Claudius the God

When I tried Protogenes he insisted that he had never uttered any such threats and never put any name down in the book except at Caligula's orders. This raised the question of the authority sufficient for a man's execution. It would be easy for one of my colonels to report to me dishonestly one morning: 'So-and-so was executed at dawn in accordance with your instructions of yesterday.' If I knew nothing of the matter it would merely be his word against mine that I had issued these instructions; and, as I am always ready to admit, my memory is none of the best. So I reintroduced the practice, started by Augustus and Livia, of immediately committing all decisions and directions to writing. Unless a paper could be, produced by my subordinates giving signed orders from me for any strong disciplinary action that they had taken or any important financial commitment or startling innovation in procedure that they had made, such action must not be regarded as authorized by me, and if I disapproved of it they must bear the blame themselves. In the end this practice, which was also adopted by my chief ministers in dealing with their own subordinates, became such a matter of course that one hardly ever heard a word spoken in government offices, during working hours, except for consultations between heads of departments or visits from City officials Every Palace servant carried a wax-tablet about with him in case it, should be needed for special orders to be, written upon.

All casual applicants for posts, grants, favours, indulgences, or what not were warned to present a document on entering the Palace, stating exactly what they wanted, and why and except in rare instances were not permitted to press their case by pleas and arguments delivered by word of mouth. This saved time but won my ministers an undeserved reputation for arrogance.

I shall tell you about my ministers. During the reigns of Tiberius and Caligula the real direction of affairs had fallen more and more, into the hands of Imperial freedmen, originally trained in secretarial duties by my grandmother Livia. The Consuls and City magistrates, though independent authorities answerable only to the Senate for carrying out their duties properly, had come to depend on the advice issued to them, in the Emperor's name, by these secretaries, especially in the case of complicated documents connected with legal and financial matters. They were shown where to affix their seals, or sign their names, the documents being already prepared for them, and seldom troubled to acquaint themselves with the contents. Their signature was in most cases a mere formality and they knew nothing at all about administrative detail compared with what the secretaries knew. Besides, the secretaries had developed a new sort of handwriting, full of abbreviations and hieroglyphs and hastily formed letters, that nobody but themselves, could read. I knew that it was impossible to expect any sudden change in this relation between the secretariat and the rest of the world, so for the present I strengthened rather than weakened the powers of the secretariat, confirming the appointments of those of Caligula's freedmen who were capable. For instance, I kept Callistus, who had been Secretary both to the Privy Purse and to the Public Treasury, which Caligula treated as a sort of Privy Purse. He had been aware of the plot against Caligula but had taken no active part in it. He told me a long story about having been recently instructed by Caligula to poison my food, but having nobly refused to do so. I did not believe it. In the first place, Caligula would never have given him those orders, but would have administered the poison with his own hands as usual; and in the second place, if he had, Callistus would never have dared to disobey. However, I let that go because he seemed anxious to continue with his Treasury duties and was the only man who really understood the ins and outs of the present financial, situation, I encouraged him by saying that I thought he had done remarkably well in keeping Caligula supplied with money so long and that I counted on him henceforth to use his gold-divining powers for the salvation of Rome' instead of for its destruction. His responsibilities extended to the direction of judicial inquiries into all public financial questions. I retained Myron as my legal secretary and Posides as my military Treasurer and put Harpocras in charge of all matters relating to Games and Entertainments and Amphaeus kept the Roll of Citizens. Myron also had the task of accompanying me whenever I went out in public, examining the messages and petitions handed to me, and sorting out the important, immediate ones from the customary shower of irrelevancies and importunities. My other chief ministers were Pallas whom I put in charge of my Privy Purse, his brother Felix whom I made my secretary for Foreign Affairs, Callon whom I made Superintendent of Stores, and his son Narcissus whom I made chief secretary for Home Affairs and private correspondence. Polybius was my religious secretary - for I was High Pontiff - and would also assist me in my historical work if ever I should get time for it. The last-named five were my own freedmen. During my days of bankruptcy I had been forced to dismiss them from my service and they had readily found clerical work to do at the Palace; so they were initiates in the Secretarial Mysteries and had even learned to write illegibly. I gave them all quarters in the New Palace, removing the rabble of sword-fighters, charioteers, grooms, actors, jugglers, and other hangers-on that Caligula had installed there. I made the Palace above all things a place for governmental work. I lived privately at the Old Palace, and in very modest style too, following the example of Augustus. For important banquets and visits of foreign princes I used Caligula's suite at the New Palace, where Messalina also had a wing for her own use.

When I gave my ministers their appointments I explained that I wanted them to act as much as possible on their own initiative; I could not be expected to direct them all in everything, even if I had been more experienced. I was not in the position of Augustus who, when he assumed control of affairs; was not only young and active but had a corps of capable advisers at his command, men of public distinction - Maecenas, Agrippa, Pollio, to name only three. I told them that they must do the best they could and that whenever they were faced by any difficulty they should consult The Roman Transactions of the God Augustus, the great memorial work published by Livia in the reign of Tiberius, and should keep closely to then forms and precedents that they found in it. If cases occurred where no precedent could be found in this invaluable record, they were, of course, to consult me; but I trusted them to save me as much unnecessary labour as possible. `Be bold,' I said, `but not too bold.'

I confessed to Messalina, who had helped me with these ministerial appointments, that the sharp edge of my Republican fervour was getting a little blunted: every day I felt more and more sympathy with, and respect for, Augustus. And respect for my grandmother Livia too, in spite of my personal dislike, for her. She had surely had a wonderfully methodical mind, and if, before restoring the Republic, I could get the governmental system working again even half as well as it had worked under her and Augustus I would be most .satisfied with myself. Messalina smilingly offered to play `the part of Livia for the occasion if I undertook that of Augustus. 'Absit omen,' I exclaimed, spitting in my bosom for luck. She answered that, joking aside, she had something of Livia's gift for summing up people's characters and deciding; just what appointments they were fit to hold. If I cared to give her a free hand she would act on my behalf in all social questions, relieving me of all the, cares connected with my office as Director of Public Morals. I was deeply in love with Messalina, you must know, and in the matter of choosing my ministers had found her judgement very shrewd, but I hesitated to allow her to take on as much responsibility as this. She begged me to let her give me some stronger proof of her capacity. She suggested that we should together go through the nominal roll of the Senatorial Order: she would tell me which names in her opinion were fit to remain on it. I called for the roll and we began to go through the list. I must confess that I was astonished at the detailed knowledge of the capacities and characters and private and public histories of the first twenty or so senators named in it. Wherever I could check her facts she was so accurate that I readily granted her request. I only consulted my own inclinations in a few doubtful cases, where she did not care very much whether the name was kept on the roll or struck off. After making inquiries through Callistus as to the financial qualifications of certain members, as well as deciding about their mental and moral qualifications,, we removed about one-third of the names and filled up the vacancies with the best knights available, and with former senators struck off the roll by Caligula for frivolous reasons. One of my own choices for removal was Sentius. I felt the need of getting rid of him, not merely because of his foolish speech to the Senate and his subsequent cowardice, but because he was one of the two senators who had accompanied me to the Palace at the time of Caligula's assassination and had then deserted me. The other, by the way, was Vitellius, but he now assured me that he had hurried off only to find Messalina and put her into a place of safety, expecting Sentius to stay and look after me; so I quite forgave him. I made Vitellius my understudy in case I should happen to fall ill or anything worse should happen to me. At all events, I got rid of Sentius. The reason that I gave for his degradation was that he had not appeared at the meeting of the Senate that I summoned to the Palace, having fled from Rome to his country estate without informing the Consuls that he would be absent; he had not returned for several days, and thus failed to benefit by the amnesty. Another leading senator that I degraded was Caligula's horse Incitatus who was to have become Consul three years later. I wrote to the Senate that I had no complaints to make against the private morals of this senator or his capacity for the tasks that had hitherto been assigned to him, but that he no longer had the necessary financial qualifications. For I had cut the pension awarded him by Caligula to the daily rations of a cavalry horse, dismissed his grooms and put him into an ordinary stable where the manger was of wood, not ivory, and the walls were whitewashed, not covered with frescoes. I did not, however, separate him from his wife, the mare Penelope: that would have been unjust.

Herod warned me to be constantly on my guard against assassination, saying that our revisions of the Roll of Senators and the further revisions that we had made in the Roll of Knights had won me many enemies. An amnesty was all very well, he said, but the generosity must not be too one-sided. Vinicius and Asiaticus, according to him, were already saying cynically that new brooms sweep clean, that Caligula and Tiberius had also,, started their reigns with a pretence of benevolence and rectitude, and that I would probably end by becoming as mad a despot as either of them. Herod advised me not to enter the Senate House for some time and even then to take every safeguard against assassination. This alarmed me. It was difficult to decide what safeguards were sufficient, and so I did not enter the Senate House for a whole month. By that time I had decided on the appropriate safeguard: I asked for and was granted permission to enter the House with an armed escort consisting of four Guards Colonels and Rufrius, the Guards Commander. I even put Rufrius on the Roll of Senators, though he did not have the proper financial qualifications, and the Senate at my request gave him permission to speak and vote whenever he entered in my company. On Messalina's advice, too, everyone who came into my presence at the Palace or elsewhere was first searched for concealed weapons: even women and boys. I did not like the notion of women being searched, but Messalina insisted, and I consented, on condition that the searching was done by her freedwomen and not by my soldiers. Messalina also insisted on my having armed soldiers in attendance during banquets. In Augustus's day this would have been considered a most despotic practice and I was ashamed to see them lined up along the walls; but I could take no risks.

I worked hard to restore the Senate's self-respect. In choosing new members Messalina and I were as careful in our inquiries about their family histories as we were about their personal capacities. As if at the request of the senior members of the Senatorial Order, though it was really my own idea, I promised not to choose anyone who could not reckon four descents in the male line from a Roman citizen. I kept this promise. The only apparent exception I' made was in the case of Felix, my foreign secretary, whom some years later I had occasion to invest with senatorial dignity. He was a younger brother of my freedman Pallas, and, born after their father had been given his freedom: so he was never a slave, as Pallas had been. But even here I did not break my promise to the Senate: I asked a member of the Claudian house - not a true Claudian, but a member of a family of Claudian retainers, originally immigrants to the City from Campania, who had been given the, citizenship and allowed to take the Claudian name - to adopt Felix as his son. So now Felix, in theory at least, has the necessary four lines of descent. But there were jealous murmurs from the House when I introducedhim to

them. Someone said: `Caesar, these things were not done in the days of our ancestors.'

I replied angrily: 'I do not think, my Lord, that you have any right to talk in this way, Your own family is not as noble as all that: I've heard that they were selling faggots in the streets in my great-great-grandfather's time, and I've heard that they gave short weight, too.'

`It's a lie,' shouted the Senator. `They were honest innkeepers.'

The House laughed the man down. But I felt obliged to say a little more. `When he was appointed Censor more than three hundred years ago, my ancestor Claudius the Blind, victor of the Etruscans and Samnites and the first Roman author of distinction, admitted the sons of freedmen to the Senate just as I have done. Numerous members of this House owe their presence here to-day- to this innovation of my ancestor. Would they care to resign?' The House then welcomed Felix warmly.

There were many rich idlers among the knights as there had been, indeed, even in Augustus's day. But I did not follow Augustus's example 'in permitting them to remain idle. I gave out that any man who shirked public office when asked to undertake it would be expelled from the Order. In three or four cases I was as good as my word.

Among the papers that I found at the Palace in Caligula's private safe were those referring to the trials and deaths, under Tiberius of my nephews Drusus and Nero, and their mother Agrippina. Caligula had-pretended to burn the whole lot at the beginning of his reign, as a magnanimous gesture, but had not really done so, and the witnesses against my nephews and sister-in-law and the senators who had voted for their deaths had been in constant terror -of his vengeance. I went carefully through the papers and called up before me as many as survived of the men mentioned' in them as having been implicated in these judicial murders. The document which concerned each man was read over to him in my presence and then given into his own hands to burn in the fire before him. I may here mention the cipher dossiers of the private lives of prominent citizens which Tiberius had taken from Livia after Augustus's death but had been unable to read. Later I managed to decipher them, but they referred to events by this time so out of date that my interest in reading them was more a historical than a political one.

The two most important tasks that now presented themselves were the gradual reorganization of State finances and the abolition of the most offensive of Caligula's decrees. Neither could, however, be undertaken in a hurry. I had a long conference with Callistus and Pallas about finances immediately after their appointment. Herod was present too; because he probably knew more than any other man living about the raising of loans and the management of debts. The first question that presented itself was how to get hold of ready money for immediate expenses. We agreed to settle this, as I have already explained, by the melting down of gold statues and gold plate and ornaments in the Palace and the gold furniture in Caligula's temple. Herod suggested that I should add to the money thus realized by borrowing in the name of Capitoline Jove from other Gods whose temple treasuries had become cluttered in the course of the last hundred years or so by useless and showy votive offerings in precious metal. These were mostly the gift of people who wished to call attention to themselves as successful public men, not made in any real, spirit of piety. For instance, a merchant, after a successful trading venture to the East, would present the God Mercury with a golden horn of plenty, or, a successful soldier would present Mars with a golden shield, or a successful lawyer would present Apollo with a golden tripod. Clearly, Apollo could have no use for 200, or 300 gold and silver tripods; and if his father Jove was in need he surely would be only too pleased to lend him a few. So I melted down and minted into coin as many of these votive offerings as I could remove without offending the families of the donors or destroying works of historic or artistic value. For a loan to Jove was the same as a loan to the Treasury. We agreed at this, conference that loans must also be raised from the bankers. We would promise them an attractive rate of interest. But Herod said that the most important thing was to restore public confidence and so force back into circulation the money that had been hoarded, by nervous businessmen. He declared that although a policy of great economy was necessary, economy could be carried too far. It must not be interpreted as meanness. `Whenever I ran short of money,' he said, `in my needy days, I always made a point of spending all the money I had left on personal adornment - rings and cloaks and beautiful new shoes. This sent my credit up and enabled me to borrow again. I would advise you to do much the same. A little bit of gold leaf, for example, goes a long way. Suppose you were to send along a couple of goldsmiths to gild the goals in the Circus, it would make everyone feel very prosperous and wouldn't cost you more than, fifty or, a hundred gold pieces. And another idea occurred to me this morning as I was watching, those great slabs of marble from Sicily being. carried up the hill for facing the inside of Caligula's temple. You're not going to do any more work on the temple, are you? Well, then, why not use them to face the sandstone barrier of the Circus? It's beautiful marble and ought to cause a tremendous sensation.'

Herod was always a man of ideas. I wished that I could keep him always with me, but he told me that he could not possibly stay; he had a kingdom to govern. I told him that if he would stay at Rome for only a few months longer I would make his kingdom as big as his grandfather Herod's had been.

But about this conference. We agreed to raise these Treasury loans and we agreed to abolish, at first, only the most extraordinary of the taxes imposed by Caligula: such as taxes on the takings of brothels, on the sales of hawkers and on the contents of the public urinals - the big pots standing at the street corners which the fullers used to carry away, when the liquid reached a certain level, to use for cleaning clothes. In my decree abolishing these taxes I promised that as soon as sufficient money came in I would abolish others too.

Chapter 7

I SOON found myself popular. Among the edicts of Caligula that I annulled were those concerned with his own religious cult, and his treason edicts, and those removing certain privileges of the Senate and the People. I decreed that the word 'treason' was henceforth meaningless. Not only would written treason not be held as a criminal offence, but neither would overt acts; in this I was more liberal even than Augustus. My decree opened the prison gates for hundreds of citizens of all degrees. But on Messalina's advice I kept everybody under open arrest until I had satisfied myself that the charge of treason did not include other crimes of a more felonious nature. For the charge of treason was often only a formality of arrest: the crime might be murder, forgery, or any other offence. These cases were not ones that I could leave for settlement to the ordinary magistrates. I felt bound to investigate them myself. I went every day to the Market Place and there, in front of the temple of Hercules, tried cases all morning long with a bench of senator colleagues. No Emperor had admitted colleagues to his tribunal for a number of years - not since Tiberius went to Capri. I also paid surprise visits to other courts and always took my place thereon the bench of advisers to the presiding judge. My knowledge of legal precedents was very faulty. I had never taken the ordinary course of honours which every Roman nobleman went through, gradually rising in rank from third-class magistrate to Consul, with intervals of military service abroad; and except for the last three years I had lived out of Rome, a great deal and very rarely visited the law-courts. So I had to rely on my native wit rather than on legal precedent and to struggle hard the whole time against the tricks of lawyers who, trading on my ignorance, tried to entangle me in their legal webs.

Every day as I came into the Market Place, from the Palace I used to pass a stuccoed building across the face of which was tarred in enormous letters:

Founded and Directed by the most Learned and Eloquent Orator and Jurist Telegonius Macarius of This City and of the City of Athens.

Underneath this on a huge square tablet appeared the following advertisement:

Telegonius gives instruction and advice to all who have become involved in financial or personal difficulties necessitating their appearance in Civil or Criminal courts; and has a positively encyclopaedic knowledge of all Roman edicts, statutes, decrees, proclamations, judicial decisions, etcetera, past and present, operative, dormant, or inoperative. At half an hour's notice the most learned and eloquent Telegonius can supply his clients with precise and legally incontrovertible opinions on any judicial matter under the sun that they care to present to him and his staff of highly trained clerks. Not only Roman Law, but Greek Law, Egyptian Law, Jewish Law, Armenian, Moroccan, or Parthian Law - Telegonius has it all at his fingers ends. The incomparable Telegonius, not content with dispensing the raw material of Law, dispenses also the finished product: namely, beautifully contrived forensic presentations of the same complete with appropriate tones and gestures. Personal appeals to the jury a speciality: Handbook of brilliant rhetorical figures and tropes, suitable for any case, to be had on request. No client of Telegonius has ever been known to suffer an adverse verdict in any court - unless his opponent has by chance also drunk from the same fountain of oratorical wisdom and eloquence. Reasonable fees and courteous attention. A few vacancies for pupils.

`The tongue is mightier than the blade'

EURIPIDES.

I gradually came to memorize this tablet by seeing it so often, and now when the counsel for the defence or prosecution used to appeal to me with expressions like, 'Surely, Caesar, you are aware of the fifteenth subsection of the fourth article of Marcus Porcius Cato's Sumptuary Law published in the year that So-and-So and So-and-So were Consuls?' or, `You will agree' with me, Caesar, that in the island of Andros, of which my client is a native, great latitude is shown to forgers if it can be proved that they were influenced by regard for the well-being of their aged parents rather than by hope of personal gain, or similar foolish talk, I would just smile back and reply: `You are mistaken, sir: I am quite unaware of this. I am not the most learned and eloquent Telegonius, who can supply precise and legally incontrovertible opinions on any judicial matter under the sun. I am merely the Judge of this Court. Proceed, and don't waste my time.' If they tried to badger me further I would say: `It's no use. In the first place, if I don't want to answer, I won't answer. You can't make me. I'm a free man, aren't I - in fact one of the freest in Rome? In the second place, if I do answer now, by Heaven you'll wish that I hadn't.'

