Claudius the God

The astronomer Barbillus (to whom I referred in my letter to the Alexandrians) made some abstruse mathematical calculations and informed me that there was to be an eclipse of the sun on my birthday. This caused me some alarm, because an eclipse is one of the most unlucky omens that can happen at any time, and happening on my birthday, which was also a national festival in honour of Mars, it would greatly disturb people and give anyone who wished to assassinate me every confidence of success. But I thought that if I warned the people beforehand that the eclipse was to take place they would feel very differently about it: not despondent but actually pleased that they knew what was coming and understood the mechanics of the phenomenon.

I published a proclamation:

Tiberius Claudius, Drusus Nero Caesar Augustus Germanicus Britannicus, Emperor, Father of the Country, High Pontiff, Protector of the People for the fifth year in succession, three times Consul, to the Senate, People and Allies of Rome, greetings.

My good friend Tiberius Claudius Barbillus of the city of Ephesus made certain astronomical calculations last year, since confirmed by a body of his fellow astronomers in the city of Alexandria, where that science flourishes, and found that an eclipse of the sun, total in some parts of Italy partial in others, will take place on the first day of August next. Now, I do not wish you to feel any alarm on this account, though superstitious terrors have always in the past been awakened by this natural phenomenon. In the old days it was a sudden and inexplicable event and considered as a warning by the Gods themselves that happiness was to be blotted out on earth for a while, just as the sun's lifegiving rays were blotted out. But now we so well understand eclipses that we can actually prophesy, 'On such and, such a day an eclipse will take place.' And I think everyone should feel both proud and relieved that the old terrors are laid at last by the force of intelligent human reasoning.'

The following, then, is the explanation that my learned friends give.' The Moon, which revolves in its orbit below the Sun, either immediately below it or perhaps with the planets Mercury and Venus intervening - this is a disputed point and does not affect the present argument - has a longitudinal motion, like the Sun, and a vertical motion, as the Sun probably, has too; but it has also a latitudinal motion which the Sun never has in any circumstances. So when, because of this latitudinal motion, the Moon, gets in a direct line with, the Sun over our heads and passes invisibly under its blazing disk - invisibly, because the Sun is so bright that by day, as you know, the Moon becomes a mere nothing then the rays which normally dart from the Sun to the earth are obscured by the Moon's intervention. For some of the earth's inhabitants this obscuration lasts for a longer time than for others- according to their geographical position, and some are not affected by it at all The fact is that the Sun never really loses its light, as the ignorant suppose, and consequently it appears in its full splendour to all people between itself and whom the Moon does not pass.

This is the simple explanation, then, of an eclipse of the Sun – as simple a matter as if anyone of you were to shade the flame of an oil lamp or candle with your hand and plunge-a whole room into temporary darkness. (An eclipse of the Moon, by the way, is caused by the Moon running into the cone-shaped shadow thrown by the Earth when the Sun is underneath it; it only happens when the Moon passes through the mean point in its latitudinal motion.) But in the districts most affected' by the eclipse, which are indicated on the adjoining map, I desire all magistrates and other responsible authorities to take every precaution against popular panic, or robbery under cover of darkness, and to discourage people from staring at the sun during its eclipse, unless through pieces of horn or glass darkened with candle smoke, because for those with weak eyes there is a danger of blindness.

I think that I must have been the first ruler since the Creation of the World to issue a proclamation of this sort; and it had a very good effect, though of course the country people did not understand words like 'longitudinal' and 'latitudinal'. The eclipse occurred exactly as foretold and the festival took place as usual, though special sacrifices were offered to Diana as Goddess of the Moon, and Apollo as God of the Sun.

I enjoyed perfect health throughout the following year,, and nobody tried to assassinate me, and the one revolution that was attempted ended in a most ignominious way for its prime mover. This was Asinius Gallus, grandson of Asinius Pollio and son of Tiberius's first wife, Vipsania, by Gallus whom she afterwards married and whom Tiberius hated so and finally killed by slow starvation. It is curious how appropriate some people's names are. Gallus means cock, and Asinus means donkey, and Asinius Gallus was the most utter little donkey-cock for his boastfulness and stupidity that one could find in a month's tour of Italy. Imagine, he had not got any troops ready or collected any funds for his revolution, but believed that the strength of his personality supported by the nobility of his birth would win him immediate adherents!

He appeared one day on the Oration Platform in the Market Place and began to hold forth to a crowd which soon assembled, on the evils of tyranny, dwelling on my uncle Tiberius's murder of his father, and saying how, necessary it was to root out the Caesar family from Rome and give the monarchy to someone really worthy of it. From his mysterious hints the crowd gathered that he meant himself and began to laugh and cheer. He was a wretched orator and the ugliest man in the Senate, not more than four foot six in height, with bottle-shoulders, a great long face, reddish hair, and a tiny little bright red nose (he suffered from indigestion); yet he thought himself Hercules and Adonis rolled into one. There was not, I believe, a single person in the Market Place who took him seriously, and all sorts of jokes went flying about such as: 'Asinus in tegulls' and 'Asinus ad lyram' and 'Ex Gallo lac et ova.' (A donkey on the roof-tiles is a proverbial expression for any sudden grotesque apparition, and a donkey playing on a lyre stands for any absurdly incompetent performance, and cock's milk and cock's eggs stand for nonsensical hopes.) However, they went on cheering every sentence to see what absurdity would come next: and sure enough, when his speech' ended he tried to lead the whole mob up to the Palace to depose me. They followed him in a long column, eight abreast, up to about twenty paces from the outer Palace Gate and then suddenly halted and let him go on by himself, which he did. The sentries at the gate let him through without question, because he was a senator, and he went marching on into the Palace grounds for some distance,' shouting threats against me, before he realized that he was alone. (Crowds can be very witty and very cruel sometimes, as well as very stupid and very cowardly.) He was soon arrested, and although the whole affair was so ridiculous I could; hardly overlook it: I banished him, but no farther than Sicily, where he had family estates. ''Go away and crow on your own dung-hill or bray in your own thistle-field, whichever you prefer, but don't let me hear you,' I told the ugly, excitable little man.

The harbour at Ostia was not nearly completed yet and had already cost 6,000,000 gold pieces: The greatest technical difficulty now lay in forming the island between the extremities of the two great moles; and you may not credit it, but I solved it myself. You remember Caligula's great obelisk-ship which had taken the elephants and camels to Britain, and brought them safely back too? She was at Ostia again and had been used twice since for voyages to Egypt to fetch coloured marble for Venus's temple in Sicily. But the captain told me that she was becoming unseaworthy and he would not care to risk another voyage in her. So one night, as I lay awake, it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to fill her with stones and sink her as a foundation for the island. But I rejected that, because we would only be able to fill her about a quarter full of stones before the water rose over the gunwale, and when she rotted they would just fall out in a loose heap. So I thought, `If we only had a Gorgon's head handy to turn her into a, big solid rock!' And that foolish fancy, the sort that often flies into my mind when I am over-tired, gave birth to a really brilliant idea: why not fill her as full as possible with cement powder, which is comparatively light, and then batten down her hatches, sink her, and let the cement set under the water?

It was about two o'clock in the morning when this idea came to me and I clapped my hands for a freedman and sent him off at once to bring my chief engineer to me. About an hour later the engineer turned up from the other side of the City in a great hurry and trembling violently; expecting to be executed, perhaps, for; some negligence of other. I asked him excitedly whether my idea, was practicable, and was greatly disappointed to hear that cement would not set satisfactorily in sea-water. However, I gave him ten days to find some means of making it set. `Ten days,' I repeated solemnly, `or else.'

He thought that `or else' was a threat, but if he had failed I should have explained my little joke, which was simply `or else we shall have to abandon the idea'. Fear improved his wits, and after eight days' frantic experimenting he invented a cement powder that set like a rock when it came into contact with sea-water, It was a mixture of ordinary cement powder from the cement works at Cumae with a peculiar sort of dust from the hills in the neighbourhood of Puteoli, and the shape of that obelisk-ship is now eternized in the hardest stone imaginable at, the mouth of Ostia harbour. We have built an island over it, using large stones, and more of the same cement; and there is a tall lighthouse on the island, with a beacon fire fed with turpentine shining every night from its summit. There are polished steel reflectors in the beacon chamber which double the light of the fire and send it out in a steady stream down the estuary. The harbour took ten years to complete, and cost 12,000,000 in gold; and there are still men at work improving the channel. But it is a great, gift to the City, and, so long as we command the seas we can never starve.

Everything seemed, to be going very well for me and Rome. The country was contented and prosperous and our armies were victorious everywhere Aulus was consolidating my conquest of Britain by a series of brilliant victories over the yet unsubdued Belgic tribes of the south and south-west; religious observances were being regularly and punctually performed; there was no distress even in the poorest quarters of the City. I had managed to get even with my law-court business and find means of keeping down the number of cases. My health was `good. Messalina was lovelier in my eyes than ever. My children were growing up strong and healthy, and little Britannicus was showing the extraordinary precocity which (though, I own, it missed me out) has always run in the Claudian family. The only thing that grieved me now was an invisible barrier between myself and the Senate that I could not break down. All that I could do in the way of paying respect to the Senatorial Order, especially to the Consuls in office and to the first-class magistrates, I did, but I was always met with a mixture of obsequiousness and suspicion that I found it difficult to account for and impossible to deal with. I decided to revive the ancient office of Censor which had been swallowed up in the Imperial Directorship of Morals, and in that popular capacity reform the Senate once more and get rid of all useless and obstruction-making members. I posted a notice in the House requesting every member to consider his own circumstances and decide whether he was still qualified to serve Rome well as a senator: if he decided he was not so qualified, either because he could not' afford it, or because he felt himself not sufficiently gifted, he should resign. I hinted that those who failed to resign would be dishonourably expelled. And I hurried things along by sending round private notifications to those whom I proposed to expel if they didn't resign. I thus lightened the Order of about a hundred names, and those who remained I then rewarded by conferring patrician rank on their families. This enlargement of the patrician circle had the advantage of providing more candidates for the higher orders of priesthood and of giving a wider choice of brides and bridegrooms to members of the surviving patrician families; for the four successive patrician creations of Romulus, Lucius Brutus, Julius Caesar, and Augustus had each in turn become practically extinct.. One would have thought-that the richer and more powerful the family, the more rapidly and vigorously it would' breed, but this has never been the case at Rome:

However, even this cleansing of the Senate did not have any appreciable effect. Debates were a mere farce. Once, during my fourth Consulship, when I was introducing a measure about certain judicial reforms, the House was so listless that I was obliged to speak very plainly:

`If you honestly approve of these proposals, my Lords, do me the kindness of saying so at once and quite simply. Or, if you do not approve of them, then suggest amendments, but do so here and now. Or if you need time to think the matter over, take time, but don't forget that you must have your opinions ready to be delivered on the day fixed for the debate. It is not at all proper to the dignity of the Senate that the Consul-Elect should repeat the exact phrases of the Consuls as his own opinion, and that everyone else when his turn comes to speak should merely say, "I agree to that" and nothing else, and that then, when the House has adjourned, the minutes should read "A debate took place ..." '

Among other marks of respect to the Senate, I restored Greece and Macedonia to the list of Senatorial provinces: my uncle Tiberius had made Imperial provinces of them. And I gave the Senate back the right of minting copper coinage for circulation in the provinces, as in the time of Augustus. There is nothing that commands such respect for sovereignty as coins: the gold and silver currency, had my head on it, because after all I was the Emperor and the man actually responsible for the greater part of the government; but the Senate's familiar ' S.C.' appeared again, on the copper, and copper is at once the most ancient, the most useful, and quantitatively the most important coinage.

The immediate cause of my decision to purge the Senate was the alarming case of Asiaticus. One day Messalina came to me and said: 'Do you remember wondering last year whether there wasn't something else at the bottom of Asiaticus's resignation of the Consulship besides the reason he gave - that people were jealous and suspicious of him, because it was his second time as Consul?'

'Yes, it didn't look like the whole reason.' -

'Well, I'll tell you something which I should have told you about long ago. Asiaticus has been violently in love for some time with Cornelius Scipio's wife; what do you think of that?'

'Oh, yes, Poppaea - very good-looking girl, with a straight nose and a bold way of staring at men? And what does she think of it? Asiaticus isn't a good-looking young fellow like Scipio: he's bald and rather fat, but of course the richest man in Rome, and what marvellous gardens he has too!'

' Poppaea, I'm afraid, has thoroughly compromised herself with Asiaticus. Well, I'll tell you. It's best to be frank. Poppaea came to me some time ago - you know what good friends we are, or, rather, we used to be and said, "Messalina, dearest, I want to ask you a great favour. You promise not, to tell anyone that I've asked you?" Naturally I promised. She said: "I’m in love with Valerius Asiaticus and I don't know what to do about it. My husband is fearfully jealous and if he knew I think he'd kill me. And the nuisance is that I'm married to him in the strict form and you know how difficult it is to get a divorce-from a strict form of marriage if the husband chooses to be nasty. It means you lose your children, for a start. Do you think that you could possibly do something to, help me? Could you ask the Emperor to speak to my husband and arrange a divorce, so that Asiaticus and I can marry?"

' I hope you didn't say that there was any chance of my consenting. Really, these women...'

'Oh, no, dearest, on the contrary. I said that if she never mentioned the subject to me again I would try, for friendship's sake, to forget what I'd heard, but that if so much as a whisper came to me of anything improper still going on between her and Asiaticus I'd come straight to you.'

`Good. I'm glad `you said that.'

`It was soon afterwards that Asiaticus resigned, and do you remember, then, that he asked the Senate's permission to visit his estates in France?'

'Yes, and he was away a long time. Trying to forget Poppaea, I suppose. There are a lot of pretty women in the South of France.'

`Don't you believe it. I have been finding out things about Asiaticus. The first thing is that lately he's been giving large money presents to the Guards captains and sergeants and standard-bearers. He does it, he says, `because of his gratitude to them for their loyalty to you. Does that sound right?'

'Well, he has more money than he knows what to do with,’

'Don't be ridiculous. Nobody has more money than they know what to do with. Then the second thing is that he and Poppaea still meet regularly; whenever poor Scipio's out of town, and spend the night together.'

'Where do they meet?'

`At the house of the- Petra brothers. They're cousins of hers.

The third thing is that Sosibius told me the other day, quite on his own, that he thought it most unwise of you to have allowed Asiaticus to pay so long a visit to his estates in France; When I asked him what he meant, he showed me a letter from a friend of his in Vienne: the friend wrote that Asiaticus had actually spent very little time on his estates. He had gone round visiting the most influential people in the province and had even been for a tour along the Rhine, where he showed great generosity to the officers of the garrison. Then, of course, you must remember that Asiaticus was born at Vienne; and Sosibius says - -'

'Call Sosibius at once, 'Sosibius was the, man I had chosen as Britannicus's tutor, so you can imagine that I had the greatest confidence in his, judgement. He was an Alexandrian Greek, but had long interested himself in the, study of early Latin authors and was the leading authority on the texts of Ennius: he was so much at home in the Republican period, which he knew far better than any Roman historian, including myself, that I considered that he would be a constant inspiration to my little boy. Sosibius came, and when I questioned him answered very frankly. Yes, he believed Asiaticus to be ambitious and capable of planning a revolution. Hadn't he once offered himself as a candidate for the monarchy in opposition to me?

`You forget, Sosibius,' I said, 'that those two days have been wiped off the City records by an amnesty.'

'But Asiaticus was in the plot against your nephew, the late Emperor, and even boasted about it in the Market Place. When a man like that resigns his Consulship for no valid reason and goes off to France, where he already has great influence, and there tries to enlarge that influence by scattering money about, and no doubt saying that he was forced to resign his Consulship because of your jealousy, or because he stood up against you for the-rights of his fellow Frenchmen. ...

Messalina said: 'It's perfectly plain. He has promised Poppaea to marry her, and the only way that he can do that is by, getting rid of you and me. He'll get leave to go, to France again, and start his revolt there with the native regiments, and then bring the Rhine regiments into it too. And the Guards will be as ready to acclaim him Emperor as they were ready, to acclaim you: it will mean another two hundred gold pieces a man for them.'

'Who else do you think is in the plot?'

`Let's find out all about the Petra brothers. That lawyer Suilius has just been asked to undertake a case for them: and he is one of my best secret agents. If there's anything against them besides their having- accommodated Poppaea and Asiaticus with a bedroom, Suilius will find it out, you can rely: on that'

'I don't like spying. I don't like Suilius, either.'

`We have got to defend ourselves, and Suilius is the handiest weapon we have.'

So Suilius was sent for, and a week. later he made his report, which confirmed Messalina's suspicions. The Petra brothers were certainly in the plot. The elder of them had privately circulated an account of a vision which had appeared to him one early morning between sleeping and waking and which the astrologers had interpreted in an alarming fashion. The vision was of my head severed at the neck and crowned with a wreath of white vine-leaves: the interpretation was that I should die violently at the close of the autumn. The younger brother had been acting as Asiaticus's go between with the Guards, of which he was a colonel. Apparently associated with Asiaticus and the Petra brothers were two old friends of mine, Pedo Pompey, who used often to play dice with me in the evenings, and Assario, maternal uncle of my son-in-law, young Pompey, who also had free access to the Palace. Suilius suggested that these would naturally have been given the task of murdering me over a friendly game of dice. Then there were Assario's two nieces, the Tristonia sisters, who had an adulterous association with the Petra brothers.

There was nothing for it, I decided, but to strike first. I sent my Guards Commander, Crispinus, with a company of Guards whose loyalty seemed beyond question, down to Assario's house at Baiae and there Asiaticus was arrested. He was handcuffed and fettered and brought before me at the Palace. I should, properly, have had him impeached before the Senate, but I could not be sure how far the plot extended. There might be a demonstration in his favour, and I did not wish to encourage that. I tried him in my own study, in the presence of Messalina, Vitellius, Crispinus, young Pompey, and my chief secretaries.

Suilius acted as public prosecutor, and I thought, as Asiaticus faced him, that if ever guilt was written on a man's features it was written there. But I must admit that Crispinus had not warned him what were the charges against him - I had not even told Crispinus - and there are few men who if suddenly arrested would be able to face their judges with absolute serenity of conscience. I know how badly I once felt myself when I was arrested by Caligula's orders on the charge of witnessing a forged will. Suilius was indeed a terrible and pitiless accuser: he had a thin, frosty face, white hair, dark eyes, and a long forefinger which probed and darted like a sword. He began with a mild rain of compliments and banter which we all recognized as a prelude to a thunderstorm of rage and invective. First he asked Asiaticus in a mockfriendly conversational tone, exactly when he proposed visiting his 'French estates again - was it before the vintage? and what had he thought of agricultural conditions in the neighbourhood of Vienne and how had they compared with those of the Rhine valley? `But don't trouble to answer my questions,' he said. `I don't really wish to know how high the barley grows in Vienne or how loud the cocks crow there, any more than you really wished to know yourself.' Then about his presents to the Guards: how loyal Asiaticus had shown himself! but was there not perhaps a danger of the simple-witted military misunderstanding those gifts?

Asiaticus was growing anxious, and breathing heavily; Suilius came a few steps nearer him," like a wild-beast hunter in the arena, some, of whose arrows, fired from a distance, have gone home: he comes nearer, because the beast is wounded, and brandishes his hunting-spear. 'To think that I ever called you friend, that I ever dined at your board, that I ever allowed myself to be deceived by 'your affable ways, your noble descent, the favour and confidence that you have falsely won from our gracious Emperor sand all honest citizens. Beast that you are filthy pathic, satyr of the stews! Bland corrupter of the loyal hearts and manly bodies of the very soldiers to whose trust the sacred person of our Caesar, the safety of the. City, the welfare of the world is committed. Where were you ion the might of the Emperor's birthday that you could not attend the banquet to which you were invited? Sick, were you? Mighty sick, I have no doubt. I shall soon confront the court with a selection of your fellow invalids, young soldiers of the Guards, who caught their infection from you, you filth.'

