I, Claudius

After six months of his monarchy, in September, the Consuls in office finished their term and he undertook a Consulship for himself for a while. Whom do you suppose he chose as a colleague? He actually chose me! And I who had twenty-three years before begged Tiberius to be given real honours, not empty ones, would now willingly have resigned my appointment in anyone's favour. It was not that I wanted to go back to my writing [for I had just completed and revised my Etruscan history and had begun on [359] no new work], but that I had quite forgotten all the rules of procedure and legal formulas and precedents that I had once studied so painfully, and that I felt thoroughly ill at ease in the Senate.

From being so little at Rome, too, I knew nothing about how to pull strings and get things done quickly, or who were the men with real power. I got into great trouble with Caligula almost at once. He entrusted me with the task of having statues made of Nero and Drusus, to be set up and consecrated in the Market Place, and the Greek firm from whom I commissioned them promised faithfully to have them ready on the day fixed for the ceremony early in December. Three days before I went along to see how the statues looked. The rogues hadn't begun on them. They made some excuse about the right coloured marble having only just come in. I flew into a temper [as I often do on occasions of this sort, but my anger doesn't last long] and told them that if they didn't get workmen busy on the blocks and keep them at the job night and day I would have the whole firm--owner, managers and men--thrown out of the City. Perhaps I made them nervous, because though Nero was done on the afternoon before the ceremony--it was a good likeness too--a careless sculptor somehow broke Drusus' hand off at the wrist. There are ways of repairing a break of this sort, but the join always shows and I couldn't present Caligula with a botched piece of work on so important an occasion. All that I could do was to go at once and tell him that Drusus wouldn't be ready. Heavens, how angry he was! He threatened to degrade me from my Consulship and wouldn't listen to any explanation. Fortunately he had decided to resign his own Consulship the next day, and ask me to resign mine, in favour of the men who had originally been chosen for it; so nothing came of his threat and I was even chosen again as Consul with him for four years ahead.

I was expected to occupy a suite of rooms at the Palace and because of Caligula's stern speeches against all sorts of immorality [in the manner of Augustus] I could not have Calpurnia there with me, though I was unmarried.

She had to remain at Capua, much to my annoyance, and I was only able to get away occasionally to visit her. His I, CLAUDIUB [?6o] own morals seemed not to come into the scope of his strictures. He was growing tired of Macro's wife, Ennia, whom Macro had divorced at his request and whom he had promised to marry, and used to go out at night in search of gallant adventures with a party of jolly fellows whom he called "The Scouts". They consisted usually of three young staff-officers, two famous gladiators, Apelles the actor, and Eutychus, the best charioteer in Rome, who won nearly every race in which he competed. Caligula had now come out strong as a partisan of the Leek Greens and sent all over the world in search of the fastest horses. He found a religious excuse for public chariot-racing, with twenty heats a day, almost whenever the sun shone. He made a lot of money by challenging rich men to take his bets against the other colours, which for politeness they did. But what he got this way was a mere drop, as the saying goes, in the ocean of his expenses. At all events with these jolly "Scouts"

he used to go out at night, disguised, and visit the lowest haunts of the City, usually coming into conflict with the night-watchmen and having riotous escapades which the Commander of the Watchmen was careful to hush up.

Caligula's three sisters, Drusilla, Agrippinilla and Lesbia, had all been married to noblemen; but he insisted on their coming to the Palace and living there. Agrippinilla and Lesbia were told to bring their husbands with them, but Drusilla had to leave hers behind; his name was Cassius Longinus and he was sent to govern Asia Minor. Caligula demanded that the three of them should be treated with the greatest respect and gave them all the privileges enjoyed by the Vestal Virgins. He had their names joined with his own in the public prayers for his health and safety, and even in the public oath that officials and priests swore in his name on their consecration... "neither shall I value my own life or the lives of my children more highly than His life and the lives of His sisters." He behaved towards them in a way that puzzled people--rather as if they were his wives than his sisters.

Drusilla was his favourite. Although she was well rid of her husband, she always seemed unhappy now, and the unhappier she grew the more solicitous were Caligula's [36i] attentions. He now married her, for appearances only, to a cousin of his, ^Emilius Lepidus, whom I have already mentioned as a slack-twisted younger brother of the ^Emilia, Julilla's daughter, to whom I was nearly married when I was a boy. This./Emilius Lepidus, who was known as Ganymede because of his effeminate appearance and his obsequiousness to Caligula, was a valued member of the Scouts. He was seven years older than Caligula but Caligula treated him like a boy of thirteen, and he seemed to like it.

Drusilla could not bear him. But Agrippinilla and Lesbia were always in and out of his bedroom laughing and joking and playing pranks. Their husbands did not seem to mind.

Life at the Palace I found extremely disorderly. I don't mean that I wasn't made very comfortable or that the servants were not well trained or that the ordinary formalities and courtesies were not observed towards visitors. But I never quite knew what tender relations existed between this person and that: Agrippinilla and Lesbia seemed to have exchanged husbands at one time, and at another Apelles seemed somehow intimately connected with Lesbia and the charioteer with Agrippinilla. As for Caligula and Ganymede--but I have said enough to show what I mean by "disorderly". I was the only one among them past middle-age, and did not understand the ways of the new generation at all. Gemellus also lived in the Palace: he was a frightened, delicate boy who bit his nails to the quick and was usually to be found sitting in a corner and drawing designs of nymphs and satyrs and that sort of thing for vases. I can't tell you much more about Gemellus than that I got into talk with him once or twice, feeling sorry for him because he was not really one of the party, any more than I was; but perhaps he thought that I was trying to draw him out and force him into saying something against Caligula, for he would only answer in monosyllables. On the day that he put on his manly-gown Caligula adopted him as his son and heir, and appointed him Leader of Cadets; but that wasn't the same thing by any means as sharing the monarchy with him.

Caligula fell ill and for a whole month his life was despaired of. The doctors called it brain-fever. The popular consternation at Rome was so great that a crowd of never less than ten thousand people stood day and [A.D. 38] night around the Palace, waiting for a favourable bulletin. They kept up a quiet muttering and whispering together; the noise, as it reached my window, was like that of a distant stream running over pebbles.

There were a number of most remarkable manifestations of anxiety. Some men even pasted up placards on their house-doors, to say that if Death held his hand and spared the Emperor, they vowed to give him their own lives in compensation. By universal consent all traffic noises and street cries and music ceased within half a mile or more of the Palace. That had never happened before, even during Augustus' illness, the one of which Musa was supposed to have cured him. The bulletins always read: "No change."

One evening Drusilla knocked at my door and said, "Uncle Claudius! The Emperor wants to see you prgently.

Come at once. Don't stop tor anything."

"What does he want me for?"

"I don't know. But for Heaven's sake humour him. He's got a sword there.

He'll kill you if you don't say what he wants you to say. He had the point at my throat this morning. He told me that I didn't love him. I had to swear and swear that I did love him. 'Kill me, if you like, my darling,' I said .O Uncle Claudius, why was I ever born?

He's mad. He always was. But he's worse than mad now.

He's

possessed."

I went along to Caligula's bedroom, which was heavily curtained and thickly carpeted. One feeble oil-lamp was burning by the bedside. The air smelt stale. His querulous voice greeted me. "Late again? I told you to hurry," He didn't look ill, only unhealthy. Two powerful deaf-mutes with axes stood as guards, one on each side of his bed.

I said, saluting him, "Oh, how I hurried! If I hadn't had a lame leg I'd have been here almost before I started. What joy to see you alive and to hear your voice again, Caesar! Can I dare to hope that you're better?"

"I have never really been ill. Only resting. And undergoing a metamorphosis. It's the most important religious event in history. No wonder the City keeps so quiet."

I felt that he expected me to be sympathetic, nevertheless. [363] "Has the metamorphosis been painful, Emperor? I trust not."

"As painful as if I were my own mother. I had a very difficult delivery.

Mercifully, I have forgotten all about it.

Or nearly all. For I was a very precocious child and distinctly remember the midwives' faces of admiration as they washed me after my emergence into this world, and the taste of the wine they put between my lips to refresh me after my struggles."

"An astounding memory. Emperor. But may I humbly enquire precisely what is the character of this glorious change that has come over you?"

"Isn't it immediately apparent?" he asked angrily.

Drusilla's word "possessed" and the conversation I had had with my grandmother Livia as she lay dying gave me the clue. I fell on my face and adored him as a God.

After a minute or two I asked from the floor whether I was the first man privileged to worship him. He said that I was and I burst out into gratitude. He was thoughtfully prodding me with the point of his sword in the back of my neck. I thought I was done for.

He said: "I admit I am still in mortal disguise, so it is not remarkable that you did not notice my Divinity at once."

"I don't know how I could have been so blind. Your face shines in this dim light like a lamp."

"Does it?" he asked with interest. "Get up and give me that mirror." I handed him a polished steel mirror and he agreed that it shone very brightly. In this fit of good humour he began to tell me a good deal about himself.

"I always knew that it would happen," he said. “I never felt anything but Divine. Think of it. At two years old I put down a mutiny of my father's army and so saved Rome. That was prodigious, like the stories told about the God Mercury when a child, or about Hercules who strangled the snakes in his cradle."

"And Mercury only stole a few oxen," I said, "and twanged a note or two on the lyre. That was nothing by comparison."

"And what's more, by the age of eight I had killed my father. Jove himself never did that. He merely banished the old fellow."

I took this as raving on the same level, but I asked in a matter-of-fact voice,

"Why did you do that?" '

"He stood in my way. He tried to discipline me--me, a young God, imagine it! So I frightened him to death. I smuggled dead things into our house at Antioch and hid them under loose tiles; and I scrawled charms, on the walls; and I got a cock in my bedroom to give him his marching orders. And I robbed him of his Hecate. Look, here she is: I always keep her under my pillow!" He held up the green jasper charm.

My heart went as cold as ice when I recognised it. I said in a horrified voice: "You were the one then? And it was you who climbed into the bolted room by that tiny window and drew your devices there too?"

He nodded proudly and went rattling on: "Not only did I kill my natural father but I killed my father by adoption too--Tiberius, you know. And whereas Jupiter only lay with one sister of his, Juno, I have lain with all three of mine.

Martina told me it was the right thing to do if I wanted to be like Jove."

"You knew Martina well then?"

"Indeed I did. When my parents were in Egypt I used to visit her every night. She was a very wise woman, I'll tell you another thing, Drusilla's Divine too. I'm going to announce it at the same time as I make the announcement about myself. How I love Drusilla! Almost as much as she loves me." "May I ask what are your sacred intentions? This metamorphosis will surely affect Rome profoundly."

"Certainly. First, I'm going to put the whole world hi awe of me. I won't allow myself to be governed by a lot of fussy old men any longer. I'm going to show... but you remember your old grandmother, Livia? That was a joke.

Somehow she had got the notion that it was she who was to be the everlasting God about whom everyone has been prophesying in the East for the last thousand years.

I think it was Thrasyllus who tricked her into believing that she was meant.

Thrasyllus never told lies but he loved misleading people. You see, Livia didn't know the precise [565] terms of the prophecy. The God is to be a man not a woman, and not born in Rome, though he is to reign at Rome [I was bom at Antium], and bom at a time of profound peace [as I was], but destined to be the cause of innumerable wars after his death. He is to die young and to be at first loved by his people and then hated, and finally to die miserably, forsaken of all.

"His servants shall drink his blood." Then after his death he is to rule over all the other Gods of the world, in lands not yet known to us. That can only be myself.

Martina told me that many prodigies had been seen lately in the near East which proved conclusively that the God had been bom at last.

The Jews were the most excited. They somehow felt themselves peculiarly concerned. I suppose that this was because I once visited their city Jerusalem with my father and gave my first divine manifestation there." He paused.

"It would greatly interest me to know about that," I said.

"Oh, it was nothing much. Just for a joke I went into a house where some of their priests and doctors were talking theology together and suddenly shouted out:

'You're a lot of ignorant old frauds. You know nothing at all about it.'

That caused a great sensation and one old white-bearded man said: 'Oh?

And who are you. Child? Are you the prophesied one?’ ‘Yes,' I answered boldly.

He said, weeping for rapture: ‘Then teach us!' I answered: 'Certainly not! It's beneath my dignity,' and ran out again. You should have seen their faces! No, Livia was a clever and capable woman in her way--a female Ulysses, as I called her once to her face--and one day perhaps I shall deify her as I promised, but there's no hurry about that. She will never make an important deity. Perhaps we'll make her the patron goddess of clerks and accountants, because she had a good head for figures. Yes, and we'll add poisoners, as Mercury has thieves under his protection as well as merchants and travellers."

"That's only justice," I said. "But what I am anxious to know at once is this: in what name am I to adore you? Is it incorrect, for instance, to call you Jove?

Aren't you someone greater than Jove?"

He said: "Oh, greater than Jove, certainly, but anonymous as yet. For the moment, I think though, I'll call myself Jove--the Latin Jove to distinguish myself from that Greek fellow. I'll have to settle with him one of these days.

He's had his own way too long."

I asked: "How does it happen that your father wasn't a God too? I never heard of a God without a divine father."

"That's simple. The God Augustus was my father."

"But he never adopted you, did he? He only adopted your elder brothers and left you to carry on your father's line."

"I don't mean that he was my father by adoption, I mean that I am his son by his incest with Julia. I must be.

That's the only possible solution. I'm certainly no son of Agrippina: her father was a nobody. It's ridiculous."

I was not such a fool as to point out that in this case Germanicus wasn't his father and therefore his sisters were only his nieces. I humoured him as Drusilla advised and said: "This is the most glorious hour of my life. Allow me to retire and sacrifice to you at once, with my remaining strength. The divine air you exhale is too strong for my mortal nostrils. I am nearly fainting," The room was dreadfully stuffy. Caligula hadn't allowed the windows to be opened ever since he took to his bed.

He said: "Go in peace. I thought of killing you, but I won't now. Tell the Scouts about my being a God and about my face shining, but don't tell them any more. I impose holy silence on you for the rest."

I grovelled on the floor again and retired, backwards.

Ganymede stopped me in the corridor and asked for the news. I said: "He's just become a God and a very important one, he says. His face shines."

"That's bad news for us mortals," said Ganymede. "But I saw it coming.

Thanks for the tip, I'll pass it on to the other fellows. Does Drusilla know? No?

Then I’ll tell her."

"Tell her that she's a Goddess too," I said, "in case she hasn't noticed it."

I went back to my room and thought to myself, "This has happened for the best. Everyone will soon see that he's mad, and lock him up. And there are no other descendants of Augustus left now of an age to become Emperor, except Ganymede, and he's not got the popularity or the necessary [367] force of character. The Republic will be restored. Caligula's father-in-law is the man for that. He has the most influence of any man in the Senate. I'll back him up. If only we could get rid of Macro, and have a decent commander of the Guards in his place everything would be easy. The Guards are the greatest obstacle. They know very well that they'd never get bounties of fifty and a hundred gold pieces a man voted them by a Republican Senate. Yes, it was Sejanus' idea of turning them into a sort of private army for my uncle Tiberius that gave monarchy its oriental absoluteness. We ought to break up the Camp and billet the men in private houses again as we used to do."

But--would you believe it?--Caligula's divinity was accepted by everyone without question. For awhile he was content to let the news of it circulate privately, and to remain officially a mortal still. It would have spoilt his free and easy relations with the Scouts and curtailed most of his pleasure if everyone had had to lie face-down on the floor whenever he appeared. But within ten days of his recovery, which was greeted with inexpressible jubilation, he had taken on himself all the mortal honours that Augustus had accepted in a lifetime and one or two more besides. He was Caesar the Good, Caesar the Father of the Armies, and the Most Gracious and Mighty Caesar, and Father of the Country, a title which Tiberius had steadfastly refused all his life.