Telegonius, by the way, seemed to be doing quite a thriving business and I came to resent his activities greatly. I detest forensic oratory. If a man cannot state his case in a brief and lucid way, bringing the necessary witnesses and abstaining from irrelevant talk about the nobility of his ancestry, the number of impoverished relatives dependent on him, the clemency and wisdom of the judge, the harsh tricks that Fate plays, the mutability of human fortune and all that stale, silly bag of tricks, he deserves the extreme penalty of the law for his dishonesty, pretension, and his waste of public time. I sent Polybius to buy Telegonius's handbook as advertised; and studied it. A few days later I was visiting a lower court when a defendant launched out on one of the-brilliant rhetorical figures recommended by Telegonius. I asked the judge to allow me to intervene. He granted me this, and I said to the orator: `Stop, sir, this will never do. You have made a mistake with your recitation-lesson. Telegonius's figure was as follows - let me see "If accused of theft" - yes, here we are.' I produced the handbook:

Hearing of my neighbour's loss, and filled with pity for him, through what woods and vales, over what windy and inhospitable mountains, in what damp and gloomy caverns did I not search for that lost sheep (or lost cow - lost horse - lost mule) until at last, extraordinary to relate, returning home, weary, footsore, and disappointed, I, found it (here shade eyes with hand and look startled): and where but in my own sheep cote (or cowshed - stable - barn) where it had perversely strayed during my absence!

'Sir,' I said, 'you put groves where the vales should have been and you left out "footsore" and the telling adverb "perversely".

You didn't look startled, either, at the word "found" only stupid. The judgement goes against you. Blame yourself, not Telegonius.'

Because I devoted myself to my judicial duties for so many hours every day, religious holidays not excepted; and even ran the summer and winter law-terms together, so that the dispensation of justice should be continuous and no accused person be forced to spend longer than a few days imprison - because of all this, I expected more considerate treatment from lawyers, court officials, and witnesses than I got. I made it quite plain that the non-appearance or late appearance in court of one of the principal parties in any suit would prejudice me in favour of his opponent. I tried to get through cases as quickly as possible and won (most unfairly) a reputation for sentencing prisoners without giving them a proper opportunity for defence. If a man was accused of a crime and I asked him straight out, 'Is this accusation substantially true?' and he shuffled and said: 'Let me explain, Caesar. I am not exactly guilty, but ...' I would cut him short. I would pronounce, `Fined a thousand gold pieces' or `Banished to the Island of Sardinia' or just `Death', and then turn to the beadle: 'Next case, please.' The man and his lawyer were naturally vexed that they had not been able to charm me with their extenuating circumstance pleas. There was one case in which the defendant claimed to be a Roman citizen and so appeared in a gown, but the plaintiff's lawyer objected and said that he was really a foreigner and should be wearing a cloak. It made no difference to this particular case whether or not he was a Roman citizen, so I silenced the lawyers by ordering the man to wear a cloak during all speeches for the prosecution and a gown during all speeches for the defence. The lawyers did not like me for that and told each other that I was ridiculing justice. Perhaps I was. On the whole they treated me very badly. Some mornings if I had been unable to settle as many eases as I had hoped and it was long past the time for my dinner they would make quite a disturbance when I adjourned proceedings until next day. They would call to me quite rudely to come back and not keep honest citizens waiting for justice, and would even catch me by the gown or foot as if forcibly to prevent me from leaving the court.

I did not discourage familiarity, provided that it was not offensive, and found that an easy atmosphere in court encouraged witnesses to give proper evidence. If anyone answered me back with spirit when I had expressed an ill-advised opinion I never took it ill. On one occasion - the counsel for the defence explained that his client, a man of sixty-five, had recently married. His wife was a witness in the case, and was quite a young woman. I remarked that the marriage was illegal. According to the Poppaean-Papian Law (with which I happened to be familiar) a man over sixty was not allowed to marry a woman under fifty: the legal assumption was that a man over sixty is unfit for parentage. I quoted the Greek epigram

The old man weds, for Nature's rule he scorns - `Father a weakly stock, or else wear horns'.

The lawyer considered for a few moments and then extemporized.

And that old man, yourself, is a plain fool To foist on Nature this unnatural rule. A sturdy old man fathers sturdy sons; A weakly young man fathers weakly ones.

This was so just a point and so neatly made that I forgave the poet-lawyer for calling me a plain fool, and at the next meeting of the Senate amended the Poppaean-Papian Law accordingly. The severest anger to which I ever remember having given way in court was roused by- a court official whose duty it was to summon witnesses and see that they arrived punctually. I had given a fraud case a hearing but had been forced to adjourn it for lack of evidence, the principal witness having fled too Africa to avoid being charged with complicity in the fraud. When the case-came on again I called for this witness; but he was not in court. I asked the court official whether this man had been duly subpoenaed to attend.

',Oh, yes, indeed, Caesar.'

`Then why is he not here.?

`He is unfortunately prevented from attending.!

'There is no excuse for non-attendance, except illness so serious that he cannot be carried into court without danger to his life.' 'I quite agree, Caesar. No, the witness is not ill now. He has been very ill, I understand. But that is all over.' `What was wrong with him?'

`He was mauled by a lion, I am informed, and afterwards gangrene set in.'

`It's a wonder he recovered,' I said.

He. didn't,' sniggered the fellow. 'He's dead. I think that death can stand as an excuse for non-attendance.' Everyone laughed.

I was so furious that I flung my writing-tablet at him, took away his citizenship, and banished him to Africa. `Go and hunt lions,' I shouted, 'and I hope they maul you properly, and I hope gangrene sets in.' However, six months later I pardoned him and re-instated him in his position. He made no more jokes at my expense.

It is only fair at this point to mention the severest anger that was ever directed in court against myself. A young nobleman was charged with unnatural acts against women. The real complainants were the Guild of Prostitutes, an unofficial but well-managed organization which protected its members pretty effectively from abuse by cheats or ruffians. The prostitutes could not very well bring a charge against the nobleman themselves, so they went to a man who had been done a bad turn by him and wanted revenge - prostitutes know everything and offered to give evidence if he brought the charge: a prostitute was a capable witness in a lawcourt. Before the case came on, I sent a message to my friend Calpurnia, the pretty young prostitute who had lived with me before I married Messalina and had been so tender and faithful to me in my misfortunes: I asked her to interview the women who were to give evidence and privately find out whether the nobleman had really abused them in the manner alleged, or whether they had been bribed by the person who was bringing the charge. Caipurnia sent me word a day or two later that the nobleman had really behaved in a very brutal and disgusting way, and that the women who had complained to the Guild were decent girls, one of whom was a personal friend of hers.

I tried the case, took sworn evidence (overruling the objection of the defending lawyer that prostitutes' oaths were both proverbially and actually worth nothing) and had this put in writing by the court recorder. When one girl repeated some very filthy and vulgar remark that the accused had made to her, the recorder asked, `Shall I put that down, Caesar?' and I answered, `Why not?' The young nobleman was so angry that he did just what I had done to the court official who teased me - he threw his writing-tablet at my head. But whereas I had missed my aim, his aim was true. The sharp edge-of the tablet gashed my cheek and drew blood. But all I said was, `I am glad to see, my Lord, that you still have some shame left.' I found him guilty and put a black mark against his name in the Roll, which disqualified him from becoming a candidate for public office. But he was a relative by marriage of Asiaticus, who asked me some months later to scratch out the black mark; because his young relative had lately reformed, his ways. `I'll scratch it out, to please you,' I answered, `but it will still show.' Asiaticus later repeated this remark of mine to his friends as a proof of my stupidity. He could not understand, I suppose, that a reputation was, as my mother used to say, like an earthenware plate. `The plate is cracked; the reputation is damaged by a criminal sentence: The plate is then mended with rivets, and becomes "as good as new"; the reputation is mended by an official pardon. A mended plate or a mended reputation is better than a cracked plate or a damaged reputation. But a plate that has never been cracked and a reputation that has never been damaged, are better still.'

A schoolmaster always appears a very queer fellow to his pupils. He has certain stock-phrases which they come to notice-and giggle at whenever he uses them. Everyone in the world has stock-phrases or tricks of speech, but unless he is in a position of authority - as a schoolmaster; or an army captain or a judge - nobody notices, them particularly. Nobody noticed them in my case until I became Emperor, but, then of course they became world-famous. I had only to remark in court, `No malice or favour whatsoever' (turning to my legal secretary after summing-up a case), `That's right, isn't it?' or `When once my mind is made up, the thing is fixed with a nail,' or quote the old tag:

As the rascal did he must

Himself be done by And that's just;

or utter the family oath, 'Ten thousand furies and serpents!' and a great roar of laughter would go up about me as though I had let fall either the most absurd solecism imaginable or the most exquisitely witty epigram.

In the course of my first year in the courts I must have made hundreds of ridiculous mistakes, but I did get the: cases settled and sometimes surprised myself by my brilliance. There was one case, I remember, where one of the witnesses for the defence, a woman, denied any relationship with the accused man, who was alleged by the prosecution to be really her son. When I told her that I would take her word for it and that in my quality as High Pontiff I would immediately join her and him in marriage she was so frightened by the prospect of having incest forced upon her that she pleaded guilty to perjury. She said that she had concealed her relationship in order to seem an impartial witness. That gave me a great reputation, which I lost almost at once in a case where the treason charge covered one of forgery. The prisoner was a freedman of one of Caligula's freedmen, and there were no extenuating circumstances to his crime. He had forged his master's, will just before his death - whether he was responsible for the death could not be proved - and had, left his mistress and her children completely destitute. I grew very angry with this man as I heard-his story unfolded and determined to inflict the maximum penalty. The defence was very weak no denial of the charge, only a stream of Telegonian irrelevancies. It was long past my dinner-time and I had been sitting in judgement solidly for six hours. A delicious whiff of cooking came floating into my nostrils from the dining-chamber of the Priests of Mars near by. They eat better than any other priestly fraternity : Mars never lacks for sacrificial victims. I felt faint with hunger. I said to the` senior of the magistrates who were sitting with me, `Please take over this, case from me and impose the maximum penalty, unless the defence has any better evidence evidence to offer than has yet been produced.'

`Do you really mean the maximum penalty?' he asked.

'Yes, indeed, whatever it may be. The man deserves no mercy.'

`Your orders shall be obeyed, Caesar,'' he replied.

So my chair was brought and I joined the priests at their dinner. When I' returned' that afternoon I found that the accused man's hands had been chopped off and hung around his neck. That was a punishment ordained for forgery by Caligula and had not yet been removed from the penal code. Everyone considered that I had acted' most cruelly, for the judge had told the Court that it was my sentence, not his own. It was hardly my fault, though.

I recalled all the exiles who had been banished on treason charges but only after asking the Senate's permission. Among these were my nieces Agrippinilla and Lesbia who had been sent to an island off the coast of Africa. For my own part, though I would certainly not have allowed them to remain there, neither would I have invited them to return to Rome. They had both behaved very insolently to me and had both committed incest with their brother Caligula, whether willingly or unwillingly I do not know, and their other adulteries had been a matter of public scandal. It was Messalina who interceded with me for them. I realize now that it gave her a delightful sense of power to do this. Agrippinilla and Lesbia had always treated her with great haughtiness, and now that they, were told that they were being recalled to Rome as a result of her generosity they would feel obliged to humble themselves before her. But at the time I thought it was plain goodness of heart in Messalina. So my nieces returned and I found that exile had by no means broken their spirits, though their delicate skins had become sadly tanned by the African sun, By Caligula's orders they had been forced to earn their living on the island by diving for sponges. However, the only comment that Agrippinilla made on her experiences was that she had not altogether wasted her time. `I have become a first-class swimmer. If anyone ever wants to kill me, he had better not try drowning,' They decided to brazen out the disgracefully slave-girlish colour of their faces, necks, and arms,, by inducing some of their noble friends to adopt sunburn as a fashion. Walnut-juice became a favourite toilet-water. Messalina's intimates, however, kept their natural pinkand-white complexions and referred contemptuously to the sunburn party as 'The Sponge Divers'. Lesbia's thanks to Messalina were most perfunctory and I was hardly thanked at, all. She, was positively unpleasant: `You kept us waiting ten days longer than was necessary,' she complained, `and the ship that was sent tofetch. us

was full of rats.' Agrippinilla was wiser: she made both of us very graceful speeches of gratitude.

I confirmed Herod's kingship of Bashan, Galilee, and Gilead, and added, to it Judaea, Samaria, and Edom, so that his dominions were now as large as those of his grandfather. I rounded off the northern part with Abilene, which had formed part of Syria. He and I entered upon a solemn league, confirmed by oaths in the open Market Place in the presence of an immense crowd, and by the ritual sacrifice of a pig, an ancient ceremony revived for the occasion. I also conferred; on him the honorary dignity of Roman Consul: this had never before been .given to a man of his race. It signalized that in the recent crisis the Senate had come for advice to him, not finding a native Roman capable of clear and impartial thought. At Herod's request I also conferred the little kingdom of Chalcis on his younger brother, Herod Pollio: Chalcis lay to the east of the Orontes, near Antioch. He asked nothing for Aristobulus, so Aristobulus got nothing. I also gladly freed Alexander the Alabarch and his brother Philo, who were still in prison at Alexandria. While on the subject, I may mention that when the Alabarch's son, to whom Herod had married his daughter Berenice died, Berenice then married her uncle Herod Pollio. I confirmed Petronius in his governorship of Syria and sent him a personal letter of congratulation on his sensible behaviour in the matter of the statue.

I took Herod's advice about the marble slabs that had been intended for facing the interior of Caligula's temple: they made a fine showing around the Circus. Then I had to decide what to do with the building itself, which was handsome enough even when stripped of its precious ornaments. It occurred to me that it would be only justice to the Twin Gods, Castor and Pollux - a decent apology for the insult that Caligula had offered them by turning - their temple into a mere portico of his own - to give it to them as an annexe of theirs. Caligula had made a breach in the wall behind their two statues, to form the main entrance to his temple, so that they became as it were his doorkeepers. There was nothing for it but to reconsecrate the premises. I fixed a propitious day for the ceremony and won the Gods' approval of it by augury; for we make this distinction between augury and consecration, that the consecration is effected by the will of man, but first the augury must denote the willing consent of the deity concerned. I had chosen the fifteenth day of July, the day that Roman knights go out crowned with olive wreaths to honour the Twins in a magnificent horseback procession: from the Temple of Mars they ride through the main streets of the City, circling back to the Temple of the Twins, where they offer sacrifices. The ceremony is a commemoration of the battle of Lake Regillus which was fought on that day over 300 years ago. Castor and Pollux came riding in person to the help of a Roman army that was making a desperate stand, on the lake-shore against a superior force of Latins ; and ever since then they have been adopted as the particular patrons of the Knights.

I took the auspices in the little tabernacle dedicated to that purpose on the summit of the Capitoline Hill. I invoked the Gods and, after calculation, marked out the appropriate quarter of the Heavens in which to make my observations, namely, the part where the constellation of the Heavenly Twins then lay. I had hardly done- so, when I heard a faint creaking sound in the sky and the looked-for sign appeared. It was a pair of swans flying from the direction that I had marked out, the noise of their wings growing stronger and stronger as they approached. I knew that these must be Castor and Pollux themselves in disguise, because, you know, they and their sister Helen were hatched out of the same treble-yolked egg that Lead laid after she had been courted by Jove in the form of a swan. The birds passed directly over their Temple and were soon lost in the distance.

I shall get a little ahead of the order of events by describing the festival. It began with a lustration. We priests and our assistants made a solemn procession around the premises, carrying laurel branches which we dipped in pots of consecrated water and waved, sprinkling drops as we went. I had been to the trouble of sending for water from Lake Regillus, where Castor and Pollux, by the way, had another temple: I mentioned the source of the water in the invocation. We also burned sulphur and aromatic herbs to keep off evil spirits, and flute-music was played to drown the sound of any ill-omened word that might be uttered. This lustration made everything holy within the bounds that we had walked, which included the new annexe as well as the Temple itself. We walled up the breach. I laid the first stone myself. I then sacrificed. I had chosen the combination of victims that I knew would please the Gods most for each of them an ox, a sheep, and a pig, all unblemished and all twins. Castor and Pollux are not major deities: they are demigods who, because of their mixed parentage, spend alternate days in Heaven and the Underworld. In sacrificing to the ghosts of heroes one draws the head of the victim down, but in sacrificing to Gods one draws it up. So in sacrificing to the Twins I followed an old practice which had lapsed for many years, of alternately drawing one head down and one head up. I have seldom seen more propitious entrails.

The Senate had voted me triumphal dress for the occasion; the excuse was a small campaign that had recently been brought to a conclusion in Morocco, where disturbances had followed Caligula's murder of the King, my cousin Ptolemy. I had had no responsibility for the Moroccan expedition, and though it was now customary for the Commander-in-Chief to be voted triumphal dress at the close, of a campaign, even though he had never left the City, I would not have accepted the honour but for one consideration. I decided that it would look strange for a. Commander-in-Chief to dedicate a temple to the only two Greek demigods who had ever fought for Rome, in a dress which was a confession that he had never done any real army commanding. But I only wore my triumphal wreath and cloak during the ceremony itself for the rest of the five days festival I wore an, ordinary purple-bordered senator's gown.

The first three -days were devoted to theatrical shows in the Theatre of Pompey, which I rededicated for the occasion. The stage and part of the auditorium had been burned down in Tiberius's reign, but rebuilt by him and dedicated to Pompey again. Caligula, however, had disliked seeing Pompey's title, `The Great', in the inscription and had rededicated the Theatre to himself. I now gave it back to Pompey, though I put an inscription on the stage, giving Tiberius credit for its restoration after the fire and myself credit for this rededication to Pompey: it is the only public building on which I have ever let my name appear.

I had never liked the wholly un-Roman practice that had sprung up towards the end of Augustus's reign, of men and women of rank appearing on the stage to show off their histrionic and, corybantic talents. I cannot think why Augustus did not discourage them more sternly than he did. I suppose it was because there was no law against the practice, and Augustus was tolerant of Greek innovations. His successor Tiberius disliked the theatre, whoever the actors might be, and called it a great waste of time and an encouragement to vice and folly. But Caligula not only recalled the professional actors whom Tiberius had banished from the City but strongly encouraged noble amateurs to perform and often appeared on the stage. himself. The chief impropriety of the innovation lay for me in the sheer incapacity of the noble amateurs. Romans are not born actors. In Greece men and women of rank take their parts in theatrical shows as a matter of course, and never fail to acquit themselves honourably. But I have never seen a Roman amateur who was any good. Rome has only produced one great actor, Roscius, but he won his extraordinary perfection in the art by the extraordinary pains that he took over it. He never once made a single gesture or movement on the stage that he had not carefully rehearsed beforehand again and again until it seemed a natural action. No other Roman has ever had the patience to forge himself into a Greek. So on this occasion I sent special messages to all noblemen and noblewomen who had ever appeared on the stage in Caligula's reign, ordering. them under pain of my displeasure to act in two plays and an interlude which I had chosen for them. They were not to be helped out by any professional actor, I said. At the same time I called for Harpocras, my Games secretary, and told him that I wished him to get together the best cast of professional actors that he could find in Rome and see whether he could not, on the second day of the festival, show what acting really should be. It was to be: the same programme; but I kept this a secret. My little object lesson worked very well. The first day's performances were pitiable to witness. Such wooden gestures and awkward entrances and exits, such mumbling and mangling of parts, such lack of gravity in the tragedies and of humour in the comedies, that the-audience soon grew impatient and coughed and shuffled and talked. But next day the professional company, acted so brilliantly that since then no man or woman of rank has ever dared to appear upon the public stage.

