemellus. Bauli is quite close to Miserium on the north coast of the Bay of Naples, so nothing was more natural than for the whole party to go together to pay their respects to Tiberius on his arrival. Tiberius invited them all to dine oil the following day. The prison where the coachman was languishing lay close by, so Herod persuaded my mother to ask Tiberius in everyone's presence to settle the case that very afternoon. I had been invited to Bauli myself, but had declined, for neither my uncle Tiberius nor my mother was very patient of my company. But I have heard the whole story from several people who were present. It was a fine dinner and only spoilt by the great scarcity of wine. Tiberius was now following his doctors' advice and abstaining altogether from drink, so as a matter of fact and caution nobody asked for his cup to be refilled after he had emptied it; and the waiters did not offer to do so, either. Going without wine always put Tiberius in a bad humour, but, nevertheless, my mother boldly brought up the subject of the coachman again. Tiberius interrupted her, as if unintentionally, by starting a new topic of conversation, and she made no further attempt until after dinner, when the whole party went out for a stroll under the trees surrounding the local racecourse. Tiberius did not walk: he was carried in a sedan, and my mother, who had become quite brisk in her old age, walked alongside. She said: 'Tiberius, may I speak to you about that coachman? It is high time, surely, that his case was settled, and we should all feel much easier, I think, if you were good enough to settle it to-day, once and for all. The prison is just over there and it could be all got over in a very few minutes.'

`Antonia,' Tiberius said, 'I have already given you the hint to leave well, alone, but if you insist I shall do as you ask.' Then he called, up Herod, who was walking behind with Caligula; and Gemellus, and said: `I am now about to examine your coachman, Herod Agrippa, at the insistence of my sister-in-law, the Lady Antonia, but I call the Gods to witness that what I am doing is not done by my own inclination but because I am forced to it.'

Herod thanked him profusely for his condescension. Then Tiberius called for Macro, who was also present, and ordered him to bring the coachman up for trial before him immediately.

It seems that Tiberius had enjoyed a few words in private with Gemellus on the previous evening. (Caligula, a year or two afterwards, forced Gemellus to give him an account of this interview.) Tiberius had asked Gemellus whether he had anything to report against his tutor, and Gemellus answered that he had overheard no disloyal words and witnessed no disloyal action; but that he saw very little of Herod these days - he was now always about with Caligula and left Gemellus to study books by himself instead of coaching him personally. Tiberius then questioned the boy about loans, whether Herod and Caligula had ever discussed loans in his presence. Gemellus considered for awhile and then answered that on one, occasion Caligula had asked Herod about a P.O,T. loan and Herod had answered, `I'll tell you about it afterwards: for little pitchers have long ears.' Tiberius immediately guessed what P.O.T. meant. It surely meant a loan negotiated by Herod on Caligula's behalf which would be repayable post obitum Tiberii - that is, after the death of Tiberius. So Tiberius dismissed Gemellus and told him that a P.O.T. loan was a matter of no significance and that he now had the fullest confidence in Herod. But he immediately sent a confidential freedman to the prison, who ordered the coachman, in the Emperor's name, to disclose what remark of Herod's he had overheard. The coachman repeated Herod's exact words and the freedman took them back to Tiberius. Tiberius considered awhile and then sent the freedman back to the prison with instructions as to what the coachman must say when brought up for trial. The freedman made him memorize the exact words and repeat them after him, and then gave him to understand that if he spoke them properly he would be set at liberty and given a money reward.

So there on the race-track itself the trial took place. The coachman was asked by Tiberius whether he pleaded guilty to stealing the carriage rugs. He answered that he was not guilty, since Herod had given them to him as a present but afterwards repented of his generosity. At this point Herod tried to interrupt the evidence by exclamations of disgust at his ingratitude and mendacity, but Tiberius begged him to be silent and asked the coachman: `What, else have you to say in your defence?'

The coachman replied: `And even if I had stolen those rugs, as I did not, it would have been an excusable act. For my master is a traitor. One afternoon shortly before my arrest I was driving a coach in the direction of Capua with your grandson, the Prince, and my master, Herod Agrippa, seated behind me. My master said: "If only the day would come-when the old warrior finally dies and you find yourself named as his successor in the monarchy! For then young Gemellus won't be any hindrance to you. It will be easy enough to get rid of him, and soon everyone will be happy, myself most of all.’

Herod was so taken aback by this evidence that for the moment he could not think what to say, except that it was perfectly untrue. Tiberius questioned Caligula, and Caligula, who was, a great coward, looked anxiously at Herod for guidance, but got none, so said in a great hurry that if Herod had made any such remark he had not heard it. He remembered the ride in the coach and it had been a very windy day. If he had heard any such treasonable words he certainly would not have let them pass but would have reported them immediately to his Emperor. Caligula was most treacherous towards his friends, if his own life was in danger, and always hung on the lightest word of Tiberius: so much so that it was said of him that never was a better slave to a worse master. But Herod spoke up-boldly 'If your son, who was sitting next to me, didn't hear the treason that I am alleged to have uttered - and nobody has quicker ears than he for hearing treasons against you - then surely the coachman could not have heard them, sitting as he was with his back to me.'

But Tiberius had already made up his mind. He said shortly to Macro, `Put that man in handcuffs,' and then to his sedan-men, `Proceed.' They stepped off, leaving Herod, Antonia, Macro, Caligula, Gemellus, and the rest staring at each other in doubt and astonishment. Macro could not make out who it was whom he was supposed to handcuff, so when Tiberius, having been carried all the way round the race-track, returned to the scene of the trial, where the, whole company was still standing just as he had left them, Macro asked him, `Pardon me, Caesar, but which of these men am I to arrest?' Tiberius pointed to Herod and- said, `That's the man I mean.' But Macro, who, had great respect for Herod and hoped perhaps to break down Tiberius's resolution by pretending to misunderstand him, once more asked, `You surely cannot mean Herod Agrippa,, Caesar?' 'I mean no one else,' growled Tiberius. Herod ran forward and all but prostrated himself before Tiberius. He did not dare to do it quite, because he knew Tiberius's dislike of being treated like an Oriental monarch. But he stretched out his arms in a pitiful way and protested himself Tiberius's most loyal servant and absolutely incapable of so much as admitting the least treasonable thought to cross his mind, let alone uttering it. He began to talk eloquently of his friendship with Tiberius's dead son (a victim, like himself, of unfounded charges of treason), whose irreparable-loss he had never ceased to mourn, and of the extraordinary honour that Tiberius had done him in appointing him tutor to his grandchild. But Tiberius looked at him in that cold, crooked way of his and sneered, `You can make that speech, in your defence, my noble Socrates, when I fix the date of your trial.' Then he told Macro, 'Take him away to the prison yonder. He can use the chain discarded by this honest coachman-fellow.'

Herod did not utter another word except to thank my mother for her generous but unavailing efforts on his behalf.' He was marched off to the prison, with his wrists handcuffed behind him. It was a place where misguided Roman citizens who had appealed to Tiberius from sentences in lower courts were confined - in cramped and unhealthy quarters, with poor food and no bedding until Tiberius should have time to settle their cases. Some of them had been there many years.

Chapter 4

HEROD, as he was being led towards the prison gates, saw a Greek slave of Caligula's waiting there. The slave seemed out of breath, as if he had been running, and held a water pitcher in his - hand. Herod hoped that Caligula had sent him there as a sign that he was still a friend, but that he could not openly declare his friendship, for fear, of offending Tiberius. He called to the boy, 'Thaumastus, for God's sake give me a drink of water.' It was very hot weather for September and, as I told you, there had been hardly any wine to drink for dinner. The boy came forward readily, as if he had, been warned for this service; Herod, greatly reassured, put his lips to the pitcher and drank it nearly dry. For it contained wine, not water. He said to the slave: `You have earned a prisoner's gratitude for this drink and I promise you that when I am free again I shall pay you well for it. I shall see that your master, who certainly is not a man to desert his friends, gives you your liberty as soon as he has secured mine, and I shall then employ you in a position of trust in my household.' Herod was able to keep his promise and Thaumastus eventually became his chief steward. He is still alive at the time I write this, in the service of Herod's son, though Herod himself is dead.

When Herod was led into the prison compound it happened to be the hour for exercise, but there was a strict rule that prisoners should not converse with each other without express permission from, the warders. Each group of five prisoners had a warder assigned to it who watched every movement they made. Herod's arrival caused a great commotion among these bored and listless men, for the sight of an Eastern prince wearing a cloak of real Tyrian purple was something that had never been seen there before. He did not greet them, however, but stood gazing at the distant roof of Tiberius's villa, as if he could read on it some message as to what. his fate was to be.

Among the prisoners was an elderly German chieftain whose history, it seems, was, as follows. He had been an officer of German auxiliaries under Varus when Rome still held the province across the Rhine, and had been given Roman citizenship in recognition of his services in battle. When Varus was treacherously ambushed and his army massacred by the famous Hermann, this chieftain, although he had not (or so he said) served in Hermann's army or given him any assistance in his plans, took no steps to prove his continued loyalty to Rome but became the head-man of his ancestral village. During the wars carried on by my brother Germanicus he left this village with his family and retired inland, returning only when Germanicus was recalled to Rome and the danger seemed-past. He was then unlucky enough to be captured by the Romans in one of the cross-river raids that were made from time to time to keep our men in good fighting condition and to remind the Germans that one day the province would be ours again. The Roman general would have had him flogged to death as a deserter, but he protested that he had never shown any disloyalty to Rome, and now exercised his right as a Roman citizen to appeal to the Emperor. (In the interval, however, he had forgotten all his camp-Latin.). This man asked his warder, who understood a little German,' to tell him about that melancholy, handsome young man standing under the tree. Who was he? The warder answered that he was a Jew and a man of great importance in his own country. The German begged for permission to speak to Herod, saying that he had never in all his life met a man of the Jewish race, but that he understood the Jews to be by no means inferior intelligence or courage even to the Germans: one might learn a lot from a Jew. He added that he too was a man of great importance in his own country. `This place is getting to be quite a university,' said the warder, grinning. 'If you two foreign gentlemen care to swap philosophy, I'll do my best to act as interpreter. But don't expect too much of my German.'

Now, while Herod had been standing under the tree, with his head muffled in his cloak because he did not wish the inquisitive prisoners and warders to see his tears, a curious thing had happened. An owl had perched on the branches above his head and dropped dirt on him. It is very rare for an owl to appear in broad daylight, but only the German had noticed the bird's performance; for everyone else was so busy looking at Herod himself. .

The German, speaking through the warder, greeted Herod courteously and, began saying that he had something of importance to tell him. Herod uncovered his face when the warder began speaking and replied with interest that. he was all attention. For the moment he expected a message from Caligula, and did not realize that the warder was merely an interpreter for one of the prisoners.

The warder said, `Excuse me, sir, but this German gentleman wants to know whether you are aware that an owl has just dropped dirt on your cloak? I am acting as this German gentleman's interpreter. He is a Roman citizen but his Latin's got a bit rusty in that damp climate of theirs.'

This made Herod smile in spite of his disappointment. He knew that prisoners with nothing to do spend a great deal of their time in, playing tricks on each other, and that sometimes the warders, equally bored with their duties, assist them. So he did not look up into the tree or examine his cloak to see whether the man was not perhaps making. fun of him. He replied in a bantering tone: `Stranger things than that have happened to me, friend. A flamingo recently flew in at my bedroom window, laid an egg in one of my shoes, and then flew out again. My wife felt quite upset. If it had been a sparrow or a thrush or even an owl she would: not have given the incident a second thought. But a flamingo, now ...'

