I, Claudius (20 page)

My sympathies were with the soldier, who came into the arena looking very white and shaky--he had been in prison for some days and the strong light bothered him. But his entire company, who it appears sympathised very much with him, for the captain was a bully and a beast, shouted in unison for him to pull himself together and defend the company's honour. He straightened up and shouted, "I'll do my best, lads!” His camp nickname, as it happened, was "Roach", and this was enough to put the greater part of the audience on his side, though the Guards were pretty unpopular in the City. If a roach were to kill a fisherman that would be a good joke. To have the amphitheatre on one's side is half the battle to a man fighting for his life.

The Thessalian, a wiry, long-armed, long-legged fellow, came swaggering in close behind him, dressed only in a leather tunic and a hard round leather cap.

He was in a good humour, cracking jokes with the front-benches, for his opponent was an amateur, and Livia was paying him a thousand gold pieces for the afternoon and five hundred more if he killed his man after a good fight. They came together in front of the Box and saluted first Augustus and Livia and then Germanicus and me as joint-presidents, with the usual formula: "Greetings, Sirs.

We salute you in Death's shadow!" We returned the greetings with a formal gesture, but Genrmanicus said to Augustus: "Why, sir, that chaser's one of my father's veterans. I know him well. He won a crown in Germany for being the first man over an enemy stockade." Augustus was interested. "Good," he said, "this should be a good fight, then. But in that case the net-man must be ten years younger, and years count in this game." Then Genrmanicus signalled for the trumpets to sound and the fight began.

Roach stood his ground, while the Thessalian danced around him. Roach was not such a fool as to waste his strength running after his lightly armed opponent or yet to be paralysed into immobility. The Thessalian tried to make him lose his temper by taunting him, but Roach was not to be drawn. Only once when the Thessalian came almost within lunging distance did he show any readiness to take the offensive, and the quickness of his thrust drew a roar of delight from the benches. But the Thessalian was away in time. Soon the fight grew more lively; the Thessalian made stabs, high and low, with his long trident, which Roach parried easily, but with one eye on the net, weighted with small lead pellets, which the Thessalian managed with his left hand.

"Beautiful work!" I heard Livia say to Augustus. "The best net-man in Rome. He's playing with the soldier. Did you see that? He could have entangled him and got his stroke in then if he had wished. But he's spinning out the fight."

"Yes," said Augustus. "I'm afraid the soldier is done for.

He should have kept off drink."

Augustus had hardly spoken when Roach knocked up the trident and jumped forward, ripping the Thessalian's leather tunic between arm and body. The Thessalian was away in a flash and as he ran he swung the net across Roach's face.

By ill-luck a pellet struck Roach in the eye, momentarily blinding him. He checked his pace and the Thessalian, seeing his advantage, turned and knocked the sword spinning out of his hand. Roach sprang to retrieve it but the Thessalian got there first, ran with it to the barrier and tossed it across to a rich patron sitting in the front rank of the seats reserved for the Knights. Then he returned to the pleasant task of goading and dispatching an unarmed man. The net whistled round Roach's head and the trident jabbed here and there; but Roach was still undismayed, and once made a snatch at the trident and nearly got possession of it.

The Thessalian had now worked him towards our Box to make a spectacular killing.

"That's enough!" said Livia in a matter-of-fact voice, "he's done enough playing about. He ought to finish him now." The Thessalian needed no prompting.

He made a simultaneous sweep of his net around Roach's head and a stab at his belly with the trident. And then what a roar went up! Roach had caught the net with his right hand and, flinging his body back, kicked with all his strength at the shaft of the trident a foot or two from his enemy's hand. The weapon flew up over the Thessalian's head, [153] turned in the air and stuck quivering into the wooden barrier. The Thessalian stood astonished for a moment, then left the net in Roach's hands and dashed past him to recover the trident. Roach threw himself forward and sideways and caught him in the ribs, as he ran, with the spiked boss of his shield. The Thessalian fell, gasping, on all fours.

Roach recovered himself quickly and with a sharp downward swing of the shield caught him on the back of his neck.

