I, Claudius

by Robert Graves

  She came towards me and said slowly: "What are you doing in my bedroom?"

  I explained myself as well as I could, and said that it was a bad joke of Plautius', sending me into her room without telling me that she was there. I had the greatest respect for her, I said, and apologised sincerely for my intrusion and would leave her at once and sleep on a couch in the Baths.

  "No, my dear, now you're here you stay. It isn't often that I have the pleasure of my husband's company. Please understand that once you're here you can't escape. Get into bed and go to sleep and I'll join you later. I'm going to read a book until I feel sleepy. I've not been able to sleep properly for nights."

  "I am very sorry if I woke you up just now..."

  "Get into bed."

  "I am very sorry indeed about Numantina's divorce. I knew nothing about it until the freedman told me a moment ago."

  "Get into bed and stop talking."

  "Good night, Urgulanilla. I am really very..."

  "Shut up." She came over and drew the curtain.

  Although I was dead tired and could hardly keep my eyes open I did my best to stay awake. I was convinced that Urgulanilla would wait until I went to sleep and then strangle me. Meanwhile she was reading to herself very slowly from a very dull book, a Greek love-story of the most idiotic sort, rustling the pages and spelling out each syllable slowly to herself in a hoarse whisper: "O schol-ar," she said, "you have tasted now both honey and ga-ll. Be care-ful that the sweet-ness of your pleas-ure does not turn to-morr-ow in-to the bit-ter-ness of re-pent-ance!"

  "Pshaw," I returned, "My sweet-heart, I am read-y, if you give me an-oth-er kiss like that last one, to be roasted up-on a slow fire like a-ny chick-en or duckling."

  She chuckled at this and then said aloud, "Go to sleep, husband. I'm waiting until I hear you snore."

  I protested, "Then you shouldn't read such exciting stories."

  I heard Plautius go to bed after a time. "O Heavens," I thought. "He'll be asleep in a few minutes and with two doors between us he won't hear my cries when Urgulanilla throttles me." Urgulanilla stopped reading and I had no muttering and crackling of paper to help me fight against sleepiness. I felt myself falling asleep. I was asleep. I knew that I was asleep and I simply must wake up. I struggled frantically to be awake. At last I was awake. There was a thud and a rustle of paper. The book had blown off the table on to the floor. The lamp had gone out; I was aware of a strong draught in the room. The door must be open. I listened attentively for about three minutes.

  Urgulanilla was certainly not in the room.

  As I was trying to make up my mind what to do I heard the most dreadful shriek ring out—from quite close it seemed. A woman screamed, "Spare me! Spare me! This is Numantina's doing! O! O!" Then came the bump of a heavy metal object falling, then the crash of splintering glass, another shriek, a distant thud, then hurried footsteps across the corridor. Somebody was in my room again.

  The door was softly closed and barred. I recognised Urgulanilla's panting breath. I heard her clothes being taken off and laid on a chair, and soon she was lying beside me. I pretended to be asleep. She groped for my throat in the dark.

  I said, as if half-waking: "Don't do that, darling. It tickles.

  And I've got to go to Rome tomorrow to buy some cosmetics for you." Then in a more wakeful voice: "O Urgulanilla! Is that you? What's all that noise? What's the time?

  Have we been asleep long?"

  She said, "I don't know. I must have been asleep about three hours. It's just before dawn. It sounds as though something dreadful has happened. Let's go and see."

  So we got up and put on our clothes in a hurry and unlocked the door. Plautius, naked except for a coverlet hastily wrapped round him, stood in the middle of an excited crowd armed with torches. He was quite distracted and kept saying, "I didn't do it. I was asleep. I felt her torn from my arms and heard her borne through the air screaming for help, and then a crash of something falling and another crash as she went through the window. It was pitch dark. She called out: 'Spare mel It's Numantina's doing.'"

  "Tell that to the judges," said Apronia's brother, striding up, "and see whether they'll believe you. You've killed her all right. Her skull's smashed in."

  "I didn't do it," said Plautius. "How could I have done?

  I was asleep. It was witchcraft. Numantina's a witch."

