Claudius the God (16 page)

The lawyer considered for a few moments and then extemporized.

And that old man, yourself, is a plain fool To foist on Nature this unnatural rule. A sturdy old man fathers sturdy sons; A weakly young man fathers weakly ones.

This was so just a point and so neatly made that I forgave the poet-lawyer for calling me a plain fool, and at the next meeting of the Senate amended the Poppaean-Papian Law accordingly. The severest anger to which I ever remember having given way in court was roused by-a court official whose duty it was to summon witnesses and see that they arrived punctually. I had given a fraud case a hearing but had been forced to adjourn it for lack of evidence, the principal witness having fled too Africa to avoid being charged with complicity in the fraud. When the case-came on again I called for this witness; but he was not in court. I asked the court official whether this man had been duly subpoenaed to attend.

‘, Oh, yes, indeed, Caesar.’

‘Then why is he not here.?

‘He is unfortunately prevented from attending.!

‘There is no excuse for non-attendance, except illness so serious that he cannot be carried into court without danger to his life.’

‘I quite agree, Caesar. No, the witness is not ill now. He has been very ill, I understand. But that is all over.’

‘What was wrong with him?’

‘He was mauled by a lion, I am informed, and afterwards gangrene set in.’

‘It’s a wonder he recovered,’ I said.

He. didn’t,’ sniggered the fellow. ‘He’s dead. I think that death can stand as an excuse for non-attendance.’ Everyone laughed.

I was so furious that I flung my writing-tablet at him, took away his citizenship, and banished him to Africa. ‘Go and hunt lions,’ I shouted, ‘and I hope they maul you properly, and I hope gangrene sets in.’ However, six months later I pardoned him and re-instated him in his position. He made no more jokes at my expense.

It is only fair at this point to mention the severest anger that was ever directed in court against myself. A young nobleman was charged with unnatural acts against women. The real complainants were the Guild of Prostitutes, an unofficial but well-managed organization which protected its members pretty effectively from abuse by cheats or ruffians. The prostitutes could not very well bring a charge against the nobleman themselves, so they went to a man who had been done a bad turn by him and wanted revenge - prostitutes know everything and offered to give evidence if he brought the charge: a prostitute was a capable witness in a lawcourt. Before the case came on, I sent a message to my friend Calpurnia, the pretty young prostitute who had lived with me before I married Messalina and had been so tender and faithful to me in my misfortunes: I asked her to interview the women who were to give evidence and privately find out whether the nobleman had really abused them in the manner alleged, or whether they had been bribed by the person who was bringing the charge. Caipurnia sent me word a day or two later that the nobleman had really behaved in a very brutal and disgusting way, and that the women who had complained to the Guild were decent girls, one of whom was a personal friend of hers.

I tried the case, took sworn evidence (overruling the objection of the defending lawyer that prostitutes’ oaths were both proverbially and actually worth nothing) and had this put in writing by the court recorder. When one girl repeated some very filthy and vulgar remark that the accused had made to her, the recorder asked, ‘Shall I put that down, Caesar?’ and I answered, ‘Why not?’ The young nobleman was so angry that he did just what I had done to the court official who teased me - he threw his writing-tablet at my head. But whereas I had missed my aim, his aim was true. The sharp edge-of the tablet gashed my cheek and drew blood. But all I said was, ‘I am glad to see, my Lord, that you still have some shame left.’ I found him guilty and put a black mark against his name in the Roll, which disqualified him from becoming a candidate for public office. But he was a relative by marriage of Asiaticus, who asked me some months later to scratch out the black mark; because his young relative had lately reformed, his ways. ‘I’ll scratch it out, to please you,’ I answered, ‘but it will still show.’ Asiaticus later repeated this remark of mine to his friends as a proof of my stupidity. 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.’

A schoolmaster always appears a very queer fellow to his pupils. He has certain stock-phrases which they come to notice-and giggle at whenever he uses them. Everyone in the world has stock-phrases or tricks of speech, but unless he is in a position of authority - as a schoolmaster; or an army captain or a judge - nobody notices, them particularly. Nobody noticed them in my case until I became Emperor, but, then of course they became world-famous. I had only to remark in court, ‘No malice or favour whatsoever’ (turning to my legal secretary after summing-up a case), ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ or ‘When once my mind is made up, the thing is fixed with a nail,’ or quote the old tag: As the rascal did he must Himself be done by And that’s just; or utter the family oath, ‘Ten thousand furies and serpents!’ and a great roar of laughter would go up about me as though I had let fall either the most absurd solecism imaginable or the most exquisitely witty epigram.

