I, Claudius

by Robert Graves

  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 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 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 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 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.