"The rabbit-blow!" said Augustus. "I've never seen that done in an arena before, have you, my dear Livia? Eh?

Killed him too, I swear."

The Thessalian was dead. I expected Livia to be greatly displeased but all she said was: "And served him right.

That's what comes of underrating one's opponent. I'm disappointed in that net-man. Still, it has saved me that five hundred in gold, so I can't complain, I suppose."

To crown the afternoon's enjoyment there was a fight between two German hostages who happened to belong to rival clans and had voluntarily engaged each other to a death-duel. It was not pretty fighting, but savage hacking with long sword and halberd: each wore a small, highly ornamented shield strapped on the lert forearm. This was an unusual manner of fighting, for the ordinary German soldier does all his work with the slim-shafted, narrow-headed assegai: the broad-headed halberd and the long sword are marks of high rank. One of the combatants, a yellowheaded man over six feet tall made short work of the other, cutting him about terribly before he gave his final smashing blow on the side of the neck. The crowd gave him a great cheer, which went to his head, for he made a speech in a mixture of German and camp-Latin, saying that he was a renowned warrior in his country and had killed six Romans in battle, including an officer, before he had been given up as a hostage by his jealous uncle, the tribal chief. He now challenged any Roman of rank to meet him, sword to sword, and make the lucky seventh for him.

The first champion who sprang into the ring was a young staff-officer of an old but impoverished family, called Cassius Chserea. He came running to the box for permission to take up the challenge. His father, he said, had been killed ^

CLAUDIUS [134] in Germany under that glorious general in whose memory this display was being held: might he piously sacrifice that boastful fellow to his father's ghost? Cassius was a fine fencer. I had often watched him on Mars Field.

Germanicus consulted with Augustus and then with me; when Augustus gave his consent and I mumbled mine Cassius was told to arm himself. He went to the dressing-rooms and borrowed Roach's sword, shield and body armour, tor good luck and out of compliment to Roach.

Soon there began a far grander fight than any that the professionals had shown, the German swinging his great sword and Cassius parrying with his shield and always trying to get in under the German's guard--but the fellow was as agile as he was strong and twice beat Cassius to his knees. The crowd was perfectly silent, as if it were a religious performance they were watching, and nothing was heard but the clash of steel on steel and the rattle of shields. Augustus said, "The German's too strong for him, I'm afraid. We shouldn't have permitted this. If Cassius gets killed it will create a bad impression on the frontier when the news gets there."

Then Cassius' foot slipped in a blood pool and he fell over on his back. The German straddled over him with a triumphant smile on his face and then... and then there was a roaring in my ears and a blackness before my eyes and I fainted away. The emotion of seeing men killed for the first time in my life, and then the combat between Roach and the Thessalian, in which I felt so strongly for Roach, and now this fight in which it seemed that it was I myself who was desperately battling for life with the German--it was too much for me. So I did not witness Cassius' wonderful recovery as the German lifted that ugly sword to crash in his skull, the quick upward thrust with the shield-boss at the German's loins, the sideways roll, and the quick decisive stab under the arm-pit. Yes, Cassius killed his man all right. Do not forget this Cassius, for he twice and three times plays an important part in this story.

As for me, nobody noticed that I had fainted for some time, and when they did I was already coming to. They propped me up again in my place until the show had [135] formally ended. To have been carried out would have been a disgrace for everyone.

The next day the Games continued, but I was not there.

It was announced that I was ill. I missed one of the most spectacular contests ever witnessed in the amphitheatre, between an Indian elephant--they are much bigger than the African breed--and a rhinoceros. Experts betted on the rhinoceros, for although it was by far the smaller animal its hide was much thicker than the elephant's and it was expected to make short work of the elephant with its long sharp hom. In Africa, they were saying, elephants had learned to avoid the haunts of the rhinoceros, which holds undisputed sway in its own territory. This Indian elephant however--as Postumus described the fight to me afterwards--showed no anxiety or fear when the rhinoceros came charging into the arena, meeting him each time with his tusks and lumbering after him with clumsy speed when he retired discomfited. But finding himself unable to penetrate the thick armour of tne beast's neck as he charged, this fantastic creature had recourse to cunning. He picked up with his trunk a rough broom made of a thorn bush which a sweeper had left on the sand and darted it in his enemy's face the next time he charged: he succeeded in blinding first one eye and then the other. The rhinoceros, distracted with rage and pain, dashed here and there in pursuit of the elephant and finally ran full tilt against the wooden barrier, going right through it and shattering his hom and stunning himself on the marble barrier behind.

