Claudius the God

It was the day that I had finally found convincing proof of Myron's fraud and forgeries. I had just had him flogged in the presence of all my other chief secretaries and then executed. I was tired out by a difficult and unpleasant day and had just settled down before supper to a friendly game of dice with Vitellius, when the eunuch Posides, my military secretary, came running in excitedly with thenews: 'Caesar,

the beacon! You're wanted in Britain.'

`Britain?' I exclaimed. I had the dice-cup in my hand, and mechanically shook it once more and threw down the dice before hurrying to the window of the room that faced north. `Show me!' I said. It was a clear evening and in the direction that Posides pointed I could make out, even with my weak eyes, the little red point of light on the summit of Mount Soracte, thirty miles away. I returned to the table, where I found Vitellius beaming at me. `What do you think of that for an omen?' he asked. `Here you have been making the lowest possible scores for the last half-hour and now suddenly you call out "Britain!" and throw Venus.'

Sure enough, the three dice were lying in a neat equilateral triangle and each showed a six! 'The odds against Venus are 216 to one, so I can be pardoned for feeling great elation. There is nothing like a really good omen for starting a campaign with, and you must understand that Venus was not only the patroness of the dice-cup but was the mother of Aeneas, and so my own ancestress through my grandmother Octavia, Augustus's sister, and guardian of the fortunes of the Julian House, of which I was now the acknowledged head. I saw significance in the triangle too, for that is the shape of Britain on the maps.

Now that I come to, think of it, I wonder whether it was Vitelius, not the Goddess, after all, who when my back was turned arranged those dice so nicely for me? I am one of the easiest people in the world to deceive: or at least that is the common verdict against me. If he did, he did well, for Venus sent me off on my conquests in the most exalted mood possible. I offered prayers to her that night (as also to Augustus and Mars) and promised her that if she helped me to victory I would do her whatever service she required of roe. `One hand washes the other,' I reminded her, `and I really expect you to do your best.' It is a custom with us Claudians to address Venus with joking familiarity. She is supposed to enjoy it, as great-grandmothers, especially great-grandmothers with a reputation for having been very gay in their youth, sometimes encourage favourite great-grandchildren to address them with as little courtesy as if they belonged to the same generation.

The next day I sailed from Ostia for Marseilles with my staff and 500 volunteers for the war. The wind was blowing pleasantly from the south and I preferred sea-travelling to the jolting of a carriage. I would be able to get some well-needed sleep. The whole City came down to the port to see us off, and everyone tried to outdo everyone else in his expressions of loyalty and in the warmth of his good wishes. Messalina threw her arms about my neck and wept. Little Germanicus wanted to come too. Vitellius promised the God Augustus to plate his temple doors with gold if I returned victorious.

We were a fleet of five fast-sailing, two-masted, square-rigged men-of-war, each with three banks of oars, and with the hulls well frapped around with strong ropes; in case of stormy weather. We raised anchor an hour after dawn and stood out to sea. There was no time to waste, so I told the captain to put on all possible sail, which he did, both sails on each mast, and the sea being calm, we were soon driving along at a good ten knots. Late that afternoon we sighted the island of Planasia, near Elba, where my poor friend Postumus had been exiled, and I could make out the now deserted buildings where his guards had been quartered. We had come 120 miles, or about a third of the way. The breeze still held. My stomach was unaffected by the pitching of the vessel and I retired to the cabin for a good sleep. That night we rounded Corsica, but the breeze dropped about midnight, and we had to rely entirely on oars. I slept well. To shorten the story, the following day we ran into rough weather and made slow progress, the wind veering gradually round to the west-north-west.

The French coast, was only sighted at dawn on the third day. The sea was now extraordinarily rough and the oars were often either buried in water up to the rowlocks or beating the empty air. Only two of our four sister-vessels were still in sight - We made for the protection of the shore and coasted along it, very slowly. We were now fifty miles west of Frejus, a station of the fleet, and threading through the Hyeres islands. By midday we should have reached Marseilles. As we passed Porquerolles, the largest and most westerly of the islands, separated at one point by only a mile of sea from the peninsula of Giens which juts out to meet it, the wind struck us with terrific force; and though the crew rowed like madmen we could make no headway at all and found ourselves slowly drifting on the rocks. We were within 100 yards of destruction when the gate momentarily slackened and we managed to pull clear. But a few minutes later we were in trouble again, and this time the danger was greater still. The last headland that we had to struggle past ended in a great black rock which the action of wind and waves had carved into a grinning Satyr-head. The water boiled and hissed at its chin, giving it as it were a white beard. The wind, blowing dead amidships, was rapidly forcing us into this monster's jaws. `If he catches us, he'll crack our bones and mangle our flesh,' the captain assured me grimly. `Many a good ship has broken up on-that black rock.' I Offered prayers for succour to every God in the Pantheon. I was told afterwards that the sailors who had overheard me swore that it was the most beautiful praying that they had ever heard in their lives and that it gave them new hope. Especially I prayed to Venus and begged her to persuade her Uncle Neptune to behave with more consideration, for the fate of Rome depended very largely on the survival of this vessel: she must please remind Neptune that I did not associate myself with my predecessor's impious quarrel with him, and that on the contrary I had always held the God in the profoundest respect. The exhausted rowers strained and groaned and the rowing-master ran along the platforms with a rope-end in his hand, cursing and flogging fresh vigour into them. We scraped through somehow I don't know how - and when a gasp of joy went up that we were out of danger I promised the rowers twenty gold pieces each as soon as we landed.

I was glad that I had kept my head. It was the first time that I had experienced a storm at sea, and I had heard it said that some of the bravest men in the world break down when faced with the prospect of death by drowning. It had even been whispered that the God Augustus was a dreadful coward in a storm, and that only his sense of the dignity of his office kept him from screaming and tearing his hair. He certainly used often to quote the tag about how `Impious was the man who first spread sail, and braved the dangers of the frantic deep.' He was most unlucky at sea, except in his sea-battles, and - speaking of impiety - once showed his deep resentment at the loss of a fleet in a sudden storm by forbidding the statue of Neptune to be carried as usual in a sacred procession around the Circus. After this he seldom put to sea without raising a storm and was all but shipwrecked on three or four occasions.

Our vessel was the first to reach Marseilles, and fortunately not a single one of the five was lost, though two were forced to turn back and run into Frejus. The earth felt splendidly firm under my feet at Marseilles: I determined never again to travel by sea when I could possibly travel by land, and have not once departed from this resolution since.

As soon as I had heard that a successful landing had been made in Britain I had moved up my reserves to Boulogne and ordered Posides to have transports assembled there ready, together with whatever extra military stores might suggest themselves as likely to be needed for the campaign. At Marseilles twenty fast gigs were waiting for me and my staff Posides had arranged this and carried us, with constant relays of horses, up the Rhone valley from Avignon to Lyons, where we spent the second night, and then on north along the Saone, travelling eighty or ninety miles a day - which was the most that I could manage because of the continuous, jolting, which racked my nerves and upset my digestion and gave me violent headaches. The third night, at Chalons, my physician Xenophon insisted on my resting the whole of the next day. I told him that I could not afford to waste a whole day he answered that if I did not rest I could not expect to be of any use to the .army in Britain when I did arrive: I raged at him and tried to override his opinion, but Xenophon insisted on reading this behaviour as a further sign of nervous exhaustion and told me that either he was my doctor or I was my own. In the latter case he would resign and resume his interrupted practice at Rome in the former, he must ask me to do as he advised me, relax completely and submit to a thorough massage. So I apologized and pleaded that to be suddenly halted in my journey would cause me such nervous anxiety that my physical condition would not be improved by any amount of compensatory massage; and that to say `relax' was no more practical advice in the circumstances than to tell a man whose clothes have caught fire that he must keep cool. In the end we arrived at a compromise: I would not continue my journey in a gig, but neither would I remain at Chalons.' I would be carried in a light sedan on the shoulders of six well-trained chairmen and thus knock off at least thirty miles or so of the 500 that still lay before me. I would submit to as much massage as he pleased both before I started and after the day's journey was over.

From Lyons it took me eight days to reach Boulogne by way of Troyes, Rheims, Soissons, and Amiens, for in the stage out of Rheims Xenophon forced me to use a sedan again. All this time I was not exactly idle. I was turning over in my mind my historical memories of great battles of the past - Julius's battles, Hannibal's battles, Alexander's, and especially those of my father and brother in Germany - and wondering whether, when it came to the point, I should be able to apply all this detailed and extensive knowledge to any practical purpose. I congratulated myself that whenever it, had been possible to draw a plan of any battle from the accounts handed down by eye-witnesses I had always done so; and had thoroughly; mastered the general tactical principles involved in the use of a small force of disciplined fighters against a great army of semi-civilized tribesmen, and also the strategical principles involved in the successful occupation of their country when the battle had been won.

At Amiens, lying sleepless in the early morning, I began picturing the battle-field. The British infantry would probably be occupying a wooded ridge, with their cavalry and chariotry manoeuvring in the low ground in front. I would draw up my regular infantry in ordinary battle formation, on a, two-regiment front, with the auxiliaries on either flank and the Guards in reserve. The elephants, which would be a complete novelty to the Britons, no such animal having ever been seen on that island but here a most uncomfortable thought came to me. `Posides,'. I called, in an anxious voice.

`Yes, Caesar,' Posides answered, springing up from his pallet, half-asleep still.

`The elephants are at Boulogne, aren't they?'

`Yes, Caesar.''

'How long ago did I give you the order to move them up there from Lyons?'

'When we heard news of the landing, Caesar; that would be on the seventh of August.'

`And to-day is the twenty-seventh.'

`Yes, Caesar.'

`Then how in the world are we going to get those elephants over? We should have had special elephant transports built.'

`The ship that brought the obelisk from Alexandria is at Boulogne.'

`But I thought that it was still at Ostia.'

'No, Caesar, at. Boulogne.'

`But if you sent it up there on the seventh it can't possibly have arrived there yet. It can't possibly be any nearer than the Bay of Biscay. It took three weeks to get to Rome from Egypt - you remember in perfect sailing weather, too.'

But Posides was a really able minister. It appears that as soon as I had decided to put elephants among my reinforcements and sent them up to Lyons - in May, I think it was - he had considered the question of transport across the Channel and without saying a word to me had fitted up; the obelisk-ship as an-elephant-transport, it was the only ship big and strong enough for the purpose - and sent it up to Boulogne, where it had arrived six weeks later. If he had waited for my orders the elephants would have had to be left behind. The obelisk-ship deserves more than a passing mention. It was the largest vessel ever launched. It was no less than 200 feet long and broad in proportion, and its main timbers were of cedar. Caligula had built it in the first few months of his monarchy to bring from Egypt an eighty-foot red granite obelisk, together with four enormous stones which formed the pediment. The obelisk was originally from Heliopolis, but had been set up in Augustus's temple at Alexandria a few years before. Caligula now wanted it set up in his own honour in the new Circus that he was building on the Vatican Hill. To understand what a monstrous sort of ship it was you must be told-that its seventy-foot main mast was a silver fir eight feet in diameter at its base; and that among the ballast used to keep it steady when the obelisk and pediment were secured on deck were 120,000 pecks of Egyptian lentils a gift for the people of Rome.

When I reached Boulogne I was delighted to find the troops in good spirits, the transports ready, and the sea calm. We embarked without delay, and our passage across the Channel was so pleasant and uneventful that on landing at Richborough I sacrificed to Venus and Neptune, thanking the latter for his unexpected favours and the former for her kindly intercession. The elephants gave no trouble. They were Indian elephants, not African. Indian elephants are about three times the size of African, and these were particularly fine ones which Caligula had bought for ceremonial use in his own religion: they had since been employed at the docks at Ostia moving timbers and stones under the direction of their Indian drivers. I found to my surprise that twelve camels had been added to the elephants. That was an idea of Posides's.

Chapter 19

AT Richborough we were anxious to hear the latest news from Aulus, and I found a dispatch from him just arrived. It reported that the Britons had made two attacks, one by day and the other by night, on the camp which he had fortified just north of London, but had been beaten off with some loss. However, new enemy reinforcements seemed to be arriving every day, from as far west as South Wales; and the men of Kent who had retired into the Weald were reported to have sent a message through to Caractacus that as soon as Aulus was forced to retreat they would leave their woods and cut him off from his base. He begged me therefore to join forces with him as soon as possible. I talked to a few seriously wounded men whom Aulus had evacuated to the Base, and they all agreed that the British infantry was no-thing to be afraid of, but that their chariotry seemed to be everywhere at once and was now so numerous as to prevent any force of less than 200 or 300 regular infantry from leaving the main body.

My column was now preparing for its advance. The elephants carried great bundles of spare javelins and other munitions of war; but certain curious machines slung across the back of the camels puzzled me.

`An invention of your Imperial Predecessor, Caesar,' Posides explained. `I took the liberty of having a set of six made at Lyons when we were there in July and sent up to Boulogne on camel back. They're a sort of siege-engine for use against uncivilized tribes.'

'I didn't, know that the late Emperor had been responsible for any military inventions.'

`I think, Caesar, that you will find this type of machine extremely effective, especially in conjunction with light rope. I have taken the liberty of bringing up several hundred yards of light rope in coils.'

Posides was grinning broadly, and I could see that he had some clever scheme at the back of his mind which he was keeping a secret from me. So I said to him: `Xerxes the Great had a war-minister called Hermotimus, a eunuch like you, and whenever Hermotimus was allowed to solve a tactical problem by himself, such as the reduction of an impregnable town without siege-engines or the crossing of an unfordable river without boats, that problem was always solved. But if Xerxes or anyone else tried to interfere with advice or suggestions Hermotimus used to say that the problem had now become too complicated for him and beg to be excused. You're a second Hermotimus, and for good luck I am going to leave you to your own devices. Your forethought in the matter of the obelisk-ship has earned you my confidence. Understand that I expect great things from your camels and their loads. If you disappoint me I shall be greatly displeased with you and shall probably throw you to the panthers in the amphitheatre on our return.'

He answered, still grinning: `And if I help to win the victory for you, what then?'

`Then I'll decorate you with the highest honour that it is in my power to bestow and one not inappropriate to your condition: you shall be awarded the Untipped Spear. Have you any other novelties smuggled away in the baggage? These camels and elephants and black spearmen from Africa already suggest spectacle on Mars Field rather than a serious expedition.'

`No, Caesar, nothing else much. But I think that the Britons will have an eyeful before we have done, and we can collect the entrance money after the performance is over.'

We marched up from Richborough and met with no opposition: the river-crossings were held for us by detachments of the Fourteenth sent back by Aulus for this purpose. When we had passed they fell in behind us. I did not see a single enemy Briton between Richborough and London, where Aulus and I joined forces on the fifth of September. I think that he was as pleased to see me as I was to see him. The first thing I asked him was whether the troops were in good spirits. He answered that they were and that he had only promised them half the forces that I had brought, and had not mentioned the elephants, so that our real strength was a surprise to them. I asked him where, the enemy were expected to give battle, and he showed me a contour map he had made in clay of the country between London and Colchester. He pointed out a place about twenty miles along the London-Colchester road - not a road in the Roman sense, of course - which Caractacus had been busily fortifying and which would almost certainly be the site of the coming battle. This was a wooded ridge called Brentwood Hill, which curved round the road in a great horseshoe, at each tip of which was a great stockaded fort, with another in the centre. The road ran north-east. The enemy's left flank beyond the ridge was protected by marshland, and a deep brook, called the Weald Brook, formed a defendable barrier in front. On the right flank the ridge bent round to the north and continued for three or four miles, but the trees and thorn bushes and brambles grew so densely along it that to try to turn that flank by sending a force of men to hack their way through would, Aulus assured me, be useless. Since the only feasible approach to Colchester was by this road, and since I wished to engage the main forces of the enemy as soon as possible, I studied the tactical problern involved very carefully. Prisoners and deserters volunteered precise information about the defences in the wood and these seemed to be extremely well planned. I did not welcome-the notion of making a frontal attack. If we marched against the central fort without first reducing the other two we would be exposed to heavy attacks from both flanks. But to attack the other two first would not help us much either; for if we succeeded in taking them, at great cost to ourselves, it would mean fighting our way through a series of further stockades inside the wood, each of which would have to be taken in a separate operation.

At a council of war to which Aulus and I summoned all general staff-officers and regimental commanders, everyone agreed that a frontal attack on the central fort was inevitable, and that we must be prepared to suffer heavy losses. It was unfortunate that the forward slopes of the ridge between the wood and the stream were admirably suited to chariot-manoeuvre. Aulus recommended a mass attack in diamond formation. The head of the diamond would consist of a single-regiment in two waves, each wave eight men deep. Then would follow two regiments marching abreast, in the same formation as the leading one; then three regiments marching abreast. This would be the broadest part of the diamond and here the elephants would be disposed as a covering for each flank. Then would come two regiments again, and then one. The cavalry and the rest of the infantry would be kept in reserve. Aulus explained that this diamond afforded a protection against charges from the flank: no attack, could-be .made on the flank of the leading regiment without engaging the-javelin-fire of the overlapping second line, nor on the second line without engaging the fire of the overlapping third. The third line was protected by the elephants. If a heavy chariot, charge was made from a rear flank the regiments; there could be turned about and the same mutual protection given.

My comments on this diamond were that it was a pretty formation and that it had been used successfully in such and such battles - I listed, them in, republican times; but that the Britons outnumbered us so greatly that once we had advanced into the centre of the horse-shoe they could attack us from all sides at once with forces that we could not drive off without disorganization the front of the diamond would almost certainly become separated from the rear. I said too, very forcibly, that I was not prepared to suffer one-tenth of the number of casualties that it had been estimated the frontal attack would cost. Vespasian came out with the old proverb about not being able to make an omelette without breaking eggs, and asked somewhat impatiently whether I proposed to cut my losses and return to France immediately, and how long, if so, I expected to keep the respect of the armies.

I countered with: `There are more ways of killing a cat than beating it to death with a horn porridge-spoon; and breaking the spoon into the bargain.'

They argued with me in the superior way of old campaigners, trying to impress me with technical military terms, as though I were an entire ignoramus. I burst out angrily: `Gentlemen, as the God Augustus used to say, "A radish may know no Greek, but I do’. I have been studying tactics for forty years and you can't teach me a thing: I know all the conventional and unconventional moves and openings in the game of human draughts. But you must understand that I am not free to play the game in the way you wish me to play it. As Father of the Country I now owe a duty to my sons: I refuse to throw away three or four thousand of their lives in an attack of this sort. Neither my father Drusus nor my brother Germanicus would ever have dreamed of making a frontal attack against a position as strong as this.'

Geta asked, perhaps ironically: `What would your noble relatives have done, Caesar, in a case of this sort, do you think?'

`They'd have found a way round.'

'But there is no way round here, Caesar. That has been established:'

`They'd have found a way round, I say.'

Crassus Frugi said: `The enemy's left flank is guarded by the Heron King and their right by the Hawthorn Queen. That's their boast, according to prisoners.'

`Who's this Heron King?' I asked.

`The Lord of the Marshes. He's a cousin, in their mythology, of the Goddess of Battle. She appears in the disguise of a raven and perches on the spear-heads. Then she drives the conquered into the marshes, and her cousin the Heron King eats, them up. The Hawthorn Queen is a virgin who dresses in white in the spring and helps soldiers in battle by defending their stockades with her thorns: you see, they fell thorn-trees and pile them in a row with the thorns outwards, making the trunks fast together. That's a fearful obstacle to get through. But the Hawthorn Queen holds that right flank of theirs without any artificial felling of trees. Our scouts are positive that the whole wood is in such a fearful tangle that it's no use trying to get through at any point there.'

