Robert Graves - I, Claudius

by I, Claudius(Lit)

  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 apologizing 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 rum 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 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 realized 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 Calpumia 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 docs 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 splendor of his disease; and when he asked what had happened at the amphitheatre I said that I had warned tile 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 wit
h 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 minor 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 would!"

  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's 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 stems interlocked. The stems 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 Rontulus and the reputed shield of Eneas which were stored in 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 tile 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 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 pleasure barges 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's 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 arid 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 sea battle 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 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 sword-fighters 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.