Then up came the elephant with his mouth open as if he were laughing and, first enlarging the breach in the wooden barrier, began trampling on his fallen enemy's skull, which he crushed in. He then nodded his head as if in time to music and presently walked quietly away. His Indian driver came running out with a huge bowl full of sweetmeats, which the elephant poured into his mouth while the audience roared applause. Then the beast helped the driver up on his neck, offering his trunk as a ladder, and trotted over to Augustus; where he trumpeted the royal salute--which these elephants are taught only to utter for monarchs--and knelt in homage. But, as I say, I missed this performance; That evening Livia wrote to Augustus: "MY DEAR AUGUSTUS, "Claudius' unmanly behaviour yesterday in fainting at the sight of two men fighting, to say nothing or the grotesque twitchings of his hands and head, which at a solemn festival in commemoration of his father's victories were all the more shameful and unfortunate, has at least had this advantage, that we can now definitely decide once and for all that except in the dignity of priest--for the vacancies in the colleges must be filled some/low and Plautius has managed to coach him well enough in his duties--Claudius is perfectly unfit to appear in public. We must be content to write him off as a loss, except perhaps for breeding purposes, for I hear he has now done his duty by Urgulanilla--but I won't be sure of that until I see the child, which may well be a monster like him.

"Antonia has to-day abstracted from his study what appears to be a notebook of historical material which he has been collecting for a life of his father; with it she found a painfully composed introduction to the projected work, which I send you herewith. You will observe that Claudius has singled out for praise his dear father's one intellectual foible--that wilful blindness of his to the march of time, the absurd delusion that the political forms that suited Rome when Rome was a small town at war with neighbouring small towns could be reestablished after Rome had become the greatest kingdom known since the days of Alexander, Look what happened when Alexander died and nobody could be found strong enough to succeed him as supreme monarch--why, the Empire simply fell to pieces.

But I should not waste my timeand yours in making historical platitudes.

Athenodorus and Sulpicius, with whom I have just had a conference, say that they had not seen this introduction until I showed it them and agree on its extreme inadvisability. They swear that they have never put any subversive ideas into his head, and suggest that he must have got them from old books. Personally I think that he inherited them--his grandfather had the same curious infirmity, you remember--and it is just like Claudius to have chosen that [137] one weakness to inherit and to have refused any legacy of physical or moral soundness! Thank God for Tiberius and Germanicus! There's no republican nonsense about them, so far as I know.

"Naturally I am instructing Claudius that he must desist from his biographical labours, saying that if he disgraces his father's memory by fainting at the solemn Games given in his honour, he is obviously unfit to write his life: let him find some other employment for his pen.

"LIVIA."

Ever since Pollio had told me about the poisoning of my father and grandfather I had been greatly perplexed. I could not make up my mind whether the old man had been talking senile nonsense, or joking, or whether he really knew something. Who but Augustus himself was sufficiently interested in the monarchy to have poisoned a nobleman merely because he believed in republican government? Yet I could not believe Augustus the murderer: poison was a mean way of killing, a slave's way, and Augustus would never have stooped to it.

Besides, he was not a hypocrite and when he talked about my father it was always with admiration and affection. I consulted two or three recent histories, but they told me nothing that I had not already hdard from Germanicus of the circumstances of my father's death.

It was only a couple of days before the Games that I happened to be talking to our porter, who had been my father's orderly throughout his campaigns, The honest fellow had been drinking rather too much, because my father's name was on everyone's lips at the time and his veterans had come in for a good deal of reflected glory.