Aulus said: `Yes, Caesar, I am afraid that we must make up our minds to that frontal attack.'

`Posides,' I suddenly called, `were you ever a soldier.?' -

`Never, Caesar.'

`That makes two of us, thank God. Now suppose I undertake to do the impossible and get our cavalryr through on the enemy's right flank, past this impenetrable tangle of thorns, can you undertake to get the Guards round on their left through that impassable bog?'

Posides answered: `You have given me the easier flank, Caesar. There is, as it happens, a track through the marshes. One would have to go along it in single file, but there is a track. I met a man in London yesterday, a travelling Spanish oculist, who goes about the country curing the people of marsh-ophthalmia. He's in the Camp now, and he says he knows that marsh well, and the track - which he always uses to avoid the tollgate on the hill. Since Cymbeline's death they have been levying no fixed toll, but a traveller must pay according to the amount of money he has in his saddlebags, and this oculist got tired of being skinned. In the early mornings there's, nearly always a mist on the marsh and he takes the path and slips round unobserved. He says that it's easy to follow once you are on it. It comes out half a mile beyond the ridge, at the edge of a pine copse. The Britons are likely to have a guard posted at that end - Caractacus is a careful general - but I think now that I can undertake to dislodge them and get as many men across the marsh as care to follow me.'

He explained his ruse, which I approved, though many of the generals raised their eyebrows at it; and then I explained my plan for forcing the other flank, which was really very simple. An important fact had been overlooked in the general concentration of interest on the diamond formation; the fact that Indian elephants are capable of bursting through the densest undergrowth imaginable and are daunted by no briars or thorns. However, in order not to tell the story twice, I shall say no more about the council of war and what was decided at it. I shall proceed to the battle, which took place at Brentwood on the seventh of September, date that had long been memorable to me as the day on which my brother Germanicus had defeated Hermann at the Weser: if he had lived he would still have been only fifty-eight years old, which was no older than Aulus.

We marched out from London along the Colchester road. Our vanguard was kept busy by British skirmishers, but no serious resistance was offered until we reached Romford, a village about seven miles from Brentwood, where we found the ford across the River Rom strongly defended. The enemy held us up there for a whole morning, at the cost to themselves of 200 killed and 100 prisoners. We lost only fifty, but two of these were captains and one a battalion commander, so in a sense the Britons got the best of the exchange. That afternoon we sighted Brentwood Ridge and encamped for the night this side of the brook, which we used as a defensive barrier.

I took the auspices. Auspices are always taken before battle by giving the sacred chickens lumps of pulse-cake and watching how they eat it. If they have no appetite the battle is already as good as lost. The best possible omen is when the chickens, as soon as the cage-door is opened by the chicken-priest, rush out without any cry or beating of wings and eat so greedily that big bits drop from their mouths. If the sound of these striking the ground can be distinctly heard it prophesies the total defeat of the enemy. And, sure enough, this best possible omen was granted. The chicken-priest did not show himself to the birds, but standing with me behind the cage suddenly slid the door back at the very moment that I threw the cake before them. Out they rushed, without so much as a cackle, and fairly tore at the cake, throwing lumps about in a way which absolutely delighted us all, it was so reckless.'

I had prepared what I considered a very suitable speech. It was somewhat reminiscent of Livy, but I felt that the historic importance of the occasion called for something in that style. It ran: -

Romans, let no tongue among you wag and no voice bellow vainly, praising the days of old as days of true gold, and belittling the present age, of whose glories we should be the doughty champions, as a graceless age of gilded plaster. The Greek heroes before Troy, of whom the august Homer sang, bore, if we are to believe his record, this verse perpetually upon their lips:

We pride ourselves as better men by far

Than all our forebears who e'er marched to war.

Be not over-modest, Romans. Hold your heads high. Puff out your chests. Ranged in battle before you to-day are men who as closely resemble your ancestors, as eagle, eagle, or wolf, wolf - a fierce, proud, nervous, unrefined race, wielding weapons that are long centuries out of date, driving chariot-ponies of an antique breed, employing pitiable battle tactics only worthy of the pages of epic poets, not organized in regiments but grouped in clans and households - as certain of defeat at your disciplined hands as the wild boar who lowers his head and charges the skilled huntsman armed with hunting-spear and net. To-morrow when the dead are counted and the long ranks of sullen prisoners march beneath the yoke, it will be a matter for laughter to you if you ever for a moment lost faith in the present, if your minds were ever dazzled by the historied glories of a remote past. No, comrades, the bodies of these primitive heroes will be tumbled by your swords upon the field of battle as roughly and indiscriminately as, just now, when I, your general, took the auspices, the holy fowl flung upon the soil from their avid bills the fragments of sanctified cake.

Some of you, I have heard, no doubt slothful rather than fearful or undutiful, hesitated when called upon to set out, upon this expedition, alleging as your excuse that the God Augustus had fixed the bounds of the Roman Empire for ever at the waters of the Rhine and the channel. If this were true, as I undertake to prove to you that it is not, then the God Augustus would be unworthy of our worship. The mission of Rome is to civilize the world - and where in the world would you find a race worthier of the benefits which we propose to confer upon it than the British race? The strange and pious task inlaid upon us of converting these fierce compeers of our ancestors into-dutiful sons of Rome, our illustrious City and Mother. What were the words that the God Augustus, wrote to my, grandmother, the Goddess Augusta? `Looking into the future I can see Britain becoming as civilized as Southern France is now. And I think that the islanders, who are racially akin to us, will become far better Romans than we shall ever succeed in making of the Germans.... And, one day (do not smile), British noblemen may well take their seats in the Roman Senate.'

You have already quitted yourselves bravely in this war. Twice you have inflicted a, resounding defeat on the enemy. You have slain King Togodumnus,, my enemy, and avenged his insults. This third time you cannot fail. Your forces, are more powerful than ever, your courage higher, your ranks more united. You, no less than the enemy, are defending your hearths and the sacred temples of your, Gods. The Roman soldier, whether his battlefield be the icy rocks of Caucasus, the burning sands of the desert beyond Atlas, the dank forests of Germany, or the grassy fields of Britain, is never unmindful of the lovely City which gives him his name, his valour, and his sense of duty.

I had composed several more paragraphs in this same lofty strains, but strangely enough not one word of the speech was delivered. When I' mounted the tribunal platform, and the captains shouted in unison: `Greetings, Caesar Augustus, Father of our Country, our Emperor!' and the soldiers took up the shout with roaring applause, I fairly broke down. My fine speech went altogether out of my head and I could only stretch out my hands to them, my eyes swimming with tears, and blurt out: `It's all right, lads: the chickens say that it's going to be all right, and we have prepared a grand surprise for them, and we're going to give them such a beating as they'll never forget so long as they live - I don't mean the chickens, I mean the British.' [Tremendous laughter, in which I thought it best to join, as if the joke had been intentional.]

`Stop laughing at me, lads,' I cried. `Don't you remember what happened to the little black boy in the Egyptian story who laughed at his father when he said the evening prayer by mistake for the morning one? The crocodile ate him; so you be careful. Well, I am getting to be an old man now, but this is the proudest moment of my life, and I wish my poor brother Germanicus were here to share it with me. Do, any of you remember my great brother? Not very many, perhaps, for he died twenty-four years ago. But you've all heard of him as the greatest general Rome has ever had. Tomorrow is the anniversary of his magnificent, defeat of Hermann, the. German chieftain, and I want you to celebrate it suitably. The pass-word to-night is Germanicus! and the battle-cry to-morrow will be Germanicus! and I think that if you shout his name loud enough he'll hear it down in the Underworld and know, that he's remembered by the regiments that he loved and led so well. It will make him. forget the wretched fate that overtook him - he, died poisoned in bed, as you know. The Twentieth Regiment will have the honour of leading the assault: Germanicus always said that though, in barracks, you Twentieth were the most insubordinate, most drunken, and most quarrelsome troops in the entire regular army, you were absolute lions on the field. Second and Fourteenth, Germanicus called you the Backbone of the Army. It will be your duty tomorrow to stiffen the French allies, who will act as the army's ribs. The Ninth will come, up last, because Germanicus always used to say that you Ninth were the slowest regiment in the Army but also the surest. You Guards are detailed for special duty. You have the easiest time and the best pay when you're not on active service, so it's only fair to the rest of the troops to give you the most dangerous and disagreeable task when you are. That's all I have to say now. Be good lads, sleep well, and earn your father's gratitude to-morrow!'

They cheered me till they were hoarse, and I knew then that Pollio was right and Livy wrong. A good general couldn't possibly deliver a studied oration on the eve of battle, even if he had one already prepared; for his lips would inevitably speak as his heart prompted. One effect of this speech - which, you will agree, reads very, poorly, by comparison with the other one was that ever since I made it the Ninth have been familiarly known not as the `Ninth Spanish' (their full title) but as the `Ninth Snails'. The Twentieth, too, whose full title is `The Conquering Valerian Twentieth' are known to other regiments as the `Drunken Lions.'; and when a, man of the Fourteenth meets a man of the Second they are now expected to salute each other as `Comrade Backbone'. The French auxiliaries are always known as `The Ribs'.

A light mist settled over the camp, but there was a moon-'soon after midnight, which was of the greatest service; if the weather had been cloudy we would not have been able to manage, the marshes. I slept until midnight and then Posides woke me as arranged and handed me a candle and a blazing pine branch from the camp-fire. I lighted the candle with it and prayed to the nymph Egeria. She is a Goddess of Prophecy, and good King Numa in the days of old used to consult her on every occasion. It was the first time that I had performed this family ceremony, but my brother Germanicus and my uncle Tiberius and my father and of leeches. But the oculist made no mistakes. He found the track and kept to it.

A British outpost was stationed in the pine copse at the further end, and as the moon rose these watchful men saw a sight and heard a sound which filled their hearts with the utmost dismay. A great bird with a long shining bill, a huge grey body, and legs fifteen feet long suddenly rose through the mist a javelin's throw away and came stalking towards them, stopping every now and then to boom hoarsely, flap his wings, preen his feathers with his dreadful bill and boom again. The Heron King! They crouched in their bivouacs, terrified, hoping that this apparition would disappear, but it came slowly on and on. At last it seemed to notice their camp-fire. It jerked its head angrily and hurried towards them, with outspread wings, booming louder and louder. They sprang up and ran for their lives. The Heron King pursued them through the copse with a fearful chuckling laughter, then turned and slowly promenaded along the edge of the marsh, booming dully at intervals.

In case you imagine that it was indeed the Heron King who had come to frighten them - for if Egeria could appear so strangely, why not a Heron King? - I must explain the ruse. The Heron King was a French soldier from the great marshes which lie to the west of Marseilles, where the shepherds are accustomed to walk on long stilts as a means of striding across soft patches too wide to jump. Posides had rigged this man up in a wicker-work basket constructed in the shape of a bird's body, and stitched over with blanket stuff. Wicker wings covered with cloth were attached to his arms. The head and bill were improvised of stuff-covered laths and fastened to his head: he could move them by moving his neck: The beak was treated with phosphorus. The boom was made by an ingenious water-pipe he carried in his mouth. The soldier knew the habits of herons and imitated the walk with his stilts, which were strapped: firmly to his legs. The oculist led him and Posides along the track until the dark outline of the copse could just be made out. The Guards were following 200 yards behind, and Posides sent back a message halting them. He waited until he saw the bird striding around the copse again and knew that the ruse had been successful. He ran back and told them that the coast was clear. They hurried forward and occupied the copse. Eight thousand men in single Me take a long time to pass a given spot, and it was more than five hours before they were all across, by which time dawn had appeared, but the mist had not cleared, so they were not seen from the hill.

An hour before dawn I sacrificed to Mars and then breakfasted with my staff, and we made a few further arrangements about what to do if everything did not go according to plan. But now we knew that most of the Guards must already be in position - for there had evidently been no interruption of their progress across the marsh and we were confident of victory. Geta was absent he had taken an odd battalion of the Eighth Regiment (I had forgotten to mention this battalion as part of our reinforcements) with the cavalry, the Batavians, and the elephants, to a position about two miles away on our left flank. My son-in-law, young Pompey, was also absent. I had entrusted him with the command of the Nubians and the Balearic slingers, and he had taken them across the Weald Brook. The Balearics carried coils of tent-rope, tent-pegs, and camp mallets; the Nubians, native drums and their long white spears.

It was a fine breakfast and we all drank just the right amount of wine enough to make us feel very pleased with ourselves and yet not enough to induce recklessness - and in the intervals of serious discussion we did a great deal of joking. They were mostly witticisms about camels, which were much on our minds at the time. My contribution was a quotation from a letter of Herod Agrippa's to my mother: `The camel is one of the seven wonders of nature. He shares this honour with the Rainbow, the Echo, the Cuckoo, the Negro,, the Volcano, and the Sirocco. But he is the first and greatest of the seven.'

I gave the order for the army to move forward into its positions beyond the Weald Brook. Massed trumpeters blew a call that could be heard miles away. It was answered by a great din of warhorns and shouting from the hill. That gave me a sudden shock. Although, naturally, I had been aware that battles cannot be fought without an enemy, I had been thinking of this battle all night as a diagram on the map, a silent affair of squares and oblongs gently pushing each other this way and that; the Roman squares and oblongs inked in black, the British left white. When the trumpets and horns blew I had to translate the diagram into terms of man, horse, chariot, and elephant. I had not slept since midnight, and I suppose my face and gestures betrayed the strain I was under: for Xenophon actually suggested that I should rest a few minutes after my breakfast and go forward only when all the regiments were in position. As though it was not essential for me to be waiting at the brook dressed in my Imperial armour and purple cloak to greet each regiment as it arrived and watch it cross over! If Xenophon had so much as whispered the word `massage' I believe I should have killed him.

I rode forward to the brook on a steady old mare, none other than Penelope, the widow of ex-citizen and might-have-been Consul Incitatus, who had recently broken a leg on the race-track and had to be destroyed. The mist was pretty thick here. One could only see ten to fifteen paces ahead, and what a terrible stink of camel! You have perhaps, at some time or other, passed in the mist through a field where an old he-goat was loose: at ordinary times wind and sun carry off most of the smell, but mist seems to suck it up and hold it, so that you will have been astonished by the rankness of the air. These were he-camels which I had imported for circus-shows - female camels are too expensive - and they smelt pretty bad. If there is one thing that horses hate it is the smell of camel, but as all our cavalry were far away on the flank this did not affect us, and Penelope was inured to circus-smells. There was no confusion in the crossing of the brook, and in spite of the mist the regiments formed up beyond in perfect order. A disciplined regiment can perform quite complicated drill-movements in the pitch dark: the Guards often practise at night on Mars Field.

Now I want to make you see the battle as it was seen by the Britons, because that way you will be better able to appreciate my plan of attack. The best British infantry are manning the three forts, each of which has a sally-port for sorties and an avenue running back through the wood into the open country behind. The forts are linked together by a strong stockade facing the entire semicircle of wood, and the wood is so full of Britons that no advantage would be won by attacking the stockade at a point between two forts. Just before dawn the sally-port of the central fort opens and out drives a division of chariotry. It is commanded by Cattigern, Caractacus's brother-in-law, king of the Trinovants. Another division drives out from the fort on the British right flank. It is led by Caractacus himself. The two divisions draw up on either side of the central fort. Caractacus is angry and reproaches Cattigern, because he has just been told that the Trinovantian infantry posted at the Weald Brook have fallen back during the night. Cattigern is angry at being spoken to in this way in front of his whole tribe. He asks Caractacus haughtily whether he accuses the Trinovants of cowardice. Caractacus wishes to know what other excuse they have for deserting their posts.' Cattigern explains that they retired for religious reasons. Their commander had been coughing violently because of the mist and suddenly began to cough blood. They regarded this as a most unlucky sign, and respect for the nymph of the brook did not allow them to stay. They therefore offered a propitiatory sacrifice - the chief's two ponies - and withdrew. Caractacus has to accept this explanation, but does not conceal his displeasure. He does not yet know of the retirement of the other outpost from the copse by the marsh, but he has heard alarming rumours of the appearance of the Heron King in person in that quarter: the Heron King has not been seen since legendary times. Our trumpets are then heard and the British reply with horns and shouts. British scouts come rushing up to report that the enemy are crossing the brook in force.

Dawn has broken, and the whole semicircle of wood stands out clearly, with open ground shelving down towards the brook, but after 300 or 400 yards the field of vision is obscured by a sea of mist. Caractacus cannot tell yet in which direction the Roman attack will develop. He sends more scouts forward to report. They hurry back twenty minutes later to report that the enemy are on the move at last. They are coming up the road towards the centre in mass formation. Caractacus wheels his chariot division across to the right flank again and anxiously waits for the first Roman companies, to appear through the mist. A Briton comes up to report that before the chariots emerged from the wood a muffled sound of hammering was heard from the mist, as if the Roman soldiers were driving tent-pegs; and that a party sent out to investigate the noise did not return. Caractacus replies, 'Tent-pegs can't hurt us.'

At last the tramp and clank of our approaching regiments can be clearly heard, and the encouraging shouts of the officers. The leading company of the Twentieth appears dimly through the mist. The Britons roar defiance. Cattigern swings his division across to the left. The Romans suddenly halt. A curious sight is seen. A company of immensely tall, long-necked beasts with humps on their backs are being trotted up and down, in and out of the mist, on the flank which Cattigern has been told to attack. The Britons are alarmed at the sight and mutter charms against magic. Cattigern should now be attacking, but he cannot yet be sure whether the Roman advance is only a feint; for only 500 men are as yet visible. The main attack may be taking place elsewhere: He waits. Caractacus sends a mounted messenger, ordering him to attack without delay. Cattigern signals the advance. And then a strange thing happens. As soon as the column of chariots sweeps down into the mist where the beasts have been seen, the ponies go quite mad. They squeal, buck, snort, baulk, and cannot be forced to go a step farther. It is clearly a magic mist. It has a peculiar and frightening odour.

While Cattigern's division is in confusion, the ponies plunging and kicking and the charioteers shouting, cursing„ and trying to get them under control,, trumpets sound and two battalions of the Twentieth, followed by two battalions of the Second, suddenly charge out of the mist at them. `Germanicus! Germanicus!' they shout. Shower after shower of javelins flies from their hands. Caractacus then launches his own attack. His division is unaffected by the spell and sweeps down, 3,000 strong, on the flank of the halted Roman mass, which seems unprovided with, a flank-guard. But a more powerful charm than a stinking mist protects this flank. The column is going at full speed and is just out of javelin range when suddenly there come six terrific claps of thunder and six simultaneous flashes of lightning. Balls of burning pitch hurtle through the air. The terrified column swings away to the right, and as they go a shower of lead bolts comes whizzing at them from the Balearic slingers posted behind the thunder and lightning. Charioteers fall right and left; as they have the reins tightly wound about their waists, this involves the wreck of a number of chariots. The column is almost out of control, but Caractacus manages to, swing it back again on its course. He is aiming at the Roman rear, which can now be clearly seen, for a light breeze is rolling the mist away to the other flank. But a catastrophe follows: As the column, which has lost its formation and is now pressed together in a disorderly mass; rushes forward, chariot after chariot comes crashing to the ground as if halted by an invisible power. The chariots behind are bunched so close and the impetus of the downhill rush is so great that nobody can pull up or turn without colliding with a, neighbour. The mass charges blindly on and the wreckage in front piles higher and higher. Above the crash of splintered chariots, the screams and groans, rises a dreadful noise of drums and up springs a horde of tall, naked black men brandishing white spears. They fling themselves on the wreckage, and their long spears dart here and there among the fallen men. They laugh and crow and shout and no Briton dares defend himself against them, mistaking them for evil spirits. Caractacus escapes from the slaughter. His own car has been among the first to overturn, but he has been thrown clear. He runs off to the right, stumbling as he goes over the tightly stretched tent-rope pegged knee high in the long grass. The last section of the column, Belgic chariot-men from the West Country, have realized in time what is happening in front. Five hundred of their chariots manage to avoid disaster by swerving away to the right. There Caractacus hails them and is rescued. The rest of the division is lost, for the Fourteenth has pushed two battalions round in their rear and two battalions of the Ninth rush obliquely forward to assist the Nubians.