The German did not know what a flamingo was, so he disregarded; this sally, and went on: `Do you know what it signifies when. a bird drops dirt on your head or shoulder? In my country it is always taken for a very lucky sign indeed. And that so holy a bird as an owl has done this and has abstained from uttering any ill-omened cries should be a sign to cause you the profoundest joy and hope. We Chaucians know all that is to be known about owls. The owl is our totem and gives our nation its name. If you were a Chaucian I should say that the God Mannus had sent this bird as a sign to you that as a result of this imprisonment, which will only be a short one, you will be promoted to a position of the greatest dignity in your own country. But I am told that you are a Jew. May I ask, sir, the name of the God of your country?'

Herod, who was still not sure whether the German's earnestness was real or assumed, answered, quite truthfully, `The Name of our God is too holy to be pronounced. We Jews are obliged to refer to it by periphrases, and even by periphrases of periphrases.'

The German decided that Herod must be making fun of him and said: `Do not think, please, that I am saying this in the hope of any reward from you; but seeing the bird do what it did I felt impelled to congratulate you on the omen. Now I have one more thing to tell you,, because I am a well-known augur in my country when next you see this bird, though it may be in the time of your highest prosperity, and it settles near you and begins to utter cries, then you will know that your days of happiness are over and that the number of those days which still remain for you to live will be no greater than the number of cries that the owl has given. But may that day be long in coming!'

Herod had quite recovered his spirits by this time and said to the German: `I think, old man, that you talk the most charming nonsense that I have heard since my return to Italy. You have my sincere thanks for trying to cheer me and if ever I get out of this place a free man, I shall see what I can do to have you freed too. If you are as good company out of chains as in chains we shall have some enjoyable evenings together, drinking and laughing and telling funny stories.'

The German went off in a huff.

Meanwhile Tiberius had given sudden orders to his servants to pack up his things and sailed back to Capri that very afternoon. He was afraid, I suppose, that my mother would try to persuade him to release Herod, and it would be difficult for him to refuse, being so much in her debt over the matter of Sejanus and Livilla. My mother, realizing that she could do nothing for Herod now, except perhaps to arrange that prison life should be made as easy as possible for him, asked Macro to oblige her in this as far as was possible. Macro replied that if he gave Herod more considerate treatment than the other prisoners he would certainly get into trouble with Tiberius. My mother replied, `Short of allowing him any facilities for escape, do all that you can for him, I beg you, and if Tiberius happens to hear of it and to be displeased I promise to bear the full weight of his displeasure myself.' She much disliked being in the position of asking favours from. Macro, whose father had been one of our family slaves. But she felt great personal concern for Herod and would have done almost anything' for him then. Macro was flattered by her pleas and promised to choose a warder for Herod who would show him every consideration, and also to appoint as governor of the prison a captain whom she knew personally. More than this, he arranged that Herod should take his meals with the governor and should be allowed to visit the local baths daily under escort. He said that if Herod's freedmen cared to bring him extra food and warm bedding - for winter was now drawing on - he would see that no difficulties were made, but that the freedmen must tell the porter at the gate that these comforts were for the governor's own use. So Herod's experience of prison was not too painful, though he was chained to the wall by a heavy iron chain whenever his warder was not in actual attendance; but he worried, greatly as to what was happening to Cypros and the children, for he was allowed no news from the outside world. Silas, though he had not had the satisfaction of telling Herod that he should have listened to his advice (about not tampering with the marsh of Camarina), saw to it that the freedmen brought the prisoner his food and other necessities punctually and discreetly; and did as much for him as lay in his power to do. In the end he was himself arrested for trying to smuggle a letter into the prison; but was released with a caution.

Early in the following year Tiberius decided to leave Capri for Rome and told Macro to send all the prisoners there, because he intended to settle their cases on his arrival. Herod and the rest were therefore taken from Misenum and marched, by stages, to the detention barracks in the Guards Camp outside the City. You will recall that Tiberius turned back when within sight of the City walls because of an unlucky omen, the death of his pet wingless dragon; he hurried back to Capri, but caught a chill and got no farther than Misenum. You will recall, too, that when he was believed to be dead and Caligula was already strutting about the hall of the villa, flashing his signet ring among a crowd of admiring courtiers, the old man started up from his coma and called loudly for food. But the news of his death and Caligula's succession had already reached Rome by courier. Herod's freedman, the one who brought him the money from Acre, happened to meet the courier on the outskirts of the City, who shouted out the news as he galloped past. The freedman ran to the camp, entered the detention barracks, and running excitedly towards. Herod cried out in Hebrew, `The Lion is dead.' Herod, questioned him rapidly in the same language and appeared so extraordinarily pleased that the governor came up and demanded to be told what news the freedman had brought.. This was a breach of prison rules, he said, and must not occur. again. Herod explained that it was nothing, only the birth of a male heir to one of his relatives in Edom; but the governor made it plain that he insisted on knowing the truth, so Herod finally said, `The Emperor is dead.'

The governor, who was on very good terms with Herod by this time, asked the freedman whether he was sure that the news was true. The freedman replied that he had heard it directly from an Imperial courier. The governor knocked off Herod's chain with his own hands and said, 'We must celebrate this, Herod Agrippa, my friend, with the best wine in the camp.' They were just eating a most cheerful meal together, Herod being in his best form and telling the governor what a good fellow he was, and how considerately he had behaved, and how happy they would all be now that Caligula was. Emperor, when news came that Tiberius was not dead after all This put the governor into a great state of alarm. He decided that Herod had arranged for this false message to be brought just to get him into trouble. `Back to your chain this instant,' he shouted angrily, `and never expect me to trust you again.' So Herod had to get up from the table and go gloomily back to his cell. But, as you will again recall, Macro had not allowed Tiberius to enjoy his new lease of life for very long but had gone into the Imperial bed-chamber and smothered him with a pillow. So again the news came that Tiberius was dead, this time really dead. But the governor kept Herod chained up all night. He was not taking any risks.

Caligula wished to release Herod at once, but curiously enough it was my mother who prevented him from doing so. She was at Baiae, close to Misenum. She told him that until Tiberius's funeral was over it would be indecent to release anyone who had' been imprisoned by him on a charge of treason. It would look much better if Herod, though allowed to return to his house at Rome, were to remain for a time under open arrest. So this was done. Herod went home but still had his warder with him and was expected to wear prison dress. When the official mourning for Tiberius was at an end, Caligula sent Herod a message telling him to shave and put on clean clothes and come to dine with him the next day at the Palace. Herod's troubles seemed over at last.

I do not think that I mentioned the death, three years before this, of Herod's uncle Philip: he left a widow - Salome, Herodias's daughter, reputed the most beautiful woman in the Near East. When the news of Philip's death reached Rome, Herod had immediately spoken to the freedman who was most in Tiberius's confidence where Eastern questions were concerned, and persuaded him to do something for him.' The freedman was to remind Tiberius that Philip had left no children, and was to suggest that his tetrarchy of Bashan should be given to no other member of the Herod family but be temporarily attached, for administrative purposes, to the province of Syria. The freedman was on no account to remind Tiberius of the royal revenues of the tetrarchy, which amounted to 160,000 gold pieces a year. Should Tiberius take his advice and instruct him to write a letter informing the Governor of Syria that the tetrarchy would now pass under his jurisdiction, he was to smuggle in a postscript to the effect that the royal revenues must be allowed to accumulate until a successor to Philip should be appointed. Herod was reserving Bashan and its revenues for his own use. So it happened that when, at the dinner to which he had invited Herod, Caligula gratefully rewarded him for his sufferings by granting him the tetrarchy complete with revenues, with the title of king thrown in too, Herod found himself very well off indeed. Caligula also called for the chain which Herod had worn in prison and gave him an exact replica of it, link for link, in the purest gold. A few days later Herod, who had not forgotten to secure the old German's release and to get the coachman condemned for perjury, deprived of his freedom, and whipped nearly to death, sailed joyfully to, the East to take over his new kingdom. Cypros went with him, more joyful even than he. During Herod's imprisonment she had been looking thoroughly ill and miserable, for she was the most faithful wife in the world and even refused to eat. or drink anything better than the prison rations that her husband was drawing. She stayed at the house of Herod's younger brother, Herod Pollio.

This happy pair, then, Herod and Cypros, reunited once more, and accompanied as usual by Silas, sailed to Egypt on their way to Bashan. At Alexandria they disembarked, to pay their respects to the Alabarch. Herod intended to enter the city with as little ostentation as possible, not wishing to be the cause of any disturbances between the Jews and Greeks; but the Jews were overjoyed at the visit of a Jewish king, and one so high in. the Emperor's favour. They met him at the docks, many thousands strong, in holiday dress, crying `Hosanna, hosanna!' and singing songs of rejoicing, and so escorted him to their quarter of the city, which is called `The Delta'. Herod did his best to calm popular enthusiasm, but Cypros found the contrast between this arrival in Alexandria and their former one so delightful that for her sake he let many extravagances go by. The Alexandrian. Greeks were angry and jealous. They dressed up in mock-royal state a well-known idiot of the city, or pretended idiot rather, Baba by name, who used to go begging around the principal squares and raising laughs and coppers by his clowning. They provided this Baba with a grotesque guard of soldiers armed with sausage swords, pork shields, and pig's-head helmets and paraded him through `The Delta'. The crowd shouted Marin! Marin! which means King! King!' They made a demonstration outside the Alabarch's house and another outside the. house of his brother Philo. Herod visited two of the leading Greeks and lodged a protest. He said no more than, 'I shall not forget to-day's performance and I think that one day you'll regret it.'

From Alexandria Herod and Cypros continued their voyage to the port of Jaffa. From Jaffa they went to Jerusalem to visit their children, there and to stay in the Temple precincts as guests of the High Priest, with whom it was important for Herod to arrive at an understanding. He created an excellent impression by dedicating his iron prison-chain to the Jewish God, hanging it up on the wall of the Temple Treasury. Then they passed through Samaria and the borders of Galilee - without, however, sending any complimentary message to Antipas and Herodias - and so came to their new home at Caesarea Philippi, the lovely city-built by Philip as, his capital on the southern slopes of Mount Hermon. There they collected the accumulated revenues laid up for them since Philip's death. Salome, Philip's widow, made a set at Herod and tried all her most captivating arts on him, but it was no use. He told her: `You are certainly very good looking and very gracious and very witty; but you must remember the proverb: "Move into a new house, but take the old earth with you." The only possible queen for Bashan is my dear Cypros.'

You can imagine that when Herodias heard of Herod's good fortune she was wild with jealousy. Cypros was now a Queen, while she herself was the wife of a mere Tetrarch. She tried to rouse Antipas into feeling the. same as she did; but Antipas, an indolent old man, was perfectly satisfied with his position; though he was only a Tetrarch, he was a very rich one and it was a matter of very little importance to him by what title or titles he was known. Herodias called him a pitiful fellow - how could he expect her to have any further respect for him? `To think,' she said, `that my brother, Herod Agrippa, who came here not so long ago as a penniless refugee, dependent on your charity for the very bread that he ate, and then grossly insulted us and fled to Syria, and was hounded out of Syria for corruption, and was nearly arrested at Anthedon for debt, and then went to Rome and was imprisoned for treason to the Emperor - to think that a man with such a record, a spendthrift who has left a trail of unpaid bills behind him wherever he has gone, should now be a King and in a position to insult us! It is unbearable. I insist that you go to Rome at once and force the new Emperor to give you at least equal honours with Herod.'