There was a great deal more of this. Asiaticus had turned dead white now, and great drops of 'sweat stood on his brow. The chain clanked, as he wiped them away. He was forbidden by the rules of the court to answer a word until the time came for him to make his defence, but at last he burst out in a hoarse voice: `Ask your own sons, Suilius ! They will admit that I am a man.' He was called to order. Suilius went on to speak of Asiaticus's adultery with Poppaea, but put little emphasis on -this, as if it was the weakest point of his case, though really it was the strongest; and so tricked Asiaticus into making a general denial of all the charges against him. If Asiaticus had been wise he would have admitted the adultery and denied the, other charges. But. he denied everything, so his guilt seemed proved. Suilius called his witnesses, mostly soldiers. The chief witness; a young recruit from South Italy, was asked to identify Asiaticus. I suppose that he had been coached to recognize Asiaticus by his bald head, for he picked on Pallas as the man who had so unnaturally abused him. A great burst of laughter went up: Pallas was known to share with me a real hatred of this sort of vice, and, besides, everyone knew that he had acted as guest-master throughout my birthday banquet.

I nearly dismissed the case then and there, but reflected that the witness might have a bad memory for faces - I have myself - and that the other charges were not disproved by his failure to identify Asiaticus. But it was in a milder, voice that I asked Asiaticus to answer Suilius's charges, point by point. He did so, but failed to account satisfactorily for his movements in France, and certainly perjured himself over the Poppaea business. The charge of corrupting the Guards I regarded as unproved. The soldiers testified in a formal, stilted way which suggested that they, had learned the testimony off by heart beforehand, and when I, questioned them merely repeated the same evidence. But then I have never heard a Guardsman testify in any other tones, they make a drill of everything.

I ordered everyone out of the room but Vitellius, young Pompey, and Pallas - Messalina had burst into tears and hurried off some minutes before - and told them that I would not sentence Asiaticus without first securing their approval. Vitellius said that, frankly, there seemed no reasonable doubt of Asiaticus's guilt, and that he was as shocked and grieved as I was: Asiaticus was a very old friend and had been a favourite of my mother Antonia's, who had used her interest at court to advance them both. Then he had had a most distinguished career and had never hung back where patriotic duty called: he had been one of the volunteers who came to Britain with me, and-though he had not arrived in time for the battle, that was the fault of the storm, not due to any cowardice on his part. So if he had now become mad and betrayed his own past it would not be showing too much clemency to allow him to be his own executioner: of course, strictly, he deserved to be hurled from the Tarpeian Rock, and to have his corpse dishonoured by being dragged off by a hook through the mouth and thrown into the Tiber. Vitellius told me too, that Asiaticus had practically confessed his guilt by sending him a message, as soon as he was arrested, begging him for old friendship's sake to secure his acquittal or, if it came to the worst, permission to commit suicide. Vitellius added: `He knew that you would give him a fair trial: you have never.' failed to give anyone a fair trial. So how ; could my intercession be expected to help him? If he was guilty, then he would be pronounced guilty; or if he was innocent, he would be acquitted.' Young Pompey protested that no mercy should be shown Asiaticus; but perhaps he was thinking; of his own safety. Assario and the Tristonia sisters, his relations, had, been mentioned as Asiaticus's accomplices, and he wished to prove his own loyalty.

I sent a message to Asiaticus to inform him that I was adjourning the trial for twenty-four hours, and that, meanwhile, he was released from his fetters. He would surely understand that message. Meanwhile Messalina had hurried to Poppaea to tell her that Asiaticus was on the point- of being condemned, and advised her to forestall her own trial and execution by immediate suicide. I knew nothing about this.

Asiaticus died courageously enough. He spent his last day-winding up his affairs, eating and drinking as usual, and taking a walk in the Gardens of Lucullus (as they were still called), giving instructions to the gardeners about the trees and flowers and fishpools. 'When he found that they had built his funeral pyre close I to a fine avenue of hornbeams he was most indignant and fined the freedman responsible for choosing the site a quarter's pay. `Didn't you realize, idiot, that the breeze would carry the flames into the foliage of those lovely old trees and spoil the whole appearance of the Gardens?' His last words to his family before the surgeon severed an artery in his leg and let him bleed to death in a warm bath were, 'Good-bye, my-dear-friends. It would have been less ignominious to have died by the dark artifices of Tiberiuss or the fury of Caligula, than now to fall a sacrifice to the imbecilic credulity of Claudius, betrayed by the woman I loved and by the friend I trusted.' For he was now convinced that Poppaea and Vitellius had arranged for the prosecution.

Two days later I asked Scipio to dine with me, and inquired after his wife's health, as a tactful way of indicating that if he still loved Poppaea and was- ready to forgive her, I would take no further action in the matter. 'She's dead, Caesar,' he answered, and began sobbing with his head in his hands.

Asiaticus's. family, the Valerians, to show that they did not wish to associate themselves with his treasonable words, were then obliged to present Messalina with, the Gardens of Lucullus as a peace-offering; though naturally I never suspected it at the time, they were the real cause of Asiaticus's death. I tried the Petra brothers and executed them, and the Tristonia sisters then committed suicide. As for Assario, it seems that I signed his death-warrant: but I have no recollection of this. When I told Pallas to warn him for trial I was told that he had already been executed, and was shown the warrant, which was certainly not forged. The only explanation that I can offer is that Messalina, or possibly Polybius, who was her tool, smuggled the death-warrant in among a number of other unimportant ones that I had to sign, and that I signed it without reading it. I know now that this sort of trick. was constantly played on me that they, took advantage of the strain from which my eyes were again suffering (so much that I had to stop all reading by artificial light) to read out as official reports and letters for my signature improvisations that did not correspond at all with the written documents.

About this time Vinicius died, of poison. I heard, some years later, that he had refused to sleep with Messalina and that the poison was administered by her; certainly he died on the day after he had dined at the Palace. The story is quite likely to be true. So now Vinicius, Vinicianus, and Asiaticus, the three men who had offered themselves as Emperor instead of me, were all dead, and their deaths seemed to lie at my door. Yet I had a clean conscience about them. Vinicianus and Asiaticus were clearly traitors, and Vinicius, I thought, had died as the result of an accident. But the Senate and People knew Messalina better than I did, and hated me because of her. That was the invisible barrier between them and me, and nobody had the courage to break it down.

As the result of a strong speech that I made about Asiaticus, at a session in which Sosibius and Crispinus were voted cash presents for their services, the Senate voluntarily surrendered to me the power of granting its members permission to leave. Italy on any pretext.

Chapter 26

MY daughter Antonia had been married for some years to young Pompey but they had no children yet. One evening I visited her at her house, in Pompey's absence, and it occurred to me how disconsolate and bored she now, always looked. Yes, she agreed, she was bored, and very bored and more than bored. So I suggested that she' would feel much happier if she had a child and told her that I thought it was her duty as a healthy young woman with servants and plenty of money to have not only one child but several. With a family of young children she need never complain of boredom. She flared up and said: 'Father, only a fool would expect a field of corn to spring up where no seed has been sown. Don't blame the soil, blame the farmer. He sows salt, not seed.' And to my astonishment she explained that the marriage had never been properly consummated; and not only that, but she had been used in the vilest possible way by my son-in-law. I asked her why she had not told me of this before, and she said that she didn't think that I would believe her, because I had never really loved her, not as I loved her half-brother and half-sister; and that young Pompey had boasted to her that he stood so well with me now that he could make me do anything he wanted and believe anything that he told me. So what chance had she? Besides, there would be the shame of having to testify in court to the horrible things that he had done to her, and she could not face that.

I grew angry, as any father would, and assured her that I loved her dearly, and that it was chiefly on her account that I treated Pompey with such respect and confidence. I swore on my honour that if only half of what she had told me was true I would take immediate vengeance on the scoundrel. And that her modesty would be spared: the matter would never go to court. What was the use of being an Emperor if I couldn't use the privileges of my position to good private purpose occasionally, as a slight counterbalance to the responsibility and labour and pain that went with it? And at what hour was Pompey expected back?

`He'll be home at about midnight,' said Antonia, miserably, `and by one o'clock he'll be in his room. He'll have a few drinks first. It's nine chances in ten that he'll take that disgusting Lycidas to bed with him: he bought him at the Asiaticus sale for twenty thousand gold pieces and he's not had eyes for anyone else since. In a way it's been a great relief to me. So you know how: bad things must be when I say that I infinitely prefer him to sleep with Lycidas than with me. Yes, I was in love with Pompey once. Love's a funny thing, isn't it?'

`Very well, then, my poor, poor Antonia. When Pompey's in his room and settled down for the night, light a pair of oil lamps and put them on the window-sill of this room for a signal. Then leave the rest to me.'

She put the oil lamps on the window-sill an hour before dawn; then she came down and made the janitor open the front door. I was there. I brought Geta and a couple of Guards sergeants into the house with me and sent them upstairs while I waited in the hall below with Antonia. She had sent all the servants away except the janitor, who had been a slave-boy of mine. She was crying a little and we clasped hands as we anxiously listened for the sound of screams and scuffling from the bedroom.. Not a sound was heard, but presently. Geta came down with the sergeants and reported that my orders had been obeyed. Pompey and the slave Lycidas had been killed with a single javelin thrust.

This was the first time that I had used my power as Emperor to avenge a private wrong; but if I had not been Emperor I should have felt just the same and done whatever lay in my power to destroy Pompey; and though the law dealing with unnatural offences has fallen into abeyance for many years now, because no jury seems willing to convict, Pompey legally, deserved to die. My only fault was that I executed him summarily; but that was the cleanest way of dealing with him. When a gardener comes across a filthy insect eating the heart out, of one of his best roses he does not bring it to court before a jury of the gardeners: he crushes it then and there between; his finger-nails. A few months later I married Antonia to Faustus, a descendant of the dictator Sulla, a modest, capable, and hard-working fellow who has turnedout an

excellent son-in-law. Two years ago he was Consul. They had a child, a boy, but it was very weakly and died, and Antonia has not been able to have another, because of the injury done to her by a careless midwife at the time of her delivery.

Shortly after this I executed Polybius, who was now my Minister of Arts, on Messalina's giving me proof that he was selling citizenships for his own profit. It was a great shock when I found that Polybius had been playing me false. I had trained him up in my service from a child, and had trusted him implicitly. He had just helped me complete the official autobiography that the Senate had requested me to write for the national archives. I had treated him so familiarly, in fact,, that one day when he and I were walking in the Palace grounds, discussing some antiquarian point or other, I did not dismiss him when the two Consuls came, up to give me their customary morning greeting. This offended their dignity, but if I was not too proud to walk beside Polybius and listen to his opinions, why should they have been? I allowed him the greatest freedom, and I had never known him to abuse it, though once he was rather too free with his tongue in the Theatre: They were playing a comedy of Menander's, and an actor had just delivered the line:

A prosperous whipstock scarce can be endured.

Someone in the wings laughed pointedly at this. It must have been Mnester. At any rate everyone turned and stared at Polybius, who as my Minister of Arts had the task of keeping the actors in order: if an actor showed too much independence Polybius saw to it for me that he was severely whipped.

Polybius shouted back 'Yes, and Menander says in his Thessaly:

Who once were goatherds now have royal power.'

That was a hit at Mnester, who started life as a goatherd in Thessaly and was now known to be Messalina's chief infatuation.

I did not know it then, but Messalina had been having sexual relations with Polybius too and he was stupid enough to be jealous of Mnester. So she got rid of him, as I have told you. My other freedmen took Polybius's death as an affront to themselves - they formed a very close guild, always shielded each other loyally and never competed for my favour or showed any jealousy among themselves Polybius had said nothing in his own defence, not wishing, I suppose, to incriminate his guild-brothers, many of whom must have been implicated in the same discreditable traffic in citizenships.

As for Mnester, it now happened on several occasions that when billed to dance he would fail to put in an appearance. It used to cause an uproar in the theatre. I, must have been very stupid; though his absence always coincided with a sick headache of Messalina's, which prevented her attendance too, it never occurred to me to draw the obvious conclusion. I had to apologize several times to the public and undertake that it would not occur again. On one occasion I said, in joke: 'My Lords, you can't' accuse me of hiding him away at the Palace.' This remark caused inordinate laughter. Everyone but myself knew where Mnester was. When I got back to the Palace, Messalina used to send for me, and I would find her, in bed in a darkened room with a damp cloth over her eyes. She would say in a faint voice: 'What, my dear, do you mean to say Mnester didn't dance again? Then I didn't miss anything after all. I was lying here simply seething with envy. I got up once and started to dress, to come after all, but the pain was so frightful that I had to get back to bed. Was the play very dull without him?'

I would say: 'We really must insist on his keeping his engagements: the City can't be treated like this, time after time.'

Messalina would sigh: 'I don't know. He's very highly strung, poor fellow. Just like a woman. Great artists are always like that. He gets sick headaches at the least provocation, he says. And if he felt only one-tenth as ill to-day as I have felt, it would be the greatest cruelty to insist on his dancing. It's not shamming, either. He loves his work and he's greatly distressed when he fails his public. Leave me now, dearest; I want to sleep if I can.'

So I would tiptoe out and nothing more would be said about Mnester until the same thing happened again. I never thought as highly of Mnester, though, as most people did. He has been compared to the great actor Roscius, who under the Republic attained to such eminence in his profession that he became a byword for artistic excellence. People, rather absurdly, still call a clever architect, or a learned historian, or even a smart boxer a very Roscius. Mnester was no Roscius except in that very loose sense. I admit that I never saw Roscius act. There is nobody now living whoever did. We must all depend on the verdict of our great-grandparents in discussing him, and they agree that Roscius's chief aim in-acting was 'to keep in character: and that noble king, or cunning pimp, or boastful soldier, or simple clown whatever Roscius chose to be, that he was, to the life, without affectation. Whereas Mnester was a mass of mannerisms, very charming and graceful mannerisms, I'm sure, but in the final sense he was not an actor, he was just a pretty fellow with a neat pair of legs and a gift for choreographical improvisation.

It was now that Aulus Plautius returned home after four years command in Britain and I had the pleasure of persuading the Senate to grant him a triumph. It was not, however, a full triumph, as I should have liked, but a lesser triumph, or ovation. If a general's services are too great to be rewarded merely with triumphal ornaments and yet have not, for some technical reason, entitled him to a full triumph, he is given this lesser sort. For example, if the war has not yet been completely finished; or if there has been insufficient bloodshed; or if the enemy is not considered a worthy one as, long ago, after the defeat of the revolted slaves under Spartacus, though, indeed, Spartacus gave our armies more trouble than many a great foreign nation. In the case of Aulus Plautius, the objection was that his conquests were not yet secure enough to allow him to withdraw his troops. So instead of a chariot with four horses, he rode into the City on horseback, and, he wore a myrtle wreath, not one of laurel, and carried no sceptre: The Senate did not head the procession, and there was no corps of trumpeters, and when the procession was done Aulus sacrificed a ram, not a bull. But otherwise the proceedings were the same as in a full triumph, and to show that it was no jealousy of mine that prevented him from winning the same honour as I had done, I came to meet him as he rode down the Sacred Way and offered him my congratulations and let him ride on my right side (the more honourable position) and myself supported him as he went on his knees up the Capitol steps. I also acted as his host at the banquet, and when the banquet was over, again put him on my right side when we brought him home to his house by torchlight.

Aulus was very grateful to me for this, but even more grateful, he told me in private, for having hushed up the scandal of his wife and the Christian love-feast (followers of that Jewish sect were now called Christians) and for having left her to his jurisdiction. He said that when a woman is unavoidably parted from her husband - her health had not allowed her to go to Britain - she is apt to feel lonely and take strange fancies into her head and fall an easy prey to religious charlatans, especially the Jewish and Egyptian sort. But she was a good woman and a good wife and he trusted that she would soon be cured of this nonsense. He was right. Two years later I arrested all the leading Christians in Rome; together with all the orthodox Jewish missionaries, and sent them out of the country, and Aulus's wife was a great help to me in rounding them up.

The chief emotional appeal of Christianity was that this Joshua, or Jesus, was said to have risen from the dead, as no man had ever done before, except in legends: after being crucified he had visited his friends apparently none the worse for his experience, had eaten and drunk : to prove that he was no vision and then gone up to Heaven in a blaze of glory. And there was no proof that these were all, lies, because,. as it, happened, there had been an earthquake just after the crucifixion, which had dislodged a heavy stone from the mouth of the tomb where the corpse had been put. The guard had fled in panic, and when they came back the corpse was gone; evidently it had been stolen. Once a story like this begins to circulate in the East it is difficult to stop it, and it would have been undignified to argue against its absurdity in a public edict; but I did publish a strong order in Galilee, where the Christians were most numerous, making it a capital offence to violate graves. But I must waste no more time over these ridiculous Christians: I must continue with my own story.

I must tell about the three letters which I added to the Roman alphabet,. and about the great Saecular Games I celebrated, and about the census I took of Roman citizens, and about my revival of the ancient religious art of soothsaying which had now fallen into neglect, and-about various important edicts of mine and laws which I inspired the Senate to pass. But perhaps it would be better first to finish briefly my account of Britain; now that Aulus Plautius has been brought safely home what happened there subsequently will not interest my readers greatly. I sent out one Ostorius to take Aulus's place, and he had a most difficult time. Plautius had completed the conquest of the plain of South Britain, but, as I say, the mountain tribes of Wales and the warlike North-. Midlanders persisted in raiding the frontiers of the new province; Caractacus had married the daughter of the King of South Wales and was leading the South Welsh army in person. As soon as he arrived Ostorius announced that he would disarm all British provincials whose loyalty he suspected; he would thus be free to send his main forces against the tribes beyond the frontier, leaving only small garrisons behind. This announcement was generally resented, and it was understood by the Icenians, who were free allies of ours, that the disarmament rule would be extended to them too. They made a sudden rising, and Ostorius at Colchester found himself threatened by a large army of north-eastern tribes, with not one regular regiment at hand: they were all away in the centre or far west of the island and he had nobody with him but French and Batavians. However, he chose to risk an immediate-battle and came off victorious. The Icenian confederacy sued for peace and was granted easy terms, and Ostorius then pushed his regular regiments north, annexing the entire Midlands, and halting on the frontier of the Brigantians. The Brigantians are a savage and powerful federation of, tribes who occupy the north of the island as far as its narrowest point; beyond them, the wild mountainous land that spreads out again, unexplored and frightful, for another few hundred miles is inhabited by those red-headed terrors, the Goidels. Ostorius made an expedition to the River Dee in the west and was plundering the valley of that river, which flows north to the Irish Sea, when he heard that the Brigantians were on the move behind him. He turned back and defeated a considerable force of them, capturing several hundred men, including some leading noblemen and a son of the King. The King of the Brigantians pledged himself to ten years of honourable peace if the prisoners were returned; and Ostorius accepted this, but kept the prince and five noblemen as hostages under the title of guests. He was then free to conduct operations in the Welsh hills against Caractacus. He used three out of his four regular regiments, basing one at Caerleon on the Usk, and two at Shrewsbury on the Severn. The remainder of the island was garrisoned only by auxiliaries, except for the Ninth, at Lincoln, and a colony of time-expired veterans at Colchester, where they had been given lands, live stock, and captives to work for, them. This colony was the first Roman municipality in Britain, and I sent a letter sanctioning the foundation there of a temple to the God Augustus,

It took Ostorius three years to subdue South and Mid Wales: Caractacus was a brave enemy, and when he was forced up into North Wales with the remnants of his army he managed to fire the tribes there with his own courage. But Ostorius eventually defeated him in a last battle, in which we too lost heavily, and captured his wife, his daughter, a brother-in-law, and two of his nephews in the British camp. Caractacus himself fought his way north-east in a desperate rear-guard action and appeared, a few days later at the court of the Queen of the Brigantians (her father, the King, had died and she was the only member of the royal house surviving, apart from the hostage prince in Ostorius's hands, so they had made her Queen). He urged her to continue the war, but she was no fool. She had him put in chains and sent him to Ostorius as a proof of her loyalty to the oath her father had sworn.