Caractacus leads his chariots back up the hill and instructs the Belgic commander to go to Cattigern's aid on the other flank. He himself drives up to the central fort, for he notices that the sallyport is open and wants to know why. He enters and finds the garrison gone. Meanwhile Cattigern is fighting bravely at the head of a force of dismounted chariot-men, supported by infantrymen who have streamed out of the wood to his assistance. He is wounded. His chariotry has disappeared. His brother has headed the flight back to the central fort, down the avenue through the wood, and so away. The garrison of the fort has gone after him. Our Twentieth and Second are gradually forcing Cattigern's men back, keeping unbroken formation as they advance. Caractacus, returning, to, the sally-port, hears the noise of chariots racing towards him: it is the Belgic section of chariotry, now also in flight. He tries to halt them, but they refuse to listen to him; and realizing that the battle is lost he turns his own chariot and blows two long blasts on his ivory horn as signal for a general retreat. He hopes to overtake the fugitives and rally them a few miles farther along the Colchester road. He hears a sound of Roman trumpets, and as his chariot drives clear of the wood on the other side he sees eight battalions of Roman regulars advancing towards it on his right. It is the Guards. And away on his left he sees elephants and Roman cavalry emerging from the wood and charging towards him. He shouts to his driver to whip on the, horses. He escapes.

With Caractacus gone, the battle was over. The Guards cut off the British retreat from the wood and the infantry remaining in it put up little fight. Cavalry were sent down the avenue to capture the fort on the British right, but half-way along it they came across; a party of British spearmen: these had the presence of mind, to cut the cords, releasing a sort of portcullis which fell squarely across the avenue, barring progress. The three avenues were all provided: with a series of these portcullises, each connected with stockades, on either side, but this was the only one of which use had been made. By, the time that the cavalry had demolished this obstacle the retreating British party had released another portcullis and hurried on to warn the garrison of the fort that all was lost. The garrison escaped safely in a westerly direction. The other fort surrendered an hour later; by which time Cattigern had been severely wounded and the resistance of his men broken.

We took 8,000 prisoners, and counted 4,700 corpses on the battle-field. Our own losses were insignificant: 380 killed, 600 wounded, of whom only 150 were disabled from further fighting. Our cavalry and elephants were sent ahead in the direction of Colchester, to prevent fugitives from rallying on the-road. They overtook Caractacus at Chelmsford, where he was trying to organize the defence of the River Chelmer. The sight of the elephants was enough to send the British scurrying in all directions. Caractacus escaped again. This time he gave up all hope of saving Colchester. With a force of 200 chariots of his own tribe he turned west and disappeared from the scene. He had gone to throw himself on the protection of his allies, the men of South Wales.

We piled a great trophy on the battle-field, of broken chariots and weapons, and burned it as a thank-offering to Mars. That night we camped on the farther side of the wood. The men had been roaming about in search of plunder. Gold chains and enamelled breastplates and helmets were found in abundance. I had issued strict orders against the violation of captured women - for hundreds of women had been fighting in the wood beside their husbands - and three men of the Fourteenth were duly executed that evening for disobeying me. When night fell I felt the reaction after victory and at supper with my staff was suddenly, seized by the most painful attack of stomachic cramp, `the cardiac passion' as they call it, that I have ever experienced. It was like 100 swords stuck into my vitals at once, and I let out a fearful bellow which made everyone present think that I had been poisoned. Xenophon rushed to my aid and hastily cutting the straps of my corselet with a carving-knife and throwing it aside; he knelt over me and began kneading at-my stomach with both hands, while I continued to roar and bellow, unable to stop. He mastered the cramp at last, and had me wrapped in hot blankets and carried away to bed, where I spent one of the wretchedest nights of my life. However, the extraordinary completeness of my victory was the medicine that really cured me. By the time that we reached Colchester, three days later, I was myself again. I travelled on elephant back like an Indian prince.

Near Colchester the advance-guard of a friendly army met us. It was the Icenians, who had risen in our support on the day that they heard of my arrival at London. Together we invested and stormed the city, which was defended bravely by a few old men and a number of women. I swore honourable alliance there in the name of Rome with the King of the Icenians, the King of East Kent, and the King of East Sussex, in recognition of their assistance in the campaign. The remainder of Caractacus's empire I formally declared a Roman province, under the governorship of Aulus, and presently received the homage of all its petty kings and chiefs, including those Kentish chiefs who had been hiding in the Weald. After this I decided that I had done all that I had come to Britain to do: I said farewell to Aulus and his army and returned to Richborough with the Guards, the elephants, and the 500 volunteers who had sailed with me from Ostia but arrived too late for the battle. We embarked in our transports and crossed without further incident to France. I had been a mere sixteen days in Britain. My only regret was perhaps rather an ungrateful one. I was with the Ninth throughout the battle and, feeling very courageous at the moment that their two battalions went forward to help the Nubians, I had galloped excitedly ahead of them to join in the fighting. However, I changed my-mind: I did not wish to get mixed up with the Nubians, who often in battle mistake friends for foes. I turned Penelope round behind them and pulled up on the flank. There I saw a British chief doubling back between me and the tangle of broken chariots and kicking horses. I drew my sword and spurred after him. I was nearly on him when a big body of chariots swept into view and I had to turn and gallop back. I know now that the chief was Caractacus. To think that I was cheated by a few seconds from a single combat with him! Since I had a horse and a sword and he had neither, I might easily have had the luck to kill him. And if I had done so, what immortal glory I would have won! Only two Roman generals in history have ever killed an enemy commander in single combat, and stripped him of his arms.

Chapter 21

A ROMAN general, in order to be granted a full triumph as a reward for victory over his country's enemies, must have fulfilled certain conditions required by ancient custom. In the first place, he must have attained consular rank or the rank of first-class magistrate, and be the, official Commander-in-Chief of the victorious forces, not an acting-commander-or lieutenant: and as Commander-in-Chief he must have personally taken the auspices before battle. Next, he must have been engaged against a foreign enemy, not against rebel citizens; and the war must have been fought not for the recovery of territory that once belonged to Rome, but for the extension of Roman rule over entirely new territory. Next, he must have decisively beaten the enemy in a pitched battle which has ended the campaign; he must have killed at least 5,000 of the enemy; and the Roman losses must have been comparatively light. Finally, the victory must have been so complete that he is able to withdraw his victorious troops without prejudice to his conquests and bring them back to Rome to take part in the triumph.

Permission to celebrate a triumph is granted by the Senate, but always after jealous and prolonged deliberation. They usually meet in the Temple of Bellona outside the City to scrutinize the laurel-wreathed dispatch sent in by the general, and if they have reason to suppose that his claims are unfounded or exaggerated they will send for him to substantiate them. If, however, they decide that he has really won a notable victory they proclaim a day of public thanksgiving and ask formal permission from the people of Rome for the victorious army to be led inside the walls for the day of the triumph. The Senate has the discretionary power of relaxing certain of the conditions necessary for a triumph if the victory seems to them of sufficient general merit. That is only just, but I am sorry to record it as my opinion that at least sixty or seventy of the 315 triumphs that have been celebrated since the time of Romulus did not deserve celebration; while, on the other hand, a good many generals have been robbed of well-earned triumphs by the spiteful influence of rivals in the Senate. If, however, a general has been cheated of the honour by enemies or by a mere technicality, he usually celebrates a triumph unofficially, on the Alban Mount, outside the City, which the whole City attends, so that it is almost as good as a real triumph; only, it cannot be recorded as such in the City annals nor can his funeral-mask, after his death, be worn with triumphal dress. Perhaps the two most disgraceful triumphs. that have been witnessed at Rome were Julius Caesar's triumph over the sons of Pompey the Great, his relatives, and one celebrated by an ancestor of mine, one Appius Claudius, in spite of the refusal of both the Senate and People to allow him the honour he induced his sister, a Vestal Virgin, to sit in his triumphal car so that the City officials did not venture to pull him out of it for fear of offending her sanctity.

When I sent in my dispatch and applied for a triumph, it was a foregone conclusion that it would be granted, because nobody would dare oppose my claims, even if they were utterly groundless - as groundless as Caligula's had been when he celebrated his triple triumph over Germany, Britain, and Neptune. He had marched a few miles into Germany, met no resistance, fallen a prey to terrors of his imagination and fled in a panic; he had never even crossed the Channel into Britain, nor sent any of his troops there; and as for Neptune, well, the kindest thing to be said about that is that triumphs cannot be awarded for victories, real or supposed, over national Gods. But I was anxious to observe the decencies, and so I stated in my dispatch that the number of Britons killed during my personal conduct of the campaign had been 300 short of the required figure of 5,000, but that the prisoners were sufficiently numerous, perhaps, to compensate for this shortage, and that the gratifying brevity of our own casualty-list might also weigh with the House, should they consider waiving this condition for once. I undertook, if the triumph were granted, to let 600 prisoners fight to the death in the Circus, thus bringing the enemy dead up to the 5,000 mark. I wrote that I could not return-to Rome before March, because Aulus would need the entire expeditionary force with him that winter to accustom the British to our permanent presence in their island; and that even then I could not leave the new province undefended, because hitherto unconquered tribes on the border would probably overrun it. But I could bring back the troops who had been actively engaged in the final battle - namely, the Twentieth Regiment, four battalions of the Fourteenth,- two of the Ninth, two of the Second, one of the Eighth, and some allied troops - if that was enough to satisfy them. Meanwhile, in accordance with old custom I would not return to the City; (which Vitellius would continue to govern, with their co-operation, as my representative) I would remain in France, with my headquarters at Lyons, hearing appeal cases, settling disputes between tribes or cities, reviewing troops, inspecting defences, auditing departmental accounts, and seeing that my order for the total suppression of the Druidical Order was strictly obeyed.

This dispatch was well received and the Senate kindly waived the 5,000-dead clause and asked the People to vote permission for me to march my army into the City, which the People gladly did. The Senate voted me 500,000 gold pieces of public money for the celebrations of my triumph, and the, date was fixed for New Year's Day, the first of March.

My tour of France was not marked by any event of interest, though I took certain important decisions about the extension of the Roman citizenship. I shall not waste time over recording my impressions of the country. Dispatches came from Aulus at regular intervals, reporting the occupation of various Catuvellaunian strongholds, detailing the distribution of his troops, and sending me for my approval a plan of campaign for the following spring, after the return of the troops from the triumph. I received a great many letters of congratulation from provincial governors, allied kings and cities, and personal friends. Marsus wrote from Antioch that my victory had been most timely. It had caused a great impression in the East, where rumours of the internal decay of Rome and the impending collapse of her empire were being constantly put about by hidden enemies and produced a most disquieting effect on the Syrian provincials. But this was by no means all that Marsus had to tell me. He reported the recent death of the old King of Parthia - the one whom Vitellius had surprised during Caligula's reign, when he was on the point of invading Syria, and forced to give important hostages for future good behaviour - and the accession of his son Gotarzes, an indolent and debauched prince with many enemies among the nobility. He wrote:

But this Gotarzes has a brother, Bardanes, a most gifted and ambitious prince. I am informed that Bardanes is now on. the way to Parthia to dispute the throne with his brother. He has been visiting Alexandria lately, on the pretext of consulting a famous physician there who undertakes to cure deafness - Bardanes is slightly deaf in one ear. But his journey has led him through Jerusalem, and my agents assure me that he went away from King Herod's dominions far richer than he came.

With, the help of this Jewish gold I expect to see him oust Gotarzes. Parthian nobles canalways be

bribed. He can count, too, on the unbought assistance of the King of Adiabene the Assyrian kingdom which, I need hardly remind you, lies across the Tigris River just south of Nineveh - and on the King of Osroene, in Western Mesopotamia. You will recall that this King of Adiabene recently restored the late King of Parthia to his throne after he had been removed by a conspiracy of nobles, and was rewarded for this service with the Golden Bed and the Upright Tiara. But it will probably be news to you that this important personage is a secret convert to Judaism and that his mother, who was the first of his household to change her religion, is now resident at Jerusalem. She has brought with her five young princes of Adiabene, her grandsons, to be educated in the Jewish language, literature, and religion. They have all been circumcised.

King Herod has now-therefore close dealings with the following kings: -

The King of Chalcis,

The King of Iturea,

The King of Adiabene,

The King of Osroene;

The King of Lesser Armenia,

The King of Pontus and Cilicia,

The King of Commagene, and

The prospective, King of Parthia.

The Crown of Parthia commands, of course, an alliance of a great many other kings of the Middle East - as far as Bactria and the Indian border. King Herod also enjoys the support of Jews throughout the world, not forgetting the Jews of Alexandria, and of the Edomites and Nabateans, and is now angling for the support of the King of Arabia. The Phoenicians, too, are slowly being won over by his blandishments: only Tyre and Sidon continue cold. He has broken off diplomatic relations with these cities and forbidden his subjects to trade with them under penalty of death. Tyre and Sidon will be forced to come to terms. Their economic prosperity depends on trade with the interior; and, except for the corn which they import from Egypt, and fish, which is often scarce in bad weather, King Herod controls their entire food supply.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the dangers of the situation and we can all be most thankful that your British victory has been so complete, though I could have wished that the regiments now stationed in Britain were available for hurried transference to the East, where I am pretty sure that they will before long be needed.

If you are willing to consider, with your usual graciousness and perspicacity, the advice that I have to offer you in these difficult circumstances, it is this I suggest that you immediately restore to his throne. Mithridates, the ex-King of Armenia, who is at present living at Rome. It was, if I may say so without offence, a lamentable mistake on the part of your uncle, the Emperor Tiberius Caesar, to allow the late King of Parthia to, unite the Armenian crown with his own, and not immediately to avenge with force of arms that most insulting letter the King wrote to him. If, therefore, you send Mithridates to me at Antioch at once, I undertake to put him back on the throne of Armenia while Bardanes and Gotarzes are disputing the throne of Parthia. The present Governor of Armenia can be bribed not to oppose us too strongly and Mithridates is a by no means incapable prince and a great admirer of Roman institutions. His brother, too, is King of Georgia and commands quite a strong army of Caucasian mountaineers. I can get in touch with him and arrange for an invasion of Armenia from the north while we march up from the south-west. If we succeed in restoring Mithridates we can have nothing to fear from the Kings of Pontus and Lesser Armenia, whose kingdoms will be cut off from Parthia by Armenia; nor from the King of Commagene (whose son has now been betrothed to King Herod's daughter Drusilla), because his kingdom lies directly between Armenia and my own command. We shall in fact, hold the north, and when Bardanes has fought his civil war, and ousted King Gotarzes (as I think he is bound to do) his next expedition will have to be against Mithridates in Armenia. The recovery of Armenia will be no easy matter if we give Mithridates adequate support, and Bardanes's southern and eastern allies will not easily be persuaded to help him in so distant and hazardous an expedition. And, until he recovers Armenia, Bardanes will be in no position to further any of the imperialistic schemes that I confidently believe King Herod Agrippa to be planning. This is the first definite accusation I have made against the loyalty of your supposed friend and ally, and I know the great danger I am running of incurring your displeasure by making it. But I put the safety of Rome before my own safety and I should consider myself a traitor if I suppressed any of the political information that comes to me, merely because it makes unsavoury reading in an official dispatch. Having said so much, I shall further make so bold as to suggest that King Herod's son, Herod Agrippa the Younger, be invited back to Rome to attend your triumph. He can then, if necessary, be detained indefinitely on some pretext, and may prove a useful hostage for his father's good behaviour.

I had two courses before me. The first was to summon Herod to Lyons at once to answer Marsus's charges, in which, in spite of my bias in Herod's favour, I could not help believing. If guilty, he would refuse to come and that would mean an immediate war, for which I was unprepared. The second course was to play for time

and give no indication of my mistrust; but the danger of that was that Herod might benefit from the delay more than, I would. If I decided on this course I would certainly take Marsus's advice about Armenia; but was Marsus right in reckoning on a friendly Armenia as sufficient protection against the enormously powerful Eastern confederation that Herod seemed to have built up?

Letters came from Herod. In the first he answered my questions about the prophesied king. In the second he congratulated me most warmly on my victories and, curiously enough, asked permission to send his son to Rome to witness my triumph; he hoped that I would not mind the lad enjoying a few months' holiday in Rome before returning to Palestine in the summer to assist him at the great feast in honour of my birthday, which he hoped to celebrate , at Caesarea. The letter about the prophesied king ran as follows:

Yes, my dear Marmoset, as a child I used to hear plenty of mystical talk about this Anointed One, or Messiah as they call him in our language, and it still goes on in theological circles at Jerusalem; but I never paid much, attention to it, until now, when your request for, a report on the prophecy has led me to investigate the matter seriously. At your suggestion I consulted our worthy friend Philo, who was in Jerusalem paying some vow or other which he had sworn to, our God - he is always either vowing or paying vows. Philo, you know, has made a daring and I should say a most absurd identification of the Deity ideally, conceived by Plato and his philosophical crew - Unchanging and Unyielding and Eternal and Uncompounded Intellectual Perfection, exalted above all predicates - with our passionate tribal God at Jerusalem. I suppose that he found the Platonic Deity too cold and abstract, and wanted to infuse some life into him, at the same time glorifying his own God by extending his rule over the universe. At all events, I asked Philo what the sacred Scriptures had to say about this enigmatic Person. Philo grew very serious at once and assured me that the whole hope of our race is centred on the coming of the Messiah. He gave me the following particulars:

This Messiah is a king who shall come to redeem Israel from its sins, and as the human representative of our Jewish God. He is not necessarily a great conqueror, though he must release the Jews from any foreign yoke which interferes with their freedom of worship. This prophecy was first made, according to Philo, shortly after the Jews had been led out of Egypt by their law-giver Moses in the days of Rameses II. In a book which we call the Book of Numbers, ascribed to Moses, he is spoken of as a `Star and Sceptre out of Jacob'. In later sacred writings, dating from about the time that Rome was founded, he is spoken of as a man who shall gather the lost sheep of Israel from many quarters and restore them to their native fold in Palestine - for already by that time the Jews had become scattered in colonies all over the Near and Middle East. Some had left Palestine voluntarily as traders and settlers, some had been carried away as captives. Philo says that Jewish theologians have never been able to decide whether this Messiah is a real or a symbolic figure. At the time of the heroic Maccabees (my mother's priestly ancestors) he was regarded as only a symbol. At other times he has not only been regarded as a real person, but has even been popularly identified with non-Jewish deliverers of the race, such as Cyrus the Persian, and even Pompey, who put an end to the Hasmonean oppression.' Philo declares that both these views are wrong: the Messiah is yet to come and he must be a Jew, in direct line from our King David whose son Solomon built the Temple at Jerusalem, and must be born in a village called Bethlehem, and must gather Israel together and cleanse it from its sins by a most thorough-going ritual of confession, repentance, and placation of the offended Deity. Jerusalem is to be sanctified down to `the very cooking-pots and the bells on the horses' necks'. Philo even knows the date of the Messiah's birth, namely, 5,500 years from that of the earliest ancestor of the Jewish race: but opinions differ as to when he lived, so that is not much help.

