Gore Vidal’s Caligula (23 page)

Ten gold pieces, offered one voice from below.

Fifteen!

Twenty!

Fifty!!

“For Julius Caesar’s
personal
chest?” cried Caligula incredulously. “Only fifty? Impossible! Do I hear sixty?”

“Sixty, Caesar,” called a Senator who hoped for favor.

“Seventy, seventy,” coaxed Caligula. “Senator Aponius just nodded,” he called, pointing to a dotard of eighty who sat fast asleep. “The chest is now his for seventy pieces of gold!”

The crowd laughed. The old Senator snored on, dreaming.

The next lot was a group of gladiators. Furniture or slaves, Caligula did not care. “Thirteen of the finest gladiators in the Empire. Bidding starts at fifty thousand gold pieces.”

Fifty.

Fifty-five.

Sixty.

Seventy!

Eighty!

Eighty-five!

Caligula grinned down from the Imperial box. “Who will make it ninety?” He looked at Senator Aponius, still fast asleep, his old white head nodding away.

“Sold!” the Emperor crowed. “Sold to Senator Aponius. Thirteen gladiators for ninety thousand pieces of gold.”

And, although it cost him everything he had, when the old Senator awoke, he was forced to pay. An expensive nap.

The cost of living grew higher in Rome. Literally. If one wanted to live, one had to pay large sums of gold into Caligula’s swelling coffers. And still he sought to save money.

“We must economize,” Caligula said, shaking his head.

“We’ve done our best, Divine Caesar,” said the stadium manager. “We’ve sold six of the lions. We’ve cut the rations of the others in half. Even so . . . well, they can only eat meat and the price of meat . . .” The man shrugged eloquently.

“Is high, I know,” agreed Caligula. “It’s a problem.”

They were standing under the stadium, where the animals for the bloody circuses were kept in heavy cages. The big cats—panthers, lions, and tigers—paced, growling with hunger.

“Of course, we could sell off the animals,” suggested the manager.

Caligula shook his head. “No. No. The people wouldn’t like that. They enjoy seeing men fight animals. I hate it myself. But then, I am only a god.” He sighed, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he looked at the long line of scruffy men, perhaps fifty of them, awaiting his inspection.

“These slaves,” he said, tapping his teeth with his dagger. “They’re not much good, are they?”

“They’re not all slaves,” the manager explained. “Some are from the jail house. They do the dirty work here . . . clean up after the animals and so on.”

“Solution,” said Caligula briskly. He pointed his dagger at a bald-headed man in the line. “Kill every man between this bald one and”—he pointed down the line—“that one there.” At once, the twenty men marked for death threw themselves prostrate on the ground, pleading for mercy. But Caligula ignored them, terribly pleased with his efficiency. “Isn’t that a brilliant idea?” he said, smiling. “That way you’ll have enough meat to feed the animals for at least a month.”

“Why, yes, Divine Caesar,” agreed the manager, choking on the words. “A brilliant solution. Brilliant.”

And what did Caligula do with all this money?

For one thing, he bought a blanket—a blanket for Incitatus, his noble white stallion. The blanket was woven in Greece of the purest white linen mixed with the thickest wool. Then it was sent by sea to Phoenicia, to Tyre itself, to be dyed purple with murex. A rich, dark, true purple, as befitted the bearer of a god. Then the blanket arrived by runner in Rome, where slaves sat up for three nights, embroidering the purple with real gold bullion, work that made their fingers swell and bleed. The blanket cost a mere ten thousand talents of gold. A small price to pay for the comfort of the buttocks of a god!

Caligula sent to Greece for a statue of Olympian Zeus, and they dared not deny it to him. Nor did they deny him the smiling
kouros,
the ancient and holy statue of Apollo, or any other statues of the old gods. He had them shipped up the Tiber and lined up in his loggia, all the ancient ones in the pantheon, the most worshipped gods in all the civilized worlds. They were beautifully carved, and their faces wore the smile of divine serenity. But it was the bodies of the statues that interested Caligula, not the heads. With his own divine hands, he took a sledge hammer and smashed the heads to little crumbs. Then the greatest marble workers in the Empire fastened marble portraits of his own head to all the bodies. Now
there
was a pantheon worth the worship!

The madness continued—divine madness.

