Claudius the God (21 page)

Silas was too astonished to say a word and was led away like a lamb to the, slaughter. The joke was that if he hadn’t been, so obstinate at Rome about refusing the citizenship that I had offered to get for him, I should never have been able to play that trick on him. He would have appealed to you and you would no doubt have pardoned him, you softhearted fellow. Well, I had to do it, or the Sidonians would never have respected me, again.. As it was, they seemed gratifyingly, impressed and the rest of the banquet proved a great success. That was some months ago, and I kept him there in gaol - unpleaded for by Cypros - to learn his lesson; intending, however, to release him in time to attend my birthday feast, which took place yesterday. I sent Thaumastus to Tiberias to to visit Silas in his cell. He was to say: ‘I was once a messenger of hope and comfort to our Lord and Master King Herod Agrippa when he was entering the, prison gates, at Misenum: I am now here, Silas, as a messenger of hope and comfort to you. This pitcher of wine is the token.

Our gracious sovereign invites you to banquet with him at Jerusalem in three days time and will allow you to present yourself, if you prefer it, without the insignia of the Order that he has conferred on you. Here, take this and drink it. And my own advice to you, my friend Silas, is never remind people of services that you have done them in times past. If they are grateful and honourable men they will not need any reminder and if they are ungrateful and dishonourable, the reminder will be wasted on them.’

Silas had been brooding over his wrongs all these months and was bursting to tell someone about them - besides his warder.’ He said to Thaumastus: ‘So that is king Herod’s message, is it? And I am supposed to be grateful, am I? What new honour does he intend to confer on me? The Order of the Whip perhaps? When was an honest man ever so badly treated at a friend’s hands as I have been at King Herod’s? Does he expect that the awful miseries I have suffered here in solitary confinement will have taught me to hold my. tongue when I feel impelled to speak the truth and shame his lying counsellors and flattering courtiers? Tell the King that he has not broken my spirit and that if, he releases me I shall celebrate the occasion by franker and blunter speech than ever: I shall tell the whole nation through how many dangers and misfortunes he and I passed together and how I always saved the situation in the end after he had nearly ruined us both by his refusal to listen to my warnings in time, and how generously he rewarded me for all this with a heavy chain and a dark dungeon. No, I shall never forget this treatment. My very soul when I die will remember it, and remember too all the glorious deeds I did for his sake.” Drink,’ said Thaumastus. But Silas would not drink. Thaumastus tried to reason with the madman, but he insisted on sending the message and refusing the wine. So Silas is still in gaol and it is quite impossible for me to release him; as Cypros agrees. I was amused by that affair at Doris. You remember what I said to you at that farewell banquet when we were both so drunk and so Samaritanly frank: you’ll be a ‘God, my Marmoset, in spite of everything you do to prevent it. You can’t stop that sort of thing. And as for what I said then about sucking-pigs stuffed with truffles and chesnuts I think I know what I must have meant.. I am such a good Jew now that I never, never on any occasion let a morsel of unclean food pass my lips - or at least if I do, nobody but I and my Arabian cook and the watching Moon knows about it. I abstain even when I visit my Phoenician neighbours or dine with my Greek subjects. When you write give me news of canning old Vitellius and those scheming scoundrels Asiaticus, Vinicius, and Vinicianus I have sent my highflown compliments to your lovely Messalina in my official letter. So good-bye for the present and continue to think well (better than he deserves) of your knavish old playmate, THE BRIGAND I shall explain about the ‘Doris affair’. In spite of my edict some young Greeks at a place in Syria called Doris had got hold of a statue of mine and broken into a Jewish synagogue, where they set it up at the south end, as if for worship. The Jews of Doris at once appealed to Herod, as their natural protector, and Herod went in person to Petronius at Antioch to make a protest. Petronius wrote the magistrates of Doris a very severe letter, ordering them to arrest the guilty persons and send them to him for punishment without delay. Petronius wrote that the offence was a double one - not only to the Jews whose desecrated synagogue could no longer be used for worship, but to myself whose edict on the subject of religious toleration had been shamelessly violated. There was one curious remark in his letter: that the proper, place for my statue was not in a Jewish synagogue but in one of my own temples. He thought, I suppose, that by now I must surely have given in to the Senate’s entreaties, and that therefore it would be politic to anticipate my deification. But I was most firm about refusing to become a God.