The scriptures are not entirely consistent in their various foreshadowings of this Messiah. He is sometimes represented as an angry powerful warrior dressed in royal purple and bathed in the blood of his country's foes, and sometimes as a meek, sorrowful outcast, a sort of poor prophet preaching repentance and brother love. Philo says, however, ever, that the most trustworthy and clearest statement made about him occurs in a book called The Psalter of Solomon. It is in the form of a prayer:

`Behold, 0 Lord, and raise up their king, the Son of David, at the time thou hast appointed, to reign over Israel Thy servant; and gird him with strength to crush unjust rulers; to cleanse Jerusalem from the heathen that tread it under foot, to cast out sinners from Thy inheritance; to break the pride of sinners and all their strength as potter's vessels with a rod of iron to destroy the lawless-nations with the words of his mouth; to gather a holy nation and lead them in righteousness. The heathen nations shall serve under his yoke; he shall glorify the Lord before all the earth and cleanse Jerusalem in holiness, as in the beginning. From the ends of the earth all nations shall come to see his glory and bring the weary sons of Zion as gifts; to see the glory of the Lord with which God hath crowned him, for he is over them a righteous King taught by God. In his days there shall be no unrighteousness in their midst; for they are all holy and their king the Anointed of the Lord.'

This Messiah legend has, naturally spread through the East in different fantastic forms, losing its Jewish setting in the process. The version-you quote about the King's painful death, deserted by his friends, who afterwards drink his blood, is not Jewish, but I think Syrian. And, in the Jewish version he is only a king of the Jews and head of a great religious confederation centred at Jerusalem, not the God himself. He could not usurp godhead, because the Jews are the most obstinate monotheists .in the world:

You ask whether, anyone now identifies himself with the Messiah. I have met nobody lately who does so. The last one that I remember was a man called Joshua bar Joseph, a native of Galilee. When I was magistrate of Tiberias (under my uncle Antipas) he had a considerable, following among the uneducated and used to preach to large crowds at the lake-side. He was a man of striking appearance and, though his father was only an artisan, claimed descent from David: I have heard that there was a scandal connected with his birth: one Panthera, a Greek soldier in my grandfather's guard, was supposed to have seduced -his mother, who was a tapestry worker for the Temple. This Joshua had been an infant prodigy (a common phenomenon among Jews) and knew the Scriptures better than most doctors of divinity. lie used to brood about religion and perhaps there was foundation to the story of his Greek parentage, because he found Judaism a very irksome creed (as no true Jew does) and began to criticize it as inadequate for ordinary, human needs. He attempted in a naive manner to do what Philo has since done so elaborately - to reconcile Judaic revelational literature with Greek philosophy. It reminds me of what Horace wrote in his Art of Poetry about a: painter making a lovely woman end in an ugly fishtail:

`Would you not laugh, my friends, to view the sight?'

If there is one thing that I hate more than an Orientalized Greek or Roman, it is a Graeco-Romanized Oriental, or any attempt at a fusion of cultures. This is written against myself, but I mean it. Your mother never succeeded in making a good Roman of me; she merely spoilt a good Oriental.

Well, Joshua ben Joseph (or, ben Panthera), had a taste for Greek philosophy. He was handicapped, however, by not being a Greek scholar. And he had to work hard at his trade - he was a joiner - to make his living. However, he made the acquaintance of a man called James, a fisherman with literary tastes who had attended lectures at the Epicurean University at Gadara which lies at the other side of the lake from Tiberias. Gadara was rather a rundown place by then, though in its prime it had produced four great men: Meleager the poet, Mnasalcus the philosopher, Theodorus the rhetorician, under whom your uncle Tiberius studied, and Philo the mathematician who worked out the proportion of the circumference of a circle to its diameter as far as, the ten-thousandth decimal place. At any rate, Joshua used James's philosophical gleanings from Gadara and his own knowledge of the Jewish scriptures to compose a synthetic- religion of his own. But a religion without authority is nothing, so secretly at first and then publicly be identified himself with the Messiah and spoke (as Moses had once spoken) as if from the mouth of God. He had a most ingenious mind and used to deliver his messages in the form of simple fables with moral endings. He also claimed to perform supernatural cures and miracles. He made himself very troublesome to the Jewish religious authorities, whom he accused of combining strict observance of the Law with rapaciousness and insolence towards the poor. There are many good stories told of him. One of his political opponents tried to catch him out once by asking whether it was right for a conscientious Jew to pay the Roman Imperial tax. If he had answered Yes, he would have lost his hold on the nationalists. If he had answered No, he would have made himself liable for arrest by the civil authorities. So he pretended to be quite innocent about the matter and asked to be shown the amount of money due before he would make any answer. They showed him a silver piece and said: `Look, every householder has to pay this much.' He asked: `Whose head is this on the coin? I can't read Latin.' They said: 'It's the head of Tiberius Caesar, of course.' He said: 'Why, if it's Caesar's coin, pay it to Caesar. But don't fail to pay God what is due to God.' They also tried to catch him out on points of Jewish law, but he always had chapter. and verse ready to justify his teachings. Eventually, however, he compromised himself as a religious heretic, and the end of the story was that our old friend Pontius Pilate, then Governor of Judaea and Samaria, arrested him for creating popular disorders and handed him over for trial by the supreme Jewish religious court at Jerusalem, where he was condemned to death for blasphemy. When I come to think of it he did die the same year as the Goddess Livia, and his followers did desert him, so that much of the prophecy you quote was fulfilled in him. And there are now people who say that he was God and that they saw his soul, ascend to Heaven after his death - just like Augustus's and Drusilla's and claim that he was born at Bethlehem and that he fulfilled all the other Messianic prophecies in one way or another; but I propose to stop this nonsense once and for all. Only three days ago I arrested and executed James, who seems to be the chief intellect of the movement; I hope to recapture and execute another leading fanatic called Simon, arrested at the same time, who somehow escaped; from prison.; The trouble is that though sensible men may laugh to view the sight' of a brightly-painted fish-tailed woman, the mob are just as likely as not to gape at her, see her as a sea-goddess, and worship her.

This apparently ingenuous letter contained one detail which convinced me that Herod really thought himself the Messiah, or at least intended soon to use the tremendous power of that name to further his own ambitions. Once he had revealed himself, the Jews would be his to a man: they would flock back to Palestine at his summons from all over the world, and I foresaw that his prestige would soon be so great that the whole of the Semitic race would embrace the new faith and join with him in removing `the stranger and the infidel' from their midst. The conversion of the King of Adiabene and his entire household was a straw showing which way the wind was blowing, and no small straw either, for this king was known as `The King-maker', and was immensely respected in Parthia. In his next letter Marsus further reported the rumoured conversion to Judaism of the King of Commagene, who had been a favourite of Caligula's. (He was sometimes credited with having first persuaded Caligula to rule with Oriental absoluteness; Caligula certainly always used to appeal to him for approval after having perpetrated some particularly bloody and capricious crime.)

The detail which convinced me that Herod intended to proclaim himself Messiah was that in mentioning Bethlehem he had not mentioned the fact that this was his own birthplace, and not, as was usually supposed, Jerusalem. His mother Berenice once told my mother the story with graphic detail. She had been on her way from her husband's estates in Hebron to Jerusalem for her lying-in, when she had been suddenly overtaken by her pains and had an unforgettably unpleasant experience at a village on the road with an avaricious innkeeper and an unskilled midwife. It was only some hours after Herod had been born that it occurred to Berenice to ask the name of the village, which was a very dirty and dilapidated place; and the midwife answered: 'Bethlehem, the birthplace of the patriarch Benjamin, and the birthplace of King David, and the place of which the prophet spoke: ' But thou, Bethlehem Ephrata, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto Me, that is to be Ruler in Israel." Berenice, infuriated by the treatment she had received, exclaimed in ironical tones : `May God Almighty everlastingly bless Bethlehem!' To which the midwife replied approvingly: `That's what visitors always say!' This story appealed very much to my mother, and for some years after that, when she wished to express her contempt for some very overrated place she used to exclaim in imitation of Berenice's voice: `May, God Almighty everlastingly bless Bethlehem!' That was how I remembered the name,

As for this Joshua, or Jesus as his Greek followers call him, he is now also claimed as a native of Bethlehem - I cannot say on what foundation, because Bethlehem is not in Galilee and his cult has since spread to Rome and seems to flourish here quite strongly in an underground sort of way. The ceremonies include a love-feast which men and women attend in order to eat, symbolically, the flesh of the Anointed One and drink his blood. I am told that this ceremony is often the occasion for disorderly and hysterical scenes, as is only to be expected when most of its initiates are slaves and men and women of the lowest class. Before they are allowed to sit down they must first confess their sins in nauseating detail to the assembled gathering. This provides a deal of entertainment, a sort of competition in self-abasement. The chief priest of the cult (if I may dignify him with the title) is a Galilean fisherman, that Simon of whom Herod wrote, whose chief claim to the position seems to rest on the fact that he deserted this Joshua, or Jesus, on the day of his arrest, and repudiated his beliefs, but has since sincerely repented. For according to the ethics of this sorry sect the greater the original crime, the greater the forgiveness!

Not being a recognized religion (the better sort of Jews repudiate it strongly), the cult falls under the regulations against drinking clubs and sodalities; and is of the dangerous sort that grows the stronger by prohibition. The chief article in the faith is the absolute equality of man with man in the sight of the Jewish God with whom this Joshua is now practically identified - and of this God's granting everlasting bliss to sinners on the single condition of their repentance and acknowledgement of his supremacy over all other Gods. Anyone can be enrolled in the cult, irrespective of class, race, or character, so people join who cannot hope for admittance to the legitimate' mysteries of Isis, Cybele, Apollo, and the rest, either because they have never had the necessary social standing, or because they have lost it by some disgrace or crime. At first an initiate had to submit to circumcision, but even this, ritual preliminary has now been waived because the sect has broken away so completely from orthodox Judaism that a mere sprinkling of water and the naming of the Messiah is the only initiatory ceremony. The cult has occasionally been known to exercise a perverse fascination on quite well-educated persons. Among the converts is an ex-Governor of Cyprus, one Sergius Paullus; whose delight in the society of-street-cleaners, slaves, and old clothes hawkers shows the degrading effect of the cult on civilized manners. He wrote to me resigning his governorship on the ground that he could no longer conscientiously take an oath by the God Augustus, because his allegiance to this new God forbade it. I let him resign, but struck him off the roll. Later, when I questioned him about this new faith; he assured me that it was entirely nonpolitical, that Jesus had been a man of deep wisdom and the most exemplary character, and loyal to Roman rule. He denied that Jesus's teaching was a confused medley of Greek and Jewish religious commonplaces. He said that it derived from and transcended a disciplined body of moderate Jewish opinion called Rabbinical, which contrasted strongly with the superstitious formalism of the party of scribes (on whose support Herod relied) by laying more emphasis on brotherly love, in the name of God, than on the divine vengeance which awaited those who disobeyed the Law; on the spirit rather than on the letter of the Law.

I paid my vow to Venus as soon as I returned to Italy. In answer to a dream in which she appeared to me and said smilingly, 'Claudius, my roof leaks: repair it, please', I rebuilt, on a grand scale too, her famous temple at Mount Eryx in Sicily, which had fallen into disrepair: I provided it with priests of ancient Sicilian family and endowed it with a large yearly income from the Treasury. I also built a handsome shrine to the nymph Egeria in her grove at Aricia, and dedicated in it a golden votive offering - a beautiful female hand snuffing a candle, with the following sentence inscribed on the candle-stick in the Sabine dialect:

To the swift flying herald of victory, Egeria, from lame Claudius, in gratitude. Grant that his candle may burn to the socket, giving a clear light, and that the flame of his enemies' candles may suddenly fail and go out.

Chapter 22

I DULY celebrated my triumph at the New Year. The Senate had been good enough to vote me five further honours. First they had voted me a Civic Crown. This was a golden oak-leaf chaplet, originally only awarded to a soldier who, in battle, went to the rescue of a comrade who had been disarmed and was at the mercy of an opponent, killed the opponent and maintained the ground. The honour was more rarely won than you would suppose; because a necessary witness was the man who had been rescued and whose duty it would be to present the crown to his saviour. It was very difficult to make a Roman soldier confess that he had been at the mercy of an enemy, champion and only owed his life to the superior strength and courage of a comrade; he was more likely to complain that his foot had slipped and that he was just about to leap up again and finish off his opponent when this ambitious fellow had officiously broken in and robbed him of his victory. Later the honour was also granted to regimental or army commanders who by their heroism or good generalship saved the lives of troops under their command. I was given the Crown in this sense, and really I think that I deserved it for not listening to the advice given me by my staff. It was in scribed For Saving the Lives of Fellow Citizens. You will remember that when I was first proclaimed Emperor the Palace Guard had forced me to wear a similar chaplet, the one with which Caligula had been pleased to honour himself for his German victories. I had no right to it then and was much ashamed of wearing it (though really Caligula had had no right to it either), so it was a great pleasure to me now to wear one that was rightfully mine. The second honour was a Naval Crown. This crown, decorated with the beaks of ships, was awarded for gallantry at sea - for example, to a sailor for being the first to board an enemy ship or to an admiral for destroying an enemy fleet. It was voted me because I had risked my life by putting to sea in dangerous weather with the object of reaching Britain as soon as possible. I afterwards hung both these Crowns on the pinnacle over the main entrance to the Palace.

The third honour the Senate gave me was the hereditary title of Britannicus. My little son was now known as Drusus Britannicus, or merely as Britannicus, and I shall henceforward always refer to him by that name. The fourth honour was the erection of two triumphal arches in commemoration of my victory: one at Boulogne, because that had been my base for the expedition, the other at Rome itself, on the Flaminian Way. They were faced with marble, decorated on both sides with trophies and bas-reliefs illustrative of my victory and surmounted with triumphal chariots in bronze. The fifth honour was a decree making 'the day of my triumph an annual festival for all time. Besides' these five honours there were two complimentary ones awarded Messalina, namely, the right to sit in a front seat in the Theatre with the Vestal Virgins, next to the Consuls, magistrates, and foreign ambassadors, and the right to use a covered carriage of state. Messalina had now been voted every one of the honours awarded my grandmother Livia in her lifetime, but I still opposed the granting to her of the title Augusta.

The sun consented to shine brightly for the day of triumph, after several days of unsettled weather, and the ward-masters and other officials had seen too it that Rome was looking as fresh and gay as so venerable and dignified a city could possibly look. The fronts of all the temples and houses had been scoured, the streets were swept as clean as the floor of the Senate House, flowers and bright objects decorated every window, and tables heaped with food were set outside every door. The temples were all thrown open, the shrines and statues were garlanded, incense burnt on every altar. The whole population, too, was dressed in its best clothes.

I had not yet entered the City, having spent the night at the Guards Camp. At dawn I ordered a general parade there of the troops who were to take part in the triumph and distributed the bounty money that I calculated was due to them from the sale of the spoil we had taken at London and Colchester and elsewhere, and from the sale of prisoners. This money amounted to thirty gold pieces for every private soldier and proportionately more for the higher ranks. I had already sent bounty money on the same scale to the soldiers in Britain who could not be spared to return for the triumph. At the same time I awarded decorations; neckchains for distinguished conduct on the field, to the number of 1,000; 400 frontlets (gold medallions in the shape of the forehead amulets of horses) reserved for gallant cavalry-men or for infantry soldiers who had succeeded in killing an enemy cavalry-man or charioteer; forty massive gold bracelets' given in recompense for outstanding valour when awarding these I read out an account of each of the feats which had earned them; six olive garlands conferred on men who had contributed to the victory, though not actually present at it (the commander of the base camp and the admiral commanding the fleet were among those who won this honour); three Rampart Crowns, for being the first man over the stockade into an enemy's camp and one Untipped Spear, Posides's which was granted, like the Civic Crown, for saving life; and which he had earned ten times over..

The Senate, on my recommendation, had voted triumphal ornaments to all men of senatorial rank who had taken part in the campaign - that is to say, to all regimental commanders and senior staff officers. It was a pity that Aulus could not be spared, or. Vespasian, but all the others had come. Hosidius Geta and his brother Lusius Geta, who had commanded the eight Guards Battalions in Britain, were both honoured: I think that this was the first time in Roman history that two brothers have worn triumphal dress on the same day. Lusius Geta became my new Guards Commander, or rather he held the appointment jointly with a man named Crispinus whom Vitellius had appointed temporarily in my absence. For Justus, the former commander, was dead. Messalina had sent an urgent message which reached me on the eve of the battle of Brentwood to tell me that Justus had been sounding various Guards officers as to their willingness to stand by him in an armed revolt. Trusting, Messalina completely and not daring to take any risks, I sent an immediate order for his. execution. It was years before I learned the true facts: that Justus had got wind of what was going on in Messalina's wing at the Palace in my absence and asked one of his colonels what he had better do about it - whether he ought to write to me at once, or wait for my return. The colonel was one of Messalina's confidants, so he advised Justus to wait, for fear that the bad news might distract: me from my military duties; and then went straight to Messalina. Justus's death, the cause of which was soon known throughout the City, was a general warning not to let me into a secret which finally everyone but myself knew - even my enemies in Britain and Parthia, if you can believe it! Messalina had been go ing from bad to worse. But I shall not record her behaviour in detail here because I was, so far, wholly ignorant of it. She had come to Genoa to meet me on my return from France and the warmth of her greeting was one of the things that was now making me feel so happy. In six months, too, little Britannicus and his baby sister had grown out of all recognition and were such beautiful children.

You must realize how much this day meant for, me. There is nothing in this world, I suppose, so glorious as a Roman triumph. It is not like a triumph celebrated by some barbarous monarch over a rival king whom he has subdued: it is an honour conferred by a free people on one of their own number for a great service he has rendered them. I knew-that I had earned it fairly and, that I had finally disproved the ill opinion that my family had always had of me as a useless person, born under the wrath of Heaven, an imbecile, a weakling, a disgrace to my glorious ancestors. Asleep in the Guards Camp that night I had dreamed that my brother Germanicus came up to me and embraced me and said in that grave voice of his: `Dear brother, you have done excellently well, better, I confess, than I ever thought you would do. You have restored the honour of Roman arms.' When I woke in the early morning I decided to abrogate the law that Augustus had made limiting triumphs to the Emperor himself and his sons or grandchildren. If Aulus continued the campaign in Britain and succeeded in the task I had given him of permanently subduing the whole southern part of the island I should persuade the Senate to give him a triumph of his own. In my opinion, it seemed that to be the only man who could legally be awarded a triumph rather detracted from the glory than added to it. Augustus's enactment had been designed to keep his generals from inciting border tribes to warfare in the hope of winning a' triumph over them; but surely, I argued, there were other ways of restraining generals than making the triumph, which had once been open to everyone, a mere family rite of the Caesars?