Ostorius in return sent her back the noble hostages, one of whom she married. Her brother, the prince, she put to death, because he was known to have shown cowardice on the field of battle, unlike her new husband, who had only been captured after receiving even wounds and accounting for five Roman soldiers. This Queen, whose name is Cartimandua, has proved a most loyal ally.

She quarrelled with her husband because he said that he did not regard himself as bound by the old King's oath to maintain peace with us. He could not persuade the Brigantians to make war on us, so he went down to South Wales and started a fresh revolt there. Our garrison at Caerleron was suddenly attacked in great force. The enemy were beaten off, but our losses included a battalion commander and eight captains of the Second. Not long after this two battalions of French auxiliaries, out foraging, were surprised and annihilated. Ostorius, worn out by three years of incessant fighting, took these reverses too much to heart: he fell sick and died, poor fellow, though it must have been some comfort to him that he was awarded triumphal ornaments just before this. That was two years ago. I sent out a general called Didius to take over the command of the province, but, while he was on his way the Fourteenth were beaten in a pitched battle and had to retreat to their camp, leaving prisoners in the, hands of the enemy.

Cartimandua's husband then left South Wales and made an attack on Cartimandua herself, who had earned his anger- by putting to death two of his brothers who were plotting against her. She appealed for help to Didius, and-he sent her four battalions of the Ninth and two of Batavians. With these and her own forces she defeated her husband, captured him, and made him swear vassalage to herself and friendship to the Romans. She then pardoned him, and they are reigning together again with apparent friendliness: there have been no border raids reported since: Meanwhile Didius has restored order in South Wales.

So let me now take leave of my province of Britain, which has cost us heavily in men and money and has so far yielded small returns except in glory. But I regard the occupation as a good investment for Rome in the long run, and if we treat the natives with justice and good faith they will become valuable allies and, eventually, valuable citizens. The riches of a country do not only lie in corn, metals, and cattle. What the Empire needs most is men, and if she can add to her resources by the annexation of a country where an honest, warlike, and industrious race is bred, that is a better acquisition than any spice island of the Indies or gold-bearing territory of Central Asia. The faith that Queen Cartimandua and her nobles have shown, and the courage in adversity of King Caractacus, are the happiest possible auguries of the future.

Caractacus was brought to Rome, and I decreed a general holiday to celebrate his arrival. The whole City came out to look at him. The Guards Division was on parade, outside the Camp, and I was sitting on a tribunal platform erected for the occasion at the Camp gate. Trumpeters sounded and, in the distance a small procession was moving across the turf towards me. First came a detachment of captured British, soldiers; then Caractacus's household thegns; then wagons heaped with trappings and collars and weapons - not only Caractacus's own, but all that he had won in wars with his neighbours, captured in that camp at Cefn Carnedd then Caractacus's wife, daughter, brother-in-law, and- nephews, and lastly Caractacus himself, carrying his head high and looking neither to the right nor the left until he came to my platform. There he made a dignified obeisance, and asked permission to address me. I. granted him permission and he spoke in a frank and noble way, in such remarkably fluent Latin, too, that I positively envied him: I am a wretched speaker and always get entangled in my sentences.

'Caesar, you see me here in chains before you, suing for my life, after having resisted your country's arms for seven long years. I might well have held out for seven years longer if I had not trusted Queen Cartimandua to respect the sacred guest-right of our island. In Britain when a man claims hospitality at any house, and is given salt and bread and wine, the host then holds himself answerable for his guest's life with his own. A man took refuge once at my father Cymbeline's court and, after having eaten his salt, revealed himself as the murderer of my grandfather. But my father said: "You are my guest. I cannot harm you." Queen Cartimandua by putting me in these chains and sending me here did more honour to you as her ally than to herself as the Queen of the Brigantians.

'I make a voluntary confession of my own faults. The letter that my brother Togodumnus wrote to you, and that I did not dissuade him from sending, was as foolish as it was, discourteous. We were young and proud then and trusting to hearsay we underestimated the strength of your Roman armies, the loyalty of your generals, and your own great qualities as a commander. If I had matched the glory of my lineage and of my own feats with a becoming-moderation in prosperity I should no doubt have entered this City as a friend, not as a captive; nor would you then have disdained to welcome me royally, as a son of my father Cymbeline whom your God Augustus honoured as an ally and overlord like him of many a conquered tribe.

'For my prolonged resistance to you, once I found that you were bent on annexing my kingdom and the kingdoms of my allies, I have no apologies to offer. I had men and arms, chariots; horses, and treasure: do you wonder that I was unwilling to part with them? You Romans aim at extending your sway over all mankind, but it does not follow that all mankind will immediately accept that sway. You must first prove your right to rule, and prove it with the sword. It has been a long war between us, Caesar, and your armies have pursued me from tribe to tribe, and from fort to fort, and I have taken heavy toll of them; but- now I am caught and the victory is yours at last. If I had surrendered to your lieutenant Aulus Plautius at that first engagement on the Medway I should have been proved an, unworthy foe and Aulus Plautius would not have sent for you, and so, you would never have celebrated your deserved triumph. Therefore respect your enemy, now that he is humbled, grant him his life, and your noble clemency will never be forgotten either by your own country or by mine. Britain will reverence the clemency of the victor, if Rome approves the courage of the conquered.'

I called. Aulus to me. 'For my part I am willing to let this brave king go free. To restore him to his throne in Britain would be everywhere regarded as weakness, so that I cannot do: But I am inclined to let him stay; here in Rome as a guest of, the City, with a pension suited; to his needs; and also to release his .family and household thegns. What do you say?' -

Aulus answered: `Caesar, Caractacus has shown himself a gallant enemy. He has tortured or executed no prisoners, poisoned no wells, fought fair, and kept faith. If you release him I shall be proud to take him by the hand, and offer him my friendship.'

I freed Caractacus, He thanked-me gravely: `I wish for every Roman citizen a heart like yours.' That night he and his family dined at the Palace. Aulus was there, too and we old campaigners fought the battle of Brentwood over again as the wine went round. I told Caractacus how nearly he and I had met in a hand-to-hand conflict. He laughed and said: `If I had only known! But if you are still eager for the fight, I'm your man; To-morrow morning on Mars Field, you on your mare and me on foot? The disparity of our-ages will make that fair.' Another remark of his has since become famous: I cannot understand, my Lords, how as, rulers of a City as glorious as this is, with its houses like marble cliffs, its shops like royal treasuries, its temples like the dreams that our Druids report when they return from magical visits to the Kingdom of the Dead, you can ever find it in your hearts to covet the possession of our poor island huts.'

Chapter 27

EXPIATORY games, called Tarentine or Saecular, are celebrated at Rome to mark the beginning of each now cycle, or age of men. They take the form of a festival of three days and nights in honour of Pluto and Proserpine, the Gods of the Underworld. Historians agree that these games were first formally established as a public ritual by Publicola, a Valerian, in the two hundred and fiftieth year after the foundation of Rome - which was also the year in which the Claudians came to Rome from Sabine country; but they had been celebrated 110 years previously as a family ritual of the Valerians, in accordance with an oracle of Delphic Apollo. Publicola made a vow that they should be performed at the beginning of every new cycle thereafter so long as the City stood. Since his time there have been five celebrations, but at irregular intervals because of differences of opinion as to when each new cycle started. Sometimes the cycle has been taken as the natural cycle of 110 years, which is the ancient Etruscan method of reckoning, and sometimes as the Roman civil cycle of 100 years, and sometimes the Games have been celebrated as soon as it was clear that nobody survived who had taken part on the previous occasion.

The most recent celebration under the Republic was in the six hundred and seventh year from the foundation of the City, and the only celebration that had taken place since then was Augustus's in the seven hundred and thirty-sixth year. The year of Augustus's celebration could not be justified as marking the hundredth' or hundred-and-tenth year from the previous celebration, nor as marking the death of the last man who had taken part in it; nor could it be understood as a date arrived at by calculation from Publicola's time, reckoning in 100 or 110 year terms. Augustus, or rather the Board of Fifteen, his religious advisers, were reckoning from a supposed first celebration of the Games in the ninety-seventh year from the foundation of the City. I admit that in my history of his religious reforms I had accepted this date as the correct one, but only because to criticize him on this important point would have got me into serious trouble with my grandmother Livia. The fact was (not to go into the matter in detail) that his reckoning; was incorrect even if the first celebration had taken place when he said it did, which was not so. I reckoned forward from Publicola's festival in natural cycles of 110 years (for this clearly was what a cycle meant to Publicola himself) until I reached the six hundred and ninetieth year from the foundation of the City. That was when the last celebration should have really taken place, and then not again until the eight hundredth year, the date which we have just reached in this story, namely, the seventh year of my own monarchy.

Now, each cycle has a certain fatal character, which is given it by the events of the inaugurating year. The first year of the previous cycle had been marked by the birth of Augustus, the death of Mithridates the Great, Pompey's victory over the Phoenicians and his capture of Jerusalem, Catiline's unsuccessful attempt at a popular revolution, and Caesar's assumption of the office of High Pontiff. Is it necessary for me to point out the significance of each of these events? that for the next cycle our arms were destined to be successful abroad, and the Empire to be greatly extended, popular liberty to be suppressed, and the Caesars to be the mouthpieces of the Gods? Now it was my intention to, expiate the sins and crimes of this old cycle, and inaugurate a new one with solemn sacrifices. For it was in this year that I counted on completing my work of reform. I would then hand the government of a now prosperous and well-organized nation -back to the -Senate and People, from whom it had so long been withheld.

I had thought the whole plan out in detail. It was clear that government by the Senate under Consuls elected annually had great disadvantages: the single-year term was not long enough. And the Army did not wish to have its Commander-in-Chief constantly changed. My plan, briefly, was to make a free gift to the nation of the Privy Purse,, except so much of it as was needed to support me as a private citizen, and the Imperial lands, including Egypt, and to introduce a law providing for a change of government every fifth year. The ex-Consuls of the previous five-year period together with certain representatives of the People and of the Knights would form a cabinet to advise and assist one of their number, chosen by religious lot and known as the Consul-in-Chief, in the government of the country. Each member of the cabinet would be responsible to the Consul-in-Chief for a department corresponding with the departments that I - had been building up under my freedmen, or for the government of one of the frontier provinces. The Consuls of the year would act as a link between the Consul-in-Chief and the Senate, and would perform their usual duties as appeal judges; the Protectors of the People would act as a link between the Consul-in-Chief and the People. The Consuls would be elected from the Senatorial order by popular election, and in national emergencies recourse would be had to a plebiscite. I had thought out a number of ingenious safeguards for this constitution and congratulated myself that it was a workable one: my freedmen would remain as permanent officials in charge of the clerical staff, and the new government would benefit by their advice. Thus the redeeming features of monarchical government would be retained without prejudice to republican liberty. And to keep the Army contented I would embody in the new constitution a measure providing for a bounty of money to be paid every five years, proportionate to the success of our arms abroad and to the increase of wealth at home. The governorships of home provinces would be distributed between knights who had risen to high command in the Army, and senators. . For the present I told nobody of my plans, but continued with a light heart at my work. I was convinced that as soon as I proved by a voluntary resignation of the monarchy that my intentions had never been tyrannical and that such summary executions as I, had ordered had been forced on me, I would be forgiven all my lesser errors for the sake of the great work of reform that I had accomplished, and all suspicions would be put to rest. I told myself: 'Augustus always said that he would resign and restore the Republic: but somehow never did, because of Livia. And Tiberius always said the same, but somehow he never did, because he was afraid of the hatred that he had earned by his cruelty and tyranny. But I really am going to resign: there's nothing to prevent me. My conscience is clear, and Messalina's no Livia.'

These Saecular Games were celebrated not in the summer, as on previous occasions, but on the twenty-first of April, the Shepherds' Festival, because that was the very day on which. Romulus and his shepherds had founded Rome 800 years before. I followed Augustus's example in not making the Gods of the Underworld the only deities addressed; though the Tarentum, a volcanic cleft in Mars Field, which was the traditional place for the celebration and was said to be one entrance to Hell, was converted into a temporary theatre and illuminated with coloured lights and made the centre of the Festival. I had sent heralds out some months before to summon all citizens (in the old formula) 'to a spectacle which nobody now living has ever seen before, and which nobody now living shall ever see again'. This provoked a few sneers, because Augustus's celebration of sixty-four years previously was remembered by a number of old men and women, some of whom had actually taken part in it. But it was the old formula, and it was justified by Augustus's celebration not having been performed at the proper time.

On the morning of the first day the Board of Fifteen distributed to all free citizens, from the steps of Jove's temple on the Capitoline Hill and Apollo's on the Palatine, torches, sulphur, and bitumen, the instruments of purification; also wheat, barley, and beans, some to serve as an offering to the Fates and some to be given as pay to the actors taking part in the festival. Early morning sacrifices had been simultaneously offered in all the principal temples of Rome, to Jove, Juno, Neptune, Minerva, Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Ceres, Vulcan, Mars, Diana, Vesta, Hercules, Augustus, Latona, the Fates, and to Pluto and Proserpine. 'But the chief event of the day was the sacrifice of a white bull to Jove and a white cow to Juno, on the Capitol, and everyone was expected to attend this. Then we went in procession to the Tarentum theatre and sang choruses in honour of Apollo and Diana. The afternoon was taken up by chariot races and wild-beast hunts and sword-fighting in the Circus and amphitheatres and scenic games in honour of Apollo in the theatre of Pompey.

At nine o'clock that night, after a great burning of sulphur and sprinkling of holy water in consecration of the whole of Mars Field, I sacrificed three male lambs to the Fates on three underground altars built by the bank of the Tiber, while a crowd of citizens with me waved their lighted torches, offered their wheat, barley, and beans, and sang a hymn of repentance for past errors. The blood of the lambs was sprinkled on the altars and their carcasses burned. At the Tarentum theatre more hymns were then sung and the expiatory part of the festival 'gone through with appropriate solemnity. Then scenes from Roman legend were acted, including a: ballet illustrative of the fight between the three brothers Horatius and the three brothers Curiatius which was said to have occurred close by on the day of the first celebration of the Games by the Valerian family. The next day the noblest matrons in Rome, headed by Messalina, assembled on the Capitol and performed supplications to Juno. The Games continued as on the previous day: 300 lions' and 100 bears were killed in the amphitheatre, not to mention bulls and numerous sword-fighters. That night I sacrificed a black hog and a black pig to Mother Earth. On the last day Greek and Latin hymns were sung in chorus in the sanctuary of Apollo by three times nine beautiful boys and: maidens, and white oxen were sacrificed to him. Apollo was so honoured because his oracle had originally ordered the institution of the Festival. The hymns were to implore the protection of Apollo, his sister Diana, his mother Latona, and his father Jove, for all cities, towns, and magistrates in the whole Empire. One of them was Horace's famous ode composed in honour of Apollo and Diana, which did not have to be brought up to date, as you might have supposed: in fact, one verse of the hymn was more appropriate than when it was first composed:

Moved by the solemn voice of prayer

Both deities shall make great Rome their care,

Benignly turn the direful woes

Of famine and of weeping war

From Rome and noble Caesar far,

And pour them on our British foes.

Horace had written that at a time when Augustus contemplated a war against Britain, but it never came off, so the British were not officially our foes, as they now were.

More sacrifices to all the Gods, more chariot races, ; swordfights, wild-beast hunts, athletic contests. That night at the Tarentum I sacrificed a black ram, a black sheep, a black bull, a black cow, a black boar, and a black sow, to Pluto and Proserpine; and the Festival was over for another 110 years. It had gone through without a single error or evil omen of any sort being reported. When I asked Vitellius whether he had enjoyed. the Festival, he said: `It was excellent and I, wish you many happy returns of the day.' I burst out laughing and he apologized for his absentmindedness. He had unconsciously been identifying Rome's birthday with mine, he explained, but hoped that the phrase might prove an omen of life prolonged for me to a remarkable and vigorous old age. But Vitellius could be very disingenuous: I believe now that he had thought the joke out weeks beforehand.

To me the proudest moment of the whole festival was on the afternoon of the third day, when the Troy Game was performed on Mars Field and my little Britannicus, then only just six years old, took part in the skirmish with boys twice his age and managed his pony and his weapons like a Hector or Caractacus. The people reserved their loudest cheers for him. They commented on his extraordinary likeness to my brother Germanicus, and prophesied splendid triumphs for him as soon as he was old enough to go to the wars. A grand-nephew of mine also took part in the Games, boy of eleven, the son of my niece Agrippinilla. His name was Lucius Domitius,* and I have mentioned him before, but only in passing. The time has now come for a fuller account of him.

*later the Emperor Nero

He was the son of that Domitius Ahenobarbus (or Brassbeard), my maternal cousin, who had the reputation of being the bloodiest-minded man in Rome. Bloody-mindedness ran in the family, like the red beard, and it was said that it was no wonder they had brass beards, to match their iron faces and leaden hearts. When a young man Domitius Ahenobarbus had served on Gaius Caesar's staff in the East and had killed one of his own freedmen by locking him up in a room with no water to drink and nothing but salt fish and dry bread to eat, because he had refused to get properly drunk at his birthday banquet. When Gaius heard of this he told Domitius that his services were no longer needed and that he no longer counted him among his friends. Domitius returned to Rome, and on the way back, in a freak of petulance, suddenly spurred his horse along a village street on the Appian Way and deliberately ran down a child who was playing in the road with its doll. Again, once in the open Market Place, he picked a quarrel with a knight to whom he owed money, and gouged out one of his eyes with his thumb. My uncle Tiberius made a friend of Domitius in the latter years of his reign: for he deliberately cultivated the society of the cruel and base, with the object, it: is supposed, of feeling somewhat virtuous by comparison. He married Domitius to his adoptive granddaughter, my niece Agrippinilla, and there was one child of the marriage, this Lucius. Congratulated by his friend on the birth of an heir, Domitius scowled: `Spare your congratulations, blockheads. If you had any real patriotism you'd go to the cradle and strangle the child at once. Don't you realize that Agrippinilla and I between us command all the known vices, human and inhuman, and that he's destined to grow up the most detestable imp that ever plagued our unfortunate country? That's not guesswork, either: have any of you seen his horoscope? It's enough to make you shudder.' Domitius was arrested on the double charge of treason and.incest with his sister Domitia - of course, that meant nothing in Tiberius's time, it was a mere formality. Tiberius died opportunely and he was liberated by Caligula. Not long afterwards Domitius himself died, of the dropsy. He had named Caligula in his will as young Lucius's co-heir, leaving him two-thirds of the estate. When Agrippinilla was banished to her island, Caligula seized the rest of the estate too, so Lucius was now practically an orphan and quite unprovided for. However, his aunt Domitia took care of him. (She must not be confused with her sister, Domitia Lepida, Messalina's mother.) She was a woman who gave herself wholly to pleasure and only bothered about young Lucius because of a prophecy that he would one day become Emperor: she wanted to stand in well with him. It is a comment on Domitia's character that the three tutors to whom she entrusted his education were a Syrian ex-ballet-dancer, who shared Domitia's favours with a Tyrolese ex-swordfighter, this same ex-sword-fighter, and her Greek hairdresser. They gave him a fine popular education.

