I, Claudius

by Robert Graves

  In the summer of this year there was an accidental meeting between Livia in a sedan-chair and Tiberius on a cob in the main street of Naples, Tiberius had just landed from Capri and Livia was returning from a visit to Herculaneum.

  Tiberius wanted to ride past without a greeting but force of habit made him rein up and salute her with formal enquiries after her health. She said: "I'm all the better for your kind enquiries, my boy. And as a mother my advice to you is: be very careful of the barbel you eat on your island.

  Some of the ones they catch there are highly poisonous."

  "Thank you. Mother," he said. "As the warning comes from you I shall in future stick religiously to tunny and mullet."

  Livia snorted and turning to Caligula, who was with her, said in a loud voice: "Well, as I was saying, my husband [your great-grandfather, my dear] and I came hurrying along this street one dark night sixty-five years ago, wasn't it, on our way to the docks where our ship was secretly waiting. We were expecting any moment to be arrested and killed by Augustus' men—how strange it seemsl My elder boy—we had had only one child so far—was riding on his father's back. Then what should that little beast do but set up a terriffic yowl: ‘0h, father, I want to go back to Peru-u-u-sia.' That gave the show away. Two soldiers came out of a tavern and called after us. We dodged into a dark doorway to let them pass. But Tiberius went on yowling, ‘I want to go back to Peru-u-u-sia.' I said, 'Kill him! Kill the brat! It's our only hope.' But my husband was a tender-hearted fool and refused. It was only by the merest chance we escaped."

  Tiberius, who had stopped to hear the end of the story, dug his spurs into his cob and clattered off in a fury. They never saw each other again.

  Livia's warning about fish was only intended to make him uncomfortable, to make him think that she had his fishermen or his cooks in her pay. She knew Tiberius' fondness for barbel, and that he would now have a constant conflict between his appetite and his fear of assassination. There was a painful sequel. One day Tiberius was sitting under a tree on a western slope of the island, enjoying the breeze and planning a verse-dialogue in Greek between the hare and the pheasant, in which each in turn claimed gastronomic pre-eminence. It was not an original idea: he had recently rewarded one of his court-poets with two thousand gold pieces for a similar poem, in which the rivals were a mushroom, a titlark, an oyster and a thrush.

  In his introduction to the present piece he brushed all these claims aside as trifling, saying that the hare and pheasant alone had the right to dispute the parsley-crown—their flesh alone had dignity without heaviness, delicacy without paltriness, He was just searching for a discourteous adjective with which to qualify the oyster when he heard a sudden rustling from the thom-bushes below him and a tousleheaded wild-looking man appeared. His clothes were wet and torn to rags, his face bleeding and an open knife was in his hand. He burst through the thicket shouting: "Here you are, Caesar, isn't it a beauty?'' From the sack he was carrying over his shoulder he pulled out a monstrous barbel and threw it, still kicking, on the turf at Tiberius' feet.

  He was only a simple fisherman who had just made this remarkable catch and, seeing Tiberius at the cliff top, had decided to present it to him. He had moored his boat to a rock, swum to the cliff, struggled up a precipice path to the belt of thorn-bushes, and hacked himself a path through them with his clasp-knife.

  But Tiberius had been startled nearly out of his senses.

  He blew a whistle and shouted out in German: "Help, help! Come at once! Wolfgang! Siegfried! Adelstan! An assassin!"

  "Coming, all-highest, noblest-born, gift-bestowing Chief," the Germans instantly replied. They had been on sentry-duty to his left and right and behind him, but there was nobody posted in front, naturally. They came bounding along, brandishing their assegais.

  The man did not understand German, and shutting his clasp-knife said cheerfully: "I caught him by the grotto yonder. What do you guess he weighs? A regular whale, eh? Nearly pulled me out of the boat."

  Tiberius, somewhat reassured, but with his imagination now running on poisoned fish, shouted to the Germans: "No, don't spear him. Cut that thing in two and rub the pieces in his face."

  Burly Wolfgang from behind clasped the fisherman around the middle so that he could not move his arms, while the other two scrubbed his face with raw fish. The unfortunate fellow called out: "Hey, stop it! That's no joke! What luck that I didn't first offer the Emperor the other thing in my sack."

  "See what it is," Tiberius ordered.

  Edelstein opened the sack and found in it an enormous lobster. "Rub his face with that," said Tiberius. "Rub it well in!"

  The wretched man lost both his eyes. Then Tiberius said: "That's enough, men. You may let him go!" The fisherman stumbled about screaming and raving with pain, and there was nothing to be done but toss him into the sea from the nearest crag.

  I am glad to say that I was never invited to visit Tiberius on his island and have carefully avoided going there since, though all evidences of his vile practices have long ago been removed and his twelve villas are said to be very beautiful.