In the course of my first year in the courts I must have made hundreds of ridiculous mistakes, but I did get the: cases settled and sometimes surprised myself by my brilliance. There was one case, I remember, where one of the witnesses for the defence, a woman, denied any relationship with the accused man, who was alleged by the prosecution to be really her son. When I told her that I would take her word for it and that in my quality as High Pontiff I would immediately join her and him in marriage she was so frightened by the prospect of having incest forced upon her that she pleaded guilty to perjury. She said that she had concealed her relationship in order to seem an impartial witness. That gave me a great reputation, which I lost almost at once in a case where the treason charge covered one of forgery. The prisoner was a freedman of one of Caligula’s freedmen, and there were no extenuating circumstances to his crime. He had forged his master’s, will just before his death - whether he was responsible for the death could not be proved - and had, left his mistress and her children completely destitute. I grew very angry with this man as I heard-his story unfolded and determined to inflict the maximum penalty. The defence was very weak no denial of the charge, only a stream of Telegonian irrelevancies. It was long past my dinner-time and I had been sitting in judgement solidly for six hours. A delicious whiff of cooking came floating into my nostrils from the dining-chamber of the Priests of Mars near by. They eat better than any other priestly fraternity: Mars never lacks for sacrificial victims. I felt faint with hunger. I said to the’ senior of the magistrates who were sitting with me, ‘Please take over this, case from me and impose the maximum penalty, unless the defence has any better evidence evidence to offer than has yet been produced.’

‘Do you really mean the maximum penalty?’ he asked.

‘Yes, indeed, whatever it may be. The man deserves no mercy.’

‘Your orders shall be obeyed, Caesar,’ he replied.

So my chair was brought and I joined the priests at their dinner. When I’ returned’ that afternoon I found that the accused man’s hands had been chopped off and hung around his neck. That was a punishment ordained for forgery by Caligula and had not yet been removed from the penal code. Everyone considered that I had acted’ most cruelly, for the judge had told the Court that it was my sentence, not his own. It was hardly my fault, though.

I recalled all the exiles who had been banished on treason charges but only after asking the Senate’s permission. Among these were my nieces Agrippinilla and Lesbia who had been sent to an island off the coast of Africa. For my own part, though I would certainly not have allowed them to remain there, neither would I have invited them to return to Rome. They had both behaved very insolently to me and had both committed incest with their brother Caligula, whether willingly or unwillingly I do not know, and their other adulteries had been a matter of public scandal. It was Messalina who interceded with me for them. I realize now that it gave her a delightful sense of power to do this. Agrippinilla and Lesbia had always treated her with great haughtiness, and now that they, were told that they were being recalled to Rome as a result of her generosity they would feel obliged to humble themselves before her. But at the time I thought it was plain goodness of heart in Messalina. 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. However, the only comment that Agrippinilla made on her experiences was that she had not altogether wasted her time. ‘I have become a first-class swimmer. If anyone ever wants to kill me, he had better not try drowning,’ They decided to brazen out the disgracefully slave-girlish colour of their faces, necks, and arms,, by inducing some of their noble friends to adopt sunburn as a fashion. Walnut-juice became a favourite toilet-water. Messalina’s intimates, however, kept their natural pinkand-white complexions and referred contemptuously to the sunburn party as ‘The Sponge Divers’. Lesbia’s thanks to Messalina were most perfunctory and I was hardly thanked at, all. She, was positively unpleasant: ‘You kept us waiting ten days longer than was necessary,’ she complained, ‘and the ship that was sent to fetch. us was full of rats.’ Agrippinilla was wiser: she made both of us very graceful speeches of gratitude.