  At dawn he was taken before the Emperor by Apronia's brother. Tiberius cross-examined him severely. He said now that while he was sound asleep she had torn herself from his arms and leaped across the room, shrieking and crashed through the window into the courtyard below. Tiberius made Plautius accompany him at once to the scene of the murder. The first thing that he noticed in the bedroom was his own wedding-gift to Flautius, a beautiful bronze-and gold candelabra taken from the tomb of a queen, now lying broken on the ground. He glanced up and saw that it had been wrenched from the ceiling. He said: "She clung to it and it came down. She was being carried towards the window on somebody's shoulders. And look how high up in the window the hole is! She was pitched through, she did not jump through."

  "It was witchcraft," said Plautius. "She was carried through the air by an unseen power. She shrieked and blamed my former wife Numantina."

  Tiberius scoffed. Plautius' friends realised that he would be convicted of murder and executed, and his property confiscated. His grandmother Urgulania therefore sent him a dagger, telling him to think of his heirs, who would be allowed to keep the property if he anticipated the verdict by immediate suicide. He was a coward and could not bring himself to drive the dagger home. Eventually he got into a hot bath and ordered a surgeon to open his veins for him; he slowly and painlessly bled to death. I felt very badly about his death. I had not accused Urgulanilla of the murder at once because I would have been asked why when I heard the first shrieks I had not jumped up and rescued Apronia. I had decided to wait until the trial and only come forward if Plautius seemed likely to be condemned. I knew nothing about the dagger until it was too late. I comforted myself by the thought that he had treated Numantina very cruelly and had been a bad friend to me, besides.

  To clear Plautius’ memory his brother brought a charge against Numantina of having disordered Plautius' wits by witchcraft. But Tiberius intervened and said that he was satisfied that Plautius had been in full possession of his faculties at the time. Numantina was discharged.

  There was not another word spoken between Urgulanilla and myself. But a month later Sejanus paid me a surprise visit as he was passing through Capua. He was in Tiberius' company, on the way to Capri, an island near Naples, where Tiberius had twelve villas and frequently went for amusement. Sejanus said: "You'll be able to divorce Urgulanilla now. She's due to have a child in about five months' time, so my agents inform me. You have me to thank for this. I knew Urgulanilla's obsession about Numantina. I happened to see a young slave, a Greek, who might have been Numantina's male twin. I made her a present of him and she fell in love with him at once. His name's Boter."

  What could I do but thank him? Then I said, "And who's my new wife to be?"

  "So you remember our conversation? Well, the lady I have in mind is my sister by adoption—Elia. You know her of course?"

  I did, but I hid my disappointment, and merely asked whether anyone so young, beautiful and. intelligent would be content to marry an old, lame, sick, stammering fool like myself.

  "Oh," he answered brutally, "she won't mind it in the least. She'll be marrying Tiberius' nephew and Nero's uncle, that's all she thinks about. Don't imagine that she's in love with you. She might bring herself to have a child by you for the sake of its ancestry, but as for any sentiment—"

  "In fact, apart from the honour of becoming your brother-in-law, I might just as well not divorce Urgulanilla for all the improvement it will make to my life?"

  "Oh, you'll manage," he laughed. "You don't live too lonely a life here, by the look of this room. There's a nice woman about somewhere, I can see. Gloves, a hand-mirror
, an embroidery frame, that box of sweets, flowers carefully arranged. And Elia won't be jealous. She has her own men friends, probably, though I don't pry into her affairs."

  "All right," I said. "I'll do it."

  "You don't sound very grateful."

  "It's not ingratitude. You have taken great trouble on my account and I don't know how to thank you properly.

  I was only feeling rather nervous. From what I know of Elia, she's rather critical, if you understand what I mean."

  He burst out laughing. "She has a tongue like a sacking needle. But surely by now you're hardened against mere scolding? Your mother has given you a good enough training, hasn't she?"

  "I am still a little thin-skinned," I said, "in places."

  "Well, I mustn't stay here any longer, my dear Claudius.

  Tiberius will be wondering where I've gone. So it's a bargain?"

  "Yes, and I thank you very much."

  "Oh, by the way, it was Urgulanilla, wasn't it, who killed poor Apronia? I rather expected a tragedy. Urgulanilla had a letter from Numantina begging her to avenge her. Numantina didn't really write it, you understand."