On the third day the principal performance was the Pyrrhic sword-dance, the native dance of the Greek cities of Asia Minor. It was performed by the sons of the notables of those cities, whom Caligula had sent for on the pretence of wanting them to, dance for-him; in reality he intended them for hostages for their parents good behaviour while he visited Asia Minor and raised money by his usual extortionate methods. Hearing of their arrival at the Palace, Caligula had gone to inspect them and was on the point of making them rehearse a song which they had learnt in his honour when Cassius Chaerea came up to ask for the watchword; and that was -the signal for his assassination. So now the boys danced with the greater joy and skill for knowing what a fate they had escaped; and sang me a very grateful song when, they had done. I rewarded them all with the Roman citizenship and sent them home a few days later, loaded with presents.

The fourth and fifth days' performances were in the Circus, which looked very fine with its gilt goals and marble barriers, and in the amphitheatres. We had twelve chariot-races and one camel race, which was an amusing novelty. We also killed 300 bears and 300 lions in the amphitheatres, and had a big sword-fighting display. The bears and the lions had been ordered by Caligula from Africa just before his death and had only just arrived. I frankly told the people, `This is the last big wild-beast show that you will see for some time: I am going to wait until the prices come down before I order anymore. The African traders have run them up to an absurd height. If they can't bring them-down again they can take their wares to another market - but I think that it will puzzle them to find one.' This appealed to the crowd's commercial sense and they cheered me gratefully. So that was the end of the festival, except for a big banquet which I gave afterwards at the Palace to the nobility and their wives, also to certain representatives of the People. More than 2,000 people were served. There were no farfetched delicacies, but it was a well-thought-out meal, with good wine and excellent roasts, and I heard no complaints about the absence of tit-lark-tongue pastries or antelope fawns in aspic or ostrich-egg omelettes:

Chapter 8

I SOON came to a decision about the sword-fighting and wildbeast hunts. First about the wild beasts. I had heard of a sport practised in Thessaly which had the double advantage of being exciting to watch and cheap to provide. So I introduced it at Rome as an alternative to the usual leopard and lion hunts. It was played with half-grown wild bulls. The Thessalians used to rouse the bull by sticking small darts into its hide as it emerged from the pen where it was imprisoned not enough to injure it, only enough to vex it. It used to come charging out and then they used to jump nimbly out of its way. They were quite unarmed. Sometimes they used to deceive it by holding coloured cloths before their bodies: when it charged the cloths they moved them away at the last moment without shifting their own ground. The bull would always charge the moving cloth. Or, as it charged, they would leap forward and either clear it in a single bound, or step on its rump for a moment before coming to ground again. The bull would gradually weary, and they would do still more daring tricks. There was one man who could actually stand with his back to the bull, bending down with his head between his legs, and then, as it charged, turn a back-somersault in the air and land standing on the bull's shoulders. It was a common sight to see a man ride around the ring balanced on a bull's back. If a bull would not tire quickly, they would make it gallop around the arena by sitting it as if it were a horse, holding a horn in the left hand and twisting its tail with the right. When it was sufficiently out of breath the chief performer would wrestle with it, holding it by both horns and slowly forcing it to the ground. Sometimes he would catch the bull's ear between his teeth to help him in his task. It was a very interesting sport to watch, and the bull often caught and killed a man who took too great liberties with it. The cheapness of the sport lay in the very reasonable demands for payment made by the Thessalians, who were simple countrymen, and in the survival of the bull for, another performance. Clever bulls who learned how to avoid being tricked and dominated soon became great popular favourites. There was one called Rusty, who was almost as famous in its way as the horse Incitatus. He killed ten of his tormentors in as many festivals. The crowd came to prefer these bull-baitings to all other shows except swordfighting.

About the sword-fighters: I decided now to recruit them principally from the slaves who in the reigns of Caligula and Tiberius had testified against their masters at treason trials and so brought about their deaths. The two crimes that I abominate most are parricide and treachery. For parricide, indeed, I have reintroduced the ancient penalty: the criminal is whipped until he bleeds and then sewed up in a sack together with a cock, a dog, and a viper, representing lust, shamelessness, and ingratitude, and finally thrown into the sea. I regard treachery of slaves towards their masters as a sort of parricide too, so I would always make them fight until one combatant was dead or severely wounded; and I never granted any man remission; but, made him fight again at the next Games, and so on until he was killed or wholly disabled. Once or twice it happened that one of, them pretended to be mortally injured when he had only received a slight cut, and would writhe on the sand as if unable to continue. If I found that he was shamming I always gave orders for his throat to be cut.

I believe the populace enjoyed the entertainments that I gave them far more than Caligula's, because they saw them much more rarely. Caligula had such a passion for chariot-racing and wildbeast hunts that almost every other day was made the excuse for a holiday. This was a great waste of public time and the audience got bored long before he did. I removed 150 of Caligula's new holidays from the calendar. Another decision that I took was to make a regulation about repetitions. It was the custom: that if a mistake had been made in the ceremony of a festival, even if it was only a small one on the last day of all, the whole business had to be gone through again. In Caligula's reign repetitions had become quite a farce. The nobles whom he had forced to celebrate games in his, honour at their own cost knew that they would never escape with only single performance: hewould. be

sure to find some flaw in the ceremony when it was all over and force them to repeat it two, three, four, five, and even as many as ten times. So they learned to appease him as a matter of course by making; an obviously intentional, mistake on the last day, and so winning the favour of only repeating the show once. My edict was that if any festival had to be repeated, the repetition should not occupy more than a single day, and if a mistake, were then made, that would be an end of the matter. As a result no mistakes at all were made: it was seen that I did not encourage them. I also ordered that there should be no official, celebrations of my birthday and no swordfighting displays given for my preservation. It was wrong, I said, for men's lives to be sacrificed, even the lives of sword-fighters, in an attempt to purchase the favour of the Infernal Gods towards a living man.

Yet, so that I should not be accused of stinting the City's pleasures, I sometimes used to proclaim suddenly one morning that there would be games held that afternoon in the Enclosure in Mars Field. I explained that there was no particular reason for the games, except that it was a good day for them, and that since I had made no particular preparations it would be a case of taking pot-luck. I called them Sportula or-Pot-luck Games. They lasted only for the single afternoon.

I mentioned just now my hatred of slaves who betrayed their masters. But I realized that unless masters had a properly paternal attitude to their slaves, slaves could not be expected to have a sense of filial duty to their masters. Slaves, after, all, are human. I protected them by legislation, of which I may give an example. The rich freedman from whom Herod had once borrowed money to, pay back my mother and myself had greatly enlarged his hospital for sick slaves, which was now situated on the Island of Aesculapius, in the Tiber. He advertised himself as ready to buy slaves in any condition with a view to curing them,, but promised first option of repurchase to the former owner at a price not to exceed three times, the original. His doctoring methods, were very rigorous, not to say inhumane. He treated the sick slaves exactly like cattle. But he did a very large and profitable business because most masters could not be bothered to have sick slaves in their house, distracting the other slaves from their ordinary duties; and, if they were in pain, keeping everyone awake at nights by their groans. They preferred to sell them as soon as it was clear that the illness would be a long and tedious one. In this they were, of course, following the base economical precepts of Cato the Censor. But I put a stop to the practice. I made an edict that any sick slave who had been sold to a hospital-keeper should, on recovery, be granted his liberty and not return to his master's service, and that the master should refund the purchase money to the hospital-keeper. If a slave fell sick the master must henceforth either `cure him at home or pay for his cure in the hospital. In the latter case he would become free on recovery, like the slaves already sold to the hospital-keeper, and would be expected, like them, to pay a thank-offering to the hospital, to the extent of one-half his moneyearnings for the next three- years. If any master chose to kill the slave rather than cure him at home or send him to the hospital, he would be guilty of murder. I then personally inspected the island hospital and gave instructions to the manager for obvious improvements in accommodation, diet, and hygiene.

Though, as I say, I removed 150 of Caligula's holidays from the calendar, I did, I admit, create three new festivals, each lasting three days. Two were in honour of my parents. I made these fall on their birthdays, postponing to vacant dates two minor festivals which happened to coincide with them. I ordered dirges to be sung in my parents memories and provided funeral banquets at my own expense. My father's victories in Germany had already been honoured with an Arch on the Appian Way and with the hereditary-title Germanicus, which was the surname of which I was proudest; but I felt that his memory deserved to be refreshed in this way as well: My mother had been granted important honours by Caligula, including the title of 'Augusta', but when he quarrelled with her and forced her to commit suicide, he meanly took them all away again: he wrote letters to the Senate accusing her of treason to himself, impiety to the other Gods, a life of malice and avarice, and the entertainment in her house of fortune-tellers and astrologers in defiant disobedience to the laws. Before I could decently make my mother `Augusta' once more I had to plead before the Senate that she was entirely guiltless of these charges : that though strong-minded she was extremely pious, and though thrifty, extremely generous, and that she never bore malice against anyone and never once consulted a fortune-teller or astrologer- in all her life. I introduced the necessary witnesses. Among them was Briseis, my mother's wardrobe-maid, who had been my property as a slave until she was given her freedom in old age. In fulfilment of a promise made a year or two before to Briseis, I presented her to the House as follows: 'My Lords, this old woman was once a faithful slave of mine, and for her life of industry and devotion in the service of the Claudian family - as maid first of all to my grandmother Livia, and then to my mother Antonia, whose hair she, used to dress I recently rewarded her with freedom. Some persons, even members of my own household, have suggested that she was really my mother's slave: I take this opportunity of branding any such suggestion as a mischievous lie! She was born as my father's slave when my father was a mere, child on his death my brother inherited her: and then she came to me. She has had no other masters or mistresses. You can place the fullest reliance on her testimony.' The senators were astonished at the warmth of my words, but cheered them, hoping to please me; and I was indeed pleased, because to old Briseis this was the most glorious moment of her life and the applause seemed intended as much for herself as for me. She began to; weep, and her rambling tributes to my mother's character were hardly audible. She died a few days later in a splendid room in the Palace and I gave her a most luxurious funeral.

My mother's stolen titles were restored to her and in the great Circensian Games her coach was included in the sacred procession, like the coach of my poor sister-in-law Agrippina. The third festival that l created was in honour of my grandfather Mark Antony. He had been one of our most brilliant Roman generals and won many remarkable victories in the East. His sole mistake had been to fall out with Augustus after a long partnership with him and to lose the battle of Actium. I did not see why my grand-uncle Augustus's victory should continue to be celebrated at my-grandfather's expense. I did not go so far as to deify my grandfather, whose many failings disqualified him for Olympus, but the festival was a tribute to his qualities as a soldier and gratified the descendants of those Roman soldiers who had been unlucky enough to choose the losing side at Actium.

Nor did I forget my brother Germanicus. I instituted no festival in his honour, for I felt somehow that his ghost would not approve. He was the most modest and self-effacing man of his rank and ability that I have ever known. But I did something that I felt, sure would please him. There was, a festival held at Naples, which is a Greek colony, and at the competition held there every five years for the best Greek comedy I submitted one that Germanicus had written, which I found among his papers after his death, It was called The Ambassadors and was written with considerable grace and wit somewhat in the style of Aristophanes; The plot was that two Greek brothers, one of whom was commander, of his city's forces in the war against Persia, and the other a mercenary in the Persian service, happened to arrive at the same time as ambassadors to the court of a neutral kingdom, each asking the king for his military co-operation. I recognized comic reminiscences of the recriminations that had once passed between the two Cheruscan chieftains, Flavius and Hermann, brothers' who fought on opposite sides in the German war which followed Augustus's deat. The comic ending to the play was that the foolish king was convinced by both brothers. He sent his infantry to help the Persians and his cavalry to help the Greeks. This comedy won the prize, by the unanimous vote of the judges. It may be suggested that a certain favouritism was shown here, not only on account of Germanicus's extraordinary popularity during his lifetime among all who came; in contact with him, but because it was known that it was I, the Emperor, who was submitting the entry.- But there could be no doubt that it was incomparably the best work that was offered for the prize, and it was much applauded during its performance. Recalling that Germanicus on his visit to Athens, Alexandria, and other famous Greek cities had worn Greek dress, I did the same at the Naples festival. I wore a cloak and high boots at the musical and dramatic performances, and a purple mantle and golden crown at the gymnastic contests. Germanicus's prize was a bronze tripod:, the judge wanted to vote him a golden one as a peculiar honour; but I refused that on the grounds of extravagance. Bronze was the customary metal for the prize tripod. I dedicated: it in his name at the local temple of Apollo.

It only remained for me now to keep the promise I had made to my grandmother Livia. I was bound by my word of honour, which I had, given her, to use all the influence that I could command to obtain the Senate's consent to her deification. I had not changed my opinion of the ruthlessness and unscrupulousness of the methods that she had used for gaining control over the Empire and keeping it in her hands for some sixty-five years; but, as I remarked a little way back, my admiration for her organizing abilities increased every day. There was no opposition in the Senate to my request except from Vinicianus, Vinicius's cousin, who played the same sort of part as Gallus had played twenty-seven years before when Tiberius proposed the deification of Augustus. Vinicianus rose to ask on precisely what grounds I made this unprecedented request and what sign had been given from Heaven to indicate that Livia Augusta would be welcomed by the Immortals as their permanent associate. I was ready with my answer: I told him that not long before her.death my grandmother, prompted no doubt by divine inspiration, had called separately first on my nephew Caligula and then on myself and had secretly informed each of us in turn that we would one day become Emperor. In return for this assurance she made us swear that we would do all that lay in our power to deify her when we succeeded to the monarchy; pointing, out that she had played as important a part as Augustus in the great work of reform that they had undertaken together after the Civil wars, and that it was most unjust that Augustus should enjoy perpetual bliss in the Heavenly mansions while she went below to the gloomy halls of Hell, to be judged by Aeacus and thereafter to be lost for ever among the countless hosts of insignificant and mouthless shades. Caligula, I told them, was only a lad at the time he made this promise, and had two elder brothers living, so it was remarkable that Livia knew that he and not they would become Emperor; for she extracted no such promise from them. Caligula, at all events, had made this promise, but had broken it when he became Emperor; and if Vinicianus needed a sure sign of the feelings of the Gods in this matter, he was; at liberty to find it in the bloody circumstances. of Caligula's death.

I then turned to address the House as a whole. `My Lords;' I said, `it is, not for me to decide whether my, grandmother Livia Augusta is worthy of national deification by your votes or whether she is not. I can only repeat that I swore to her by my own head that if ever I became Emperor - an event which, I admit, seemed both improbable and absurd, though she herself was positive that it. would come to pass - I would do, my best to persuade you to raise her to Heaven, where she might stand once more at the side of her, faithful husband, who is now, next to Capitoline love, the most venerated of all our deities. If you refuse my request to-day I shall renew it every year at this same season, until you grant it: so long as my life is spared and so long as I am still privileged to address you from this chair.'

That was the end of the little speech that I had prepared but I found myself launched on a further, extempore, appeal, `And I really think, my Lords, that you should consider Augustus's feelings in this matter. For more than fifty years he and Livia worked hand in hand together, all day and every day. There were few things that he did without her knowledge and advice, and if ever he did act on his own initiative, it cannot be said that he always acted wisely or that he met with any great success in these undertakings. Yes, whenever he was faced by a problem which taxed his own powers of judgement, he would always call for Livia. I would not go so far as to say that my grandmother was without the faults that are complementary to the extraordinary qualities with which she was endowed: I am probably more cognizant of them than anybody here. To begin with, she was entirely heartless. Heartlessness is a grave human fault and is unforgivable when combined with profligacy, greed, sloth, and disorderliness; but when combined with boundless energy and a rigid sense of order and public decency, heartlessness takes on a different character altogether. It becomes a divine attribute. Many Gods do not indeed possess it in nearly so full a measure as my grandmother did. Then again, she had a will that was positively Olympian in its inflexibility, and though she never spared any member of her own household who failed to show the devotion to duty that she expected of him, or who created a public scandal by his loose living, neither, we must remember, did she spare herself. How she worked! By going at it night and day she enlarged those sixty-five years of rule to one hundred and thirty. She soon came to identify her own will with that of Rome, and anyone who withstood it was a traitor in her eyes, even Augustus. And Augustus, with occasional lapses into self-will, saw the justice of this identification; and though, in an official way of speaking, she was merely his unofficial adviser, yet in his private letters to her he made a thousand acknowledgements of his entire dependence on her divine wisdom. Yes, he used the word "divine", Vinicianus: I call that conclusive. And you are old enough to remember that whenever he happened to be temporarily parted from her, Augustus was not at all the man that he was in her company; and it may be argued that his present task in Heaven of watching over the fortunes of the Roman people has been made very difficult by the absence of his former helpmeet. Certainly Rome has not flourished since his death nearly so prosperously as during his lifetime, except for the years that my grandmother Livia ruled through her son, the Emperor Tiberius. And has it occurred to you, my Lords, that Augustus is almost the only male deity in Heaven without a consort? When Hercules was raised to heaven, he was given a bride at once, the Goddess Hebe.'

What about Apollo?' interrupted Vinicianus. `I never heard that Apollo was married. That seems to me a very lame argument.'

The Consul called Vinicianus to order. It was clear that the word `lame' was intended offensively. But I was accustomed to insults and answered quietly: `I have always understood that the God Apollo remains a bachelor either because he is unable to choose between the Nine Muses, or because he cannot afford to offend eight of them by choosing the other as his bride. And he is immortally young, and so are they, and it is quite safe for him to postpone his choice indefinitely; for they are all in love with him, as the poet What's-his-name says. But perhaps Augustus will eventually persuade him to do his duty by Olympus, by taking one of the Nine in honourable wedlock, and raising a large family "as quick as boiled asparagus".'

Vinicianus was silenced in the burst of laughter that followed, for 'as quick as boiled asparagus' was one of Augustus's favourite expressions. He had several others: `As easily as a dog squats' and `There are more ways than one of killing a cat' and 'You mind your own business, I'll mind mine' and `I'll see that it gets done on the Greek Kalends' (which, of course, means never) and `The knee is nearer than the shin' (which. means that one's first concern is with matters that affect one personally). And if anyone tried to contradict him on a point of literary scholarship, he used to say: `A radish may know no Greek, but I do'. And whenever he was encouraging anyone to bear an unpleasant condition patiently he always used to say: `Let us content ourselves with this Cato'. From what I have told you about Cato, that virtuous man, you will easily understand what he meant. I now, found myself often using these phrases of Augustus's: I suppose that this was because I had consented to adopt his name and position: The handiest was the one he used when he was making a speech and had lost his way in a sentence a thing that constantly happens to me, because I am inclined, when I make an extempore speech, and in historical writing too when I am not watching myself, to get involved in long, ambitious sentences - and now I am doing it again, you notice. However, the point is that Augustus, whenever he got into a tangle, used to cut the Gordian knot, like Alexander, saying: `Words fail me, my Lords. Nothing that I might utter could possibly match the depth of my feelings in this matter.' And, I learned this phrase off by heart and constantly, made it my salvation. I used to throw up my hands, shut my eyes, and declaim: 'Words fail me, my Lords. Nothing that I might utter could possibly match the depth of my feelings in this matter? Then I would pause for a few seconds and recover the thread of my argument.