Gemellus was the first victim of the terror, Caligula sent for a colonel of the Guards and told him, "Kill that traitor, my son, at once." The colonel went straight to Gemellus' rooms and struck his head off. The next victim was Caligula's father-in-law. He was one of the Silanus family--Caligula had married his daughter Junia but she had died in child-birth a year before he became Emperor. Silanus enjoyed the distinction of being the only Senator whom Tiberius had never suspected of disloyalty: Tiberius had always refused to listen to any appeal from his judicial sentences. Caligula now sent him a message, "By dawn tomorrow you must be dead." The unfortunate man thereupon said good-bye to his family and cut his throat with a razor. Caligula explained in a letter to the Senate that Gemellus had died a traitor's death: the insolent lad had refused to come to sea with him that stormy day when he had sailed to Pandataria and Ponza to collect the remains of his mother and brothers, and had stayed behind in the hope of seizing the monarchy if tempests wrecked his ship; and during his recent dangerous illness had offered no prayer for his recovery but tried to ingratiate himself with the officers of his body-guard. His father-in-law, he wrote, was another traitor: he had taken antidotes against poison whenever he came to dine at the Palace so that his whole person smelt of them. "But is there any antidote against Caesar?" These explanations were accepted by the Senate.

The truth of the matter was, that Gemellus was so bad a sailor that he nearly died of sea-sickness every time he went out in a boat, even in fine weather, and it was Caligula himself who had kindly refused his offer to accompany him on that voyage. As for his father-in-law he had an obstinate cough and smelt of the medicine that he took to soothe his throat, so as not to be a nuisance at table.

XXX

WHEN MY MOTHER HEARD OF GEMELLUS' MURDER SHE was very

grieved and came to the Palace asking to see Caligula, who received her sulkily, for he felt that she was about to scold him. She said; "Grandson, may I speak to you in private? It is about the death of Gemellus."

"No, certainly not in private," he answered. "Say what you wish to say in Macro's presence. I must have a witness by me if what you have to say is as important as all that."

"Then I prefer to keep silent. It is a family matter, not for the ears of the sons of slaves. That fellow's father was the son of one of my vine-dressers. I sold him to my brother-in-law for forty-five gold pieces."

"You will please tell me at once what it was you were about to say, without insulting my ministers. Don't you [369] know that I have the power to make anyone in the world do just what I please?"

"It is nothing that you will be glad to hear."

"Say

it."

"As you wish. I came to say that your killing of my poor Gemellus was wanton murder and I wish to resign all the honours I have had from your wicked hands."

Caligula laughed and said to Macro, "I think the best thing that this old lady can do now is to go home and borrow a pruning-knife from one of her vine-dressers and cut her vocal chords with it."

Macro said: "I always gave the same sort of advice to my grandmother, but the old witch refused to take it."

My mother came to see me. "I am about to kill myself, Claudius," she said.

"You will find all my affairs in order.

There will be a few small debts outstanding: pay them punctually. Be good to my household staff; they have been loyal workers, every one of them. I am sorry that your little daughter will have nobody now to look after her; I think that you had better marry again to give her a mother.

She's a good child."

I said: "What, Mother! Kill yourself? Why? O don't do that!"

She smiled sourly. "My life's my own, isn't it? And why should you dissuade me from taking it? Surely you won't miss me, will you?"

"You are my mother," I said. "A man only has one mother."

"I am surprised that you speak so dutifully. I have been no very loving mother to you. How could I have been expected to be so? You were always a great disappointment to me--a sick, feeble, timorous, woolly-witted thing. Well, I have been prettily punished by the Gods for my neglect of you. My splendid son Germanicus murdered, and my poor grandsons, Nero and Drusus and Gemellus murdered, and my daughter Livilla punished for her wickedness, her abominable wickedness, by my own hand--that was the worst pain I suffered, no mother ever suffered a worse--and my four granddaughters all gone to the bad, and this filthy impious Caligula.... But you'll survive him. You'd survive a Universal Deluge, I believe." Her voice, calm at first, had risen to its usual angry scolding tone.

I said: "Mother, have you no kindly word to give me even at a time like this? How did I ever intentionally wrong you or disobey you?"

But she did not seem to hear. "I have been prettily punished,” she repeated.

Then: "I wish you to come to my house in five hours' time. By that time I shall have completed my arrangements. I count on you to pay me the last rites. I don't want you to catch my dying breath. If I am not dead when you arrive wait in the ante-room until you get the word from my maid Briseis. Don't make a muddle of the valedictory: that would be just like you. You will find full instructions written out for the funeral. You are to be chief mourner. I want no funeral oration.

Remember to cut off my hand for separate burial: because this will be a suicide. I want no perfumes on the pyre: it's often done but it's strictly against the law and I have always regarded it as a most wasteful practice. I am giving Pallas his freedom, so he'll wear the cap of liberty in the procession, don't forget. And just for once in your life try to carry one ceremony through without a mistake." That was all, except-a formal "Good-bye". No kiss, no tears, no blessing. As a dutiful son I carried out her last wishes, to the letter. It was odd her giving my own slave Pallas his freedom. She did the same with Briseis.

Watching her pyre burning, from his dining-room window, a few days later, Caligula said to Macro: "You stood by me well against that old woman. I'm going to reward you. I'm going to give you the most honourable appointment in the whole Empire. It's an appointment which, as Augustus laid down as a principle of State, must never fall into the hands of an adventurer. I am going to make you Governor of Egypt." Macro was delighted: he did not quite know, these days, how he stood with Caligula and if he went to Egypt he would be safe. As Caligula had said, the appointment was an important one: the Governor of Egypt had the power of starving Rome by cutting off the corn-supply, and the garrison could be strengthened by local levies until it was big enough to hold the province against any invading army that could be brought against it.

So Macro was relieved of his command of the Guards.

Caligula appointed nobody in his place for a time, but let the nine colonels of battalions each command for a month in turn. He gave out that at the end of this time the most loyal and efficient of them would be given the appointment permanently. But the man to whom he secretly promised it was the colonel of the battalion which found the Palace Guard--none other than the same brave Cassius Chaerea whose name you cannot have forgotten if you have read this story with any attention--the man who killed the German in the amphitheatre, the man who led his company back from the massacre of Varus' army, and who afterwards saved the bridgehead; the man too who cut his way through the mutineers in the camp at Bonn and who carried Caligula on his back that early morning when Agrippina and her friends had to trudge on foot from the camp under his protection. Cassius was white-haired now, though not yet sixty years of age, and stooped a little, and his hands trembled because of a fever that had nearly killed him in Germany, but he was still a fine swordsman and reputedly the bravest man in Rome. One day an old soldier of the Guards went mad and ran amok with his spear in the courtyard of the Palace. He thought he was killing French rebels.

Everyone fled but Cassius, who though unarmed stood his ground until the madman charged him, when he calmly gave the parade-ground order, "Company, halt! Ground arms!" and the crazy fellow, to whom obedience to orders had become second-nature, halted and laid his spear flat along the ground. "Company about turn," Cassius ordered again. "Quick march!" So he disarmed him. Cassius, then, was the first temporary commander of the Guards and kept them in order while Macro was being tried for his life.

For Macro's appointment to the governorship of Egypt was only a trick of Caligula's, the same sort of trick that Tiberius had played on Sejanus. Macro was arrested as he went aboard his ship at Ostia and brought back to Rome in chains.

He was accused of having brought about the deaths of Arruntius and several other innocent men and women.

To this charge Caligula added another, namely that Macro had played the pander, trying to make him fall in love with his wife Ennia--a temptation to which in his youthful inexperience, he admitted, he had nearly succumbed, Macro and Ennia were both forced to kill themselves. I was surprised how easily he got rid of Macro.

One day Caligula as High Pontiff went to solemnise a marriage between one of the Piso family and a woman called Orestilla. He took a fancy to Orestilla and when the ceremony was completed and most of the high nobility of Rome were gathered at the wedding feast, having great fun, as one does on these occasions, he suddenly called out to the bridegroom: "Hey, there. Sir, stop kissing that woman! She's my wife." He then rose and, in the hush of surprise that followed, ordered the guards to seize Orestilla and carry her off to the Palace.

Nobody dared to protest. The next day he married Orestilla: her husband was forced to attend the ceremony and give her away. He sent a letter to the Senate to inform them that he had celebrated a marriage in the style of Romulus and Augustus--referring, I suppose, to Romulus' rape of the Sabine women and Augustus' marriage with my grandmother [when my grandfather was present].

Within two months he had divorced Orestilla and banished her, and her former husband too, on the grounds that they had been committing adultery when his back was turned. She was sent to Spain and he to Rhodes. He was only allowed to take ten slaves with him: when he asked as a favour to be allowed double that number Caligula said: "As many as you like, but for every extra slave you take you’ll have to have an extra soldier to guard you."

Drusilla died. I am certain in my own mind that Caligula killed her but I have no proof. Whenever he kissed a woman now, I am told, he used to say: "As white and lovely a neck as this is, I have only to give the word, and slash! It will be cut clean through." If the neck was particularly white and lovely he could sometimes not resist the temptation of giving the word and seeing his boast proved true. In the case of Drusilla I think that he struck the blow himself. At all events nobody was allowed to see her corpse. He gave out that she died of a consumption and gave her a most extraordinary rich funeral. She was deified under the name of Panthea and had temples built to her, and noblemen and noblewomen appointed her priests, and [373] a great annual festival instituted in her honour, more splendid than any other in the Calendar. A man earned ten thousand gold pieces for seeing her spirit being received into Heaven by Augustus. During the days of public mourning that Caligula ordered in her honour, it was a capital crime for any citizen to laugh, sing, shave, go to the baths, or even have dinner with his family.

The law-courts were closed, no marriages were celebrated, no troops performed military exercises. Caligula had one man put to death for selling hot water in the streets, and another for exposing razors for sale. The resulting gloom was so profound and widespread that he could not himself bear it [or it may have been remorse], so one night he left the City and travelled down towards Syracuse, alone except for a guard of honour. He had no business there, but the journey was a distraction. He got no further then Messina, where Etna happened to be in slight eruption. The sight frightened him so much that he turned back at once. When he reached Rome again he soon set things going as usual, particularly sword-fighting, chariot-racing, and wild-beast hunting. He suddenly remembered that the men who had vowed their lives in exchange for his during his illness had not yet committed suicide; and made them do it, not only on general principles to keep them from the sin of perjury, but more particularly to prevent Death from going back on the bargain they had struck with him.

A few days later at supper I happened to be laying down the law, rather drunkenly, about the inheritance of female beauty, and quoting examples of my contention that it usually missed a generation, going from the grandmother to the granddaughter. Unfortunately I wound up by saying, "The most beautiful woman in Rome when I was a boy has reappeared, feature for feature, and limb for limb, in the person of her granddaughter and namesake Lollia, the wife of the present Governor of Greece. With the sole exception of a certain lady whom I will not name, because she is present in this room, Lollia is in my opinion the most beautiful woman alive to-day." I made this exception merely for tactfulness. Lollia was far and away more beautiful than my nieces, Agrippinilla or Lesbia, or than any other member of the company. I was not in love with her, I may say: I had merely noticed one day that she was perfect, and remembered having made exactly the same observation about her grandmother when I was a boy. Caligula grew interested and questioned me about Lollia; I did not realise that I had said too much, and said more.

That evening Caligula wrote to Lollia's husband telling him to return to Rome and accept a signal honour. The signal honour turned out to be that of divorcing Lollia and marrying her to the Emperor.

Another chance remark that I made at supper about this time had an unexpected effect on Caligula. Someone mentioned epilepsy and I said that Carthaginian records showed Hannibal to have been an epileptic, and that Alexander and Julius Casar were both subject to this mysterious disease, which seemed to be an almost inevitable accompaniment of superlative military genius.

Caligula pricked up his ears at this, and a few days later he gave a very good imitation of an epileptic fit, falling on the floor in the Senate House and screaming at the top of his voice, his lips white with foam--soap-suds, probably.

The people of Rome were still happy enough. Caligula continued giving them a good time with theatrical shows and sword-fights and wild-beasts hunts and chariot-races and largesse thrown from the Oration Platform or from the upper windows of the Palace. What marriages he contracted or dissolved, or what courtiers he murdered, they did not much care. He was never satisfied unless every seat in the theatre or Circus was occupied and all the gangways crowded; so whenever there was a performance he postponed all lawsuits and suspended all mourning to give nobody any excuse for not attending. He made several other innovations. He allowed people to bring cushions to sit on and in hot weather to wear straw hats, and to come barefooted--even senators, who were supposed to set an example of austerity.

When I eventually managed to visit Capua for a few days, for the first time for nearly a year, almost the first thing Calpurnia asked me was: "How much is left in the Treasury, Claudius, of that twenty million?"

"Less than five million, I believe. But he's been building pleasure-barges of cedar-wood and overlaying them with [37?] gold and studding them with jewels and putting baths and flower-gardens in them, and he's started work on sixty new temples and talks of cutting a canal across the isthmus of Corinth. He takes baths in spikenard and oil of violet. Two days ago he gave Eutychus, the Leek Green charioteer, a present of twenty thousand in gold for winning a close race."

"Does Leek Green always win?"

"Always. Or almost always. Scarlet happened to come in first the other day and the people gave it a big cheer. They were tiring of the monotony of Leek Green. The Emperor was furious. Next day the Scarlet charioteer and his winning team were all dead. Poisoned. The same sort of thing has happened before."

"By this time next year things will be going badly with you, my poor Claudius. By the way, would you like to look at your accounts? It's been an unlucky year, as I wrote to you. Those valuable cattle dying, and the slaves stealing right and left, and the corn-ricks burned. You're the poorer by two thousand or more gold pieces. It's not the steward's fault, either. He does his best and at least he's honest. It's because you are not here to act as overseer that these things happen."

"It can't be helped," I said. "To be frank, I am more anxious about my life than about my money these days."

"Are you badly treated?"

"Yes. They make a fool of me all the time. I don't like it. The Emperor is my chief tormentor."

"What do they do to you?"

"Oh, practical jokes. Booby traps with buckets of water suspended over doors. And frogs in my bed. Or nasty pathics smelling of myrrh: you know how I loathe frogs and pathics. If I happen to take a nap after my dinner they flip date-stones at me or tie shoes on my hands or ring the fire-bell in my ears. And I never get time to do any work.

If I ever start they upset my inkpot all over it. And nothing that I say is ever treated seriously."

"Are you the only butt they have?"

"The favourite one. The official one."

"Claudius, you're luckier than you realise. Guard your appointment jealously. Don't let anyone usurp it."

"What do you mean, girl?"

"I mean that people don't kill their butts. They are cruel to them, they frighten them, they rob them, but they don't kill them."

I said: "Calpurnia, you are very clever. Listen to me now. I still have money. I shall buy you a beautiful silk dress and a gold cosmetic box and a marmoset and a parcel of cinnamon sticks."

She smiled. "I should prefer the present in cash. How much were you going to spend?"

"About seven hundred." "Good. It will come in handy one of these days.

Thank you, kind Claudius."

When I returned to Rome I heard that there had open trouble. Caligula had been disturbed one night by the distant noise of the people crowding to the amphitheatre just before dawn, and pushing and struggling to get near the gates, so that when these opened they could get into the front rows of the free seats.

Caligula sent a company of Guards with truncheons to restore order. The Guards were ill-tempered at being pulled from their beds for this duty and struck out right and left, killing a number of people, including some quite substantial citizens. To show his displeasure at having had his sleep disturbed by the original commotion and by the far louder noise that the people made when they scattered screaming before the truncheon charge, Caligula did not appear in the amphitheatre until well on in the afternoon when everyone was worn out by waiting for him, and hungry too. When Leek Green won the first heat there was no applause and even a little hissing.

Caligula leaped angrily from his seat: "I wish you had only a single neck.

I'd hack it through!"

The next day there was to be a sword-fight and a wildbeast hunt. Caligula cancelled all the arrangements that had been made and sent in the most wretched set of animals that he could buy up in the wholesale market--mangy lions and panthers and sick bears and old worn-out wild bulls, the sort that are sent to out-of-the-way garrison towns in the provinces where audiences are not particular and amateur huntsmen don't welcome animals of too good quality. The huntsmen whom Caligula substituted for the [377] performers advertised to appear were in keeping with the animals: fat, stiff-jointed, wheezy veterans. Some of them had perhaps been good men in their day--back in Augustus' golden age. The crowd jeered and booed them. This was what Caligula had been waiting for. He sent his officers to arrest the men who were making most noise and put them into the arena to see if they would do any better. The mangy lions and panthers and sick bears and worn-out bulls made short work of them.