I confirmed Herod’s kingship of Bashan, Galilee, and Gilead, and added, to it Judaea, Samaria, and Edom, so that his dominions were now as large as those of his grandfather. I rounded off the northern part with Abilene, which had formed part of Syria. He and I entered upon a solemn league, confirmed by oaths in the open Market Place in the presence of an immense crowd, and by the ritual sacrifice of a pig, an ancient ceremony revived for the occasion. I also conferred; on him the honorary dignity of Roman Consul: this had never before been. given to a man of his race. It signalized that in the recent crisis the Senate had come for advice to him, not finding a native Roman capable of clear and impartial thought. At Herod’s request I also conferred the little kingdom of Chalcis on his younger brother, Herod Pollio: Chalcis lay to the east of the Orontes, near Antioch. He asked nothing for Aristobulus, so Aristobulus got nothing. I also gladly freed Alexander the Alabarch and his brother Philo, who were still in prison at Alexandria. While on the subject, I may mention that when the Alabarch’s son, to whom Herod had married his daughter Berenice died, Berenice then married her uncle Herod Pollio. I confirmed Petronius in his governorship of Syria and sent him a personal letter of congratulation on his sensible behaviour in the matter of the statue.

I took Herod’s advice about the marble slabs that had been intended for facing the interior of Caligula’s temple: they made a fine showing around the Circus. Then I had to decide what to do with the building itself, which was handsome enough even when stripped of its precious ornaments. It occurred to me that it would be only justice to the Twin Gods, Castor and Pollux - a decent apology for the insult that Caligula had offered them by turning - their temple into a mere portico of his own - to give it to them as an annexe of theirs. Caligula had made a breach in the wall behind their two statues, to form the main entrance to his temple, so that they became as it were his doorkeepers. There was nothing for it but to reconsecrate the premises. I fixed a propitious day for the ceremony and won the Gods’ approval of it by augury; for we make this distinction between augury and consecration, that the consecration is effected by the will of man, but first the augury must denote the willing consent of the deity concerned. I had chosen the fifteenth day of July, the day that Roman knights go out crowned with olive wreaths to honour the Twins in a magnificent horseback procession: from the Temple of Mars they ride through the main streets of the City, circling back to the Temple of the Twins, where they offer sacrifices. The ceremony is a commemoration of the battle of Lake Regillus which was fought on that day over 300 years ago. Castor and Pollux came riding in person to the help of a Roman army that was making a desperate stand, on the lake-shore against a superior force of Latins; and ever since then they have been adopted as the particular patrons of the Knights.

I took the auspices in the little tabernacle dedicated to that purpose on the summit of the Capitoline Hill. I invoked the Gods and, after calculation, marked out the appropriate quarter of the Heavens in which to make my observations, namely, the part where the constellation of the Heavenly Twins then lay. I had hardly done-so, when I heard a faint creaking sound in the sky and the looked-for sign appeared. It was a pair of swans flying from the direction that I had marked out, the noise of their wings growing stronger and stronger as they approached. I knew that these must be Castor and Pollux themselves in disguise, because, you know, they and their sister Helen were hatched out of the same treble-yolked egg that Lead laid after she had been courted by Jove in the form of a swan. The birds passed directly over their Temple and were soon lost in the distance.

I shall get a little ahead of the order of events by describing the festival. It began with a lustration. We priests and our assistants made a solemn procession around the premises, carrying laurel branches which we dipped in pots of consecrated water and waved, sprinkling drops as we went. I had been to the trouble of sending for water from Lake Regillus, where Castor and Pollux, by the way, had another temple: I mentioned the source of the water in the invocation. We also burned sulphur and aromatic herbs to keep off evil spirits, and flute-music was played to drown the sound of any ill-omened word that might be uttered. This lustration made everything holy within the bounds that we had walked, which included the new annexe as well as the Temple itself. We walled up the breach. I laid the first stone myself. I then sacrificed. I had chosen the combination of victims that I knew would please the Gods most for each of them an ox, a sheep, and a pig, all unblemished and all twins. Castor and Pollux are not major deities: they are demigods who, because of their mixed parentage, spend alternate days in Heaven and the Underworld. In sacrificing to the ghosts of heroes one draws the head of the victim down, but in sacrificing to Gods one draws it up. So in sacrificing to the Twins I followed an old practice which had lapsed for many years, of alternately drawing one head down and one head up. I have seldom seen more propitious entrails.