Claudius the God (65 page)

He was not to be dissuaded by anything that I could say, nor even by my tears. Now I have abandoned all hope of his rescue: no doctor can save a patient’s life against his determined will to die. Instead, I have done all that he asks of me, like an indulgent father. I have dismissed Sosibius and the other tutors and appointed new ones. I have promised to let him come of age this New Year and am altering my will in his favour; in my previous will he was hardly mentioned. To-day I have made the Senate my farewell speech and humbly recommended Nero and Britannicus to them, and given these two a long and earnest exhortation to brotherly love and concord, calling the House to witness that I have done so. But with what irony I spoke! I knew as certainly as that fire is hot and ice cold that my Britannicus was doomed, and that it was I who was giving him over to his death, and cutting off, in him, the last true Claudian of the ancient stock of Appius Claudius. Imbecilic I.

My eyes are weary, and my hand shakes so much that I can hardly form the letters. Strange portents have been seen of late. A great comet like that which foretold the death of Julius Caesar has long been blazing in the midnight, sky. From Egypt a phoenix has, been reported. It flew there from Arabia, as its custom, is, followed by a flock of admiring other birds. I can hardly think that it was a true phoenix, for that appears only once every 1,461 years, and only 250 years have elapsed since it was last genuinely reported from Heliopolis in the reign of the third Ptolemy; but certainly it was some sort of phoenix. And as if a phoenix and comet were not sufficient marvels, a centaur has been born in Thessaly and brought to me at Rome (by way of Egypt where the Alexandrian doctors first examined it), and I have handled it with my own hands. It only lived a single day, and came to me preserved in honey, but it was an unmistakable centaur, and of the sort which has a horse’s body, not the inferior sort which has an ass’s body. Phoenix, comet, and centaur, a swarm of bees among the standards at the Guards Camp, a pig farrowed with claws like a hawk, and my father’s monument struck by lightning! Prodigies; enough, soothsayers?

Write no more now, Tiberius Claudius, God of the Britons, write no more.

AND not long after this he wrote his will and signed it with the seals of all the head-magistrates. Whereupon, before that he could proceed any further, prevented he was and cut short by Agrippina, whom they also who were privy to her and of her counsel, yet nevertheless informers, accused besides all this of many crimes. And verily it is agreed upon generally by all, that killed he was by poison, but where it should be, and who gave it, there is some difference. Some write that as he sat at a feast in the Capitol castle with the priests, it was presented unto him by Halotus, the eunuch, his taster; others report that it was at a meal in his own home by Agrippina herself, who had offered unto him a mushroom empoisoned, knowing that he was most greedy of such meats. Of those accidents also which ensued hereupon the report is variable. Some say that straight upon the receipt of the poison he became speechless, and continuing all night in dolorous torments died a little before day. Others affirm that at first he fell asleep, and afterwards, as the meat flowed and floated aloft, vomited all up, and so was followed again with a rank poison. But whether the same were put into a mess of thick gruel (considering he was of necessity to be refreshed with food being emptied in his stomach), or conveyed up by a clyster, as if being overcharged with fullness and surfeit he might be eased also by this kind of egestion and purgation, it is uncertain.

His death was kept secret until all things were set in order about his successor. And therefore both vows were made for him as if he had lain sick still, and also comic actors were brought in place colourably to solace and delight him, as having a longing desire after such sports. He deceased three days before the ides of October, when Asinius Marcellus and Acilius Aviola were consuls, in the sixty-fourth year of his age and the fourteenth of his empire. His funeral was performed with a solemn pomp and procession of the magistrates, and canonized he was a saint in heaven; which honour, forelet and abolished by Nero, he recovered afterwards by Vespasian.

Especial tokens there were presaging and prognosticating his death: to wit, the rising, of a hairy star which they call a comet; also the monument of his father Drusus was blasted with lightning; and for that in the same year most of the magistrates of all sorts were dead. But himself seemeth not either to have been ignorant that his end drew near or to have dissembled so much; which may be gathered by some good arguments and demonstrations. For both in the ordination of Consuls he appointed none of them to continue longer than the month wherein he died, and also in the Senate, the very last time that ever he sat there, after a long and earnest exhortation of his children to concord, he humbly recommended the age of them both to the lords of that honourable house; and in his last judicial session upon the tribunal once or twice he pronounced openly that come he was now to the end of his mortality, notwithstanding that they that heard him grieved to hear such an osse, and prayed the gods to avert the same.

