Claudius the God (17 page)

The Senate had voted me triumphal dress for the occasion; the excuse was a small campaign that had recently been brought to a conclusion in Morocco, where disturbances had followed Caligula’s murder of the King, my cousin Ptolemy. I had had no responsibility for the Moroccan expedition, and though it was now customary for the Commanderin-Chief to be voted triumphal dress at the close, of a campaign, even though he had never left the City, I would not have accepted the honour but for one consideration. I decided that it would look strange for a. Commanderin-Chief to dedicate a temple to the only two Greek demigods who had ever fought for Rome, in a dress which was a confession that he had never done any real army commanding. But I only wore my triumphal wreath and cloak during the ceremony itself for the rest of the five days festival I wore an, ordinary purple-bordered senator’s gown.

The first three -days were devoted to theatrical shows in the Theatre of Pompey, which I rededicated for the occasion. The stage and part of the auditorium had been burned down in Tiberius’s reign, but rebuilt by him and dedicated to Pompey again. Caligula, however, had disliked seeing Pompey’s title, ‘The Great’, in the inscription and had rededicated the Theatre to himself. I now gave it back to Pompey, though I put an inscription on the stage, giving Tiberius credit for its restoration after the fire and myself credit for this rededication to Pompey: it is the only public building on which I have ever let my name appear.

I had never liked the wholly un-Roman practice that had sprung up towards the end of Augustus’s reign, of men and women of rank appearing on the stage to show off their histrionic and, corybantic talents. I cannot think why Augustus did not discourage them more sternly than he did. I suppose it was because there was no law against the practice, and Augustus was tolerant of Greek innovations. His successor Tiberius disliked the theatre, whoever the actors might be, and called it a great waste of time and an encouragement to vice and folly. But Caligula not only recalled the professional actors whom Tiberius had banished from the City but strongly encouraged noble amateurs to perform and often appeared on the stage. himself. The chief impropriety of the innovation lay for me in the sheer incapacity of the noble amateurs. Romans are not born actors. In Greece men and women of rank take their parts in theatrical shows as a matter of course, and never fail to acquit themselves honourably. But I have never seen a Roman amateur who was any good. Rome has only produced one great actor, Roscius, but he won his extraordinary perfection in the art by the extraordinary pains that he took over it. He never once made a single gesture or movement on the stage that he had not carefully rehearsed beforehand again and again until it seemed a natural action. No other Roman has ever had the patience to forge himself into a Greek. So on this occasion I sent special messages to all noblemen and noblewomen who had ever appeared on the stage in Caligula’s reign, ordering. them under pain of my displeasure to act in two plays and an interlude which I had chosen for them. They were not to be helped out by any professional actor, I said. At the same time I called for Harpocras, my Games secretary, and told him that I wished him to get together the best cast of professional actors that he could find in Rome and see whether he could not, on the second day of the festival, show what acting really should be. It was to be: the same programme; but I kept this a secret. My little object lesson worked very well. The first day’s performances were pitiable to witness. Such wooden gestures and awkward entrances and exits, such mumbling and mangling of parts, such lack of gravity in the tragedies and of humour in the comedies, that the-audience soon grew impatient and coughed and shuffled and talked. But next day the professional company, acted so brilliantly that since then no man or woman of rank has ever dared to appear upon the public stage.

On the third day the principal performance was the Pyrrhic sword-dance, the native dance of the Greek cities of Asia Minor. It was performed by the sons of the notables of those cities, whom Caligula had sent for on the pretence of wanting them to, dance for-him; in reality he intended them for hostages for their parents good behaviour while he visited Asia Minor and raised money by his usual extortionate methods. Hearing of their arrival at the Palace, Caligula had gone to inspect them and was on the point of making them rehearse a song which they had learnt in his honour when Cassius Chaerea came up to ask for the watchword; and that was -the signal for his assassination. So now the boys danced with the greater joy and skill for knowing what a fate they had escaped; and sang me a very grateful song when, they had done. I rewarded them all with the Roman citizenship and sent them home a few days later, loaded with presents.