He was beginning to be unpopular. That the crowd always likes a holiday is a common saying, but when the whole year becomes one long holiday, and nobody has time for attending to his business, and pleasure becomes compulsory, then it is a different matter. Chariot races grew wearisome. It was all very well for Caligula, who had a personal interest in the teams and drivers and even used sometimes to drive a car himself. He was not a bad hand with the reins and whip and the competing charioteers took care not to win from him. Theatrical shows grew rather wearisome too. All theatre-pieces are much the same except to connoisseurs; or they are to me at all events. Caligula fancied himself a connoisseur and was also sentimentally attached to Apelles, the Philistine tragic actor, who wrote many of the pieces in which he played. One piece which Caligula admired particularly--because he had made suggestions which Apelles had incorporated in his part--was played over and over again until everyone hated the sight and sound of it. He had an even stronger liking for Mnester, the principal dancer of the mythological ballets then in fashion. He used to kiss Mnester in full view of the audience whenever he had done anything particularly well. A knight began coughing once during a performance, couldn't stop, and at last had to leave.

The noise he made by squeezing along past people's knees, and apologising and coughing and pushing his way through the crowded aisles to the exit disturbed Mnester, who stopped in the middle of one of his most exquisite dances to soft flute-music and waited for everyone to settle down again. Caligula was furious with the knight, had him brought before him and gave him a good beating with his own hands. Then he sent him off post-haste on a journey to Tangier, with a sealed message for the King of Morocco. [The King, a relative of mine--his mother was my Aunt Selene, Antony's daughter by Cleopatra--was greatly mystified by the message. It read: "Kindly send bearer back to Rome."] The other knights resented this incident very much: Mnester was only a freedman and gave himself airs like a triumphant general.

Caligula took private lessons in elocution and dancing from Apelles and Mnester and after a time frequently appeared on the stage in their parts. After delivering a speech in some tragedy, he used sometimes to run and shout to Apelles in the wings: "That was perfect, wasn't it? You couldn't have done better yourself." And after a graceful hop, skip and jump or two in the ballet he would stop the orchestra, hold up his hand for absolute silence and then go through the movement again unaccompanied.

As Tiberius had a pet dragon, so Caligula had a favourite stallion. This horse's original stable name was Porcellus [meaning "little pig"] but Caligula did not consider that grand enough and renamed him "Incitatus" which means "swift-speeding". Incitatus never lost a race and Caligula was so extravagantly fond of him that he made him first a citizen and then a senator and at last put him on the list of his nominees for the Consulship four years in advance.

Incitatus was given a house and servants. He had a marble bedroom with a big straw mat for a bed, a new one every day, also an ivory manger, a gold bucket to drink from, and pictures by famous artists on the walls. He used to be invited to dinner with us whenever he won a race, but preferred a bowl of barley to the meat and fish that Caligula always offered him. We had to drink his health twenty times over.

The money went faster and faster and at last Caligula decided to make economies. He said one day, for instance, "What is the use of putting men in prison for forgery and theft and breaches of the peace? They don't enjoy themselves there and they are a great expense for me to feed and guard; yet if I were to let them go they would only start their career of crime again. I'll visit the prisons to-day and look into the matter." He did. He weeded out the men whom he considered the most hardened criminals, and had them executed. Their bodies were cut up and used as meat [379] for the wild beasts waiting to be killed in the amphitheatre: which made it a double economy. Every month now he made his round of the prisons. Crime decreased slightly.

One day his Treasurer, Callistus, reported only a million gold pieces left in the Treasury and only half a million in the Privy Purse. He realised that economy was not enough: revenue had to be increased. So first he began selling priesthoods and magistracies and monopolies, and that brought him in a great deal, but not enough; and then, as Calpurnia had foreseen, he began using informers to convict rich men of real or imaginary crimes, in order to get their estates. He had abolished the capital charge for treason as soon as he became Emperor, but there were plenty of other crimes punishable with death.

He celebrated his first batch of convictions with a particularly splendid wild-beast hunt. But the crowd was in an ugly temper. They booed and groaned and refused to pay any attention to the proceedings. Then a cry began at the other end of the Circus from the President's Box where Caligula was sitting: "Give up the informers! Give up the informers!" Caligula rose to command silence, but they howled him down. He sent Guards with truncheons along to the part where noise was loudest and they whacked a few men on the head, but it began again more violently elsewhere. Caligula grew alarmed. He hurriedly left the amphitheatre, calling on me to take on the presidency from him.

I did not welcome this at all and was much relieved, when I rose to speak, that the crowd gave me a courteous hearing and even shouted "Feliciter" which means "Good luck to you!" My voice is not strong. Caligula's was very strong: he could make himself heard from one end of Mars Field to the other. I had to find someone to repeat my speech after me. Mnester volunteered, and made it sound much better than it was.

I announced that the Emperor had unfortunately been called away on important State business. That made everyone laugh; Mnester did some beautiful gestures illustrative of the importance and urgency of this State business. Then I said that the President's duties had devolved on my unfortunate and unworthy self.

Mnester's hopeless shrug and the little twiddle with a forefinger at his temples expressed this excellently. Then I said: "Let us go on with the Games, my friends."

But at once the shout rose again, "Give up the informers!" But I asked, and Mnester repeated the question winningly: "And if the Emperor does consent to give them up, what then? Will someone inform against them?" There was no answer to this but a confused buzzing. I asked them a further question. I asked them which was the worst sort of criminal--an informer? or an informer against an informer? or an informer against an informer against an informer? I said that the further you took the offence the more heinous it became, and the more people it polluted. The best policy was to do nothing which might give informers any ground for action. If everyone, I said, lived a life of the strictest virtue, the cursed breed would die out for want of nourishment, like mice in a miser's kitchen. You would never believe what a tempest of laughter this sally provoked. The simpler and sillier the joke, the better a big crowd likes it. [The greatest applause I ever won for a joke was once in the Circus when I happened to be presiding in Caligula's absence. The people called out angrily for a sword-fighter called Pigeon who was advertised to perform but had not turned up, so I said "Patience, friends!

First catch your Pigeon and then pluck him!" Whereas really witty jokes of mine have been quite lost on them.]

"Let's get on with the Games, my friends," I repeated, and this time the shouting stopped. The games turned out very good ones. Two sword-fighters killed each other, with simultaneous thrusts in the belly: this is a very rare happening. I ordered the weapons to be brought to me and had little knives made of them; such little knives are the most effective charms known for the use in cases of epilepsy.

Caligula would appreciate the gift--if he forgave me for quieting the crowd where he had failed. For he had been in such a fright that he had driven out of Rome at full speed in the direction of Antium; and did not reappear for several days.

It turned out all right. He was pleased with the little knives which gave him an opportunity of enlarging on the splendour of his disease; and when he asked what had happened at the amphitheatre I said that I had warned the [38i] crowd of what he would do if they did not repent of their disloyalty and ingratitude. I said that they had then changed their rebellious cries into howls of guilty fear and pleas for forgiveness. "Yes," he said, "I was too gentle with them. I am determined now not to yield an inch. 'Immovable rigour' is the watchword from henceforward."

And to keep himself reminded of this decision, he used every morning now to practise frightful faces before a mirror in his bedroom and terrible shouts in his private bathroom, which had a fine echo.

I asked him: "Why don't you publicly announce your Godhead? That would awe them as nothing else wouldl"

He answered: "I have still a few acts to perform in my human disguise."

The first of these acts was to order harbourmasters throughout Italy and Sicily to detain all vessels that were over a certain tonnage, put their cargoes in bond and send them empty under the convoy of warships to the Bay of Naples.

Nobody understood what this order meant. It was supposed that he contemplated an invasion of Britain and wanted the vessels for use as transports. But nothing of the sort. He was merely about to justify Thrasynus' statement that he could no more become Emperor than ride a horse across the Bay of Baize. He collected about four thousand vessels, including a thousand built especially for the occasion, and anchored them across the bay, thwart to thwart in a double line from the docks of Puteoli to his villa at Bauli.

The prows were outward and the sterns interlocked. The sterns stuck up too high for his purpose, so he had them trimmed flat, sawing off the helmsman's seat and the figurehead for every one; which made the crews very unhappy, because the figurehead was the guardian deity of the ship.

Then he boarded the double line across and threw earth on the boards and had the earth watered and rammed flat; and the result was a broad firm road, some six thousand paces long from end to end. When more ships arrived, just back from voyages to the East, he lashed them together into five islands which he linked to the road, one at every thousand paces. He had a row of ships built all the way across and ordered the ward-masters of Rome to have them stocked and staffed within ten days. He installed a drinking-water system and planted gardens. The islands he made into villages.

Fortunately the weather was fine throughout these preparations and the sea glassy smooth. When everything was ready he put on the breastplate of Alexander

[Augustus was unworthy to use Alexander's ring, but Caligula wore his very breastplate] and over it a purple silk cloak stiff with jewel-encrusted gold embroidery; then he took Julius Caesar's sword and the reputed battle-axe of Romulus and the reputed shield of Eneas which were stored m the Capitol [both forgeries in my opinion, but such early forgeries as to be practically genuine] and crowned himself with a garland of oak-leaves. After a propitiatory sacrifice to Neptune--a seal, because that is an amphibious beast--and another, a peacock, to Envy, in case, as he said, any God should be jealous of him, he mounted on Incitatus and began trotting across the bridge from the Bauli end. The whole of the Guards cavalry was at his back, and behind that a great force of cavalry brought from France, followed by twenty thousand infantry. When he reached the last island, close to Puteoli, he made his trumpeters blow the charge and dashed into the city as fiercely as if he were pursuing a beaten enemy.

He remained in Puteoli that night and most of the next day, as if resting from battle. In the evening he returned in a triumphal chariot with gold-plated wheels and sides. Incitatus and the mare Penelope to whom Caligula had ritually married him were in the shafts. Caligula was wearing the same splendid clothes as before, except that he had a garland of bay-leaves instead of oak-leaves. A long wagontrain followed heaped high with what were supposed to be battle-spoils--furniture and statues and ornaments cobbed from the houses of rich Puteoli merchants. For prisoners he used the hostages which the petty kings of the East were required to send to Rome as earnest of good behaviour and whatever foreign slaves he could lay his hands upon, dressed in their national costumes and loaded with chains. His friends followed in decorated chariots, wearing embroidered gowns and chanting his praises. Then came the army, and last a procession of about two hundred thousand people in holiday dress. Countless bonfires were alight on the whole [383] circle of hills around the bay and every soldier and citizen in the procession carried a torch. It was the most impressive theatrical spectacle, I should think, that the world has ever seen, and I am sure it was the most pointless. But how everybody enjoyed it! A pine-wood went on fire at Cape Misenum to the south-west and blazed magnificently. As soon as Caligula reached Bauli again he dismounted and called for his gold-pronged trident and his other purple cloak worked over with silver fish and dolphins. With these he entered the biggest of his five cedar-built pleasurebarges which were waiting on the shore-side of the bridge, and was rowed out in it to the middle island of the five, which was by far the biggest, followed by most of his troops in war-vessels.

Here he disembarked, mounted a silk-hung platform and harangued the crowds as they passed along the bridge.

There were watchmen to keep them on the move, so nobody heard more than a few sentences, except his friends around the platform--among whom I found myself--and the soldiers in the nearest war-vessels, who had not been permitted to land. Among other things, he called Neptune a coward for allowing himself to be put in fetters without a struggle, and promised, one day soon, to teach the old God an even sharper lesson. [He seemed to forget the propitiatory sacrifice he had made.] As for the Emperor Xerxes who had once bridged the Hellespont in the course of his unlucky expedition against Greece, Caligula laughed at him like anything. He said that Xerxes' famous bridge had been only half the length of the present one and not nearly so solid. Then he announced that he was about to give every soldier two gold pieces to drink his health with, and every member of the crowd five silver pieces.

The cheering lasted for half an hour; which seemed to satisfy him. He stopped it and had the money paid out on the spot. The whole procession had to file past again and bag after bag of coin was brought up and emptied. After a couple of hours the money-supply failed and Caligula told the disappointed late-comers to revenge themselves on the greedy first-comers. This, of course, started a free fight.

There followed one of the most remarkable nights of drinking and singing and horse-play and violence and merry-making that was ever known. The effect of drink on Caligula was always to make him a little mischievous. At the head of the Scouts and the German bodyguard he charged about the island and along the line of shops, pushing people into the sea. The water was so calm that it was only the dead-drunk, the decrepit, the aged and little children who failed to save themselves. Not more than two or three hundred were drowned.

About midnight he made a naval attack on one of the smaller islands, breaking the bridge on either side of it and then ramming ship after ship of the island until the inhabitants whom he had cut off were crowded together in a very small space in the middle. The final assault was reserved for Caligula's flagship.

He stood waving his trident in the forecastle top, swept down on the terrified survivors and sent them all under. Among the victims of this seabattle was the most remarkable exhibit of Caligula's triumphal procession--Eleazar, the Parthian hostage; who was the tallest man in the world. He was over eleven foot high. He was not, however, strong in proportion to his height; he had a voice like the bleat of a camel and a weak back, and was considered to be of feeble intellect. He was a Jew by birth. Caligula had the body stuffed and dressed in armour and put Eleazar outside the door of his bedchamber to frighten away would-be assassins.

XXXI

THE EXPENSE OF THIS TWO DAYS' ENTERTAINMENT DRAINED the Treasury and the Privy Purse completely dry. To make things worse Caligula, instead of returning the vessels to their masters and crew, ordered the breach in the bridge to be repaired and then, riding back to Rome, busied himself with other affairs. Neptune, to prove himself no coward, sent a heavy storm at the bridge from the west and sank [385] about a thousand ships. Most of the rest dragged their anchors and were driven ashore. About two thousand rode the storm out or were hauled in on the beach for safety, but the loss of the rest caused a great shortage of ships for the carriage of corn from Egypt and Africa, and so a serious food-shortage in the City. Caligula swore to be revenged on Neptune. His new ways of raising money were most ingenious and amused all but the victims and their friends or dependants. For instance, any young men whom he put so deeply in his debt by fines or confiscations that they became his slaves he sent to the sword-fighting schools. When they were trained he put them into the amphitheatre to fight for their lives. His only expense in this was their board and lodgings: being his slaves they were given no payment.

If they were killed, there was an end of them. If they were victorious he auctioned them off to the magistrates whose duty it was to give similar contests--lots were drawn for this distinction--and to anyone else who cared to bid. He ran up the prices to an absurd height by pretending that people had made bids when they had done no more than scratch their heads or rub their noses. My nervous toss of the head got me into great trouble: I was saddled with three sword-fighters at an average of two thousand gold pieces each. But I was luckier than a magistrate called Aponius who fell asleep during the auction. Caligula sold him swordfighters whom nobody else seemed to fancy, raising the bid every time his head nodded on his breast: when he woke up he found he had no less than ninety thousand gold pieces to pay for thirteen sword-fighters whom he did not in the least want. One of the swordfighters I had bought was a very good performer, but Caligula betted against him heavily with me. When the day came for him to fight he could hardly stand and was easily beaten. It appears that Caligula had drugged his food.

Many rich men came to these auctions and willingly bid large sums, not because they wanted sword-fighters but because if they loosened their purse-strings now Caligula would be less likely to bring some charge against them later and rob them of their lives as well as of their money.

An amusing thing happened on the day that my swordfighter was beaten.

Caligula had betted heavily with me against five net-and-trident men who were matched against an equal number of chasers armed with sword and shield. I was resigned to losing the thousand gold pieces that he had made me bet against five thousand of his own; for as soon as the fight began I could see that the net-men had been bribed to give the fight away. I was sitting next to Caligula and said:

"Well, you seem likely to win, but it's my opinion that those net-men aren't doing their best." One by one the chasers rounded up the net-men, who surrendered, and finally all five were lying with their faces in the sand and each with a chaser standing over him with a raised sword. The audience turned their thumbs downwards as a signal that they should be killed. Caligula, as the President, had a right to take this advice or not, as he pleased. He took it. "Kill them!" he shouted.

"They didn't try to win!"

This was hard luck on the net-men, to whom he had secretly promised their lives if they allowed themselves to be beaten; for I wasn't by any means the only man who had been forced to bet on them--he stood to win eighty thousand if they lost. Well, one of them felt so sore at being cheated that he suddenly grappled with his chaser, overturned him and managed to pick up a trident, which was lying not far off, and a net, and dash away. You wouldn't believe it, but I won my five thousand after all! First that angry net-man killed two chasers who had their backs to him and were busy acknowledging the cheers of the audience after dispatching their victims, and then he killed the other three, one by one, as they came running at him, each a few paces behind the other. Caligula wept for vexation and exclaimed, "Oh, the monster! Look, he's killed five promising young swordsmen with that horrible trout-spear of his!" When I say that I won my five thousand, I mean that I would have won it if I hadn't been tactful enough to call the bet off.