Antipas answered: `My dear Herodias, you are not talking wisely. We are very well off here, you know, and if we tried to improve our position it might bring us bad luck. Rome has never been a safe place to visit since Augustus died.'

'I won't speak to you or sleep with you again,' said Herodias, `until you give me your word that you will go.'

Herod heard of this scene from one of his agents at Antipas's court; and when, shortly, after, Antipas started out for Rome he sent a letter to Caligula by a fast vessel, offering the captain a very large reward if he reached Rome before Antipas did. The captain cracked on as muchsail as

he dared and just managed to win the money. When Antipas presented himself before Caligula, Caligula already had Herod's letter in his hand. It was to the effect that Herod while staying in Jerusalem had heard grave charges against his uncle Herod Antipas, which he had not at first credited, but which had on investigation proved true. Not only had his uncle been. engaged in treasonable correspondence with Sejanus at the time that Sejanus and Livilla were plotting to usurp the monarchy - that was an old story - but he had lately been exchanging letters with the King of Parthia, planning with his help to organize a widespread revolt against Rome in the Near East. The King of Parthia had undertaken to give him Samaria, Judaea, and Herod's own kingdom of Bashan as a reward for his disloyalty. As a proof of this accusation, Herod mentioned that Antipas had 70,000 complete suits of armour in his palace armoury. What, otherwise, was the meaning of these secret preparations for war? His uncle's standing army numbered only a few hundred men, a mere guard of honour. The armour was certainly not intended for arming Roman troops.

Herod was very sly. He knew perfectly well that Antipas had no war-like intentions whatsoever and that it was merely his fondness for display that had led him to stock his armoury in this lavish style. The revenues from Galilee and Gilead were rich, and Antipas, though stingy, in his hospitality, liked to spend money on costly objects: he collected suits of armour as rich men at Rome collect statues, pictures, and inlaid furniture. But Herod knew that this explanation would not occur to Caligula, whom he had often told about Antipas's miserliness. So when Antipascame. to

the Palace and saluted Caligula, congratulating him on his accession, Caligula greeted him coldly and asked him at once: `Is it true, Tetrarch, that you have seventy thousand suits-of armour in your. palace armoury?' Antipas was startled and could not deny it: for Herod had been careful not to exaggerate. He muttered something about the armour being intended for his own personal pleasure.

Caligula said: `This audience is already over. Don't make feeble excuses. I shall consider what to do with you to-morrow.' Antipas had to retire, abashed and anxious.

That evening Caligula asked me at dinner: `Where was it that you were born, Uncle Claudius?'

'Lyons,' I answered.

`An unhealthy sort of place, isn't it?' asked Caligula, twiddling a gold wine-cup in his fingers.

`Yes,' I answered. `It. has the reputation of being one of the most unhealthy places in your dominions. I blame the climate of Lyons for having condemned me, while still an infant, to my present useless and inactive life.'

`Yes, I thought I had once heard you say that,' said Caligula.' `We'll send Antipas there. The change of climate may do him good. There's too much sun in Galilee for a man of his fiery character.'

Next day Caligula told Antipas that he must consider himself degraded from his rank of Tetrarch, and that a vessel was waiting at Ostia to carry him away to exile at Lyons. Antipas took the matter philosophically - exile was better than death - and I will say this much to his credit, that so far as I know he never gave Herodias, who had accompanied him from Galilee, a word of reproach. Caligula wrote to Herod thanking him for his timely warning and awarding him Antipas's tetrarchy and revenues in recognition of his loyalty. But knowing that Herodias was Herod's sister, he told her that for her brother's sake he would allow her to keep any property of her own that she might possess and return to Galilee, if she wished, to live under his protection. Herodias was too proud to accept this and told Caligula that Antipas had always treated her very well and that she would not desert him in the hour of his need. She began a long speech intended to soften Caligula's heart, but he cut it short. Herodias and Antipas sailed together for Lyons the next morning. They never returned to Palestine.

Herod replied in terms of the most boundless gratitude for Caligula's gift. Caligula showed me the letter. `But what a man! Herod had written. `Seventy thousand suits of armour, and all for his own personal pleasure! Two a day for nearly a hundred years! But it seems almost a pity to condemn a man like that to rot away at Lyons.' You ought to send him out to invade Germany singlehanded. Your father always said that the only way to deal with the Germans was to exterminate them, and here you have the perfect exterminator at your service - such a glutton for combat that he lays in a stock of seventy thousand suits of armour, all made to measure.' We had a good laugh over that. Herod ended by saying that he must come back at once to Rome to thank Caligula by word of mouth: pen and paper were not sufficient to express what he felt. He would make his brother Aristobulus temporary regent in Galilee and Gilead, with Silas to keep a careful eye on him, and his youngest brother, Herod Pollio, temporary regent of Bashan.

He came back to Rome with Cypros, and paid his creditors every penny of his debts: and went about saying that he never intended to borrow again. For the first year of Caligula's reign he had no difficulties worth mentioning. Even when Caligula quarrelled with my mother over his murder of Gemellus - from which, you may be sure, Herod had not actively dissuaded him so that, as I described in my previous story, she was forced to commit .suicide, Herod was so sure of Caligula's continued trust in his loyalty that almost alone of her friends he wore mourning for her sake and attended her funeral. He felt her death pretty keenly, I believe - but the way he put it to Caligula was: ' I should be a thankless wretch if I failed to pay my respects to the ghost of my benefactress. That you showed your displeasure at her grandmotherly interference in a matter which did not concern her must have affected the Lady Antonia with the profoundest grief and shame. If I felt that, I earned your displeasure by any similar behaviour - but of course the case is absurd - I should certainly do as she has done. My mourning is a tribute to her courage in leaving a modern world which has superannuated women of her antique sort.'

Caligula took this well enough and said: 'No, Herod, you have done rightly. The injury she did was to me, not to you.' But when his brain turned altogether as a result of his illness and he declared his divinity and began cutting off the heads of statues of Gods and substituting his own, Herod began to grow anxious. As ruler of many thousands of Jews he foresaw trouble. The first certain signs of this trouble came from Alexandria, where his enemies, the Greeks, pressed the Governor of Egypt to insist on the erection of the Emperor's statues in Jewish synagogues as well as in Greek temples, and on the use, by Jews as well as by Greeks, of Caligula's divine name in the taking of legal oaths. The Governor of Egypt had been an enemy of Agrippina's and also a partisan of Tiberius Gemellus's, and decided that, the best way, to prove his loyalty to Caligula was to enforce the Imperial edict which had, as a matter of fact, been intended only for the Greeks of the city., When the Jews refused to swear by Caligula's godhead or admit his statues within the synagogues the Governor published a decree declaring all Jews in the city aliens and intruders. The Alexandrians were jubilant and began a pogrom against the Jews, driving the richer ones from other parts of the city, where they lived in style side by side with Greeks and Romans, into the crowded narrow streets of `The Delta'. Over 400 merchants' houses were sacked, and the owners murdered or maimed. Countless insults were heaped on the survivors. The loss in lives and the damage to property were so heavy that the Greeks decided to justify their action by sending an embassy to Caligula at Rome, explaining that the refusal of the Jews to worship his majesty had so outraged the younger and less'disciplined Greek citizens that they had taken vengeance into their own hands. The Jews sent a counter-embassy, led by the Alabarch's brother, one Philo, a distinguished Jew with a reputation as the best philosopher in Egypt. When Philo reached Rome he naturally called upon Herod, to whom he was now related by marriage; for Herod, after paying back the Alabarch those 8,000 gold pieces, together with interest at ten per cent for two years - greatly to the Alabarch's embarrassment, for as a Jew he could not lawfully accept interest on a loan from a fellow-Jew had further shown his gratitude by betrothing Berenice, his eldest surviving daughter, to the Alabarch's eldest son. Philo asked Herod to intervene on his behalf with Caligula, but Herod said that he preferred to have nothing to do with the embassy: if events took a serious turn he would do what he could to mitigate the Emperor's displeasure, which he expected to be severe - and that was all that he could say at present.

Caligula listened affably to the Greek embassy, but dismissed the Jews with angry threats, as Herod had foreseen, telling them that he did not wish to hear any more talk about Augustus's promises to them of religious toleration: Augustus, he shouted, had been dead a long time now and his edicts were out of date and absurd. 'I am your God, and you shall have no other Gods but me.'

Philo turned to the other ambassadors and said in Aramaic: 'I am glad that we came; for these words are a deliberate challenge to the Living God and now we can be sure that this fool will perish miserably.' Luckily none of the courtiers understood Aramaic.

Caligula sent a letter to the Governor of Egypt informing him that the Greeks had done their duty in forcibly protesting against the Jews' disloyalty, and that if the Jews persisted in their present disobedience he would himself come with an army and exterminate them. Meanwhile, he ordered the Alabarch and all other officials of the Jewish colony to be imprisoned. He explained that but for the Alabarch's kinship with his friend Herod Agrippa he would have put him and his brother Philo to death. The only satisfaction that Herod was at presentable to give the Jews in Alexandria was to have the Governor of Egypt removed. He persuaded Caligula to arrest him on the grounds of his former enmity to Agrippina (who, was, of course, Caligula's mother) and banish him to one of the smaller Greek islands.

Then Herod told Caligula, who now found himself short of funds: `I must see what I can do in Palestine to raise some money for your Privy Purse. My brother Aristobulus informs me that my fire-eating old uncle Antipas was even richer than we supposed. Now that you are off on your British and German conquests - and, by the way,. if you happen to-pass through Lyons, please remember me very kindly to Antipas and Herodias Rome will seem very dismal to us left-behinds. It will be a good opportunity for me to absent myself and visit my kingdom again; but as soon as I hear that you are on the way back I shall hurry home too, and I hope that you will be satisfied with my efforts on your behalf.' The fact was that most disquieting news had just arrived for Herod from Palestine. He sailed east on the day after Caligula had fixed for his absurd military expedition; though as a matter of fact it was nearly a year before Caligula set out.

Caligula had given orders for his statue to be placed in the Holy of Holies in, the Temple at Jerusalem, a secret inner chamber where the God off the Jews is supposed to dwell in his cedar- chest and which is only visited once a year by the High Priest. His further orders were that the statue should be taken out from the Holy of Holies on days of public festival and worshipped in the outer court by the assembled congregation, Jews and non-Jews alike. He either did not know or did not care about the intense religious awe in which the Jews hold their God. When the proclamation was read at Jerusalem by the new Governor of Judaea sent to succeed Pontius Pilate (who by the way had committed suicide on his arrival at Rome) there were such extraordinary scenes of riot that the Governor was forced to take refuge in his camp outside the city, where, he sustained something very like a siege. The news reached Caligula at Lyons.; He was utterly enraged and sent a letter to the new Governor of Syria who had succeeded my friend Vitellius, ordering him to raise a strong force of Syrian auxiliaries and with these and the two Roman regiments under his command to march into Judaea and enforce the edict at the point of the sword. This Governor's name was Publius Petronius, a Roman soldier of the old school. He lost no time in obeying Caligula's orders, so far as his preparations for the expedition were concerned, and marched down to Acre. Here he wrote a letter to the High Priest and chief notables of the Jews informing them of his instructions and of his readiness to carry them out. Herod meanwhile had taken a hand in the game, though he kept as much in the background as possible. He secretly advised the High Priest as to the best course to follow. At his suggestion the Governor of Judaea and his garrison were sent under safe conduct to Petronius at Acre. They were followed by a delegation of some 10,000 leading Jews, who came to appeal against the intended defilement of the Temple. They had come with no warlike intentions, they declared, but nevertheless would rather die than permit this terrible injury to be done to their ancestral land, which would immediately be struck by a curse and never recover. They said that they owed political allegiance to Rome and that there could be no complaints against them for disloyalty or failure to pay their taxes; but that their principal allegiance was to the God of their Fathers, who had always preserved them in the past (so long as they obeyed his laws) and had strictly forbidden the worship of any other Gods in his domain.

