I, Claudius (54 page)

He'll kill you if you don't say what he wants you to say. He had the point at my throat this morning. He told me that I didn't love him. I had to swear and swear that I did love him. 'Kill me, if you like, my darling,' I said .O Uncle Claudius, why was I ever born?

He's mad. He always was. But he's worse than mad now.

He's

possessed."

I went along to Caligula's bedroom, which was heavily curtained and thickly carpeted. One feeble oil-lamp was burning by the bedside. The air smelt stale. His querulous voice greeted me. "Late again? I told you to hurry," He didn't look ill, only unhealthy. Two powerful deaf-mutes with axes stood as guards, one on each side of his bed.

I said, saluting him, "Oh, how I hurried! If I hadn't had a lame leg I'd have been here almost before I started. What joy to see you alive and to hear your voice again, Caesar! Can I dare to hope that you're better?"

"I have never really been ill. Only resting. And undergoing a metamorphosis. It's the most important religious event in history. No wonder the City keeps so quiet."

I felt that he expected me to be sympathetic, nevertheless. [363] "Has the metamorphosis been painful, Emperor? I trust not."

"As painful as if I were my own mother. I had a very difficult delivery.

Mercifully, I have forgotten all about it.

Or nearly all. For I was a very precocious child and distinctly remember the midwives' faces of admiration as they washed me after my emergence into this world, and the taste of the wine they put between my lips to refresh me after my struggles."

"An astounding memory. Emperor. But may I humbly enquire precisely what is the character of this glorious change that has come over you?"

"Isn't it immediately apparent?" he asked angrily.

Drusilla's word "possessed" and the conversation I had had with my grandmother Livia as she lay dying gave me the clue. I fell on my face and adored him as a God.

After a minute or two I asked from the floor whether I was the first man privileged to worship him. He said that I was and I burst out into gratitude. He was thoughtfully prodding me with the point of his sword in the back of my neck. I thought I was done for.

He said: "I admit I am still in mortal disguise, so it is not remarkable that you did not notice my Divinity at once."

"I don't know how I could have been so blind. Your face shines in this dim light like a lamp."

"Does it?" he asked with interest. "Get up and give me that mirror." I handed him a polished steel mirror and he agreed that it shone very brightly. In this fit of good humour he began to tell me a good deal about himself.

"I always knew that it would happen," he said. “I never felt anything but Divine. Think of it. At two years old I put down a mutiny of my father's army and so saved Rome. That was prodigious, like the stories told about the God Mercury when a child, or about Hercules who strangled the snakes in his cradle."

"And Mercury only stole a few oxen," I said, "and twanged a note or two on the lyre. That was nothing by comparison."

"And what's more, by the age of eight I had killed my father. Jove himself never did that. He merely banished the old fellow."

I took this as raving on the same level, but I asked in a matter-of-fact voice,

"Why did you do that?" '

"He stood in my way. He tried to discipline me--me, a young God, imagine it! So I frightened him to death. I smuggled dead things into our house at Antioch and hid them under loose tiles; and I scrawled charms, on the walls; and I got a cock in my bedroom to give him his marching orders. And I robbed him of his Hecate. Look, here she is: I always keep her under my pillow!" He held up the green jasper charm.

My heart went as cold as ice when I recognised it. I said in a horrified voice: "You were the one then? And it was you who climbed into the bolted room by that tiny window and drew your devices there too?"

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 [565] 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 [367] 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 [369] 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."