Claudius the God (Claudius, #2)

by Robert Graves

a God of whom no image is in existence, whose name his devout worshippers are forbidden to pronounce (though in his honour they clip their foreskins and practise many other curious and barbarous rites), and who is said to live alone, at Jerusalem, in an ancient cedar chest lined with badger-skins dyed blue and to refuse to have anything to do with any other deities in the world or even to acknowledge the existence of such.

Most men – it is my experience – are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted. They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any length of time: ignoble mediocrities. But a few men remain always true to a single extreme character: these are the men who leave the strongest mark on history, and I should divide them into four classes. First there are the scoundrels with stony hearts, of whom Macro, the Guards Commander under Tiberius and Caligula, was an outstanding example. Next come the virtuous men with equally stony hearts, of whom Cato the Censor, my bugbear, was an outstanding example. The third class are the virtuous men with golden hearts, such as old Athenodorus and my poor murdered brother Germanicus. And last and most rarely found are the scoundrels with golden hearts, and of these Herod Agrippa was the most perfect instance imaginable. It is the scoundrels with the golden hearts, these anti-Catos, who make the most valuable friends in time of need. You expect nothing from them. They are entirely without principle, as they themselves acknowledge, and only consider their own advantage. But go to them when in desperate trouble and say, ‘For God’s sake do so-and-so for me,’ and they will almost certainly do it – not as a friendly favour but, they will say, because it fits in with their own crooked plans; and you are forbidden to thank them.

this turnip-witted fellow

They were just eating a most cheerful meal together, Herod being in his best form and telling the governor what a good fellow he was, and how considerately he had behaved, and how happy they would all be now that Caligula was Emperor, when news came that Tiberius was not dead after all. This put the governor into a great state of alarm. He decided that Herod had arranged for this false message to be brought just to get him into trouble. ‘Back to your chain this instant,’ he shouted angrily, ‘and never expect me to trust you again.’ So Herod had to get up from the table and go gloomily back to his cell. But, as you will again recall, Macro had not allowed Tiberius to enjoy his new lease of life for very long but had gone into the Imperial bed-chamber and smothered him with a pillow. So again the news came that Tiberius was dead, this time really dead. But the governor kept Herod chained up all night. He was not taking any risks.

Lupus was weeping and seemed not to hear him. Cassius asked the soldier who was to act as executioner whether he had had any previous practice in that trade. ‘No,’ replied the soldier, ‘but I was a butcher in civil life.’ Cassius laughed and said: ‘That is very well. And now will you do me the favour of using my own sword on me? It is the one with which I killed Caligula.’ He was dispatched at a single stroke. Lupus was not so fortunate: when he was ordered to stretch out his neck he did so timorously and then flinched at the blow, which caught him on the forehead. The executioner had to strike several times before he could finish him.

Portraits on coins, however, are always disappointing because they are executed in profile. Nobody is familiar with his own profile, and it comes as a shock, when one sees it in a portrait, that one really looks like that to people standing beside one. For one’s full face, because of the familiarity that mirrors give it, a certain toleration and even affection is felt; but I must say that when I first saw the model of the gold piece that the mint-masters were striking for me I grew angry and asked whether it was intended to be a caricature. My little head with its worried face perched on my long neck, and the Adam’s apple standing out almost like a second chin, shocked me. But Messalina said: ‘No, my dear, that’s really what you look like. In fact, it is rather flattering than otherwise.’ ‘Can you really love a man like that?’ I asked. She swore that there was no face so dear to her in the world. So I tried to get accustomed to the coin.

‘Be bold,’ I said, ‘but not too bold.’

On one occasion the counsel for the defence explained that his client, a man of sixty-five, had recently married. His wife was a witness in the case, and was quite a young woman. I remarked that the marriage was illegal. According to the Poppaean-Papian Law (with which I happened to be familiar) a man over sixty was not allowed to marry a woman under fifty: the legal assumption was that a man over sixty is unfit for parentage. I quoted the Greek epigram: The old man weds, for Nature’s rule he scorns – ‘Father a weakly stock, or else wear horns’.

He could not understand, I suppose, that a reputation was, as my mother used to say, like an earthenware plate. ‘The plate is cracked; the reputation is damaged by a criminal sentence. The plate is then mended with rivets and becomes “as good as new”; the reputation is mended by an official pardon. A mended plate or a mended reputation is better than a cracked plate or a damaged reputation. But a plate that has never been cracked and a reputation that has never been damaged are better still.’

So my nieces returned and I found that exile had by no means broken their spirits, though their delicate skins had become sadly tanned by the African sun. By Caligula’s orders they had been forced to earn their living on the island by diving for sponges.

