I, Claudius (57 page)

He remained in Puteoli that night and most of the next day, as if resting from battle. In the evening he returned in a triumphal chariot with gold-plated wheels and sides. Incitatus and the mare Penelope to whom Caligula had ritually married him were in the shafts. Caligula was wearing the same splendid clothes as before, except that he had a garland of bay-leaves instead of oak-leaves. A long wagontrain followed heaped high with what were supposed to be battle-spoils--furniture and statues and ornaments cobbed from the houses of rich Puteoli merchants. For prisoners he used the hostages which the petty kings of the East were required to send to Rome as earnest of good behaviour and whatever foreign slaves he could lay his hands upon, dressed in their national costumes and loaded with chains. His friends followed in decorated chariots, wearing embroidered gowns and chanting his praises. Then came the army, and last a procession of about two hundred thousand people in holiday dress. Countless bonfires were alight on the whole [383] circle of hills around the bay and every soldier and citizen in the procession carried a torch. It was the most impressive theatrical spectacle, I should think, that the world has ever seen, and I am sure it was the most pointless. But how everybody enjoyed it! A pine-wood went on fire at Cape Misenum to the south-west and blazed magnificently. As soon as Caligula reached Bauli again he dismounted and called for his gold-pronged trident and his other purple cloak worked over with silver fish and dolphins. With these he entered the biggest of his five cedar-built pleasurebarges which were waiting on the shore-side of the bridge, and was rowed out in it to the middle island of the five, which was by far the biggest, followed by most of his troops in war-vessels.

Here he disembarked, mounted a silk-hung platform and harangued the crowds as they passed along the bridge.

There were watchmen to keep them on the move, so nobody heard more than a few sentences, except his friends around the platform--among whom I found myself--and the soldiers in the nearest war-vessels, who had not been permitted to land. Among other things, he called Neptune a coward for allowing himself to be put in fetters without a struggle, and promised, one day soon, to teach the old God an even sharper lesson. [He seemed to forget the propitiatory sacrifice he had made.] As for the Emperor Xerxes who had once bridged the Hellespont in the course of his unlucky expedition against Greece, Caligula laughed at him like anything. He said that Xerxes' famous bridge had been only half the length of the present one and not nearly so solid. Then he announced that he was about to give every soldier two gold pieces to drink his health with, and every member of the crowd five silver pieces.

The cheering lasted for half an hour; which seemed to satisfy him. He stopped it and had the money paid out on the spot. The whole procession had to file past again and bag after bag of coin was brought up and emptied. After a couple of hours the money-supply failed and Caligula told the disappointed late-comers to revenge themselves on the greedy first-comers. This, of course, started a free fight.

There followed one of the most remarkable nights of drinking and singing and horse-play and violence and merry-making that was ever known. The effect of drink on Caligula was always to make him a little mischievous. At the head of the Scouts and the German bodyguard he charged about the island and along the line of shops, pushing people into the sea. The water was so calm that it was only the dead-drunk, the decrepit, the aged and little children who failed to save themselves. Not more than two or three hundred were drowned.

About midnight he made a naval attack on one of the smaller islands, breaking the bridge on either side of it and then ramming ship after ship of the island until the inhabitants whom he had cut off were crowded together in a very small space in the middle. The final assault was reserved for Caligula's flagship.

He stood waving his trident in the forecastle top, swept down on the terrified survivors and sent them all under. Among the victims of this seabattle was the most remarkable exhibit of Caligula's triumphal procession--Eleazar, the Parthian hostage; who was the tallest man in the world. He was over eleven foot high. He was not, however, strong in proportion to his height; he had a voice like the bleat of a camel and a weak back, and was considered to be of feeble intellect. He was a Jew by birth. Caligula had the body stuffed and dressed in armour and put Eleazar outside the door of his bedchamber to frighten away would-be assassins.