We deified Livia without further delay and voted her a statue to be placed alongside that of Augustus in his Temple. At the deification ceremony cadets of noble families gave a performance of the sham-fight on horseback which we call the Troy Game. We also voted her a chariot to be drawn by elephants in the procession during the Circensian Games, an honour which she shared only with Augustus: The Vestal Virgins were instructed to offer sacrifices to her in the Temple; and just as in taking legal oaths all Romans now used the name of Augustus, so henceforth all Roman women were to use my grandmother's name. Well, I had kept my promise.

All was fairly quiet in Rome now. Money was coming in plentifully and I was able to abolish more taxes. My secretaries were managing their departments to my satisfaction; Messalina was busy reviewing the roll of Roman citizens. She found that a number of freedmen were describing themselves as Roman citizens and claiming privileges to which they were not entitled. We decided to punish all such pretenders with the greatest rigour, confiscating their property and making them slaves again, to work as City scavengers or road-menders. I trusted Messalina so completely that I allowed her to use a duplicate seal for all letters and decisions made by her on my behalf in these matters. To make Rome still more quiet I disbanded the Clubs. The night-watchmen had been unable to cope with the numerous' bands of young rowdies that had recently been formed on the model of Caligula's `Scouts' and which used to' keep honest citizens awake at night by their scandalous goings-on. There had, as a matter of fact, been such clubs in Rome for the last 100 years or more - an introduction from Greece. At Athens, Corinth, and other Greek cities the club men had all been young men of family, and it was the same in Rome until Caligula's reign, when he set the fashion of admitting actors, professional sword-fighters, chariot-drivers, musicians, and such-like to membership. The result was increased rowdiness and shamelessness, great damage to property the fellows sometimes even set fire to houses - and many injuries to inoffensive people who happened to be out late at night, perhaps in search of a doctor or midwife, or on some such emergency errand. I published an order disbanding the Clubs ,but knowing that this by itself would not be enough to put an end to the nuisance, I took the only effective step possible: I prohibited the use of any building as a, clubhouse, under penalty of a ruinous fine, and made illegal the sale of cooked meat and other ready-dressed food for consumption on the premises where it was prepared. I extended this order to the sale of drink. After sundown, no drink must be consumed in the bar-room of any tavern. For it was principally the fact of meeting in a clubroom to eat and drink that encouraged the young fellows, when they began feeling merry, to go out in the cool night air to sing ribald songs, molest-passers-by, and challenge the watchmen to tussles and running fights. If they were forced to dine at home, this sort of thing would be unlikely to occur.

My prohibition proved effective and pleased the great mass of the people; whenever I went out now I was always greeted enthusiastically. The citizens had never greeted Tiberius so cordially as this, nor Caligula, except in the first few months of his reign when he was all generosity and affability. But I did not, realize how beloved I was and how seemingly important to Rome the preservation of my life had become, until one day a rumour ran through the City that I had been ambushed on my way to Ostia by a party of senators and their slaves and murdered. The whole City began lamenting in the most dismal fashion, wringing their hands and mopping their eyes and sitting groaning on their doorsteps; but those whose indignation prevailed over their grief ran to the Market Place, crying out that the Guards were traitors and the Senate a parcel of parricides There were loud threats of vengeance and even talk of burning down the Senate House. The rumour had, not the slightest foundation except that I was indeed on my way to the Ostia docks that afternoon to inspect the facilities for unloading corn. (I had been informed that in bad weather a great deal of corn was always lost between ship and land, and wanted to see whether this could be avoided. Few great cities were cursed with so awkward a harbour as Rome with Ostia: when the wind blew strongly from the west and heavy tides swept up the estuary the corn-ships, had to ride at anchor for weeks on end,, unable to discharge their cargoes.) The rumour had been put about, I suspect, by the bankers, though I could get no proof of this: it was a trick to create a sudden demand for cash. It was common talk that if I happened to die civil commotion would immediately ensue, with bloody combats in the streets between the partisans of rival candidates for the monarchy. The bankers, aware of this nervousness, foresaw that property-holders who did not wish to be involved in such disorders would naturally hurry out of Rome as soon as a report of my death was started: and there would be a rush to the banks to offer land and house property, in exchange for immediate gold at a price far below its real value. This is what actually happened. But once more Herod saved the situation. He went to Messalina and insisted on her publishing an immediate order in my name for the closing of the banks until further notice. This was done. But the panic was not checked until I had received news at Ostia of what was happening in the City and had sent four or five of my staff - honest men, whose word the citizens would trust - at full speed back to the Market Place, to appear on the Oration Platform as witnesses that the whole story was a fabrication, put about by some enemy of the State for his own crooked ends.

The facilities for discharging corn at Ostia I found most inadequate. Indeed, the whole corn supply question was a very difficult one. Caligula had left the public granaries as empty as the Public Treasury. It was only by persuading the corn-factors to endanger the vessels that they owned by running cargoes even in bad weather, that I succeeded in tiding over the season. I had, of course, to compensate them heavily for their losses in vessels, crews, and corn. I determined to solve the matter once and for all by making Ostia a safe port even in the worst weather and sent for engineers to survey the place and draw up a scheme.

My first real trouble abroad started in Egypt. Caligula had given the Alexandrian Greeks tacit permission to chastise the Alexandrian Jews, as they thought fit, for their refusal to worship his Divine Person. The Greeks were not allowed to bear arms in the streets that was a Roman prerogative - but they performed countless acts of physical violence nevertheless. The Jews, many of whom were tax-farmers and therefore unpopular with the poorer and more improvident sort of Greek citizens, were exposed to daily humiliations and dangers. Being less numerous than the Greeks, they could not offer adequate resistance, and their leaders were in prison. But they sent word to their kinsmen in Palestine, Syria, and even Parthia, acquainting them of their plight, and begging them to send secret help in men, money, and munitions of war. An armed uprising was their only hope. Help came in abundance, and the Jewish revolt was planned for the day of Caligula's arrival in Egypt, when the Greek population would be crowding in holiday dress to greet him at the, docks, and the whole Roman garrison would be there as a guard-of honour, leaving the city unprotected. The news of Caligula's death had the effect of setting the rebellion off before its proper time in an ineffectual, and half-hearted manner. But the Governor of Egypt was alarmed and sent me an immediate appeal for reinforcements there were few troops in Alexandria itself. However, the next day he received a letter that I had written him a fortnight before in which I announced my elevation to the monarchy and ordered the release of the Alabarch, with the other Jewish elders, as also the suspension of Caligula's religious decrees and his order penalizing the Jews, until such time as I should be able to inform the Governor of their complete abrogation. The Jews were jubilant, and even those who had hitherto taken no part in the rising now felt that they enjoyed my Imperial favour and could get their own back on the Greeks with impunity. They killed quite a large number of the most persistent Jew-baiters. Meanwhile I replied to the Governor of Egypt, ordering him to put an end to the disturbances, by armed force if necessary; but saying that in view of the letter which by now he must have received from me, and the sedative effects that I hoped from it, I did not consider it necessary to send reinforcements. I told him that it was possible that the Jews had acted under great provocation, and hoped that, being men; of sense, they would not continue hostilities, now that they knew that their wrongs were in process of being redressed.

This had the effect of ending the disturbances; and a few days later, after consulting the Senate, I definitely cancelled Caligula's decrees and restored to the Jews all the privileges that they had held under Augustus. But many of the younger Jews were still smarting under the sense of injustice and went marching through the streets: of Alexandria carrying banners which read: `Now Our Persecutors Must Lose Their Civic Rights', which was absurd, and `Equal: Rights For All Jews Throughout The Empire', which was not so absurd. I published an edict which ran as follows:

Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, High Pontiff, Protector of the People, Consul-Elect for the second time, issues the following,decree:

I hereby very willingly comply with the petitions of King Agrippa, and his brother King Herod, personages whom I hold in the highest esteem, that .I should grant to the Jews throughout the Roman Empire the same rights and privileges as I have granted, or rather restored, to the Jews of Alexandria. I do, these other Jews this favour not, only for the gratification of the aforesaid royal petitioners, but because I consider them worthy of these rights and privileges: they have always shown themselves faithful friends of the Roman people. I should not consider it just, however, that any Greek city should-(as has been suggested) be deprived of any rights and privileges which were granted it by the Emperor Augustus (now the God Augustus), any more than that the Jewish colony in Alexandria should have been deprived of its rights, and privileges by my predecessor. What is justice for Jews is justice for Greeks; and contrariwise. I have therefore decided to permit all Jews throughout my Empire to keep their ancient customs - in so far as these do not confict with the conduct of Imperial business without hindrance from anyone. At the same time I charge them not to presume upon the favour that I am hereby granting them, by showing contempt for the religious beliefs or practices of other races: let them content themselves with keeping their own Law. It is my pleasure that this decision of mine shall forthwith be engraved on stone tablets at the instance of the governors of all kingdoms, cities, colonies, and municipalities, both in Italy and abroad, whether Roman officials or Allied Potentates, and that these tablets shall be posted for public reading, during a full month, in some prominent public place and at a height from which the words will be plainly legible from the ground.

Talking privately to Herod one night I said: `The fact is that the Greek mind and the Jewish mind work in quite different ways and are bound to come in conflict. The Jews are too serious and proud, the Greeks' too vain and laughter-loving; the Jews hold too fast to the old, the Greeks are too restless in always seeking for something new; the Jews are too self-sufficient, the Greeks too accommodating. But though I might claim that we Romans understand the Greeks we know their limitations and potentialities and can make them very useful servants I should never claim that we understand the Jews. We have conquered them by our superior military strength but we have never felt ourselves their masters. We recognize that they retain the ancient virtues of their race, which goes back much farther in history than ours, and that we have lost our own ancient virtues; and the result is that we feel rather ashamed before them.'

Herod asked: `Do you know the Jewish version of Deucalion's Flood? The Jewish Deucalion was called Noah, and he had three married sons who, when the Flood subsided, re-peopled the earth. The eldest was Shem, the middle one was Ham, and the youngest was Japhet. Ham was punished for laughing at his father when he accidentally got drunk and threw off all his clothes, by being fated to serve the other two, who behaved with greater decency. Ham is the ancestor of all the African peoples. Japhet is the ancestor of the Greeks and Italians, and Shem the ancestor of the Jews, Syrians,' Phoenicians, Arabians, Edomites, Chaldeans, Assyrians, and the like. There is an ancient prophetic saying that if Shem and Japhet ever live under the same roof there will be endless bickering at the fireside, at the table, and in the bed-chamber. That has always proved true. Alexandria is a neat example. And if the whole of Palestine were cleared of Greeks, who don't belong there, it would be far easier to govern. The same with Syria.'

`Not for a Roman governor,' I smiled. `The Romans are not of the family of Shem and they count on Greek support. You'd have to get rid of us Romans too. But I agree with you so far as to wish that Rome had never conquered the East at all. She would have been much wiser if she had limited herself to ruling a federation of the descendants of Japhet. Alexander and Pompey have much to answer for. Both won the title "The Great" for their Eastern conquests, but I cannot see that either of them conferred a real benefit on his country.'

'It will all settle itself one day, Caesar,' said Herod thoughtfully,- ` if we have patience.'

Then I began telling Herod that I was about to betroth my daughter Antonia, who was now nearly old enough to marry; to young Pompey, a descendant of Pompey the Great. Caligula had taken away young Pompey's title, saying that it was too magnificent a one for a boy of his age to bear, and that in any case there was only one `'Great' in the world now: I had just restored the title, and all the other titles that Caligula had taken from noble Roman houses; together with such commemorative badges as the Torquatan Torque and the Cincinnatan Lock. Herod did not volunteer any more of his views on the subject. I did not realize that the future political relations of Shem and Japhet was the problem that had recently come to occupy his mind to the exclusion of all others.

Chapter 9

WHEN Herod had established me in the monarchy and set me proper course to follow - this, I am sure, is how he put the situation to himself - and in return won a number of favours from me, he said that he must take his leave at last unless there was some work of real importance that I wished him to do, such as nobody but himself was capable of undertaking. I could not think of any excuse for detaining him, and I would have felt obliged to pay him with more territory for every extra month he remained, so after a farewell banquet, which was appropriately magnificent, I let him go. We were both rather drunk that evening, I must confess, and I shed tears at the thought of his departure. We recalled our schooldays together, and when nobody seemed to be listening I leant across and called him by his old nickname.

`Brigand,' I said quietly, 'I always expected you to be a, king, but if anyone had ever told me that I'd be your Emperor I'd have called him a madman.'

`Little Marmoset,' he replied in the same low tones. `You're a fool, as I've always told you. But you have fool's luck. And fool's luck holds. You'll be an Olympian God when I'm only a dead hero; yes, don't blush, for That's how it will be, though there's no question which of us two is the better man.'

It did me good to hear Herod speak in his old style again. For the last three months he had been addressing me in the most formal and distant way, never failing to call me Caesar Augustus and to express only the most profound admiration for my opinions, even if he. was often regretfully forced to disagree with them. `Little Marmoset' (Cercopithecion) was the playful nickname Athenodorus had given me. I now begged him that when he wrote to me from Palestine he would always enclose with his official letter, signed with all his new titles, an unofficial letter signed `The Brigand' and giving me his, private news. He agreed to this: on condition that I replied in the same vein, signing myself 'Cercopithecion'. As we shook hands on the bargain he looked me steadily in the eyes and said: `Marmoset, do you want a little more of my excellent knavish advice? I'll give it you absolutely free this time.'

`Please, dear Brigand, let me have it.'

`My advice to you, old fellow, is this: never trust anyone! Never trust your most grateful freedman, your most intimate friend, your dearest child, the wife of your bosom, or the ally joined to you by the most sacred oath. Trust yourself only. Or at least trust your fool's luck, if you can't honestly trust yourself.'

The earnestness of his tones penetrated the cheerful fumes of wine that were clouding my brain and roused my attention. `Why do you say that, Herod?'' I asked sharply. `Don't you trust your wife Cypros? Don't you trust your friend Silas? Don't you trust young Agrippa, your son? Don't you trust Thaumastus and your freedman Marsyas, who got you the money at Acre, and brought you food in prison? Don't you trust me, your ally? Why did you say that? Against whom are you putting me on my guard?'

Herod laughed stupidly. 'Don't pay any attention to me, Marmoset. I'm drunk, hopelessly drunk. I say: the most extraordinary things when I'm drunk. The man who made the proverb ‘There's truth in wine must have been pretty well soaked when he made it. Do you know, the other day at a banquet I said to my steward: "Now look here, Thaumastus, I never want roasted sucking-pig stuffed with truffles and chestnuts, served at my table ever again. Do you hear?" "Very good, your Majesty, he replied. Yet if there is one dish in the world which I really love beyond all others it is roasted sucking-pig stuffed with truffles and chestnuts. What was it I told you just now? Never to trust your allies? That was funny, eh? I forgot for the moment that you and I were allies.' So I let the remark go, but it came back to me the next day, as I stood at a window watching Herod's coach roll away in the direction of Brindisi: I wondered what he had meant, and felt uncomfortable.

Herod was not the only king at that farewell banquet. His brother Herod Pollio, of Chalcis, was there; and Antiochus, to whom I had restored the kingdom of Commagene, on the north-eastern border of Syria, which Caligula had taken away from him; and Mithridates, whom I' had now, made King of the Crimea; and, besides these, the King of Lesser Armenia and the King of Osroene, both of whom had been hanging about Caligula's court, thinking it safer to be at Rome than in their own kingdoms, where Caligula might suspect them of plotting against him. I sent them all back together.

It would be just as well to follow Herod's story a little farther and to bring the account of what happened at Alexandria to a more conclusive point before returning to write of events at Rome and giving an indication of what was happening on the Rhine, in Morocco, and on other-frontiers. Herod returned to Palestine, with more pomp and glory even than on the last occasion. On arrival at Jerusalem he took down from the Temple Treasury the iron chain which he had hung up there as a thank-offering and put in its place the golden one that Caligula had given him: now that Caligula was dead he could do this without offence. The High Priest, greeted- him most respectfully, but after the usual compliments had passed took, it upon himself to reprove Herod for having given his eldest daughter in marriage to his brother: no good, he said, would come of it. Herod was not the man to allow. himself to be dictated to by any ecclesiastic, however important or holy. He asked, the High Priest, whose name was Jonathan, whether or not he considered that he, King Agrippa, had done a good service to the, God of the Jews by dissuading Caligula from defiling the Temple and by persuading me to confirm the religious privileges of the Jews at Alexandria, and to grant similar privileges to Jews throughout the world. Jonathan replied that all this was well done. So Herod told him a little parable. A rich man one day; saw a beggar by the roadside, who cried out to him for alms and claimed to be a cousin. The rich man said: `I am sorry for you, beggar-man, and will do what I can fox you, since you are my cousin. To-morrow if you go to my bank you will find ten bags of gold waiting for you there, each containing two thousand gold pieces in coin of the realm.' `If you are speaking the truth,' the beggar said, `may God reward you!' The beggar went to the bank and, sure enough, the bags of gold were handed to him. How pleased he was and how grateful! But one of the beggar's own brothers, a priest, who had himself done nothing for him when he was in distress, came to call on the rich man the next day; `Do you call this a joke?' he asked indignantly. `You swore to give your poor cousin, twenty thousand gold pieces in coin of the realm, and deceived him into thinking that you had actually done so. Well, I came to help him count them, and do you know, in the very first bag I found a Parthian gold-piece;, masquerading as a real one! Can you pretend to believe that Parthian money passes current here? Is this an honest trick to play on a beggar?'

Jonathan was not abashed by the parable. He told Herod that the rich man had been foolish to spoil his gift by the inclusion of the Parthian coin,, if, indeed, he had deliberately done 'so. And he said, too, that Herod must not forget that the greatest kings were only instruments in the hands of God and were rewarded by Him in proportion to their devotion to His service.

'And His High Priests?' asked Herod.

His High Priests are sufficiently rewarded for their faithfulness to Him, which includes the rebuking of all, Jews who fail in their religious duty, by being allowed to put on the sacred vestments and once a year enter that marvellously holy chamber where He dwells apart in immeasurable Power and Glory.'

`Very well,' said Herod. `If I am an instrument in His hands, as you say, I hereby depose you. Someone else will wear the sacred vestments at the Passover Festival this year. It will be someone who knows the right times and seasons for uttering rebukes.'

So Jonathan was deposed and Herod appointed a successor, who also after a time offended Herod by protesting that it was not proper for the Master of Horse to be a Samaritan: a Jewish king should have only Jewish officers on his staff. The Samaritans were not of the seed of Father' Abraham, but interlopers. This Master of Horse was none other than Silas; and for Silas's sake Herod deposed the High Priest and offered the office to Jonathan again. Jonathan refused it, though with seeming gratitude, saying that he was content to have once put on the sacred vestments and that a second consecration to the High Priesthood could not be so holy a ceremony as, the first. If God had empowered Herod, to depose him, it must have been, a, punishment for his pride; and if now God was in a forgiving mood, he rejoiced, but would not risk a second offence. Might he therefore suggest that the High Priesthood be given to his brother Matthias as holy and God-fearing a man as was to be found in all Jerusalem? Herod consented.