"For one man to kill five isn't fair fighting," I said.

Up to this time Caligula had always spoken of Tiberius as a thorough scoundrel and encouraged everyone else to do the same. But one day he entered the Senate and delivered a long eulogy on him, saying that he had been a much misunderstood man and that nobody must speak a word against him. "In my capacity as Emperor I have the right [387] to criticise him if I please, but you have no right. In fact, you are guilty of treason. The other day a senator said in a speech that my brothers Nero and Drusus were murdered by Tiberius after having been imprisoned on false charges. What an amazing thing to say!" Then he produced the records which he had pretended to burn, and read lengthy extracts. He showed that the Senate had not questioned the evidence collected against his brothers by Tiberius, but had unanimously voted for them to be handed over to him for punishment. Some had even volunteered testimony against them. Caligula said: "If you knew that the evidence which Tiberius laid before you [in all good faith] was false, then you are the murderers, not he; and it is only since he has been dead that you have dared to blame your cruelty and treachery on him. Or if you thought at the time that the evidence was true, then he was no murderer and you are treasonably defaming his character. Or if you thought that it was false and that he knew it was false, then you were as guilty of murder as he was, and cowards too."

He frowned heavily in imitation of Tiberius and made Tiberius' sharp chopping motion of the hand, which brought back frightening memories of treason-trials, and said in Tiberius' harsh voice, "Well spoken, my Son! You can't trust any one of these curs farther than you can kick him. Look what a little God they made of Sejanus before they turned and tore him to pieces! They'll do the same to you if they get half a chance. They all hate you and pray for your death.

My advice to you is, consult no interest but your own and put pleasure before everything. Nobody likes being ruled over, and the only way that I kept my place was by making this trash afraid of me. Do the same. The worse you treat them, the more they'll honour you."

Caligula then reintroduced treason as a capital crime, ordered his speech to be at once engraved on a bronze tablet and posted on the wall of the House above the seats of the Consuls, and rushed away. No more business was transacted that day: we were all too dejected. But the next day we lavished praise on Caligula as a sincere and pious ruler and voted annual sacrifices to his Clemency. What else could we do? He had the Army at his back, and power of life and death over us, and until someone was bold and clever enough to mate a successful conspiracy against his life all that we could do was to humour him and hope for the best. At a banquet a few nights later he suddenly burst into a most extraordinary howl of laughter. Nobody knew what the joke was. The two Consuls, who sat next to him, asked whether they might be graciously permitted to share in it. At this Caligula laughed even louder, the tears starting from his eyes. "No," he choked, "that's just the point.

It's a joke that you wouldn't think at all funny. I was laughing to think that with one nod of my head I could have both your throats cut on the spot."

Charges of treason were now brought against the twenty reputedly wealthiest men in Rome. They were given no chance of committing suicide before the trial and all condemned to death. One of them, a senior magistrate, proved to have been quite poor. Caligula said: "The idiot! Why did he pretend to have money? I was quite taken in. He need not have died at all." I can only remember a single man who escaped with his life from a charge of treason.

That was Afer, the man who had prosecuted my cousin Pulchra, a lawyer famous for his eloquence. His crime was having put an inscription on a statue of Caligula in the hall of his house, to the effect that the Emperor in his twenty-seventh year was already Consul for the second time. Caligula found this treasonable--a sneer at his youth and a reproach against him for having held the office before he was legally capable of doing so. He composed a long, careful speech against Afer and delivered it in the Senate with all the oratorical force at his command, every gesture and tone carefully rehearsed beforehand. Caligula used to boast that he was the best lawyer and orator in the world, and was even more anxious to outshine Afer in eloquence than to secure his condemnation and confiscate his money. Afer realised this and pretended to be astonished and overcome by Caligula's genius as a prosecutor. He repeated the counts against himself, point by point, praising them with a professional detachment and muttering "Yes, that's quite unanswerable" and "He's got the last ounce of weight out of that argument" and "A very real dilemma" and "What extraordinary command of language!" When Caligula had finished and sat down with a triumphant grin, Afer was [389] asked if he had anything to say. He answered:

"Nothing except that I consider myself most unlucky. I had counted on using my oratorical gifts as some slight offset against the Emperor's anger with me for my inexcusable thoughtlessness in the matter of that cursed inscription. But Fate has weighted the dice far too heavily against me. The Emperor has absolute power, a clear case against me, and a thousand times more eloquence than I could ever hope to achieve even if I escaped sentence and studied until I was a centenarian." He was condemned to death, but reprieved the next day.

Speaking of weighted dice--when rich provincials came to the City they were always invited to dinner at the Palace and a friendly gamble afterwards. They were astonished and dismayed by the Emperor's luck: he threw Venus every time and skinned them of all they had. Yes, Caligula always played with weighted dice.

For instance, he now removed the Consuls from office and fined them heavily on the ground that they had celebrated the usual festival in honour of Augustus'

victory over Antony at Actium. He said that it was an insult to his ancestor Antony. [By the way, he appointed Afer to one of the vacant Consulships.]

He had told us at dinner a few days before the festival that whatever the Consuls did he would punish them: for if they refrained from celebrating the festival they would be insulting his ancestor Augustus. It was on this occasion that Ganymede made a fatal mistake. He cried: "You are clever, my dear! You catch them every way. But the poor idiots will celebrate the festival, if they have any sense; because Agrippa did most of the work at Actium and he was your ancestor too, so they will at least be honouring two of your ancestors of three."

Caligula said: "Ganymede, we are no longer friends."

"Oh," said Ganymede, "don't tell me that, my dear! I said nothing to offend you, did I?"

"Leave the table," ordered Caligula.

I knew at once what Ganymede's mistake was. It was a double one.

Ganymede, as Caligula's cousin on the maternal side, was descended from Augustus and Agrippa, but not from Antony. All his ancestors had been of Augustus' party. So he should have been careful to avoid the subject.

And Caligula disliked any reminder of his descent from Agrippa, a man of undistinguished family. But he took no action against Ganymede yet.

He divorced Lollia, saying that she was barren, and married a woman called Caesonia. She was neither young nor good-looking and was the daughter of a captain of the Watchmen, and married to a baker, or some such person, by whom she already had three children. But there was something about her that attracted Caligula in a way that nobody could explain, himself least of all. He used often to say that he would fetch the secret out of her, even if he had to do it with the fiddle-string torture, why it was that he loved her so entirely. It was said that she won him with a love-philtre, and further that it sent him mad. But the love-philtre is only a guess, and he had begun to go mad long before he met her. In any case, she was with child by him and he was so excited at the thought of being a parent, that, as I say, he married her. It was shortly after his marriage with Caesonia that he first publicly declared his own Divinity. He visited the temple of Jove on the Capitoline Hill. Apelles was with him. He asked Apelles, "Who's the greater God--Jove or myself?" Apelles hesitated, thinking that Caligula was joking, and not wishing to blaspheme Jove in Jove's own temple. Caligula whistled two Germans up and had Apelles stripped and whipped in sight of Jove's statue. "Not so fast,"

Caligula told the Germans. "Slowly, so that he feels it more." They whipped him until he fainted, and then revived him with holy water and whipped him until he died. Caligula then sent letters to the Senate announcing his Divinity and ordered the immediate building of a great shrine next door to the temple of Jove, "in order that I may dwell with my brother Jove". Here he set up an image of himself, three times the size of life, made of solid gold and dressed every day in new clothes.

But he soon quarrelled with Jove and was heard to threaten him angrily: "If you can't realise who's master here I'll pack you off to Greece." Jove was understood to apologise, and Caligula said: "Oh, keep your wretched Capitoline Hill. I'll go to the Palatine. It's a much finer situation. I'll build a temple there worthy of myself, you shabby old belly-rumbling fraud." Another curious thing

[59»] happened when he visited the temple of Diana in company with a former governor of Syria called Vitellius. Vitellius had done very well out there, having surprised the King of Parthia, who was about to invade the province, by a forced march across the Euphrates. Caught on ground unfavourable for battle the Parthian King was obliged to sign a humiliating peace and give his sons up as hostages. I should have mentioned that Caligula had the eldest son as a prisoner with him in his chariot when he drove across the bridge. Well, Caligula was jealous of Vitellius and would have put him to death if Vitellius had not been warned by me

[he was a friend of mine] what to do. A letter from me was waiting for him at Brindisi when he arrived, and as soon as he reached Rome and was admitted to Caligula's presence he fell prostrate and worshipped him as a God.

This was before the news of Caligula's Divinity was officially known, so Caligula thought it was a genuine tribute.

Vitellius became his intimate friend and showed his gratitude to me in many ways. As I was saying, Caligula was in Diana's temple talking to the Goddess--not the statue but an invisible presence. He asked Vitellius whether he could see her too, or only the moonlight. . Vitellius trembled violently, as if in awe, and keeping his eyes fixed on the ground said: "Only you Gods, my Lord, are privileged to behold one another."

Caligula was pleased. "She's very beautiful, Vitellius, and often comes to sleep with me at the Palace."

It was about this time that I got into trouble again. I thought at first that it was a plot of Caligula's to get rid of me. I am still not so sure that it was not. An acquaintance of mine, a man I used to play dice with a good deal, forged a will and took the trouble to forge my seal to it as witness.

Luckily for me he had not noticed a tiny chip on the edge of the agate seal-gem, which always left its mark on the wax. When I was suddenly arrested for conspiracy to defraud and brought to Court, I bribed a soldier to carry a secret appeal to my friend Vitellius, begging him to save my life as I had saved his. I asked him to hint about the chip to Caligula, who was judging the case, and to have a genuine seal of mine ready for Caligula to compare with the forged one.

But Caligula must be encouraged to find the difference for himself and to take all the credit. Vitellius managed the affair very tactfully. Caligula noticed the chip, boasted of his quickness of eye and absolved me with a stern warning to be more careful in future about my associates. The forger had his hands cut off and hung around his neck as a warning. If I had been found guilty I would have lost my head. Caligula told me so at supper that night.

I replied; "Most merciful God, I really don't understand why you trouble so much about my life."

It is the nature of nephews to enjoy an uncle's flattery.

He unbent a little and asked me, with a wink to the rest of the table, "And what precise valuation would you put on your life tonight, may I ask?"

"I have worked it out already: one farthing."

"And how do you arrive at so modest a figure?"

"Every life has an assessable value. The ransom that Julius Caesar's family actually paid the pirates who had captured him and threatened to kill him--though they asked a great deal more than this at first--was no more than twenty thousand in gold. So Julius Caesar's life was actually worth no more than twenty thousand.

My wife ^Elia was once attacked by footpads, but persuaded them to spare her life by handing over an amethyst brooch worth only fifty. So ^Elia was worth only fifty. My life has just been saved by a chip of agate weighing, I should judge, no more than the fortieth part of a scruple. That quality of agate is worth perhaps as much as a silver-piece a scruple.

The chip, if one could find it, which would be difficult, or find a buyer, which would be still more difficult, would therefore be worth one fortieth part of a silver piece, or exactly one farthing. So my life is also worth exactly one farthing--

"

"--If you could find a buyer," he roared, delighted with his own wit. How everybody cheered, myself included! For a long time after this I was called

"Teruncius" Claudius at the Palace, instead of Tiberius Claudius. Teruncius is Latin for farthing.

For his worship he had to have priests. He was his own High Priest and his subordinates were myself, Caesonia, Vitellius, Ganymede, fourteen ex-Consuls and his noble friend the horse Incitatus. Each of these subordinates had [393] to pay eighty thousand gold pieces for the honour. He helped Incitatus to raise the money by imposing a yearly tribute in his name on all the horses in Italy: if they did not pay they would be sent to the knackers. He helped Caesonia to raise the money by imposing a tax in her name on all married men for the privilege of sleeping with their wives. Ganymede, Vitellius and the others were rich men; though in some instances they had to sell property at a loss to get the hundred thousand in cash at short notice, they still remained comfortably off. Not so poor Claudius.

Caligula's previous tricks in selling me sword-fighters, and charging me heavily for the privilege of sleeping and boarding at the Palace, had left me with a mere thirty thousand in cash, and no property to sell except my small estate at Capua and the house left me by my mother. I paid Caligula the thirty thousand and told him the same night at dinner that I was putting up all my property for sale at once to enable me to pay him the remainder when I found a buyer. "I've nothing else to sell," I said. Caligula thought this a great joke. "Nothing at all to sell? Why, what about the clothes you're wearing?"

By this time I had found it wisest to pretend I was quite half-witted. "By Heaven," I said. "I forgot all about them.

Will you be good enough to auction them for me to the company? You're the most wonderful auctioneer in the world. I began stripping off all my clothes until I had on nothing but a table-napkin which I hastily wrapped round my loins.

He sold my sandals to someone for a hundred gold pieces each, and my gown for a thousand, and so on, and each time I expressed my boisterous delight. He then wanted to auction the napkin. I said, "My natural modesty would not prevent me from sacrificing my last rag, if the money it brought in helped me to pay the rest of the fee. But in this case, alas, something more powerful even than modesty prevents me from selling."

Caligula frowned. "What's that? What's stronger than modesty?"

"My veneration for yourself, Caesar. It's your own napkin. One that you had graciously set for my use at this excellent meal."

This little play only reduced my debt by three thousand.

But it did convince Caligula of my poverty.

I had to give up my rooms and my place at table, and lodged for a time with old Briseis, my mother's former maid, who was caretaker of the house until it found a buyer. Calpurnia came to live with me there, and would you believe it, the dear girl still had the money which I had given her instead of necklaces and marmosets and silk dresses, and offered to lend it to me. And what was more, my cattle hadn't really died as she pretended, nor had the ricks burned. It was just a trick to sell them secretly at a good price and put the money aside for an emergency. She paid it all over to me--two thousand gold pieces--together with an exact account of the transactions signed by my steward. So we managed pretty well. But to keep up the pretence of absolute poverty I used to go out with a jug every night, using a crutch instead of a sedan-chair, and buy wine from the taverns.

Old Briseis used to say, "Master Claudius, people all think that I was your mother's freedwoman. It isn't so. I became your slave when you first grew up to be Master, and it was you who gave me my freedom, not she, wasn't it?"

I would answer, "Of course, Briseis. One day I'll nail that lie in public." She was a dear old thing and entirely devoted to me. We lived in four rooms together, with an old slave to do the porter's work, and had a very happy time, all considered.

Caesonia's child, a girl, was born a month after Caligula married her.

Caligula said that this was a prodigy. He took the child and laid her on the knees of the statue of Jove--this was before his quarrel with Jove--as if to make Jove his honorary colleague in fatherhood, and then put her in the arms of Minerva's statue and allowed her to suck at the Goddess' marble breast for awhile. He called her Drusilla, the name that his dead sister had discarded when she became the Goddess Panthea. This child was made a priestess too. He raised the money for the initiation fee by making a pathetic appeal to the public, complaining of his poverty and the heavy expenses of fatherhood, and opening a fund, called The Drusilla Fund. He put collecting boxes in every street marked "Drusilla's Food", "Drusilla's Drink" and [395] "Drusilla's Dowry", and nobody dared pass by the Guards posted there without dropping in a copper or two.

Caligula dearly loved his little Drusilla, who turned out as precocious a child as he had himself been. He took delight in teaching her his own "immovable rigour", beginning the lessons when she was only just able to walk and talk. He encouraged her to torture kittens and puppies and to fly with her sharp nails at the eyes of her little playmates.

"There can be no reasonable doubt as to your paternity, my pretty one," be used to chuckle when she showed particular promise. And once in my presence he bent down and said slyly to her: "And the first full-sized murder you commit, Precious, if it's only your poor old grand-uncle Claudius, I'll make a Goddess of you."

"Will you make me a Goddess if I kill Mamma?" the little fiend lisped. "I hate Mamma."

The gold statue for his temple was another expense. He paid for it by publishing an edict that he would receive New-Year's gifts at the main gate of the Palace. When the day came he sent parties of Guards out to herd the City crowds up the Palatine Hill at the sword-point and make them shed every coin they had on them into great tubs put out for the purpose. They were warned that if they tried to dodge the Guards or hold back a single farthing of money they would be liable to instant death. By evening two thousand huge tubs had been filled.