Suetonius Claudius
Tr. Philemon Holland (1606)

In the midst of this vast accumulation of anxieties Claudius was attacked with illness, and for the recovery of his health had recourse to the soft air and salubrious waters of Sinuessa. It was then that Agrippina, long since bent upon the impious deed, and eagerly seizing the present occasion, well furnished too as she was with wicked agents, deliberated upon the nature of the poison she would use, whether, if it were sudden and instantaneous in its operation, the desperate achievement would not be brought to light: if she chose materials slow and consuming in their operation, whether Claudius, when his end approached, and perhaps having discovered the treachery, would not resume his affection for his son. Something of a subtle nature was therefore resolved upon, ‘such as would disorder his brain and require time to kill. An experienced artist in such preparations was chosen, her name Locusta; lately condemned for poisoning, and long reserved as one of the instruments, of ambition. By this woman’s skill the poison was prepared: to administer it was assigned to Halotus, one of the eunuchs, whose office it was to serve up the emperor’s repasts, and prove the viands by tasting them.

In fact, all the particulars of this transaction were soon afterwards so thoroughly known, that the writers of those times are able to recount, how the poison was poured into a dish of mushrooms, of which he was particularly fond; but whether it was that his senses were stupefied, or from the wine he had drunk, the effect of the poison was not immediately perceived: at the same time a relaxation of the intestines seemed to have been of service to him; Agrippina therefore became dismayed but as her life was at stake, she thought little of the odium of her present proceedings, and called in the aid of Xenophon the physician, whom she had already implicated in her guilty purposes. It is believed that he, as if he purposed to assist Claudius in his efforts to vomit, put down his throat a feather besmeared with deadly poison; not unaware that in desperate villainies the attempt without the deed is perilous, while too ensure the reward they must be done effectually at once.

The senate was in the meantime assembled and the consuls and pontiffs were offering vows for the recovery of the emperor, when, already dead, he was covered with clothes, and warm applications, to hide it till matters were arranged for securing the empire to Nero. First there was Agrippina, who feigning to. be overpowered with grief, and anxiously seeking for consolation, clasped Britannicus in her arms, called him ‘the very model of his father’, and by various artifices withheld him from leaving the chamber; she likewise detained Antonia and Octavia, his sisters; and had closely guarded all the approaches to the palace; from time to time too she gave out that the prince was on the mend; that the soldiery might entertain hopes till the auspicious moment, predicted by the calculations of the astrologers, should arrive.

, At last, on the thirteenth day of October, at noon, the gates, of the palace were suddenly thrown open, and Nero, accompanied by Burrhus, went forth to the cohort which, according to the custom, of the army, was keeping watch. There, upon a signal made by the praefect, he was received with shouts of joy, and instantly put into a litter. It was reported, that there were some who hesitated, looking back anxiously, and frequently asking, where was Britannicus? but as no one came forward to oppose ft, they embraced the choice which was offered them. Thus Nero was borne to the camp; where, after a speech suitable to, the exigency, and the promise of a largess equal to that of the late emperor his father, he was saluted emperor. The voice of the soldiers was followed by the decrees of the senate; nor was there any hesitation in the several provinces. To Claudius were decreed divine honours, and his funeral obsequies were solemnized with the same pomp as those of the deified Augustus; Agrippina emulating the magnificence of her great-grandmother Livia. His will, however, was not rehearsed, lest the preference of the son of his wife to his own son might excite the minds of the people by its injustice and baseness.