Herod took up hisresidence. in

Jerusalem, in the part called Bezetha, or the blew City, which surprised me very much, for he now had several fine cities luxuriously built in the Graeco-Roman style, any one of which he could have made his capital. He visited all these cities from time to time in ceremonial style and treated the inhabitants with courtesy, but Jerusalem, he said, was the only city for a Jewish king to live and reign in. He made himself extremely popular with the inhabitants of Jerusalem not only by his gifts to the Temple and his beautification of the city but by his abolition of the house-tax, which diminished his revenues by 100,000 gold pieces annually. His total annual income, however, amounted even without, this to some 500,000 gold pieces. What surprised me still more was that he now worshipped daily in the Temple and kept the Law with great strictness: for I remembered. the contempt that I had often heard him express for `that holy psalm-singer' his, devout brother Aristobulus, and in the private letters that he now always enclosed in his official dispatches there was no sign of any moral change of heart. One letter that he sent me was almost all about Silas. It ran as follows

Marmoset, my old friend, I have the saddest and most comical story to tell you: it concerns Silas, the `faithful Achates' of your brigand `friend Herod Agrippa. Most learned Marmoset, from your rich store of out-of-the-way historical learning can you inform me whether your ancestor, the pious Aeneas, was ever as bored by the faithful Achates as I have lately been by Silas? Have Virgilian commentators anything to tell us on that head? The fact is that I was foolish enough to appoint Silas my Master of Horse, as I think I wrote to-you at the time. The High Priest didn't approve of the appointment, because he was a Samaritan; the Samaritans once vexed the Jews at Jerusalem, the ones who had returned there from their Babylonian captivity, by knocking down every night the walls they built by day; and the Jews have never forgiven them this. So I went to the trouble of deposing the High Priest on Silas's account. Silas had already begun to be very self-important and was daily giving fresh proof of his famous frankness and bluntness of speech. My removal of the High Priest encouraged him to put on greater airs than ever. Upon my word, sometimes visitors at Court could not make out which of us was the King and which was only the Master of Horse. Yet if I hinted to Silas that he was presuming on his friendship he used to sulk, and dear Cypros used to reproach me for my unkindness to him, and remind me of all that he had done for us. I had to be pleasant to him again end as good as apologize to him for my ingratitude.

His worst habit was constantly harping on my former troubles - in mixed company too - and giving most embarrassingly circumstantial details of how he had saved me from this danger and that, and how faithful he had shown himself, and how much excellent advice of his I had neglected, and how he had never looked for any reward but my friendship, in fine weather or rain or tempest - for that was the Samaritan character. Well, he opened his mouth once too often. I was at Tiberias, on the Lake of Galilee, where I was once magistrate under Antipas, and the leading men of Sidon were banqueting with me. You may remember the difference of opinion that I once had with the Sidonians when I was Flaccus's adviser at Antioch? Trust Silas to be on his worst behaviour at a banquet of such unusual political importance. Almost the first thing that he, said to Hasdrubal, the harbour-master of Sidon, a man of the greatest influence in Phoenicia, was: `I know your face, don't I? Isn't your name Hasdrubal? Of course, yes, you were one of the delegation thatcame to

King Herod Agrippa, about nine years ago, asking him to use his influence with Flaccus on behalf of Sidon in that boundary dispute with Damascus. I well remember advising Herod to refuse your presents, pointing out that it was, dangerous to take-bribes from both parties in a dispute:' he would be sure to get into trouble. But he only laughed at me. That's his way.' '

Hasdrubal was a man of delicacy and said that he had no recollection of the incident at all: he was sure that Silas must be mistaken. But you can't stop Silas. `Surely your memory isn't as bad as that?' he persisted. `Why, it was because of that case that Herod had to clear out of Antioch in the disguise of a camel-driver I provided him with it - leaving his wife and children behind - I had to smuggle them aboard a ship to take - them away and make a long detour by way of the Syrian desert to Edom. He went on a stolen camel. No, in case you ask me about that camel, it wasn't I who stole it, but King Herod Agrippa himself.'

This made me pretty hot, and it was no use denying the main facts of the story. But I did my best to gloze it over with a light-hearted romance of how one day my desert blood stirred in me and I grew weary of Roman life at Antioch and felt an overpowering impulse to ride out into the vast desert spaces and visit my kinsmen in Edom; but knowing that Flaccus would detain me - he was dependent on me for political advice - I was forced to take my leave secretly, and so arranged with Silas for my family to meet me at the port of Anthedon at the conclusion of my adventure. And a very enjoyable holiday it had proved to be. At Anthedon, I said, I had been met by an Imperial courier, who had failed to find me at Antioch, with a letter from the Emperor Tiberius: inviting me to Rome to act as his adviser, because my brains were wasted in the provinces.

Hasdrubal listened with polite interest, admiring my lies, for he knew the story almost as well as Silas did. He asked, 'May I inquire of your Majesty whether this was your first visit to Edom? I understand that the Edomites are a very noble, hospitable, and courageous race, and despise luxury and frivolity with a primitive severity which I find it easier, myself, to admire than to imitate.'

That fool Silas must needs put his oar in again. 'Oh, no, Hasdrubal, that wasn't his first visit to Edom. I was his only companion - except for the Lady Cypros, as she was then, and the two elder children - on his first visit. That was the year that Tiberius's son was murdered. King Herod had been obliged because of this to escape from his creditors at Rome, and Edom was the only safe place of refuge. He had run up the most enormous debts in spite of my repeated warnings that a day of reckoning would come at last. He loathed Edom, to tell the honest truth, and was contemplating suicide; but the Lady Cypros saved him by swallowing her pride and writing a very- humble letter to her sister-in-law Herodias, with whom she had quarrelled. King Herod was invited here to Galilee and King Antipas, made him a judge of the Lower Courts in this very town. His annual income was only seven hundred gold pieces.'

Hasdrubal was opening his mouth to express surprise and incredulity when Cypros suddenly came- to my help: She had not minded, Silas's telling tales about me, but when he brought up that old memory of the letter to Herodias, it was quite another matter: `Silas,' she said, `you talk far too much and most of what you say is inaccurate and nonsensical. You will oblige me by holding your tongue.'

Silas grew very red and once more addressed Hasdrubal: `It is my Samaritan nature to tell the truth frankly, however disagreeable. Yes, King Herod passed through many vicissitudes before he won his present kingdom. Of some of these he does not appear to be ashamed - for instance, he has actually hung up in the Temple Treasury at Jerusalem the iron chain with which he was once fettered by order of the Emperor Tiberius. He was put in gaol for treason, you know. I had warned him repeatedly not to have private conversations with Gaius Caligula in the hearing of his coachman, but as usual he disregarded my warning. Afterwards Gaius Caligula gave him a gold chain, a replica of the iron one, and, the other day King Herod hung this gold chain up in the Treasury and took down the iron one, which did not shine brightly enough, I suppose.' I caught Cypros's eye and we exchanged understanding looks. So I told Thaumastus to go to my bedroom where the chain was hanging on the wall facing my bed and bring it down. He did so, and I passed it round the table as a curiosity; the Sidonians examining it with ill-concealed embarrassment. Then I called Silas to me. `Silas,' I said, `I am about to do you a signal honour. In recognition of all your services to me and mine, and the fine frankness that you have never failed to show me even in the presence of distinguished guests, I hereby invest you with the Order of the Iron Chain; and may you live long to wear it. You and I are the only two companions, of this very select Order and I gladly surrender the regalia to you complete. Thaumastus, chain this man and take himaway. to

prison.'

Silas was too astonished to say a word and was led away like a lamb to the, slaughter. The joke was that if he hadn't been, so obstinate at Rome about refusing the citizenship that I had offered to get for him, I should never have been able to play that trick on him. He would have appealed to you and you would no doubt have pardoned him, you softhearted fellow. Well, I had to do it, or the Sidonians would never have respected me, again.. As it was, they seemed gratifyingly, impressed and the rest of the banquet proved a great success. That was some months ago, and I kept him there in gaol - unpleaded for by Cypros - to learn his lesson; intending, however, to release him in time to attend my birthday feast, which took place yesterday. I sent Thaumastus to Tiberias to to visit Silas in his cell. He was to say: `I was once a messenger of hope and comfort to our Lord and Master King Herod Agrippa when he was entering the, prison gates, at Misenum: I am now here, Silas, as a messenger of hope and comfort to you. This pitcher of wine is the token.

Our gracious sovereign invites you to banquet with him at Jerusalem in three days time and will allow you to present yourself, if you prefer it, without the insignia of the Order that he has conferred on you. Here, take this and drink it. And my own advice to you, my friend Silas, is never remind people of services that you have done them in times past. If they are grateful and honourable men they will not need any reminder and if they are ungrateful and dishonourable, the reminder will be wasted on them.'

Silas had been brooding over his wrongs all these months and was bursting to tell someone about them - besides his warder.' He said to Thaumastus: `So that is king Herod's message, is it? And I am supposed to be grateful, am I? What new honour does he intend to confer on me? The Order of the Whip perhaps? When was an honest man ever so badly treated at a friend's hands as I have been at King Herod's? Does he expect that the awful miseries I have suffered here in solitary confinement will have taught me to hold my. tongue when I feel impelled to speak the truth and shame his lying counsellors and flattering courtiers? Tell the King that he has not broken my spirit and that if, he releases me I shall celebrate the occasion by franker and blunter speech than ever: I shall tell the whole nation through how many dangers and misfortunes he and I passed together and how I always saved the situation in the end after he had nearly ruined us both by his refusal to listen to my warnings in time, and how generously he rewarded me for all this with a heavy chain and a dark dungeon. No, I shall never forget this treatment. My very soul when I die will remember it, and remember too all the glorious deeds I did for his sake." Drink,' said Thaumastus. But Silas would not drink. Thaumastus tried to reason with the madman, but he insisted on sending the message and refusing the wine. So Silas is still in gaol and it is quite impossible for me to release him; as Cypros agrees. I was amused by that affair at Doris. You remember what I said to you at that farewell banquet when we were both so drunk and so Samaritanly frank: you'll be a 'God, my Marmoset, in spite of everything you do to prevent it. You can't stop that sort of thing. And as for what I said then about sucking-pigs stuffed with truffles and chesnuts I think I know what I must have meant.. I am such a good Jew now that I never, never on any occasion let a morsel of unclean food pass my lips - or at least if I do, nobody but I and my Arabian cook and the watching Moon knows about it. I abstain even when I visit my Phoenician neighbours or dine with my Greek subjects. When you write give me news of canning old Vitellius and those scheming scoundrels Asiaticus, Vinicius, and Vinicianus I have sent my highflown compliments to your lovely Messalina in my official letter. So good-bye for the present and continue to think well (better than he deserves) of your knavish old playmate,

THE BRIGAND

I shall explain about the 'Doris affair'. In spite of my edict some young Greeks at a place in Syria called Doris had got hold of a statue of mine and broken into a Jewish synagogue, where they set it up at the south end, as if for worship. The Jews of Doris at once appealed to Herod, as their natural protector, and Herod went in person to Petronius at Antioch to make a protest. Petronius wrote the magistrates of Doris a very severe letter, ordering them to arrest the guilty persons and send them to him for punishment without delay. Petronius wrote that the offence was a double one - not only to the Jews whose desecrated synagogue could no longer be used for worship, but to myself whose edict on the subject of religious toleration had been shamelessly violated. There was one curious remark in his letter: that the proper, place for my statue was not in a Jewish synagogue but in one of my own temples. He thought, I suppose, that by now I must surely have given in to the Senate's entreaties, and that therefore it would be politic to anticipate my deification. But I was most firm about refusing to become a God.

You can imagine that the Alexandrian Greeks did their utmost to win my favour now. They sent a deputation to congratulate me on my accession and to offer to build and dedicate a splendid temple to me, at the City's expense; or, if I refused this, at least to build and stock a Library of Italian Studies, and dedicate this to me as the most distinguished living historian. They also asked permission to give special public readings of my History of Carthage and my History of Etruria every year on my birthday. Each work was to be read out from end to end-by relays of highly trained elocutionists, the former in the old library, the latter in the new. They knew that this could not fail to flatter me. In accepting the honour. I felt very much as the parents of still-born twins might be expected to feel if, some time after the delivery, the little cold corpses awaiting their funeral in a basket set somewhere in a corner were suddenly to glow with unexpected warmth and sneeze and cry in unison. After all, I had spent more than twenty of the best years of my life on these books and taken infinite trouble to learn the various languages necessary for collecting and checking my facts and not a single person hitherto had to my knowledge been to the trouble of reading them. When I say `not a single person' I must make two exceptions. Herod had read the History of Carthage - he was not interested in the subject of Etruria -and said that he had, learned a lot from it about the Phoenician character; but that he did not think that many people would have the same interest in it as he had; `There's too much meat in that sausage,' he said, `and not enough spices and garlic.'' He meant that there was too much information in it and not enough elegant writing. He told me this while I was still a private citizen, so there could be no question of flattery. The only person except my secretaries and research assistants who had, read both books was Calpurnia. She preferred a good book to a dad play, she said, my histories to many quite good plays she had seen, and the Etruscan book to the Carthaginian one because it was about places that she knew. When I became Emperor, I should record here, I bought Calpurnia a charming villa near Ostia and gave her a comfortable annual income and a staff of well-trained slaves. But she never came to visit me at the Palace and I never visited her, for fear of making Messalina jealous. She lived with a close friend, Cleopatra, an Alexandrian, who had also been a prostitute; but now that Caipurnia had enough money, and to spare, neither of them continued in the profession. They were quiet girls.

But, as I was saying, I was very proud indeed of the Alexandrian offer, for after all Alexandria is the cultural capital of the world and had I not been addressed by its leading citizens as the most distinguished living historian? I regretted that I could not spare the time for a visit to Alexandria to be present at one of the readings. The day that the embassy came -I sent for a professional reader and asked him to read over to me in private a few passages from each of the histories. He did so with so much expression and such beautiful articulation that, forgetting for the moment that I was the author, I began clapping loudly.

Chapter 10

My immediate preoccupation abroad was with the Rhine frontier: Towards the end of Tiberius's reign the Northern Germans had been encouraged by reports of his general inactivity to make raids across the river, into what we call the Lower Province. Small parties used to swim across at unguarded spots by night to attack lonely houses or hamlets, murder the occupants, and loot what gold and jewels they could find; and then swim back at dawn. It would have been difficult to stop them doing this, even if our men had been constantly on the alert - as in the North at least they certainly were not - because the Rhine is an immensely long river and most difficult to patrol. The only effective measure against the raiders would have been retaliation; but Tiberius had refused permission for any large-scale punitive expedition. He wrote: 'If hornets plague you, burn their nest; but if it is only mosquitoes, pay no attention.' As for the Upper Province, it may be recalled that Caligula during: his expedition to France sent for Gaetulicus, the commander of the four regiments on the Upper Rhine, and executed him on the unfounded charge of conspiracy; that he crossed the river with an enormous army and advanced a few miles, the Germans offering no resistance; that he then grew suddenly alarmed and rushed back. The man whom he had appointed as Gaetulicus's successor was, commander of the French auxiliary forces at Lyons. His name was Galba, * and he was one of Livia's men. She had marked him out for preferment when he was still a youngster, and he had amply justified the, trust she: had placed in him. He was a courageous soldier and a discerning, magistrate, worked hard, and bore an exemplary private character. He had attained his Consulship six years before this. Livia, when she died, had left him a special legacy of 500,000 gold pieces; Tiberius, however, as Livia's executor, pronounced that this must be a mistake. The sum had been written in figures, not in words, and; he ruled that 50,000 was all the testatrix had intended. As Tiberius never paid a single one of Livia's legacies, this did not make much difference at the time, but when Caligula became Emperor. and paid Livia's legacies in full, it was bad luck for Galba that Caligula was unaware of Tiberius's fraud. Galba did not press for the whole 500,000, and perhaps it was as well for him that he did not, for if he had done so Caligula would have remembered the incident when he ran short of funds and, so far from giving him this important command on the Rhine, would probably have accused him of taking part in Gaetulicus's conspiracy.

How Caligula chose Galba makes a curious story.. He had ordered a big parade at Lyons one day, and when it was over he called before him all the officers who had taken part in it and gave them a lecture on the necessity, for keeping in good physical condition. `A Roman soldier,' he said, `should be as tough as leather and as hard as iron, and all officers should set a good example to their men in this. I. shall be interested to see how many of you will

*' Afterwards Emperor (A.D. 69). - R.G.

survive a simple test which I am about to set you. Come; friends, let us go for a little run in the direction of Autun.' He was sitting in his chariot with a couple of fine French cobs in the shafts. His driver cracked his whip and off they went. The already sweating officers dashed after him with their heavy weapons and armour. He kept just far enough ahead of them not to let them drop behind out of sight, but never let his horses fall into a walk, for fear that the officers would follow their example. On and on he went. The line strung out. Many of the runners fainted and one dropped dead. At the twentieth milestone: he finally pulled up. Only one man had survived the test Galba. Caligula said: `Would you prefer to run back, General, or would you prefer a seat beside me?' Galba had sufficient breath left to reply that as a soldier he had no preferences: he was accustomed to obey orders. So Caligula let him walk back, but the next day gave him his appointment. Agrippinilla became greatly interested in Galba when she met him at Lyons: she wanted to marry him, though he was married already to a lady of the Lepidan house. Galba was perfectly satisfied with his wife and behaved as coldly towards Agrippinilla as his loyalty to Caligula permitted. Agrippinilla persisted in her attentions and there was a great scandal one day at a reception given by Galba's mother-in-law to which Agrippinilla came without an invitation. Galba's mother-in-law called her out in front of all the noblemen and noblewomen assembled, abused her roundly as a shameless and lascivious hussy and actually struck her in the face with her fists. It would have gone badly for Galba if Caligula had not decided the next day that Agrippinilla was implicated in the plot against his life and banished her as I have described.

When Caligula had fled back to Rome in terror of a reported German raid across the Rhine (a lie humorously put about by the soldiers) his forces were all concentrated at one point. Great stretches of the river were left unguarded. The Germans heard of this at once, and also of Caligula's cowardice. They took the opportunity of crossing the Rhine in force and establishing themselves in our territory, where they did a great deal of damage. Those who crossed were the tribesmen called the Chattians, which means the Mountain Cats. The Cat was their tribal ensign. They had fortresses in the hill country between the Rhine and the Upper Weser. My brother Germanicus always used to give them credit for being the best fighting men in Germany. They kept their ranks in battle, obeyed their leaders almost like Romans: and at night used to dig entrenchments and put outposts out - a precaution seldom taken by, any other German tribe:, It cost Galba several months and considerable losses in men to dislodge them and drive them back across the river.

Galba was a strict, disciplinarian. Gaetulicus had been a capable soldier but rather too lenient. The day that Galba arrived at Mainz to take over his command the soldierss were watching some games that were being held in Caligula's honour. A huntsman had shown great skill in dispatching a, leopard and the men all started clapping. The first words that Galba spoke on entering the General's box were, `Keep your hands under your cloaks, men! I am in command. now and I don't permit any slovenliness.' He kept this up, and for so severe a commander was extremely popular. His enemies called him mean, but that was unjust: he was; merely most abstemious, discouraged extravagance in his staff, and exacted a strict account of expenditure from his subordinates. When. news came of Caligula's assassination, his friends urged him, to march on Rome at the head of his corps, saying that he was now the only fit person to take control of the Empire. Galba replied, `March on Rome and leave the Rhine: unguarded? What sort of a Roman do you take me to be?' And he continued! 'Besides, from all accounts, this; Claudius is a hard working and modest-man; and though some of you seem to think him a fool, I should hesitate to call any member of the Imperial family a fool who has successfully survived the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula. I think that in the circumstances the choice is a good one and I shall be pleased to take the oath of allegiance to Claudius. He is not a soldier, you say. So much the better Campaigning experience is sometimes not altogether a blessing in a Commanderin-Chief. The God Augustus – I speak with all respect - was inclined, as. an old, man, to hamper his generals by giving them overdetailed instructions and advice : that last Balkan campaign would never have dragged on as it did, if he had not been so anxious to refight from far in the rear the battles that he had fought at the head of his troops some forty years previously. Claudius will not, I think, either take the field himself, at his age, or be tempted to override the decisions of his generals in matters of whichhe is

ignorant. But at the same time he is a learned historian and has, I am told, a grasp of general strategical principles that many Commanders-in-Chief with actual fighting experience might envy him.'