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 swordfighting 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 wildbeast show that you will see for some time: I am going to wait until the prices come down before I order anymore. 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.’ This appealed to the crowd’s commercial sense and they cheered me gratefully. So that was the end of the festival, except for a big banquet which I gave afterwards at the Palace to the nobility and their wives, also to certain representatives of the People. More than 2,000 people were served. There were no farfetched delicacies, but it was a well-thought-out meal, with good wine and excellent roasts, and I heard no complaints about the absence of tit-lark-tongue pastries or antelope fawns in aspic or ostrich-egg omelettes: Chapter 8 I SOON came to a decision about the swordfighting and wildbeast hunts. First about the wild beasts. I had heard of a sport practised in Thessaly which had the double advantage of being exciting to watch and cheap to provide. So I introduced it at Rome as an alternative to the usual leopard and lion hunts. It was played with half-grown wild bulls. The Thessalians used to rouse the bull by sticking small darts into its hide as it emerged from the pen where it was imprisoned not enough to injure it, only enough to vex it. It used to come charging out and then they used to jump nimbly out of its way. They were quite unarmed. Sometimes they used to deceive it by holding coloured cloths before their bodies: when it charged the cloths they moved them away at the last moment without shifting their own ground. The bull would always charge the moving cloth. Or, as it charged, they would leap forward and either clear it in a single bound, or step on its rump for a moment before coming to ground again. The bull would gradually weary, and they would do still more daring tricks. There was one man who could actually stand with his back to the bull, bending down with his head between his legs, and then, as it charged, turn a back-somersault in the air and land standing on the bull’s shoulders. It was a common sight to see a man ride around the ring balanced on a bull’s back. If a bull would not tire quickly, they would make it gallop around the arena by sitting it as if it were a horse, holding a horn in the left hand and twisting its tail with the right. When it was sufficiently out of breath the chief performer would wrestle with it, holding it by both horns and slowly forcing it to the ground. Sometimes he would catch the bull’s ear between his teeth to help him in his task. It was a very interesting sport to watch, and the bull often caught and killed a man who took too great liberties with it. The cheapness of the sport lay in the very reasonable demands for payment made by the Thessalians, who were simple countrymen, and in the survival of the bull for, another performance. Clever bulls who learned how to avoid being tricked and dominated soon became great popular favourites. There was one called Rusty, who was almost as famous in its way as the horse Incitatus. He killed ten of his tormentors in as many festivals. The crowd came to prefer these bull-baitings to all other shows except swordfighting.

About the swordfighters: I decided now to recruit them principally from the slaves who in the reigns of Caligula and Tiberius had testified against their masters at treason trials and so brought about their deaths. The two crimes that I abominate most are parricide and treachery. For parricide, indeed, I have reintroduced the ancient penalty: the criminal is whipped until he bleeds and then sewed up in a sack together with a cock, a dog, and a viper, representing lust, shamelessness, and ingratitude, and finally thrown into the sea. I regard treachery of slaves towards their masters as a sort of parricide too, so I would always make them fight until one combatant was dead or severely wounded; and I never granted any man remission; but, made him fight again at the next Games, and so on until he was killed or wholly disabled. Once or twice it happened that one of, them pretended to be mortally injured when he had only received a slight cut, and would writhe on the sand as if unable to continue. If I found that he was shamming I always gave orders for his throat to be cut.

I believe the populace enjoyed the entertainments that I gave them far more than Caligula’s, because they saw them much more rarely. Caligula had such a passion for chariot-racing and wildbeast hunts that almost every other day was made the excuse for a holiday. This was a great waste of public time and the audience got bored long before he did. I removed 150 of Caligula’s new holidays from the calendar. Another decision that I took was to make a regulation about repetitions. It was the custom: that if a mistake had been made in the ceremony of a festival, even if it was only a small one on the last day of all, the whole business had to be gone through again. In Caligula’s reign repetitions had become quite a farce. The nobles whom he had forced to celebrate games in his, honour at their own cost knew that they would never escape with only single performance: he would. be sure to find some flaw in the ceremony when it was all over and force them to repeat it two, three, four, five, and even as many as ten times. So they learned to appease him as a matter of course by making; an obviously intentional, mistake on the last day, and so winning the favour of only repeating the show once. My edict was that if any festival had to be repeated, the repetition should not occupy more than a single day, and if a mistake, were then made, that would be an end of the matter. As a result no mistakes at all were made: it was seen that I did not encourage them. I also ordered that there should be no official, celebrations of my birthday and no swordfighting displays given for my preservation. It was wrong, I said, for men’s lives to be sacrificed, even the lives of swordfighters, in an attempt to purchase the favour of the Infernal Gods towards a living man.