When two years later Agrippinilla returned she felt so little maternal feeling for her son that she told Domitia that he might as well stay with her for another few years; she would pay well to have the responsibility taken off her hands. I intervened and made Agrippinilla take him home; she took the tutors too, because Lucius was unwilling to come without them, and Domitia had other lovers. Agrippinilla also took Domitia's husband, an ex-Consul, and married him, but they soon quarrelled and separated. The next event in Lucius's life was an attempt to assassinate him while he was taking his afternoon siesta: two men walked in at the front door unchallenged by the porter, who was also taking his siesta, went upstairs, found nobody about in the corridors, wandered along until they saw a slave sleeping in front of a bedroom door which they decided must be the one that they were looking for, went in, found Lucius asleep in his bed, drew their daggers, and tiptoed close. A moment later they came rushing out again screaming: `The snake, the snake!' Though the household was alarmed by the noise no effort was made to stop them, and they escaped. What had frightened them, was the sight of a cobra's skin on Lucius's pillow. He had been wearing it wound around his leg as a cure for scrofula, from which he suffered greatly, as a child, and I suppose had been playing with it before he went to sleep: `In the darkened room it looked like a live cobra. I have since supposed that the assassins were sent by Messalina, who hated Agrippinilla but did not, for some reason or other, dare to bring any charge against her. At any rate, the story went round- that two cobras stood on guard at Lucius's bed, and Agrippinilla encouraged it. She enclosed the snakeskin in a gold snake-shaped brace Set for him to wear and told her friends that it had indeed been found on the pillow and must have been sloughed there by a cobra. Lucius told his friends that he certainly had a cobra guard, but that it was probably an exaggeration to say that it was a double-guard: he had never seen more than a single cobra. It used to drink from his water-jug. No more attempts were made to assassinate him.

Lucius, as well as Britannicus, resembled my dear brother Germanicus, who was his grandfather, but in this case it was a hateful resemblance. The features were almost identical, but the frank, noble, generous, modest character that beamed from Germanicus's face was supplanted here by slyness, baseness, meanness, vanity. And yet most people were blinded to this by the degenerate refinement he had: made of his grandfather's handsome looks: he had an effeminate beauty that made men warm to him as they would to a woman; and he knew the power of his beauty only too well, and took as long every morning over his toilet, especially over his hair, which he wore quite long, as his mother or his aunt. His hairdresser tutor tended his beauty as jealously as the head gardener in the Gardens of Lucullus tended the fruit on the famous peach wall or the unique white-fleshed cherry-tree which Lucullus had brought from the Black Sea.. It was strange to watch Lucius on Mars Field doing military exercises with sword, shield, and spear: he handled them correctly enough, as his Tyrolese sword-fighter tutor had taught him, yet it was less a drill than a ballet-dance. When, at the same age,- Germanicus was doing his exercises, one could always in imagination hear the clash of battle, trumpets, groans, and shouts, and see the gush of German blood; with Lucius one only heard the rippling applause of a theatre audience and saw roses and gold coins showered on the stage.

But enough of Lucius for the moment. A more pleasant topic is my improvement of the Roman alphabet. In my previous book I explained about the three new letters that I had suggested as necessary for modern usage: consonantal u; the vowel between i and u corresponding with Greek upsilon and the consonant which we have hitherto expressed by bs or ps. I had intended to introduce these after my triumph, but then postponed the matter until the new cycle should start. I announced my project in the Senate on the day following the Saecular Games, and it was favourably received. But I said that this was an innovation which personally affected everyone in the Empire and that I did not wish to force my own ideas on the Roman people against their will or in a hurry, so I proposed to put the matter to a plebiscite in a year's time.

Meanwhile I published a circular letter explaining and justifying my scheme. I pointed out that though one was brought up to regard the alphabet as a series no less sacred and unalterable than the year of months, or the order of the numerals, or the signs of the Zodiac, this was not really so: everything in this world was subject to change and improvement. Julius Caesar had reformed the Calendar: the convention for writing numerals had been altered and extended; the names of constellations had been changed: even the stars that composed them were not immortal - since the time of Homer, for example, the seven Pleiades had become six through the disappearance of the star Sterope, or, as she was sometimes called, Electra. So with the Latin alphabet. Not only had the linear forms of the letters changed, but so also had the significance of the letters as denoting certain spoken sounds. The Latin alphabet was borrowed from the Dorian Greeks in the time of the learned King Evander, and the Greeks had originally had it from Cadmus who brought it with him when he arrived with the Phoenician fleet, and the Phoenicians had it from the Egyptians. It was the same alphabet, but only in name. The fact was that Egyptian writing began in the form of pictures of animals and other natural objects, and that these gradually became formalized into hieroglyphic letters, and that the Phoenicians borrowed and altered them, and that the Greeks borrowed and altered these alterations, and finally the Latins borrowed and altered these alterations of alterations. The primitive Greek alphabet contained only sixteen letters, but it was added to until it numbered twenty-four and in some cities twenty-seven. The first Latin alphabet contained only twenty letters, because three Greek, aspirated consonants and the letter Z were found unnecessary. However, about 500 years from the foundation of Rome, G was introduced to supplement C, and more recently still the Z had returned. And still in my opinion the alphabet was not perfect. It would perhaps be a little awkward, at first, if the country voted in favour of the change, to remember to use these convenient new forms instead of the old ones, but the awkwardness would soon wear off and a new generation of boys taught to read and write in the new style would not feel it at all. The awkwardness and inconvenience of the change that was made in the Calendar, not quite 100 years ago, when one year had to be extended to fifteen months, and thereafter the number of days in each month altered, and the name of one of the months changed too - now, that really was something to complain about, but had it not passed off all right? Surely nobody would wish to go back to the old style?

Well, everyone discussed the matter learnedly, but perhaps nobody cared very much about it, one way or the other, at any rate not so much as I did. When eventually the vote was taken it was overwhelmingly in favour of the new letters; but rather as a personal compliment to me, I think, than from any real understanding of the issue. So the Senate voted for their immediate introduction and they appear now in all official documents and in every sort of literature from poems, scientific treatises, and legal commentaries, to advertisements of auctions, duns, love-letters, and pornographic scrawls in chalk on the walls of buildings.

And now I shall give a brief account of various public works, reforms, laws, and decrees of mine dating from the latter part of my monarchy; I shall thus, so to speak, have the table cleared for writing the painful last chapters of my life. For I have now reached a turning-point in my story, `the discovery' as tragedians call it, after which, though I continued to carry out my duties as Emperor, it was in a very different spirit from hitherto.

I finished building the aqueducts. I also built many hundreds of miles of new roads and put broken ones into good repair. I prohibited money-lenders from making loans to needy young men in expectation of their fathers' deaths: it was a disgusting traffic the interest was always extortionate and it happened more often than was natural that the father died soon afterwards. This measure was in protection of honest fathers against prodigal sons, but I also provided for honest sons with prodigal fathers: I exempted a son's lawful inheritance from the sequestration of a father's property on account of debt or felony. I also legislated on behalf of women, freeing them from the vexatious tutelage of their paternal and had then been betrayed by him in this way. He went to Suilius and asked for a return of his 4,000 gold pieces. Suilius said that he had done his best and regretted he could not pay back the money that would be a dangerous precedent. The knight committed suicide on Suilius's doorstep.

By thus reducing the barristers' fees, which in Republican Rome had been pronounced illegal, I damaged their prestige with the juries, who were thereafter more inclined to give verdicts corresponding with the facts of the case. I waged a sort of war with the barristers. Often when I was about to judge a case I used to warn the court with a smile: `I am an old man,, and my patience is easily., tried. My verdict will probably go to the side that presents its evidence in the briefest, frankest, and most lucid manner, even if it is somewhat incriminating, rather than to the side that spoils a good case by putting up an inappropriately brilliant performance.' And I would quote Homer:

Yea, when men speak, that man I most detest Who locks the verity within his breast.

I encouraged the appearance of a new sort of advocate, men without either eloquence or great legal expertness, but with common sense, clear voices, and a talent for reducing cases to their simplest elements. The best of these was called Agatho. I always gave him the benefit of the doubt when he pleaded a case before me in his pleasant, quick, precise way; in order to encourage others to emulate him.

The Forensic and Legal Institute of Telegonius, `that most learned and eloquent orator and jurist', was closed down about three years ago. It happened as follows. Telegonius, fat, bustling, and crop-haired, appeared one day in the Court of Appeal where I was presiding, and conducted a case of his own. He had been ordered by a magistrate to pay a heavy fine, on the ground that he had incited one of his slaves to kill a valuable slave of Vitellius's in a dispute. It appears that Telegonius's slave, in a barber's shop, had put on insufferable airs as a lawyer and orator. A dispute started between this fellow and Vitellius's slave, who was waiting his turn to be shaved and was known as the best cook (except mine) in all Rome, and worth at the very least 10,000 gold pieces. Telegonius's slave, with offensive eloquence, contrasted the artistic importance of oratory and cookery. Vitellius's cook was not quarrelsome but made a few dispassionate statements of fact, such as that no proper comparison could be drawn between domestic practitioners of splendid arts and splendid practitioners of domestic arts; that he expected, if not deference, at least politeness from slaves of less importance than himself; and that he was worth at least a hundred times more than his opponent. The orator, enraged by the sympathy the cook got from the other customers, snatched the razor from the barber's hand and cut the cook'sthroat with it, crying: `I'll teach you to argue with one of Telegonius's men. Telegonius had therefore been fined the full value of the murdered cook, on the ground that his slave's violence was due to an obsession of argumental infallibility inculcated by the Institute in all its employees. Telegonius now appealed on the ground that the slave had not been incited, to murder by violence, for the very motto of the Institute was: `The tongue is mightier than the blade', which constituted a direct injunction to keep to that weapon in any dispute. He also pleaded that it had been a very hot day, that the slave had been subjected to a gross insult by the suggestion that he was not worth more than a miserable 100 gold pieces - the lowest value that could be put upon his services as a trained clerk would be fifty gold pieces annually - and that therefore the only fair view could be that the cook had invited death by provocative behaviour.

Vitellius appeared as a witness. `Caesar,' he said, `I see it this way. This Telegonius's slave has killed my head-cook, a gentle, dignified person, and a perfect artist in his way, as you will yourself agree, having often highly praised his sauces and cakes. It will cost me at least ten thousand gold pieces to replace him, and even then, you may be sure, I'll never get anyone half so good. His murderer used phrases, in praise of oratory and in dispraise of cookery, that have been proved to occur, word for word, in Telegonius's own handbooks and it has been further proved that in the same handbooks, in the sections devoted to "Liberty". many violent passages occur which seek to justify a person in resorting to armed force when arguments and reason fail.'

Telegonius cross-examined Vitellius, and I must admit that he was scoring heavily when a chance visitor to the court sprang a surprise. It was Alexander the Alabarch, who happened to be in Rome and had strolled into court for amusement. He passed me up a note:

The person who calls himself Telegonius of Athens and Rome is a runaway slave of mine named Joannes, born at Alexandria in my own household, of a Syrian mother. I lost him twenty-five years ago. You will find the letter A, within a circle, pricked on his left hip, which is my household brand.

Signed: ALEXANDER, ALABARCH

I stopped the case while Telegonius was taken outside by my yeomen and identified as indeed the Alabarch's property. Imagine he had been masquerading as a Roman citizen for nearly twenty years. His entire property should have gone to the State, except for the 10,000 gold pieces which had been awarded to Vitellius, but I let the Alabarch keep half of it. In return the Alabarch made me a present of Telegonius, whom I handed over to Narcissus for disposal: Narcissus set him to work at the useful, if humble, task of keeping court records.

This, then, was the sort of way I governed. And I widely extended the Roman citizenship, intending that no province whose inhabitants were loyal, orderly, and prosperous should long remain inferior in civic status to Rome and the rest of Italy. The first city of Northern France for which I secured the citizenship was Autun.

I then took the census of Roman citizens.

The total number of citizens, including women and children, now stood at 5,984,072, compared with the 4,937,000 given by the census of the year that Augustus died, and again with the 4,233,000 given by the census taken in the year after my father died. Written briefly on a page these numbers are not impressive, but think of them in human terms. If the whole Roman citizenry were to file past me at a brisk walk, toe to heel, it would be two whole years before the last one came in sight. And these were only the true citizens. If the entire population of the Empire went past, over 70,000,000 in number, now that Britain, Morocco, and Palestine had to be reckoned in, it would take twelve times as long, namely, twenty-four years, for them to pass, and in twenty-four years an entire new generation has time to be born, so that I might sit a lifetime and the stream would still glide on,

Would glide and slide with still perpetual flow, and never the same face appear twice. Numbers are a nightmare. To think that Romulus's first Shepherds' Festival was celebrated by no more than 3,300 souls. Where will it all end?

What I wish to emphasize most of all in this account of my activities as Emperor is that up to this point at least I acted, so

far as I knew how,, for the public good in the widest possible sense. I was no thoughtless revolutionary and no cruel tyrant and no obstinate reactionary: I tried to combine generosity with common sense wherever possible and nobody can accuse me of not having done my best.

Two Documents Illustrating Claudius's Legislative Practice, also his Epistolary and Oratorical Style

CLAUDIUS'S EDICT ABOUT CERTAIN TYROLESE TRIBES

Published at the Residence at Baiae in the year of the Consulship of Marcus Junius Silanus and of Quintus Sulpicius Camerius, on the fifteenth day of March, by order of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.

Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, High Pontiff, Protector of the People for the sixth time, Emperor, Father of the Country, Consul-Elect for the fourth time, issues the following official statement:

As regards certain ancient controversies, the settlement of which had already been left pending for some years when my uncle Tiberius was Emperor: my uncle had sent one Pinarius Apollinaris to inquire into such of these' controversies as concerned the Comensians (so far as I recall) and the Bergalians, but no others; and this Pinarius had neglected his commission because of my uncle's obstinate absence from Rome; and then when my nephew Gaius became Emperor and did not call for any report from him either, he offered none - he was no fool in the circumstances - and after that I had a report from Camurius Statutus to the effect that much of the agricultural and forest land in those parts was really under my own jurisdiction so then, to come down to the present day, I recently sent my good friend Planta Julius there and, when he called a meeting of my governors, both the local governors and those whose districts lay some distance away, he went thoroughly into all these questions and drew his conclusions. I now approve the wording of the following edict which - first justifying it with a lucid report - he has drawn up for my signature; though it embodies wider decisions than Pinarius was called upon to make:

`As regards the position of the Anaunians, the Tulliassians, and the Sindunians, I understand from authoritative sources that some of these have become incorporated in the government of the Southern Tyrol, though not all. Now although I observe that the claims of men of these tribes to Roman citizenship rest on none too secure a foundation, yet, since they may be said to have come into possession of it by squatter's right and to have mixed so closely with the Southern Tyrolese that they could not be separated from them now without serious injury being done to that distinguished body of citizens, I hereby, voluntarily grant - them permission to continue in the enjoyment of the rights which they have assumed. I do this all the more readily because a large number of the men whose legal status is affected are reported to be serving in the Guards Division - a few of them have risen to command companies - and some of their compatriots have been enrolled for jury-service at Rome and are carrying out their duties there.

`This favour carries with it retrospective legal sanction for whatever actions they have performed, and whatever contracts they have entered into under the impression that they were Roman citizens, either among themselves or among the Southern Tyrolese, or in any other circumstances; and such names as they have hitherto borne, as though they were Roman citizens, I hereby permit them to retain.'

SURVIVING FRAGMENTS OF CLAUDIUS'S SPEECH TO THE SENATE, PROPOSING THE-EXTENSION OF THE ROMAN CITIZENSHIP TO THE FRENCH OF THE AUTUN DISTRICT

I must beg you in advance, my Lords, to revise your first shocked impressions, on listening to the proposal I am about to make, that it is a most revolutionary one: such feelings, I foresee, will be the strongest obstacle which I shall encounter to-day. Perhaps the best way for me to negotiate this obstacle is to remind you how many changes have been made in our constitution in the course of Roman history, how extremely plastic, indeed, it has proved from the very beginning.

At one time Rome was ruled by kings, yet the monarchy never became hereditary. Strangers won the crown, and even foreigners: such as Romulus's successor, King Numa, who was a native of Sabinum (then still a foreign state though lying so close to Rome), and Tarquin the First, who succeeded Ancus Martins. Tarquin was of far from distinguished birth - his father was Demarathus, a Corinthian, and his mother was so poor that though she came of the noble Tarquin family she was forced to marry below her; so being debarred from holding honourable office at Corinth, Tarquin came here and was elected king. He and his son, or perhaps his grandson - historians are unable to agree even on this point - were succeeded by Servius Tullius, who, according to Roman accounts, was the son of Ocresia, a captive woman. Etruscan records make him the faithful companion of the Etruscan Caele Vipinas and sharer in all his misfortunes: they say that when Caele had been defeated, Servius Tullius left Etruria with the remnants of Caele's army

and seized the Caelian hill yonder, which he named after their former commander. He then changed his Etruscan name - it was Macstrna to Tullius, and won the Roman crown, and made a very good king too. Later, when Tarquin the Proud and his sons began to be loathed for their tyrannical behaviour, the Roman people; please observe, grew tired of monarchical government and we had, Consuls, annually elected magistrates, instead.

Need I then remind you of the dictatorship, which our ancestors found a stronger form of government even than the consular power in difficult times of war or political discord? Or of the appointment of Protectors of the People to defend the rights of the commons against encroachment? Or of the Board of Ten which for a time took over the government from the Consuls? Or of the sharing of the consular power between several persons? Or of the irregular appointment of army colonels to the Consulship - it happened seven or eight times? Or of the granting to members of the commons not only the highest magistracies but admission to the priesthood too? However, I shall not dilate on the early struggles of our ancestors and what the outcome of it all has been; you might suspect that I was immodestly making this historical survey an excuse for boasting of our recent extension of the Empire beyond the northern seas....

It was the will of my uncle, the Emperor Tiberius, that all leading colonies and provincial towns in Italy should have representatives sitting in this House; and representatives were indeed found with the necessary qualifications of character and wealth. `Yes,' you will say, 'but there is a great difference between an Italian senator and a senator from abroad.' Well, when I begin justifying to you this part of my action, as Censor, in extending the full Roman citizenship to the provinces, I shall show you just how I feel about the matter. But let me say briefly that I do not think that we ought to debar provincials from a seat in this House, if they can be a credit to it, merely because they are provincials. The renowned and splendid colony of Vienne, in France, has been sending us senators for a long time now, has it not? My dear friend Lucius Vestinus comes from Vienne: he is one of the most distinguished members of the Noble Order of Knights and I employ him here to assist me in my administrative duties. (I have, by the way, a favour to ask from you for Vestinus's children; I wish to have the highest honours of the priesthood conferred on them - I trust that later they will earn distinctions by their own merits to add to those granted them on their father's account.) There is, however, one Frenchman whose name I shall keep out of this speech, because he was a rascally robber and I hate the very mention of him. He was a sort of wrestling-school prodigy and carried a Consulship back to his colony before the place had even been granted the Roman citizenship. I have an equally low opinion of his brother – such a miserable and unworthy wretch that he could not possibly be of any: use to you as a senator.

r

But it is now high time, Tiberius Claudius Germanicus, for you reveal to the House the theme of your speech: you have already reached the frontiers of the South of France....