Petronius answered: 'I am not qualified to speak on matters of religion. It may be as you say, or it may not be so. My own allegiance to the Emperor is not divided into political and religious halves. It is an unquestioning allegiance. I am his servant and shall' obey his orders, come what may.'

They replied: 'We are the faithful servants of our Lord God and shall obey his orders, come what may.'

So there was a deadlock. Petronius then moved down into Galilee. On Herod's advice no hostile act was committed against him, but although it was time for the autumn sowing the fields were left unploughed and everyone went about in mourning dress with ashes sprinkled on his head. Trade and industry were at a standstill. A new delegation met Petronius at Caesarea (the Samarian Caesarea), headed by Herod's brother Aristobulus, and he was told again that the Jews had no warlike intentions, but that if he persisted in carrying out the Imperial edict, no God-fearing Jew would have any further interest in life and the land would go to ruin. This put Petronius in a quandary. He wanted to ask Herod for help or advice, but Herod, realizing the insecurity of his own position, had already sailed for Rome. What could a soldier like Petronius do, a man who had always shown himself ready to face the fiercest enemy drawn up in line of battle or charging down on him from ambush with shouts, when these venerable old men came forward and stretched out their necks to him, saying: `We offer no resistance. We are loyal tributaries of Rome, but our religious duty is to the God of our Fathers, by whose laws we have lived from infancy; kill us, if it so please you, for we cannot see our God blasphemed and live'?

He made them a very honest speech. He told them that it was his duty as a Roman to keep the oath of allegiance that he had sworn the Emperor and to obey him in every particular; and they could see that with the armed forces at his disposal; he was perfectly capable of fulfilling the orders that he had received. Nevertheless he praised them for their firmness and for their abstention from any act of violence. He confessed that though, in his official capacity as Governor of Syria, he knew where his duty lay, yet as a humane and reasonable man he found it next to impossible to do what he had been charged to do. It was not a Roman act to kill unarmed old men merely because they persisted in worshiping their ancestral God. He said that he would write again to

Caligula and present their case in as favourable a light as possible. It was more than likely that Caligula would reward him with death, but if, by sacrificing his own life, he could save the lives of so many thousands of industrious, inoffensive provincials, he was willing to do so. He urged them to pluck up their spirits and hope for the best. The first thing to be done, once he had written the letter, which would be that very morning, was for them to renew the cultivation of their land. If they neglected this, famine would ensue, followed by banditry and pestilence, and matters would become far worse than they already were. It happened that as he was speaking storm-clouds suddenly blew, up from the west and a heavy downpour began. The ordinary autumn rains had not fallen that year and it was now almost past the season for them; so this was taken as an omen of extraordinary good fortune, and the crowds of mourning Jews dispersed, singing songs of praise and joy. The rain continued to fail and soon the whole laid came alive again.

Petronius kept his word. He wrote to Caligula informing him of the obstinacy of the Jews and asking him to reconsider his decision. He said that the Jews had shown themselves perfectly respectful to their Emperor, but they insisted that a terrible curse would fall on their land if any statue whatsoever were erected in the Temple, even that of their glorious Emperor. He enlarged on their despairing refusal to cultivate the land and suggested that only two alternatives now presented themselves: the first, to erect the statue and sentence the land to ruin, which would mean an immense loss of revenue; the second, to reverse the Imperial decision and earn the undying gratitude of a noble people. He begged the Emperor at the very least to postpone the dedication of the statue until after harvest.

But before this letter arrived at Rome Herod Agrippa had already set himself to work on the Jewish God's behalf. Caligula and he greeted each other with great affection after their long absence from each other and Herod brought with him great chests full of gold and jewels and other precious objects. Some came from his own treasury, some from that of Antipas, and the rest had, I believe, been part of an offering made to him by the Jews of Alexandria. Herod invited Caligula to the most expensive banquet that had ever been given in the City: unheard-of delicacies were served, including five great pasties entirely filled with the tongues of tit-larks, marvellously delicate fish brought in tanks all the way from India, and for the roast an animal like a young elephant, but hairy and of no known species - it had been found embedded in the ice of some frozen lake of the Caucasus, and brought here packed in snow by way of Armenia, Antioch, and Rhodes. Caligula was astonished by the magnificence of the table and admitted that he would never have had sufficient ingenuity to provide such a display even if he had been able to afford it. The drink was as remarkable as the food, and Caligula became so lively as the meal went on that, deprecating his own generosity to Herod in the past as something hardly worth mentioning, he now promised to give him whatever it lay in his power to grant. :

`Ask me anything, my dearest Herod,' he said, `and it shall be yours.' He repeated: `Absolutely anything. I swear by my own Divinity that I will grant it.'

Herod protested that he had not provided this banquet in the hope of winning any favour from Caligula. He said that Caligula had done as much for him already as any prince in the world had done for any subject or ally of his in the whole panorama of history or tradition. He said that he was far more than content: he wanted absolutely nothing at all but to be allowed in some measure to show his gratitude. However, Caligula, continuing to help himself from the crystal wine-decanter, kept on pressing him: wasn't there something very special that he wanted? Some new Eastern kingdom? Chalcis perhaps, or Iturea? Then it was his for the asking.

Herod said: `Most gracious and magnanimous and divine Caesar, I repeat that I want nothing for myself at all. All that I can hope for is the privilege of serving you. But you have already read my mind. Nothing escapes your astonishingly quick and searching eyes. There is indeed something that I do really desire to ask, but it is a gift that will directly benefit only yourself. My reward will be an indirect one - the glory of having been your adviser.'

Caligula's curiosity was excited. `Don't be afraid to ask, Herod,' he said. Haven't I sworn that I will grant it, and am I not a God of my word?'

'In that case, my one wish,' said Herod, `is that you will no longer think of dedicating that statue of yourself in the Temple of Jerusalem.'

A very long silence followed. I was present at this historic banquet myself and never remember having felt so uncomfortable or so excited in my life as then, waiting to see the result of Herod's boldness. What in the world would Caligula do? He had sworn by his own Divinity to grant the boon, in the presence of many witnesses; yet how could he go back on his resolution to humble this God of the Jews, who alone of all Gods in the world continued to oppose him?

At last Caligula spoke. He said, mildly, almost beseechingly, as though he counted on Herod to help him out of his dilemma: `I don't understand, dearest Herod. How do you suppose that the granting of this boon will benefit me?'

Herod had worked the whole thing out in detail before ever he sat down to table. He replied with seeming earnestness: `Because, Caesar, to place your sacred statue in the Temple at Jerusalem would not redound to your own glory at all. Oh, quite to the contrary! Are you aware of the nature of the statue that is now kept in the innermost shrine of the Temple, and the rites which are performed about it on holy days? No? Then listen and you will at once understand that what you have regarded as wicked obstinacy among my co-religionists is no more than a loyal desire not to injure your Majesty. The God of the Jews, Caesar, is an extra ordinary fellow. He has been described as an anti-God. He has a rooted aversion to statues, particularly to statues of majestic bearing and dignified workmanship like those of the Greek Gods. In order to symbolize his hatred for other divinities he has ordered the erection, in this inner shrine, of a large, crude, and ludicrous statue of an Ass. It has long ears, huge teeth, and enormous genitals, and on every holy day the priests abuse this statue with the vilest incantations and bespatter it with the most loathsome excrement and offal and then wheel it on a carriage around the Inner Court for the whole congregation to abuse similarly; so that the whole Temple stinks like the Great Sewer. It is a secret ceremony. No non-Jews are admitted to it and the Jews themselves are not allowed to speak about it under penalty of a curse. Besides, they are ashamed. You understand everything now, don't you? The leading Jews are afraid that if your statue were erected in the Temple it would cause profound misunderstandings; that in their religious fanaticism the common people would subject it to the gravest indignities, while thinking to honour you by their zeal. But, as I say, natural delicacy and the holy silence imposed on them have prevented them from explaining to our friend Petronius why they would rather die than allow him to put your orders into execution. It is lucky that I am here to tell you what they are unable to tell: I am only a Jew on my mother's side, so that perhaps frees me from the curse. In any case I am risking it, for your sake.'

Caligula drank all this in with perfect credulity and even I was half-convinced by Herod's gravity. All that Caligula said was: `If the fools had been, as frank with me as you have been, my dearest Herod, it would have saved us all a lot of trouble. You don't think that Petronius has yet carried out my orders?'

`I hope for your sake that he has not,' Herod replied.

So Caligula wrote Petronius a short letter: `If you have already put my Statue in the Temple, as I ordered, let it stand; but see that the rites are closely supervised by armed Roman soldiers. If not, disband your army and forget about the matter. On the advice of King Herod Agrippa, I have come to the conclusion that the Temple in question is an extremely unsuitable place for my Sacred Statue to be erected.'

This letter crossed with the one Petronius had written. Caligula was furious that Petronius should dare to write as he did, attempting to make him change his mind on mere grounds of humanity.

He replied: Since you appear to value the bribes of the Jews more highlythan. my

Imperial Will, my advice to you is to kill yourself quickly and painlessly before I make such an example of you, as will horrify all future ages.'

As it happened, Caligula's second letter arrived late - the ship lost its mainmast between Rhodes and Cyprus and lay disabled for several days - so that the news of Caligula's death arrived at Caesarea first. Petronius almost embraced Judaism, he was so relieved.

This ends the first part of the story of Herod Agrippa, but you shall hear the rest as I continue to tell my own.

Chapter 5

So here we are back again at the point where I was being carried round the great court of the Palace on the shoulders of two corporals of the Guard, with the Household Battalion of Germans crowding about me and dedicating their assegais to my service. Eventually I prevailed on the corporals to put me down and on four Germans to fetch my sedan. They brought it and I climbed into it. I was told that they had decided to take me to the Guards' Camp at the other side of the City, where I would be protected from possible attempts at assassination. I was beginning to protest again when I saw a glint of colour at the back of the crowd. A purple-sleeved arm was waving at me in a peculiar circular motion which brought back memories of my schooldays. I said to the soldiers: `I think I see King Herod Agrippa. If he wishes to speak to me, let him come through at once.'

When Caligula was murdered Herod had not been far off. He had followed us out of the theatre but had been led aside by one of the conspirators, who pretended that he wished him to speak to Caligula about some favour. So Herod did not witness the actual murder. If I knew him as well as think I did, he would certainly have saved Caligula's life by some trick or other; and now when he came upon the dead body he showed his gratitude for past favours in no uncertain terms. He embraced it, all bloody as it was, and carried it tenderly in his own arms into the Palace, where he laid it on the Imperial bed. He even sent out for surgeons, as though Caligula was not really dead and had a chance of recovery.

He then left the Palace by another door and hurried round to the theatre again, where he prompted Mnester, the actor; to make his famous speech, the one which reassured the excited Germans and prevented them from massacring the audience in vengeance for their master's death. Then back he darted to the Palace. When he heard there what had happened to me he came boldly into the court to see whether he could be of any service. I must admit that the sight of Herod's crooked smile - one corner of the mouth turned up, the other down - heartened me considerably.