These remarks of Galba's. were later reported to me by one of his staff, ;and I sent him a personal letter of thanks for his good opinion of me. I told him that he could count on me to give my generals a free hand in such campaigns as I ordered or authorized them to undertake. I would merely decide whether the expedition was to be one of conquest or whether it would have merely a punitive character. In the former case vigour was to be tempered with humanity as little damage as possible was to be done to captured villages and towns and to standing crops; the local Gods were not to be humiliated, and no butchery must be allowed once the enemy was broken in, battle. In the case, however, of a punitive expedition no mercy whatsoever need be shown: as much damage as possible must be done to crops, villages, towns, and temples, and such, of the inhabitants as were not worth taking home as slaves were to be massacred. I would also indicate the maximum number of reserves that could be called upon and the maximum number of Roman casualties that would be permitted. I would decide beforehand, in consultation with the general himself, the precise objectives of attack and ask him to state how many days or months he would need for taking them. I would leave all strategical and tactical dispositions to him, and only exercise my right of taking personal .command of the campaign, bringing with me such further reinforcements as I thought necessary, should the objectives not be reached within the agreed time, or should the Roman casualties rise beyond the, stipulated figure.

For I had a campaign in mind for Galba to make against the Chattians. It was to be a punitive expedition. I did not propose to enlarge the Empire beyond the natural and obvious frontier of the Rhine, but when the Chattians and the Northern tribesmen, the Istaevonians, failed to respect that frontier, a vigorous assertion of Roman dignity had to be made. My brother Germanicus always used to say that the only way to win the respect of Germans was to treat them with brutality; and that they were the only nation in the world of whom he would say this. The Spaniards, for example, could be impressed, by the courtesy of a conqueror, the French by his riches, the Greeks by his respect for the arts, the Jews by his moral integrity, the Africans by his calm authoritative bearing. But the German, who is impressed by none of these things, must always be struck to the dust, and .struck down again as he rises, and struck again, as he lies groaning. `While his wounds still pain him he will respect the hand that dealt them.' At the same time as Galba was advancing, another punitive expedition was to be made against the Istaevonian raiders, by Gambinius, the General commanding the four regiments on the Lower Rhine. Gabinius's expedition interested me far more than Galba's, for its object was not merely punitive. Before ordering it I sacrificed in Augustus's Temple and privately informed the God that I was bent on completing a task that my brother Germanicus had been prevented from completing, and which was, I knew, one in which He was Himself much interested: it was the rescue of the third and last of the lost Eagles of Varus, still in German hands after more than thirty years. My brother Germanicus, I reminded Him, had recaptured one Eagle in the year following His Deification and another in the campaigning season after that; but Tiberius had recalled him before he could avenge Varus in a last crushing battle and win back the Eagle that was still missing. I therefore begged the God to favour my arms and restore the honour of Rome. As the smoke of the sacrifice rose, the hands of Augustus's statue seemed to move in a blessing and his head to nod. It may only have been a trick of the smoke, but I took it for a favourable omen:

The fact was, I was now confident that I knew exactly where in Germany the Eagle was hidden, and proud of myself for the way I had discovered this secret. My predecessors could have done what I did if they had only thought of it; but they never did. It was always a pleasure to prove to myself that I was by no means the fool that they had all thought me, and that indeed I could manage some things better than they. It occurred to me that in my Household Battalion, composed of captured tribesmen from almost every district in Germany, there must be a half a dozen men at least who knew where the Eagle was hidden; yet when the question had once been put to them on parade by Caligula, with an offer of freedom and a large sum of money in return for the information, every face had immediately gone blank: it seemed that nobody knew. I tried a very different method of persuasion. I ordered them all out on parade one day and addressed them very kindly. I told them that as a reward for their faithful, services I was going to do them an unprecedented kindness: I was going to send back to Germany the dear, dear Fatherland about which they nightly sang such melancholy and tuneful songs - all members of the battalion who had completed twenty-five years' service with it I said that I should have liked to send them home with gifts of gold, weapons, horses, and the like, but unfortunately I was unable to do this or even to allow them to take back across the Rhine any possessions that they had acquired during their captivity. The obstacle was the still missing Eagle. Until this sacred emblem was returned, Roman honour was still in pawn, and it would create a: bad impression in the City if I were to reward with anything beyond, their bare freedom men who had in their youth taken part in the massacre of Varus's army. However, to true patriots liberty was better than gold and they would, I felt sure, accept the gift in the spirit that it was made in. I did not ask them, I said; to reveal to me the whereabouts of the Eagle, because no doubt this was a, secret which they had been bound by oaths to their Gods not to reveal: and I would not ask any man to perjure himself for the sake of a bribe, as my predecessor had done. In two days' time, I promised, all the twenty-five-year veterans would be sent back across the Rhine under safe conduct.

I then dismissed the parade. The sequel was as I had foreseen. These veterans were even less anxious to return to Germany than the Romans captured by the Parthians at Carrhae were to return to Rome when, thirty years later, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa bargained with the King for their exchange. Those Romans in Parthia had settled down, married, raised families, grown rich, and quite forgotten their past. And these Germans at Rome, though technically, slaves, lived: a most easy and enjoyable life; and their regret for home was not at all a sincere emotion; merely an excuse for tears when they were maudlin drunk. They came to me in a body and begged for permission to remain in my service. Many of them were fathers, and even grandfathers, by slave-women attached, to the Palace, and they were all comfortably off: Caligula had given them handsome presents from time to time. I pretended to be angry, called them ungrateful and base to refuse so priceless a gift as liberty and said that I had no further use for their services. They asked pardon and permission at. least to take their families with them. I refused this plea, mentioning the Eagle again. One of them, a Cheruscan, cried out: `It's all the fault of those cursed Chaucians that we have to go like this. Because they have sworn to keep the secret, we other innocent Germans are made to suffer.'

This was what I wanted. I dismissed from my, presence all but the representatives of the Greater and Lesser Chaucian tribes. (The Chaucians lived on. the North German coast between the Dutch Lakes and the Elbe; they had been confederates of Hermann's.) Then I said to these: `I have no intention of asking you Chaucians where the Eagle is, but if any of you have not sworn an oath about it, please tell me so at once.' The Greater Chaucians, the western half of the nation, all declared that they had not sworn any such oath. I believed them, because the second Eagle that my brother Germanicus won back had been found in a temple of theirs. It was unlikely that one tribe would have been awarded two Eagles in the distribution of spoils that followed Hermann's victory. I then addressed the chief man of the Lesser Chaucians: `I do not ask you to tell me where the Eagle is, or to what God you swore the oath. But perhaps you will tell me in what town or village you took that oath. If you tell me this I shall suspend my order for your repatriation.

`Even to say as much as that would be a violation of my oath, Caesar.'

But I used an old trick on him that I had read about in my historical studies: once, when a certain Phoenician judge visiting a village on his assizes wished to find out where a man had hidden a gold cup that he had stolen, he told the man that he did not believe him capable of theft and would discharge him. `Come, sir, let us go for a friendly walk instead and you will perhaps show me your interesting village.' The man guided him down every street but one. The judge found by inquiry that one of the houses in this street was occupied by the man's sweetheart; and the cup was discovered hidden in the thatch of her roof. So in the same way I said: `Very well, I shall not press you further.' I then turned to another member of the tribe who also seemed, by his sullen, uncomfortable looks, to be in the secret, and asked conversationally: `Tell me: in what towns or villages in your territory are these temples raised to your German Hercules' It was probable that the Eagles had been dedicated to this God. He gave me a list of seven names, which I noted down. `Is that all?' I asked.

`I cannot recall any more,' he answered.

I appealed to the Great Chaucians. `Surely there must be more than seven temples in so important a territory as Lesser Chaucia between the great rivers of Weser and Elbe?'

`Oh, yes, Caesar,' they replied. 'He has not mentioned the famous temple at Bremen on the eastern bank of the Weser.'

That is how I was able to write to Gabinius: `You will, I think find the Eagle somewhere hidden in the temple of the German Hercules at Bremen on the eastern bank of the Weser. Don't spend too much time at first in punishing the Istaevonians, march in close formation straight through their territory and that of the Ansibarians, rescue the Eagle and do the burning, killing, and pillaging on your return.'

Before I forget it, there is another story that I want to tell about a stolen gold cup, and it may as well go in here as anywhere. Once I invited a number of provincial knights to supper - and would you believe it, one of the rogues, a Marseilles man, went off with the gold, wine-cup that had been put before him. I didn't say a word to him, but invited him to supper again the next day, and this time gave him only a stone cup. This apparently frightened him, for the next morning the gold cup was returned with a fulsomely apologetic note explaining that he had taken the liberty of borrowing the cup for two days in order to get the engravings on it, which he much admired, copied by a goldsmith: he wished to, perpetuate the memory of the enormous honour that I had done him, by drinking from a similarly chased gold cup every day for the rest of his life. In answer I sent him the stone cup, asking, in exchange, for the reproduction of the gold one as a memento of the charming incident.

I arranged a date in May for both Galba's and Gabinius's expeditions to start, increased their forces by levies in France and Italy to six regiments apiece leaving two regiments to hold the Upper Rhine, and two to hold the Lower - allowed them each a maximum of 2,000 casualties, and gave them until July the First to conclude their operations and be on the way home. Galba's objective was a line of three Chattian towns originally built when the country was under Roman rule Nuaesium, Gravionarium, and Melocavus - which lie parallel with the Rhine about 100 miles inland from Mainz.

I shall content myself by recording that both campaigns were a complete success. Galba burned 150 stockaded villages, destroyed thousands of acres of crops, killed great numbers of Germans, armed and unarmed, and had sacked the three towns indicated by the middle of June. He took about 2,000 prisoners of both sexes, including men and women of rank to hold, as hostages for the Chattians good behaviour. He lost 1,200 men, killed or disabled, of whom 400 were Romans. Gabinius had the harder task and accomplished it with the loss of only 800 men. He took a last minute suggestion of mine, which was not to make straight for Bremen but to invade the territory of the Angrivarians, who live to the south of the Lesser Chaucians; and from there to send a flying column of cavalry against Bremen, in the, hope of capturing the town before the Chaucians: thought it worth while to remove the Eagle to some safer repository. It all worked out exactly to plan. Gabinius's cavalry, which he commanded personally, found the Eagle just where I had expected, and he was so pleased with himself that he called up the rest of his force: and drove right through Lesser Chaucia from end to end, burning the timber shrines of the German Hercules one after the other, until none was left standing. His destruction of crops and villages was not so methodical as Galba's; but on the way back he gave the Istaevonians plenty to remember him by He took 2,000 prisoners.

The news of the rescue of the Eagle came to Rome simultaneously with that, of Galba's successful sacking of the Chattian towns, and the Senate immediately voted me the title of Emperor, which this time I did not refuse. I considered that I had earned it by my location of the Eagle and by suggesting the long-distance cavalry raid, and by the care that I had taken to make both campaigns a' surprise; Nobody knew anything about them until I signed the order, instructing the French and -Italian levies to be under arms- and on their way to the Rhine within three days.

Galba and Gabinius were given triumphal ornaments. I should have had them granted triumphs if the, campaigns had been more than mere punitive-expeditions. But I persuaded the Senate to honour Gabinius with the hereditary surname Chaucias" in commemoration of his feat. The Eagle was carried in solemn procession to the Temple of Augustus, where I sacrificed and gave thanks for his divine aid: and dedicated to him the wooden gates of the temple where the Eagle had been found - Gabinius had sent them to me as a gift. I could not dedicate the Eagle itself to Augustus; because. there was a socket long ago prepared for its reception in the temple of Avenging Mars, alongside the other two rescued Eagles. I took it there later and dedicated it, my heart swelling with pride;

The soldiers composed ballad verses- about the rescue of the Eagle. But this time, instead of building them on to their original ballad, `The Three Griefs of Lord Augustus', they made them into a new one called `Claudius and the Eagle'. It was by no means flattering to me, but: I enjoyed some of the verses. The theme was that I was an absolute fool in some respects and did the most ridiculous things - I stirred, my porridge with my foot, and shaved myself with a comb, and when I went to the Baths used to drink the oil handed me to rub: myself with and rub myself with the wine handed me to drink. Yet I had amazing learning, for all that: I knew the names of every one of the stars in Heaven and could recite all the poems that had ever been written, and had read all the books in all the libraries of the world. And the fruit of this wisdom was that I alone was able to tell the Romans where the Eagle was that had been lost so many years and had resisted all efforts to recapture it. The first part of the, ballad-contained a dramatic account of my acclamation as Emperor by the Palace Guard; and t shall quote three verses to show the sort of ballad it was:

Claudius hid behind a curtain,

Gratus twitched the thing away.

`Be our Leader,' said bold Gratus.

`All your orders we'll obey.'

'Be our Leader,' said bold Gratus,

`Learned Claudius, courage take!

There's an Eagle to be rescued

For the God Augustus' sake.'

Learned Claudius, feeling thirsty, -

Drank a mighty pot of ink. `Owl was it you said, or Eagle? `

I could rescue both, I think.'

Early in August, twenty days after I had been voted the title of Emperor,. Messalina bore me her child. It was a boy, ands for the first time I experienced all the pride of fatherhood. For my son. Drusillus, whom I had lost some twenty years before at the age of eleven, I had felt no warm paternal feelings at all, and very few for my daughter Antonia, though she was a good-hearted child. This was because my marriages with Urgulanilla, Drusillus's mother, and with Aelia, Antonia's mother (both of whom I divorced as soon as the political situation enabled, me to do so), had been forced on me: I had no love for either of these women. Whereas I was passionately in love with Messalina and seldom, I suppose, had our Roman. Goddess Lucina, who presides over childbirth, been so persistently courted with prayers and sacrifices as she was by me in the last two months of Messalina's pregnancy. He was a fine healthy baby, and being my only son he took all my names, as the custom was. But I gave it out that he was to be known as Drusus Germanicus: I knew that this would have a good effect on the Germans. The first Drusus Germanicus to make that name terrible across the Rhine - more than fifty years before this - had been my father, and the next had been my brother, twenty-five years later; and I was also a Drusus Germanicus, and had I not just won back the last of the captured Eagles? In another quarter of a century, no doubt, my little Germanicus would repeat history and slaughter a few score thousands more of them. Germans are like briars on the edge of a field: they grow quickly and have to be constantly checked with steel and fire to prevent them from encroachment. As soon as my boy was a few months old and I could pick him up without risk of injuring him, I used to carry him about with me in my arms in the Palace grounds and show him to the soldiers; they all loved him almost as much as I did. I reminded them that he was the first of the Caesars since the great Julius who had been born a Caesar, not merely adopted into the family, as Augustus, Marcellus, Gaius, Lucius, Postumus, Tiberius, Castor,. Nero, Drusus, Caligula had each in turn been. But here, as a matter of fact, my pride tempted me into inaccuracy. Caligula, unlike his brothers Nero and Drusus, was born two or three years after his father, my brother Germanicus, had been adopted by Augustus (a Caesar in virtue of his adoption by Julius) as his son; so he was really born a Caesar. What misled me was the fact that Caligula was not adopted by Tiberius (a Caesar in virtue of his adoption by Augustus) as his son until he was about twenty-three years old.

Messalina did not keep our little Germanicus at her own breast, as I wished her to do, but found him a foster-mother. She was too busy to nurse a child, she said. But nursing a child is an almost certain insurance against renewed pregnancy, and pregnancy interferes with a woman's health and freedom of action; even more than nursing does. So it was bad luck for Messalina when she became pregnant again, so soon afterwards that only eleven months elapsed between Germanicus's birth and that of our daughter Octavia.

There was a poor harvest that summer and so meagre a supply of corn in the public granaries that I grew alarmed and cut down the free ration of corn, which the poor citizens had come to regard as their right, to a very small daily measure. I only maintained it even at that measure by commandeering or buying corn from every, possible source. The heart of the populace lies in its belly. In the middle of winter, before supplies began to come through from Egypt and Africa (where, fortunately, the new harvest was a particularly good one), there were frequent disorders in the poorest quarters of the City and much loose revolutionary talk.

Chapter 11

B Y this time my engineers had finished the report which I had told them to make on the possibility of converting Ostia into a safe winter harbour. The report was at first sight a most discouraging one. Ten years and 10,000,000 gold pieces seemed to be needed. But I reminded myself that the work once carried out would last for ever and that the danger of a icon mime would never arise again, or at least not so long as we held Egypt and Africa. It seemed to me an undertaking worthy of the dignity and greatness of Rome. In the first place, a considerable tract of land would have to be excavated and strong retaining-walls of concrete built on every side of the excavation, before the sea could be let into it to form the inner harbour. This harbour in turn must be protected by two huge moles built out into _deep water, on either side of the harbour entrance, with an island between their extremities to act as a breakwater when the wind blew from the west and big seas came rushing up the mouth of the Tiber. On this island it was proposed to build a lighthouse like the famous .one at Alexandria, to guide shipping safely in, however dark and stormy the night. The island and the moles would form the outer harbour.

When the engineers brought me their plans they said: 'We have done as you told us, Caesar, but of course the cost will be prohibitive.':

l answered rather sharply. `I asked for a plan and an estimate and you have been good enough to provide both, for which many thanks; but I do not employ you as my financial advisers and I shall thank you not to take that upon yourselves.'

'But Callistus, your Treasurer - 'one of them began.’

I cut him short: `Yes, of course, Callistus has been speaking to you. He is very careful with public money, and it is right that he should be. But economy can be carried too far. This is a matter of the utmost importance. Besides, I should not be surprised to learn that it is the corn-factors who have persuaded you to send in this discouraging report. The scarcer corn becomes, the richer they grow. They pray for bad weather and thrive on the miseries of the poor.'

`Oh, Caesar,' they chorused virtuously, `can you believe that we would take bribes from corn factors?'

But I could see that my shot had gone home. `Persuaded, not bribed, was my word. Don't accuse yourselves unnecessarily. Now listen to me. I am determined to carry this plan out whatever it is going to cost: get that into your heads. And I'll tell you another thing: it is not going to take nearly so long a time or cost nearly so much, money as you seem to think. Three days from now you and I are going to go into the question thoroughly.'