You can imagine that the Alexandrian Greeks did their utmost to win my favour now. They sent a deputation to congratulate me on my accession and to offer to build and dedicate a splendid temple to me, at the City’s expense; or, if I refused this, at least to build and stock a Library of Italian Studies, and dedicate this to me as the most distinguished living historian. They also asked permission to give special public readings of my History of Carthage and my History of Etruria every year on my birthday. Each work was to be read out from end to end-by relays of highly trained elocutionists, the former in the old library, the latter in the new. They knew that this could not fail to flatter me. In accepting the honour. I felt very much as the parents of still-born twins might be expected to feel if, some time after the delivery, the little cold corpses awaiting their funeral in a basket set somewhere in a corner were suddenly to glow with unexpected warmth and sneeze and cry in unison. After all, I had spent more than twenty of the best years of my life on these books and taken infinite trouble to learn the various languages necessary for collecting and checking my facts and not a single person hitherto had to my knowledge been to the trouble of reading them. When I say ‘not a single person’ I must make two exceptions. Herod had read the History of Carthage - he was not interested in the subject of Etruria -and said that he had, learned a lot from it about the Phoenician character; but that he did not think that many people would have the same interest in it as he had; ‘There’s too much meat in that sausage,’ he said, ‘and not enough spices and garlic.’

‘ He meant that there was too much information in it and not enough elegant writing. He told me this while I was still a private citizen, so there could be no question of flattery. The only person except my secretaries and research assistants who had, read both books was Calpurnia. She preferred a good book to a dad play, she said, my histories to many quite good plays she had seen, and the Etruscan book to the Carthaginian one because it was about places that she knew. When I became Emperor, I should record here, I bought Calpurnia a charming villa near Ostia and gave her a comfortable annual income and a staff of well-trained slaves. But she never came to visit me at the Palace and I never visited her, for fear of making Messalina jealous. She lived with a close friend, Cleopatra, an Alexandrian, who had also been a prostitute; but now that Caipurnia had enough money, and to spare, neither of them continued in the profession. They were quiet girls.

But, as I was saying, I was very proud indeed of the Alexandrian offer, for after all Alexandria is the cultural capital of the world and had I not been addressed by its leading citizens as the most distinguished living historian? I regretted that I could not spare the time for a visit to Alexandria to be present at one of the readings. The day that the embassy came -I sent for a professional reader and asked him to read over to me in private a few passages from each of the histories. He did so with so much expression and such beautiful articulation that, forgetting for the moment that I was the author, I began clapping loudly.

My immediate preoccupation abroad was with the Rhine frontier: Towards the end of Tiberius’s reign the Northern Germans had been encouraged by reports of his general inactivity to make raids across the river, into what we call the Lower Province. Small parties used to swim across at unguarded spots by night to attack lonely houses or hamlets, murder the occupants, and loot what gold and jewels they could find; and then swim back at dawn. It would have been difficult to stop them doing this, even if our men had been constantly on the alert - as in the North at least they certainly were not - because the Rhine is an immensely long river and most difficult to patrol. The only effective measure against the raiders would have been retaliation; but Tiberius had refused permission for any large-scale punitive expedition. He wrote: ‘If hornets plague you, burn their nest; but if it is only mosquitoes, pay no attention.’ As for the Upper Province, it may be recalled that Caligula during: his expedition to France sent for Gaetulicus, the commander of the four regiments on the Upper Rhine, and executed him on the unfounded charge of conspiracy; that he crossed the river with an enormous army and advanced a few miles, the Germans offering no resistance; that he then grew suddenly alarmed and rushed back. The man whom he had appointed as Gaetulicus’s successor was, commander of the French auxiliary forces at Lyons. His name was Galba,
and he was one of Livia’s men. She had marked him out for preferment when he was still a youngster, and he had amply justified the, trust she: had placed in him. He was a courageous soldier and a discerning, magistrate, worked hard, and bore an exemplary private character. He had attained his Consulship six years before this. Livia, when she died, had left him a special legacy of 500,000 gold pieces; Tiberius, however, as Livia’s executor, pronounced that this must be a mistake. The sum had been written in figures, not in words, and; he ruled that 50,000 was all the testatrix had intended. As Tiberius never paid a single one of Livia’s legacies, this did not make much difference at the time, but when Caligula became Emperor. and paid Livia’s legacies in full, it was bad luck for Galba that Caligula was unaware of Tiberius’s fraud. Galba did not press for the whole 500,000, and perhaps it was as well for him that he did not, for if he had done so Caligula would have remembered the incident when he ran short of funds and, so far from giving him this important command on the Rhine, would probably have accused him of taking part in Gaetulicus’s conspiracy.