... This House should be no more ashamed of these noble gentlemen; now standing before me, were they raised to the quality of senators; than my distinguished friend Periscus is ashamed when he finds the French name Allobrogicus among the funeral masks of his ancestors. If you agree that all this is as I say, what more do you want of me? Do you want me to prove to you from the map, putting my finger on the very spot, that you are already getting senators from beyond the frontier of Southern France, that no shame, in fact, has been felt about introducing men into our order who were born at Lyons? * O my Lords, I protest that it is with the greatest timidity that I venture beyond the familiar home-boundaries of Southern France! However, the cause of the rest of that great country must now definitely be pleaded. I grant you that the French fought against Julius Caesar (now deified) for ten years, but in return you must grant me that for a whole century since then they have preserved a more devoted loyalty to us, in times of disorder too, than we could ever have believed possible. When my father Drusus was engaged in the conquest of Germany the entire land of France remained at peace in his rear; and that, too, at a time when he had been called away from the business of taking a census of property-holders - a new and disquieting experience for the French. Why, even today, as I have only too good reason to know by personal experience, this taking of the census is a most arduous task, though it now means no more than a public review of our material resources....

*A Joking reference to himself. - R.G.

Chapter 28

ONE morning in August, the year of the census, Messalina came early into my bedroom and woke me up. It always takes me a long time to collect my wits when I first wake up, especially if I have been unable to sleep between midnight and dawn, as is often the case. She bent over me and-kissed me and

stroked my hair and told me in tones of the greatest concern that she had terrible news for me. I asked drowsily and rather crossly what it was.

'Barbillus the astrologer - you know that he never makes a mistake, don't you? Well, I asked him to read my stars yesterday, because he'd not done it for two or three years, and he observed them last night, and do you know what he has just come and told me?'

'Of course I don't know. Out with it and let me go on sleeping. I've had a wretched night.'

`Darling, I wouldn't dare to disturb you like this if it wasn't terribly important. What he said was, "Lady Messalina, a frightful fate is in store for one very near to you. This is Saturn's baleful influence once more. He is in his most malignant aspect. The blow will fall within thirty days, not later than the Ides of September." I asked him whom he meant, but he wouldn't tell me. He just kept on hinting, and at last I dragged it out of him by threatening to have him flogged. And guess what he said!'

'I hate guessing when I'm half-asleep.'

`But I hate telling you directly, it's so frightening. He said: "Lady Messalina, your husband will die a violent death".'

`He really said that?'

She nodded solemnly.

I sat up, my heart pounding. Yes, Barbillus was always right in his forecasts. And that meant that I would not survive my attempted introduction of the new constitution by more than a few days. I had planned my speech for the seventh of September, the anniversary of my victory at Brentwood but I had kept the whole business a complete secret from everyone, even Messalina, from whom otherwise I had no secrets. I said: `Is there nothing to be done? Can't we cheat the prophecy somehow?'

`I can't think of anything. You're my husband, aren't you? Unless ... unless ... listen, I have an idea! Suppose that just for this next month you aren't my husband.'

`But I am. You can't pretend I'm not.'

`You can divorce me, can't you, just for a month? And marry me again when Barbillus reports that Saturn has moved away to a safe distance.'

`No, that's not possible. If I divorce you we can't legally remarry unless there has been a marriage in between.'

`I didn't think of that. But don't let us be beaten by a mere technicality. Suppose, then, that I do marry someone - anyone just as a matter of form. A cook or a porter or one of the Palace Guards. Only the ceremonial part of the marriage, of course. We'd go into the nuptial-chamber by one door and then come right out again by another. That's not a bad idea, is it?

I thought that there was something in it; but obviously she must marry someone of rank and importance, or it would create a bad impression. First I suggested Vitellius, and she said smiling that Vitellius already felt so sentimentally about her that it would be cruel to marry him and not allow him to spend the night with her. Besides, what about the prophecy? I didn't want to doom Vitellius to a violent death, did I?

So we discussed various husbands for her. The only one that we could agree on was Silius, the Consul-Elect, a son of that Silius, my brother Germanicus's general, whom Tiberius had accused of high treason and forced to suicide. I disliked him because he had led the opposition in the Senate to my measure for the extension of the franchise and had been very insolent to me. After my speech about the franchise, he had been asked to give his opinion. He said that he thought it strange that our ancient allies, the noble and illustrious Greek cities of Lycia, should remain deprived of their freedom (I had annexed Lycia five years previously, because of continued political unrest there, and also the neighbouring island of Rhodes, where they had impaled some Roman citizens) while the, Celtic barbarians of the north should be admitted to the fullest rights of Roman citizenship. When I came to answer this abjection, which was almost the only one raised, I did so in the pleasantest possible way. I began, `It is indeed a long way from famous Lycia, from

Xanthus' lucid stream,

where, in the poet Horace's words that we heard sung last year at the Saecular Games,

Apollo most delights to bathe his hair,

to France and the huge dark River Rhone, the huge dark River Rhone ... of which no mention whatsoever appears in Classical legend, apart from a doubtful visit by Hercules, in the course of his Tenth Labour, on his way to win the oxen of Geryones. But I do not think,...' I was interrupted by a tittering that soon swelled into a roar of laughter. It, appears that when I repeated `the huge dark River Rhone' and hesitated for a moment, in search of a phrase, Silius had remarked in an audible voice - but he was sitting on my deaf side, so I had not heard the interruption - `Yes, the huge dark River Rhone,, where, if historians do not lie,

Claudius most delights to bathe his hair.'

A reference to the occasion when I was flung over a bridge into that river at Caligula's orders and nearly drowned. You can imagine how angry I was when Narcissus explained what the laughter was about. It is all very well to make little personal jokes at a private supper table or at the baths, or more boisterous ones during Saturn's All Fools' Festival (to which, by the way, I had restored the fifth day removed by Caligula), but for my own part it would never occur to me to make any sort of personal joke in the Senate which could raise an unkind laugh against a fellow member; and that a Consul-Elect had done so at my expense, and in the presence too of a group of prominent Frenchmen whom I had brought into the House, I took very ill. I shouted out: 'My Lords, I invited you to give your opinions on my motion, but from the noise that you are making anyone would, mistake this for the cheapest sort of knocking-shop. Please observe the rules of the House. Whatever will these French gentlemen think of us?' The noise stopped instantly. It always did when they saw I was angry.

Messalina said that she would like very much to marry Silius, not only because of his rudeness to me, which certainly merited astral vengeance, but because by the way he looked at her she felt sure that his rudeness was based on jealousy and that he was passionately in love with her. It would be a neat punishment for his presumption if she told him that she was being divorced and would marry him, and then only at the very last minute let him discover that it was to be a marriage in form only.

So we chose Silius, and that very day I signed a document repudiating Messalina as my wife and permitting her to return to her paternal roof. There were a lot of jokes about itbetween. us

. Messalina pretended to plead for permission to stay, falling on 'her knees before me and asking pardon for her errors. She also weepingly embraced the children, who did not know what to make of the business: `Must these poor darlings suffer for a mother's faults, cruel man?'

I replied that her faults were unpardonable: she was too clever, too beautiful and too industrious to stay with me an hour longer. She set an impossible standard for other wives to live up to, and made me the object of-universal jealousy.

She whispered in my ear `If I come into the Palace some night next week and commit adultery with you, will you banish me? I might be tempted, you know.'

`Yes, I'll banish you, all right. I'll banish myself too. Where shall we go? I'd like to visit Alexandria. They say it's an ideal place for banishment.'

'And take the children too? They'd love it.'

'I don't think the climate would suit them. They'd have to stay here with your mother, I'm afraid.'

`Mother knows nothing about the proper bringing-up of children: look at the way she brought me up! If you won't bring the children too, I won't come and commit adultery with you.'

`Then I'll marry Lollia Paulina, just to spite you.'

'Then I'll murder Lollia Paulina. I'll send her poisoned cakes; like the ones Caligula used to send people who had made him their heir.'

'Well, here's your divorce document all signed and sealed, you slut. Now you're restored to all the rights and privileges of an unmarried woman.' -

'Let us kiss, Claudius, before we part.'

'It reminds me of the famous farewell between Hector and Andromache in the Sixth Book of the Iliad:

His princess parts with a prophetic sigh,' Unwilling parts, and oft reverts her eye

That streamed at every look; then, moving slow, Sought her own palace and indulged her woe:’

Here, don't be in such a hurry to run off stage with your divorce. You ought to take a few private lessons in acting from Mnester.'

'I'm my, own mistress now. If you're not careful I'll marry Mnester.'

Silius was supposed to be the best-looking nobleman in Rome and Messalina had long been fascinated by him. But he was not by any means an easy victim of her passion. In the first place he was a virtuous man, or at least prided himself on his virtue, and then he was married to a noblewoman of the Silanus family, a sister of Caligula's first wife, and finally, though Messalina attracted him physically in the highest degree, he knew of the indiscriminate generosity with which she had been conferring her favours on nobleman, commoner, sword-fighter, actor, guardsman, even on one of the Parthian ambassadors, and did not consider himself particularly honoured by being asked to join their company. So she had to hook and play her fish with great cunning. The first difficulty lay in persuading him to visit her privately. She invited him several times, but he excused himself. She managed it in the end only by an arrangement with the Commander of the Watchmen, a former lover of hers, who invited Silius to supper and then had him shown into a room where she was waiting for him with supper laid for two. Once he was there he could not easily escape, and she was very clever: she did not talk love at all at first, she talked revolutionary politics! She reminded him of his murdered father and asked him whether he could bear to see the murderer's nephew, a bloodier tyrant still, clamping the yoke of slavery tighter and tighter on the neck of a once free people. (This was myself, in case you do not recognize me.) Then she told him that she was in danger of her life because she had been constantly reproaching me for not restoring the Republic and for my cruel murders of innocent men and women. She said, too, that I had despised her beauty and preferred housemaids and common prostitutes and that it was only in revenge for my disregard that she had ever been unfaithful to me; her promiscuity had been the result of extreme despair and loneliness. He, Silius, was the only man she knew who was virtuous and bold enough to help her in the task to which she had now dedicated her life - the restoration of the Republic. Would he forgive the innocent trick that she had played in decoying him there?

Frankly I cannot blame Silius for being deceived by her: she deceived me daily for nine years. Remember that she was very beautiful; and you can assume, too, that she had doctored his wine. Naturally he tried to comfort her, and before he realized what was happening, they were lying in each other's arms on the couch mixing the words 'love' and 'liberty' with kisses and sighs. She said that only now did she know what true love meant, and he swore that with her help he would restore the Republic at the earliest opportunity, and she swore to remain everlastingly faithful to his love if he divorced his wife, who, she knew, was secretly unfaithful to him, and was barren too - Silius ought not to let his family die out - and so on, and so on. She had hooked him, and now she played him for all her worth.

But Silius was cautious as well as virtuous, and did not feel himself strong enough to raise an armed revolt. He divorced his wife but told Messalina, on second thoughts, that it would be best if they waited for me to die before restoring the Republic. Then he would marry her and adopt Britannicus, and this would make the City and Army look to him as their natural leader. Messalina saw that she would have to take action herself. So she worked the Barbillus trick on me as I have described, and Silius (if what he told me afterwards was the truth) knew nothing of the divorce until she went to him with the document, without explaining how she came by it, and told him joyfully that they could now get married and live happily ever afterwards, but that he must tell nobody about it until she gave him permission.

Everyone at Rome was astounded at the news of Messalina's divorce, particularly as it seemed to make no difference to me: I continued to show her as much respect as before, or even more, and she continued her political work at the Palace. But every day she visited Silius at his house, quite openly, with a full retinue of attendants. When I suggested that she was carrying the joke rather too far, she told me that she was finding some difficulty in, consenting to make him marry her. `I'm afraid that he suspects that there's some catch in it, and he's very polite. and reserved, but underneath he's boiling with passion for me, the beast!' After a few days of this she gleefully reported that he had consented and would marry her on the tenth of September. She asked me to officiate as High Pontiff and see the fun. `Won't it be lovely to watch his baffled face when he finds he's been cheated?' By this time I had begun to repent of the whole business, especially of this practical joke on Silius, although he had insulted me in the Senate again with another ill-mannered interruption. I decided that I should not have taken the prophecy seriously and that I had only done so because I was half-awake when Messalina told me of it. And if the prophecy was really true, how could it be evaded by a mock-marriage? It occurred to me that no marriage is recognized as such by law until it has been physically consummated. I tried to persuade Messalina to drop the whole business, but she told me that I was jealous of Silius and that she thought that I was losing my sense of humour and becoming a silly old spoil-sport and pedant. I said no more.

On the morning of the fifth of September I went down to Ostia to dedicate a big new granary there. I had told Messalina that I would not be back until the following morning. Messalina said that she wanted to come too, and it was arranged that we would drive down there together; but at the last moment she had one of her famous sick-headaches and had to stay behind. I was disappointed, but it was too late to change my plans, since a civic reception had been arranged for me at Ostia, and I had promised to sacrifice in the Temple of Augustus there: ever since the occasion on which I had lost my temper with the Ostians for not receiving me properly I had been particularly careful not to hurt their feelings.

Early that afternoon as I was going into the Temple to the sacrifice, Euodus, one of my freedmen, handed me a note. It was now Euodus's duty to protect me from inopportune petitions from the general public: all notes were handed to him, and if he considered them frivolous or insane or not worth my attention I was not bothered with them. It is surprising what reams of nonsense people write in petitions. Euodus said, `Excuse me, Caesar, but I can't read this. A woman handed it to me. Perhaps you can be bothered just this once?' To my surprise it was written in Etruscan, an extinct language known to not more than four or five living people, and read: `Great danger to Rome and yourself. Come to my house at once. Don't waste a moment.' It startled and puzzled me. Why Etruscan? Whose house? What danger? And it was a minute or two before I understood. It must be from Calpurnia, the girl, you remember, who had lived with me before I married Messalina: it had amused me to teach her Etruscan while I was compiling my history of Etruria. Calpurnia had probably sent me the note in Etruscan not only because it would be unintelligible to anyone but myself, but because I would know that it really came from her. I asked Euodus: `Did you see the woman?' He said that she looked like an Egyptian and had a pockmarked forehead but was otherwise very good-looking. I recognized this as Cleopatra, Calpurnia's friend who shared the house with her.

I was due to go down to the docks immediately after the sacrifice and could not decently postpone the engagement: it would be thought that I was more interested in visiting a couple of prostitutes than in attending to Imperial business. Yet I knew that Calpurnia was not the sort of person to send me an idle message, and while I was sacrificing I decided that I must hear what she had to say at all costs. I would sham sick, perhaps. Fortunately the God Augustus came to my assistance: the entrails of the ram I now sacrificed to him were the most unpropitious ones I had ever seen. It had seemed a fine animal, too, but inside it was as rotten as an old cheese. It was plainly impossible for me to transact any public business on that day, particularly so serious a matter as the dedication of the largest granary in the world, as this was. So I excused myself and everyone agreed that my decision was a proper one. 'I went to my own villa and gave out that I would rest there for the remainder of the day, but would be glad to attend the banquet to which I had beers invited that night, so long as it had no official character. I then sent my sedan-chair round to the back entrance of the villa and was soon being carried in it, with the curtains drawn, to Calpurnia's pretty house on a hill just outside the town.

Calpurnia greeted me with a look of such anxious sorrow that I knew at once that something very serious had happened. `Tell me at once 1' I said. 'What's the matter?'

She began to cry. I had never seen Calpurnia cry before, except once on the famous occasion when I was sent for at midnight to the Palace by Caligula's orders and she thought that I was going to my execution. She was a self-possessed girl with none of the tricks and manners of the ordinary prostitute and ‘as true as a Roman sword', as the saying is. 'You promise to listen? But you'll not want to believe me. You'll want to have me tortured and flogged don't want to tell you, either. But nobody else dares tell you, so I must. I promised Narcissus and Pallas that I would. They were good friends to me in the old days when we were all poor together. They said that you'd not believe them, or anyone, but I said that I thought you'd believe me, because once I showed myself your true friend when you were in trouble. I gave you all my savings, didn't I? I was never greedy or jealous or dishonest, was I?'

'Calpurnia, in my life I have known only three really good women, and I'll tell you their names. One was Cypros, a Jewish princess; one was old Briseis, my mother's wardrobe-maid; and the third is you. Now tell me what you have to say.'

'You've left out Messalina.'

`Messalina goes without saying. Very well, then, four really good women. And I don't consider that I'm insulting Messalina by linking her with an Oriental princess, a Greek freedwoman, and a prostitute from Padua. The sort of goodness I mean isn't the prerogative - '

'If you put Messalina in the list, leave me out,' she said, gasping.

'Modest, Calpurnia? You needn't be. I mean what I say.''No. Not modest.'

'Then I don't understand.'

Calpurnia said, very slowly and painfully: 'I hate to hurt you, Claudius. But I mean this. I mean that if Cypros had been a typical princess of the Herod family if she had been blood-thirsty and ambitious and unscrupulous and without any moral restraint; and if Briseis had been a typical wardrobe-maid - If she had been thieving and base-minded and lazy and clever at covering up her tracks; and if your Calpurnia had been a typical prostitute - if I had been vain, lustful, promiscuous, and greedy, and used my beauty as a means for dominating and ruining men - and if you were now listing the three worst types of women you knew and happened to pick on us as convenient examples -'

` Then what? What are you getting at? You talk so slowly.'

`- Then, Claudius, you'd be right to add Messalina to us and to tell me, "Messalina goes without saying".

'Am I mad, or are you?'

'Not I'

'Then what do you mean? What's my poor Messalina done to be suddenly attacked in this violent and extraordinary way? I don't think that you and I are going to remain friends much longer, Calpurnia.'

'You left town at seven o'clock this morning.'

`Yes. And what of it?'

'I left at ten. I had been up there with Cleopatra. doing some shopping. I looked in at the wedding. A curious hour of the day for a wedding, wasn't it? They were having a grand time. Everyone drunk. Marvellous show. The whole house decorated with vine-leaves and ivy and enormous bunches of grapes, and wine-vats, and wine-presses. The vintage festival, that was what it was supposed to represent.'

`What wedding? Talk sense.'

`Messalina's wedding to Silius. Weren't you invited? She was there dancing and waving a thyrsus in the biggest wine-vat she could find, dressed in a short wine-stained white tunic with one breast exposed and her hair flying loose. She was almost decent, though, compared with the other women. They only wore leopardskins, because they were Bacchantes. Silius was Bacchus. He was crowned with ivy and wore buskins. He was even drunker than Messalina. He kept tossing his head about in time to the music and grinning like Baba.'

'But ... but ..,' I said stupidly. `The wedding isn't until the tenth. I'm to officiate.'

'They're managing nicely without you. So I went to Narcissus at the Palace, and when he saw me, he said: "Thank God you're here, Calpurnia. You're the only one he'll believe." And Pallas `I don't believe. I refuse to believe.'

Calpurnia clapped her' hands. 'Cleopatra, Narcissus!' They came in and fell at my feet. `It's true about the wedding, isn't it-?

They agreed that it was true.

`But I know all about it,' I said feebly. `It's not a real wedding my friends. It's a sort of joke that Messalina: and I planned. She's not going to bed with him at the end of the ceremony. It's all quite innocent.'

