I, Claudius

by Robert Graves

As Tiberius had a pet dragon, so Caligula had a favourite stallion. This horse’s original stable name was Porcellus (meaning ‘little pig’) but Caligula did not consider that grand enough and renamed him ‘Incitatus’, which means ‘swift-speeding’. Incitatus never lost a race and Caligula was so extravagantly fond of him that he made him first a citizen and then a senator and at last put him on the list of his nominees for the Consulship four years in advance. Incitatus was given a house and servants. He had a marble bedroom with a big straw mat for a bed, a new one every day, also an ivory manger, a gold bucket to drink from, and pictures by famous artists on the walls. He used to be invited to dinner with us whenever he won a race, but preferred a bowl of barley to the meat and fish that Caligula always offered him. We had to drink his health twenty times over.