His first words were: `Congratulations, Caesar, on your election: may you long enjoy the great honours that these brave soldiers have bestowed on you, and may I have the glory of being your first ally!' The soldiers cheered lustily. Then, coming close to me and clasping my hand tightly in his, he began talking earnestly in Phoenician, a language with which he knew I was acquainted because of my researches into the history of Carthage, but which none of the soldiers would understand. He gave me no opportunity of interrupting him. `Listen to me, Claudius. I know what you are feeling. I know that you don't really want to be Emperor, but for all our sakes,. as well as your own, don't be a fool. Don't let slip what the Gods, have given you of their own accord. I can guess what you are thinking. You have some crazy idea of yielding up your power to the Senate as soon as the soldiers let you go. That would be madness; it would be the signal for civil war. The Senate are a flock of sheep, but there are three or four wolves among them who are ready, the moment you lay down your power, to fight for it among, themselves. There's Asiaticus for a start, not to mention Vinicius. They were both in the conspiracy, so: they are likely to do something desperate for fear of being executed. Vinicius thinks himself a Caesar already because of his marriage with your niece Lesbia. He'll recall her from banishment and they'll make a very strong combination. If it's not Asiaticus or Vinicius it will be someone else, probably Vinicianus. You are the only obvious Emperor for Rome and you'll have the armies solidly behind you. If you won't take on the responsibility because of some absurd prejudice it will be the ruin of everything. That's all I'll say. Think it over and keep up your spirits!' Then he turned and shouted to the soldiers, `Romans, I congratulate you too. You could not have made a wiser choice. Your new Emperor is courageous, generous, learned, and just. You can trust him as completely as you trusted his glorious brother Germanicus. Don't let yourselves be fooled with the Senate or by any of your Colonels. Stick by the Emperor Claudius and he'll stick by you. The safest place for him is in your camp. I have just been advising him to pay you well for your loyalty.' With these words he disappeared.

They carried me in my sedan towards their camp, going at a jog trot. As soon as one chairman showed any signs of flagging his place was taken by another. The Germans ran shouting ahead. I sat quite numb, self-possessed but never so blankly miserable in all my life before. With Herod gone the outlook seemed hopeless again. We had just reached the Sacred Way at the foot of the Palatine Hill when messengers came hurrying along it to intercept us and protest against my usurpation of the monarchy. The messengers were two `Protectors of the People'. (This office was a survival from the middle days of the Republic, when the Protectors maintained the rights of the common people against the tyrannous encroachments of the nobility: their persons were inviolate and, though they claimed no legislative power, they had forced from the nobles the right to veto any act of the Senate which displeased them. But Augustus and his two Imperial successors had also adopted the title of `Protector of the People', with its prerogatives; so that the real ones, though they continued to be elected and to perform certain functions under Imperial direction, had lost their original importance.) It seemed clear that the Senate had chosen these messengers not only as an indication that all Rome was behind them in their protest, but also because their inviolateness of person would protect them from any hostility on the part of my men.

These Protectors, who were unknown to me personally, did not behave with conspicuous courage when we stopped to parley with them, or even dare to utter the stern message with which I afterwards learned that they had been entrusted. They called me `Caesar’ a title to which I then had no claim, not being a member of the Julian house; and said very humbly: `You will pardon us, Caesar, but the Senate would be much obliged by your immediate attendance at the House: they are anxious to learn your intentions:'

I was willing enough to go, but the Guards would not allow it. They felt only contempt for the Senate and, now that they had chosen an Emperor of their own, were resolved not to let him out of their sight, and to resist every attempt on the part of the Senate either to restore the Republic or to appoint a rival Emperor.

Angry shouts arose, `Clear off, d'ye hear?' `Tell the Senate to mind their own business and we'll mind ours!' `We won't allow our new Emperor to be murdered too.' I leaned through the window of my sedan and said: `Pray give my respectful compliments to the Senate and inform them that for the present I am unable to comply with their gracious invitation. I have a prior one. I am being carried off by the sergeants, corporals, and private soldiers of the Palace Guard to enjoy their hospitality, at the Guards' Camp. It is as much as my life is worth to insult this devoted soldiery.'

So away we went again. `What a wag our new Emperor is!' they roared. When we reached the Camp I was greeted with greater enthusiasm, than ever. The Guards Division consisted of some 12,000 infantrymen besides the attached cavalry. It was not only the corporals and sergeants who now acclaimed me Emperor, but the captains and the colonels too. I discouraged them as much as I could while thanking them for their goodwill. I said that I could not consent, to be their Emperor until I had been so appointed by the Senate, in whose hands the election rested. I was conveyed to Headquarters, where I was treated with a deference to which I was wholly unaccustomed, but found myself virtually a prisoner.

As for the assassins, as soon as they had made sure of Caligula and escaped from the pursuing Germans and from Caligula's chairmen and yeomen who also came hurrying up with cries of vengeance, they had run down to Vinicius's house, which was not far from the Market Place. Here were waiting the colonels of the three City Battalions, who were the only regular troops stationed in Rome besides the Watchmen and the Imperial Guards. These colonels had not taken any active part in the conspiracy but had promised to put their forces at the disposal of the Senate as soon as Caligula was dead and the Republic restored. Cassius now insisted that someone must go at once and kill Caesonia and myself: we were too closely related to Caligula to be allowed to survive him.. A colonel called Lupus volunteered for the task; he was a brother-in-law of the Guards' Commander. He came up to the Palace and, striding sword in hand through many deserted rooms, finally reached the Imperial bedchamber where Caligula's body was lying, bloody and frightful, just as Herod had left it. But Caesonia was now sitting on the bed with the head on her lap, and little Drusilla, Caligula's only child, was at her knees. As Lupus entered, Caesonia was wailing to the corpse, `Husband, husband, you should have listened to my advice.' When she saw Lupus's sword' she looked up anxiously into his face and knew that she was doomed. She stretched out her neck. 'Strike clean,' she said. 'Don't bungle it like the other assassins did.' Caesonia was no coward. He struck and the head fell. He then caught up the little brat, who came rushing at him, biting and scratching. He held her by the feet, swung her head against a marble pillar, and so dashed out her brains. It is always unpleasant to hear of the murder of a child: but the reader must take my word for it that if he too had known little Drusilla, her father's pet, he would have longed to do what Lupus did.

There has been a great deal of argument since about the meaning of Caesonia's, address to the corpse, which certainly was ambiguous. Some say that what she meant was that Caligula should have listened to some advice that she had given him about killing Cassius, whose intentions she suspected, before he had time to put them into effect. The people who explain it in this way are those who blame Caesonia for Caligula's madness, saying that it was she who first disordered his wits by giving him the love-philtre which bound him to her so entirely. Others hold, and I must say that I agree with them, that she meant that she had advised Caligula to mitigate what he was pleased to call his `immovable rigour' and behave more like a humane and sensible mortal.

Lupus then came in search of me, to complete his task.' But by this time the shouts 'Long live the Emperor Claudius' were just beginning. He stood in the doorway of the hall where the meeting was being held, but when he saw how popular 'I had become he lost courage and stole quietly away.

In the Market Place the excited crowds could not decide whether to cheer themselves hoarse in honour of the assassins or howl themselves hoarse in demands for their blood. A rumour ran about that Caligula had not been murdered at all, that the whole business was an elaborate hoax stage-managed by himself, and that he was only waiting for them to express joy at his death before beginning a general massacre. That was what he had meant, it was said, by his promise to exhibit an entirely new spectacle that night, to be called Death, Destruction, and the Mysteries of Hell.

Caution prevailed and they had begun to bawl loyally, `Search out the murderers! Avenge our glorious Caesar's death!' when Asiaticus, an ex-Consul, who was a man of imposing figure and one who had been in Caligula's close confidence, climbed up on the Oration Platform and exclaimed: `You are looking for the assassins? So am I. I want to congratulate them. I only wish I had struck a blow myself. Caligula was a vile creature and they acted nobly in killing him. Don't be idiots, men of Rome! You all hated Caligula, and now that he is dead you will be able to breathe freely again. Go back to your homes and celebrate his death with wine and song!'

Three or four companies of City troops were drawn up close by, and Asiaticus said to them: 'We are counting on you soldiers to keep the peace. The Senate is supreme once more,, Once more we are a Republic. Obey the Senate's orders and I give you my word that every man of you will be considerably richer by the time things have settled down again. There must be no plundering or rioting. Any offence against life or property will be punished by death.' So the people changed their tune at once and began cheering the assassins and the Senate and Asiaticus himself.

From Vinicius's house those of the conspirators who were senators were proceeding to the Senate House, where the Consuls had hastily called a meeting; when Lupus came running down from the Palatine Hill with the news that the Guards had acclaimed me Emperor and were hurrying me off to their camp. So they sent me a threatening message by two Protectors of the People, whom they mounted on cavalry horses and told to overtake me. They were to deliver the message as if from the Senate in session: I have already related how, when it came to the point, the threat lost most of its force. The other conspirators, the Guards officers, headed by Cassius, then seized the Citadel on the Capitoline Hill, manning it with one of the City Battalions.

I should like to have been an eye-witness of that historic meeting of the Senate, to which crowded not only all the senators but also a large number of knights and others who had no business to be there. As soon as news came of the successful seizure of the Citadel they all left the Senate House and moved up to the Temple of Jove near by, thinking it a safer place. But the excuse they gave themselves was that the official designation of the Senate House was `The Julian Building' and that free men should not meet in a place dedicated to the dynasty from whose tyranny they had now at last so happily escaped. When they were comfortably settled in their new quarters everyone began speaking at once. Some senators cried out that the memory of the Caesars should be utterly abolished, their statues broken, and their temples destroyed. But the Consuls rose and pleaded for order. `One thing at a time, my Lords,' they said. `One thing at a time.' They called on a senator named Sentius to make a speech - because he always had oneready in

his head and was a loud and persuasive orator. They hoped that once somebody began speaking in proper form instead of exchanging random shouts and congratulations and arguments with neighbours, the House would soon settle down to business.

Sentius spoke. `My Lords,' he said, `this is well-nigh incredible! Do you realize that we are free at last, no longer slaves to the madness of a tyrant? Oh, I trust that your hearts are all beating as strongly and proudly as mine, though how long this blessed condition will last, who will dare to prophesy? At all events let us enjoy it while we can, and let us be happy. It is nearly a hundred years now since it was possible to announce in this ancient and glorious city, "We are free; so of course neither you nor .I can recall what it felt like in the old days to utter those splendid words, but certainly at the present moment my soul is as buoyant as a cork. How happy are the decrepit old men who at the end of a long life of slavery can breathe their last breath to-day with that sweet phrase on their lips "We are free"! How instructive, too, for the young men, to whom freedom is but a name, to know what it means when they hear the glad universal cry go up: "We are free"' But, my Lords and gentlemen, we must remember that virtue alone can preserve liberty. The mischief of tyranny is that it discourages virtue. Tyranny teaches flattery and base fear. Under a tyranny we are straws upon the wind of caprice. The first of our tyrants was Julius Caesar. Since his reign there has been no sort of misery which we have not experienced. For there has been a steady decline since Julius in the quality of the Emperors who have been chosen to rule over us. Each, has named as successor a man a little worse than himself. These Emperors have hated virtue with a malignant hatred. The worst of them all was this Gaius Caligula - may his ghost suffer torment! - the enemy of both men and Gods. Once a tyrant does an injury to a man, that man is suspected of harbouring resentment even if he gives no sign of it. A criminal charge is trumped up against him and he is condemned without hope of reprieve. That happened to my own brother-inlaw, a very worthy, honest knight. But now, I repeat, we are free. Now we are only accountable each to the other. Once more this is a House of frank speech and frank discussion. Let us confess it, we have been cowards, we have lived like slaves, we, have heard of intolerable calamities striking at our neighbours, but so long as they have not struck us we. have kept mute. My Lords, let us decree the greatest honours in our power to the tyrannicides, especially to Cassius Chaerea, who has been prime mover in the whole heroic affair. His name should be made more glorious even than that of Brutus, who killed Julius Caesar, or Cassius's namesake, who stood by this Brutus and also struck a blow; for Brutus and Cassius by their action began a civil war which plunged the country into deepest degradation and misery. Whereas Cassius Chaerea's action can lead to no such calamity. He has placed himself like a true Roman at the disposal of the Senate and has made us a gift of the precious freedom that has been so long, ah, so long, denied us.'

