Claudius the God

by Robert Graves

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

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

  Chapter 7

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

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

  Founded and Directed by the most Learned and Eloquent Orator and

  Jurist Telegonius Macarius of This City and of the City of Athens.

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

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

  ‘The tongue is mightier than the blade’:

  EURIPIDES.

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

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

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

  ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘you put groves where the vales should have been and you left out “footsore” and the telling adverb “perversely”. You didn’t look startled, either, at the word “found”, only stupid. The judgement goes against you. Blame yourself, not Telegonius.’

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

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

  The old man weds, for Nature’s rule he scorns –

  ‘Father a weakly stock, or else wear horns’.

  The lawyer considered for a few moments and then extemporized:

  And that old man, yourself, is a plain fool

  To foist on Nature this unnatural rule.

  A sturdy old man fathers sturdy sons;

  A weakly young man fathers weakly ones.

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

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed, Caesar.’

  ‘Then why is he not here?’

  ‘He is unfortunately prevented from attending.’

  ‘There is no excuse for non-attendance, except illness so serious that he cannot be carried into court without danger to his life.’

  ‘I quite agree, Caesar. No, the witness is not ill now. He has been very ill, I understand. But that is all over.’

  ‘What was wrong with him?’

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

  ‘It’s a wonder he recovered,’ I said.

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

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

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

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

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

  As the rascal did he must

  Himself be done by. And that’s just,

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