Claudius the God (26 page)

I took my second Consulship in March, which is the New Year, but resigned the office two months later in favour of the next senator due for it: I was too busy to be bothered with the routine duties it involved. This was the year that my A.D. 42 daughter Octavia was born, that the Vinicianus Scribonianus rising took place, and that I added Morocco to the Empire as a province. I shall first tell briefly what happened in Morocco. The Moors had risen again under a capable general named Salabus, who had led them in the previous campaign. Paulinus, who was commanding the Roman forces, overran the country as far as the Atlas range, but was unable to come to grips with Salabus himself and suffered heavy losses from ambushes and night attacks. His term of command presently expired and he had to return to Rome. He was succeeded by one Hosidius Geta whom I instructed, before he set out, not on any account to allow Salabus to become another Tacfarinas. (Tacfarinas was the Numidian who, under Tiberius, had earned three Roman generals the laurel crown by allowing himself to be defeated by them in apparently decisive engagements, but who always reappeared at the head of his reconstituted army as soon as the Roman forces were withdrawn; however, a fourth general ended the business by catching and killing Tacfarinas himself.) I said to Geta: ‘Don’t be satisfied with partial successes. Search out Salabus’s main force, crush it and kill or capture Salabus. Chase him all round Africa if necessary. If he runs off inland to the country where they say that men’s heads sprout from under their armpits, why, follow him there. You’ll easily recognize him by his having his head in a different place.’ I also said to Geta: ‘I won’t attempt to direct your campaign: but one word of advice - don’t be bound by hard-and-fast campaigning rules like Augustus’s, general Aelius Gallus who marched to the conquest of Arabia as if Arabia were a second Italy, or Germany. He loaded up his men with the usual entrenching tools and heavy armour instead of water-skins and extra corn rations, and even brought a train of siege-engines. When colic attacked the men and they began boiling the bad water that they found in the wells, to make it safer to drink, Aelius came along and cried: “What! boiling your water! No disciplined Roman soldier boils his water! And using dried dung for fuel? Unheard of! Roman-soldiers collect brushwood or else go without a fire.” He lost the greater part of his force. The interior of Morocco is a dangerous quarter too. Suit your tactics and equipment to the country.’

Geta took my advice in the most literal way. He chased Salabus from end to end of Morocco, defeating him twice, and on the second occasion only just failing to capture him. Salabus then fled to the Atlas mountains and crossed them into the unexplored desert beyond, instructing his men to hold the pass while he collected reinforcements from his allies, the desert nomads. Geta left a detachment near the pass and with the hardiest of his men struggled across another, more difficult, pass a few miles away and went in faithful search of Salabus. He had taken as much water with him as his men and mules could possibly carry, cutting down his equipment to the least possible weight. He reckoned on finding some water at least, but followed Salabus’s criss-cross track in the desert sands for more than 200 miles before he saw so much as a thorn-bush growing. The water began to give out and the men to weaken. Geta concealed his anxiety, but realized that even if he retreated at once, and gave up all hope of capturing Salabus, he, had not enough water to see him safely back. The Atlas was 100 miles off, and only a divine miracle could save him.

Now, at Rome when there is a drought we know how to persuade the Gods’ to send rain. There is a black stone called the Dripping Stone, captured originally from the Etruscans and stored in a temple of Mars outside the City. We go in solemn procession and fetch it within the walls, where we pour water on it, singing incantations and sacrificing. Rain always follows - unless there has been some slight mistake in the ritual, as is frequently the case. But Geta had no Dripping Stone with him, so he was completely at a loss. The nomads were accustomed to going without water for days at a time and knew the country perfectly besides. They began to close in on the Roman force; they cut off, killed, stripped, and mutilated a few stragglers whom the heat had driven out of their wits.