Narcissus said: 'Silius caught at her and pulled up her tunic and began kissing her body in full view of the company, and she screamed and laughed and then he carried her off to the nuptial-chamber, and they stayed there nearly an hour before coming out again to do a little more drinking and dancing. That's not innocent, Caesar, surely?'

Calpurnia said: `And unless you act at once, Silius will be master of Rome. Everyone I met told me that Messalina and Silius have sworn by their own heads to restore the Republic, and that they have the whole Senate behind them and most of the Guards.'

`I must hear more,' I said. `I don't, know whether to laugh or cry. I don't know whether to pour gold in your, laps or flog you until the bones show.'

They told me more, but Narcissus would only speak on condition that I forgave him for hiding Messalina's crimes from me so long. He said that when he was first aware of them and I seemed happy in my innocence, he had resolved to spare me the pain of disillusionment so long as Messalina did nothing which endangered my life or the safety of the country. He had hoped that she might mend her ways or else that I would find out about her for, myself. But as time went on and her behaviour grew more and more shameless, it became more and more difficult to tell me. In fact, he could not believe that I did not know by now what all Rome, and all the provinces for that matter, and our enemies over the frontier, knew. In the course of nine years it seemed impossible that I should not have heard of her debaucheries, which were astounding in their impudence.

Cleopatra told me the most horrible and ludicrous story. During my absence in Britain Messalina had issued a challenge to the Prostitutes' Guild asking them to provide a champion to contend with her at the Palace, and see which of the two would wear out most gallants: in, the course of a night. The Guild had sent a famous Sicilian named Scylla, after the whirlpool in the Straits of Messina. When dawn came Scylla had been forced to confess herself beaten at the twenty-fifth gallant but Messalina had continued, out of bravado, until the sun was quite high in the sky. And, what was worse, most of the nobility at Rome had been invited to attend the contest, and many of the men had taken part in it; and three or four of the women had been persuaded by Messalina to compete too.

I sat weeping with my head in my hands, just as Augustus had done some fifty years before, when his grandsons Gaius and Lucius told him the same sort of story about their mother Julia and in Augustus's very words I said that I had never heard the slightest whisper or entertained the faintest suspicion that Messalina was not the chastest woman in Rome. And like Augustus I had the impulse to shut myself away in a room and see nobody for days. But they would not let me. Two lines out of a musical comedy that Mnester's company had played a few days before - I forget the name - kept hammering absurdly in my brain

I know no sound so laughable, so laughable and sad,

As an old man weeping for his wife, a girl gone to the bad.

I said to Narcissus: `At the first Games I ever saw (I was acting as joint-President with my brother Germanicus) - Games in honour of my father, you know - I saw a Spanish sword-fighter have his shield-arm lopped off at the shoulder. He was-close to me and I saw his face clearly. Such a stupid look when he saw what had happened. And the whole amphitheatre roared with laughter at him. I thought it was funny too, God forgive me.'

Chapter 29

THEN Xenophon came in and forced a drink between my lips, because I was on the point of collapse, and took me in hand generally. I don't know exactly what decoction he gave me, but it had the effect of making me feel very clear-headed and self-possessed and utterly impersonal about everything. My feet seemed to be treading on clouds like a god. It also affected the focus of my eyes, so that I saw Narcissus and Calpurnia and Pallas as if they were standing twenty paces away instead of quite close.

`Send for Turranius and Lusius Geta.' Turranius was my Superintendent of Stores now that Callon was dead, and Geta, as I have told you, was the joint Commander of the Guards with Crispinus.

I cross-examined them, after first assuring them that I would not punish them if they spoke the truth. They confirmed all that Narcissus and Calpurnia and Cleopatra had told me, and told me a lot more. When I asked Geta to explain frankly why he had failed to, report all this to me before,, he said: `May I quote a proverb, Caesar, that is often on your own lips: The knee is nearer than the shin? What happened to Justus, my predecessor, when he tried to let you know what was happening in your wife's wing of the Palace?'

Turranius replied to the same question by reminding me that when recently he had summoned the courage to come to me with a complaint of the seizure of public stores at Messalina's orders - basalt blocks imported from Egypt for the repaving of the Ox Market for use, it turned out, in a new colonnade that she was building in the Gardens of Lucullus, I had grown angry and told him never again to question any act or order of hers, saying that nothing that she did was done except at my particular instance or at least with my full sanction. I had told him that if he ever again had any complaint to make against the Lady Messalina's behaviour he was to make it to the Lady Messalina herself. Turranius was right. I had actually said that.

Calpurnia, who had been fidgeting impatiently in the background while I was questioning Geta and Turranius, now caught my eye pleadingly. I understood that she wanted a word with me alone. I cleared the room at once and then she said gently and earnestly : 'My dear, you won't get anywhere by asking the same question over and over again from different people. It's quite plain: they were all afraid to tell you, partly because they knew how much you loved and trusted Messalina, but mostly because you were Emperor. You have been very foolish and very unlucky and now you must do something to retrieve the position. If you don't act at once you will be sentencing us all to death. Every minute counts. You must go at once to the Guards Camp and get the protection of all the loyal troops there. I can't believe that they'll desert you for Messalina's and Silius's sake. There may be one or two colonels or captains who have been bought over, but the rank and file are devoted to you. Send mounted messengers to Rome at once to announce that you are on your way to take vengeance on

Silius and your wife. Send warrants for the arrest of everyone present at the wedding. That will probably be enough to smother the revolt. They'll all be too drunk to do anything dangerous. But hurry!'

'Oh, yes,' I said. `I'll hurry!'

I called in Narcissus again. `Do you trust Geta?'

'To be honest, Caesar, I don't altogether trust him.'

'And the two captains he has with him here?'

`I trust them, but they're stupid.'

`Crispinus is away on leave at Baiae, so whom shall we put in command of the Guards, if we can't trust Geta?'

'If Calpurnia was a man, I'd say, Calpurnia. But since she's not, the next best choice is myself.- I'm a mere freedman, I know, but the Guards officers know me and like me, and it would only be for a single day.'

`Very well, General-of-the-Day Narcissus. Tell Geta that he's confined to bed by doctor's orders until tomorrow. Give me pen and parchment. Wait a moment. What's the date? September the fifth? Here's your commission, then. Show it to the captains and send them on to Rome at once with their men to arrest the whole wedding party. No violence, though, except in self-defence; tell them. Let the Guards know that I'm coming and that I expect them to remain loyal to me, and that their loyalty won't pass unrewarded.'

It is about eighteen miles from Ostia to Rome, but the soldiers covered the distance in an hour and a half, using fast gigs. As it happened, the wedding was just breaking up when they arrived. The cause was a knight called Vettius Valens, who had been one of Messalina's lovers before Silius came on the scene, and was still in her favour. The party had come to the stage that parties reach when the first excitement of drink has worn off and everyone begins to feel a little tired and at a loss. Interest now centred on Vettius Valens: he was hugging a fine evergreen oak-tree which grew outside the house, and talking to an imaginary Dryad inside it. The Dryad had apparently fallen in love with him and was-inviting him in a whisper, audible only to himself, to a rendezvous at the top of the tree. He finally consented to join her there and made his friends form a human pyramid to enable him to climb up to the first big bough. The pyramid collapsed twice amid shrieks of laughter, but Vettius persevered and at the third try got astride of the bough. From there slowly and dangerously he climbed higher and higher until he disappeared into the thick foliage at the summit. Everyone stood gazing up to watch what would happen next. Expectation. ran high, because Vettius was a famous comedian. Soon he began imitating the Dryad's affectionate cries and making loud smacking kiss-noises and uttering little squeals of excitement. Then Vettius kept very quiet, until, the crowd began calling, up to him: `Vettius, Vettius, what are you doing?'

`I'm just viewing the world. This is the best look-out anywhere in Rome. The Dryad's sitting on my lap and pointing out places of interest; so don't interrupt. Yes, that's the Senate House. Silly girl, I knew that! And that's Colchester! But surely: you're mistaken? You can't see as far as Colchester from this tree, can you? You must mean the Guards Camp. No, it is Colchester, by God. I can see the name written up on a notice board and blue-faced Britons walking about. What's that? What are they doing? No, I don't believe it. What, worshipping Claudius as a God?' And then in an imitation of my voice: `Why, though, I want to know why? Nobody else to worship? Have the other Gods refused to cross the Channel? I don't blame them. I was dreadfully sea-sick myself, crossing the Channel.'

Vettius's audience was entranced. When he was silent again they called out: `Vettius, Vettius! What are you doing now?'

He answered, imitating my voice again: `In the first place, if I don't want to answer, I won't answer. You can't make me. I'm a free man, aren't I? In fact one of the freest men in Rome.'

`Oh, do tell us, Vettius.'

`Look there! Look there! A thousand Furies and Serpents! Let me go, Dryad, let me go at once. No, no, another time. Can't wait for that sort of thing now. Must get down. Hands off, Dryad!'

`What's happening, Vettius?'

`Run for your lives. I've just seen a fearful sight. No, stop!' Trogus, Proculus, help me down first! But everyone else run for your lives!'

'What? What?

`A terrific storm coming up from Ostia! Run fog your lives!'

And the crowd actually did scatter. Laughing and screaming and headed by the bride and bridegroom they rushed out of the garden into the street a few seconds before my soldiers came galloping up. Messalina got safely away, and so did Silius, but the soldiers had no difficulty in arresting about 200 of the guests, and

later picked up about fifty more who were stumbling drunkenly home. Messalina was accompanied by only three companions. There had been twenty or more with her at first, but as soon as the alarm was raised that the Guards were coming they deserted her. She went on foot through the City until she came to the Gardens of Lucullus, by which time she had sobered somewhat. She decided that she must go to Ostia at once and try the effect of her beauty on me again - it had never hitherto failed to cheat me - and bring the children with her too as a reinforcement. She was still barefooted and wearing her vintage costume, which had earned her hisses and jeers as she hurried through the streets. She sent a maid to the Palace to fetch her the children, sandals, some jewellery, and a clean gown. The quality of the love between her and Silius was shown by their immediate desertion of each other at the first sign of danger. Messalina prepared to sacrifice him to my rage, and Silius went to the Market Place to resume his judicial work there as if nothing had happened. He was drunk enough to think that he could pretend complete innocence, and when the captains came to arrest him he told them that he was busy, and what did they want? Their answer was to handcuff him and lead him off to the Camp.

Meanwhile I had been joined by Vitellius and Caecina (my colleague in my second Consulship) who had accompanied me down to Ostia and after the sacrifice had gone off to visit friends on the other side of the town. I told them briefly what had happened and said that I was returning to Rome immediately: I expected them to support me and witness the impartiality with which I would visit judgement on the guilty of whatever rank or station. The Olympian effect of the drug continued. I talked calmly, fluently, and, I think, sensibly. Vitellius and Caecina made no reply at first, expressing astonishment and concern only in their looks. When I asked them what they thought about the whole business, Vitellius would still only utter exclamations of astonishment and horror such as, 'They really told you that! Oh, how horrible! What vile treason!' and Caecina followed his example. The carriage of state was announced and Narcissus, whom I had directed to write out a charge-sheet against Messalina, and who had been busy questioning the staff so as to make the list of her adulteries as full as possible, then showed himself a brave man and a faithful servant. `Caesar, please inform your noble friends who I am for today and give me a seat in this carriage with you. Until my Lords Vitellius and Caecina come out with an honest opinion, and refrain from making remarks that can be construed either as a condemnation of your wife or as condemnation of her accusers,' it is my duty as your Guards Commander to, remain by your side:'

I am glad that he came with me. As we drove towards the Cite I began telling Vitellius about Messalina's pretty ways and how much I had loved her and how vilely she had deceived me. He sighed deeply and said: `A man would have to be stone, not to be melted by beauty like hers.' I spoke about the children, too, and Caecina and Vitellius sighed in unison: 'The poor, dear children! They must not be allowed to suffer.' But the nearest that either of them came to expressing a real opinion was when Vitellius exclaimed: `It is almost impossible for anyone who has felt for Messalina the admiration and tenderness that I have felt, to believe these filthy accusations, though a thousand trustworthy witnesses were to swear that they were true.' And when Caecina agreed, `Oh, what an evil and sorrowful world we live in!' An embarrassment, was in store for them. Two vehicles were seen approaching through the dusk. One was another carriage, drawn by white horses, and in it sat Vibidia, the oldest and most honoured of the Vestal Virgins: eighty-five years old and one of my dearest friends. Behind this carriage followed a cart with a big yellow L painted on it, one of the carts belonging to the Gardens of Lucullus and used for carrying soil and rubbish. In it were Messalina and the children. Narcissus took in the situation at a glance: he had better eyes than I have and stopped the carriage. `Here's the Vestal Vibidia come to meet you, Caesar,' he said. `No doubt she'll ask you to forgive Messalina. Vibidia is a dear old soul, and I think the world of her, but for God's sake don't make her any rash promises. Remember how monstrously you've been treated and remember that Messalina and Silius are traitors to Rome. Be polite to Vibidia, by all means, but don't give away anything at all. Here's the charge-sheet. Look at it now, read the names.' Look at the eleventh charge - Mnester. Are you going to forgive that? And Caesoninus, what about Caesoninus? What can you think of a woman who can play about with a creature like that?'

I took the parchment from him and as he stepped out of the carriage he whispered something in Vitellius's ear. I don't know what it was, but it decided Vitellius to keep his mouth shut in Narcissus's absence. While I was reading the charges by the light of a lantern Narcissus ran along the road and met Vibidia and

Messalina, who had also dismounted, coming towards him. Messalina was comparatively sober now: she called out gently to me from the distance: `Hullo, Claudius! I've been such a silly girl! You'd never believe it of me!' For once my deafness was of service to me. I didn't recognize her voice or hear a word. Narcissus greeted Vibidia courteously, but refused to let Messalina come any farther. Messalina cursed and spat in his face and tried to dodge past, but he ordered the two sergeants whom we had with us to escort her to her cart and see that it drove back to the City. Messalina screamed as if she were being murdered or outraged, and I looked up from the parchment to ask what was the matter. Vitellius said: `A woman in the crowd. Overcome by labour-pains, by the sound of it.'

Then Vibidia came: slowly up to our carriage and Narcissus panted back after her. Narcissus did all the talking for me. He told Vibidia that Messalina's notorious and unexampled whoredoms and treacheries made it ludicrous for a pious and aged Vestal to come and plead with me for her life. `You Vestals surely don't approve of having the Palace turned into a brothel again, as in Caligula's days, do you? You don't approve of ballet-dancers and sword-fighters performing between the sheets of the High Pontiff's bed, do you, with the active co-operation of the High Pontiff's wife?'

That gave Vibidia a shock: Messalina had only confessed to an `indiscreet familiarity' with Silius. She said: 'I know nothing about that, but at least I must urge the High Pontiff to do nothing rashly, to shed no innocent blood, to condemn nobody unheard, to consider the honour of his house and his duty to the Gods.'

I broke in: 'Vibidia, Vibidia, my dear friend, I shall deal justly with Messalina, you can count on that.'

Narcissus said: `Yes, indeed. The danger is that the High Pontiff may show his former wife an undeserved clemency. It is very difficult indeed for him to judge the case as impartially as it will be his official duty' to do. I must therefore ask you on his behalf not to make things more painful for him than they already are. May I courteously suggest that you retire, my Lady Vibidia, and attend to the solemnities of the Goddess Vesta, which you understand so well?'

So she retired, and we drove on. As we came into the City, Messalina made another attempt to see me, I am told, but was restrained by the sergeants. She then tried to send Britannicus and little Octavia to plead with, me for her, but Narcissus saw there running towards us and waved them back. I was sitting silent, brooding over the list of Messalina's lovers. Narcissus had headed it: `Provisional and incomplete account of Valeria Messalina notorious adulteries, from the first year of her marriage to Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus Britannicus, Father; of the Country, High Pontiff, etc., until the present day.' It contained forty-four names, later extended to 156.

Narcissus sent a message ordering the cart back to the Gardens: the traffic regulations forbade it to be in the streets at this hour. Messalina saw that she was beaten, so allowed herself to be carried back to the Gardens. The children had been sent to the Palace but her mother Domitia Lepida, though lately there had been a coolness between the two, bravely joined her in the cart; otherwise Messalina would have been quite alone but for the carter. Narcissus then told our coachman to drive on to Silius's house. When we reached it I said: `This isn't the place, is it? Surely this is the family mansion of the Asinians?'

Narcissus explained: `Messalina bought it privately when Asinius Gallus was banished, and gave it to Silius as a wedding present. Come inside and see for yourself what, has been going on.'

I went in and saw the litter of the wedding - the vine-leaf decorations, the wine-vats and presses, tables covered with food and dirty plates, trampled rose-leaves and garlands on the floor, discarded leopard-skins, and wine spilt everywhere. The house was deserted except for an old porter and two dead-drunk lovers lying in each other's arms on, the bed in the nuptial-chamber. I had them arrested. One was a staff-lieutenant called Montanus, the other was Narcissus's own niece, a young married woman with two children. What shocked and distressed me most was to find the whole house full of Palace furniture, not merely things that Messalina had brought me as part of her dowry when we were married, but ancient heirlooms of the Claudian and Julian families, including the very statues of my ancestors and the family masks, cupboard and all! There could be no plainer proof of her intentions than that. So we climbed into the carriage again and drove on to the Guards Camp. Narcissus was gloomy and subdued now, because he had been very fond of his niece; but Vitellius and Caecina, had made up their minds that it would be safer for them to believe the evidence of their eyes, and simultaneously began urging me to vengeance. We reached the Camp, where I found the whole Division on parade, by Narcissus's orders, in front of the tribunal. It was dark now and the tribunal was lit by flaring torches. I climbed up on the platform and made a short speech. My voice was clear, but sounded very far away:

`Guards, my friend the late King Herod Agrippa, who first recommended me to you as your Emperor and then persuaded the Senate to accept your choice, told me on the last occasion that I saw him alive, and also wrote to-me in the last letter that I ever had from him, never to trust anyone, for nobody about me was worthy of my trust. I did not take his words literally. I continued to repose the fullest confidence in my wife, Valeria Messalina, whom I now know to have been a whore, a liar, a thief, a murderess, and a traitor to Rome. I don't mean, Guards, that I don't trust you. You're the only people I do trust, you know. You're soldiers and do your duty without question. I expect you to stand by me now and crush the plot which my former wife Messalina and her adulterer, the Consul-Elect Gaius Silius, have formed against my life under a pretence of restoring popular liberty to the City again. The Senate is rotten with conspiracy, as rotten as the entrails of the ram that I sacrificed this afternoon to the God Augustus; you never saw such an unholy sight. I am ashamed to talk as I do, but that's right, isn't it? Help me bring my enemies our enemies to book and, once Messalina's dead, if I ever marry again I give you free and full leave to chop me to pieces with your swords, and use my head as a football at the Baths, like Sejanus's. Three times married, and three times unlucky. Well, what about it, lads? Tell me what you think. I can't get a straight answer from my other friends.'

`Kill them, Caesar!' - `No mercy!' `Strangle the bitch!' - . `Death to them all!' `We'll stand by you!' - `You've been too damned generous.' -`Wipe them out, Caesar!' There was no doubt what the Guards thought of the matter.