On a hint; given me by my secretary Polybius I consulted the Palace-archives, and there, sure enough, I found a detailed scheme that had been prepared by Julius Caesar's engineers some ninety years before for the very same work. The scheme was almost identical with the one that had just been made, but the estimated time and cost were, I was delighted to find, only four years and 4,000,000 of gold. Allowing for a slight increase in the cost of materials and labour it should be possible to carry the task out for only half what my own engineers had estimated, and in four years instead of ten. In certain respects the old plan (abandoned as too costly!) was an improvement on the new, though it left out the island; I studied both plans closely; comparing their points of difference; and then visited Ostia myself, in company with Vitellius, who knew a great deal about engineering, to make sure that no important physical changes had occurred on the site of the proposed harbour since Julius's day. When the, conference met I was so primed with information that the engineers found it impossible to deceive me - by under-estimating, for instance, the amount of earth that 100 men could shift from this point to that in a single day, or, by suggesting that the excavations would entail the, cutting away of many thousands of square feet of living rock. I now knew almost as much about thebusiness as

they did. I did not tell them how I came to know : I let it appear that I had taught myself engineering in the course of my historical studies, and that a couple of visits to Ostia had sufficed me for mastering the whole problem and drawing my own conclusions. I profited from the great impression that I thus made on them by saying that if there was any attempt to slow down the work once it started, or any lack of enthusiasm, l would send them all down to the Underworld to build Charon a, new jetty on the River Styx. Work on the harbour must begin at once. They should have as many workmen as they needed, up to the-number of 30,000, and 1,000 military foremen, with the necessary materials, tools, and transport; but begin they must.

Then I called Callistus and told him what I had decided. When he threw up his hands and turned up his eyes in a despairing gesture I told him to stop play-acting.

`But, Caesar, where's the money to come from?' he bleated like a sheep. .

`From the corn-factors,; fool,' 'I answered, `Give me the names - of principal members of the Corn Ring and I'll see that we get as much as we need.'

Within an hour I had the six richest corn-factors in the-City before me. I frightened them.

`My engineers report that you gentlemen have- been bribing them to send in an unfavourable report on the Ostia scheme. I take. a very serious view of the matter. It amounts to conspiracy against the lives of your fellow-citizens. You deserve to be thrown to the wild beasts.'

They denied the charge-with tears and oaths and begged me to let them know in what way they could prove their loyalty.

That was easy: wanted an immediate loan of 1,000,000 gold pieces for the Ostia scheme, which I would pay back as soon as the financial situation justified it.

They pretended that their combined fortunes did not amount to half that sum. I knew better. I gave there a month to, raise the money and I warned them that if they did not do so they would - all be banished to the Black Sea. Or farther. `And remember,' I said, `that when this harbour is built it will be my harbour if you want to use it you willhave to

come to me for permission. I advise you to keep on the right side of me.'

The money was paid over within five days, and the work at Ostia began at once with the erection of shelters for the workmen and the pegging out of tasks. On occasions of this sort it was, I must admit, very pleasurable to be a monarch: to be able to get important things done by smothering stupid opposition with a single authoritative word. But I had to be constantly reminding myself of the danger of exercising my Imperial prerogatives in such a way as to retard the eventual restoration of a Republic. I did my best to encourage free speech and public-spiritedness, and to avoid transforming personal caprices of my own, into laws which all Rome must obey.. It was very difficult. The joke was that free speech; public-spiritedness, and Republican idealism itself seemed to come under the heading of personal caprices of my own. And though at first I made a point of being accessible to everyone, in order to avoid-the appearance of monarchical haughtiness, and of speaking inn a friendly-familiar way with all my fellow-citizens, I soon had to behave more distantly. It was not so much that I had not the time to spare for continuous friendly chat with everyone who came calling at .the Palace: it was rather that my fellow-citizens, with few exceptions, shamefully abused my good feelings towards them. They did this either by answering my familiarity with an ironically polite haughtiness, as if to say, `You can't fool us into loyalty,' or by a giggling impudence as if to say, `Why don't you behave like a real Emperor?' or by thoroughly false good-comradeship, as if to say, `If it pleases your Majesty to unbend, and to expect us to unbend in conformity with your humour, then look how obligingly we do so! But if you please to frown, down we'll go on our faces at once.'

Speaking of the harbour, Vitellius said to me one day: `A republic can never hope to carry through public works on so grand a scale ass a monarchy. All the grandest constructions in the world are the work of Kings or Queens. The walls and hanging gardens of Babylon. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The Pyramids. You have never been to Egypt, have you? I was stationed there as a young soldier and, ye Gods, those Pyramids! It is impossible to convey in words the crushing sense of awe with which they overwhelm everyone who sees them. One first hears about, them at home, as a child, and asks: "What are the Pyramids?" and the answer is, "Huge stone tombs in Egypt, triangular in shape, without any ornaments on them: just faced with white stucco." That doesn't sound very interesting or impressive. The mind makes "huge" no linger than some very big building with which one happens to be familiar - say the Temple of Augustus yonder or the Julian Basilica. And then again, visiting Egypt, one sees them at a great distance across the desert, little white marks like tents, and says "Why, surely that's nothing to make a fuss about!’ But, Heavens, to stand beneath them a few hours later and look up! Caesar, I tell you, they are incredibly and impossibly huge. It makes one feel physically sick to think of them as having been built by-human hands. One's first sight of the Alps was nothing by comparison. So white, smooth, pitilessly immortal. Such a terrific monument of human aspiration '

`And stupidity and tyranny- and cruelty,' I broke in. 'King Cheops, who built the Great Pyramid, ruined his rich country, bled it white and left it gasping; and all to gratify his own absurd vanity and perhaps impress the Gods with his superhuman power. And what practical use did this Pyramid serve? Was it intended as a tomb to house Cheops's corpse for all eternity? Yet I have read that this absurdly impressive sepulchre has long been empty. The invading Shepherd Kings, discovered the secret entrance, rifled the inner chamber, and made a bonfire of proud Cheops's mummy.'

Vitellius smiled. `You haven't seen the Great Pyramid or you wouldn't talk like that. Its emptiness makes it all the more majestic. And as for use, why, it has a most important use. Its pinnacle serves as a mark of orientation for the Egyptian peasants when the yearly Nile flood subsides and they must mark out their fields again in the sea of fertile mud.'

'A tall pillar would have served just as well,' I said, `and two tall pillars, one on each bank of the Nile, would have been still better; and the cost would have been negligible. Cheops was mad, like Caligula; though apparently he had. a more settled madness than Caligula, who always did things by fits and starts. The great city that Caligula planned, to command the Great St Bernard Pass on the Alps, would never have got very far towards completion, though he had lived to be centenarian.'

Vitellius agreed. 'He was a jackdaw. The nearest he ever came to raising a Pyramid was when he built that outsize ship and stole the great red obelisk from Alexandria. A jackdaw and a monkey.'

`Yet I seem to remember that you once adored that jackdaw monkey as a God.'

'And I gratefully remember that the advice and example came from you.'

`_Heaven forgive us both,' I said. We were standing talking outside the Temple of Capitoline Jove, which we had just been ritually purifying, because of the recent appearance, on the roof, of a bird of evil omen. (It was an owl of the sort we call `incendiaries because they foretell the destruction by fire of any building on which they perch.) I pointed across the valley with my finger. `Do you see that? That's part of the greatest monument ever built, and though monarchs like Augustus and. Tiberius have added to it and kept it in repair, it was first built by a free people. And I have no doubt that it will last as long as the Pyramids, besides having proved of infinitely more service to mankind.'

'I don't see what- you mean. You seem to be pointing at the Palace.'

'I am pointing at the Appian Way,' I replied solemnly. 'It was begun in the Censorship of my great ancestor, Appius Claudius the Blind. The Roman Road is the greatest monument ever raised to human liberty by a noble and generous people. It runs across mountain, marsh, and river. It is built broad, straight, and firm. It joins city with city and nation with nation. It is tens of thousands of miles long, and always thronged with grateful travellers. And while the Great Pyramid, a few hundred feet high and wide, awes sightseers to silence - though it is only the rifled tomb of an ignoble corpse and a monument of oppression and misery, so that no doubt in viewing it you may still seem to hear the crack of the taskmaster's whip and the squeals and groans of the poor workmen struggling to set a huge block of stone into position 'But in this unpremeditated gush of eloquence I had forgotten the beginning of my sentence. I broke off, feeling foolish, and Vitellius had to come to the rescue. He threw up his hands, shut his eyes, and declaimed: `Words fail me, my Lords. Nothing that I might utter could possibly match the depth of my feelings in this matter.' We both laughed uproariously at this. Vitellius was one of the few friends I had who treated me with the right sort of familiarity. I never knew whether it was genuine, or artificial; but if artificial, it was so good an imitation of the real thing that I accepted it at its face value. I should never perhaps have called it in question if his former adoration of Caligula had not been so well acted, and if it had not been for the matter of Messalina's slipper. I shall tell you about this.

Vitellius was going up a staircase at the Palace, one day in summer, in company with Messalina and myself, when Messalina said: `Stop a moment, please: I've, lost my slipper.' Vitellius quickly turned and retrieved it for her, handing it back with a deep obeisance. Messalina was charmed. She said, smiling: `Claudius, you won't be jealous, will you, if I confer the Order of the Jewelled Slipper on this brave soldier, our, dear friend Vitellius? He really is most gallant and obliging.'

`But don't you need the slipper, my dear?'

`No, it's cooler to go barefoot on a day like this. And I have scores of other pretty pairs.'

So Vitellius took the slipper and kissed it and put it in the pocket-fold of his robe, where he kept it continually; bringing it out to kiss once more when enlarging, in sentimental private talk with me, on Messalina's beauty, brains, bounty, and on my extra ordinarily good fortune in being her husband. It always brought a great sense of warmth to my heart and sometimes even tears to my eyes to hear Messalina praised. It was a constant wonder to me that she could care as much for a lame, pedantic, stuttering old fellow like myself as she swore she did; yet nobody, I argued, could pretend that she had married me for mercenary reasons. I was a bankrupt at the time, and as for, the possibility of my ever becoming Emperor, it could surely never have occurred to her.

The harbour at Ostia was by no means my only great public work. The verse that the Sibyl of Cumae recited when I visited her once, in disguise, ten years before I became Emperor, prophesied that I should `give Rome water and winter bread'. The winter bread was a reference to Ostia, but the water meant the two great aqueducts I built. It is very curious about prophecies. A prophecy is made, perhaps, when one is a boy, and one pays great attention to it at the time, but then a mist descends: one forgets about it altogether until suddenly the mist clears and the prophecy is fulfilled. It was not until my aqueducts were completed and consecrated, and the harbour completed too, that I recalled the Sibyl's verse. Yet I suppose that it had been at the back of my mind all the time, as it were the God's whisper to me to undertake these great projects:

My aqueducts were most necessary the existing water supply was by no means sufficient for the City's needs, though greater than that of any other city in the world. We Romans love fresh water. Rome is a town of baths and fish-pools and fountains. The fact was that, though Rome was now served by no less than seven aqueducts, the rich men had managed to draw away most of the public water for their own use, getting permission to connect private reservoirs with the mains - their swimming-baths had to have fresh water every day, and their great gardens had to be watered so that many of the poorer citizens were reduced in the summer to drinking and cooking with Tiber water, which was most unhealthy. Cocceius Nerva, that virtuous old man, whom my Uncle Tiberius kept by him as his good genius, and who eventually committed suicide this Nerva, then, whom Tiberius had made his Inspector of Aqueducts, advised him to show his magnanimity by giving the City a water-supply worthy of its greatness; and reminded him that his ancestor Appius Claudius the Blind had won eternal fame for bringing the Appian Water into Rome, from eight miles away, by the City's first aqueduct. Tiberius undertook to do as Nerva advised, but put the project off, and put it off again and again, as his way was, until Nerva's death. Then he felt remorse and sent his engineers out to discover suitable springs, according to the rules laid down by the famous Vitruvius. Such springs must run strongly all the year round, and run clean and sweet, and not fur the pipes, and must have such an elevation that, allowing for the fall necessary to give the channel of the aqueduct its proper -inclination, the water will enter the final reservoir at a height sufficient to allow of its distribution, by pipes, to the highest houses in Rome. The engineers had to go far afield before they came on water that answered their purpose: they found it eventually in the hills to the south-east of the City. Two copious and excellent springs called the Blue Spring and the Curtian Spring broke out near the thirty-eighth milestone on the Sublacentian Road: they could be run together as one. Then there was the New Anio stream which could be drawn upon at the forty-second milestone on the same road, but on the other side: that would have to be carried by a second aqueduct and would pick up another stream, the Herculanean, opposite the Blue Spring. They reported that the water from these sources fulfilled all the necessary conditions, and that there was no nearer supply that did so Tiberius had plans for two aqueducts drawn out and called for estimates; but decided at once that he could not afford the work, and shortly afterwards died.

Caligula, immediately on his accession, to show that he was of a more generous and public-spirited nature than Tiberius, began work on Tiberius's plans, which were very detailed and good ones. He started well, but as his Treasury grew empty he could not keep it up and, taking his workmen from, the most difficult parts (the great arched bridges, arch over arch in tiers, which carried the water across valleys and low ground), he put them to work on the easier levels where the channel ran round the slopes of hills or directly across the plain. He still could boast of rapid progress in terms of miles, and the expense was negligible. Some of the arches which he thus shirked building needed to be over 100 feet high.

The first aqueduct, afterwards called the Claudian Water, was to be over forty-six miles long, of which ten `miles were to run on arches. The second, called the New Anio,: was to be nearly fifty-nine miles long, and fifteen miles or so were to run on arches. When Caligula quarrelled with the people of Rome, the time they made the disturbance in the amphitheatre and sent him running in fright out of the City, he made his quarrel an excuse for abandoning all work on the aqueducts. He took the workmen: away and put them on other tasks, such as building his temple and clearing sites at Antium (his birthplace) for the erection of a new capital city there.

So it fell to me to take up the work, which seemed to me one of first importance, where Caligula had abandoned it, though it meant having to concentrate on the more difficult stretches. If you wonder why the New Anio, though picking up the. Herculanean stream close to the beginning of the Claudian Water, had to make a great circuit, instead of being run along the same arches, the answer is that the New Anio started at a much higher level and would have had too swift a flow if it had been brought down immediately to the Claudian Water. Vitruvius recommends an inclination of half a foot in 100 yards and the height of the New Anio did riot allow it to join the Claudian Water, even on a higher tier of arches, until quite near the City, having travelled thirteen miles farther. In order to keep the water clean, there was a covered top to the channel with vent-holes, at intervals to prevent bursts. There were also frequent large reservoirs through which the water, passed, leaving its sediment behind. These reservoirs were also useful for purposes of irrigation, and amply paid for themselves by making it possible for the neighbouring landowners to put land under cultivation which otherwise would have been waste.

The work took nine years to complete, but there were no setbacks; and when it was finished it was among the chief wonders of Rome. The two waters entered the City by the Praenestine Gate, the New Anio above, the Claudian below, where a huge double arch had to be built to cross two main roads. The terminus was a great tower from which the water was distributed to ninety-two smaller towers. There were already some 160 of these small watertowers in existence at Rome,: but my two aqueducts doubled the actual supply of water. My Inspector of Aqueducts now calculated the flow of water into Rome as equal to a stream thirty feet broad and six feet deep, flowing at the: rate of twenty miles an hour. Experts and ordinary people agreed that; mine was the best quality of water of any, except that brought by the Marcian Water, the most important of the existing: aqueducts, which accounted for fifty-four of the towers and had been in existence for about 170 years.

I was very. strict about the thieving of water by irresponsible persons. The chief thieving in the old days before Agrippa undertook the work of overhauling the whole water-system - he built two new aqueducts himself, one chiefly underground on the left bank of the Tiber - was done by deliberately punching holes in the main, or bribing the persons in charge of the aqueducts to do so, and making the damage look accidental; for there was a law giving people the right to casual water from leaks. This practice had lately started again. I reorganized the corps of aqueduct workers and gave orders that all leakages were to be immediately repaired. But there was another kind of thieving going on too. There were pipes leading from the main to private water-towers built by the common subscriptions of wealthy families or clans. These pipes were made of lead and of a regulation size, so that no more water should be taken from the main than could flow through the pipe in its normal horizontal position; but by enlarging the pipe by pushing a stake through, lead being a very ductile metal, and furthermore inclining it from the horizontal, a much greater flow of water was obtained. Sometimes more impudent or powerful families substituted pipes of their own. I was determined to stop this. I had the pipes cast of bronze and officially stamped and so fixed to the main that they could not be declined without breaking them and ordered my inspectors to visit the water-towers regularly to see that nothing was tampered with.

I might as well mention here the last of my three great engineering undertakings, the draining of the Fucine Lake. This lake, which lies some sixty miles due east of Rome under the Alban Hills, surrounded by marshes, is about twenty miles long and ten wide, though of no great depth. The project for draining it had long been discussed. The inhabitants of that part of the country, who are called Marsians, once petitioned Augustus about it, but, after due consideration, he turned down their request on the ground that the task was too laborious and that the possible results could not justify it. Now the question was raised again ands group of rich landowners came to me and volunteered to pay two-thirds of the expense of the drainage if I undertook to carry it out. Theyasked in

return-grants of the land that would-be reclaimed from the marshes and from the lake itself when the water was drained off I refused their offer; because it occurred to me that if they were willing to pay so much for the reclaimed land it was probably worth far more. The problem seemed a simple one. One had only to cut a channel three miles long through a hill at the south-west extremity of the lake, thus allowing the water to escape into the River Liris which ran on the opposite side of the hill. I decided to start at once.

The work began in the first year of my monarchy, but it was soon evident that Augustus had been right in not attempting it. The labour and expense of cutting through that hill was infinitely greater than my engineers had reckoned it would be. They came on huge masses of solid rock that had to be hacked away piece by piece, and the debris dragged off along the channel; and there were troubles with springs in the hill which-kept-bursting out and interfering with the work. In order to finish it at all I soon had to set 30,000 men working constantly at it.But I refused to be beaten: I hate throwing up a task. The channel was completed only the other day, after thirteen years labour. Soon I shall give the signal for opening the sluice-gates and letting out the lake-water.

Chapter 12

ONE day, just before Herod left Rome, he suggested that I should see a really good Greek doctor about my health; pointing out how important it was for Rome that I should take myself in hand physically. I had been showing signs of great fatigue lately, he said, as a result of the extraordinary long hours that I worked. If I did not either shorten these hours or put myself into a condition which would enable me to stand the strain better I could not expect to live much longer. I grew vexed and said that no Greek doctor had been able to cure me as a young man, though I had consulted many; and assured him that it was not only too late to do anything about my infirmities but that I had grown quite attached to them as an integral part of myself, and that I had no use for Greek doctors in any case.

Herod grinned. `This is the first time in my life that I have heard you agree with, old Cato. I remember that Commentary on Medicine which he wrote for, his son, forbidding him ever to consult a Greek doctor. Instead, he recommended prayers, common sense, and cabbage leaves. They were good enough for every common physical ailment, he said. Well, there are enough prayers going up for your-health in Rome to-day to make you a positive athlete, if prayers were enough. And common sense is the birthright of every Roman. Perhaps, Caesar, you have forgotten the cabbage leaves?'

I stirred irritably on my couch. `Well, what doctor do you recommend? I'll see just one, to please you, but no more. What about Largus? He's the Palace Physician now. Messalina says, that he's quite clever.'

'If Largus had known of a cure for your ailments he would have volunteered it quick enough. No use going to him. If you will only consent to consult a single one, consult Xenophon of Cos.'

`What, my father's old field-surgeon?'