How Caligula chose Galba makes a curious story.. He had ordered a big parade at Lyons one day, and when it was over he called before him all the officers who had taken part in it and gave them a lecture on the necessity, for keeping in good physical condition. ‘A Roman soldier,’ he said, ‘should be as tough as leather and as hard as iron, and all officers should set a good example to their men in this. I. shall be interested to see how many of you will ‘ Afterwards Emperor (A.D. 69). - R.G. survive a simple test which I am about to set you. Come; friends, let us go for a little run in the direction of Autun.’ He was sitting in his chariot with a couple of fine French cobs in the shafts. His driver cracked his whip and off they went. The already sweating officers dashed after him with their heavy weapons and armour. He kept just far enough ahead of them not to let them drop behind out of sight, but never let his horses fall into a walk, for fear that the officers would follow their example. On and on he went. The line strung out. Many of the runners fainted and one dropped dead. At the twentieth milestone: he finally pulled up. Only one man had survived the test Galba. Caligula said: ‘Would you prefer to run back, General, or would you prefer a seat beside me?’ Galba had sufficient breath left to reply that as a soldier he had no preferences: he was accustomed to obey orders. So Caligula let him walk back, but the next day gave him his appointment. Agrippinilla became greatly interested in Galba when she met him at Lyons: she wanted to marry him, though he was married already to a lady of the Lepidan house. Galba was perfectly satisfied with his wife and behaved as coldly towards Agrippinilla as his loyalty to Caligula permitted. Agrippinilla persisted in her attentions and there was a great scandal one day at a reception given by Galba’s motherin-law to which Agrippinilla came without an invitation. Galba’s motherin-law called her out in front of all the noblemen and noblewomen assembled, abused her roundly as a shameless and lascivious hussy and actually struck her in the face with her fists. It would have gone badly for Galba if Caligula had not decided the next day that Agrippinilla was implicated in the plot against his life and banished her as I have described.

When Caligula had fled back to Rome in terror of a reported German raid across the Rhine (a lie humorously put about by the soldiers) his forces were all concentrated at one point. Great stretches of the river were left unguarded. The Germans heard of this at once, and also of Caligula’s cowardice. They took the opportunity of crossing the Rhine in force and establishing themselves in our territory, where they did a great deal of damage. Those who crossed were the tribesmen called the Chattians, which means the Mountain Cats. The Cat was their tribal ensign. They had fortresses in the hill country between the Rhine and the Upper Weser. My brother Germanicus always used to give them credit for being the best fighting men in Germany. They kept their ranks in battle, obeyed their leaders almost like Romans: and at night used to dig entrenchments and put outposts out - a precaution seldom taken by, any other German tribe:, It cost Galba several months and considerable losses in men to dislodge them and drive them back across the river.

Galba was a strict, disciplinarian. Gaetulicus had been a capable soldier but rather too lenient. The day that Galba arrived at Mainz to take over his command the soldierss were watching some games that were being held in Caligula’s honour. A huntsman had shown great skill in dispatching a, leopard and the men all started clapping. The first words that Galba spoke on entering the General’s box were, ‘Keep your hands under your cloaks, men! I am in command. now and I don’t permit any slovenliness.’ He kept this up, and for so severe a commander was extremely popular. His enemies called him mean, but that was unjust: he was; merely most abstemious, discouraged extravagance in his staff, and exacted a strict account of expenditure from his subordinates. When. news came of Caligula’s assassination, his friends urged him, to march on Rome at the head of his corps, saying that he was now the only fit person to take control of the Empire. Galba replied, ‘March on Rome and leave the Rhine: unguarded? What sort of a Roman do you take me to be?’ And he continued! ‘Besides, from all accounts, this; Claudius is a hard working and modest-man; and though some of you seem to think him a fool, I should hesitate to call any member of the Imperial family a fool who has successfully survived the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and Caligula. I think that in the circumstances the choice is a good one and I shall be pleased to take the oath of allegiance to Claudius. He is not a soldier, you say. So much the better Campaigning experience is sometimes not altogether a blessing in a Commanderin-Chief. The God Augustus - I speak with all respect - was inclined, as. an old, man, to hamper his generals by giving them overdetailed instructions and advice: that last Balkan campaign would never have dragged on as it did, if he had not been so anxious to refight from far in the rear the battles that he had fought at the head of his troops some forty years previously. Claudius will not, I think, either take the field himself, at his age, or be tempted to override the decisions of his generals in matters of which he is ignorant. But at the same time he is a learned historian and has, I am told, a grasp of general strategical principles that many Commanders-in-Chief with actual fighting experience might envy him.’