It was about this time that he said to Ganymede and Agrippinilla and Lesbia: "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you idle drones. What do you do for your living?

You're mere parasites. Are you aware that every man and woman in Rome works hard to support me? Every wretched baggage-porter gladly pays me one-eighth of his wage, and every poor prostitute the same."

Agrippinilla said: "Well, brother, you have stripped us of practically all our money on one pretext or another.

Isn't that enough?"

"Enough? Indeed it isn't. Money inherited is not the same as money honestly earned. I'm going to make you girls and boys work."

So he advertised in the Senate, by distributing leaflets, that on such and such a night a most exclusive and exquisite brothel would be opened at the Palace, with entertainment to suit all tastes provided by persons of the most illustrious birth. Admission, only one thousand gold pieces. Drinks free. Agrippinilla and Lesbia, I am sorry to say, did not protest very strongly against Caligula's disgraceful proposal, and indeed thought that it would be great fun. But they insisted that they should have the right of choosing their own customers and that Caligula should not take too high a commission on the money earned. Much to my disgust I was dragged into this business, by being dressed up as the comic porter.

Caligula, wearing a mask and disguising his voice, was the bawd-master, and played all the usual bawd-master tricks for cheating his guests of their pleasure and their money. When they protested, I was called upon to act as chucker-out. I am strong enough in the arms, stronger than most men, I may say, though my legs are very little use to me; so I caused a great deal of amusement by my clumsy hobbling and by the unexpectedly heavy drubbing I gave the guests when I managed to get hold of them.

Caligula declaimed in a theatrical voice, the lines from Homer: “Vulcan with awkward grace his office plies And unextinguished laughter shakes the skies.”

This was the passage in the First Book of the Iliad where the lame God goes hobbling about Olympus and the other Gods all laugh at him. I was lying on the floor pounding Lesbia's husband with my fists--it wasn't often that I got such a chance of paying back old scores--and raising myself up I said: “Then from his anvil the lame craftsman rose. Wide, with distorted legs, oblique, he goes”, and staggered over to the refreshment table. Caligula was delighted and quoted another couple of lines which occur just before the "unextinguished laughter" passage: “If you submit, the Thunderer stands appeased, The Gracious God is willing to be pleased.”

This was how he came to call me Vulcan, a title that I was glad to win, because it gave me a certain protection against his caprices.

Caligula then quietly left us, removed his disguise and reappeared as himself, coming in from the Palace courtyard by the door where he had posted me.

He pretended to be utterly surprised and shocked at what was going oa and stood declaiming Homer again--Ulysses' shame and anger at the behaviour of the palace-women: As thus pavilioned in the porch he lay, Scenes of lewd loves his wakeful eyes survey; Whilst to nocturnal joys impure repair With wanton glee, the prostituted fair.

His heart with rage this new dishonour stung, Wavering his thought in dubious balance hung.

Or, instant should he quench the guilty Same With their own blood, and intercept the shame; Or to their lust indulge a last embrace, And let the peers consummate the disgrace; Round his swoln heart the murmurous fury rolls; As o'er her young the mother-mastiff growls, And bays the stranger groom: so wrath compress'd Recoiling, mutter'd thunder in his breast.

"Poor, suffering heart", he cried, "support the pain Of wounded honour and thy rage restrain! Not fiercer woes thy fortitude could foil When the brave partners of thy ten-year toil Dire Polypheme devoured: I then was freed By patient prudence from the death decreed."

"For ‘Polypheme' read Tiberius'," he explained. Then he clapped his hands for the Guard, who came running up at the double. "Send Cassius Chserea here at once!" Cassius was sent for and Caligula said: "Cassius, old hero, you who acted as my war-horse when I was a child, my oldest and most faithful family-friend, did you ever see such a sad and degrading sight as this? My two sisters prostituting their bodies to senators in my very Palace, my uncle Claudius standing at the gate selling tickets of admission!

Oh, what would my poor mother and father have said if they had lived to see this day!"

"Shall I arrest them all, Caesar?" asked Cassius, eagerly.

"No, to their lust indulge a last embrace And let the peers consummate the disgrace," Caligula replied resignedly, and made mother-mastiff noises in his throat. Cassius was told to march the Guard off again.

It was not the last orgy of this sort at the Palace and thereafter Caligula made the senators who had attended the show bring their wives and daughters to assist Agrippinilla and Lesbia. But the problem of raising money was becoming acute again and Caligula decided to visit France and see what he could do there.

He first gathered an enormous number of troops, sending for detachments from all the regular regiments, and forming new regiments, and raising levies from every possible quarter. He marched out of Italy at the head of one hundred and fifty thousand men and increased them, in France, to a quarter of a million. The expense of arming and equipping this immense force fell on the cities through which he passed: and he commandeered the necessary food supplies from them too. Sometimes he went forward at a gallop and made the army march forty-eight hours or more on end to catch up with him, sometimes he went forward at the rate of only a mile or two a day, admiring the scenery from a sedan-chair carried on eight men's shoulders and frequently stopping to pick flowers.

He sent letters ahead ordering the presence at Lyons, where he proposed to concentrate his forces, of all officials in France and the Rhine provinces who were over the rank of captain. Among those who obeyed the summons was Gaetulicus, one of my dear brother Germanicus' most valued officers, who had been in command of the four regiments of the Upper Province for the last few years. He was very popular among the troops because he kept up the tradition of mild punishments and of discipline based on love rather than on fear. He was popular with the regiments in the Lower Province too, commanded by his father-in-law Apronius--for Gaetulicus had married a sister of that Apronia whom my brother-

in-law Plautius was supposed to have thrown out of the window. At the fall of Sejanus he would have been put to death by Tiberius because he had [399]

promised his daughter in marriage to Sejanus' son, but he escaped by writing the Emperor a bold letter. He said that so long as he was allowed to retain his command his allegiance could be counted on, and so could that of the troops.

Tiberius wisely let him alone. But Caligula envied him his popularity and almost as soon as he arrived had him arrested.

Caligula had not invited me on this expedition, so I missed what followed and cannot write about it in detail.

All I know is that Ganymede and Gaetulicus were accused of conspiracy--Ganymede with designs on the monarchy, Gaetulicus with abetting him, and that both were put to death without trial. Lesbia and Agrippinilla [the latter's husband had lately died of dropsy] were also supposed to be in the plot. They were banished to an island off the coast of Africa near Carthage. It was a very hot, very arid island where sponge-fishing was the only industry, and Caligula ordered them to learn the trade of diving for sponges, for he said that he could not afford to support them longer. But before being sent to their island they had a task laid on them: they had to walk to Rome, all the way from Lyons, under an armed escort, and take turns at carrying in their arms the urn in which Ganymede's ashes had been put. This was a punishment for their persistent adultery with Ganymede, as Caligula explained in a loftily styled letter he sent the Senate. He enlarged on his own great clemency in not putting them to death. Why, they had proved themselves worse than common prostitutes: no honest prostitute would have had the face to ask the prices they asked, and got, for their debaucheries!

I had no reason to feel sorry for my nieces. They were as bad as Caligula, in their way, and treated me very spitefully. When Agrippinilla's baby was born three years before she had asked Caligula to suggest a name for it. Caligula said, "Call it Claudius and it will be sure to turn out a beauty." Agrippinilla was so furious that she nearly struck Caligula; instead she turned quickly round and spat towards me--

and then burst into tears. The baby was called Lucius Domitius.* Lesbia was too proud to pay attention * Afterwards the Emperor Nero.--R. G. to me or acknowledge my presence in any way. If I happened to meet her in a narrow passage she used to walk straight on down the middle without slackening her pace, making me squeeze against the wall. It was difficult for me to remember that they were the children of my dear brother and that I had promised Agrippina to do my very best to protect them, I had the embarrassing duty assigned to me of going to France, at the head of an embassy of four ex-Consuls, to congratulate Caligula on his suppression of the conspiracy.

This was my first visit to France since my infancy and I wished I was not making it. I had to take money from Calpurnia for travelling expenses, for my estate and home had not yet found a buyer, and I could not count on Caligula's being pleased to see me. I went by sea from Ostia, landing at Marseilles. It appears that after banishing my nieces Caligula had auctioned the jewellery and ornaments and clothes they had brought with them. These fetched such high prices that he also sold their slaves and then their freedmen, pretending that these were slaves too. The bids were made by rich provincials who wanted the glory of saying, "Yes, such and such belonged to the Emperor's sister. I bought it from him personally!"

This gave Caligula a new idea. The old Palace where Livia had lived was now shut up. It was full of valuable furniture and pictures and relics of Augustus. Caligula sent for all this stuff to Rome and made me responsible tor its safe and prompt arrival at Lyons. He wrote: "Send it by road, not by sea. I have a quarrel on with Neptune." The letter arrived only the day before I sailed, so I put Pallas in charge of the job. The difficulty was that all the surplus horses and carts had already been commandeered for the transport of Caligula's army. But Caligula had given the order, and horses and conveyances had somehow to be found. Pallas went to the Consuls and showed them Caligula's orders. They were forced to commandeer public mail-coaches and bakers' vans and the horses that turned the corn-mills, which was a great inconvenience to the public.

So it happened that one evening in May just before sunset Caligula, sitting on the bridge at Lyons engaged in [401] imaginary conversation with the local river-god, saw me coming along the road in the distance. He recognized my sedan by the dice-board I have [A.D. 40] fitted across it: I beguile long journeys by throwing dice with myself. He called out angrily: "Hey, you sir, where are the carts? Why haven't you brought the carts?"

I called back: "Heaven bless your Majesty! The carts won't be here for a few days yet, I fear. They are coming by land, through Genoa. My colleagues and I have come by water."

"Then back by water you’ll go, my man,” he said.

"Come

here!"

When I reached the bridge I was pulled out of my sedan by two German soldiers and carried to the parapet above the middle arch, where they sat me with my back to the river. Caligula rushed forward and pushed me over. I turned two back-somersaults and fell what seemed like a thousand feet before I struck the water. I remember saying to myself: "Born at Lyons, died at Lyons!" The river Rhône is very cold, very deep and very swift. My heavy robe entangled my arms and legs, but somehow I managed to keep afloat, and to clamber ashore behind some boats about half a mile downstream, out of sight of the bridge.

I am a much better swimmer than I am a walker: I am strong in the arms and being rather fat from not being able to take exercise and from liking my meals I float like a cork. By the way, Caligula couldn't swim a stroke.

He was surprised, a few minutes later, to see me come hobbling up the road, and laughed hugely at the stinking muddy mess I was in. "Where have you been, my dear Vulcan?" he called.

I had the answer pat: I felt the Thunderer's might, Hurled headlong downward from th'etherial height Tost all the day in rapid circles round Nor till the sun descended touch'd the ground.

Breathless I fell, in giddy motions lost; The Sinthians raised me on the Lemnian coast.

"For 'Lemnian' read 'Lyonian'," I said. He was sitting on the parapet with my three fellow-envoys lying on the ground face-downwards in a row before him.

He had his feet on the necks of two and his swordpoint balanced between the shoulders of the third, Lesbia's husband, who was sobbing for mercy. "Claudius,"

he groaned, hearing my voice, "beseech the Emperor to set us free: we only came to offer him our loving congratulations."

"I want carts, not congratulations," said Caligula.

It seemed as if Homer had written the passage from which I had just quoted on purpose for this occasion. I said to Lesbia's husband: Be patient and obey.

Dear as you are, if Jove his arm extend

I can but grieve, unable to defend.

What soul so daring in your aid to move

Or lift his hand against the might of Jove?

Caligula was delighted. He said to the three suppliants: "What are your lives worth to you? Fifty thousand gold pieces each?"

"Whatever you say, Caesar," they answered faintly.

"Then pay poor Claudius that sum as soon as you get back to Rome. He's saved your lives by his ready tongue."

So they were allowed to rise and Caligula made them sign a promise, then and there, to pay me one hundred and fifty thousand gold pieces in three months'

time. I said to Caligula: "Most gracious Caesar, your need is greater than mine.

Will you accept one hundred thousand gold pieces from me, when they pay me, in gratitude for my own salvation? If you condescended to take that gift, I would still have fifty thousand left, which would enable me to pay my initiation fee in full. I have worried a great deal about that debt."

He said, "Anything that I can do that will contribute to your peace of mind!" and called me his Golden Farthing.

So Homer saved me. But Caligula a few days later warned me not to quote Homer again. "He's a most overrated author. I am going to have his poems called in and burned. Why shouldn't I put Plato's philosophical recommendations into practice? You know The Republic? An |f [4°3] admirable piece of argument. Plato was for keeping all poets whatsoever out of his ideal state: he said that they were all liars, and so they are."

I asked: "Is your Sacred Majesty going to bum any other poets besides Homer?"

"Oh, indeed, yes. All the over-rated ones. Virgil for a start. He's a dull fellow. Tries to be a Homer and can't do it."

"And

any

historians?"

"Yes, Livy. Still duller. Tries to be a Virgil and can't do it."

XXXII

HE CALLED FOR THE MOST RECENT OFFICIAL PROPERTY census and after examining it summoned all the richest men in France to Lyons, so that when the Palace-stun! arrived there from Rome he would be sure to get good prices for it. Just before the auction started, he made a speech.

He said that he was a poor bankrupt with enormous liabilities, but trusted that, for the sake of the Empire, his affectionate provincial friends and grateful allies would not take advantage of his financial plight. He begged them not to offer less than the true value of 'the family heirlooms which, much to his grief, he was being forced to put up for sale.

There was no ordinary auctioneer's trick that he had not learned, and he invented a great many new ones too beyond the scope of the market-place cheap-jacks from whom he borrowed so much of his patter. For instance, he sold the same article several times over to different buyers with each time a different account of its quality and usefulness and history. And by "true value" he expected bidders to understand "sentimental value" which always turned out to be a hundred times greater than the intrinsic value. For instance he would say: "This was the favourite easy-chair of my great-grandfather Mark Antony"--"the God Augustus drank out of this wine-cup at his marriage feast"--"this dress was worn by my sister, the Goddess Panthea, at a reception given to King Herod Agrippa in celebration of his release from prison"--and so forth. And he sold what he called

"blind bargains", small articles wrapped up in cloth. When he had inveigled a man into buying an old sandal or a piece of cheese for two thousand gold pieces, he was tremendously pleased with himself.

Bidding always started at the reserve price; for he would nod at some rich Frenchman and say, "I think you said forty thousand gold pieces for that alabaster casket? Thank you. But let's see if we can't do better. Who'll say forty-five thousand?" You can imagine that fear made the bidding brisk. He skinned the whole lot of all they had and celebrated the skinning by a magnificent ten-day festival.

He then continued his progress to the Rhine Provinces.

He swore that he was about to fight a war against the Germans that would only end in their total extermination. He would piously complete the task begun by his grandfather and father. He sent a couple of regiments over the river to locate the nearest enemy. About a thousand prisoners were brought back. Caligula reviewed them and after picking out three hundred fine young men for his bodyguard he lined up the remainder against a cliff. A bald-headed man was at either end of the line. Caligula gave Cassius the order: "Kill them, from bald head to bald head, in vengeance for the death of Varus." The news of this massacre reached the Germans and they withdrew into their thickest forests. Caligula then crossed the river with his entire army and found the countryside deserted. The first day of his march, just to make things more exciting, he ordered some of his German bodyguard into a neighbouring wood, and then had news brought to him at supper that the enemy was at hand. At the head of his "Scouts" and a troop of Guards Cavalry he then dashed out to the attack. He brought back the men as prisoners, loaded with chains and announced a crushing victory against overwhelming odds.

He rewarded his comrades-in-arms with a new sort of military decoration called "The Scouts' Crown", a golden coronet [4°5] decorated with the Sun, Moon and stars in precious stones.

On the third day the road lay through a narrow pass.

The army had to move in column instead of in skirmishing order. Cassius said to Caligula, "It was in a place rather like this, Caesar, that Varus got ambushed. I shall never forget that day so long as I live--I was marching at the head of my company and had just reached a bend in the road, as it might be this one we are coming to, when suddenly there was a tremendous war-cry, as it might be from that clump of firs yonder, and three or four hundred assegais came whizzing down on us...."