So I had the arrested men and women brought up beore me there and then, and ordered- the arrest of 110 more men now named in the charge-sheet as Messalina's adulterers, and four women of rank who had prostituted themselves, at Messalina's suggestion, in the course of that notorious Palace orgy. I finished the trial in three hours. But this was because all but thirty-four of the 360 persons who answered their names pleaded guilty to the charges brought against them. Those whose only, crime was their attendance at the wedding I banished. Twenty knights, six senators, and a Guards colonel, who all pleaded guilty to adultery or attempted revolution, or both, demanded to be executed at once. I granted them this favour: Vettius Valens tried to buy his life by offering to reveal the names of the ringleaders of the plot. I told him that I could find them out without his, assistance and he was led off to execution. Montanus was mentioned in Narcissus's list, but pleaded that Messalina had forced him to spend the night with her by showing him an order to do so signed and sealed by me: and that after that single night she had tired of him. Messalina must have got my signature to the document by reading it out to me - `just to save your precious eyes, my darling' as something quite different. However, I pointed out that he had no order from me to attend the wedding or to commit adultery with my friend Narcissus's' niece; so he was executed too. There were also fifteen suicides in the City that night by persons who had not been arrested but expected to be. Three intimate friends of mine, all knights, Trogus, Cotta, and Fabius, were among these. I suspect that Narcissus knew of their guilt but left them out of the charge-sheet for friendship's sake, contenting himself with sending them a warning.

Mnester would not plead guilty: he reminded me that he was under orders from me to obey my wife in everything, and said that he had obeyed her much against his will. He pulled off his clothes and showed the marks of a lash on his back. `She gave me that because my natural modesty prevented me from carrying out your orders as energetically as she wished, Caesar.' I was sorry for Mnester. He had once saved that theatre-audience from massacre by the Germans. And what can you expect from an actor? But Narcissus said: `Don't spare him, Caesar. Look carefully at the bruises. The flesh isn't cut open at all. It's clear to anyone with eyes in his head that the lash wasn't meant to hurt; it was just part of their vicious practices.' So Mnester made a very graceful bow to the parade, his last bow, and spoke his usual little speech: `If I have ever pleased you, that is my reward. If I have offended you, I ask your forgiveness.' They received it in silence, and he was led off to his death,

The only two people whom I spared except the obviously innocent were one Lateranus, who was accused of conspiracy but pleaded not guilty, and Caesoninus. The evidence against Lateranus was conflicting, and he was a nephew of Aulus Plautius, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt: Caesoninus I spared because he was so foul a wretch, though of good family, that I did not wish to insult his fellow-adulterers by executing him alongside of them: in Caligula's reign he had prostituted himself as a woman. I don't know what happened to him: he never reappeared in Rome. I also dismissed the charge against Narcissus's niece: I owed him that.

The Bacchantes, still wearing nothing but their leopard skins, I ordered to be hanged, quoting Ulysses's speech in the Odyssey, when he took vengeance on Penelope's wicked maidservants:

Then thus the prince `To these shall we afford

A fate so pure as by the martial sword?

To these, the nightly prostitutes to shame

And base revilers of our house and name?'

I strung them all up in Homeric fashion, twelve in a row, on a huge ship's cable tautened between two trees with a winch. Their feet were just off the ground and as they died I quoted once more:

They twitched their feet awhile, but not for long.

And Silius? And Messalina? Silius attempted no defence: but when I questioned him he made a plain statement of fact giving an account of his seduction by Messalina. I pressed him: `But why, I want to know why? Were you really in love with her? Did you really think me a tyrant? Did you really intend to restore the Republic, or just to become Emperor in my place?' He answered: 'I can't explain, Caesar. Perhaps I was bewitched. She made me see you as a tyrant. My plans were vague. I talked liberty to many of my friends and, you know how it is, when one talks liberty everything seems beautifully simple. One expects all gates to open and all walls to fall flat and all voices to shout for joy.'

`Do you wish your life to be spared? Shall I put you into the custody of your family as an irresponsible imbecile?'

`I wish to die.'

Messalina had written me a letter from the Gardens. In it she told me that she loved me as much as ever and that she hoped I wouldn't take her prank seriously; she had just been leading Silius on, as she and I had arranged, and if she had rather overdone the joke by getting beastly drunk, I mustn't be stupid and feel cross or jealous. `There is nothing that makes a man so hateful and ugly in a woman's eyes as jealousy.' The letter was handed to me on the tribunal, but Narcissus would not let me answer it until the trials were over, except by a formal `Your communication has been received, and will be granted my Imperial attention in due course.' He said that until I was satisfied as to the extent of her guilt it was better not to compromise myself in writing: I must not hold out any hope that she would escape death and merely be exiled to some small prison-island.

Messalina's reply to my formal acknowledgement of her letter was a long screed, blotted with tears, reproaching me for my cold answer to her loving words. She now made a full confession, as she called it, of her many indiscretions, but did not admit to actual adultery in a single instance; she begged me for the sake of the children to forgive her and grant her a chance of starting again as a faithful and dutiful wife; and she promised to set a perfect example of matronly deportment to Roman noble-women for all ages to come. 'She signed herself by her pet name. It reached me during Silius's trial.

Narcissus saw tears in my eyes and said: `Caesar, don't give way. A born whore can never reform. She's not honest with you even in this letter.

I said: `No, I won't give way. A man can't die twice of the same disease.'

I wrote again: `Your communication has been received and will be granted my attention in due course.'

Messalina's third letter arrived just as the last heads had fallen. It was angry and threatening. She wrote that she had now given me every chance to treat her fairly and decently, and that if I did not immediately beg her pardon for the insolent, heartless, and ungrateful behaviour I had shown her, I must take the consequences; for her patience was wearing out. She secretly commanded the loyalty of all my Guards officers, and of all my freedmen with the exception of Narcissus, and of most of the Senate; she had only to speak the word and I would immediately be arrested and surrendered to her vengeance. Narcissus threw back his head and laughed. `Well, at least she acknowledges my loyalty to you, Caesar. Now, let's go to the Palace. You must be nearly fainting with hunger. You have had nothing since breakfast, have you?'

'But what shall I answer?'

`It deserves no answer.'

We returned to the Palace and there was a fine meal waiting for us. Vermouth (recommended by Xenophon as a sedative) and

oysters, and roast goose with my favourite mushroom and onion sauce - made according to a recipe given my mother by Berenice, Herod's mother - and stewed veal with horse-radish, and a mixed dish of vegetables, and apple-pie flavoured with honey and cloves, and water-melon from Africa. I ate ravenously and when I had done I began to feel very sleepy. I said, to Narcissus : 'My mind won't work anymore to-night. I'm tired out. I put you in charge of affairs until tomorrow morning. I suppose that I ought to warn that miserable woman to attend here to-morrow morning and defend herself against those charges. I promised Vibidia that I'd give her a fair trial.' Narcissus said nothing: I went to sleep on, my couch.

Narcissus beckoned to the Colonel of the Guard. `The Emperor's orders. You are to proceed with six men to the pleasure-house in the Gardens of Lucullus and there execute the Lady Valeria Messalina, the Emperor's divorced wife.' Then he told Euodus to run ahead of the Guards and warn Messalina that they were coming, thus giving her an opportunity of committing suicide. If she took it, as she could hardly fail to do, I would not need to hear of the unauthorized order for her execution. Euodus found her lying on her face on the floor of the pleasure-house, sobbing. Her mother knelt beside her. Messalina said, without looking up '0 beloved Claudius, I'm so miserable and ashamed.'

Euodus laughed: `You're mistaken, Madam. The Emperor is asleep, at the Palace, with orders not to be disturbed. Before he went off he told the Colonel of the Guard to come here and cut off your pretty head. His very words, Madam. "Cut off her pretty head and stick it on the end of a spear. I ran ahead to let you know. If you've as much courage as you have beauty, Madam, my advice is to get it over before they come. I brought this dagger along in case you hadn't one handy.'

Domitia Lepida said: `There's no hope, my poor child; you can't escape now. The only honourable thing left for you to do is to take his dagger and kill yourself.'

`It's not true,' Messalina wept. `Claudius would never dare to get rid of me like this. It's an invention of Narcissus's. I ought to have killed Narcissus long ago. Vile, hateful Narcissus!'

The tramp of heavy feet was heard on the pavement outside. `Guard, halt! Order arms!' The door flew open and the Colonel stood with folded arms in the entrance, outlined against the night sky. He did not say a word.

Messalina screamed at the sight of him and snatched the dagger from Euodus. She felt the edge and point timorously. Euodus sneered: `Do you want the Guards to wait there while I fetch. a grindstone and sharpen it up for you?'

Domitia Lepida said `Be brave, child. It won't hurt if you drive it home quick.'

The Colonel slowly unfolded his arms: his right hand reached for the pommel of his sword. Messalina put the point of the dagger first to her throat and then to her breast. `Oh, I can't, Mother! I'm afraid!'

The Colonel's sword was out of its sheath. He took three long steps forward and ran her through.

Chapter 30

XENOPHON had given me another dose of the `Olympian mixture' just before I went to sleep, and the exalted feeling, which had been wearing off slightly during supper, revived in me. I woke up with a start - a careless slave had dropped a pile of dishes yawned loudly and apologized to the company for my bad tablemanners. `Granted, Caesar,' they all cried. I thought how frightened they looked. Bad lives and bad consciences.

`Has anyone been poisoning my drink while I was asleep?' I bantered.

`God forbid, Caesar,' they protested.

`Narcissus, what was the sense of that Colchester joke of Vettius Vileness'? Something about the Britons worshipping me as a God.'

Narcissus said: `It was not altogether a joke, Caesar. In fact, you may as well know that a temple at Colchester had been dedicated to the God Claudius Augustus. They have been worshipping you there since the early summer. But I've only just heard about it.'

`So that's why I feel so queer. I've been turning into a God! But how did it happen? I wrote to Ostorius, I remember, sanctioning the erection and dedication of a temple at Colchester to the God Augustus, in gratitude for the victory he had given Roman arms in the island of Britain.'

`Then I suppose, Caesar, that Ostorius made the natural mistake of understanding "Augustus" as meaning yourself, particularly as you specified a victory given by Augustus to Roman arms in Britain. The God' Augustus fixed the frontier at the Channel - and his name means nothing to the British, in comparison with your own. The natives speak of you there, I am informed, with the deepest religious awe. There are poems composed about your thunder and lightning and your magic mists and your black spirits and your humped monsters and your monsters with snakes, for noses. Politically speaking, Ostorius was-perfectly correct in dedicating the temple to you. But I must regret that it was done without your consent, and, I suppose, against your wishes.'

`So I'm a God, now, am I?' I repeated. `Herod Agrippa always said that I'd end as a God, and I told him that he was talking nonsense. I suppose that I can't cancel the mistake, can I, Narcissus, do you think?'

`It would create a very bad effect on the provincials, I should say,' Narcissus answered.

`Well, I don't care, the way I feel now,' I said. `I don't care about anything. Suppose that I have that miserable woman brought here for trial at once. I feel completely free from petty mortal passions. I might even forgive her.'

`She's dead,' Narcissus said in a low voice. `Dead, at your own orders.'

'Fill my glass,' I said. `I don't remember giving the order, but it's all the same to me now. I wonder what sort of God I am. Old Athenodorus used to explain to me the Stoic idea of God: God was a perfectly rounded whole, immune from accident or event. I always pictured God as an enormous pumpkin. Ha, ha, ha! If I eat any more of this goose and drink any more of this wine I'll become pumpkinified too. So Messalina's dead! A beautiful woman, my friends! But bad!'

`Beautiful but bad, Caesar.'

`Carry me up to bed, someone, and let me sleep the blessed sleep of the Gods. I'm a blessed God now, aren't I?'

So they took me up to bed. 'I stayed in bed until noon the next day, fast asleep all the time. The Senate met in my absence and passed a motion congratulating me on the suppression of the revolt, and another expunging Messalina's name from the archives and removing it from every public inscription, and destroying all her statues. I rose in the afternoon and resumed my ordinary Imperial work. Everyone whom I met was extremely subdued and polite, and when I visited the Law Courts nobody, for the first time for years, attempted to bustle or browbeat me. I got through my cases in no time.

The next day I began to talk grandly about the conquest of Germany; and Narcissus, realizing that Xenophon's medicine was having too violent an effect - disordering my wits instead of merely tiding me gently over the shock of Messalina's death, as had been intended - told him to give me no more of it. Gradually the Olympian mood faded and I felt pathetically mortal again. The first morning after I was free from the effects of the drug I went down to breakfast, and asked: `Where's my wife? Where's the Lady Messalina?' Messalina always breakfasted with me unless she had a `sick headache'.

`She's dead, Caesar,' Euodus answered. `She died some days ago, by your orders.'

`I didn't know,' I. said weakly. `I mean, I had forgotten.' Then the shame and grief and horror of the whole business came welling back to my mind, and I broke down. Soon' I was babbling foolishly of my dear, precious Messalina and reproaching myself as her murderer, and saying that it was all my fault, and making an almighty fool of myself. I eventually pulled myself together and called for my sedan. `The Gardens of Lucullus,' I ordered. They took me there.

Seated on a garden bench under a cedar, looking across a smooth green lawn and down a wide grassy avenue of hornbeams, with nobody about except my German guards posted out of sight in the shrubbery, and with a long strip of paper on my knee and a pen in my hand, I began solemnly working out just where and how I stood. I have this paper by me as I now write and will copy out what I put down exactly as I find it. My statements fell, for some reason or other, into related groups of three, like the `tercets' of the British Druids (their common metrical convention for verse of a moralistic or didactic sort)

I love liberty: I detest tyranny.

I have always been a patriotic Roman.

The Roman genius is Republican.

I am now, paradoxically, an Emperor.

As such I' exercise monarchical power.

The Republic hasbeen suspended for three generations.

The Republic was torn by Civil Wars.

Augustus instituted this monarchical power.

It was an emergency measure only.

Augustus found that he could not resign his power.

In my mind I condemned Augustus as hypocritical.

I remained a convinced Republican.

Tiberius became Emperor.

Against his inclination?

Afraid of some enemy seizing power?

Probably forced into it by his mother Livia.

In his reign I lived in retirement.

I considered him a blood-thirsty hypocrite.

I remained a convinced Republican.

Caligula suddenly appointed me Consul.

I only desired to be back at my books.

Caligula tried to rule like an Oriental monarch.

I was a patriotic Roman.

I should have attempted to kill Caligula.

Instead I saved my skin by playing the imbecile.

Cassius Chaerea was perhaps a patriotic Roman.

He broke his oath, he assassinated Caligula.

He attempted, at least, to restore the Republic.

The Republic was not then restored.

Instead there was a new Emperor appointed.

That Emperor was myself, Tiberius Claudius.

If I had refused I should have been killed.

If I had refused there would have been Civil War.

It was an emergency measure only.

I put Cassius Chaerea to death.

I found that I could not yet resign my power.

I became a second Augustus.

I worked hard and long, like Augustus,

I enlarged and strengthened the Empire, like Augustus,

I was an absolute monarch, like Augustus.

I am not a conscious hypocrite.

I flattered myself that I was acting for the best.

I planned to restore the Republic this very year.

Julia's disgrace was Augustus's punishment.

Would I had never wed, and childless died.

I feel just the same about Messalina.

I should have killed myself rather than rule:

I should never have allowed Herod Agrippa to persuade me.

With the best of intentions I have become a tyrant.

I was blind to. Messalina's follies and villainies.

In my name she shed the blood of innocent men and women.

Ignorance is no justification for crime.

But am I the only guilty person?

Has not the whole nation equally sinned?

They made me Emperor and courted my favour.

And if I now carry out my honest intentions?

If I restore the Republic, what then?

Do I really suppose that Rome will be grateful? -

`You know how it is when one talks of liberty.

Everything seems beautifully simple.

One expects every gate to open and every wall to fall flat.'

The world is, perfectly content with me as Emperor,

All but the people who want to be Emperor themselves.

Nobody really wants the Republic back.

Asinius Pollio was right:

'It will have to be much worse before it can be any better.

Decided: I shall not, after all, carry out my plan.

The frog-pool wanted a king.

Jove sent them Old King Log.

I have been as deaf and blind and wooden as a log.

The frog-pool wanted a king.

Let Jove now send them Young King Stork.

Caligula's chief fault: his stork-reign was too brief.'

My chief fault: I have been far too benevolent.

I repaired the ruin my predecessors spread

I reconciled Rome and the world to monarchy again.

Rome is fated to bow to another Caesar.

Let him be mad, bloody, capricious, wasteful, lustful.

King Stork shall prove again the nature of kings.

By dulling the blade of tyranny fell into great error.

By whetting the same blade I might redeem that error.

Violent disorders call for violent remedies.

Yet I am, I must remember, Old King Log.

I shall float inertly in the stagnant pool.

Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.

I kept my resolution. I have kept it strictly ever since. I have allowed nothing to come between me and it. It was very painful at first. I had told Narcissus that I felt like the Spanish sword-fighter whose shield-arm was suddenly lopped off in the arena; but the difference was that the Spaniard died of his wound, and I continue to live. You have perhaps heard maimed men complain, in damp, cold weather, of sensations of pain in the leg or arm they have lost? It can be a most precise pain too, described as a sharp pain running up the wrist from the thumb, or as a settled pain in the knee. I felt like this often. I used to worry what Messalina would think of some decision I had taken, or about what effect a long boring play in the theatre was having on her; if it thundered I would remember how frightened she was of thunder.

As you may have guessed, the most painful consideration of all was that my little Britannicus and Octavia were perhaps, after all, not my children. Octavia, I was convinced, was not my child. She did not resemble the Claudian side of the family in the slightest. I looked at her a hundred times before I suddenly realized who her father must have been the Commander of the Germans under Caligula. I remembered now that when, a year after the amnesty, he had disgraced himself and lost his position and finally sunk so low that he became a sword-fighter, Messalina had pleaded for his life in the arena (he was disarmed and a net-man was standing over him with his trident raised) - pleaded for the wretch's life against the protests of the entire audience, who were yelling and booing and turning their thumbs down. I let him off, because she said that it would be bad for her health if I refused: this was just before Octavia's birth. However, a few months later he fought the same net-man and was killed at once.

Britannicus was a true Claudian and a noble little fellow, but the horrible thought came into my mind that he resembled my brother Germanicus far too closely. Could it be that Caligula was really his father? He had nothing of Caligula's nature, but heredity often skips a generation. The notion haunted me.. I could not rid myself of it for a long time. I kept him out of my sight as much as possible without seeming to disown him. He and Octavia must have suffered much at this time. They had been greatly attached to their mother, so I had given instructions that they should not be told in detail about her crimes; they were merely to know that their mother was dead. But they soon found out that she had been executed by my orders, and naturally they felt a childish resentment of me. But I could not yet bring myself to talk to them about it.

I have explained that my freedmen formed a very close guild and that a man who offended one of them offended all, and that a man who was taken under the protection of one enjoyed the favour of all. In this they set a good example to the Senate, but the Senate did not follow it, being always torn into factions and only united in their common servility to me. And though now, three months after Messalina's death, a rivalry started between my three chief ministers, Narcissus, Pallas, and Callistus, it had been agreed beforehand that the successful one would not use the strong position that he would win by pleasing me as a means of humiliating the other two. You would never guess what the rivalry was about. It was about choosing a fourth wife for me! `But,' you will exclaim, `I thought you gave the Guards full permission to chop you in pieces with their swords if you ever married again?' I did. But that was before I took my fateful decision, sitting there under the cedar in the Gardens of Lucullus. For now I had made up my mind, and once I do that, the thing is fixed with a nail. I set my freedmen a sort of guessing-game as to what my marital intentions were. It was a joke, for I had already chosen the lucky woman. I started them off one night-by remarking casually at supper: `I ought to do something better for little Octavia than put her in charge of freedwomen. I hanged all the maids who understood her ways, poor child. And I can't expect my daughter Antonia to look after her: Antonia's been very poorly ever since her own baby died.'