  I had asked Livia's permission to marry Elia and she had given it with malicious good wishes. She even attended the wedding. It was a very splendid wedding—Sejanus saw to that—and one effect of it was to alienate me from Agrippina and Nero and their friends. It was thought that I would not be able to keep any secrets from Elia and that Elia would tell Sejanus all that she found out. This saddened me a great deal, but I saw that it was useless trying to reassure Agrippina [who was now in mourning for her sister Julilla, who had just died after a twenty-years exile in that wretched little island of Tremerus]. So gradually I stopped visiting her house, to avoid embarrassment. I and EIia were man and wife only in name. The first thing she said to me when we went into our bridal-chamber was: "Now understand, Claudius, that I don't want you to touch me and that if we ever have to sleep together again in one bed, like to-night, there'll be a coverlet between us, and the least movement you make—out you go. And another thing: you mind your own business, and I'll mind mine..."

  I said. "Thank you: you have taken a great load off my mind."

  She was a dreadful woman. She had the loud persistent eloquence of an auctioneer in the slave-market. I soon gave up trying to answer her back. Of course I still lived at Capua, and Elia never came to see me there, but Sejanus insisted that whenever I visited Rome I should be seen in her company as much as possible.

  Nero had no chance against Sejanus and Livilla. Though Agrippina constantly warned him to weigh every word he spoke, he was of far too open a nature to conceal his thoughts. Among the young noblemen whom he trusted as his friends there were several secret agents of Sejanus, and these kept a register of the opinions he expressed on all public events. Worse still, his wife, whom we called Helen, or Heluo, was Livilla's daughter and reported all his confidences to her. But the worst of all was his own brother, Drusus, to whom he confided even more than to his wife, and who was jealous because Nero was the elder son, and Agrippina's favourite. Drusus went to Sejanus and said that Nero had asked him to sail secretly to Germany with him on the next dark night, where they would throw themselves on the protection of the regiments, as Germanicus' sons, and call for a march on Rome; that he had of course indignantly refused. Sejanus told him to wait a little longer and he would then be called on to tell the story to Tiberius: but the right moment had not yet come.

  Meanwhile, Sejanus sent the rumour flying around that Tiberius was about to charge Nero with treason. Nero's friends began to desert him. As soon as two or three of them began excusing themselves from attending his dinners, and returning his greeting coldly when they met him in public, the rest followed their example. After a few months only his real friends remained. Among them was Gallus, who now that Tiberius himself did not visit the Senate any more concentrated on teasing Sejanus. His method with Sejanus was constantly to propose votes of thanks for his services, and the granting of exceptional honours—statues and arches an
d titles and prayers and the public celebration of his birthday. The Senate did not dare to oppose these motions, and Sejanus, not being a senator, had no say in the matter, and Tiberius did not wish to go against the Senate by vetoing their vote for fear of antagonizing Sejanus or seeming to have lost confidence in him.

  Whenever the Senate now wanted anything done they would first send representatives to Sejanus asking for permission to apply to Tiberius about it: and if Sejanus discouraged them the matter would be dropped. Gallus one day proposed that, as the descendants of Torquatus had a golden torque and those of Cincinnatus a curled lock of hair granted by the Senate as family badges in commemoration of their ancestors' service to the State, so Sejanus and his descendants should be awarded as their badge a golden key, in token of his faithful services as the Emperor's doorkeeper. The Senate unanimously voted this motion and Sejanus, growing alarmed, wrote to Tiberius and complained that Gallus had maliciously proposed all the previous honours in the hope of making the Senate jealous of him, and even perhaps of making the Emperor suspect him of insolent ambitions. The present motion had been still more malicious—a suggestion to the Emperor that access to the Imperial presence was in the hands of someone who made use of it for his own private enrichment. He begged that the Emperor would find a technical reason for vetoing the decree, and a way to silence Gallus. Tiberius answered that he could not veto the decree without damaging Sejanus' credit, but that he would very soon take steps to silence Gallus: Sejanus need not be anxious about the matter and his letter had shown true loyalty and a fine delicacy of judgment. But Gallus' hint had struck home.

  Tiberius suddenly realised that while all the goings and comings at Capri were known to Sejanus and could to a great extent be controlled by him, he himself only knew as much as Sejanus cared to tell him about the comings and goings by Sejanus' front door.

  And now I have come to a turning point in my story—the death of my grandmother Livia at the age of eighty-six. She might well have lived many years longer, for she had kept her eyesight and hearing and the use of her limbs—not to mention her mind and memory—unimpaired. But recently she had suffered from repeated colds owing to some infection of the nose, and at last one of these settled on her lungs. She summoned me to her bedside at the Palace. I happened to be in Rome and came immediately. I could see that she was dying. She reminded me of my oath again.

  "I'll not rest until it's fulfilled. Grandmother," I said.

  When a very old woman lies dying, one's grandmother too, one says whatever one can to please her. "But I thought Caligula was going to arrange it for you?"

  She did not answer for a time. Then she said, raging weakly: "He was here ten minutes agol He stood and laughed at me. He said that I could go to Hell and stew there for ever and ever for all he cared. He said that now I was dying he had no need to keep in with me any longer, and that he did not consider himself bound by the oath, because it was forced on him. He said that he was going to be the Almighty God that has been prophesied, not I.

  He said..."

  "That's all right. Grandmother. You'll have the laugh of him in the end. When you're the Queen of Heaven and he's being slowly broken on an eternal wheel by Minos' men in Hell..."