"Quick, my mare!" called Caligula in a panic. "Clear the road!" He sprang from his sedan, mounted Penelope [Incitatus was at Rome, winning races] and galloped back down the column. In four hours' time he was at the bridge again, but found it so choked with baggage-wagons and was in such a hurry to cross that he dismounted and made soldiers hand him in a chair from wagon to wagon until he was safely on the other side. He recalled his army at once, announcing that the enemy were too cowardly to meet him in battle, and that he would therefore seek new conquests elsewhere. When the whole force had reassembled at Cologne he marched down the Rhine and then across to Boulogne, the nearest port to Britain.

It so happened that the son of Cymbeline, the King of Britain, had quarrelled with his father and, hearing of Caligula's approach, he fled across the Channel with a few followers and put himself under Roman protection. Caligula, who had already informed the Senate of his total subjugation of Germany, now wrote to say that King Cymbeline had sent his son to acknowledge Roman suzerainty over the entire British archipelago from the Scilly Islands to the Orkneys.

I was with Caligula throughout this expedition and had a very difficult time trying to humour him. He complained of sleeplessness and said that his enemy Neptune was plaguing him all the time with sea-noises in his ears, and used to come by night and threaten him with a trident. I said: "Neptune? I wouldn't allow myself to be browbeaten by that saucy fellow if I were you. Why don't you punish him as you punished the Germans? You threatened him ^ CLAUDIV [^06] once before, I remember, and if he continues to flout you, it would be wrong to stretch your clemency any further."

He looked at me, uncomfortably, through narrowed eyelids. "Do you think I'm mad?" he asked, after a time.

I laughed nervously. "Mad, Caesar? You ask whether I think you mad?

Why, you set the standard of sanity for the whole habitable world."

"It's a very difficult thing, you know, Claudius,” he said confidentially, "to be a God in human disguise. I've often thought I was going mad. They say that the hellebore Cure at Anticyra is very good. What do you think of it?"

I said: "One of the greatest Greek philosophers, Out I can't remember now which of them it was, took the hellebore cure just to make his clear brain still clearer. But if you are asking me to advise you, I should say, "Don't take it. Your brain is as clear as a pool of rock-water."

"Yes," he said. "but I wish I could get more than three hours' sleep a night."

"Those three hours are because of your mortal disguise, "I said.

"Undisguised Gods never sleep at all."

So he was comforted and the next day drew up his army in order of battle on the sea-front: archers and slingers in front, then the auxiliary Germans armed with assegais, then the main Roman forces, with the French in the rear.

The cavalry were on the wings and the siege-engines, mangonels and catapults, planted on sand-dunes. Nobody knew what on earth was going to happen. He rode forward into the sea as far as Penelope's knees and cried:

"Neptune, old enemy, defend yourself. I challenge you to mortal fight. You treacherously wrecked my father's fleet, did you? Try your might on me, if you dare." Then he quoted from Ajax's wrestling match with Ulysses, in Homer: Or let me lift thee, Chief, or lift thou me.

Prove we our force,..

A little wave came rolling past. He cut at it with his sword and laughed contemptuously. Then he coolly retired and ordered the "general engagement" to be sounded. The archers shot, the slingers slung, the javelin-men threw their javelins; the regular infantry waded into the waters as far as their arm-pits and hacked at the little waves, the cavalry [4°7] charged on either flank and swam out some way, slashing with their sabres, the mangonels hurled rocks and the catapults huge javelins and iron-tipped beams. Caligula then put to sea in a war-vessel and anchored just out of range of the missiles, uttering absurd challenges to Neptune and spitting far out over the vessel's side. Neptune made no attempt to defend himself or to reply, except that one man was nipped by a lobster, and another stung by a jelly-fish.

Caligula finally had the rally blown and told his men to wipe the blood off their swords and gather the spoil. The spoil was the sea-shells on the beach. Each man was expected to collect a helmet-full, which was added to a general heap. The shells were then sorted and packed in boxes to be sent to Rome in proof of this unheard-of victory.

The troops thought it great fun, and when he rewarded them with four gold pieces a man cheered him tremendously. As a trophy of victory he built a very high lighthouse, on the model of the famous one at Alexandria, which has since proved a great blessing to sailors in those dangerous waters.

He then marched up the Rhine again. When we reached Bonn Caligula took me aside and whispered darkly: "The regiments have never been punished for the insult they once paid me by mutinying against my father, during my absence from this Camp. You remember, I had to come back and restore order for him."

"I remember perfectly." I said. "But that's rather long ago, isn't it? After twenty-six years there can't be many men still serving in the ranks who were then there. You and Cassius Chsrea are probably the only two veteran survivors of that dreadful day."

"Perhaps I shall only decimate them, then," he said.

The men of the First and Twentieth Regiments were ordered to attend a special assembly and told that they might leave their arms behind, because of the hot weather.

The Guards cavalry were also ordered to attend but instructed to bring their lances as well as their sabres. I found a sergeant who looked as though he might have fought at Philippi, he was so old and scarred. I said, "Sergeant, do you know who I am?"

"No, sir. Can't say that I do, sir. You seem to be an exConsul, sir."

"I am the brother of Germanicus."

"Indeed, sir. Never knew that there was such a person, sir."

"No, I'm not a soldier or anyone important. But I've got an important message for you fellows. Don't leave your swords too far away when you go to this afternoon's assembly!"

"Why, sir, if I may ask?"

"Because you may need them. Perhaps there will be an attack by the Germans. Perhaps by someone else."

He stared hard at me and then saw that I really meant it.

"Much obliged to you, sir, I'll pass the word around," he answered.

The infantry were massed in front of the tribunal platform and Caligula spoke to them with an angry scowling face, stamping his feet and sawing with his hands. He began reminding them of a certain night in early autumn, many years before, when under a starless and bewitched sky... Here some of the men began sneaking away through a gap between two troops of cavalry. They were going to fetch their swords. Others boldly pulled theirs out from under their military cloaks where they had been hiding them. Caligula must have noticed what was happening, for he suddenly changed his tone, in the middle of a sentence. He began drawing a happy contrast between those bad days, happily forgotten, and the present reign of glory, wealth and victory. "Your little playfellow grew to manhood," he said, "and became the mightiest Emperor this world has ever known. No foeman however fierce, dares challenge his unconquerable arms."

My old sergeant rushed forward. "All is lost, Caesar," he shouted. "The enemy has crossed the river at Cologne--three hundred thousand strong. They're out to sack Lyons--then they'll cross the Alps and sack Romel"

Nobody believed this nonsensical story but Caligula. He turned yellow with fear, dived from the platform, grabbed hold of a horse, tumbled into the saddle and was out of the camp like a flash. A groom galloped after him and Caligula [4°9]

called back to him, "Thank God I still hold Egypt. I’ll be safe there at least. The Germans aren't sailors."

How everyone laughed! But a colonel went after him on a good horse and caught him before very long. He assured Caligula that the news was exaggerated.

Only a small force, he said, had crossed the river and had been beaten back: the Roman bank was now quite clear of the enemy. Caligula stopped at the next town and wrote a dispatch to the Senate, informing them that all his wars were now successfully over and that he was coming back at once with his laurel-garlanded troops. He blamed those cowardly stay-at-homes most severely for having, from all accounts, lived life in the City just as usual--theatres, baths, supper-parties--

while he had been undergoing the severest hardships of campaign. He had eaten, drunk and slept no better than a private soldier.

The Senate was puzzled how to pacify him, being under strict orders from him to vote him no honours on their own initiative. They sent him an embassy, however, congratulating him on his magnificent victories and begging him to hasten back to Rome where his presence was so sadly missed. He was dreadfully angry that no triumph had been decreed him even in spite of his orders, and that he was not referred to as Jove in the message but merely as the Emperor Gaius Caesar. He rapped his hand on his sword pommel and shouted: "Hasten back?

Indeed I will, and with this in my hand."

He had made preparations for a triple triumph: over Germany, over Britain and over Neptune. For British captives he had Cymbeline's son and his followers, to which were added the crews of some British trading vessels whom he had detained at Boulogne. For German captives he had three hundred real ones and all the tallest men he could find in France, wearing yellow wigs and German clothes and talking together in a jargon supposed to be German.

But, as I say, the Senate had been afraid to vote him a formal triumph, so he had to be content with an informal one. He rode into the City in the same style as he had ridden across the bridge at Bais, and it was only on the intercession of Caesonia, who was a sensible woman, that he refrained from putting the entire Senate to the sword. He rewarded the people for their alms-giving generosity to him in the past by showering gold and silver from the Palace roof. But he mixed red-hot discs of iron with this largesse, to remind them that he had not yet forgiven them for their behaviour in the amphitheatre. His soldiers were told that they could make as much disturbance as they pleased and get as drunk as they liked at the public expense. They took full advantage of this licence, sacking whole streets of shops and burning down the prostitutes' quarter. Order was not restored for ten days.

This was in September. While he was away the workmen had been busy on the new temple on the Palatine Hill at the other side of the Temple of Castor and Pollux horn the New Palace. An extension had been made as far as the Market Place. Caligula now turned the Temple of Castor and Pollux into a vestibule for the new temple, cutting a passage between the statues of the Gods. "The Heavenly Twins are my doorkeepers," he boasted. Then he sent a message to the Governor of Greece to see that all the most famous statues of Gods were removed from the temples there and sent to him at Rome. He proposed to take off their heads and substitute his own. The statue he most coveted was the colossal one of Olympian Jove. He had a special ship built for its conveyance to Rome. But the ship was struck by lightning just before it was launched. Or this, at least, was the report--I believe really, that the superstitious crew burned it on purpose. However, Capitoline Jove then repented of his quarrel with Caligula [or so Caligula told us]

and begged him to return and live next to him again. Caligula replied that he had now practically completed a new temple; but since Capitoline Jove had apologised so humbly he would make a compromise--he would build a bridge over the valley and join the two hills. He did this: the bridge passed over the roof of the Temple of Augustus.

Caligula was now publicly Jove. He was not only Latin Jove but Olympian Jove, and not only that but all the other Gods and Goddesses, too, whom he had decapitated and reheaded. Sometimes he was Apollo and sometimes Mercury and sometimes Pluto, in each case wearing the appropriate dress and demanding the appropriate sacrifices. I [4"] have seen him go about as Venus in a long gauzy silk robe with face painted, a red wig, padded bosom and highheeled slippers. He was present as the Good Goddess at her December festival: that was a scandal. Mars was a favourite character with him, too. But most of the time he was Jove: he wore an olive-wreath, a beard of fine gold wires and a bright blue silk cloak, and carried a jagged piece of electrum in his hand to represent lightning. One day he was on the Oration Platform in the Market Place dressed as Jove and making a speech. "I intend shortly," he said, "to build a city for my occupation on the top of the Alps.

We Gods prefer mountain-tops to unhealthy river-valleys.

From the Alps I shall have a wide view of my Empire--France, Italy, Switzerland, the Tyrol and Germany. If I see any treason hatching anywhere below me, I shall give a warning growl of thunder so! [He growled in his throat.]

If the warning is disregarded I shall blast the traitor with this lightning of mine, so! [He hurled his piece of lightning at the crowd. It hit a statue and bounced off harmlessly.]

A stranger in the crowd, a shoemaker from Marseilles on a sight-seeing visit to Rome, burst out laughing. Caligula had the fellow arrested and brought nearer the platform, then bending down he asked frowning: "Who do I seem to you to be?"

"A big humbug," said the shoemaker. Caligula was puzzled. "Humbug?" he repeated. "I a humbugl"

"Yes," said the Frenchman, "I'm only a poor French shoemaker and this is my first visit to Rome. And I don't know any better. If anyone at home did what you're doing he'd be a big humbug."

Caligula began to laugh too. "You poor half-wit," he said. "Of course he would be. That's just the difference."

The whole crowd laughed like mad, but whether at Caligula or at the shoemaker was not clear. Soon after this he had a thunder-and-lightning machine made. He lit a fuse and it made a roar and a flash and catapulted stones in whatever direction he wanted. But I have it on good authority that whenever there was a real thunderstorm at night he used to creep under the bed. There is a good story about that. One day a storm burst when he was parading about dressed as Venus. He began to cry: "Father, Father. spare your pretty daughter!"

The money he had won in France was soon spent and he invented new ways of increasing the revenue. His favourite one now was to examine judicially the wills of men who had just died and had left him no money: he would then give evidence of the benefits that the testators had received from him and declare that they had been either ungrateful or of unsound mind at the time of drawing their wills and that he preferred to think that they had been of unsound mind. He cancelled the wills and appointed himself principal heir. He used to come into Court in the early morning and write up on a blackboard the sum of money that he intended to win that day, usually two hundred thousand gold pieces. When he had won it, he closed the Court. He made a new edict one morning about the hours of business permitted in various sorts of shops. He had it written in very small letters on a tiny placard posted high on a pillar in the Market Place where nobody troubled to read it, not realising its importance. That afternoon his officers took the names of several hundred tradesmen who had unwittingly infringed the edict.

When they were brought to trial he allowed any of them who could do so to plead in mitigation of sentence that they had named him as co-heir with their children.

Few of them could.

It now became customary for men with money to notify the Imperial Treasurer that Caligula was named in-their wills as the principal heir. But in several cases this proved unwise. For Caligula made use of the medicine chest that he had inherited from my grandmother Livia. One day he sent round presents of honied fruits to some recent testators. They all died at once. He also summoned my cousin, the King of Morocco, to Rome and put him to death, saying simply: "I need your fortune, Ptolemy."

During his absence in France there had been comparatively few convictions at Rome and the prisons were nearly empty: this meant a shortage of victims for throwing to the wild beasts. He made the shortage up by using members of the audience, first cutting out their tongues so that they could not call out to their friends for rescue. He was becoming more and more capricious. One day a priest was about to sacrifice a young bull to him in his aspect of Apollo. The usual sacrificial procedure was for a deacon to [41?] stun the bull with a stone axe, and for the priest then to cut its throat. Caligula came in dressed as a deacon and asked the usual question: "Shall I?" When the priest answered, "Do so," he brought the axe down smash on the priest's head.

I was still living in poverty with Briseis and Calpurnia, for though I had no debts, neither had I any money except what little income came to me from the farm. I was careful to let Caligula know how poor I was and he graciously permitted me to remain in the Senatorial Order though I no longer had the necessary financial qualifications. But I felt my position daily more insecure. One midnight early in October I was awakened by loud knocking at the front door. I put my head out of the window. "Who's there?" I asked.

"You're wanted at the Palace immediately."

I said: "Is that you, Cassius Chaerea? Am I going to be killed, do you know?"

"My orders are to fetch you to him immediately."

Calpurnia cried and Briseis cried and both kissed me good-bye very tenderly. As they helped me to dress I hurriedly told them how to dispose of my few remaining possessions, and what to do with little Antonia, and about my funeral, and so on. It was a most affecting scene for all of us, but I did not dare prolong it. Soon I was hopping along at Cassius' side to the Palace. He said gruffly, "Two more ex-Consuls have been summoned to appear with you." He told me their names and I was still more alarmed. They were rich men, just the sort whom Caligula would accuse of a plot against him. But why me? I was the first to arrive.

The two others came rushing in almost immediately after, breathless with haste and fear. We were taken into the Hall of Justice and made to sit on chairs on a sort of scaffold looking down on the tribunal platform. A guard of German soldiers stood behind us, muttering together in their own language. The room was in complete darkness but for two tiny oil lamps on the tribunal. The windows behind were draped, we noticed, with black hangings embroidered with silver stars. My companions and I silently clasped hands in farewell. They were men from whom I had had many insults at one time or another, but in the shadow of death such trifles are forgotten. We sat there waiting for something to happen until just before daybreak.

Suddenly we heard a clash of symbols and the gay music of oboes and Eddies. Slaves filed in from a door at the side of the tribunal, each carrying two lamps, which they put on tables at the side; and then the powerful voice of a eunuch began singing the well-known song, When the long watches of the night.

The slaves retired. A shuffling sound was heard and presently in danced a tall ungainly figure in a woman's pink silk gown with a crown of imitation TQSfS on its head. It was Caligula.

The rosy-fingered Goddess then

Will roll away the night of stars...

Here he drew away the draperies from the window and disclosed the first streaks of dawn, and then, when the eunuch reached the part about the rosy-fingered Goddess blowing out the lamps one by one, brought this incident into the dance too. Puff. Puff. Puff.

And where clandestine lovers lie

Entangled in sweet passion's toils...