The fourth and fifth days’ performances were in the Circus, which looked very fine with its gilt goals and marble barriers, and in the amphitheatres. We had twelve chariot-races and one camel-race, which was an amusing novelty. We also killed 300 bears and 300 lions in the amphitheatres, and had a big sword-fighting display. The bears and the lions had been ordered by Caligula from Africa just before his death and had only just arrived. I frankly told the people, ‘This is the last big wild-beast show that you will see for some time: I am going to wait until the prices come down before I order any more. The African traders have run them up to an absurd height. If they can’t bring them down again they can take their wares to another market – but I think that it will puzzle them to find one.’

Sportula

They also asked permission to give special public readings of my History of Carthage and my History of Etruria every year on my birthday. Each work was to be read out from end to end by relays of highly trained elocutionists, the former in the old library, the latter in the new. They knew that this could not fail to flatter me. In accepting the honour I felt very much as the parents of still-born twins might be expected to feel if, some time after the delivery, the little cold corpses awaiting their funeral in a basket set somewhere in a corner were suddenly to glow with unexpected warmth and sneeze and cry in unison.

‘There’s too much meat in that sausage,’ he said, ‘and not enough spices and garlic.’ He meant that there was too much information in it and not enough elegant writing.

‘If hornets plague you, burn their nest; but if it is only mosquitoes, pay no attention.’

As soon as my boy was a few months old and I could pick him up without risk of injuring him, I used to carry him about with me in my arms in the Palace grounds and show him to the soldiers; they all loved him almost as much as I did.

The heart of the populace lies in its belly.

‘Yes, of course, Callistus has been speaking to you. He is very careful with public money, and it is right that he should be. But economy can be carried too far. This is a matter of the utmost importance.

Then he felt remorse and sent his engineers out to discover suitable springs, according to the rules laid down by the famous Vitruvius. Such springs must run strongly all the year round, and run clean and sweet, and not fur the pipes, and must have such an elevation that, allowing for the fall necessary to give the channel of the aqueduct its proper inclination, the water will enter the final reservoir at a height sufficient to allow of its distribution, by pipes, to the highest houses in Rome.

Make it a rule never to rise from the table without an unsatisfied longing for just one little thing more.

Atlas, who is said to carry the world on his shoulders in obedience to the will of the Gods.

A few women were also executed. I did not see why a woman’s sex should protect her from punishment if she had been guilty of fomenting rebellion, particularly a woman who had not married a man in the strict form of marriage but had kept her independence and her own property, and so could not plead coercion. They were brought to the scaffold in chains, just like their husbands, and on the whole showed much greater courage in facing death. One woman, Arria, Paetus’s wife but a close friend of Messalina’s, married in the strict form, could no doubt have won a pardon if she had dared to sue for one. But no, she preferred to die with Paetus. Paetus, as a reward for his evidence in the case of Rufrius, was allowed to commit suicide before any charge was formally brought against him. He was a coward and could not nerve himself to fall on his sword. Arria snatched it from him and drove it home under her own ribs. ‘Look, Paetus,’ she said as she died, ‘it doesn’t hurt.’

About this time Vinicius died, of poison. I heard, some years later, that he had refused to sleep with Messalina and that the poison was administered by her; certainly he died on the day after he had dined at the Palace. The story is quite likely to be true. So now Vinicius, Vinicianus, and Asiaticus, the three men who had offered themselves as Emperor instead of me, were all dead, and their deaths seemed to lie at my door. Yet I had a clean conscience about them. Vinicianus and Asiaticus were clearly traitors, and Vinicius, I thought, had died as the result of an accident. But the Senate and People knew Messalina better than I did, and hated me because of her. That was the invisible barrier between them and me, and nobody had the courage to break it down.

The chief emotional appeal of Christianity was that this Joshua, or Jesus, was said to have risen from the dead, as no man had ever done before, except in legends: after being crucified he had visited his friends apparently none the worse for his experience, had eaten and drunk to prove that he was no vision and then gone up to Heaven in a blaze of glory. And there was no proof that these were all lies, because, as it happened, there had been an earthquake just after the crucifixion, which had dislodged a heavy stone from the mouth of the tomb where the corpse had been put. The guard had fled in panic, and when they came back the corpse was gone; evidently it had been stolen. Once a story like this begins to circulate in the East it is difficult to stop it, and it would have been undignified to argue against its absurdity in a public edict; but I did publish a strong order in Galilee, where the Christians were most numerous, making it a capital offence to violate graves. But I must waste no more time over these ridiculous Christians: I must continue with my own story.

The riches of a country do not only lie in corn, metals, and cattle. What the Empire needs most is men, and if she can add to her resources by the annexation of a country where an honest, warlike, and industrious race is bred, that is a better acquisition than any spice island of the Indies or gold-bearing territory of Central Asia. The faith that Queen Cartimandua and her nobles have shown, and the courage in adversity of King Caractacus, are the happiest possible auguries of the future.

in such remarkably fluent Latin, too, that I positively envied him: I am a wretched speaker and always get entangled in my sentences.

King Evander,

please observe,