XXXI

THE EXPENSE OF THIS TWO DAYS' ENTERTAINMENT DRAINED the Treasury and the Privy Purse completely dry. To make things worse Caligula, instead of returning the vessels to their masters and crew, ordered the breach in the bridge to be repaired and then, riding back to Rome, busied himself with other affairs. Neptune, to prove himself no coward, sent a heavy storm at the bridge from the west and sank [385] about a thousand ships. Most of the rest dragged their anchors and were driven ashore. About two thousand rode the storm out or were hauled in on the beach for safety, but the loss of the rest caused a great shortage of ships for the carriage of corn from Egypt and Africa, and so a serious food-shortage in the City. Caligula swore to be revenged on Neptune. His new ways of raising money were most ingenious and amused all but the victims and their friends or dependants. For instance, any young men whom he put so deeply in his debt by fines or confiscations that they became his slaves he sent to the sword-fighting schools. When they were trained he put them into the amphitheatre to fight for their lives. His only expense in this was their board and lodgings: being his slaves they were given no payment.

If they were killed, there was an end of them. If they were victorious he auctioned them off to the magistrates whose duty it was to give similar contests--lots were drawn for this distinction--and to anyone else who cared to bid. He ran up the prices to an absurd height by pretending that people had made bids when they had done no more than scratch their heads or rub their noses. My nervous toss of the head got me into great trouble: I was saddled with three sword-fighters at an average of two thousand gold pieces each. But I was luckier than a magistrate called Aponius who fell asleep during the auction. Caligula sold him swordfighters whom nobody else seemed to fancy, raising the bid every time his head nodded on his breast: when he woke up he found he had no less than ninety thousand gold pieces to pay for thirteen sword-fighters whom he did not in the least want. One of the swordfighters I had bought was a very good performer, but Caligula betted against him heavily with me. When the day came for him to fight he could hardly stand and was easily beaten. It appears that Caligula had drugged his food.

Many rich men came to these auctions and willingly bid large sums, not because they wanted sword-fighters but because if they loosened their purse-strings now Caligula would be less likely to bring some charge against them later and rob them of their lives as well as of their money.

An amusing thing happened on the day that my swordfighter was beaten.

Caligula had betted heavily with me against five net-and-trident men who were matched against an equal number of chasers armed with sword and shield. I was resigned to losing the thousand gold pieces that he had made me bet against five thousand of his own; for as soon as the fight began I could see that the net-men had been bribed to give the fight away. I was sitting next to Caligula and said:

"Well, you seem likely to win, but it's my opinion that those net-men aren't doing their best." One by one the chasers rounded up the net-men, who surrendered, and finally all five were lying with their faces in the sand and each with a chaser standing over him with a raised sword. The audience turned their thumbs downwards as a signal that they should be killed. Caligula, as the President, had a right to take this advice or not, as he pleased. He took it. "Kill them!" he shouted.

"They didn't try to win!"

This was hard luck on the net-men, to whom he had secretly promised their lives if they allowed themselves to be beaten; for I wasn't by any means the only man who had been forced to bet on them--he stood to win eighty thousand if they lost. Well, one of them felt so sore at being cheated that he suddenly grappled with his chaser, overturned him and managed to pick up a trident, which was lying not far off, and a net, and dash away. You wouldn't believe it, but I won my five thousand after all! First that angry net-man killed two chasers who had their backs to him and were busy acknowledging the cheers of the audience after dispatching their victims, and then he killed the other three, one by one, as they came running at him, each a few paces behind the other. Caligula wept for vexation and exclaimed, "Oh, the monster! Look, he's killed five promising young swordsmen with that horrible trout-spear of his!" When I say that I won my five thousand, I mean that I would have won it if I hadn't been tactful enough to call the bet off.

"For one man to kill five isn't fair fighting," I said.