From a bed which we had not noticed, because it was in an alcove, the Goddess Dawn then pulled out a girl and a man, neither of them with any clothes on, and in dumb show indicated that it was the time for them to part. The girl was very beautiful. The man was the eunuch who was singing. They parted in opposite directions as if profoundly distressed. When the last verse came: O Dawn, of Goddesses most fair, Who with thy slow and lovely tread Dost give relief to every care...

I had the sense to prostrate myself on the ground. My companions were not slow in following my example. Caligula capered off the stage and soon afterwards we were summoned to breakfast with him. I said "O God of Gods, I have never in my life witnessed any dance that gave me such profound joy as the one I have just witnessed. I have no words for its loveliness."

My companions agreed with me and said that it was a million pities that so matchless a performance had been given to so tiny an audience. He said, complacently, that it was only a rehearsal. He would give it one night soon in the amphitheatre to the whole City. I didn't see how he would manage the curtain-drawing effect in an open-air amphitheatre hundreds of yards long, but I said nothing about that. We had a very tasty breakfast, the senior ex-Consul sitting on the floor alternately eating thrush-pie and kissing Caligula's foot. I was just thinking how pleased Calpurnia and Briseis would be to see me back when Caligula, who was in a very pleasant humour, suddenly said: "Pretty girl, wasn't she, Claudius, you old lecher?"

"Very pretty indeed, God."

"And still a virgin, so far as I know. Would you like to marry her? You can if you like. I took a fancy to her for a moment, but it's a funny thing, I don't really like immature women.... Or any mature woman, for that matter, except Caesonia.

Did you recognise the girl?"

"No, Lord, I was only watching you, to tell the truth."

"She's your cousin Messalina, Barbatus' daughter. The old pander didn't utter a word of protest when I asked for her to be sent along to me. What cowards they are, after all, Claudius!"

"Yes,

Lord

God."

"All right, then, I'll marry you two to-morrow. I'm going to bed now, I think."

"A thousand thanks and homages. Lord." He gave me his other foot to kiss.

Next day he kept his promise and married us. He accepted a tenth of Messalina's dowry as a fee but otherwise behaved courteously enough. Calpurnia had been delighted to see me alive again and had pretended not to mind about my marriage.

She said in a business-like way: "Very well, my dear, I'll go back to the farm and look after things for you there again.

You won't miss me, with that pretty wife of yours. And now you have money you'll have to live at the Palace again."

I told her that the marriage was forced on me and that I would miss her very much indeed. But she pooh-poohed that: Messalina had twice her looks, three times her brains, and birth and money into the bargain. I was in love with her already, Calpurnia said.

I felt uncomfortable. Calpumia had been my only true friend in all those four years of misery. What had she not done for me? And yet she was right: I was in love with Messalina, and Messalina was to be my wife now. There would be no place for Calpurnia with Messalina about.

She was in tears as she went away. So was I. I was not in love with her, but she was my truest friend and I knew that if ever I needed her she would be there to help me. I need not say that when I received the dowry money I did not forget her.

XXXIII

MESSALINA WAS AN EXTREMELY BEAUTIFUL GIRL, SLIM and quick-moving with eyes as black as jet and masses of curly black hair. She hardly spoke a word and had a mysterious smile which drove me nearly crazy with love for her.

She was so glad to have escaped from Caligula and so quick to realise the advantages that marriage with me gave her, that she behaved in a way which made me quite sure that she loved me as much as I loved her. This was practically the first time I had been in love with anyone since my boyhood; and when a not very clever, not very attractive man of fifty falls in love with a very attractive and very clever girl of fifteen it is usually a poor look-out for him.

We were married in October. By December she was pregnant by me. She appeared very fond of my little Antonia, who was aged about ten, and it was a relief to me that the child now had someone whom she could call mother, someone who was near enough to her in age to be a friend and could explain the ways of society to her and take her about, as Calpurnia had not been able to do.

Messalina and I were invited to live at the Palace again.

We arrived at an unfortunate time. A merchant called Bassus had been asking questions of a captain of the Palace Guards about Caligula's daily habits--was it true that he walked about the cloisters at night because he could not sleep?

At what time did he do this? Which cloisters did he usually choose? What guard did he have with him? The captain reported the incident to Cassius and Cassius reported it to Caligula. Bassus was arrested and cross-examined. He was forced to admit that he had intended to kill Caligula but denied even under torture that he had any associates. Caligula then sent a message to Bassus' old father, ordering him to attend his son's execution. The old man, who had no notion that Bassus had been planning to assassinate Caligula or even that he had been arrested, was greatly shocked to find his son groaning on the Palace floor, his body broken by torture. But he controlled himself and thanked Caligula for his graciousness in summoning him to close his son's eyes. Caligula laughed. "Close his eyes indeed!

He's going to have no eyes to close, the assassin! I'm going to poke them out in a moment. And yours too."

Bassus' father said: "Spare our lives. We are only tools in the hands of powerful men. I'll give you all the names."

This impressed Caligula, and when the old man mentioned the Guards'

Commander, the Commander of the Germans, Callistus the Treasurer, Caesonia, Mnester, and three or four others, he grew pale with alarm. "And whom would they make Emperor in my place?" he asked. "Your uncle Claudius."

"Is he in the plot too?"

"No, they were merely going to use him as a figurehead." Caligula hurried away and summoned the Guards' Commander, the Commander of the Germans, the Treasurer and myself to a private room. He asked the others, pointing to me;

"Is that creature fit to be Emperor?"

They answered in surprised tones, "Not unless you say so, Jove."

Then he gave them a pathetic smile and exclaimed, "I am one and you are three. Two of you are armed and I am defenceless. If you hate me and want to kill me, do so at once and put that poor idiot into my place as Emperor."

We all fell on our faces and the two soldiers handed him their swords from the floor, saying, "We are innocent of any such treacherous thought. Lord. If you disbelieve us, kill us!"

Do you know, he was actually about to kill us! But while he hesitated I said; "Almighty God, the colonel who summoned me here told me of the charge brought against these loyal men by Bassus' father. Its falsity is evident. If Bassus had really been employed by them, would it have been necessary for him to question the captain about your movements? Would he not have been able to get all the necessary information from these generals themselves? No, Bassus' father has tried to save his own life and Bassus' by a clumsy lie."

Caligula appeared to be convinced by my argument. He gave me his hand to kiss, made us all rise, and handed the swords back. Bassus and his father were thereupon hewn to pieces by the Germans. But Caligula could not rid his mind of the dread of assassination, which was presently increased by a number of unlucky omens. First the porter's lodge at the Palace was struck by lightning. Then Incitatus, when he was brought in to dinner one evening, reared up and cast a shoe which broke an alabaster cup that had belonged to Julius Caesar, spilling the wine on the floor. The worst omen of all was what happened at Olympus, when, in accordance with Caligula's orders, the temple workmen began to take the statue of Jove to pieces for conveyance to Rome. The head was to come off first, to be used as a measure for the new head of Caligula that would be substituted when the statue was reassembled. They had got the pulley fixed to the temple roof and a rope knotted around the neck and were just about to haul, when suddenly a thunderous peal of laughter roared out through the whole building. The workmen rushed away in panic. Nobody could be found bold enough to take their places.

Caesonia now advised him, since by his immovable rigour he had made everyone tremble at the very sound of his name, to rule mildly and earn the people's love instead of their fear. For Caesonia realised how dangerously he was placed and that if anything happened to him she would [4^9] certainly lose her life too, unless she was known to have done her best to dissuade him from his cruelties. He was behaving in a most imprudent way now. He went in turn to the Guards' Commander, the Treasurer and the Commander of the Germans and pretended to take each of them into his confidence saying, "I trust you, but the others are plotting against me and I want you to regard them as my deadliest enemies." They compared notes; and that is why when a real plot was formed they shut their eyes to it. Caligula said that he approved Caesonia's advice and thanked her for it; he would certainly follow it when he had made his peace with his enemies. He called the Senate together and addressed us in this strain: "Soon I shall grant you all an amnesty, my enemies, and reign with love and peace a thousand years. That is the prophecy.

But before that golden time comes heads must roll along the floor of this House and blood spurt up to the beams. A wild five minutes that will be." If the thousand years of peace had come first, and then the wild five minutes, we should have preferred it.

The plot was formed by Cassius Chaerea. He was an old-fashioned soldier, accustomed to blind obedience to the orders of his superiors. Things have to be extraordinarily bad before a man of this stamp can think of plotting against the life of his Commander-in-Chief, to whom he has sworn allegiance in the most solemn terms imaginable.

Caligula had treated Cassius extremely badly. He had definitely promised him the command of the Guards and then without a word of explanation or apology had given it to a captain of short service and no military distinction as a reward for a remarkable drinking feat at the Palace: he had volunteered to drain a three-gallon jar of wine without removing it from his lips, and had really done so--I was watching--and kept the wine down into the bargain. Caligula had also made this man a senator. And Caligula employed Cassius on all his most unpleasant errands and tasks--collection of taxes that were not really due, the seizure of property for offences never committed, the execution of innocent men. Recently he had made him torture a beautiful girl, well born too, called Quintilia. The story was as follows. Several young men had wanted to marry her, but the one whom her guardian had proposed, a member of the Scouts, she did not like at all. She begged him to let her choose one of the others; he consented, and the day for the marriage was fixed. The rejected Scout went to Caligula and brought an accusation against his rival, saying that he had blasphemed, speaking of his August Sovereign as "that bald-headed madame". He cited Quintilia as a witness.

Quintilia and her betrothed were brought before Caligula. Both denied the charge.

Both were sentenced to the rack. Cassius' face revealed his disgust, for only slaves could legally be put to torture. So Caligula ordered him to supervise Quintilia's racking and turn the screws with his own hands. Quintilia did not utter a word or a cry throughout her ordeal and afterwards said to Cassius, who was so affected that he was weeping, "Poor Colonel, I bear you no grudge. Sometimes it must be hard to obey orders."

Cassius said bitterly: "I wish I had died that day with Varus in the Teutoburger Forest."

She was taken again into Caligula's presence and Cassius reported that she had made no confession and not allowed a cry to escape her. Caesonia said to Caligula, "That was because she was in love with the man. Love conquers all. You might cut her to pieces but she would never betray him."

Caligula said: "And would you too be so gloriously brave on my account, Caesonia?"

"You know that I would," she said.

So Quintilia's betrothed was not tortured but given a free pardon, and Quintilia was awarded a dowry of eight thousand gold pieces from the estate of the Scout, who was executed for perjury. But Caligula heard that Cassius had wept during Quintilia's torture and jeered at him for an old cry-baby. "Cry-baby" was not the worst he found.

He pretended that Cassius was an effeminate old pathic, and was always making dirty jokes about him to the other Guards officers, who were obliged to laugh heartily at them. Cassius used to come to Caligula for the watchword every day at noon. It had always been "Rome" or "Augustus" or "Jove" or "Victory" or something of the sort; but now to annoy Cassius, Caligula would give him absurd words like "Stay-laces" or "Lots of Love" or "Curling irons" [4"] or "Kiss me.

Sergeant," and Cassius had to take them back to his brother-officers and stand their chaff. He decided to kill Caligula.

Caligula was madder than ever. He came into my room one day and said without any introductory remark: "I shall have three Imperial cities, and Rome won't be one of them.

I shall have my city on the Alps, and I shall rebuild Rome at Antium because that's where I was bom and deserves the honour, and because it's on the sea, and then I shall have Alexandria in case the Germans capture the other two.

Alexandria is a very cultivated place."

"Yes, God," I said humbly.

He then suddenly remembered that he had been called a bald-headed madame--his hair was certainly very thin on top now--and shouted out, "How dare you go about with a great ugly bush of hair in my presence? It's blasphemy."

He turned to his German guard, "Cut his head off!"

Once more I thought I was done for. But I had the presence of mind to say sharply to the Guard who was running at me with his sword, "What are you doing, idiot? The God didn't say 'head', he said 'hair'! Run off and fetch the shears at once!" Caligula was taken aback and perhaps really thought that he had said

"hair". He allowed the German to fetch the shears. My crown was shorn clean. I asked permission to dedicate the clippings to his Deity and he graciously gave consent. So now he had everyone in the Palace shorn, except the Germans. When it came to Cassius' turn Caligula said, "Oh, what a pity! Those darling little ringlets that the Sergeant loves so much!"

That evening Cassius met Lesbia's husband. He had been Ganymede's best friend and from something that Caligula had said that morning was not likely to live much longer. He said, "Good evening Cassius Chasrea, my friend.

What's

the

watchword

to-day?"

Cassius had never been called "my friend" before by Lesbia's husband and looked intently at him.

Lesbia's husband--his name was Marcus Vinicius--said again, "Cassius, we have much in common and when I call you 'friend', I mean it. What's the watchword?"

Cassius answered, "The watchword to-night is 'Little Ringlets'. But, my friend Marcus Vinicius, if I may indeed call you friend, give me the watchword

'Liberty' and my sword is at your service."

Vinicius embraced him. "We are not the only two who are ready to strike for Liberty. The Tiger is also with me."

'The Tiger"--his real name was Cornelius Sabinus--was another Guards colonel, who relieved Cassius whenever he went off duty.

The great Palatine Festival started the next day. This festival in honour of Augustus had been instituted by Livia at the beginning of Tiberius' monarchy and was held annually in the Southern Court of the Old Palace.

AJ] .41] It began with sacrifices to Augustus and a symbolic procession, and continued for three days with theatrical pieces, dancing, singing, juggling and the like. Wooden stands were erected with seating for sixty thousand people.

When the festival ended the stands were taken down and stored away until the following year. This year Caligula had prolonged the three days to eight, interspersing the performances with chariot-races in the Circus and sham naval-fights in the Basin. He wanted to be continuously amused until the day he sailed for Alexandria, which was to be the twenty-fifth of January. For he was going to Egypt to see the sights, to raise money by immovable rigour and the same sort of trickery he had used in France, to make plans for the rebuilding of Alexandria and, lastly, so he boasted, to put a new head on the Sphinx.

The Festival started. Caligula sacrificed to Augustus, but in a somewhat perfunctory and disdainful way--like a master who in some emergency or other has to perform some menial service for one of his slaves. When this was over he proclaimed that if any citizen present asked a boon that it was in his power to grant he would graciously grant it. He had been angry with the people lately for their lack of enthusiasm at the last wild-beast show and had punished them by shutting the city granaries for ten days; but perhaps he had forgiven them now because he had just scattered largesse from the Palace roof. So a glad shout went up, "More bread, less taxes, Caesar! More bread, less taxes!"

Caligula was very angry. He sent a platoon of Germans along the benches and a hundred heads were chopped off.

This incident disturbed the conspirators; it was a reminder [423] of the barbarity of the Germans and the marvellous devotion that they paid Caligula. By this time, there can hardly have been a citizen in Rome who did not long for the death of Caligula, or would not willingly have eaten his flesh, as the saying is; but to these Germans he was the most glorious hero the world had ever known. And if he dressed as a woman; or galloped suddenly away from hu; army on the march; or made Caesonia appear naked before them and boasted of her beauty; or burned down his most beautiful villa at Herculaneum on the ground that his mother Agrippina had been imprisoned there for two days on her way to the island where she died--this inexplicable sort of behaviour only made him the more worthy of their worship as a divine being. They used to nod wisely to each other and say,

"Yes, the Gods are like that. You can't tell what they are going to do next. Tuisco and Mann, at home in our dear, dear Fatherland, are just the same."

Cassius was reckless and did not care what happened to him personally, so long as Caligula was assassinated, but the other conspirators who did not feel so strongly, began to wonder what vengeance the Germans would take on the murderers of their wonderful hero. They began making excuses and Cassius could not get them to agree on a proper plan of action. They suggested leaving it to chance. Cassius grew anxious. He called them cowards and accused them of playing for time. He said that they really wanted Caligula to get safe away to Egypt. The last day of the festival came, and Cassius had with great difficulty persuaded them to agree to a workable plan, when Caligula suddenly gave out that the festival would go on tor another three days. He said that he wanted to act and sing in a masque which he had himself composed for the benefit of the Alexandrians, but which he thought it only fair to show his own countrymen first.

This change of plans gave the more timorous of the conspirators a new opportunity for hedging. "Oh, but Cassius, this quite alters matters. It makes everything much easier for us. We can kill him on the last day, just as he comes off the stage. That's a far better plan. Or as he goes on.

Whichever you prefer."

Cassius answered; "We've made a plan and sworn to keep it, and keep it we must. It's a very good plan too. Not a flaw in it."