The decoration ceremony over, I gave three audiences : the first to all governors of provinces, for whose temporary attendance at Rome I had asked the Senate's permission, the next to the ambassadors sent me from allied kings, and the last to the exiles. For I had won the Senate's permission for the return from their places of banishment of all exiles, but only for the duration of the triumphal festivities. This last audience was rather a sad one for me, because many of them looked very feeble and ill and they all begged piteously to have their sentences revised. I told them not to despair, for I would personally review every case, and if I decided that it was to the public interest for the sentence to be cancelled or mitigated I would intercede with the Senate on their behalf. This I afterwards did, and many of those whose recall I could not recommend were at least allowed a change of their place of banishment in every case a change for the better. I offered Seneca a change, but he refused it, replying that while he lay under Caesar's displeasure he could not desire any amelioration of his lot; the perennial frost that (according to the fables of travellers) bound the land of the brutish Finns, the perpetual heat that scorched the sands of the deserts beyond. Atlas (where Caesar's victorious armies had penetrated in defiance of Nature and in expansion of the map of the known world), the fever-ridden marshy estuaries of Britain now subjugated, no less. than the fertile. plains and valleys of that distant and famous island, by Caesar's; out. standing military genius, nay, even the pestiferous climate of Corsica, where the unfortunate Seneca, author of this memorial, had now languished for two years - or was it two centuries? this frost, this fire; this, damp, this Corsican three-in-one medley, of damp, fire, and frost, would pass as evils scarcely noticed by the exile, Stoic-minded, whose one thought was to bear in patience: the crushing weight of the disgrace under which he laboured, and make himself worthy of Caesar's pardon, should this supreme gift ever, beyond expectation,: be bestowed upon him. I was quite ready to send him to his native Spain, as his friend my secretary Polybius pleaded for him, but if he himself insisted on Corsica, why, Corsica it must be. Narcissus learned from the. harbour officials at Ostia that among the mementoes of his visit to Rome this. brave Stoic took back in his luggage gem-studded golden drinking cups, down pillows, Indian, spices, costly unguents, tables and couches of the fragrant sandarach-wood from Africa, inlaid with ivory, pictures of a sort that would have delighted Tiberius, quantities of vintage Falernian, and (though this falls into a somewhat different category from, the rest) a complete set of my published works.

At ten o'clock it was time to be on our way. The procession entered the City from the north-east by the Triumphal Gate and passed along the Sacred Way. Its order was as follows. First came the Senate, on foot, in its best robes, headed by the magistrates. Next, a picked body of trumpeters trained to blow triumphant marching tunes like one man. The trumpets were to call attention to the spoils, which then followed on a train of decorated wagons drawn by mules and escorted by the Germans of the Household Battalion dressed, in the, Imperial livery. These spoils were, heaps of gold and silver coin, weapons, armour, horse-furniture, jewels and gold ornaments, ingots of tin and lead, rich drinking-vessels, decorated bronze buckets, and other furniture from Cymbeline's palace at Colchester, numerous examples of exquisite North British enamel work, carved; and painted wooden totem-poles, necklaces of jet and amber and pearl, feather head-dresses, embroidered Druidical robes, carved coracle paddles, and, countless other beautiful, valuable, or strange objects. Behind these wagons came twelve captured British chariots, the finest we could choose, drawn by well-matched ponies. To each of these was fixed a placard, on poles above the head of the driver, giving the name of one of the twelve conquered British tribes. Next came more wagons, drawn by horses, containing models in painted wood or clay of the towns and forts we had captured, and groups of living statuary representing the yielding of various river gods to our troops, each group being backed by a huge canvas-picture of the engagement. Last of this series was a model of the famous stone temple of the Sun God of which I have already spoken.

After these came a body of flute-players' playing soft music. They introduced the white bulls that came along behind, under charge of the priests of Jove, roaring angrily and causing a lot of trouble. Their horns were gilded and they wore red fillets and garlands to show that they were destined for sacrifice. The priests carried pole-axes and knives. The acolytes of Jove followed, with golden dishes and other holy instruments. Next came an interesting exhibit - a live walrus. This bull-like seal with great ivory tusks was captured asleep on a beach by the guard of our base camp. The walrus was followed by British wild cattle and deer, the skeleton of a stranded whale, and a transparent-sided tank full of beavers. After this, the arms and insignia of the captured chiefs, and then the chiefs themselves, with all members of their families that had fallen into our hands, followed by all the inferior captives marching in fetters. I was sorry not to have Caractacus in the procession, but Cattigern was there and his wife, and the wife and children of Togodumnus, and an infant son of Caractacus, and thirty chiefs of importance.

After these came a company of public slaves, marching two and two, carrying on cushions the complimentary golden crowns which had been sent me by allied kings and states in token of grateful respect. Next came twenty-four yeomen, dressed in purple, each with an axe tied in a bundle of rods, the axes crowned with laurel. Then came a four-horse chariot which had been built at the order of the Senate, of silver and ebony: except for its traditionally peculiar shape and for the embossed scenes on its sides, which represented two battles and a storm at sea, it was not unlike the chariot which I had broken up in the Goldsmiths' Street as being too luxurious. It was drawn by four white horses and in it rode the author of this history - not `Clau-Clau-Claudius', or `Claudius the Idiot', or `That Claudius', or 'Claudius the Stammerer-'..:or even `Poor Uncle Claudius', but, the victorious and triutruphant Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Caesar Augustus Germanicus Britannicus, Emperor, Father of the Country, High Pontiff, Protector of the People for the fourth year in succession, three times Consul, who had been awarded the Civic and Naval Crowns, triumphal ornaments on three previous occasions and other lesser honours, civil and military, too numerous to mention. This exalted and happy personage was attired in a gold-embroidered robe and flowered tunic and bore in his right hand, which was trembling a little, a laurel bough, and in his left an ivory sceptre sure mounted with a golden bird. A garland of Delphic laurel shaded his brows and, in revival of an ancient custom, his face, arms, neck, and legs (as much of his body as showed) were painted bright red. In the Victor's chariot rode his little son Britannicus, shouting and clapping his hands, his friend Vitellius, wearing the Olive Crown, who had ruled the State in the Victor's absence, his infant daughter Octavia, held in the arms of young Silanus, who, had been chosen as her future husband and who in company with young Pompey, married to the Victor's daughter Antonia, had brought the Senate the laurel-wreathed dispatch. Silanus had been voted triumphal dress and so had young Pompey, who also rode in this chariot and held Britannicus on his knee. Beside the chariot rode young Pompey's father, Crassus Frugi, who had now worn triumphal dress twice, the first time having been after Galba's defeat of the Chattians. And we must not forget the public slave who stood in the chariot holding over the Victor's head a golden Etruscan crown ornamented with jewels, the gift of the Roman people. It was his duty to whisper in the Victor's ear every now and then the ancient formula, `Look behind thee remember thyself mortal!' - a warning that the Gods would be jealous of the Victor if he bore himself too divinely, and would not fail to humble him. And to avert the evil eye of spectators a phallic charm, a little bell, and a scourge were fastened to the dash-board of the chariot.

Next came Messalina, the Victor's wife, in her carriage of state. Next, walking on foot, the commanders who had been awarded triumphal dress. Then the winners of the Olive Crown. Then the colonels, captains, sergeants, and other ranks who had been decorated for valour. Then the elephants. Then the camels, yoked two and two and drawing carriages on which were mounted the six thunder-and-lightning machines of Caligula's invention, which had been put to such apt use by Posides. Then came the Heron King on his stilts, a golden bracelet twisted about his neck. I am told that, after myself, the Heron King earned more cheers than anyone. After him walked Posides with his Untipped Spear, and the Spanish oculist, wearing a gown, for he had been rewarded with the Roman citizenship. Then came the Roman cavalry, and then the infantry in marching order, their weapons adorned with laurel; The younger soldiers were shouting `'Io Triumphe!' and singing hymns of victory, but the veterans exercised the right of free speech which was theirs for the day, indulging in sarcastic ribaldry at the Victor's expense. The veterans of the Twentieth had composed a fine song for the occasion:

Claudius was a famous scholar,

Claudius shed less blood than ink,

When he came to fight the Britons

From the fray he did not shrink,

But the weapons of his choice were

Rope and stilts and camel stink.

O, O, Oh!

Rope and stilts and stink of camel Made the British army shake.

Off they ran with yells of horror

And their cries the dead would wake -

Cries as loud as Claudius utters

When he's got the stomach-ache.

O, O, Oh !

I am told that at the tail of this column there were bawdy songs sung about Messalina, but I did not hear them where I was indeed, if they had been sung by the yeomen walking just ahead of me I should not have heard them, the crowd was raising such a tremendous din. After the infantry came detachments of auxiliaries, headed by the Balearics and Nubians.

That ended the procession proper, but it was followed by a laughing and cheering rabble giving a mock triumph to Baba, the clown of Alexandria, who had come to Rome to improve his fortunes. He rode in a public dung-cart, to which had been yoked in a row a goat, a sheep, a pig, and a fox. He was painted blue, with British woad, and dressed in a fantastic parody of triumphal dress. His cloak was a patchwork quilt and his tunic an old sack trimmed with dirty coloured ribbons. His sceptre was a cabbage-stick with a dead bat tied to the end of it with string, and his laurel branch was a thistle. Our most famous native-born clown, Augurinus, had recently consented to share the government of the Society of Vagabonds with Baba. Baba was held to resemble me closely, and therefore always played the part of Caesar in the theatricals that the; two of them were constantly giving in the back streets of the City. Augurinus played the part of Vitellius; or a Consul of the year, or a Colonel of the Guards, or one of my ministers, according to circumstances. He had a very lively gift for parody. On this particular occasion he represented the slave who held the crown over Baba (an inverted chamber-pot into which, every now and then, Baba's head disappeared) and kept tickling him with a cock's feather. Baba's sack-tunic was torn behind and disclosed Baba's rump, painted blue with bold red markings to make it look like a grinning human face. Baba's hands trembled madly the whole time and he jerked his head about in caricature of my nervous tic, rolling his eyes, and whenever Augurinus molested him struck back with the thistle or the dead bat. In another dung-cart behind, under a tattered hood, reclined an enormous naked negress with a brass ring in her nose, nursing a little pink pig. The spoils of this rival triumph were displayed on handcarts wheeled by ragged hawkers kitchen refuse, broken bedsteads, filthy mattresses, rusty iron, cracked cooking-pots, and all sorts of mouldy lumber -- and the prisoners were dwarfs, fat men, thin men, albinos, cripples, blind men, hydrocephalitics, and men suffering from dreadful diseases or chosen for their surprising ugliness. The rest of the procession was in keeping: I am told that the models and pictures, illustrating Baba's victories were the funniest things, in a dirty way, ever seen at Rome.

When we came to the Capitoline Hill, I dismounted and went through a performance which custom demanded but which I found a great physical strain: I ascended the steps of the Temple of Jove humbly kneeling on my knees. Young Pompey and Silanus supported me on either side. At this point it was the custom to lead aside the captured enemy chiefs and execute them in the prison adjoining the temple. This custom was the survival of an ancient rite of human sacrifice, in thanksgiving for victory. I dispensed with it on grounds of public policy: I decided to keep these, chiefs alive at Rome in order to give others in Britain who were still holding out against us a demonstration of clemency. The Britons themselves sacrificed war prisoners, but it would be absurd to commemorate our intention of civilizing their island with an act of primitive barbarism. I would grant these chiefs and their families small pensions from the public funds and encourage them to become Romanized, so that later when regiments of British auxiliaries were formed there would be officers to command them capable of acting in friendly co-operation with our own forces.

Though 1 failed to sacrifice the chiefs to Jove I did not at any rate fail to sacrifice the white bulls, or to give the God an offering from the spoils (the pick of the golden ornaments from Cymbeline's palace), or to place in the lap of his sacred image the laurel-crown from my brow. Then I and my companions in triumph, and Messalina, were entertained by the college of the Priest of Jove to a public banquet while the troops dispersed and were entertained by the City. A house whose table was not honoured by the presence of at least one triumphant hero was an unlucky house indeed. I had heard unofficially, the night before, that the Twentieth were planning another drunken orgy like the one in which they had taken part during Caligula's triumph: they intended to launch an assault on the Goldsmiths Street and if they found the doors of the shops barred they would use fire or battering-rams. I thought at first of defending the street with a corps of Watchmen, but that would only have meant bloodshed, so I had the better idea of filling the flasks of all the troops with a free wine ration withwhich. to

drink my health. The flasks were filled just before the procession started and my orders were not to drink until the trumpets gave them the signal that the sacrifice had been duly made. It was all good wine, but what I gave the Twentieth was heavily doctored with poppy-seed. So they drank my health and that put them so soundly to sleep that by the time they woke up the triumph was over: one man, I regret to say, never woke up. But at least there was no serious disturbance of the peace that day.

In the evening I was guided home to the Palace by a long torchlight procession and the corps of flute-players, and followed by enormous crowds of cheering and singing citizens. I was tired out and after washing off my red paint went straight to bed, but the festivities continued all night and would not let me sleep. At midnight I rose and with only Narcissus and Pallas as my companions went out into the streets. I was disguised as an ordinary citizen in a plain white gown. I wanted to hear what people; really thought of me. We mixed with the crowd. The steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux were dotted with groups of people resting and talking, and here we found seats. Everyone addressed everyone else without ceremony. I was glad that free speech had returned: to Rome at last, after its long suppression by Tiberius and Caligula even; though some of the things I heard did not altogether please: me. The general opinion seemed to be that it had been a very. fine triumph but that it would have been still finer if I bad distributed money to the citizens as well as to the soldiers, and increased the corn ration. (Corn had been scarce that winter again through no fault of mine.) I was anxious to hear what a battle-scarred captain of the Fourteenth sitting near us had to say: he was with a brother., whom he had apparently not seen for sixteen years: At first he would not talk about the battle, though his brother pressed him to do so, and would only discuss Britain as a military station: he thought that with luck he could count on very pretty pickings. Soon he would be able to retire, he hoped, with the rank of knight: he had made quite a packet of money in the last ten years by selling exemptions from duty to the men of his company, and ‘on the Rhine one doesn't get a chance of spending much money - it's not like at Rome'. But in the end he said: `Frankly speaking, we officers of the Fourteenth didn't think much of the Brentwood fighting. The Emperor made it too easy for us. Wonderfully clever man, the Emperor. One of these strategists. Gets it all out of books. That trip-rope, now, that was a typical stratagem. And that great bird, flapping its wings and making weird, sounds. And getting the camels forward on the flank to scare the enemy's ponies with their stink. A first-class strategist. But strategy isn't what I call soldiering. Old Aulus Plautius was going straight at that central stockade, and be damned to the consequences. Old Aulus is a soldier. He'd have given us a better bloody battle if it had been left to him. We officers of the Fourteenth like a good bloody battle better than a clever bit of strategy. It's what we live for, a bloody battle is, and if we lose heavily, why, that's a soldier's luck and it means promotion for the survivors. No promotion at all in the Fourteenth this time. A couple of corporals killed, that's all. No, he made it too easy. I had a better time than most, of course: I got in among the chariots with my leading platoon and killed a good few British, and I won this chain here, so I can't complain. But speaking for the Regiment as a whole, that battle wasn't up to the standard of the two others we fought before the Emperor came: the Medway fight was a good one, now, nobody, will deny that.'

An old woman piped up: `Well, Captain, you're very gallant,and we're all very grateful and proud of you, I'm sure, but for my part I've got two boys serving in the Second, and though I'm disappointed that they didn't get home-leave for to-day, I'm thankful they're alive. Perhaps if your General Aulus, had had his way, they'd be lying there on Brentwood Hill for the crows to pick at.'

An old Frenchman agreed: `For my part, Captain, I shouldn't care how a battle was won, so long as it was well won. I heard two other officers like yourself discussing the battle to-night. And one of them said: "Yes, a clever bit of strategy, but too clever: smells of the lamp." What I say is, did the Emperor win a splendid victory or did he not? He did. Then long live the Emperor."

But the Captain said: `Smells of the lamp, they said, did they? That was very well put. A strategical victory, but it smelled of the lamp. The Emperor's altogether too clever to rank as a good soldier. For my part, I thank the Gods that I never read a book in my life.'

I said shyly to Narcissus as we went home: `You didn't agree with that captain, did you, Narcissus?'

`No, Caesar,' said Narcissus, `did you? But I thought he spoke like a brave and honest man and as he's only a captain, perhaps you ought to be rather pleased than otherwise. You don't want captains in the army who know too much or think too much. And he certainly gave you full credit for the victory, didn't he?'

But I grumbled: `Either I'm an utter imbecile or I'm altogether too clever.'

The triumph lasted for three days. On the second day we had spectacles in the Circus and in the amphitheatre simultaneously. At the first we had chariot-races, ten in all, and athletic contests, and fights between British captives and bears; and boys from Asia Minor performed the national sword-dance. At the other a pageant of the storming and sacking of Colchester and the yielding of the enemy chiefs was re-enacted, arid we had a battle between 300 Catuvellaunians and 300 Trinovants, chariots as well as infantry. The Catuvellaunians won. On the morning of the third day we had more horse-racing and a battle between Catuvellaunian broad-swordsmen and a company of Numidian spearmen, captured by Geta the year before. The Catuvellaunians won easily. The last performance took place in the Theatre - plays, interludes, and acrobatic dancing. Mnester was splendid that day; and the audience made him perform his dance of triumph in Orestes and Pylades he was Pylades three times over. He refused to take a fourth call. He put his head around the curtain and called archly `I can't come, my Lords. Orestes and I are in bed together.'

Messalina said to me afterwards: `I want you to, talk to Mnester very sternly, my dearest husband. He's much too independent for a man; of his profession and origin, though he is a marvellous actor. During your absence he was most rude tome on two or three occasions. When I asked him to make his company rehearse a favourite ballet of mine for a festival you know that I have been supervising all the Games and Shows because Vitellius found it too much for him, and then I found that Harpocras, the secretary, had been behaving dishonestly, and we had to have him executed, and Pheronactus whom I chose in his place has been rather slow in, learning his business - well, anyhow, it was all very difficult for me, and Mnester instead of making things easier was most dreadfully obstinate. Oh, no, he said, he couldn't put on Ulysses and Circe because he hadn't anyone capable of playing Circe to his Ulysses, and when I suggested The Minotaur he said that Theseus was a part he greatly disliked playing- but that on the other hand it would be below his dignity to dance in the less important part of King Minos. That's the sort of obstruction he made all the time. He simply refused to grasp that I was your representative and that he simply must do what I told him: but I didn't punish him because I thought you might not wish it. I waited until now

I called Mnester. `Listen, little Greek,' I said. `This is my wife, the Lady Valeria Messalina. The Senate of Rome thinks as highly of her as I do: they have paid her exalted honours. In my absence she has been taking over some of my duties for me and performing them to my entire satisfaction. She now complains that you have been both un-co-operative and insolent. Understand this: if the Lady Messalina tells you to do anything, however much obedience in the matter may happen to hurt your professional vanity, you must obey her. Anything, mark you, little Greek, and no arguments either. Anything and everything.'

`I obey, Caesar,' Mnester answered, sinking to the floor with exaggerated docility, `and I beg forgiveness for my stupidity. I did not understand that I was to obey the Lady Messalina in everything, only in certain things.'

`Well, you understand now.'

So that was the end of my triumph. The troops returned to duty in Britain, and I returned to civil dress and duty at Rome. It is probable that it will never happen to anyone again in this world, as it is certain that it had- never happened to anyone before, to fight his first battle at the age of, fifty-three, never having performed military service of any sort in his youth, win a crushing victory, and never take the field again for the rest of his life.

Chapter 23

I CONTINUED my reforms at Rome, especially doing all I could to create a sense of public responsibility in my subordinates. I appointed the Treasury officials whom I had been training and made their appointments run for three years. I dismissed from the Senatorial Order the Governor of Southern Spain because he could not clear himself of the charges brought against him by the troops serving in Morocco that he had cheated them of half their corn-rations. Other charges of fraud were brought against him too, and he had to pay 100,000 gold-pieces. He went round to his friends trying to gain their sympathy by telling them that the charges were framed by Posides and Pallas whom he had offended by remembering their slavish birth. But he got little sympathy. One early morning this governor brought all his house-furniture, which made about 300 wagon-loads of exceptionally valuable pieces, to the public auction-place. This cause a lot of excitement because he had an unrivalled collection of Corinthian vessels. All the dealers and connoisseurs came crowding up, licking their lips and searching round for' bargains. `Poor Umbonius is finished,' they said. 'Now's our chance to pick up cheap the stuff which he refused to part with when we made him really-handsome offers for it.' But they were disappointed. When the spear was stuck upright in the ground, to show that a public auction was in progress, all that Umbonius sold was his senator's gown. Then he had the spear pulled out again to show that the auction was over, and that night at midnight, when wagons were allowed in the streets again, he took all his stuff -back home. He was merely showing everyone that he had plenty of money still and could live very comfortably as a private citizen. However, I was not going to let the insult pass. I put a heavy tax on Corinthian vessels that year, which he could not evade- because he had publicly displayed his collection and even listed them on the auction board.