This puerile speech was applauded vociferously. Somehow nobody considered that Sentius had been one of Caligula's most notorious flatterers and had even earned the nickname of `The Lap-dog'. But the senator sitting next to him suddenly noticed that he was wearing on his finger a gold ring with an enormous cameo, portrait of Caligula in coloured glass on it. This senator was another former lap-dog of Caligula's, but, anxious to excel in republican virtuousness, he snatched the ring off Sentius's finger and dashed it to the floor. Everyone joined in stamping it to bits. This energetic scene was interrupted by the entry of Cassius Chaerea. He was accompanied by Aquila, `The Tiger', two other Guards officers who had been among the assassins, and Lupus: On entering the Senate Cassius did not waste a single glance on the crowded benches of cheering senators and knights, but marched straight up to the two Consuls and saluted. `What is the watchword to-day?' he asked. The jubilant Senate felt this as the greatest moment of their lives. Under the Republic the Consuls, had been joint commanders-in-chief of the forces, unless there happened to be a dictator appointed who took precedence over them; but it had now been over eighty years since they had given out the watchword of the day. The Senior Consul, another of the lap-dog breed, puffed himself up and replied: `The watchword, Colonel, is Liberty.'

It was ten minutes before the cheers had died down sufficiently for the voice of the Consul to be heard again. He then rose, in some agitation, to announce that the messengers had returned that had been sent to me in the Senate's name: they reported that I had expressed myself unable, to obey their summons, and had explained that I was being forcibly taken away to the Guards' Camp, This news caused consternation and confusion among the benches, and a ragged debate followed, the conclusion of which' was that my friend Vitellius suggested sending for King Herod Agrippa: Herod, being an outsider, but in close touch with political currents in Rome, and a man of great reputation both in the West and the East, might be able to give them seasonable advice: Someone seconded Vitellius, pointing out that Herod was known to have a strong influence over me, that he was respected by the Imperial Guards, and that at the same time he had always been well-disposed towards the Senate, among whom he had numerous personal friends. So a messenger was sent to beg Herod to attend as soon as possible. I believe that Herod had arranged for this invitation, but I cannot be sure. At all events he did not show himself either too ready to go or too slack in going. He sent a servant downstairs from his bedroom to tell the messenger that he would be ready in a few minutes, but that at the moment he must be excused, as he was in a state of dishabille. Presently he came down smelling very strongly of a peculiar Oriental scent called patchouli, which was a standing joke at the Palace: it was supposed to have an irresistible effect on Cypros. Caligula, whenever he smelt it on Herod, used to sniff loudly and say: `Herod,- you uxorious old man! How well you advertise your marital secrets!' Herod, you understand, did not wish it to be known that he had spent so long on the Palatine Hill, or they might suspect that he had been taking sides. He had, in fact, left the Palace disguised as a servant, mixed with the crowd in the Market Place, and only just reached home when the message came for him. He used the scent as an alibi, and it seems to have been accepted. When he arrived at the Temple the Consuls explained the position to him and he pretended to be surprised to hear that I had been acclaimed Emperor, and made a lengthy protestation as to his absolute neutrality in City politics. He was merely an allied king and the trusted friend of Rome, and so he would remain, by their leave, whatever her government. `Nevertheless,' he said, `since you appear to be in need of my advice I am prepared to speak frankly. The republican form of government appears to me in certain circumstances a most estimable thing. I would say the same of a benignant monarchy. Nobody can, in my opinion, make a hard-and-fast pronouncement that one form of government is essentially better than another. The suitability of each form depends on, the temper of the people, the capacity of the ruler or rulers, the geographical extent of the State, and so on. Only one general rule, can be made, and it is this: No sensible man would give that ‘(here he gave a contemptuous snap of his fingers) `for, any government,. whether democratic, plutocratic, aristocratic, or autocratic, that cannot count on the loyal support of the armed forces of the State over which it pretends to rule. And so, my lords, before I begin to offer you any practical advice I must ask you a question. My question is: Have you the Army behind you?'

It was Vinicius who jumped up to answer him. `King Herod,' he cried, `the City Battalions are loyal to a man. You see their three colonels here among us to-night. We have great stores of weapons too and vast supplies of money with which to pay any further forces that, we may require to raise. There are many of us here who could, enlist a double company of troops from our own household slaves, and would gladly give them their liberty on their undertaking to fight for the Republic.'

Herod ostentatiously covered his mouth so that they should see that he was trying not to laugh. 'My friend Lord Vinicius,' he said, `my advice is don't you try it! What sort of a show do you think that your porters, and bakers and bath-attendants would make, against the Guards, the best troops in the Empire? I, mention the Guards because if they had been on your side you would certainly have told me about it. If you think that you can make a slave into a soldier by tying a breastplate on him, putting a spear in his hand, hanging a sword round his middle and saying:. ‘Now, fight, my boy!" - well, I repeat, don't you try it!' Then he addressed the Senate again as a whole. 'My Lords,' he said, `you tell me that the Guards have acclaimed as Emperor my friend Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, the ex-Consul, but without first asking your consent. And I gather that the Guards have shown some hesitation in allowing him to obey your summons to attend this House. But I also gather that the message that was sent him did not emanate from you as a body but from an unofficial caucus of some two or three senators; and that only a small party of excited soldiers - no officers among them - were in attendance on Tiberius Claudius when it was delivered. Perhaps if another delegation were now sent to. him, with proper authority, the officers at the Guards' Camp would advise him to treat it with the respect that it deserves and would check the holiday spirit of the men under their command. I suggest that the same two Protectors of the People should be sent again, and I am ready, if you desire, to go with them and add my voice to theirs - in a quite disinterested way, of course. I believe that I have sufficient influence with my friend Tiberius Claudius, whom I have known from boyhood - we studied under the same venerable tutor - and sufficient interest with the officers at the Camp I am a frequent guest at their mess-table - and certainly, let me assure you, my Lords, I have sufficient eagerness for your good opinion, to be able to settle matters to the satisfaction of all parties concerned.'

So at about four o'clock that afternoon, as I was eating my long-delayed luncheon in the Colonels' Mess at the Guards' Camp, with every movement that I made silently, closely, though respectfully watched by my companions, a captain came in with the news that a delegation had arrived from the Senate and that King Herod Agrippa, who was here too, wished to speak to me privately beforehand.

`Bring King Herod in here,' said the Senior Colonel. `He's our friend.'

Presently Herod entered. He greeted each, of the Colonels by name and slapped one or two of them on the back and then came over to me and made me a most formal obeisance.

`May I speak to you in private, Caesar?' he asked, grinning.

I was disconcerted at being addressed as Caesar and asked him to call me by my proper name.

`Well, if you're not Caesar, I don't know who else is,' Herod answered, and the whole room laughed with him. He turned round. `My gallant friends,' he said, 'I thank you. But if you had been present at the meeting of the Senate this afternoon you really would have had something worth laughing at. I have never seen such a mob of infatuated enthusiasts in my life. Do you know what they think? They actually think that they are going to start a civil war and challenge you Guards to a pitched battle, with no one to help them but the City Battalions, and perhaps a Watchman or two, and their own household slaves masquerading as soldiers, under the command of sword-fighters from the amphitheatre! That's rich, eh? As a matter of fact, what I have come to tell the Emperor I can say in front of you all. They have now sent him a delegation of Protectors of the People, because, you see, there is not a single one of their own number who dares come himself: the Emperor is going to be asked to submit himself to the Senate's authority, and if he doesn't, why then they'll make him. What do you think of that? I came along with them after promising the Senate that I'd give the Emperor a few words of disinterested advice. I am now going to keep my promise.' He turned sharply round again and addressed me. `Caesar, my advice is, be rough with them! Stamp on the worms and watch them wriggle.'

I said stiffly: 'My friend King Herod, you seem to forget that I Am a Roman and that the powers even of an Emperor depend constitutionally on the will of the Senate. If the Senate' sends me a message which I am able to answer politely and submissively I shall not fail to do so.'

`Have it your own way,' Herod answered with a shrug, `but they won't treat you any the better for it. Constitutionally, eh? I must bow of course to your superior authority as an antiquarian, but has the word "constitution" any practical meaning to-day?'

Then the two Protectors were admitted. They repeated what the, Senate had asked them to say, in a mechanical and unpersuasive duet. I was desired to do nothing by violence, but to yield without further hesitation to the power of the Senate. I was reminded of the dangers that they and I had escaped under the late Emperor and begged to commit no act that could be a cause of fresh public disasters.

The sentence about the dangers that they and I had escaped under Caligula was repeated three times in all, because first one of them made a mistake, and then the other went to his rescue, and then the first one said it all over again. I said, rather testily: `Yes, that verse occurred once before, I think,' and quoted the Homeric tag that is found so often in the Odyssey:

Glad from death's peril to have won scot-free - Our comrades not so fortunate as we.

Herod was delighted with this. He recited comically: 'Our comrades not so fortunate as we,' and then whispered to the Colonels: `That's the point. All that they really care about is their own dirty hides.'

The Protectors of the People grew flustered and went on gabbling their message like a brace of ducks. If I resigned the supreme power that had been unconstitutionally awarded me, they said, the Senate promised to vote me the greatest honours that a free people could bestow. But I must place myself unreservedly in their hands. If, on the contrary, I acted foolishly and persisted in my refusal to attend the House, I would have. the armed forces of the City sent against me, and once I was captured I need expect no mercy.

The Colonels crowded round the two Protectors with such threatening looks and mutterings that they hastily explained that they were only repeating what had been put into their mouths by the Senate, and that personally they wished to assure me that I was the only proper person, in their opinion, to rule the Empire. They begged us to remember that in their quality both as ambassadors of the Senate and as Protectors of the People their persons were inviolate, and not to do them any indignity. Then they said: 'And the Consuls privately gave us a second message that we were to give you in case our first doesn't please you.'

I wondered what this second message could be.

`Caesar,' they answered, 'we were ordered to tell you that if you do want the monarchy you must accept it as the Senate's gift and not as the gift of the Guards.'

That made me laugh outright: it was the first time that I had so much as smiled since Caligula's assassination. I asked, `Is that all, or is there a third message in case I don't like the second?'

`No, there is nothing more, Caesar,' they answered humbly.

'Well,' I said, still much amused, `tell the Senate that I don't blame them for not wanting another Emperor. The last one somehow lacked the gift of endearing himself to his people. But, on the other hand, the Imperial Guards insist on making me Emperor, and the officers have already sworn their allegiance to me and forced me to accept it - so what can I do? You may carry the Senate my respectful compliments and tell them that I shall do nothing unconstitutional' - here I looked defiantly at Herod - `and that they can, trust me not to deceive them. I acknowledge their authority, but at the same time I must remind them that I am in no position to oppose the wishes of my military advisers.'