Yet, so that I should not be accused of stinting the City’s pleasures, I sometimes used to proclaim suddenly one morning that there would be games held that afternoon in the Enclosure in Mars Field. I explained that there was no particular reason for the games, except that it was a good day for them, and that since I had made no particular preparations it would be a case of taking pot-luck. I called them Sportula or-Pot-luck Games. They lasted only for the single afternoon.

I mentioned just now my hatred of slaves who betrayed their masters. But I realized that unless masters had a properly paternal attitude to their slaves, slaves could not be expected to have a sense of filial duty to their masters. Slaves, after, all, are human. I protected them by legislation, of which I may give an example. The rich freedman from whom Herod had once borrowed money to, pay back my mother and myself had greatly enlarged his hospital for sick slaves, which was now situated on the Island of Aesculapius, in the Tiber. He advertised himself as ready to buy slaves in any condition with a view to curing them,, but promised first option of repurchase to the former owner at a price not to exceed three times, the original. His doctoring methods, were very rigorous, not to say inhumane. He treated the sick slaves exactly like cattle. But he did a very large and profitable business because most masters could not be bothered to have sick slaves in their house, distracting the other slaves from their ordinary duties; and, if they were in pain, keeping everyone awake at nights by their groans. They preferred to sell them as soon as it was clear that the illness would be a long and tedious one. In this they were, of course, following the base economical precepts of Cato the Censor. But I put a stop to the practice. I made an edict that any sick slave who had been sold to a hospital-keeper should, on recovery, be granted his liberty and not return to his master’s service, and that the master should refund the purchase money to the hospital-keeper. If a slave fell sick the master must henceforth either ‘cure him at home or pay for his cure in the hospital. In the latter case he would become free on recovery, like the slaves already sold to the hospital-keeper, and would be expected, like them, to pay a thank-offering to the hospital, to the extent of one-half his moneyearnings for the next three-years. If any master chose to kill the slave rather than cure him at home or send him to the hospital, he would be guilty of murder. I then personally inspected the island hospital and gave instructions to the manager for obvious improvements in accommodation, diet, and hygiene.

Though, as I say, I removed 150 of Caligula’s holidays from the calendar, I did, I admit, create three new festivals, each lasting three days. Two were in honour of my parents. I made these fall on their birthdays, postponing to vacant dates two minor festivals which happened to coincide with them. I ordered dirges to be sung in my parents memories and provided funeral banquets at my own expense. My father’s victories in Germany had already been honoured with an Arch on the Appian Way and with the hereditary-title Germanicus, which was the surname of which I was proudest; but I felt that his memory deserved to be refreshed in this way as well: My mother had been granted important honours by Caligula, including the title of ‘Augusta’, but when he quarrelled with her and forced her to commit suicide, he meanly took them all away again: he wrote letters to the Senate accusing her of treason to himself, impiety to the other Gods, a life of malice and avarice, and the entertainment in her house of fortune-tellers and astrologers in defiant disobedience to the laws. Before I could decently make my mother ‘Augusta’ once more I had to plead before the Senate that she was entirely guiltless of these charges: that though strong-minded she was extremely pious, and though thrifty, extremely generous, and that she never bore malice against anyone and never once consulted a fortune-teller or astrologer-in all her life. I introduced the necessary witnesses. Among them was Briseis, my mother’s wardrobe-maid, who had been my property as a slave until she was given her freedom in old age. In fulfilment of a promise made a year or two before to Briseis, I presented her to the House as follows: ‘My Lords, this old woman was once a faithful slave of mine, and for her life of industry and devotion in the service of the Claudian family - as maid first of all to my grandmother Livia, and then to my mother Antonia, whose hair she, used to dress I recently rewarded her with freedom. Some persons, even members of my own household, have suggested that she was really my mother’s slave: I take this opportunity of branding any such suggestion as a mischievous lie! She was born as my father’s slave when my father was a mere, child on his death my brother inherited her: and then she came to me. She has had no other masters or mistresses. You can place the fullest reliance on her testimony.’ The senators were astonished at the warmth of my words, but cheered them, hoping to please me; and I was indeed pleased, because to old Briseis this was the most glorious moment of her life and the applause seemed intended as much for herself as for me. She began to; weep, and her rambling tributes to my mother’s character were hardly audible. She died a few days later in a splendid room in the Palace and I gave her a most luxurious funeral.