This Was the time that I began going closely into the question of new religions and cults. Some new foreign god came to Rome every year to serve the needs of immigrants and in general I had no objection to this.. For example; a colony of 400 Arabian merchants and their families from Yemen, which had settled at Ostia, built a temple there to their tribal gods: it was orderly worship, involving no human sacrifices or other scandals. But what I objected to was disorderly competition between religious cults, their priests and missioners going from house to house in search of converts and modelling their persuasive vocabulary on that of the auctioneer or the brothel-pimp or the vagabond Greek astrologer. The discovery that religion, is a marketable commodity like oil, figs, or slaves was first made at Rome in late Republican times and steps had been taken to check such marketing, but without great success. There had been a notable breakdown in religious belief after our conquest of Greece, when Greek philosophy spread to Rome: The philosophers, while not denying the divine, made such a remote abstraction of it that a practical people like the Romans began to argue: `Very well, the Gods are infinitely powerful and wise but also infinitely remote. They deserve, our respect and we will honour them most devotedly with temples and sacrifices, but it is clear that we were mistaken in thinking that they were immediate presences and that they would bother to strike individual sinners dead or punish the whole city for one man's crime, or appear in mortal disguise. We have been mistaking poetical fiction for prose reality. We must revise our views.'

This decision made an uncomfortable void, for the ordinary common citizen, between himself and those remote ideals. of (for example) Power, Intelligence, Beauty, and Chastity into which the philosophers had converted Jove, Mercury, Venus, and Diana. Some intermediary beings were needed. Into the void came crowding new divine or semi-divine characters. These were mostly foreign gods with very definite personalities, who could not easily be philosophized about. They could be summoned by incantation and take on visible human shape. They could appear in the middle of a circle of devotees and talk familiarly to each member of the cult. Occasionally they even had sexual intercourse with women worshippers. There was one famous scandal in the reign of my uncle Tiberius. A rich knight was in, love with a respectable married noblewoman. He tried to bribe her to, sleep with him: and offered her as much as 2,500 gold pieces for a single tryst. She refused, indignantly, and thereafter would not even acknowledge his greetings when they met in the street. He knew that she was a devotee of Isis, who had a temple at Rome, and bribed the priests of the Goddess, for 500 gold pieces, to tell her that the God Anubis was in love with her and wished her to visit him. She was greatly flattered by the message and went to the Temple on the night ordained by Anubis, and there in the holiest part, on the very couch of the God, the knight, disguised as the God, enjoyed her until morning. The silly woman could not contain herself for felicity. She told her husband and friends of the signal honour that she had been shown. Most of them believed her. Three days later she met the knight in the street and as usual tried to pass by without answering his greeting. He barred her way and taking her familiarly by the arm said: `My dear, you have saved me two thousand gold pieces. A thrifty woman like you ought to be ashamed to throw good money away. Personally, I care nothing for names. You happen to dislike mine and adore Anubis's, and so the other night I had to be Anubis. But the pleasure was just as great as if I had used my own name. Now, good-bye. I've had what I wanted and I'm satisfied.' Never was a woman so thunderstruck and horrified. She ran home to her husband and told him how she had been deceived and abused, and swore that if she was not immediately avenged she would kill herself for shame. The husband, a senator, went to Tiberius; and Tiberius, who thought highly of him, had the Temple of Isis destroyed, her priests, crucified, and her image thrown into the Tiber. But the knight himself boldly told Tiberius: `You know the power of love. Nothing can withstand it. And what I have done should be a warning to all respectable women not to embrace fancy religions but to stick to the good old Roman Gods.' So he was only banished for a few years. Then the husband, having had his married happiness ruined by this affair, began a campaign against all religious charlatans. He brought charges, against four Jewish missionaries, who had converted a noblewoman of the Fulvian family to their faith, that they had persuaded her to send votive offerings of gold and purple cloth to the Temple at Jerusalem, but had sold these gifts for their own profit. Tiberius found the men guilty and crucified them. As a warning against similar practices he banished all the Jews in Rome to Sardinia: there were 4,000 of them and half that number died; of fever within a few months after arriving there. Caligula allowed the Jews to come back again. Tiberius, you will recall, also expelled all the fortune-tellers' . pretended astrologers from Italy. He was a curious compound of atheism and superstition, credulity and scepticism. He once said at a dinner that he regarded the worship of the Gods as useless it view of the stars: he believed in predestination. His expulsion of the astrologers was due perhaps to his wishing to enjoy the monopoly, of prediction: for Thrasyllus remained with him always. What he did not realize was that though the stars may tell no lies, astrologers, even the best of them, cannot be counted upon either to read their messages with perfect correctness or to report with perfect frankness what they have read. I am neither a sceptic nor particularly superstitious. I love ancient forms and ceremonies and have an inherited belief in the old Roman Gods which I refuse to subject to any philosophical analysis. I think that every nation ought to worship its own gods in its own way (so long as it is a civilized way) and not idly adopt exotic deities. As high priest of Augustus I have had to accept him as a god and after all the demi-god Romulus was only a poor Roman shepherd to begin with, and probably far less gifted and industrious than Augustus. If I had been a contemporary of Romulus I would probably have laughed at the notion of his ever being paid semi-divine rites. But godhead is, after all, a matter of fact, not a matter of opinion: if a man is generally worshipped as a god then he is a god. And if -a god ceases to be worshipped he is nothing. While Caligula was worshipped and believed in as a god he was indeed a supernatural being. Cassius Chaerea found it almost impossible to kill him, because there was a certain divine awe about him, the result of the worship offered him from simple hearts, and the conspirators felt it themselves and hung back. Perhaps he would never have succeeded if Caligula had not cursed himself with a divine premonition of assassination.

Augustus is worshipped now with genuine devotion by millions. I myself pray to him with almost as much confidence as I pray to Mars or Venus. But I make a clear distinction between the historical Augustus, of whose weaknesses and misfortunes I am well informed, and the God Augustus, the object of public-worship, who has attained power as a deity. What I mean to say is that I cannot deprecate too strongly the wilful assumption by a mortal of divine power; but if he can indeed persuade men to worship him and they worship him genuinely, and there are no portents or other signs of heavenly displeasure at his deification - well, then he is a god, and he must be accepted as such. But the worship of Augustus as a major deity at Rome would never have been possible, if it had not been for this gulf which the philosophers had opened between the ordinary man and the traditional gods. For the ordinary Roman citizen, Augustus filled the gap well. He was remembered as a noble, and gracious ruler who had given perhaps stronger proofs of his loving care for the City and Empire than the Olympian Gods themselves.

The Augustan cult, however, rather provided a, political convenience than satisfied the emotional needs of religiously-minded persons, who preferred to, go to Isis or Serapis or Imouthes for an assurance, in the mysteries of these gods, that `God' was more than either a remote ideal of perfection, or the commemorated glory of a deceased hero. To offer an, alternative to these Egyptian cults - they did not in my opinion play a wholesome part in our Graeco-Roman civilization I prevailed on our standing commission on foreign religions at Rome, the Board of Fifteen, to allow me to popularize mysteries of a more suitable nature. For example, the cult of Cybele, the Goddess worshipped by our Trojan ancestors , and therefore well suited to serve our own religious needs, had been introduced into Rome some 250 years before, in obedience to an oracle; but her mysteries were carried on in private by eunuch priests from, Phrygia, for no Roman citizen was allowed to castrate himself in the Goddess's honour. I changed all this: the High Priest of Cybele was now to be a Roman knight, though no eunuch, and citizens of good standing might join in her worship. I also attempted to introduce the Eleusinian mysteries to Rome from Greece: the conduct of this famous Attic festival in, honour of the Goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone I need hardly describe, for while Greek survives as a language everyone will know about it. But the nature of the mysteries themselves, of which the festival, is only the outer pomp, is by no means a matter of common knowledge and I should much like to tell about them; but because of an oath that I once swore I unfortunately cannot do so. I shall content myself by saying that they are concerned with a revelation of life in the world to come, where happiness will be earned by a virtuous life lived as a mortal. In introducing them, at Rome, where I would limit participation in them to senators, knights, and substantial citizens, I hoped to supplement the formal worship of the ordinary gods with an obligation to virtue felt from within, not enforced by laws or edicts. Unfortunately my attempt failed. Unfavourable oracles were uttered at all the principal Greek shrines, including Apollo's at Delphi, warning me of the terrible consequences of my `transplanting Eleusis to Rome'. Would it be impious to suggest that the Greek Gods were combining to protect the pilgrim-trade, which was now a chief source of their country's income?

I published an edict forbidding the attendance of Roman citizens at Jewish synagogues and expelled from the City a number of the most energetic Jewish missioners. I wrote to tell Herod of my action. He replied that I had done very wisely, and that he would apply the same principle or, rather, its converse, in his. own dominions: he would forbid Greek teachers of philosophy to hold classes in Jewish cities and debar all Jews who attended them elsewhere from worship in the Temple. Neither Herod nor I had made any comment in our letters to each other, on events in Armenia or Parthia; but this is what had happened. I had sent King Mithridates to Antioch, where Marsus greeted him with honour and sent him to Armenia with two regular battalions, a siege-train, and six battalions of Syrian Greek auxiliaries. He arrived there in March. The Parthian Governor marched out against him and was defeated. This did not mean that Mithridates was immediately left in undisputed possession of his kingdom. Cotys, King of Lesser Armenia, sent armed help to the Parthian Governor and, though his expedition was defeated in its turn, the Parthian garrisons of a number of fortresses refused to surrender and the Roman siege-train had to reduce them one by one. However, Mithridates's brother, the King of Georgia, made his promised invasion from the north and by July the two had joined forces on the River Aras and captured Mufarghin, Ardesh, and Erzerum, the three chief towns of Armenia.

In Parthia Bardanes had soon raised an important army, to which the Kings of Osroene and Adiabene contributed contingents, and marched against his brother Gotarzes, whose court was then at the city of Ecbatana in the country of the Medes. In a sudden surprise raid at the head, of a corps of dromedaries - he covered nearly 300 miles in two days - Bardanes drove the panic-stricken Gotarzes from the throne and presently received the horn age of all the subject kingdoms and cities of the Parthian Empire. The only exception was the city of Seleucia, on the River Tigris, which, revolting some seven years before, had obstinately maintained its independence ever since. It was extremely fortunate for us that Seleucia refused to acknowledge, Bardanes's suzerainty, because Bardanes made it a matter of pride to besiege and capture it before turning his attention to more important matters, and Seleucia with its huge walls was no easy place to capture. Though Bardanes held Ctesiphon, the city on the opposite bank of the Tigris, he did not command the river itself, and the strong Seleucian fleet could introduce, supplies into the city, bought from friendly Arabian tribes on the western shore of the Persian gulf. So he wasted precious time on the Tigris, and Gotarzes, who had escaped to Bokhara, raised a new army there. The siege of Seleucia, continued from December until April, when Bardanes, hearing of Gotarzes's new enterprises, raised it and marched northeast for 1,000 miles, through Parthia proper, to the province of Bactria where he eventually encountered Gotarzes. Bardanes's forces were somewhat larger and better equipped than his brother's, but the issue of the impending battle was doubtful, and Bardanes saw that even if he were the victor it was likely to be a Pyrrhic victory he would lose more men than he could afford. So when Gotarzes offered at the last moment to bargain with him, he consented. As a result of their conference Gotarzes. made a formal cession of his rights to the throne and in return Bardanes granted him his life, estates on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, and a yearly pension worthy of his rank. Meanwhile pressure was put on Seleucia by the King of Adiabene and other neighbouring rulers to surrender on terms; and by the middle of July Marsus at Antioch knew that Bardanes was now the undisputed sovereign of Parthia and was on his way west with an enormous army. He reported this to me at once, and another uncomfortable piece of news too, namely, that on the pretence of having been insulted and threatened by the Greek regiments stationed at. Caesarea, Herod had disarmed them and put them to work on 'road-building and the repairing of the city defences. And this was not all - there had been secret drilling in the desert of large bodies of Jewish volunteers, under the command of members of Herod's bodyguard. Marsus wrote: `In three months the fate of the Roman Empire in the East will be decided one way or the, other.'

I did all that I could do in the circumstances. I dispatched an immediate order to Eastern governors mobilizing all available forces. I also sent one division of the fleet to Egypt, to smother the Jewish rising that I expected in Alexandria, and another to Marsus at Antioch. I mobilized forces in Italy and the Tyrol. But nobody but Marsus and myself and my foreign minister Felix, in, whom I was forced to confide because he wrote my letters for me, knew what tremendous storm-clouds were blowing up from the East. And we were the only three who ever knew, because, by an extraordinary fate, the storm never burst at all.

I have no dramatic gift, like my brother Germanicus: I am merely an historian and no doubt most people would call me, in general, dull and prosy, but I have come to a point in my story where the record of bare facts unimproved by oratorical beauties should stir the wonder of my readers as greatly as they stirred me at the time. Let me first tell in what an exalted mood King Herod Agrippa came up from Jerusalem to Caesarea to the festival that had been prepared, there in honour of my birthday. He was nursing a secret pride so great that it almost choked him. The foundations of the great edifice that he had so long dreamed of raising, the Empire of the East, were grandly and firmly laid at last. He now had only to speak the word and the walls would (these are the words he used to his Queen Cypros) ‘shoot up white and splendid into the dark blue sky, the crystal roof would close over it, and lovely gardens and cool colonnades and lily-ponds would surround it, spreading out as far as the enraptured eye could reach. Inside all would be beryl and opal and sapphire and sardonyx and pure-gold and in the mighty Hall of Judgement would blaze a diamond throne, the throne of the Messiah, whom men had hitherto known as Herod Agrippa.’

He had already revealed himself, in secret, to the High Priest and the Sanhedrin, and they had all with one accord bowed themselves to the ground and glorified God and acknowledged him as the prophesied Messiah. He could now publicly reveal himself to the Jewish nation, and to the whole world. His word would go out: `The Day of Deliverance is at hand, saith the Anointed of the Lord. Let us break the yoke of the Ungodly.' The Jews would rise as one man and cleanse the borders of Israel of the stranger and the infidel. There were now 200,000 Jews trained in the use of weapons in Herod's dominions alone, and thousands more in Egypt, Syria, and the East; and the Jew fighting in the name of his God, as the history of the Maccabees had shown, is heroic to the point of madness. Never was there a better disciplined race. Nor were arms and armour wanting: Herod had added to the 70,000 suits of armour that he had found in Antipas's treasury 200,000 more, besides those, that he had taken from the Greeks. The fortifications of Jerusalem were not complete, but in less than six months the city would be impregnable. Even after my order to cease work Herod had secretly continued hollowing out great store-chambers under the Temple and driving long tunnels under the walls to points more than a mile outside, so that if ever it came to a siege the garrison could make surprise sorties and attack an investing army from the rear.

He had concluded a secret alliance against Rome with all the neighbouring kingdoms and cities for hundreds of miles around. Only Phoenician Tyre and Sidon had rejected his advances, and that had troubled him because the Phoenicians were a seafaring people and their fleet was needed to protect his coasts; but now they too had joined him. A joint deputation from both cities had approached his chamberlain Blastus and, humbly told him that, faced with the necessity of having either Rome or the Jewish nation as their enemies, they had chosen the lesser evil and were now here to sue for his royal master's friendship and forgiveness. Blastus had informed them of Herod's terms, which eventually they accepted. To-day their formal submission would be made. Herod's terms were that they should forswear Ashtaroth and their other deities, accept circumcision and swear perpetual obedience to the God of Israel, and to Herod the Anointed, his representative here on earth.

With that symbolic act would Herod initiate his reign of glory! He would mount on his throne, the rams' horns would blow, and he would command his soldiers to bring before him that statue of the, God Augustus which had been set up in the market-place of the town, and my own statue which stood next to it (wearing a fresh garland to-day in honour of my birthday), and he would call out to the multitude: `Thus saith the Anointed of the Lord, hew Me in pieces all graven images that are found in My coasts, grind them to powder; for I am a jealous God.' Then; with a hammer he would batter at Augustus's statue and mine, would strike off our heads and lop off our limbs. The people would utter a great shout of joy and he would cry again: `Thus saith the Anointed of the Lord, 0 my children, the children of Shem, first-born of my servant Noah, cleanse ye this land of the stranger and the infidel, and let the habitations of Japhet be a prey unto you, for the hour of your deliverance is at hand.' The news would sweep the country like a fire: `The Anointed has manifested himself and has, hewn the images of the Caesars asunder. Be joyful in the Lord. Let us defile the temples of the heathen, and lead our enemies captive;.The Jews would hear of it in Alexandria. They would rise 300,000 strong, and seize the city, massacring our small garrison there Bardanes would hear of it at Nineveh and march on Antioch and the kings of Commagene, Lesser Armenia, and Pontus would join forces with him on the Armenian border. Marsus with his, three regular battalions and his two regiments of Syrian Greeks would be overwhelmed. Moreover, Bardanes had pledged himself by an oath sworn in the Temple before the High Priest that if by Herod's aid he won the throne from his brother (as he had now done) he would make a public acknowledgement of his debt to Herod by, sending him back all the Jews that could be found in ;the whole Parthian Empire, together with their families, flocks, and possessions, and by swearing eternal friendship with the Jewish people. The scattered sheep of Israel would return at last to the fold. They would be as many in number as the sand, on the seashore. They would occupy the cities from which they had expelled the stranger, and the infidel, and they would be a united holy people as in the days of Moses, but ruled by a greater one than Moses, a more glorious one than Solomon, namely, by Herod, the Beloved, the Anointed of the Lord.

The festival in pretended honour of my birthday was to take place in the amphitheatre at Caesarea: and wild beasts and swordfighters and racing chariots were all ready for the performance that Herod never really intended to take place. The audience was composed partly of Syrian-Greeks, and partly of Jews. They occupied different parts of the amphitheatre. Herod's throne was among his own subjects, and next to it were the seats reserved for distinguished visitors. There were no Romans present: they were all at Antioch celebrating my birthday under the presidency of Marsus. But ambassadors from Arabia were there, and the King of Iturea, and the delegation from Tyre and Sidon, and the mother and sons of the King of Adiabene, and Herod Pollio with his family. The spectators were protected against the fierce August sun by great awnings of white canvas, but over Herod's throne, which was made of silver studded with turquoise,., the awnings were purple silk.

The audience flocked in and took their seats, waiting for Herod's entrance. Trumpets sounded and presently he appeared at the southern .entrance with all his train and made a stately progress across the arena., The whole audience rose. He had on a royal robe of silver tissue worked over with polished silver roundels that flashed in the sun so brightly that it tried the eyes to look at him. On his head was a golden diadem twinkling with diamonds and in his hand a flashing silver sword. Beside him Cypros walked in royal purple, and behind her came his lovely little daughters dressed in white silk embroidered with arabesques and edged with purple and gold. Herod held his head high as he walked and smiled a kingly greeting to his, subjects. He reached his throne and mounted on it. King Herod Pollio, the ambassadors from Arabia, and the King of Iturea left their seats and came to the steps of the throne to greet him. They spoke in Hebrew: `O King, live for ever!' But to the men of Tyre and Sidon this was not enough: they felt constrained to make amends for their discourteous treatment of him in the past. They grovelled before, him.