Tacitus, Annals
(Oxford translation)

Claudius was angered by Agrippina’s actions, of which he was now becoming aware, and sought for his son Britannicus, who had purposely been kept out of his sight by her most of the time (for she was doing. everything she could to secure the throne for Nero, inasmuch as he was her own son by her former husband Domitius); and he displayed. his affection whenever he met the boy. He would not endure her behaviour, but was. preparing to put an end to her power, to cause his son to assume the toga virilis, and to declare him heir to the throne. Agrippina, learning of this, became alarmed and made haste to forestall anything of the sort by poisoning Claudius. But since, owing to the great quantity of wine he was for ever drinking and his general habits of life, such as all emperors as a rule adopt for their protection, he could not easily be harmed, she sent for a famous dealer in poisons, a woman named Locusta, who had recently been convicted on this very charge; and preparing with her aid a poison whose effect was sure, she put it in one of the vegetables called mushrooms. Then she herself ate of the others, but made her husband eat of the one which contained the poison; for it was the largest and finest of them. And so the victim of the plot was carried from the banquet apparently quite overcome by strong drink, a thing that had happened many times before; but during the night the poison took effect and he passed away, without having been able to say or hear a: word. It was. the thirteenth of October, and he had lived sixty-three years, two months and thirteen days, having been emperor thirteen years, eight months and twenty days.

Agrippina was able to do this deed owing to the fact that she had previously sent Narcissus off to Campania, feigning that he needed to take, the-waters there for his gout. For had he been present, she would never have accomplished it, so carefully did he guard his master. As it was, however, his death followed hard upon that of Claudius. He was slain beside the tomb’ of Messalina, a circumstance due to mere chance, though it seemed to be in fulfilment of her vengeance.

In such a manner did Claudius meet his end. It seemed as if this event had been indicated by the comet, which was seen for a very long, time, by the shower of blood, by the thunderbolt that fell upon the standards of the Praetorians, by the opening of its own accord of the temple of Jupiter Victor, by the swarming of bees in the Camp, and by the, fact that one incumbent of each political office died. The emperor received, the state burial and all the other honours that had been accorded to Augustus. Agrippina and Nero pretended to grieve for the man whom they had killed, and elevated to heaven him whom they had carried out on a litter from the banquet. On this point Lucius Junius Gallio, the brother of Seneca, was the author of a very witty remark. Seneca himself had composed a work that he called ‘Pumpkinification’ - a word formed on the analogy of ‘deification’; and his brother is credited with saying’ a great deal in one short sentence. Inasmuch as the public executioners were accustomed to drag the bodies of those executed in the prison to the Forum with large hooks, and from there hauled them to the river, he remarked that Claudius had been raised to heaven with a hook. Nero, too, has left us a remark not unworthy of record. He declared mushrooms to be the food of the gods, since Claudius by means of the mushroom had become a god.

At the death of Claudius the rule in strict justice belonged to Britannicus, who was a legitimate son of Claudius and in physical development was in advance of his years; yet by law the power fell also to Nero because of his adoption. But no claim is stronger than that of arms; for everyone who possesses superior force always appears to have the greater right on his side, whatever he says or does. And thus Nero, having first destroyed the will of Claudius and having succeeded him as master of the whole empire, put Britannicus and his sisters out of the way.. Why, then, should one lament the misfortunes of the other victims?

Dio Cassius, Book LXI as epitomized by Xiphilinus and Zonaras (tr. Cary)

I MUST here put on record what took place in Heaven on the thirteenth day of October of this very year, the year that has ushered in so glorious a now age. No malice or favour whatsoever. That’s right, isn’t it? If anyone asks me how I get my information, well, in the first place if I don’t want, to answer, I won’t answer. Who is going to compel me to do so? I am a free man, aren’t I? I was freed on the day that a well-known personage died, the man who made the proverb true, ‘Either be born an Emperor or an idiot’. If I do, however, choose to answer, I shall say the first thing that springs to my lips. Are historians ever compelled to produce witnesses in court to swear that they have told the truth? Still, if it were absolutely necessary for me to call on someone, I would call on the man who saw Drusilla’s soul on its way to Heaven; he will swear that he saw Claudius taking the same road, ‘with halting gait’ (as the poet says). That man simply cannot help observing everything that goes on in Heaven: he’s the custodian of the Appian Way, which of course is the road that both Augustus and Tiberius took on their way to join the Gods. If you ask him privately he will tell you the whole story, but he will say nothing when a lot of people are about. You see, ever since he swore before the Senate that he saw Drusilla going up to Heaven, and nobody believed the news, which was certainly a little too good to be true, he has solemnly engaged himself never again to bear witness to anything he has seen - not even if he sees a man murdered in the middle of the Market Place. But what he told me I now report, and all good luck to him.