Geta had a black orderly who had been born in this very desert but had been sold as a slave too the Moors. He could not remember where the nearest water was, because he had been sold when only a child. But he said to Geta, ‘General, why don’t you pray to Father Gwa-Gwa!’ Geta inquired who this person might be. The man replied that he was the God of the Deserts who gave rain in time of drought. Geta said, ‘The Emperor told me to suit my tactics, to the country. Tell me how to invoke Father Gwa-Gwa and I shall do so at once.’ The orderly told him to take a little pot, bury it up to the neck in the sand and fill at with beer, saying as he did so: ‘Father Gwa-Gwa, we offer you beer.’ Then the men were to fill their drinking vessels with all, the water that they had with them in their water-skins except enough to dip their fingers in and sprinkle on the ground. Then everyone must drink and dance and adore Father Gwa-Gwa, sprinkling the water and drinking every drop in the skins. Geta himself must chant: ‘As this water is sprinkled, so let rain fall! We have drunk our last drop, Father. None remains. What would you have us do? Drink beer, Father Gwa-Gwa, and make water for us, your children, or we die!’ For beer is a powerful diuretic and these nomads had the same theological notions as the early Greeks who considered that Jove made water when it rained; so that the same word (with a mere difference in gender) is still used in Greek for Heaven and for chamberpot. The nomads considered that their God would be encouraged to make water, in the form of rain, by offering him a drink of beer. The sprinkling of water, like our own lustrations, was to remind him how rain fell, in case he had forgotten.

Geta in desperation called his tottering force together and inquired whether anyone happened to have’ a little beer with him. And by good luck a party of German auxiliaries had a pint or two hoarded in a water-skin; they had brought it with them in preference to water. Geta made them give it up to him. He then equally distributed all the water that was left, but the beer he reserved for Father Gwa-Gwa. The troops danced and drank the water and sprinkled the necessary drops on the sand, while Geta uttered the prescribed formula of invocation. Father Gwa-Gwa (his name apparently means ‘Water’) was so pleased and impressed by the honour paid him by this imposing force of perfect strangers that the sky was immediately darkened with rain-clouds and a downpour began which lasted for three days and turned every sandy hollow into a brimming pool of water. The army was saved. The nomads, taking the abundant rain as an undeniable token of Father Gwa Gwa’s favour towards the Romans, came humbly forward with offers of alliance. Geta refused this unless they first delivered-up Salabus to him. Salabus was presently brought to the camp in bonds. Presents were exchanged between Geta and the nomads and a treaty made; then Geta marched back without further loss to the mountains; where he caught Salabus’s men, who were still holding the pass, in the rear, killing or capturing the whole detachment. The other Moorish forces, seeing their leader brought back to Tangier as a prisoner, surrendered without further fighting. So two or three pints of beer had saved the lives of more than 2,000 Romans and gained Rome a new province. I ordered the dedication of a shrine to Father Gwa-Gwa in the desert beyond the mountains, where he ruled; and Morocco, which I now divided up into two provinces - Western Morocco with its capital at Tangier-and Eastern Morocco with its capital at Caesarea. had to furnish it with a yearly tribute of 100 goat-skins of the best beer. I awarded Geta triumphal ornaments and would have asked the Senate to confer on him the hereditary title of Maurus (of Morocco’) had he not exceeded his powers by putting Salabus to death at Tangier without first consulting me. There was no military necessity for this act; he only did it for vainglory.

I mentioned just now the birth of my daughter Octavia. Messalina had come to be much courted by the Senate and People, because it was-well known that I had delegated to her most of the duties which fell tome in my capacity as Director of Public Morals. She acted, in theory, only as my adviser, but had, as I have explained, a duplicate seal of mine to ratify documents with; and within certain limits I let her decide what knights or senators to degrade for social offences and whom to appoint to the resulting vacancies. She had now also undertaken the laborious task of deciding on the fitness of all candidates for the Roman Citizenship. The Senate wished to vote her the title of Augusta and made the birth of Octavia the pretext.. Much as I loved Messalina, I did not think that she had yet earned this honour: it was something for her, to look forward to in middle life. She was as yet only seventeen, whereas my grandmother Livia had earned the title only after her death and my mother in extreme old age. So I refused it to her. But the Alexandrians, without asking my permission - and once the thing was done I could not undo it - struck a coin with my; head on the obverse and on the reverse a full-length portrait of Messalina in the dress of the Goddess Demeter, holding in the palm of one hand two figurines representing her little boy and girl, and in the other a sheaf of corn representing fertility. This was a flattering play on the name Messalina,- the Latin word messis meaning the corn-harvest. She was delighted. She came to me shyly one evening, peeped. up at my face without saying anything, and at last asked, plainly embarrassed, and after one or two false starts: ‘Do you love me, dearest husband?’

I assured her that I loved her beyond anyone else in the world.

‘And what did you tell me, the other day were the Three Main Pillars of the Temple of Love?’

‘I said that the Temple of True Love was pillared on kindness, frankness, and understanding. Or rather I quoted the philosopher Mnasalcus as having said so.’