  "And to think that I ever called you a fool," she said.

  "I'm going now, Claudius. Close my eyes and put the coin in my mouth that you'll find under the pillow. The Ferryman will recognise it. He'll pay proper respect...."

  Then she died and I closed her eyes and put the coin in her mouth. It was a gold coin of a type I had never seen before, with Augustus' head and her own facing each other, on the obverse, and a triumphant chariot on the reverse.

  Nothing had been said between us about Tiberius. I soon heard that he had been warned about her condition in plenty of time to pay her the last offices. He now wrote to the Senate excusing himself for not having visited her but saying he had been exceedingly busy and would at all events come to Rome for the funeral. Meanwhile the Senate had decreed various extraordinary honours in her memory, including the title Mother of the Country, and had even proposed to make her a demi-goddess. But Tiberius reversed nearly all of these decrees, explaining in a letter that Livia was a singularly modest woman, averse to all public recognition of her services, and with a peculiar sentiment against having any religious worship paid to her after death. The letter ended with reflections on the unsuitability of women's meddling in politics "for which they are not fitted, and which rouse in them all those worst feelings of arrogance and petulance to which the female sex is naturally prone".

  He did not of course come to the City for the funeral though, solely with the object of limiting its magnificence, he made all arrangements for it. And he took so long over them that the corpse, old and withered as it was, had reached an advanced stage of putrefaction before it was put on the pyre. To the general surprise, Caligula spoke the funeral oration, which Tiberius himself should have done, and if not Tiberius, then Nero, as his heir. The Senate had decreed an arch in Livia's memory—the first time in the history of Rome that a woman had been so honoured. Tiberius allowed this decree to stand but promised to build the arch at his own expense: and then neglected to build it. As for Livia's will, he inherited the greater part of her fortune as her natural heir, but she had left as much of it as she was legally permitted to members of her own household and other trusted dependents. He did not pay anybody a single one of her bequests. I was to have benefited to the extent of twenty thousand gold pieces.

  XXVII

  I COULD NEVER HAVE THOUGHT IT POSSIBLE THAT I would miss Livia when she died. When I was a child I used secretly, night after night, to pray to the Infernal Gods to carry her off. And now I would have offered the richest sacrifices I could find—unblemished white bulls and desert antelopes and ibises and flamingoes by the dozen—to have had her back again. For it was clear that it had long been only the fear of his mother that had kept Tiberius within bounds. A few days after her death he struck at Agrippina and Nero. Agrippina had by now recovered from her illness. He did not charge them with treason. He wrote to the Senate complaining of Nero's gross sexual depravity and of Agrippina's "haughty bearing and mischief-making tongue", and suggested that severe steps should be taken for keeping both of them in order.

  When the letter was read in the Senate nobody said a word for a long time. Everyone was wondering on just how much popular support Germanicus' family could count now that Tiberius was preparing to victimise them; and whether it would not be safer to go against Tiberius than against the populace. At last a friend of Sejanus' rose to suggest that the Emperor's wishes should be respected and that some decree or other should be passed against the two persons mentioned. There was a senator who acted as official recorder of the Senate's transactions, and what he said carried great weight. He had hitherto voted without question whatever had been suggested in any letter of Tiberius', and Sejanus had reported that he could always be counted upon to do what he was told. Yet it was this Recorder who rose to oppose the motion. He said that the question of Nero's morals and Agrippina's bearing should not be raised at present. It was his opinion that the Emperor had been misinformed and had written hastily, and that in his own interest therefore, as well as that of Nero and Agrippina, no decree should be passed until he had been allowed time to reconsider such grave charges against his near relatives. The news of the letter had meanwhile spread all over the City, though all transactions in the Senate were supposed to be secret until officially published by the Emperor's orders, and huge crowds gathered around the Senate House making demonstrations in favour of Agrippina and Nero, and crying out, "Long Live Tiberius. The letter is forged! Long Live Tiberius! It's Sejanus' doing."

  Sejanus sent a messenger at great speed to Tiberius, who had moved for the occasion to a villa only a few miles outside the City, in case of trouble. He reported that the Senate had, on the motion of the Recorder, refused to pay any attention to the letter; that the people were on the point of revolt, calling Agrippina the
true Mother of the Country and Nero their Saviour; and that unless Tiberius acted firmly and decisively there would be bloodshed before the day was out.

  Tiberius was frightened but he took Sejanus' advice and wrote a menacing letter to the Senate, putting the blame on the Recorder for his unparalleled insult to the Imperial dignity, and demanding that the whole affair should be left entirely to him to settle since they were so half-hearted in his interests. The Senate gave way. Tiberius, after having the Guards marched through the City with swords drawn and trumpets blowing, threatened to halve the free ration of corn if any further seditious demonstrations were made.

  He then banished Agrippina to Pandataria, the very island where her mother Julia had been first confined, and Nero to Fonza, another tiny rocky island, half-way between Capri and Rome but far out of sight of the coast. He told the Senate that the two prisoners had been on the point of escaping from the City in the hope of seducing the loyalty of the regiments on the Rhine.