Caesar held the rank of priest, as had Tiberius and Augustus before him. He was privileged to assist at sacrifices.

Caesar sacrificed.

An unblemished bull was to be offered to Capitoline Jupiter. The altar was erected, the fires lit, the prayers intoned. Among the witnesses and worshippers were many Senators, Claudius, Longinus, Chaerea. It had been explained to Caligula. The bullock was to die oblivious, innocent of any struggle. Anything else would be ill-omened. Caligula was handed the ritual mallet; at the signal, he was to strike the bull on the head, to stun it while the priest cut its throat, so that it would come to the god without fighting its fate. Caligula understood. He nodded. The signal was given. Lifting his mallet high in the air, he brought it down with a sickening crunch, not on the head of the bull, but on the head of the priest. The man crumpled and fell dead on the spot.

“Great Jupiter,” cried Caligula. It was not a prayer. “My father in heaven . . . whom I shall join . . . when Jupiter himself lifts me up to heaven. I hope you’re listening, Jupiter. Because, if you disobey me, I shall be obliged to cast
you
into hell!”

He looked at the dead priest and smiled serenely. It was a good omen. The man had died without a struggle, come oblivious and innocent as a sacrifice to the god Caligula.

With much of the palace furniture auctioned off, many of the rooms were empty. Caligula, Divine Caesar, had another of his brilliant ideas. He would fill the rooms with beds. After all, what was more profitable than a brothel? In good times, a brothel thrived. In bad times, poor people flocked there to forget their troubles. You couldn’t lose. And the Palatine was
such
a good location, so central to everything. It seemed a pity to waste it merely as a palace.

Caligula gave a contemptuous thought to old Tiberius. Now, there was a man who liked to spend money! If he’d opened a brothel—and he had, hadn’t he, in Capri?—he would have searched the world over for the rarest creatures to fill it. Old Tiberius would have spent thousands, tens of thousands. What a waste of gold! Why spend money when Rome was full of fuckable objects for free?

The wives of the patricians, for example. When would an ordinary citizen like a bootmaker or a joiner get a chance to screw a nobly-born lady? They’d pay well for the privilege. And what about the patrician daughters of Rome? Here was their chance to help out a god, merely by spreading their legs. Boys, too. Everybody liked to fuck pretty boys with tight asses, and Rome had tight patricians by the hundreds. And men, hairy men with long legs and strong muscles and big cocks. They were always in demand. It was so simple, and so economical.

Word was sent to all the Senators and all the noble families that Divine Caesar, Caligula the God, expected every able-bodied man, woman and child in Rome to do his or her duty, and spend at least one week in the Imperial brothel. This went for matrons, brides, virgins, and even crones. Yes, there were weird types who liked making love with old ladies; he’d heard that somewhere. And it wouldn’t do for a patrician to bundle up his wife and daughter and rush them out to the country estate. No, indeed! The God Caligula would be very angry, not to mention hurt, and the punishment would be a very lingering death, accompanied by confiscation of every shred of family property, even that of distant cousins. No, Caligula’s brothel was declared open, and everybody must be present and accounted for!

The Romans of the noble class were at first incredulous, then several families attempted to escape. But Caligula was as good as his word, and when the mutilated corpses of men, women and children went on display as horrible examples, the other families soon obeyed orders. Weeping wives and cringing daughters were carried up the Palatine hill in curtained litters dragged out at the palace gates, and put to work at once. Even some of the better-looking Senators found themselves pressed into sexual service.

The only families to escape humiliation were those, and there were not many, who opened their veins and died with Roman dignity. But Caligula was happy to have their confiscated estates.

The mob loved the brothel and couldn’t get enough of it. Accustomed to the dingy flesh of undernourished women, accustomed to being treated as though they were invisible, the common people of Rome took delight in revenging themselves on the soft bodies of the patricians. They poured into the brothel by the hundreds, stinking of garlic, onions and sausage, their hands filthy, their breath rank from their decaying teeth and rotting gums. They liked nothing better than to lie at their ease, watching great Roman ladies sweating naked between their legs.