So the Protectors were dismissed, and very glad they were to get away alive. Herod said: `That was all right, but you would have done much better to have spoken firmly, as I suggested. You are only delaying matters.'

When Herod had gone, the Colonels told me that, they expected me to pay every Guardsman 150 gold pieces as a bounty on my accession, and 500 gold pieces each to the Captains. As to what I should pay the Colonels, I could please myself. `Would you be satisfied with ten thousand apiece?' I joked. We agreed on 2,000, and then they asked me to appoint one of themselves in the place of Caligula's Commander, who had taken part in the conspiracy and was now apparently attending the meeting of the Senate.

`Choose whomever you like,' I said, indifferently.

So they chose the Senior Colonel, who was called Rufrius Pollius. Then I had to go out and make an announcement about the bounty from the tribunal platform and receive 'the oaths of allegiance from each company of soldiers in turn. I was also asked to announce that the same bounty would be paid to the regiments stationed on the Rhine, in the Balkans, in Syria, in Africa, and in all other parts of the Empire. I was the more willing to do this because I knew that there were arrears of pay owing everywhere, except among the Rhine troops, whom Caligula had paid with the money stolen from the French. The swearing of allegiance took hours, for every man had to repeat the oath, and there were 12,000 of them; and then the City Watchmen came into the camp and insisted on doing the same, and then sailors of the Imperial Navy came crowding up from Ostia. It seemed endless.

When the Senate received my message they adjourned until midnight. The motion for adjournment was made by Sentius and seconded by the senator who had pulled the ring off his finger. As soon as it was voted they hurried out and back to their houses, where they packed up a few belongings and drove out of the City to their country estates: they realized the insecurity of their position. Midnight came and the Senate met, but what a thin House it was. Hardly a hundred members were present, and even these were in a panic. The officers of the City Battalions were present, however, and as soon as proceedings opened, bluntly asked the Senate to give them an Emperor. It was the only hope for the City, they said.

Herod was quite right: the man who first offered himself as Emperor was Vinicius. He seemed to have a few supporters, including his rat-like cousin Vinicianus, but not many, and he was snubbed by the Consuls. They did not even put the motion to the House that the monarchy should be offered to him. As Herod had also foreseen, Asiaticus then came forward as a candidate. But Vinicius rose and asked whether anyone present took the suggestion seriously. A wrangle followed and blows were exchanged. Vinicianus came off with a bloody nose and had to lie down until the flow ceased. The Consuls had difficulty in restoring order. Then news was brought that the Watchmen and Sailors had joined the Guards at the-Camp, and, the sword-fighters too (I forgot just now to mention the sword-fighters); so Vinicius and Asiaticus both withdrew their candidatures. Nobody else came forward, The meeting broke up into small groups talking anxiously together in whispers. At dawn Cassius Chaerea, Aquila, Lupus, and The Tiger entered. Cassius attempted to speak. He began by referring to the splendid restoration, of the Republic. At this there were angry shouts from the officers of the City Battalions.

`Forget about the Republic, Cassius. We've decided now to, have an Emperor, and if the Consuls don't give us one pretty soon, and a good one too, that's the last they'll see of us. We'll go to the Camp and join Claudius.'

One of the Consuls said nervously, looking at Cassius for support: 'No, we're not quite agreed yet about appointing an Emperor. Our last resolution - carried unanimously - was that the Republic was now restored. Cassius didn't kill Caligula merely for the sake of a change of Emperors did you, Cassius? - but because he wished to give us back our ancient liberties.'

Cassius sprang to his feet, white with passion, and cried: `Romans, I for one refuse to tolerate another Emperor. If another Emperor were appointed I should not hesitate to do to him as I did to Gaius Caligula.'

`Don't talk nonsense,' the City officers told him. `There's no harm in an Emperor, if he's a good one. We were all very well off under Augustus.'

Cassius said, `I'll give you a good Emperor, then, if you promise to bring me the watchword from him - I'll give you Eutychus.' You may remember that Eutychus was one of Caligula's `Scouts'. He was the best charioteer in Rome and drove for the Leek Green faction in the Circus. Cassius was reminding them of the fatigues that Caligula had forced the City troops to do for him, such as building stables for his race-horses and cleaning them out when they were in use, under Eutychus's fussy and arrogant supervision. 'I suppose you enjoy going down on your knees and scrubbing the muck from a stable floor at the orders of an Emperor's favourite charioteer'

One of the Colonels sneered: `You talk very big, Cassius, but you're afraid of Claudius, none the less. Admit it.'

'I afraid of Claudius?' Cassius shouted. `If the Senate told me to go to the Camp and bring his head back, I'd cheerfully do so I can't understand you people. It amazes me that after having been ruled for four years by a madman you should be ready to commit the government to an idiot.'

But Cassius could not convince the officers. They left the Senate without another word, assembled their men in the Market Place under the company' banners and marched out to the Camp to swear allegiance to me. The Senate, or what remained of the Senate, was now left alone and unprotected. Everyone, I am told, began reproaching his neighbours, and all pretence of devotion to the failing Republican cause vanished. If a single man of them had shown himself courageous it would have been something: I should have felt less ashamed of my country. I had long suspected the veracity of certain of the heroic legends of ancient Rome related by the historian Livy, and on hearing of this scene in the Senate I , even began to have doubts about my favourite passage, the one describing the fortitude of the senators of old after the disaster of the River Allia, when the Celts were advancing on the City and all hope of defending the walls was gone. Livy tells how the young men of military age, with their wives and children, withdrew into the Citadel after getting in a store of arms and provisions, resolved to hold out to the last; But the old men, who could be only an encumbrance to the besieged, remained behind' and awaited death, wearing senatorial robes and seated in chairs of office in the porticoes of their houses, their ivory rods of office grasped firmly in their hands. When I was a boy, old Athenodorus made me memorize all this and I have never forgotten it

The halls of the patricians stood open and the invaders gazed with feelings of true awe upon the seated figures in the porticoes, impressed not only by the superhuman magnificence of their apparel and trappings but also by their majestic bearing and the serene expression that their countenances wore: they seemed very Gods. So they stood marvelling, as at so many divine statues, until, as the legend tells, one of them began gently to stroke the beard of a patrician, by name Marcus Papirius - beards in those days were universally worn long - who rose and smote him on the head with his ivory staff. Admiration yielded to passion and Marcus Papirius was the first patrician to meet his death. The rest were butchered, still seated in their chairs.

Certainly Livy was a fine writer. He wrote to persuade men to virtue by his inspiring, though unhistorical, tales of Rome's greatness in times past. But no, he had not been particularly successful in his persuasions, I reflected.

Even Cassius, Lupus, and The Tiger were quarrelling now. The Tiger swore that, he would rather kill himself than consent to salute me as Emperor and see slavery return.

Cassius said, You don't mean what you say; and it's not yet time to talk like that.'

The Tiger shouted angrily: `You too, Cassius Chaerea? Are you going to fail us now? You love your life too well, I think. You claim that you planned the whole assassination, but who struck the first- blow - you or I?'

'I did,' said Cassius promptly, `and I struck him from in front, not from behind. As for loving my life, who but a fool doesn't? I am certainly not going to lay it down unnecessarily. If I had followed Varus's example that day in the Teutoburger forest, more than thirty years ago - if I had killed myself because all hope seemed gone, who would have brought the eighty survivors back and held the Germans in play until Tiberius arrived with his army of relief ? No, I loved life that day. And now it is quite possible that Claudius will decide, after all, to resign the monarchy. His answer was quite consistent with such an intention: he's idiot enough for anything, and as nervous as a cat. Until I know definitely that he is not going to do so I shall continue to live.'

By this time the Senate had dissolved, and Cassius, Lupus, and The Tiger were left arguing in the deserted vestibule. When Cassius looked round and saw that they were alone he burst into a cackle of laughter.

`It's absurd for us, of all people, to quarrel,' he said. `Tiger, let's have some breakfast. You too, Lupus! Come on, you Lupus!'

I was having breakfast too, after only an hour or so of uninterrupted sleep, when I was informed that the Consuls and the diehard Republican senators who had attended the midnight meeting had now arrived in Camp to pay their homage to me and offer their congratulations. The Colonels showed their satisfaction with an ironical 'They have come too early: let them wait.' Sleeplessness had made me very irritable.. I said that, for my part, I was in no mood to receive them: I liked men who clung courageously to their opinions. I tried to dismiss the senators from my mind and went on eating my breakfast. But Herod, who seemed to be everywhere at once throughout those two eventful days, saved their lives. The Germans, who were drunk and quarrelsome, had caught up their assegais and were on the point of killing them, and they were down on their knees yelling for mercy. The Guards made no attempt to interfere; Herod had to use my name to bring the Germans to their senses. He came into the breakfast-room as soon as he had put the rescued senators into a place of safety and said in a bantering voice: `Excuse me, Caesar, but I didn't expect you to take my advice about stamping on the Senate quite so seriously. You must treat the poor fellows with more gentleness. If any mischief happens to them, where are you going to rake up such a marvellously subservient crew again?'

It was becoming increasingly difficult for me now to sustain my Republican convictions. What a farcical situation - myself, the only true anti-monarchist, forced to act as monarch! On Herod's advice I summoned the Senate to meet me at the Palace. The officers made no difficulty about my leaving Camp. The whole Guards Division came with me as escort, nine battalions marching ahead of me and three marching in the rear, followed by the rest of my troops, the Palace Guard being in the van. Then a most embarrassing incident occurred. Cassius and The Tiger, having had their breakfast, joined the parade and put themselves at the head of the Palace Guard with Lupus between them. I knew nothing about this myself because the vanguard was far out of sight of my sedan. The Palace Guard,, accustomed to obey Cassius and The Tiger, concluded that they were acting under the orders of Rufrius, the new Guards Commander, though as a matter of fact Rufrius had sent these two a message informing them that they were deprived of their command. The spectators were mystified, and when they understood that the two were acting in deliberate disobedience of orders they made a scandal of it. One of the Protectors of the People came running down the column to inform me what was happening. I did not in the least know what to say or do. But I could not let this act of bravado pass unnoticed: they were defying Rufrius's order and my authority too.

When we reached the Palace I asked Herod and Vitellius and Rufrius and Messalina (who greeted me with the greatest delight) to consult with me at once as to what action I should take. The troops were drawn up outside the Palace - Cassius, Lupus, and The Tiger still with them, speaking together in loud, confident tones, but shunned by all the other officers. I opened the consultation by remarking that although Caligula had been my nephew and although I had promised his father, my dear brother Germanicus, to care for and protect him, I could not find it in me to blame Cassius for the murder. Caligula had invited assassination in a thousand ways. I said, too, that Cassius had a military record unequalled by that of any other officer in. the Army, and that if I could be sure that he had struck the blow from such lofty, motives as had, for example, animated the second Brutus, I would be very ready to pardon him. But what really had been his motives

Rufrius spoke first. `Cassius says now that he struck the blow in the name of Liberty, but the fact is that what encouraged him to strike the blow was an injury to his own dignity Caligula's constant teasing of him by giving him comic and indecent watchwords.'

Vitellius said: `And if it had been a sudden strong resentment that overcame him some excuse could be made, but the conspiracy was planned days and even months beforehand. The murder was done in cold blood.'