Vitellius said: 'No, what little Octavia needs is a mother. And so does Britannicus, though it's easier for a boy than a girl to look after himself.'

I made no answer, so everyone present knew that I was thinking of marrying again, and everyone knew too how easily I had been managed by Messalina, and thought that if he were the man to find me a wife-his fortune was made. Narcissus, Pallas, and

Callistus each offered a candidate in turn,: as soon as a favourable moment came for talking to me privately. It was most interesting to me to watch how their minds worked. Callistus remembered that Caligula had forced a Governor of Greece to divorce his wife, Lollia Paulina, and then married her himself (as his third wife) because someone had told him at a banquet that she was the most beautiful woman in the Empire: and he remembered further that this someone had been myself. He thought that since Lollia Paulina had not lost any of her looks in the ten years that had passed since, but had rather improved them, he was pretty safe in-suggesting her. He did so the very next day. I smiled and promised to give the matter my careful consideration.

Narcissus was next. He asked me first who it was that Callistus had suggested and when I told him `Lollia Paulina', he exclaimed that she would never suit me. She cared for nothing but jewels. `She never goes about with less than thirty thousand gold pieces around her neck in emeralds or rubies or pearls, never the same assortment either, and she's as stupid and obstinate as a miller's mule. Caesar, the one woman for you really, as we both know is Calpurnia. But you can hardly marry a prostitute:' it wouldn't look well. My suggestion therefore is that you marry some noblewoman just as a matter of form, but live with Calpurnia, as you did before you met Messalina, and enjoy real happiness for the rest of your life.'

`Whom do you suggest as my matter-of-form wife?'

'Aelia Paetina. After you divorced her she married again, you remember. Recently she lost her husband, and he left her very badly off. It would be a real charity to marry her.'

`But her tongue, Narcissus?'

'She's chastened by misfortune. That legal tongue of hers will never be heard again, I undertake that. I'll warn her about it and explain the conditions of marriage. She'll be paid all the respect due to her as your wife, and as your daughter Antonia's mother, and have a large private income, but she must sign a contract to behave like a deaf-mute in your presence, and not to be jealous of Calpurnia. How's that?'

'I shall give the matter my careful consideration, my dear Narcissus.'

But it was Pallas who made the correct guess. It was either extraordinarily stupid of him or extraordinarily clever. How could he suppose that I would do anything so monstrous as to marry my niece, Agrippinilla? In the first. place, the marriage would be incestuous in the second place she was the mother of Lucius Domitius, to whom I had taken the most violent dislike; in the third place, now that Messalina was dead, she could claim the title of the worst woman in Rome. Even in Messalina's lifetime it would have been a very nice question how to decide between these two: they were equally vicious, and if Messalina had been more promiscuous than Agrippinilla, she had at least never committed incest, as Agrippinilla, to my own knowledge, had. But Agrippinilla had one lonely virtue - she was very brave, while Messalina, as we have seen, was a coward. Pallas suggested Agrippinilla, with the same proviso that Narcissus had made, namely, that it need only be a marriage of form: I could keep any mistress I pleased. Agrippinilla, he said, was the only woman in Rome capable of taking over Messalina's political work, and would be a real-help to me.

I promised to give the matter my careful consideration.

I then arranged a regular debate between Callistus, Narcissus, and Pallas, after first giving them time to sound the willingness of their candidates to stand for the office of Caesar's wife. I called in Vitellius as umpire and the debate took place a few days later. Narcissus, in recommending Aelia, argued that by resuming an old connexion I should introduce no innovation into the family, and that she would be a good mother to little Octavia and to Britannicus, to whom she was already related by being the mother of their half-sister Antonia.

Callistus reminded Narcissus that Aelia had long been divorced from me, and suggested that if she was taken back her pride' would be inflamed and she would probably revenge herself privately on Messalina's children. Lollia was a much more eligible match: nobody could deny that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and virtuous too.

Pallas opposed both choices. Aelia was an old shrew, he said, and Lollia a vacant-minded simpleton who went about looking like a jeweller's shop and would expect a whole new set of gewgaws, at the expense of the Treasury, as regularly as the sun rose. No, the only possible choice was the Lady Agrippina. [It was only I who still called her by the diminutive `Agrippinilla.'] She would bring with her the grandson of Germanicus, who was in every way worthy of the Imperial fortune; and it was of great political importance that a woman who had shown herself fruitful and was still young should not marry into another house and transfer to it the splendours of the Caesars.

I could see Vitellius sweating hard, trying to guess from my looks which of the three it was that I favoured, and wondering whether perhaps it would not be better to suggest a quite different name himself. But he guessed correctly, perhaps from the order in which I had given my freedmen leave to speak. He took a deep breath and said: `Between three such beautiful, wise, well-born, and distinguished candidates, I find it as difficult to judge as the Trojan shepherd, Paris, between the three Goddesses Juno, Venus, and Minerva. Let me keep this figure, which is a helpful one. Aelia Paetina stands for Juno. She has already been married and had a child by the Emperor; but as Jove was displeased with Juno, though she was the mother of Hebe, for her nagging tongue, so has the Emperor been displeased by Aelia Paetina, and we want no more domestic wars in this terrestrial Heaven of ours. It is claimed for Lollia Paulina that she is a very Venus, and certainly Paris awarded the prize to Venus; but Paris was an impression - able young swain, you will remember, and beauty unallied with intelligence can have no appeal for a mature ruler with great marltal as well as governmental experience. Agrippinilla is Minerva, for wisdom, and she yields little, if anything, to Lollia for beauty. The Emperor's wife should have both good looks and outstanding intelligence: my choice is Agrippinilla.'

As though I had only just considered the matter I protested: `But, Vitellius, she's my niece. I can't marry my niece, can I?'

'If you wish me to approach the Senate, Caesar, I can undertake to obtain their consent. It's irregular, of course, but I can take the same line as you took the other day in your speech about the Autun franchise: I can point out that the marriage laws at Rome have become more and more plastic in course of time. A hundred years ago, for instance, it would have been considered monstrous for first cousins to marry, but now it is regularly done even in the best families. And why shouldn't uncle and niece marry? The Parthians do it, and theirs is a very old civilization. And in the Herod family there have been more marriages between uncle and niece than any other sort.'

`That's right,' I said. `Herodias married her uncle Philip, and then deserted him and ran off with her uncle Antipas. And Herod Agrippa's daughter Berenice married her uncle Herod Pollio, King of Chalcis, and now she's supposed to be living incestuously with her brother, young Agrippa. Why shouldn't the Caesars be as free as the Herods?'

Vitellius looked surprised but said quite seriously: `Incest between brother and sister is another matter. I cannot make out a' case for that. But it may well be that our very earliest ancestors allowed uncle and niece to marry; because there is nowhere any disgust expressed in ancient classical literature for Pluto's marriage with his niece Proserpine.'

`Pluto was a God;' I said. `But then, it seems, so am I now. Pallas, what does my niece Agrippinilla herself think about the matter?'

`She will be greatly honoured and altogether overjoyed, Caesar,' ' said Pallas, hardly able to conceal his elation. `And she is ready to swear that she will faithfully devote herself as long as she lives entirely: to you, your children, and the Empire.'

`Bring her to me.'

When Agrippinilla arrived she fell at my feet; I told her to rise and said that I was prepared to marry her, if she wished it. She° embraced me passionately, for answer, and said this was the happiest moment of her life. I believed her. Why not? She would now be able to rule the world through me.

Agrippinilla was no Messalina. Messalina had the gift of surrendering herself wholly to sensual pleasure. In this she took after her great-grandfather, Mark Antony. Agrippinilla was not that sort of woman. She took after her great-grandmother, the Goddess Livia: she cared only for power. Sexually, as I have. said, she was completely immoral; yet she was by no means prodigal of her favours. She only slept with men who could be useful to her politically. I have, for instance, every reason to suspect that she rewarded Vitellius for his gallant championship of her, and I know for certain (though I have never told her so) that Pallas was then, and is now, her lover. For Pallas controls the Privy Purse.

So Vitellius made his speech in the Senate (having first arranged a big public demonstration outside) and told them that he had suggested the marriage to me and that I had agreed about its political necessity, but had hesitated to make a definite decision until I had first heard what the Senate and People thought of the innovation. Vitellius spoke with old-fashioned eloquence. `And you will not have long to search, my Lords, before you find that among all the ladies of Rome this Agrippina stands pre-eminent for the splendour of her lineage, has given signal proof of her fruitfulness, and comes up to and even surpasses your requirements in virtuous accomplishments: it is indeed a singularly happy circumstance that, through the providence of the Gods, this paragon among women is a widow and may be readily united with a Person who has always hitherto been a model of husbandly virtue.'

You can perhaps guess how his speech was received. They voted for his motion without a single dissentient voice not by any means because they all loved Agrippinilla, but because nobody dared to earn her resentment now that it seemed likely that she would become my wife - and several senators sprang up in emulous zeal and said that if necessary they would compel me to bow to the consentient will of the whole country. I received their greetings and pleadings, and. congratulations in the Market Place and then proceeded to the Senate, where I demanded the passing of a decree permanently legalizing marriages between uncles and fraternal nieces. They passed it. At the New Year I married Agrippinilla. Only one person took advantage of the new law, a knight who had been a Guards captain. Agrippinilla paid him well for it.

I made a statement to the Senate about my temple in Britain. I explained that my deification had come about accidentally, and apologized to my fellow-citizens. But perhaps they would forgive me and confirm the incongruity in view of the political danger of cancelling it. `Britain is far away, and it is only a little temple,' I pleaded ironically._ `A tiny rustic temple with a mud floor and a turf roof, like the ones in which the Gods of Rome lived, back in Republican times, before the God Augustus rehoused them in their present palatial splendour. Surely you won't object to one little temple, so far away, and an old priest or two, and an occasional modest sacrifice? For my part I never intended to be a God. And I give you my word that it will be my only one....' But nobody, it seemed, grudged me the temple.

After closing the census I had not taken on the office of Censor again, but as a prelude to my: restoration of the Republic had given the appointment to Vitellius. It was the first time for a century that the control of public morals had been out of the hands of the Caesars. One of Vitellius's first acts after arranging my marriage with Agrippinilla was to remove from the Senatorial Order one of the first-rank magistrates of the year, none other than my son-in-law, young Silanus! The reason he gave was Silanus's incest with his sister Calvina, who had been his own daughter-in-law, but had lately. been divorced by her husband, young Vitellius. Vitellius explained that his son had surprised the two in bed together some time before and had told him of it under the bonds of secrecy; but now that he had become Censor he could not con= scientiously conceal Silanus's guilt. I examined the case myself. Silanus and Calvina denied the charge, but it seemed proved beyond all dispute, so I dissolved the marriage-contract between Silanus and my daughter Octavia (or rather Messalina's daughter Octavia) and made him resign this magistracy. It had only a single day to run, but to show how strongly I felt I gave someone else the appointment for the last day. Of course Vitellius would never have dared to reveal the, incest if it had not been for Agrippinilla. Silanus stood in the way of her ambitions: she wanted her son Lucius to become my son-in-law. Well, I had been fond of Silanus, and, after all, he was a descendant of the God Augustus; so I told him that I would postpone judgement in his case - meaning that I expected him, to commit suicide. He delayed for some time, and eventually chose my, wedding-day for the deed; which was not inappropriate. Calvina I banished and advised the College of Pontiffs to offer sacrifices and atonements at the Grove of Diana, in revival of a picturesque institution of Tullus Hostilius, the third King of Rome.

Baba and Augurinus were in great form about this time. They parodied everything I did. Baba introduced three new letters into the alphabet: one to stand for a hawk of phlegm, one for the noisy sucking of teeth, and the third for `the indeterminate vowel halfway between a hiccup and a belch. He divorced the enormous negress who had hitherto acted the part of Messalina, whipped her through the streets and went through a mock ceremony of marriage with a cross-eyed albino woman whom he claimed to be his fraternal niece. He took a census of beggars, thieves, and vagabonds and removed from the Society all who had ever done a stroke of honest work in their lives. One of his jokes was resigning. his censorship and appointing Augurinus as his successor for the unexpired period of his office - exactly one hour by the waterclock. Augurinus boasted of all the glorious things that he professed to do in the hour. His one complaint was that Baba's waterclock didn't keep good time: he wanted to go off and fetch his own, which had hours that lasted at least three times as long. But Baba, imitating my: voice and gestures, quoted a phrase I had recently used in the law-courts, and was rather proud of, `One can

expect agreement between philosophers sooner than between clocks', and refused to let him go. Augurinus insisted that fair was fair; if he was going to be Censor, he needed a full hour of regulation size and weight. They carried on the argument hotly until Augurinus's term of office ended suddenly with nothing done. `And I was going to dip you in boiling tar and then fry you within an inch of your life, according to a picturesque institution of King Tullus Hostilius,' Augurinus grieved.

I allow Baba and Augurinus perfect freedom to parody and caricature me. They draw great audiences in their performances outside the Temple of Mercury: Mercury is, of course, the patron of thieves and practical jokers. Agrippinilla was highly offended by the insult to her of Baba's marriage to the albino, but I surprised her by-telling her firmly: `So long as I live Baba's life is to be spared, understand and Augurinus's too.'

`Exactly so long, to the very hour,'' Agrippina agreed in her most unpleasant tones.

There was a plague of vipers this year: I published an order informing the public of an infallible remedy against snake-bite, namely, the juice of a yew-tree. Augurinus and Baba republished it with the addition of the phrase `and contrariwise', which, it seems, is recognized as one of my stock expressions.

Chapter 31

I AM near the end of my long story. I have now been five years married to Agrippinilla, but they have been comparatively uneventful years, and I shall not write about them in too great detail. I have let Agrippinilla and my freedmen rule me. I have opened and shut my mouth and gestured with my arms like the little jointed marionettes they make in Sicily: but the voice has not been mine, nor the gestures. I must say at once that Agrippinilla has shown herself a remarkably able ruler of the tyrannical sort. When she comes into a room where a number of notables are gathered, and looks coldly around her, everyone quakes and springs to attention and studies how best to please her. She no longer needs to pretend affection for me. I soon made her realize that I had married her purely on political grounds, and, physically, she was repulsive to me. I was quite frank about it. I explained: 'The fact is that I got tired of being Emperor. I wanted, someone to do most of the work for me. I married you not for your heart but, for your head. It takes a woman to run an empire like this. There's no reason for us to pretend amorous devotion to each other.'

`That suits me,' she said.. `You're not the sort of lover one dreams about.'

`And you're not quite what you were twenty-two years ago; my dear, when you were a bride for the first time. Still, you'll last a little longer if you continue with that daily facial massage and those milk baths: Vitellius pretends to find you the most beautiful woman in Rome.'

`And perhaps you'll last too, if you don't exasperate the people you depend on.'

`Yes, we two have outlasted all, the rest of our family,' I agreed. ` I don't know how we've done it. I think we ought to congratulate each other, instead of quarrelling.'

`You always begin it,' she said, 'by being what you call "honest".'

Agrippinilla could not understand me. She soon found that, it was unnecessary to coax or cheat or bully me if she wanted things done her way. I accepted her suggestions on almost every point. She could hardly believe her luck when I consented to betroth Lucius to Octavia: she knew what I really thought of Lucius. She could not make out why I consented. She was emboldened to go further and suggest that I should adopt him as my son. But that was already my intention. She first let Pallas sound me on the subject. Pallas was tactful. He began speaking fondly of my brother Germanicus and of his adoption by my Uncle Tiberius at Augustus's request, though Tiberius had a son of his own, Castor. He enlarged on the remarkable brotherly love that had sprung up between Germanicus and Castor and the generosity that Castor had shown to Germanicus's widow and children. I knew at once what Pallas was driving at, and agreed that two loving sons were better than one. 'But remember,' I said, `that was not the end of the story. Germanicus and Castor were both murdered; and my Uncle. Tiberius in his old age, as it might be myself, named another pair of loving brothers as his joint heirs, Caligula and Gemellus. Caligula had the advantage of being the elder. When the old man died Caligula seized the monarchy and killed Gemellus.'

That silenced Pallas for a while. When he tried a slightly different line, this time telling me what fast friends Lucius and Britannicus had become, I said, as if quite irrelevantly : `Do you know that the Claudian family has kept its descent direct in the male line, without adoptions, ever since the day of the original Appius Claudius, five whole cycles ago? There's no other family in Rome can make the same boast.'

`Yes, Caesar,' Pallas said, `the Claudian family tradition is one of the least plastic things in a remarkably plastic world. But, as you wisely point out, ‘all things are subject to change’

`Listen, Pallas. Why do you go on beating about the bush? Tell the Lady Agrippinilla that if she wishes me to adopt her son as my joint-heir with Britannicus I am ready to do so. As for plasticity, I've gone very soft in my old age. You can roll me in your hands like dough and fill me with whatever stuffing you like and bake me into Imperial dumplings.'

I adopted Lucius. He is now called Nero. Recently I married him to Octavia, whom I had first, however, to let Vitellius adopt as his daughter, to avoid the technical crime of incest. On the night of their marriage the whole sky seemed on fire. Lucius (or Nero as he was now called) did his best to win Britannicus's friendship, But Britannicus saw through him and haughtily rejected his advances. He refused at first to address him as Nero, continuing to call him Lucius Domitius until Agrippinilla intervened and ordered him to apologize. Britannicus replied `I shall apologize only if my father orders me to do so.' I ordered him to apologize. I still saw very little of Britannicus. I had fought down my morbid suspicions about his being Caligula's bastard - and loved him now as dearly as ever before. But I concealed my true feelings. I was determined to play Old King Log, and nothing must hinder my resolution. Sosibius was his tutor still and gave him an old-fashioned education. Britannicus was accustomed to the plainest foods and lay at night on a plank bed like a soldier. Horsemanship, fencing, military engineering, and early Roman history were his chief studies, but he knew the works of Homer and Ennius and Livy as well as or better than I did. In his holidays Sosibius took him down to my Capua estate, and there he learned about bee-keeping, stock-breeding, and farming. I allowed him no training in Greek oratory or philosophy. I told Sosibius: `The ancient Persians taught their children to shoot straight and speak the truth. Teach my son the same.'

Narcissus ventured to criticize me. `The sort of education that Britannicus is being given, Caesar, would have. been all very well , in the, old days when, as you are-so fond of quoting,

Under the oak sat Romulus

Eating boiled turnips with a will,

or even a few hundred years later when,

Called to fight his country's foemen

Cincinnatus left the plough.

But surely in this new ninth cycle of Roman history it is a little out of date?'

'I know what I am doing, Narcissus,' I said

As for Nero, I provided our young King Stork with the most appropriate tutor in the world. I had to send all the way to Corsica - for this prodigy. You will guess his name, perhaps Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Stoic - that flashy orator, that shameless flatterer, that dissolute and perverted amorist. I pleaded before the Senate myself for his forgiveness and recall I spoke of the uncomplaining patience with which he had borne his eight years of exile, the rigorous discipline to which he had voluntarily subjected himself, and his deep -sense of loyalty to my house. Seneca must have been astounded, after the two false moves he had recently made. For shortly after the publication of his Consolation to Polybius, Polybius had been executed as a criminal. Seneca had then tried to remedy the mistake by a panegyric on Messalina. A few days after it was published at Rome, Messalina followed Polybius into disgrace and death, and it was hurriedly withdrawn. Agrippinilla was quite ready to welcome Seneca as Nero's teacher. She valued his talents as a teacher of rhetoric and took all the credit for his recall.