  "I know nothing. I was sound asleep at the time."

  "Like Plautius?"

  "Sounder even than Plautius."

  "Sensible fellow! Well, good-bye, Claudius."

  "Good-bye, Elius Sejanus." He rode off.

  I divorced Urgulanilla, after first writing to my grandmother for permission. Livia wrote that the child should be exposed as soon as born; this was her wish and the wish of Urgulania.

  I sent a reliable freedman to Urgulanilla at Herculaneum to tell her the orders I had been given, warning her that if she wanted the child to live she must exchange it, as soon as born, for a dead baby; I had to have a baby of sorts to expose, and so long as it wasn't too long dead, any dead baby would serve the purpose. So the child was saved that way and later Urgulanilla took it back from its foster parents, from whom she had got the dead baby. I don't know what happened to Boter, but the child, who was a girl, grew up the living image of Numantina, they say. Urgulanilla has been dead many years now. When she died they had to break down a wall to get her enormous body out of the house—and it was all honest bulk, not dropsy. In her will she paid a curious tribute to me: "I don't care what people say, but Claudius is no fool." She left me a collection of Greek gems, some Persian embroideries, and her portrait of Numantina.

  XXIV

  TIBERIUS AND LIVIA NEVER MET NOW. Livia had offended Tiberius by dedicating a statue to Augustus in their joint names and putting her name first. He retaliated by doing the one thing that she could not even pretend to forgive—when ambassadors came to him from Spain asking that they might erect a temple to him and his mother he refused on behalf of both. He told the Senate that he had, perhaps in a moment of weakness, allowed the dedication of a temple in Asia to the Senate and its leader [namely, himself]—together symbolizing the paternal government of Rome. His mother's name also occurred in the dedicatory inscription as High Priestess of the cult of Augustus. But to assent to the deification of himself and his mother would be carrying indulgence too far.

  "For myself, my Lords, that I am a mortal man, that I am bound by the trammels of human nature, and that I fill the principal place among you to your satisfaction—if I do—I solemnly assure you is quite enough for me: this is how I prefer to be remembered by posterity. If posterity believes me to have been worthy of my ancestors, watchful of your interest, unmoved in dangers and, in defence of the commonwealth, fearless of private enmities, I will be sufficiently remembered. The loving gratitude of the Senate and people of Rome and or our allies is the fairest temple I would raise—a temple not of marble but more enduring than marble, a temple of the heart. Marble temples, when the hallowed beings to whom they are raised fall into disrepute, are despised as mere sepulchres. I therefore invoke Heaven to grant me until the end of my life an untroubled spirit and the power of clear discernment in all duties human and sacred: and therefore too I implore our citizens and allies that whenever dissolution comes to this mortal body of mine, they will celebrate my life and deeds [if they are so worthy] with inward thankfulness and praise rather than the outward pomp and temple-building and annual sacrifice. The true love that Rome felt for my father Augustus when he was among us as a man is already obscured both by the awe which his Godhead excites in the religious-minded and by the indiscriminate use of his name as a market-place oath. And while we are on the subject, my Lords, I propose that we henceforth make it a criminal offence to use the sacred name of Augustus for any but the most solemn occasions and that we enforce this law vigourously." No mention of Livia's feelings in the matter. And the day before he had refused to appoint one of her nominees to a vacant Judgeship, unless he were permitted to qualify the appointment with: "This person is the choice of my mother, Livia Augusta, to whose importunities in his interest I have been forced to give way, against my better knowledge of his character and capacities."

  Soon after this Livia invited all the noblewomen of Rome to an all-day entertainment. There were jugglers and acrobats and recitations from the poets and marvellous cakes and sweetmeats and liqueurs and a beautiful jewel for each guest as a memento of the occasion. To conclude the proceedings Livia gave a reading of Augustus' letters. She was now eighty-three years old and her voice was weak and she whistled a good deal on her s', but for an hour and a half she held her audience spellbound. The first letters she read contained pronouncements on public policy, all of which seemed especially written as warnings against the present state of affairs at Rome. There were some very apposite remarks about treason trials, including the following paragraph: "Though I have been bound to protect myself legally against all sorts of libel I shall exert myself to the utmost, my dear Livia, to avoid staging so unpleasant a spectacle as a trial, for treason, of any foolish historian, caricaturist or epigram-maker who has made me a target of his wit or eloquence. My father Julius Cassar forgave the poet Catullus the most filthy lampoons imaginable: he wrote to Catullus that if he were trying to show that he was no servile flatterer like most of his fellow-poets, he had now fully proved his case and could return to other more poetical subjects than the sexual abnormalities of a middleaged statesman: and would he come to dinner the next day and bring any friend he liked? Catullus came, and thenceforward the two were fast friends. To use the majesty of law for revenging any petty act of private spite is to make a public confession of weakness, cowardice and an ignoble spirit."