'No, his son. He was with your brother Germanicus on his last campaign, you may remember; then he went to practise at Antioch. He was extraordinary successful there and recently he's come to Rome. He uses the motto of the great Asclepiades, Cure quickly, safely, pleasantly. No violent purges and emetics. Diet, exercise, massage, and a few simple botanical remedies. He cured me of a violent fever with a distillation of the leaves of a purple flowered weed called monk's-hood and then set me right generally with advice about diet, and so forth: told me not to drink so much, and what spices to avoid. A marvellous surgeon too, when it comes to that. He knows exactly where every nerve, bone, muscle, and sinew in the body lies.' He told me that he learned his anatomy from your brother.'

`Germanicus wasn't an anatomist.'

`No, but he was a German-killer. Xenophon picked up his knowledge on the battlefield: Germanicus provided the subjects. No surgeon can learn anatomy in Italy or Greece. He has either to go to Alexandria, where they don't mind cutting up corpses, or follow in the wake of a conquering army.'

'I suppose he'll come if I send for him?'

`What doctor wouldn't? Do you forget who you are? But of course, if he cures you you'll have to pay him handsomely. He likes money. What Greek doesn't?'

`If he cures me.'

I sent for Xenophon. I took an immediate liking to him because his professional interest in me as a case made him forget that I was Emperor and had the power of life and death over him. He was a man of about fifty. After his first formal obeisances and compliments he talked curtly and dryly and kept strictly to the point.

`Your pulse. Thanks. Your tongue. Thanks. Excuse me (he turned up my eyelids). `Eyes somewhat inflamed. Can cure that. I'll give you a lotion to bathe them with. Slight retraction of eyelids. Stand up, please. Yes, infantile paralysis. Can't cure that, naturally. Too late. Could have done so before you stopped growing.'

`You were only a child yourself at the time, Xenophon,' I smiled.

He appeared not to hear me. `Were you a premature birth? Yes? I suspected it. Malaria too?'

`Malaria, measles, colitis, scrofula, erysipelas. The whole battalion answers "present", Xenophon, except epilepsy, venereal disease, and megalomania.'

He consented to smile briefly. `Strip!' he said. I stripped.. `You eat too much and drink too much. You must stop that. Make it a rule never to rise from the table without an unsatisfied longing for just one little thing more. Yes, left leg much shrunk. No good prescribing exercise. Massage will have to do instead. You may dress again.' He asked me a few more intimate questions, and always in a way that showed he knew the answer and was merely confirming it from my mouth as a matter of routine. `You dribble on your pillow at night, of course?' I owned with shame that this was so. `Fits of sudden anger? Involuntary twitching of the facial muscles? Stuttering when in a state of embarrassment? Occasional weakness of bladder? Fits of aphasia? Rigidity of muscles, so that you often wake up cold and stiff even on warm nights?' He even told me the sort of things I dreamed about.

I asked, astonished: `Can you interpret them, too, Xenophon? That ought to be easy.'

`Yes,' he answered in a matter-of-fact way, 'but there's a law against it. Now, Caesar, I'll tell you about yourself. You have a good many more years to live if you care to live them. You work too hard, but I, cannot, prevent you from doing that, I suppose. I recommend reading as little as possible. The fatigue of which you complain is largely due to eyestrain. Make your secretaries read everything possible out to you. Do as little writing as you can. Rest for an hour after your principal meal: don't rush off to the law-courts as soon as you have gobbled your dessert. You must find time for twenty minutes' massage twice a day. You will need a properly trained masseur. The only properly trained masseurs in Rome are slaves of mine. The best is Charmes: I shall give him special instructions in your case. If you break my rules you must not expect a complete cure, though the medicine that I shall prescribe will do you appreciable good. For instance, the violent cramp in the stomach of which you complain, the cardiac passion as we call it if you neglect your massage and eat a heavy meal in a hurry, when in a state of nervous excitement about something or other, that cramp will come on you again, as sure as fate, in spite of my medicine. But follow my directions and you'll be a sound man.'

`What's the medicine? Is it difficult to come by? Will I have to send to Egypt or India for it?' '

Xenophon permitted himself a little creaking laugh. 'No, nor any farther than the nearest bit of waste land. I belong to the Cos school of medicine: I am a native of Cos, in fact, a descendant of Aesculapius himself. At Cos we classify diseases by their remedies, which are for the most part the herbs that if eaten in great quantities produce the very symptoms that when eaten in moderate quantities they cure. Thus if a child wets his bed after the age of three or four and shows certain other cretinous symptoms associated with bed-wetting we say: "That child has the Dandelion disease." Dandelion eaten in large quantities produces these symptoms, and a decoction of dandelion cures them. When I first came into the room and noticed the twitch of your head and the tremor of your hand and the slight stutter of your greeting, together with the rather harsh quality of your voice, I summed you up at once. "A typical bryony case," I said to myself.' "Bryony, massage, diet. '

`What, Common Bryony'

'The same I’ll write out a prescription for its preparation.' `And the prayers?'

`What prayers?'

'Don't you prescribe special prayers to be used when taking the medicine? All the other doctors who have tried to cure me have always given me special prayers to repeat while mixing and taking the medicine.'

He answered, rather stiffly: `I suggest, Caesar, that as High Pontiff and the author of a history of religious origins at Rome, you are better equipped than myself for undertaking the theurgical side of the cure.'

I could see that he was an unbeliever, like so many Greeks, so I did not press the matter, and that ended the interview : he begged to be excused because he had patients' waiting in his consulting-room.

Well, bryony cured me. For the first time in my life I knew what it was to be perfectly well. I followed Xenophon's advice to the letter and have hardly had a day's illness since. Of course, I remain lame and occasionally I stammer and twitch my head from old habit if I get excited. But my aphasia has disappeared, my hand hardly trembles at all, and I can still at the age of sixty-four do a good fourteen hours work a day, if necessary, and not feel utterly exhausted at the end of it. The cardiac passion has recurred occasionally, but only in the circumstances against which Xenophon warned me.

You may be .sure that I paid Xenophon well for my bryony. I persuaded him to come and live at the Palace as Largus's colleague: Largus was a good physician in his way, and had written several books on medical subjects. Xenophon would not come at first. He had built up a large private practice during the few months he had been at Rome: he assessed it as now worth 3,000 gold pieces a year. I offered him 6,000 - Largus's salary was only 3,000 and when he hesitated even then I said: `Xenophon, you must come: I insist. And when you have kept me alive and well for fifteen years, the Governors of Cos will be sent an official letter informing, them that the island where you learned medicine will henceforth be excused from furnishing its military contingent and from paying tribute to the Imperial Government.'

So he consented. If you wish to know to whom my freedman addressed prayers when mixing my medicine and to whom I addressed mine when taking it, it was the Goddess Carna, an old Sabine Goddess whom we Claudians have always cultivated since the time of Appius Claudius, of Regillus. Medicine mixed and taken without prayers would have seemed to me as unlucky and useless as a wedding celebrated without guests, sacrifice, or music.

Before I forget it, I must record two valuable health hints that I learned from Xenophon. He used to say `The man is a fool who puts good manners before health. If you are troubled with wind, never hold it in. It does great injury to the stomach. I knew a man who once nearly killed himself by holding; in his wind. If for some reason or other you cannot conveniently leave the room - say you are sacrificing, or addressing the Senate - don't be afraid to belch or break wind downwards where you stand. Better that the company should suffer some slight inconvenience than that you should permanently injure yourself. And again, when you suffer from a cold, don't constantly blow your nose. That only increases the flow of rheum and inflames the delicate membranes of your nose. Let it run. Wipe, don't blow.' I have always taken Xenophon's advice, at least about nose-blowing: my colds don't last nearly so long now as they did. Of course, caricaturists and satirists soon made fun of me as having a permanently dripping nose, but what did I care for that? Messalina. told me that she thought I was extremely sensible to take such care of myself: if I were suddenly to die or fall seriously ill, what would become of the City and Empire, not to mention herself and our little boy?

Messalina said to me one day: `I am beginning to repent of my kind heart.'

'Do you mean that my niece Lesbia should after all have been left in exile?'

She nodded. `How, did you guess that I meant that? Now tell me, my dear, why does Lesbia go to your rooms in the Palace so often when I'm not about? What does she talk of? And why don't you let me know when she comes? You see, it's no good trying to keep secrets from me.'

I smiled reassuringly but felt a little awkward. `There's nothing secret about, it, nothing at all. You remember that about -a month ago I gave her back the remainder of the estates which Caligula had taken from her? The Calabrian ones that you and I decided not to give back until we saw how she and Vinicius would behave? Well, as I told you, when I gave them back she burst into tears and said how ungrateful she had been and swore that she was now going to change her way of living altogether and conquer her stupid pride:'

`Very touching, I am sure. But this is the first word I have heard of any such dramatic scene.'

`But I distinctly remember telling you the whole story, one morning at breakfast.'

`You must have dreamed it. Well, what was the whole story? Better late than never. When you gave her back the estates I certainly thought it rather queer that you should reward her insolence to, me. But I said nothing. It was your business, not mine.'

`I cannot understand this. I could have sworn I told you. My memory has the most extraordinary lapses, sometimes. I am very sorry indeed, my dearest. Well, I gave her back the estates, simply because she said that she had just gone to you and made a wholehearted apology and that you had said: "I forgive you freely, Lesbia. Go and tell Claudius that I forgive you."'

`Oh, what a bare-faced lie! She never came to me at all. Are you sure, she said that? Or is your memory at fault again?'

'No, I'm positive about it. Otherwise I should never have given her back the estates.'

`You know the legal formula about evidence? "False in one thing, false in all." That fits Lesbia. But you haven't yet told me why she visits you. What is she trying to get out of you?'

`Nothing, so far as I know. She just comes occasionally for a friendly visit to repeat how grateful she is and to ask whether she can be of any use to me. She never stays long enough to be a nuisance and always asks how you are. When I say that you're working she says that she wouldn't dream of disturbing you and apologizes for disturbing me. Yesterday she said that she thought you were still a little suspicious of her. d said that I thought not. She chatters a little about things in general for a few minutes, kisses me like a good niece, and off she goes.. I quite enjoy her visits. But I was convinced that I'd mentioned them to you.'

`Never. That woman's a snake. I think I know her plan. She'll worm her way into your confidence - like a good niece, of course - and then begin slandering me. In a quiet, hinting sort of way at first and then more directly as she gets bolder. She'll probably make up a wonderful story about the double life I lead. She'll say that behind your back I live, a regular life of debauchery - swordfighters and actors and young gallants and the rest. And you'll believe her, of course, like a good uncle. 0 God, what cats women are! I believe she's begun already. Has she?'

`Certainly not. I wouldn't let her. I wouldn't believe anyone who told me that you were unfaithful to me in deed or word. I wouldn't believe it even if you told me so yourself with your own lips. There, does that satisfy you?'

'Forgive me, dear, for being so jealous. It's my nature. I hate you to have friendships with other women behind my back, even relations. I don't trust any woman alone with you. You're so simple-minded. And I'm going to make it my business to find what poisonous trick Lesbia has at the back of her mind. But I don't want her to know that I suspect her. Promise me that you won't let her know that you have caught her out in a falsehood, until I have some more serious charge against her.'

I promised. I told Messalina that I didn't believe in Lesbia's change of heart now and that I would report all conversational remarks that she made to me. This satisfied Messalina, who said that now she could continue her work with an easier mind.

I faithfully repeated to Messalina all Lesbia's remarks. They seemed to me of little importance, but Messalina found significance in many of them and caught especially at one - to me perfectly inoffensive remark that Lesbia had made about a senator called Seneca. Seneca was a magistrate of the second rank, and had once incurred the jealous dislike of Caligula by the eloquence with which he had conducted a case in the Senate.' He would certainly have lost; his head then but for me. I had done him the service of depreciating his oratorical abilities, saying to Caligula: `Eloquent? Seneca's not eloquent. He's just very well educated and has a prodigious memory. His father compiled those Controversies and Persuasories, school-exercises in oratory on imaginary cases. Childish stuff. He wrote a lot more which have remained unpublished. Seneca seems to have got the whole lot off by heart. He has a rhetorical key now to fit any lock. It's not eloquence. There's nothing behind it, not even strong personal character. I'll tell you what it is - it's like sand without lime. You can't build up a reputation for true eloquence out of that.' Caligula repeated my own words as his own judgement on Seneca. 'School-exercises only. Puerile declamations, borrowings from his father's unpublished papers. Sand without lime.' So Seneca was permitted to live.

Now Messalina asked me: `You are sure that she went out of her way to commend Seneca as an honest and unambitious man? You didn't bring up his name yourself first?'

'No.'

`Then you may depend on it, Seneca's her lover. I have known for some time that she was keeping a secret lover, but she hides her tracks so well that I couldn't be sure whether it was Seneca or her husband's cousin Vinicianus, or that fellow Asinius Gallus, Pollio's grandson. They all live in the same street.'

Ten days later she told me that she now had complete proof of adultery between Lesbia and Seneca during the recent absence from Rome of Vinicius, Lesbia's husband. She brought witnesses who swore that, they had seen Seneca leave his house late at night, in disguise; had followed him' to Lesbia's house, which he had entered by a side door; had seen a light suddenly appear at Lesbia's bedroom window and presently go out again; and three or four hours later had seen Seneca emerge and return home, still in disguise.

It was clear that Lesbia could not be allowed to stay at Rome any longer. She was my niece, and therefore an important public figure. She had already been banished once, on a charge of adultery and recalled by me only on an understanding that she would behave more discreetly in future. I expected all members of my family to set a high moral standard for the City. Seneca would have to be banished too. He was a married man and a senator, and though Lesbia was a beautiful woman I suspected that with a man of Seneca's character ambition was a stronger motive for the adultery than sexual passion. She was a direct descendant-of Augustus, of Livia, and of Mark Antony, a daughter of Germanicus, a sister of the late Emperor, a niece of the present one: while he was merely the son of a well-to-do provincial grammarian and had been born in Spain.

Somehow I did not wish to interview Lesbia myself, so I asked Messalina to do so. I felt that Messalina had more cause for resentment in the matter than I had, and wished to stand well with her again and show how sorry I was that I had given her occasion for the slightest twinge of jealousy. She gladly undertook the task of lecturing Lesbia for her ingratitude and acquainting her with her sentence; which was banishment to Reggio in the South of Italy, the town where her grandmother Julia had died in banishment for the same offence. Messalina afterwards reported that Lesbia had spoken most insolently, but had finally admitted adultery with Seneca, saying that her body was her own to do with as she liked. On being informed that she would be banished, she had flown into a passion and threatened us both: she said: 'One morning the Palace servants will enter the Imperial bed-chamber and find you both lying with your throats cut,' and 'How do you think my husband and his family will take this insult?'

`Only words, my dear,' I said. `I don't take them seriously, though perhaps we had better keep a careful watch on Vinicius and his party.'

On, the very night that Lesbia started out for Reggio, towards dawn, Messalina and I were awakened by a sudden cry and scuffle in the corridor, outside our door, some violent sneezing and shouts of, `Seize him! Murder! Assassins! Seize him!' I jumped out of bed, my heart pounding because of the sudden shock, and snatched up a stool as a weapon of defence, shouting to Messalina to get behind me. But my courage was not called in question. It was only one man and he had already been disarmed.

I ordered the guards to stand to arms for the rest of the night and went back to bed, though it took me some time to fall asleep again. Messalina needed a deal of comforting. She seemed scared almost out of her wits, laughing and crying in turns. `It's Lesbia's doing,'' she sobbed; 'I'm sure it is.'

When morning came I had the would-be assassin brought before me. He confessed to being a freedman of Lesbia's. But he had come disguised in Palace livery. He was a Syrian Greek and his story was a grotesque one. He said that he had not intended to murder me. It was all his own fault for repeating the wrong words at the close of the Mystery. `What Mystery?' I asked.

`I am forbidden to tell, Caesar. I'll only reveal as much as I dare. It is the most sacred of all sacred Mysteries. I was initiated into it last night. It happened underground. A certain bird was sacrificed and I drank its blood. Two tall spirits appeared, with shining faces, and gave me a dagger and a pepper-pot, explaining what these instruments symbolized. They blindfolded me, dressed me in a new dress,. and told me to keep perfect silence. They repeated magic words and told me to follow them to Hell. They led me here and there, up steps and down steps, along streets and through gardens, describing many strange sights as we went. We entered a boat and paid the ferryman. It was Charon himself., We were then put ashore in Hell. They showed me the whole of Hell. The ghosts of my ancestors talked to me. I heard Cerberus bark. Finally they took off the bandage from my eyes and whispered to me "You are now in the Halls of the God of Death. Hide this dagger in your gown. Follow this corridor round to the right, mount the stairs at the end, and then turn to the left down a second corridor. If any sentry challenges you, give him the password. The pass-word is `Fate'. The God of Death and his Goddess lie asleep in the end room. At their door two more sentries are on watch. They are not like the other sentries. We do not know their password. But creep up close to them in the shadows and suddenly throw this holy pepper-powder in their eyes. Then boldly burst open the door and slay the God and Goddess. If you succeed in this enterprise you shall live forever in regions of perpetual bliss and be accounted greater than Hercules, greater than Prometheus, greater than Jove himself. There will be no more Death. But, as you go, you must say over and over to yourself the words of the same charm that we have used to bring you so far in safety. If you do not do so, all our guidance will have been wasted. The spell will break and you will find yourself in quite a different place. I was frightened. I suppose that I must have made a mistake in the spell, because as I drew back my hand to fling the pepper I suddenly found myself back here in Rome, in your Imperial Palace, struggling with the guards at your bedroom door. I had failed. Death still reigns. Some other bolder, more collected soul than I must one day strike that blow.'

`Lesbia's confederates are very clever,' Messalina whispered. `What a perfect plot!'

`Who initiated you?' I asked the man.

He would not answer, even under torture, and I could not get much information from the Guard at the main gate, who happened to be newly-joined men. They said that they had admitted him because he was, wearing Palace livery and had the correct password. I could not blame them. He had arrived at the Gate in the company of two other men in. Palace livery who had said good-night to him and strolled off.

I was inclined to believe the man's story; but he persisted in his refusal to say who it was who had sponsored his initiation into these so-called mysteries. When I assured him in quite a pleasant way that they could not have been real mysteries but an elaborate hoax, and that therefore his oath was not binding he flared up and spoke to me most rudely. So he had to be executed. And after long debate with myself I agreed with Messalina that for the sake of public safety it was now necessary to have Lesbia executed too. I sent a detachment of Guards Cavalry, after her, and on the following day they brought me back her head in token of her death, It was very painful for me to have had to execute a daughter of my dear brother Germanicus after swearing at his death to love and protect all his children as if they were my own. But I comforted myself by the thought that he would have acted as I had done if he had been in my place. He always put public duty before private feeling.

As for Seneca, I told the Senate that unless they knew some good reason to the contrary I desired them to vote for his banishment to Corsica. So they banished him, allowing him thirty hours in which to leave Rome and thirty- days in which to leave Italy. Seneca was not popular with the House. While in Corsica he had plenty of opportunity for practising the philosophy of the Stoics to which he announced himself converted by a chance word of mine once spoken in their commendation. The flattery of which that fellow was capable was really nauseating. When a year or two later my secretary Polybius lost a brother, of whom he was fond, Seneca, who knew Polybius only slightly and his brother not at all, sent him, from Corsica, a long carefully-phrased letter, which at the same time he arranged to have published in the City under the title Consolation for Polybius. The consolation took the form of gently reproving Polybius for giving way to private grief for his brother while I, Caesar, lived and enjoyed good health, and continued to show him my princely favour.