‘Then will you show me the greatest kindness and understanding that your love for me is capable of showing? My love will have to provide only the frankness. I’ll come straight to the point. If it’s not too hard for you, would you - could you possibly - allow me to sleep in a bedroom apart from you for a little while? It isn’t that I don’t love you every bit as much as you love me, but now that we have had two children in less than two years of marriage, oughtn’t we to wait a little before we risk having a third? It is a very disagreeable thing to be pregnant: I have morning-sickness and heartburn and my digestion goes wrong, and I don’t feel I could go through that again just yet. And, to be honest, quite apart: from this dread, I somehow feel less passionately towards you than I did. I swear that I love you as much as ever, but now it’s rather as my dearest friend and as the father of my children than as my lover. Having children uses up a lot of a woman’s emotions, I suppose. I’m not hiding anything from you. You do believe me, don’t you?’

‘I believe you and I love you’

She stroked my face. ‘And I’m not like any ordinary woman, am I, whose business is merely to have children and children and children until she wears out? I am your wife - the Emperor’s wife - and I help him in his Imperial work, and that should take precedence over everything, shouldn’t it? Pregnancy interferes with work terribly.’

I said rather ruefully: ‘Of course, my dearest, if you really feel like that, I am not the sort of husband to. insist on forcing anything on you. But is it really necessary for us to sleep apart? Couldn’t we at least occupy the same bed, for company’s sake?’

‘0 Claudius,’ she said, nearly crying, ‘it has been difficult enough for me to make up my mind to ask you about this, because I love you so much and don’t want to hurt you in the least. Don’t make it more difficult. And now that I have frankly told you how I feel, wouldn’t it be dreadfully difficult for you if you had violently passionate feelings for me while we were sleeping together and I could not honestly return them? If I repulsed you that would be as destructive of our love as if I yielded against my will; and I am sure you would feel very remorseful afterwards if anything happened to destroy my love for you. No, can’t you see now how much better it would be for us to sleep apart until I feel about you again as I used to do? Suppose, just to distance myself from temptation, I were to move across to my suite in the New Palace? It’s more convenient for my work to be over there. I can get up in the morning and go straight to my papers. This lying-in has put me greatly behindhand with my Citizens’ Roll.’

I pleaded: ‘How long do you think you will want to be away?’

‘We’ll see how it works out,’ she said, kissing the back of my neck tenderly. ‘Oh, how relieved I am that you aren’t angry. How long? Oh, I don’t know. Does it matter so much? After all, sex is not essential to love if there is any other strong bond between lovers such as common idealistic pursuit of Beauty or Perfection. I do agree with Plato about that. He thought sex positively an obstruction to love.’

‘He was talking of, homosexual love,’ I reminded her, trying not to sound depressed.

‘Well, my dear,’ she said lightly, ‘I do a man’s work, the same as you,- and so it comes to much the same thing, doesn’t it? And as for a common idealism, we have to be very idealistic indeed to get through all this drudgery in the name of attempted political perfection, don’t we? Well, is that really settled? Will you really be a dear, dear Claudius, and not insist on my sharing your bed in a literal sense, I mean? In all other senses I am still your devoted little Messalina, and do remember that it has been very, very painful for me to ask you this.’

I told her that I respected and loved her all the more for her frankness, and of course she must have her way. But that naturally I should be impatient for the time when she felt again for me as she once had done.

‘Oh, please don’t be impatient,’ she cried. ‘It makes it so difficult for me. If you were impatient I should feel that I was being unkind to you, and should probably pretend feelings; that I didn’t have. I may be an exception, but somehow sex doesn’t mean much to me. I suspect, though, that many women get bored with it without ceasing to love their husbands or to want their husbands to love them. But I’ll always continue to be suspicious of other women. If you were to have affairs with other women, I think I should go mad with jealousy. It isn’t that I mind the thought of your sleeping with someone other than me; it’s the fear that you might come to love her better than me, not merely regarding her as a pleasant sexual convenience, and then want to divorce me. I mean, if you were to sleep with a pretty housemaid occasionally, or some nice clean woman too low in rank for me to be jealous of, I should be very glad, really delighted, to think that you were having a nice time with her; and if you and I ever slept together afterwards we wouldn’t consider it as anything that had come between us. We’d merely think of it as a measure that you had taken for the sake of your health -like a purge or an emetic. I shouldn’t expect you even to tell me the woman’s name, in fact I’d prefer you not to, so long as you first promised not to have doings with anyone about whom I would have a right to feel jealous. Wasn’t that how Livia is said to have felt about Augustus?’