The leader of the Tyrian pleaded in tones of the profoundest humility: `Be merciful to us, Great; King, we repent of our ingratitude.'

And the leader of the Sidonians,: `Hitherto we have reverenced you as a man, but we must now acknowledge that you are superior to mortal nature.'

Herod answered: `You are forgiven, Sidon.'

The Tyrian exclaimed: `It is the voice of a God, not of a man.'

Herod answered: `Tyre, you are forgiven.'

He raised his hand to give the signal for the rams' horns to blow, but suddenly let it drop again. For a bird had flown in from the gate by which he had himself entered and was fluttering here and there about the arena. The people watched it and shouts of surprise arose: `Look, an owl! An owl blinded by daylight.'

The owl perched on a guy-rope above Herod's left shoulder. He turned and gazed up at it. And not until then did he remember the oath he had sworn at Alexandria thirteen years before in the presence of Alexander the Alabarch and Cypros and his children, the oath to honour the living God and keep. His laws so far as in him lay, and the curse that he had called upon himself if he ever wittingly blasphemed from hardness of heart. The first and greatest commandment- of God, as spoken through Moses, was:

`THOU SHALT HAVE NONE OTHER GODS BUT ME', but when

the Tyrian had called him a God, had Herod torn his clothes and fallen on his face to avert Heaven's jealous anger? No, he had smiled at the blasphemer and said, 'Tyre, you are forgiven', and the people standing about him had taken up the cry, 'A God, not a man'. The owl was gazing down in his face. Herod turned pale. The owl hooted five times, then flapped its wings, flew up over the tiers' of seats, and disappeared beyond.

Herod said to Cypros: `The owl that visited me in the prison yard at Misenum - the same owl,' and then a fearful groan burst from his lips and he cried weakly to Helcias, his Master of Horse, successor to Silas: `Carry me out. I am ill. Let my brother the King of Chalcis take over from me the Presidency of the Games.'

Cypros clasped Herod to her: `Herod, my king and sweetheart, why do you groan? What ails you?'

Herod replied in a dreadful whisper: `The maggots are already in my flesh.'

He was carried out. The rams' horns never blew. The statues were not brought into be broken. The Jewish soldiers posted outside the theatre, prepared to enter at Herod's signal and begin the massacre of the Greeks, remained at their posts. The Games ended before they had begun. The Jewish multitude raised a great wailing and lamentation, tearing' their clothes and throwing dust on their heads. The rumour went round that Herod was dying. He was in frightful pain, but he called his brother Herod, and Helcias, and Thaumastus, and the son of the High Priest, to his bedside at the Palace and said to them: `My friends, all is over now. In five days I shall be dead. I am luckier in this than my grandfather Herod: he lived eighteen months after the pain first fastened on him. I have no complaints to make. It has been a good life. I blame only myself for what has come upon me. For six days I was saluted by the elders of Israel as the Lord's Anointed and on the seventh I foolishly allowed His name to be blasphemed without reproof. Though it was my will to enlarge His Kingdom, to the ends of the world, and purify it and bring back the lost tribes, and worship Him all the days of my life, yet because of this one sin I am rejected as my ancestor David was rejected for his sin against Uriah the Hittite. Now Jewry must wait another age until a holier Redeemer comes to accomplish what I have been proved unworthy to accomplish. Tell the confederate. kings that the key-stone has fallen from the arch, and that no help can come to them now from the Jewish nation. Tell them that I, Herod, am dying and that I charge them not to make war against Rome without me, because without me they are a rudderless boat, a headless spear, a broken arch. Helcias, see that no violence is done the Greeks. Call in the arms that have been distributed secretly to the Jews and lay them up in the Armoury at Caesarea Philippi, putting a strong guard over them. Give the Greeks back their arms and recall them to their ordinary duties. My servant Thaumastus, see that my debts are paid in full. My brother Herod, see that my dear wife Cypros and my daughters Drusilla and Mariamne come to no harm, and above all dissuade the nation from any folly. Greet the Jews of Alexandria in my name, and ask them to pardon me for having offered them such high hopes and then utterly disappointed them. Go now, and God be with you. I can speak no more.'

The Jews put on sackcloth and lay in their tens of thousands prostrate on the ground about the Palace, even in that terrible heat. Agrippa saw them from the window of the upper room where his bed was laid and began to weep for them. `Poor. Jews,' he said. 'You have waited a thousand years, and must now wait, a thousand more, perhaps two thousand, before your day of glory breaks. This has been a false dawn. I deceived myself and I deceived you.' He called for pen and paper and wrote me a letter while he still had strength to hold the pen. I have the letter here before me with the others he wrote me and it is pitiful to compare the 'handwritings the others boldly and decisively written, line under line as regular as a flight of steps, and this scrawled crookedly, each letter jagged and broken with pain, like confessions written by criminals after they have been put on the rack or flogged with the cat-o’-nine-tails. It is short:

My last letter: I am dying. My body is full of maggots. Forgive your old friend, the, Brigand, who loved you dearly, yet secretly plotted to take the .East away from you. Why did I do this? Because Japhet and Shem can live as brothers, but each must rule his own house. The West would have remained yours from Rhodes to Britain. You would have been able to rid Rome of all the Gods and customs of the East: then and only then could the ancient liberty that you prize so much have returned to you. I have failed. I played too dangerous a game. Marmoset, you are a fool, but I envy you your folly: it is a sane folly. Now I charge you with my dying breath not to revenge yourself on my family. My son Agrippa is innocent: he knows nothing of my ambitions, and neither do my daughters. Cypros did all that she could to dissuade me. The best course for you now is to appear to know nothing. Treat all your Eastern allies as faithful allies still. With Herod gone what are they? Adders, but their fangs are drawn. They trusted me, but they have no trust in the Parthian. As for my dominions, make them a Roman province again, as in the time of Tiberius. Do not injure my honour by returning them to my uncle Antipas. To appoint my son Agrippa as my successor would be dangerous, but honour him in some way or other for: my sake. Do not put my dominions under the rule of Syria, under, my enemy Marsus. Rule them yourself, Marmoset. Make Felix your governor. Felix is a nobody and will do nothing either wise or foolish; I can write little more. My fingers fail me. I am in torrent. Do not weep for me: I have had a glorious life and regret nothing. but my one single folly - that I underrated the pride and power and jealousy of the ever-living God of Israel, that I bore myself towards Him like any foolish philosophizing Gadarene Greek. Now farewell for the last time, Tiberius Claudius, my friend whom I love more truly than you ever supposed. Farewell, little Marmoset, my school fellow, and trust nobody, for nobody about you is worthy of your trust.

Your dying friend Herod Agrippa, surnamed

THE BRIGAND

Before he died Herod called Helcias and Thaumastus and his brother Herod Pollio to him again and said to them: 'One last charge I lay upon you. Go to Silas in prison and tell him that I am dying. Say that Herod's Evil is on me. Remind him of the oath that I rashly swore at Alexandria in the house of Alexander the Alabarch. Tell him of the agony in which you see me writhing. Ask him to forgive me, if I have wronged him. Tell him that he may visit me and clasp my hand in friendship once more. Then deal with him as you think best, according to his answer.'

They went to the prison, where they found Silas in his cell with his writing-tablet on his knee. At sight of them he flung it face downwards on the floor. Thaumastus said: 'Silas, if that tablet is filled with reproaches against your King and master, Herod Agrippa, you do well to throw it down. When we tell you of the condition in which the King is lying you will surely weep. You will wish that you had never spoken a word of reproach against him, or put him to public shame by your unmannerly tongue. He is dying in agony. His disease is Herod's Evil, with which in a rash moment he once cursed himself at Alexandria, should he ever offend the Majesty of the Most High.'

`I know,' said. Silas. 'I was present when he swore that, and afterwards I warned him ...'

'Silence for the King's message. The King says: "Tell Silas of the agony in which you see me writhing, and ask him to forgive me if ever I have wronged him. He is at liberty now to leave his cell and come with you to the Palace. I should be pleased to clasp his hand in friendship once more before I die."'

Silas said sullenly: `You are Jews and I am only a despised Samaritan, so I suppose that I ought to feel honoured by your visit. But I'll tell you this about us Samaritans: we prize free speech and honest dealing above all the opinions, good or bad, that our Jewish neighbours may care to entertain about us. As for my, former friend and master King Herod, if he is in torment, then he has only himself to blame for not listening to my advice -'

Helcias turned to King Herod Pollio: 'He dies?'

Silas continued calmly: 'Three times I as good as saved his life, but this time I can do nothing for him. His fate is in God's hands. And, as for friendship, what sort of a friend do you call ...?'

Helcias seized a javelin from the hand of the soldier who was standing guard at the door and ran Silas through the belly. He made no movement to avoid the thrust.

Silas died at the very moment that, worn out by five days of incessant pain, King Herod Agrippa himself died, in Cypros's arms, to the indescribable grief and horror of the Jewish nation.

By now the whole .story was known. Herod's curse seemed to rest on all Jews alike: they were utterly unmanned. The Greeks were elated beyond measure. The regiments re-armed by Helcias at Herod's orders behaved in the most shameless and revolting way. They attacked the Palace and seized Cypros and her. daughters, intending to lead them in mockery through the streets of Caesarea. Cypros snatched sword from a soldier and killed herself, but her daughters were forced to put on their embroidered dresses and accompany their captors, and even to join in the hymns of thanksgiving sung for their father's death. When the procession ended they were taken to the regimental brothels and subjected there, on the roof-tops, to the grossest outrages and indecencies. And not only in Caesarea but in the Greek city of Samaria too, public banquets were spread in the squares and the Greeks, with garlands on their heads, and sweet-smelling ointments, ate and drank to their hearts' content, toasting each other and pouring libations to the Ferryman. The Jews did not raise a hand or voice in protest. `Whom God has cursed, is it lawful to succour?' For God's curse was held to descend to a man's children. These princesses were aged only six and ten years when they were so mistreated.

Chapter 24

HEROD's death took place ten years ago to-day and I shall tell as briefly as possible what has happened in the East since, then; though the East will now have little interest for nay readers, I feel conscientiously bound to leave no loose threads in this story. Marsus, as soon as he heard of Herod's death, came down to Caesarea and restored order there and in Samaria. He appointed an emergency governor of Herod's dominions: this was Fadus, a Roman knight who had big mercantile interests in Palestine and was married to a Jewish woman. I confirmed this appointment and Fadus acted with the necessary firmness. The arms that had been distributed to the Jews had not all been returned to Helcias the men of Gilead kept theirs for use against eastern neighbours, the Arabs of Rabboth Ammon. There were also a great many arms not, returned by Judaeans and Galilean, and robber bands were formed which did the country a great deal of damage. However, Fadus, with the help of Helcias and King Herod Pollio, who were anxious to show their loyalty, arrested the leading Gileadites, disarmed their followers, and then hunted down the robber bands one by one

The confederate Kings of Pontus, Commagene, Lesser Armenia, and Iturea took the advice Herod had sent them by his brother and resumed their allegiance to, Rome, excusing themselves to Bardanes for not marching to meet him on the borders of Armenia. Bardanes nevertheless continued his westward progress: he was determined to recover Armenia. Marsus sent him, a stern warning from Antioch that war against Armenia would spell war with Rome. The King of Adiabene thereupon told Bardanes that he would not join in the expedition, because his children were at Jerusalem and would be seized as hostages by the Romans. Bardanes declared war on him and was about to invade his territory when he heard that Gotarzes had raised another army and had resumed his pretensions to the Empire. Back he marched again, and this time the battle between the brothers was fought out stubbornly on the banks of the River Charinda, near the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. Gotarzes was beaten and fled away to the land of the Dahians, which lies 400 miles away to the east. Bardanes pursued him; but, after defeating the Dahians, he could persuade his victorious army to march no farther, for he had passed the bounds of the Parthian Empire. He returned in the following year and was on the point of invading Adiabene when he wasassassinated by

his nobles; they decoyed him into an ambush when he was out hunting. I was relieved when he was out of the way, for he was a man of great gifts and unusual energy,

Meanwhile Marsus's term of office had come to an end and I was glad to have him back at Rome to advise me. I sent out Cassius Longings to take his place. He was a celebrated jurist, whom I had often consulted on difficult legal points, and a former brother-in-law of my niece Drusilla. When the news of Bardanes's death reached Rome Marsus was not surprised: it seems that he had had a finger in the plot. He now advised me to send out, as a claimant to the Parthian throne, Meherdates, the son of a former King of Parthia, who had been kept as a hostage at Rome for many years now. He said that he could undertake that the nobles who had killed Bardanes would favour Meherdates. However, Gotarzes reappeared with a Dahian army and the assassins of Bardanes were forced to pay him homage, so Meherdates had to remain at Rome until a favourable opportunity presented itself for us to-send him east. Marsus thought that this would be soon: Gotarzes was cruel, capricious, and cowardly, and could not keep the loyalty of his nobles for long. Marsus was right. A secret embassy came two years later from various notables of the Parthian Empire, including the King of Adiabene, asking me to send them , Meherdates. I agreed to do so, giving Meherdates a good character. In the presence of the ambassadors I admonished him not to play the tyrant but to regard himself merely in the light of a chief magistrate and his people as his fellow-citizens: justice and clemency had never yet been practised by a Parthian king. I sent him to Antioch, and Cassius Longinus escorted him as far as the River Euphrates and there told him to push on to Parthia at once because the throne was his if he acted with speed and courage. However, the King of Osroene, a pretended ally who secretly favoured Gotarzes, purposely detained Meherdates at his court with luxurious entertainments and hunting and then advised him to go round by way of Armenia instead of risking a march direct through Mesopotamia. Meherdates took this bad advice, which gave Gotarzes time to make preparations, and lost several months in taking his army through the snow-covered Armenian highlands. On emerging from Armenia he marched down the Tigris and captured Nineveh and other important towns. The King of Adiabene welcomed him on his arrival at the frontier, but immediately summed him up as a weakling and decided to abandon his cause at the first opportunity. So when the armies of Gotarzes and Meherdates met in battle, Meherdates was suddenly deserted by the Kings of Osroene and Adiabene. He fought bravely and nearly won, for Gotarzes was such a cowardly commander that his generals had to chain him to a tree to stop him from running away. In the end, Meherdates was captured and the gallant Gotarzes sent him back to Cassius in mockery with his ears sliced off Shortly afterwards Gotarzes died. More recent events in Parthia will certainly not interest my readers more than they have interested me, which is very little indeed.

Mithridates kept his Armenian throne for some years but was finally killed by his nephew, the son of his brother the King of Georgia. That was a curious story. The King of Georgia had been ruling for forty years and his eldest son was tired of waiting for him to die and leave him the kingdom. Knowing his son's character. and fearing for his own life, the King advised him to seize the throne of Armenia which was a bigger and richer kingdom than Georgia. The son agreed. The King then made a pretence of quarrelling with him, and he fled to Armenia, to Mithridates's protection, and was kindly received by him and given his daughter in marriage. He immediately busied himself with intrigues against his, benefactor. He returned to Georgia, pretending to be reconciled to his father, who then picked a quarrel with Mithridates and gave command of an invading army to his son. The Roman colonel who acted as Mithridates's political adviser proposed a conference between Mithridates and his son-in-law, and Mithridates agreed to attend it: but he was treacherously seized by Georgian troops as a blood-covenant was on the point of being sealed, and smothered with blankets. The Governor of Syria, when he heard of this horrid act, called, a council of his staff to decide whether Mithridates should be avenged by a punitive expedition against his murderer, who now reigned in his stead; but the general opinion: seemed to be that the more treacherous and bloody the behaviour of Eastern kings on our frontier, the better for us the security of the Roman Empire resting on the mutual mistrust of our neighbours and that nothing should be done. However, the Governor, to show that he did not countenance the murder, sent a formal letter to the King of Georgia ordering him to withdraw his forces and, recall his son. When the Parthians heard of this letter they thought it a good opportunity for winning back Armenia. And so they invaded Armenia, and the new king fled, and then they had to abandon the expedition because it was a very severe winter and they lost a lot of men from frost-bite and sickness, so the king returned - but why continue the story? All Eastern stories are the same purposeless on-and-on to-and-fro story, unless very seldom, so seldom as almost to be never, a leader, arises to give purpose and direction to the flux. Herod Agrippa was such a one, but he died before he could give full proof of his genius.

As for the Jewish hope of the Messiah, it was kindled again by one Theudas, a magician of Gilead, who gathered a great following during Fadus's governorship and told them to follow him to the River Jordan, for he would part it as the, prophet Elisha had once done and lead them dry-shod across to take, possession of Jerusalem. Fadus sent a troop of cavalry across, charged the fanatical l crowd, captured Theudas and cut off his head. (There have been no subsequent pretenders to the title, though indeed the sect about which Herod wrote to me, the followers of Joshua ben Joseph, or Jesus, seems to have made considerable headway recently, even at Rome. Aulus Plautius's wife was accused before me of having attended one of their love-feasts; but Aulus was in Britain and I hushed the affair up for his sake.) Fadus's task was made difficult by a failure of the Palestinian harvest: Herod's treasury was found to be nearly empty (and no wonder, the, way he spent his money), so there was no means of relieving the distress by buying corn from Egypt. However, he organized a relief committee among the Jews and money was found to get them through the winter; but then the harvest failed again, and if it had not been for the Queen-Mother of Adiabene, who gave her entire wealth to the purchase of corn from Egypt, hundreds of thousands of Jews must have died. The Jews viewed the famine as God's vengeance on the whole nation for Herod's sin. The second failure of the harvest was indeed not so much the fault of the weather as the fault of the Jewish farmers: they were so low-spirited that instead of sowing the seed-corn with which they had been supplied by Fadus's successor (the son of Alexander the Alabarch, who had abandoned Judaism) they ate it or even left it to sprout in the sack. The Jews are an extraordinary race. Under the governorship of one Cumanus who came next there were great disturbances Cumanus was not a good choice; I am afraid, and his term of office began with a great disaster. Following Roman precedent, he had stationed a battalion of regulars in the Temple cloisters to keep order at the great Jewish Passover feast, and one of the soldiers who had a grudge against the Jews let down his breeches during the holiest part of the festival and exposed his privy members derisively to the worshippers, calling out: `Here, Jews, look this way!' Here's something worth seeing.' That started a riot, and Cumanus was accused by the Jews of having ordered the soldier to make this provocative and very foolish display. He was naturally annoyed. He shouted to the crowd to be quiet and continue their festival in an orderly manner: but they grew more and more threatening. It seemed to Cumanus that a single battalion was not enough in the circumstances. To overawe the crowd he sent for the entire garrison: which in my opinion was a grave error of judgement. The streets of Jerusalem are very narrow and tortuous and were crowded with vast numbers of Jews who had come as usual from all over the world to celebrate the festival. The cry went up: `The soldiers are coming. Run for your lives!' Everyone ran for his life. If anyone stumbled and fell he was trampled underfoot, and at street corners where two streams of fugitives met the pressure was so great from behind that thousands were crushed to death. The soldiers did not even draw their swords, but no less then 20,000 Jews were killed in the panic. The disaster was so overwhelming that the final day of the festival was not celebrated. Then as the crowd dispersed to its homes a, party of Galileans happened to overtake one of my own Egyptian stewards, who was travelling from Alexandria to Acre to collect some money due to me. He' was doing some business of his own on the side and the Galileans robbed him of a very valuable casket of jewels. When Cumanus heard of this he took reprisals on the villages nearest the scene of the robbery (on the borders of Samaria and Judaea), disregarding the fact that the robbers were plainly Galilean, by their accents, and only passing through. He sent a party of soldiers to plunder the villages and arrest the leading citizens. They did so and one of the soldiers in plundering the houses came across a copy of the Laws of Moses. He waved it over his head and then began reading out an obscene parody of the sacred writings. The Jews screamed in horror at the blasphemy and' rushed to take the parchment from him. But he ran away laughing, tearing the thing in pieces as he went and scattering them behind him. Feeling ran so high that when Cumanus heard the facts he was forced to execute the soldier as a warning to his comrades and as a sign of goodwill to the Jews.