Caligula was an expert brothel keeper; he did more than simply collect five pieces of gold from each man in advance. Knowing that there are watchers as well as doers, he ordered holes bored with brace and bit through the wooden walls of several rooms, so that the occupants of one room could peer at the activities in the adjacent one. For these rooms he charged double. He had a special room built for a special purpose. Here, holes large enough for a man to stick his cock through were made in the walls. On the other side of these walls was . . . another hole. Sometimes it was a mouth, sometimes a cunt, more likely an asshole. When a man inserted his cock through the wall, he had no idea what receptacle was waiting for it, only that it would be soft, wet, hot. It was one of the most popular attractions in the brothel, and to Caligula’s surprise it was equally profitable on both sides of the wall.

So the brothel flourished, and as a result a mini-palace was built for Incitatus the horse beside Caligula’s own. A marble stable was erected on the Palatine, decorated with friezes of mares being mounted by stallions. At one end of the stable was the manger, carved of solid ivory, with a golden chute through which Incitatus’ oats and millet fell. Caligula had the idea of having his horse’s fodder shot through with gold, but the animal’s doctor talked him out of that; there was no guarantee that Incitatus would shit gold, he said, and a great likelihood that he might die of indigestion. Caligula contented himself by furnishing the stable magnificently, with the finest of couches and tables from the noblest Roman houses, so that Incitatus could receive his visitors in Imperial style. Who was Alexander’s Bucephalus, who was Pegasus, when compared with Incitatus? Mules and donkeys, not genuine divine horseflesh.

Disappointingly, the Roman girl virgins at the brothel brought in less money than the boys did, and Caligula magnanimously allowed their parents to ransom them. That proved far more profitable. Next to the money, it was the Senate’s humiliation and degradation he enjoyed the most; perhaps old Tiberius had not been so far off the mark after all.

Meanwhile, the work of the Roman Empire continued. Papers continued to pile up on Longinus’ desk for Caligula to sign.

“I am a slave to your routine, Longinus,” he said one morning as he walked into the office accompanied by Chaerea.

“Hardly, Divine Caesar,” Longinus said, bending to kiss the Emperor’s hand. “Here are the plans for the mustering of troops for your invasion of Britain.”

Caligula brushed the papers aside.

“We also need your personal order to build invasion barges and—”

“Later. Where are the execution lists? I must clear my accounts.”

Caligula accepted these papers with eagerness. Every Roman executed for treason forfeited his property to the Emperor, and the list of names was very long.

“Nothing but Senators on this page. They’re a bad lot, aren’t they?”

“Yes, Divine Caesar,” replied Longinus uncomfortably.

“But a rich one.” He began to stamp and seal with relish, intoning the new formula, “I, Caligula the God, command in the name of the Senate and the People of Rome.”

Chaerea took one nervous step forward. He cleared his throat. “Divine Caesar, a plea . . .”

Caligula looked up from his lists of prisoners’ names. “What’s that?”

“I beg you to release young Proculus. He’s a fine officer. And we need him in the coming war. And—”

“And you’re in love with him,” Caligula interrupted nastily. “How sweet! How romantic! And at your age!” He raised his eyebrows archly at his Commander of the Guard.

“No! No, Divine Caesar! It’s just that . . .”

“You want him to take you in his arms again,” simpered Caligula, batting his eyelashes. “You want him to thrust the powerful emblem of his young manhood into your old and withered flanks.”

“No! No! No!” Chaerea was horrified.

“Yes, yes, yes!” mocked Caligula. “Well, he dies. I am inflexible. You know that.”

Proculus. What a juicy thought! He’d forgotten the boy’s existence. Well, he’d have to remedy that now, wouldn’t he? It should prove amusing.

From the length of Proculus’ beard, it was evident that he’d been chained to the cell wall for some time. Naked except for a breech-clout, he was emaciated. His ribs stuck out and his belly was hollow, but he was a magnificent specimen still, with long, muscular arms and legs, and wide shoulders. Manacled at the wrists and ankles, he was hung up like a side of beef.

“Ah, Proculus!” Caligula strolled cheerfully into the cell. Behind the Emperor came his private executioner, a razor-sharp knife in his hand. “My dear boy, isn’t it awfully uncomfortable, being chained like that?”

“Yes, Divine Caesar.” The answer came through cracked and swollen lips.

“I’m told that your lovely wife is pregnant,” the Emperor continued in the same conversational vein. “Of course, we’ll never know for certain who the father was. You . . . or”—he tapped his own chest—“god.”