"But we have plenty of time now Why not wait another three days?"

Cassius said: "If you won't carry that plan out to-day as you all swore you would, I shall have to work single-handed! won't have much of a chance against the Germans--but I'll do my best. If they are too strong for me I'll call out,

'Vinicius, Asprenas, Bubo, Aquila, Tiger, why aren't you here as you promised?' "

So they agreed to carry out the original plan. Caligula was to be persuaded by Vinicius and Asprenas to leave the theatre at noon for a plunge in the swimming pool and a quick lunch. Just before this Cassius, The Tiger, and the other captains who were in the plot were to slip out unobtrusively by the stage-door. They were to go round to the entrance of the covered passage which was the short cut from the theatre to the New Palace. Asprenas and Vinicius would persuade Caligula to take this short cut.

The play that day had been announced as Ulysses and Circe and Caligula had promised to scatter fruit and cakes and money at the end of it. He would naturally do this from the end nearest the gate, where his seat was, so everyone came as early as possible to the theatre to secure seats at that end. When the gates were opened the crowd rushed in and raced for the nearest seats. Usually all the women sat together in one part, and there were seats reserved for knights, and for senators, and for distinguished foreigners and so on. But to-day everyone was muddled up together. I saw a senator who had come in late forced to sit between an African slave and a woman with saffron-dyed hair and the dark-coloured gown that common prostitutes wear as their professional dress. "So much the better,"

said Cassius to The Tiger. "The more confusion there is, the better chance we have."

Apart from the Germans and Caligula himself almost the only person at the Palace who had not by now heard of the plot was poor Claudius. This was because poor Claudius was going to be killed too, as Caligula's uncle.

All Caligula's family were to be killed. The conspirators were afraid, I suppose, that I would make myself Emperor [42?] and avenge his death. They had determined to restore the Republic. If only the idiots had taken me into their confidence this story would have had a very different ending.

For I was a better Republican than any of them. But they mistrusted me, and very cruelly doomed me to death. Even Caligula knew more about the plot than I did, in a sense, for he had just been sent a warning oracle from the Temple of Fortune at Antium: "Beware of Cassius." He misunderstood it, and recalled Drusilla's first husband, Cassius Longinus, from Asia Minor, where he was Governor. He thought that Longinus was angry with him for murdering Drusilla and remembered that he was a descendant of that Cassius who helped to assassinate Julius Caesar.

I came into the theatre that morning at eight o'clock and found that a place had been reserved for me by the ushers.

I was between the Guards' Commander and the Commander of the Germans. The Guards' Commander leant across me and asked: "Have you heard the news?"

"What news?" said the Commander of the Germans.

"They are playing a new drama to-day."

"What is it?"

"The Tyrant's Death."

The Commander of the Germans gave him a quick look and quoted frowning: "Brave comrade, hold thy peace Lest someone hear thee, of the men of Greece."

I said: "Yes, there is a change in the programme.

Mnester is to give us The Tyrant's Death. It hasn't been played for years. It's about King Cinyras, who wouldn't come into the war against Troy, and got killed for his cowardice."

The play began and Mnester was at the top of his form.

When he died at the hands of Apollo he spurted blood all over his clothes from a little bladder concealed in his mouth. Caligula sent for him and kissed him on both cheeks. Cassius and The Tiger escorted him to his dressing-room as if to protect him from his admirers. Then they went out by the stage-door. The captains followed during the confusion of the largesse-throwing. Asprenas said to Caligula:

"That was marvellous. Now what about a plunge in the bath and a little light luncheon?"

"No.” said Caligula, “I want to see those girl acrobats.

They're said to be pretty good. I think I'll sit the show out.

It's the last day." He was in an extremely affable mood.

So Vinicius rose. He was going to tell Cassius, The Tiger, and the rest, not to wait. Caligula pulled at his cloak. "My dear fellow, don't run away. You must see those girls. One does a dance called the fish-dance which makes you feel as if you were ten fathoms under water."

Vinicius sat down and saw the fish-dance. But first he had to sit through a short melodramatic interlude called Laureolus, or The Robber Chief. There was a lot of slaughter in it and the actors, a second-rate lot, had all found blood-bladders to put in their mouths in imitation of Mnester. You never saw such an ill-omened mess as they made of the stage! When the fish-dance was over Vinicius rose again: "To tell the truth, Lord, I would love to stay but Cloacina calls me. It's some confounded thing I ate.

"Soft but cohesive let my offerings flow, Not roughly swift, nor impudently slow.,."

Caligula laughed. "Don't blame it on me, my dear fellow. You're one of my best friends. I wouldn't doctor your food for the world."

Vinicius went out by the stage-door and found Cassius and The Tiger in the court. "You'd better come back," he said. "He's sitting it out to the end."

Cassius said: "Very well. Let's go back. I'm going to kill him where he sits.

I expect you to stand by me."

Just then a Guardsman came up to Cassius and said, "The boys are here at last, sir."

Now, Caligula had lately sent letters to the Greek cities of Asia Minor ordering them each to send him ten boys of the noblest blood to dance the national sword-dance at the festival and sing a hymn in his honour. This was only an excuse for getting the boys in his power: they would be useful hostages when he turned his fury against Asia Minor. They should have arrived several days before this, but rough weather in the Adriatic bad held them up at [w] Corfu. The Tiger said, "Inform the Emperor at once."

The

Guardsman

hurried to the theatre.

Meanwhile I was beginning to feel very hungry. I whispered to Vitellius who was sitting behind me, "I do? Ah that the Emperor would set us the example of going out iys. a little luncheon." Then the Guardsman came up with the message about the boys’ arrival and Caligula said to Asprenas: "Splendid! They'll be able to perform this afternoon. I must see them at once and have a short rehearsal of the hymn. Come on, friends! The rehearsal first, then a bathe, luncheon, and back again!"

We went out. Caligula stopped at the gate to give orders about the afternoon performance. I walked ahead withVitellius, a senator named Sentius, and the two generals.

We went by the covered passage. I noticed Cassius and The Tiger at the entrance. They did not salute me, which I thought strange, for they saluted the others. We reached the Palace. I said, "I am hungry. I smell venison cooking. I hope that rehearsal won't take too long." We were in the ante-room to the banqueting-hall. "This is odd," I thought. "No captains here, only sergeants." I fumed questioningly to my companions but--another odd thing--found that they had all silently vanished. Just then I heard distant shouting and screams, then more shouting. I wondered what on earth was happening. Someone ran past the window shouting, "It's all over. He's dead!" Two minutes later there came a most awful roar from the theatre, as if the whole audience was being massacred. It went on and on but after a time there was a lull followed by tremendous cheering. I stumbled upstairs to my little reading-room where I collapsed trembling on a chair.

The pillared portrait-busts of Herodotus, Polybius, Thucydides, and Asinius Pollio stood facing me. Their impassive features seemed to say: "A true historian will always rise superior to the political disturbances of his day."

I determined to comport myself as a true historian.

XXXIV

WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS THIS. CALIGULA HAD COME OUT of the theatre. A sedan was waiting to take him the long way round to the New Palace between double ranks of Guards. But Vinicius said: "Let's go by the short cut. The Greek boys are waiting there at the entrance, I believe."

"All right, then, come along," said Caligula. The people tried to follow him out but Asprenas dropped behind and forced them back. "The Emperor doesn't want to be bothered with you," he said. "Get back!" He told the gatekeepers to close the gates again.

Caligula went towards the covered passage. Cassius stepped forward and saluted. "The watchword, Caesar?"

Caligula said, "Eh? O yes, the watchword, Cassius. I'll give you a nice one to-day--'Old Man's Petticoat.'"

The Tiger called from behind Caligula, "Shall I?" It was the agreed signal.

"Do so!" bellowed Cassius, drawing his sword, and striking at Caligula with all his strength.

He had intended to split his skull to the chin, but in his rage he missed his aim and struck him between the neck and the shoulders. The upper breastbone took the chief force of the blow. Caligula was staggered with pain and astonishment. He looked wildly around him, turned and ran.

As he turned Cassius struck at him again, severing his jaw.

The Tiger then felled him with a badly-aimed blow on the side of his head.

He slowly rose to his knees. "Strike again!" Cassius shouted.

Caligula looked up to Heaven with a face of agony. "O Jove," he prayed.

"Granted," shouted The Tiger, and hacked off one of his hands.

A captain called Aquila gave the finishing stroke, a deep thrust in the groin, but ten more swords were plunged into his breast and belly afterwards, just to make sure o£ him.

A captain called Bubo dipped his hand in a wound in Caligula's side and then licked his fingers, shrieking, "I swore to drink his blood!"

A crowd had collected and the alarm went around, "The Germans are coming." The assassins had no chance against a whole battalion of Germans. They rushed into the nearest building, which happened to be my old home, lately borrowed from me by Caligula as guest-apartments for foreign ambassadors whom he did not want to have about in the Palace. They went in at the front door and out at the back door. All got away in time but The Tiger and Asprenas. The Tiger had to pretend that he was not one of the assassins and joined the Germans in their cries for vengeance. Asprenas ran into the covered passage, where the Germans caught him and killed him. They killed two other senators whom they happened to meet. This was only a small party of Germans. The rest of the battalion marched into the theatre and closed the gate behind them. They were going to avenge their murdered hero by a wholesale massacre. That was the roar and screaming I had heard. Nobody in the theatre knew that Caligula was dead or that any attempt had been made against his life. But it was quite clear what the Germans intended because they were going through that curious performance of patting and stroking their assegais and speaking to them as if they were human beings, which is their invariable custom before shedding blood with those terrible weapons. There was no escape. Suddenly from the stage the trumpet blew the Attention, followed by the six notes which mean Imperial Orders. Mnester entered and raised his hand.

And at once the terrible din died down into mere sobs and smothered groans, for when Mnester appeared on the stage it was a rule that nobody should utter the least sound on pain of instant death. The Germans too stopped their patting and stroking and incantations. The Imperial Orders stiffened them into statues.

Mnester shouted: "He's not dead, Citizens. Far from it. The assassins set on him and beat him to his knees, so! But he presently rose again, so! Swords cannot prevail against our Divine Caesar. Wounded and bloody as he was he rose. So! He lifted his august head and walked, so! with divine stride through the ranks of his cowardly and baffled assassins. His wounds healed, a miracle! He is now in the Market Place loudly and eloquently haranguing his subjects from the Oration Platform."

A mighty cheer arose and the Germans sheathed their swords and marched out. Mnester's timely lie [prompted, as a matter of fact, by a message from Herod Agrippa,

King of the Jews, the only man in Rome who kept his wits about him that fateful afternoon had saved sixty thousand lives or more].

But the real news had by now reached the Palace, where it caused the most utter confusion. A few old soldiers thought that the opportunity for looting was too good to be missed. They would pretend to be looking for the assassins. Every room in the Palace had a golden door-knob, each worth six months' pay, easy enough to hack off with a sharp sword. I heard the cries, "Kill them, kill thcm!

Avenge Caesar!" and hid behind a curtain. Two soldiers came in. They saw my feet under the curtain. "Come out of there, assassin. No use hiding from us."

I came out and fell on my face. "Don't k-k-k-k-kill me, Lords," I said. "I had n-nothing to d-d-d-d-do with it."

"Who's this old gentleman?" asked one of the soldiers who was new at the Palace. "He doesn't look dangerous."

"Why! Don't you know? He's Germanicus' invalid brother. A decent old stick. No harm in him at all. Get up, sir. We won't hurt you." This soldier's name was Gratus.

They made me follow them downstairs again into the banqueting-hall where the sergeants and corporals were holding a council-of-war. A young sergeant stood on a table waving his arms and shouting, "Republic be hanged! A new Emperor's our only hope. Any Emperor so long as we can persuade the Germans to accept him."

"Incitatus," someone suggested, guffawing.

"Yes, by God! Better the old nag than no Emperor at all. We want someone immediately, to keep the Germans quiet. Otherwise they'll run amok."

My two captors pushed their way through the crowd dragging me behind them. Gratus called out, "Hey, Sergeant! Look whom we have here! A bit of luck, I think. It's old Claudius. What's wrong with old Claudius for Emperor? [43i] The best man for the job in Rome, though he do limp and stammer a bit."

Loud cheers, laughter, and cries of "Long live the Emperor Claudius!" The Sergeant apologised. "Why sir, we all thought you were dead. But you're our man, all right. Push him up, lads, where we can all see him!" Two burly corporals caught me by the legs and hoisted me on their shoulders. "Long live the Emperor Claudiusl"

"Put me down," I cried furiously. "Put me down! I don't want to be Emperor. I refuse to be Emperor. Long live the Republic!"

But they only laughed. "That's a good one. He doesn't want to be Emperor, he says. Modest, eh?"

"Give me a sword," I shouted. "I'll kill myself sooner."

Messalina came hurrying towards us. "For my sake, Claudius, do what they ask of you. For our child's sake!

We'll all be murdered if you refuse. They've killed Caesonia already. And they took her little girl by the feet and bashed out her brains against a wall."

"You'll be all right, sir, once you get accustomed to it,"

Gratus said, grinning. "It's not such a bad life, an Emperor's isn't."

I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against Fate? They hurried me out into the Great Court, singing the foolish hymn of hope composed at Caligula's accession, "Germanicus is come Again, To Free the City from her Pain." For I had the surname Germanicus too.

They forced me to put on Caligula's golden oak-leaf chaplet, recovered from one of the looters. To steady myself I had to cling tightly to the corporals'

shoulders. The chaplet kept slipping over one ear. How foolish I felt. They say that I looked like a criminal being hauled away to execution.

Massed trumpeters blew the Imperial Salute.

The Germans came streaming towards us. They had just heard for certain of Caligula's death, from a senator who came to meet them in deep mourning. They were furious at having been tricked and wanted to go back to the theatre, but the theatre was empty now, so they were at a loss what to do next. There was nobody about to take vengeance on except the Guards, and the Guards were armed.

The Imperial Salute decided them. They rushed forward shouting: "Hochi Hochi Long live the Emperor Claudius!" and began frantically dedicating their assegais to my service and struggling to break through the crowd of Guardsmen to kiss my feet. I called to them to keep back, and they obeyed, prostrating themselves before me. I was carried round and round the Court.

And what thoughts or memories, would you guess, were passing through my mind on this extraordinary occasion?

Was I thinking of the Sibyl's prophecy, of the omen of the wolf-cub, of Pollio's advice, or of Briseis' dream? Of my grandfather and liberty? Of my father and liberty? Of my three Imperial predecessors, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, their lives and deaths? Of the great danger I was still in from the conspirators, and from the Senate, and from the Guards battalions at Ac Camp? Of Messalina and our unborn child? Of my grandmother Livia and my promise to deify her if ever I became Emperor? Of Postumus and Germanicus? Of Agrippina and Nero? Of Camilla? No, you would never guess what was passing through my mind. But I shall be frank and tell you what it was, though the confession is a shameful one. I was thinking, "So, I'm Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now. Public recitals to large audiences. And good books too, thirty-five years' hard work in them. It won't be unfair. Pollio used to get attentive audiences by giving expensive dinners. He was a very sound historian, and the last of Romans. My History of Carthage is full of amusing anecdotes. I'm sure they'll enjoy it."

That was what I was thinking. I was thinking too, what opportunities I should have, as Emperor, for consulting the secret archives and finding out just what happened on this occasion or on that. How many twisted stories still remained to be straightened out. What a miraculous fate for a historian! And as you will have seen, I took full advantage of my opportunities. Even the mature historian's privilege of setting forth conversations of which he knows only the gist is one that I have availed myself of hardly at all.

The End

About the Author

Although he is a primarily a poet, ROBERT GRAVES in over forty years of writing has also made distinguished contributions as a novelist, critic, translator, essayist, scholar, historian, lecturer and librettist. Born in London in 1895, Mr.

Graves left school when World War I broke and served as a captain with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in France. First recognised as a "war poet" along with his fellow officer Siegfried Sassoon, he won international acclaim in 1929 with the publication of Goodbye to All That, an autobiography vividly appraising the effect of the war years on his generation.

After the war, Mr. Graves was granted a Classical scholarship at Oxford, and subsequently went to Egypt as the first Professor of English at the newly formed University of Cairo. Since 1932 he has lived with his wife and famfly in Deya, Majorca, except in time of war J, Claudius first appeared in 1935 and won both the Tames Tait Black and Hawthorne prizes.