Up to this time Caligula had always spoken of Tiberius as a thorough scoundrel and encouraged everyone else to do the same. But one day he entered the Senate and delivered a long eulogy on him, saying that he had been a much misunderstood man and that nobody must speak a word against him. "In my capacity as Emperor I have the right [387] to criticise him if I please, but you have no right. In fact, you are guilty of treason. The other day a senator said in a speech that my brothers Nero and Drusus were murdered by Tiberius after having been imprisoned on false charges. What an amazing thing to say!" Then he produced the records which he had pretended to burn, and read lengthy extracts. He showed that the Senate had not questioned the evidence collected against his brothers by Tiberius, but had unanimously voted for them to be handed over to him for punishment. Some had even volunteered testimony against them. Caligula said: "If you knew that the evidence which Tiberius laid before you [in all good faith] was false, then you are the murderers, not he; and it is only since he has been dead that you have dared to blame your cruelty and treachery on him. Or if you thought at the time that the evidence was true, then he was no murderer and you are treasonably defaming his character. Or if you thought that it was false and that he knew it was false, then you were as guilty of murder as he was, and cowards too."

He frowned heavily in imitation of Tiberius and made Tiberius' sharp chopping motion of the hand, which brought back frightening memories of treason-trials, and said in Tiberius' harsh voice, "Well spoken, my Son! You can't trust any one of these curs farther than you can kick him. Look what a little God they made of Sejanus before they turned and tore him to pieces! They'll do the same to you if they get half a chance. They all hate you and pray for your death.

My advice to you is, consult no interest but your own and put pleasure before everything. Nobody likes being ruled over, and the only way that I kept my place was by making this trash afraid of me. Do the same. The worse you treat them, the more they'll honour you."

Caligula then reintroduced treason as a capital crime, ordered his speech to be at once engraved on a bronze tablet and posted on the wall of the House above the seats of the Consuls, and rushed away. No more business was transacted that day: we were all too dejected. But the next day we lavished praise on Caligula as a sincere and pious ruler and voted annual sacrifices to his Clemency. What else could we do? He had the Army at his back, and power of life and death over us, and until someone was bold and clever enough to mate a successful conspiracy against his life all that we could do was to humour him and hope for the best. At a banquet a few nights later he suddenly burst into a most extraordinary howl of laughter. Nobody knew what the joke was. The two Consuls, who sat next to him, asked whether they might be graciously permitted to share in it. At this Caligula laughed even louder, the tears starting from his eyes. "No," he choked, "that's just the point.

It's a joke that you wouldn't think at all funny. I was laughing to think that with one nod of my head I could have both your throats cut on the spot."

Charges of treason were now brought against the twenty reputedly wealthiest men in Rome. They were given no chance of committing suicide before the trial and all condemned to death. One of them, a senior magistrate, proved to have been quite poor. Caligula said: "The idiot! Why did he pretend to have money? I was quite taken in. He need not have died at all." I can only remember a single man who escaped with his life from a charge of treason.

That was Afer, the man who had prosecuted my cousin Pulchra, a lawyer famous for his eloquence. His crime was having put an inscription on a statue of Caligula in the hall of his house, to the effect that the Emperor in his twenty-seventh year was already Consul for the second time. Caligula found this treasonable--a sneer at his youth and a reproach against him for having held the office before he was legally capable of doing so. He composed a long, careful speech against Afer and delivered it in the Senate with all the oratorical force at his command, every gesture and tone carefully rehearsed beforehand. Caligula used to boast that he was the best lawyer and orator in the world, and was even more anxious to outshine Afer in eloquence than to secure his condemnation and confiscate his money. Afer realised this and pretended to be astonished and overcome by Caligula's genius as a prosecutor. He repeated the counts against himself, point by point, praising them with a professional detachment and muttering "Yes, that's quite unanswerable" and "He's got the last ounce of weight out of that argument" and "A very real dilemma" and "What extraordinary command of language!" When Caligula had finished and sat down with a triumphant grin, Afer was [389] asked if he had anything to say. He answered:

"Nothing except that I consider myself most unlucky. I had counted on using my oratorical gifts as some slight offset against the Emperor's anger with me for my inexcusable thoughtlessness in the matter of that cursed inscription. But Fate has weighted the dice far too heavily against me. The Emperor has absolute power, a clear case against me, and a thousand times more eloquence than I could ever hope to achieve even if I escaped sentence and studied until I was a centenarian." He was condemned to death, but reprieved the next day.