A month or two later Galileans came up to Jerusalem to another festival and the inhabitants of a Samaritan village refused to let them pass, because of the previous trouble. The Galileans insisted on passing and in the ensuing fight several were killed. The survivors went to Cumanus for satisfaction, but he gave them none,. telling them that the Samaritans had a perfect right to forbid their passage through the village: why couldn't they have gone round by the fields? The foolish Galileans called a famous bandit to their aid and revenged themselves on the Samaritans by plundering their villages with his aid. Cumanus armed the Samaritans and with four battalions of the Samaria garrison made a drive against the Galilean raiders and killed and captured a great number of them. Later, a delegation of Samaritanswent. to

the Governor of Syria and asked satisfaction from him against another party of Galilean whom they accused of setting fire to their villages. He came down to Samaria determined to end this business once and for all. He had the captured Galileans crucified and then went carefully into the origin of the disturbances. He found, that the Galileans had a right of way through Samaria and that Cumanus should have punished the Samaritans for the disturbances instead of. supporting them, and that his action in taking reprisals on Judaean and Samaritan villages for a robbery committed by Galileans was unjustified; and further, that the original breach of the peace, the indecent self-exposure of the soldier during the Passover Festival, had been countenanced by the colonel of the battalion, who had laughed loudly, and said that if the Jews did not like the sight they were not compelled to, look at it. By a careful sifting of evidence he also decided that the villages had been burned by the Samaritans themselves and that the compensation which they asked was many times more than the value of the property destroyed. Before the fire had been started all objects of value had been carefully removed from the houses. So he sent Cumanus, the colonel, the Samaritan, plaintiffs, and a number of Jewish witnesses to me at Rome, where. I tried them. The evidence was confiicting, but I eventually came to the same conclusion as the Governor. I exiled Cumanus to the Black Sea; ordered the Samaritan plaintiffs to be executed as liars and incendiaries; and had the colonel who laughed taken back to Jerusalem to be led through the streets of the city for public execration and then executed on. the scene of his crime - for I regard it as a crime when an officer whose duty it is to keep order at a religious festival deliberately inflames popular feeling and causes the death of 20,000 innocent people.

After Cumanus's removal I remembered Herod's advice: and sent Felix out as governor: that was three years ago and he, is still there, having a difficult time, because the country is in a most disturbed state and overrun with bandits. He has married the youngest of Herod's daughters; she was previously married to the King of Homs, but left him. The other daughter married the son of Helcias. Herod Pollio is dead, and young Agrippa who governed Chalcis for four years after his uncle's death I have now made King of Bashan.

At Alexandria there were fresh disturbances three years ago and a number of deaths. I inquired into the case at Rome and found that the Greeks had provoked the Jews once more by interrupting their religious ceremonies. I punished them accordingly.

So much, then, for the East, and perhaps it would now be as well to wind up my account of events in other parts of the Empire, so as to be able to concentrate on my main story, which centres now in Rome.

At about the same time as the Parthians sent to Rome for a king, so did the great German confederation over which Hermann had ruled, the Cheruscans. Hermann had been assassinated by members of his own family for trying to reign over a free people in a despotic manner, and a feud had then- started between the two principal assassins, his nephews, which led to a prolonged civil war and finally to the extinction of the whole Cheruscan royal house, with one single exception. This was Italicus, the son of Flavius, Hermann's brother. Flavius remained loyal to Rome at the time that Hermann treacherously ambushed and massacred Varus's three regiments, but had been killed by Hermann in battle some years after while serving under my brother Germanicus. Italicus was born at Rome and was enrolled in the Noble Order of Knights, as his father had been. He was a handsome and gifted young man and had been given a good Roman education, but foreseeing that he, might one day occupy the Cheruscan throne I had insisted on his learning the use of German weapons as well as Roman ones, and on his studying his native language and laws with close attention: members of my bodyguard were his tutors. They

also taught him to drink-beer: a German prince who cannot drink pot for pot with his thegns is considered a weakling.

A Cheruscan delegation then came to Rome to ask for Italicus as their new king. They created a great stir in the Theatre on the first afternoon, of their arrival. None of them had even been in Rome before. They called on me at the Palace and were told that I was at the, Theatre, so they followed me there. A comedy of Plautus's, The Truculent Man, was being played, and everyone was listening with the greatest attention. They were shown into the public seats, and not very good ones either, high up, almost out of earshot of the stage. As soon as they had settled down they looked about them and began asking in loud tones: `Are these honourable seats?'

The ushers whisperingly tried to assure them that they were.

`Where's Caesar sitting? Where are his chief thegns?' they asked.

The ushers pointed down to the orchestra. 'There's Caesar. But he only sits down there because he's slightly deaf. The seats you are in are really the most honourable seats. The higher, the more honourable, you know.'

`Who are those dark-skinned men with jewelled caps, sitting quite-close to Caesar?'

'Those are Parthian ambassadors.'

`What's Parthia?'

'A great Empire in the East.'

`Why are they sitting down there? Aren't they honourable? Is it because of their colour?'

'Oh no, they are very honourable,' the ushers said. `But please don't talk so loud.'

`Then why are they sitting in such humble seats?' the Germans persisted.

('Hush, hush!' Quiet there, Barbarians, we can't hear!' and similar protests from the, crowd.)

`Out of compliment to Caesar,' the ushers lied. 'They swear that if Caesar's deafness forces him to occupy such a lowly seat, they won't presume to sit any higher.'

`And do you expect us to be outdone in courtesy by a miserable parcel of blackamoors?' the Germans shouted indignantly. `Come on, brothers, down we go!' The play was held up for five minutes as they forced their way down through the packed seats and fetched up triumphantly among the Vestal Virgins. Well, they meant no harm, and I greeted them honourably as they deserved and at dinner that night consented to let them have the king they wanted; II was, of course, very glad to be, able to do so.

I sent Italicus across the Rhine with an admonition that contrasted strangely with the one I had given Meherdates before I sent him across the Euphrates;, for the Parthians and; the Cheruscans are the two most dissimilar races, I suppose, that, you could find anywhere in the world. My words to Italicus were., these' 'Italicus, remember that you have been called upon to rule over a free nation. You have been educated as a Roman and accustomed to Roman discipline. Be careful not toexpect. as

much from your fellow tribesmen as a Roman magistrate or general would expect from his subordinates. Germans can be persuaded but not forced. If a Roman commander says to a military subordinate: "Colonel, take so many men to such-and-such a place and there raise an earthwork so-and-so many paces long, thick, and high,’ he replies, "Very good, General’: off he goes without argument and the earthwork is raised within twenty-four hours. You can't speak to a Cheruscan in that style. He'll want to know precisely why you want the earthwork raised and against whom, and wouldn't it be better to send someone else of less importance to perform this dishonourable task - earthworks are a sign of cowardice, he'll argue - and what gifts will you bestow on him if he consents, of his own free will, to carry out your suggestion? The art of ruling your compatriots, my friend Italicus, is never to give them a downright order, but to express your wishes clearly, disguising them as mere advice of State policy. Let your thegns think that; they are doing you, a favour, and thus honouring themselves, by carrying out these wishes of their own free will. If there is an unpleasant or thankless task to. be done, make it a matter of rivalry between your thegns who shall have the honour of undertaking it, and, never fail to reward with gold bracelets and weapons services which at Rome would be regarded as routine duties. Above all, be patient and never lose your temper.'

So he went off in high hopes,.; as Meherdates had gone off, and was welcomed by a majority of the thegns, the ones who knew that they had no chance of succeeding to the vacant throne themselves, but were jealous of all native-born claimants. Italicus did not know the ins-and-outs of Cheruscan domestic politics and could, be counted on to behave with-reasonable impartiality. But there was a minority of men who thought themselves worthy of the throne themselves and these temporarily sank their differences to unite against Italicus. They expected that Italicus would soon make a mess of the government from ignorance, but he disappointed them by ruling remarkably well. They therefore went secretly round to the chiefs of allied tribes raising feeling against him as a Roman interloper. 'The ancient liberty of Germany has departed,' they lamented, 'and the power of Rome is triumphant. Is there no native Cheruscan worthy of the throne, that the son of Flavius, the spy and traitor, should be permitted to usurp it?' They raised a large patriotic army by this appeal. Italicus's supporters, however, declared that Italicus had not usurped the throne, but had been offered it with the consent of a majority of the tribe; and that he was the only royal prince left and though born in Italy had studiously acquainted himself with the German language, customs, and weapons, and was ruling very justly; and that his father Flavius, far from being a traitor, had on the contrary sworn an oath of friendship with the Romans approved by the whole nation, including his brother Hermann, and unlike Hermann had not violated it. As for the ancient liberty of the Germans, that was hypocritical talk: the men who used it would think nothing of destroying the nation by renewed civil wars.

In a great battle fought between Italicus and his rivals, Italicus came off victorious, and his victory was so complete that he soon forgot my advice and grew impatient of humouring German independence and vanity: he began ordering his thegns about. They drove him out at once. Afterwards he was restored by the armed assistance of a neighbouring tribe, and then ousted again. I made no attempt to intervene: in the West as in the East the security of the Roman Empire rests largely on the civil dissensions of our neighbours. At the time of writing Italicus is king once more but much hated although he has just fought a successful war against the Chattians.

There was trouble farther north about this time. The Governor of the Lower Rhine province died suddenly and the enemy began their cross-river raids again. They had a a capable leader of the same type as the Numidian Tacfarinas who had given us so much trouble under Tiberius: like Tacfarinas he was a deserter from one of our auxiliary regiments and had picked up a considerable knowledge of tactics. Gannascus was his name, a Frisian, and he carried on his operations on an extensive scale. He captured a number of light river transports from us and turned pirate on the coasts of Flanders and Brabant. The new Governor I appointed was called Corbulo, a man for whom I had no great personal liking but whose talents I gratefully employed. Tiberius had once made Corbulo his Commissioner of Highways and he had soon sent in a severe report on the fraud of contractors and the negligence of provincial magistrates whose task it was to see that the roads were kept in good repair. Tiberius, acting on, the report, had fined the accused men heavily; and out of all proportion to their culpability because the roads had been allowed to get into a bad condition by previous magistrates and these particular contractors had only been employed to patch up the worst places. When Caligula succeeded Tiberius and began to feel the need of money, amongst his other tricks and shifts he brought out the Corbulo report and fined all previous provincial, magistrates and contractors on the same scale as the ones who had been fined by Tiberius; he gave Corbulo the task of collecting the money. When I succeeded Caligula I paid back these fines, only retaining as much as was needed to repair the roads - about one-fifth of the total amount. Caligula had not, of course, used any of the money for road-repairs, and neither had Tiberius, and the roads were in a worse condition than ever. I really did repair them and introduced special traffic-regulations limiting the use of heavy private coaches on country roads. These coaches did far more damage than country, wagons bringing in merchandise to Rome, and I did not think it right that the provinces should pay for the luxury and pleasure of wealthy idlers. If rich Roman knights wished to visit their country estates, let them use sedan-chairs, or ride on horseback.

But I was speaking of Corbulo. I knew him for a man of great severity and precision, and the garrison of the Lower Province needed a martinet to restore discipline there: the Governor who had died was much too easy-going. Corbulo's arrival at his headquarters at Cologne recalled Galba's at Mainz. (Galba was now my Governor of Africa.) He ordered a soldier to be flogged whom he found improperly dressed on sentry-duty at the camp gate. The man was unshaved, his hair had not been cut for at least a month, and his military cloak was a fancy yellow colour instead of the regulation brownish-red. Not long after this Corbulo executed two soldiers for 'abandoning their arms in the face of the enemy.' they were digging a trench and had left their swords behind in their tents. This scared the troops into efficiency, and when Corbulo took the field against Gannascus and showed that he was a capable general as well as a strict disciplinarian they did all that he could have expected of them. Soldiers, or at least old soldiers, always prefer a reliable general, however severe, to an incompetent one, however humane.

Corbulo fitted out war-vessels, chased and sank Gannascus's pirate fleet, and then marched up the coast and compelled the Frisians to give hostages and swear allegiance to Rome. He wrote out a constitution for them on the Roman model and built and garrisoned a fortress in their territory. This was all very well, but instead of stopping here Corbulo pushed on into the land of the Greater Chaucians, who had taken no part in the raids. He heard that Gannascus had taken refuge in a Chaucian shrine' and sent a troop of cavalry to hunt him down and kill him there. This was an insult to the Chaucian Gods, and after Gannascus's assassination the same troop rode on to the Ems and there at Emsbuhren presented the Chaucian tribal council with Corbulo's demands for their instant submission with payment of a heavy yearly tribute.

Corbulo reported his actions to me and I was furiously angry with him; he had done well enough in getting rid of Gannascus, but to pick a quarrel with the Chaucians was another matter. We had not sufficient troops to spare for a war, if the Greater Chaucians called in the Lesser Chaucians to their assistance and the Frisians revolted again I would have to find strong reinforcements from somewhere, and they were not to be had, because of our commitments in Britain. I wrote ordering him to recross the Rhine at once.

Corbulo received my orders before the Chaucians had had time to reply to his ultimatum. He was angry with me, thinking that I was jealous of any general who dared to rival my military feats. He reminded his staff that Geta had not been awarded proper honours for his fine conquest of Morocco and the capture of Salabus; and said that, though I had now made it legal for generals who were not members of the Imperial Family to celebrate a,triumph, in practice, it seemed, no one, but myself would be allowed to conduct a campaign for which a triumph could legally be awarded. My anti-despotic pretensions were mere affectation: I was just as much of a tyrant as Caligula, but I concealed it better. He said too that I was lowering Roman prestige by going back on the threats that he had made in my name; and that our allies would laugh at him, and so would his own troops. But this was only an angry talk to his staff. All that he told the troops when he sounded the signal for a general retirement was : 'Men, Caesar Augustus orders us back across the Rhine: We do not yet know why he has reached this decision, and we cannot, question it, though I confess that I, for one, am greatly disappointed: How fortunate were the Roman generals who led our armies in the days of old!' However, he was awarded triumphal ornaments and I also wrote him a private letter exculpating myself from the angry charges which, I told him, I had heard that he had made against me. I wrote that if he had been angry, why, so had I on hearing of his provocation of the Chaucians; and that though he should have thought better of me than to accuse me of jealous motives, I blamed myself for sending him so curt a dispatch instead of explaining: at length my reasons for ordering him to withdraw. I then explained these reasons. He wrote back in handsome apology, withdrawing the charges of despotism and jealousy, and I think now that we understood each other. To keep his troops occupied and allow them no leisure for laughing; at him, he put them to work on a canal twenty-three miles long between the Meuse and the Rhine, to carry off occasional inundations of the sea in this flat region.

Since that time there have been no other events of importance to record in Germany except, four years ago, another raid by the Chattians. They crossed the Rhine in great force one night a few miles north of Mainz. The Commander of the Upper Province was Secundus, the Consul who had behaved with such indecision when I became Emperor. He was also supposed to be the best living Roman poet. Personally, - I think very little of the moderns, or indeed of the Augustans: their poetry does not ring true to me. To my mind Catullus was the last of the true poets. It may be that poetry and liberty go together: that under a monarchy true poetry dies and the best that one can hope for then is gorgeous rhetoric and remarkable metrical artifice. For my part I would exchange all twelve books of Virgil's Aeneid for a single book of Ennius's Annals. Ennius, who lived in Rome's grandest Republican days and counted the great Scipio as his personal friend, was what I would call a true poet: Virgil was merely a remarkable verse craftsman. Compare the two of them when they are both writing about a battle : Ennius writes: like the soldier he was (he rose from the ranks to a captaincy), Virgil like a cultured spectator from a distant hill. Virgil borrowed much from Ennius. Some say, he overshadowed Ennius's rude genius by his cultured felicity: of phrase and rhythm, But that is nonsense. It is like Aesop's fable of the wren and the eagle. The birds all competed as to which could fly the highest. The eagle won, but when he tired and could go no higher, the wren, who had been nestling on his back, mounted up a few score feet and claimed the prize. Virgil was a mere wren by comparison with Ennius the eagle. And even if you concentrate on single beauties, where in Virgil will you find a passage to equal in simple grandeur such lines of Ennius's as these?

Fraxinu' frangitur atque abies consternitur alta.

Pinus proceras pervortunt: omne sonabat

Arbustum fremitu silval frondosal.

The ash was hewn, the high white fir laid low,

Down toppled they the princely pines, and all

That grove of countless leaves rang with the timber's fall.

But they are untranslatable, and in any case I am not writing a treatise on poetry. And though Secundus's poetry was, in my opinion, as disingenuous and unpraiseworthy as his behaviour in the Senate House that day, he was at least capable of dealing decisively with the Chattians on their return in two divisions from the plunder of our French allies. Victory disorganizes the Germans, especially if their plunder includes wine, which they swill as if it were beer, disregarding its greater potency. Secundus's forces surrounded and defeated both enemy' divisions, killing 10,000 men and capturing as many prisoners. He was given triumphal ornaments, but the regulations controlling the award of triumphs did not permit me to grant him one.

I had recently granted a similar honour to Secundus's predecessor, one Curtius Rufus, who, though only the son of a swordfighter, had risen under Tiberius to the dignity of first-rank magistrate. (Tiberius had won him this appointment, in spite of the competition of several men of birth and distinction, by remarking: 'Yes, but Curtius Rufus is his own illustrious ancestor'.) Rufus had become ambitious for triumphal ornaments but was aware that I would not approve of his picking a quarrel with the enemy. He knew of a vein of silver that had been discovered a few miles across the river, in the reign of Augustus, just before Varus's defeat, and sent a regiment across to work it. He got a good deal of silver out before the vein ran too far underground to be manageable - sufficient silver indeed to pay the whole Rhine army for two years. This was naturally worth triumphal ornaments. The troops found the mining: very arduous and wrote me an amusing letter, in the name of the entire army

The loyal troops of Claudius Caesar send him their best wishes and sincerely hope that he and his family will continue to enjoy long life and perfect health. They also beg that, in future, he will award his generals triumphal ornaments before he sends them out to command armies, because then they will not feel obliged to earn them by making Caesar's loyal troops sweat and drudge at silver-mining, canal-digging, and suchlike tasks which would be more suitably done by German prisoners. If Caesar would only permit his loyal troops to cross the Rhine and capture a few thousand Chattians, they would be very pleased to do so, to the best of their ability.

Chapter 25

THE year after Herod died I celebrated the first annual festival in honour of my British triumph; and, remembering the complaints that I had overheard that night on the steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, I made a distribution of money to the needy populace three gold pieces a head with half a gold piece extra for every child in the family who had not yet come of age. In one case I had to pay as much as twelve and a half gold pieces, but, that was because there were several sets of twins to subsidize. Young Silanus and young Pompey assisted me in the distribution. When I record that I had now removed all Caligula's extraordinary taxes and paid back the men he had robbed, and that work continued on the, Ostia harbour scheme and the aqueducts and the Fucine Lake drainage scheme, and that, without defrauding anyone, I was able to pay out this bounty and still keep a substantial balance in the Public Treasury, you will admit, I think, that I had done extremely well in these four years.