  There was a notable paragraph about informers: "Except where I am convinced that an informer does not expect to benefit directly or indirectly by his accusations, but brings them from a sense of true patriotism and public decency, I not only discount their importance as evidence but I put a black mark against that informer's name and never afterwards employ him in any position of trust..."

  And, to finish up, she read a series of very illuminating letters. Livia had tens of thousands of Augustus' letters, written over a stretch of fifty-two years, carefully sewn into book-form and indexed. She chose from these thousands the fifteen most damaging ones she could find. The series began with complaints against Tiberius' disgusting behaviour as a little boy, his unpopularity with his schoolfellows as a big boy, his close-fistedness and haughtiness as a young man, and so on, with signs of growing irritation and the phrase, often repeated, "and if it were not that he was your son, my dearest Livia, I would say—" Then came complaints of his brutal severity with the troops under his command—"almost an encouragement to mutiny"—and his dilatoriness in pressing his attacks on the enemy, with unfavourable comparisons between his methods and my father's. Then an angry refusal to consider him as a son-in-law, and a detailed list of his moral shortcomings. Then more letters relating to the painful Julia story, written for the most part in terms of almost insane loathing and disgust for Tiberius. She read one important letter written on the occasion of Tiberius' recall from Rhodes: "DEAREST LIVIA: "I take advantage of this forty-second annive
rsary of our marriage to thank you with all my heart for the extraordinary services you have rendered the State ever since we joined forces. If I am styled the Father of the Country it seems absurd to me that you should not be styled the Mother of the Country: I swear you have done twice as much as I have in our great work of public reconstruction.

  Why do you ask me to wait another few years before asking the Senate to vote you this honour? The only way that I can show my absolute confidence in your disinterested loyalty and profound judgment is to give way at last to your repeated pleas for the recall of Tiberius, a man to whose character I confess I continue to feel the greatest repugnance, and I pray to Heaven that by giving way to you now I do not inflict lasting damage on the commonwealth."

  Livia's last choice was a letter written about a year before Augustus' death: "I had a sudden feeling of profoundest regret and despair, my dearest wife, when discussing State policy with Tiberius yesterday, that the people of Rome should be fated to be glared at by those protruding eyes of his and pounded by that bony fist of his and chewed by those dreadfully slow jaws of his and stamped on by those huge feet of his. But I was for the moment reckoning without yourself and our dear Germanicus. If I did not believe that when I am dead he will both be guided by you in all matters of State and shamed by Germanicus' example into at least a semblance of decent living, I would even now, I swear, disinherit him and ask the Senate to revoke all his titles of honour. The man's a beast and needs keepers."

  When she had finished she rose and said: "Perhaps, ladies, it would be best to say nothing to your husbands about these peculiar letters. I did not realise, in fact, when I began to read, how—how peculiar they were. I am not asking you this on my own account but for the sake of the Empire."

  Tiberius heard the whole story from Sejanus just as he was about to take his seat in the Senate, and he was overcome with shame and rage and alarm. It so happened that his business that afternoon was to hear a charge of treason brought against Lentulus, one of the pontiffs who had incurred his suspicion in the matter of the prayer for Nero and Drusus, and also because he had voted for the mitigation of Sosia's sentence. When Lentuhis, a simple old man, distinguished equally for his birth, his victories in Africa under Augustus and his unassuming mildness—his nickname was "The Bell-Wether"—heard that he was accused of plotting against the State, he burst out laughing. Tiberius, already distracted, lost all self-control and said, nearly weeping, to the House: "If Lentulus too hates me, I am unworthy to live,"