Messalina said: `And are you forgetting that it was not an ordinary murder that he committed, but a breach of his most solemn oath of unquestioning loyalty to his Emperor? For this he has no right to be allowed to live. If he were an honest man he would now already have fallen on his own sword.'

Herod said: `And are you forgetting that Cassius sent Lupus to murder you, and the Lady Messalina too? If you, let him go free the City will conclude that you are afraid of him.'

I sent for Cassius and said to him: `Cassius Chaerea, you are a man accustomed to obey orders. I am now your Commander-in-Chief, whether I like it or not; and you must obey my orders, whether you like them or not. My decision is as follows: If you had done as Brutus did, killing a tyrant for the common good although you loved him personally, I should have applauded you; though I should have expected you, since you had broken your solemn oath of fidelity by that act, to die by your own hand. But you planned the murder (and carried it out boldly where others hung back) because of feelings of personal resentment; and such motives cannot earn my praise. Moreover, I understand that on no authority but your own you sent Lupus to murder the Lady Caesonia and my wife the Lady Messalina and myself too, if he could find me; and for that reason I, shall not grant you the privilege of suicide. I shall have you executed, like a common criminal. It grieves me to do this, believe me. You have called me an idiot before the Senate and have told your friends that I deserve no mercy from their swords. It may be that you are right. But fool or no fool, I wish now to pay a tribute to your great services to Rome in the past. It was you who saved the Rhine bridges after the defeat of Varus, and my dear brother once commended you to me in a letter as the finest soldier serving under his command. I only wish that this story could have had a happier ending. I have no more to say. Good-bye.'

Cassius saluted without a word and was marched out to his death. I also gave orders for Lupus's execution. It was a very cold day and Lupus, who had put off his military cloak sows not to get it blood-stained, began to shiver and complain of the cold. Cassius was ashamed for Lupus and said reprovingly, `A wolf should never complain of the cold.' (Lupus is the Latin for wolf.) But Lupus was weeping and seemed not to hear him. Cassius asked the soldier who was to act as executioner whether he had had any previous practice in that trade.

`No,' replied the soldier, `but I was a butcher in civil life.'

Cassius laughed and said: `That is very. well. And now will you do me the favour of using my own sword on me? It is the one with which I killed Caligula.'

He was dispatched at a single stroke. Lupus was not so fortunate: when he was ordered to stretch out his neck he did so timorously and then flinched at the blow, which caught him on the forehead. The executioner had to strike several times before he could finish him.

As for The Tiger, Aquila, Vinicius, and the rest of the assassins, I took no vengeance on them. They benefited from the amnesty which, on the arrival of the Senate at the Palace, I immediately proclaimed for all words spoken and deeds done on that day and on the day preceding. I undertook to restore Aquila and The Tiger to their commands, provided that they took the oath of allegiance to me; but I gave the former Commander of the Guards another appointment, for Rufrius was too good a man to lose in that capacity. Here I must pay a tribute to The Tiger, as a man of his word. He had sworn to Cassius and Lupus that he would rather die than salute me Emperor, and now that they were executed he felt a debt of honour to their ghosts. He bravely killed himself just before their funeral pyre was lighted, and his body was burned with theirs.

Chapter 6

THERE were so many things to be done in the process of cleaning up the mess that Caligula had left behind him - nearly four years of misrule that it makes my head swim even now to think of it. Indeed, the chief argument by which I justified to myself my failure to do what I had intended, namely, to resign the monarchy as soon as, the excitement aroused by Caligula's assassination had died down, was that the mess was such a complete mess: I knew of nobody in Rome, besides myself, who would have the patience, even if he had the authority, to undertake the hard and thankless work that the cleaning-up process demanded. I could not with a clear conscience hand the responsibility over to the Consuls. Consuls, even the best of them, are incapable of planning a gradual reconstructive programme to be carried out over a course of five or ten years. They cannot think beyond their single twelve months of office. They always either aim at immediate splendid results, forcing things too quickly, or else do nothing at all. This was a task for a dictator appointed for a term of years. But even if a dictator with the proper qualities could be found, could he be trusted not to consolidate his position by adopting the name of Caesar and turning despot?

I remembered with, dull; resentment the beautifully clean start that Caligula had been given: well-filled Treasury and Privy Purse, capable and trustworthy advisers, the goodwill of the entire nation. Well; the best choice of many evils was to remain in power myself, for a time at least, hoping to be relieved as soon as possible. I could trust myself better than I could trust others. I would concentrate on the work before me and shake things into some, sort of order before proving that my Republican principles were real principles and not just talk as they were with Sentius and men of his kind. Meanwhile I would remain as unEmperor-like as possible. But the problem of what titles I should temporarily allow myself to be voted arose at once. Without titles that carry with them the necessary authority to act, nobody can go very far. I would accept what was necessary. And I would find assistants somewhere, probably more among Greek clerks and enterprising City business men than among members of the Senate. There is a neat Latin proverb,

'Olera olla legit', which means 'The pot finds its own herbs'. I would manage somehow.

The Senate wanted to vote me every title of honour that had ever been held by my predecessors, just to show me how thoroughly they regretted their Republican fervour. I refused as many as I; could. I did accept the name of Caesar to which I had a right in a way, because I was of the blood of the Caesars through my grandmother Octavia, Augustus's sister, and no true Caesars were left. I accepted it because of the prestige that the name carried with foreign peoples like the Armenians, Parthians, Germans, and Moroccans. If they had thought that I was a usurper founding a new dynasty they would have been encouraged' to make trouble on the frontier. I also accepted the title of Protector of the People, which made my person inviolate and gave me the right to veto decrees of the Senate. This inviolacy of person was important to me because I proposed to annul all laws and edicts imposing penalties for treason against the Emperor, and without it I would not be even reasonably safe from assassination. However, I refused the title of Father of the Country, I refused the title of Augustus, I ridiculed attempts to vote me divine honours, and I even told the Senate that I did not wish to be styled `Emperor'. This, I pointed out, had from ancient times been a title of distinction won by successful service in the field: it did not signify merely the supreme command of the armies. Augustus had been acclaimed Emperor on account of his victories at Actium and elsewhere. My uncle Tiberius had been one-of the most successful Roman generals in the whole of our history. My predecessor Caligula had allowed himself to be styled Emperor from youthful ambition, but even he had felt it incumbent on him to earn the title in the field; hence his expedition across the Rhine and his attack upon the waters of the English Channel. His military operations, bloodless though they were, were symbolic of his understanding of the responsibilities that the title of Emperor carried with it. `One day, my Lords,' I wrote to them, `I may feel it necessary to take the field at the head of my armies, and if the Gods prosper me I shall earn the title, which I shall be very proud to bear, but until that day I must ask you not to address me by it, out of respect for those capable generals of the past who have really earned it.'

They were so pleased by this letter of mine that they voted me a golden statue - no, it was three golden statues - but I vetoed the motion on two grounds. One was that I had done nothing to earn this honour; and the other,, that it was an extravagance: I did allow them, though, to vote me three statues which were to be put up in prominent places in the City; but the most expensive one was to be of silver, and not solid silver at that, but a hollow statue filled with plaster. The other two were of bronze and marble respectively. I accepted these three statues because Rome was so full of statues that two or three more would not make much difference, and I was interested to sit for my sculptured portrait to a really good sculptor, now that the best sculptors in the world were at my service.

The Senate also decided to dishonour Caligula by every means in their power. They voted that the day of his assassination should be made a festival of national thanksgiving. Again I interposed my veto and, apart from annulling Caligula's edicts about the religious worship that was to be paid to himself and to the Goddess Panthea, which was the name he gave my poor niece Drusilla whom he murdered, I took no further action against his memory. Silence about him, was the best policy. Herod reminded me that Caligula had not done any dishonour to the memory of Tiberius, though he had good cause to hate him; he had merely abstained from deifying him and left the arch of honour which had been voted to him uncompleted.

`But what shall I do with all Caligula's statues?' I asked.

'That's simple enough,' he said. `Set the City Watchmen to collect them all at two o'clock to-morrow morning when everyone is asleep and bring them here to the Palace. When Rome wakes up it will find the niches and pedestals unoccupied, or perhaps filled again with the statues originally moved to make room for them.'

I took Herod's advice. The statues were of two sorts - the statues of foreign Gods whose heads he had removed and replaced with his own; and the ones that he had made of himself, all in precious metals. The first sort I restored as nearly as possible, to their original condition, the others I broke up, melted down and minted into my new coinage. The great gold statue that, he had placed in his temple melted down into nearly 1,000,000 gold pieces. I do not think I mentioned about this statue, that every day his priests - of whom I, to, my shame, had been one - clothed it with, a costume similar to the one he himself was wearing. Not only did we have to dress it in ordinary civil or military costume with his especial badges of Imperial rank, but on days when he happened to believe himself to be Venus or Minerva or Jupiter or the, Good Goddess, we had to rig it out appropriately with the different divine insignia.

It pleased my vanity to have my head on the coins, but this was a pleasure which prominent citizens had enjoyed under the Republic too, so I must not be blamed for that. Portraits on coins, however, are always disappointing because they are executed in profile. Nobody is familiar with his own profile, and it comes as a shock, when one sees it in a portrait, that one really looks like that to people standing beside one. For one's full face, because of the familiarity that mirrors give it, a certain toleration and even affection is felt; but I must say that when I first saw the model of the gold piece that the mint-masters were striking for me, I grew angry and asked whether it was intended to be a caricature. My little head with its worried face perched on my long neck, and the Adam's apple standing out almost like a second chin, shocked me. But Messalina said: 'No, my dear, that's really what you look like. In fact, it is rather flattering than otherwise.'

`Can you really love a man like that?' I asked.

She swore that there was no face so dear to her in the world. So I tried to get accustomed to the coin.

Besides Caligula's statues a good deal of his wasteful expenditure was represented by gold and silver objects in the Palace and elsewhere which could also be removed and converted into bullion. For instance, the golden door-knobs and window-panes and the gold and silver furniture in his temple. I removed it all. I gave the Palace a great clearing-out. In Caligula's bed-chamber I found the poison chest which had belonged to Livia and of which Caligula had made good use, sending presents of poisoned sweetmeats to men who had drawn their wills in his favour and sometimes pouring poison into the plates of dinner-guests, after first distracting their attention by some prearranged diversion. (He experienced most pleasure, he confessed, in watching them die from arsenic.) I took the whole chest down to Ostia with me the first calm day of spring and, rowing down the estuary in one of Caligula's pleasure-barges, dumped it overboard about a mile from the coast. A minute or two later thousands of dead fish came floating up. I had not told the sailors what the chest contained and some of them grabbed at the fish floating near, meaning to take them home to eat; but I stopped that, forbidding them to do so on pain of death.

Under Caligula's pillow I found his two famous books, on one of which was painted a bloody sword and on the other a bloody dagger. Caligula was always followed by a freedman carrying these two books, and if he heard something about a man which happened to displease him he used to say to the freedman, ` Protogenes, write that fellow's name down under the dagger' or `write his name down under the sword.' The sword was for those destined to execution, the dagger for those who were to be invited to commit suicide. The last names in the dagger-book were Vinicius, Asiaticus, Cassius Chaerea, and Tiberius Claudius - myself. These books I burned in a brazier with my own hands. And Protogenes I put to death. It was not only that I loathed the sight of this grim-faced, bloody-minded fellow who had always treated me with insufferable impudence, but that I was now given evidence that he had threatened senators and knights to write their names down in the book unless they paid him large sums of money. Caligula's memory was so bad at this time that Protogenes could easily have persuaded him that the entries were his own.