Claudius the God (44 page)

Next came Messalina, the Victor’s wife, in her carriage of state. Next, walking on foot, the commanders who had been awarded triumphal dress. Then the winners of the Olive Crown. Then the colonels, captains, sergeants, and other ranks who had been decorated for valour. Then the elephants. Then the camels, yoked two and two and drawing carriages on which were mounted the six thunder-and-lightning machines of Caligula’s invention, which had been put to such apt use by Posides. Then came the Heron King on his stilts, a golden bracelet twisted about his neck. I am told that, after myself, the Heron King earned more cheers than anyone. After him walked Posides with his Untipped Spear, and the Spanish oculist, wearing a gown, for he had been rewarded with the Roman citizenship. Then came the Roman cavalry, and then the infantry in marching order, their weapons adorned with laurel; The younger soldiers were shouting ‘Io Triumphe!’ and singing hymns of victory, but the veterans exercised the right of free speech which was theirs for the day, indulging in sarcastic ribaldry at the Victor’s expense. The veterans of the Twentieth had composed a fine song for the occasion:

Claudius was a famous scholar,
Claudius shed less blood than ink,
When he came to fight the Britons
From the fray he did not shrink,
But the weapons of his choice were
Rope and stilts and camel stink.
O, O, Oh!

Rope and stilts and stink of camel
Made the British army shake.
Off they ran with yells of horror
And their cries the dead would wake -
Cries as loud as Claudius utters
When he’s got the stomach-ache.
O, O, Oh!

I am told that at the tail of this column there were bawdy songs sung about Messalina, but I did not hear them where I was indeed, if they had been sung by the yeomen walking just ahead of me I should not have heard them, the crowd was raising such a tremendous din. After the infantry came detachments of auxiliaries, headed by the Balearics and Nubians.

That ended the procession proper, but it was followed by a laughing and cheering rabble giving a mock triumph to Baba, the clown of Alexandria, who had come to Rome to improve his fortunes. He rode in a public dung-cart, to which had been yoked in a row a goat, a sheep, a pig, and a fox. He was painted blue, with British woad, and dressed in a fantastic parody of triumphal dress. His cloak was a patchwork quilt and his tunic an old sack trimmed with dirty coloured ribbons. His sceptre was a cabbage-stick with a dead bat tied to the end of it with string, and his laurel branch was a thistle. Our most famous native-born clown, Augurinus, had recently consented to share the government of the Society of Vagabonds with Baba. Baba was held to resemble me closely, and therefore always played the part of Caesar in the theatricals that the; two of them were constantly giving in the back streets of the City. Augurinus played the part of Vitellius; or a Consul of the year, or a Colonel of the Guards, or one of my ministers, according to circumstances. He had a very lively gift for parody. On this particular occasion he represented the slave who held the crown over Baba (an inverted chamberpot into which, every now and then, Baba’s head disappeared) and kept tickling him with a cock’s feather. Baba’s sack-tunic was torn behind and disclosed Baba’s rump, painted blue with bold red markings to make it look like a grinning human face. Baba’s hands trembled madly the whole time and he jerked his head about in caricature of my nervous tic, rolling his eyes, and whenever Augurinus molested him struck back with the thistle or the dead bat. In another dung-cart behind, under a tattered hood, reclined an enormous naked negress with a brass ring in her nose, nursing a little pink pig. The spoils of this rival triumph were displayed on handcarts wheeled by ragged hawkers kitchen refuse, broken bedsteads, filthy mattresses, rusty iron, cracked cooking-pots, and all sorts of mouldy lumber—and the prisoners were dwarfs, fat men, thin men, albinos, cripples, blind men, hydrocephalitics, and men suffering from dreadful diseases or chosen for their surprising ugliness. The rest of the procession was in keeping: I am told that the models and pictures, illustrating Baba’s victories were the funniest things, in a dirty way, ever seen at Rome.

When we came to the Capitoline Hill, I dismounted and went through a performance which custom demanded but which I found a great physical strain: I ascended the steps of the Temple of Jove humbly kneeling on my knees. Young Pompey and Silanus supported me on either side. At this point it was the custom to lead aside the captured enemy chiefs and execute them in the prison adjoining the temple. This custom was the survival of an ancient rite of human sacrifice, in thanksgiving for victory. I dispensed with it on grounds of public policy: I decided to keep these, chiefs alive at Rome in order to give others in Britain who were still holding out against us a demonstration of clemency. The Britons themselves sacrificed war prisoners, but it would be absurd to commemorate our intention of civilizing their island with an act of primitive barbarism. I would grant these chiefs and their families small pensions from the public funds and encourage them to become Romanized, so that later when regiments of British auxiliaries were formed there would be officers to command them capable of acting in friendly co-operation with our own forces.

Though 1 failed to sacrifice the chiefs to Jove I did not at any rate fail to sacrifice the white bulls, or to give the God an offering from the spoils (the pick of the golden ornaments from Cymbeline’s palace), or to place in the lap of his sacred image the laurel-crown from my brow. Then I and my companions in triumph, and Messalina, were entertained by the college of the Priest of Jove to a public banquet while the troops dispersed and were entertained by the City. A house whose table was not honoured by the presence of at least one triumphant hero was an unlucky house indeed. I had heard unofficially, the night before, that the Twentieth were planning another drunken orgy like the one in which they had taken part during Caligula’s triumph: they intended to launch an assault on the Goldsmiths Street and if they found the doors of the shops barred they would use fire or battering-rams. I thought at first of defending the street with a corps of Watchmen, but that would only have meant bloodshed, so I had the better idea of filling the flasks of all the troops with a free wine ration with which. to drink my health. The flasks were filled just before the procession started and my orders were not to drink until the trumpets gave them the signal that the sacrifice had been duly made. It was all good wine, but what I gave the Twentieth was heavily doctored with poppy-seed. So they drank my health and that put them so soundly to sleep that by the time they woke up the triumph was over: one man, I regret to say, never woke up. But at least there was no serious disturbance of the peace that day.

In the evening I was guided home to the Palace by a long torchlight procession and the corps of flute-players, and followed by enormous crowds of cheering and singing citizens. I was tired out and after washing off my red paint went straight to bed, but the festivities continued all night and would not let me sleep. At midnight I rose and with only Narcissus and Pallas as my companions went out into the streets. I was disguised as an ordinary citizen in a plain white gown. I wanted to hear what people; really thought of me. We mixed with the crowd. The steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux were dotted with groups of people resting and talking, and here we found seats. Everyone addressed everyone else without ceremony. I was glad that free speech had returned: to Rome at last, after its long suppression by Tiberius and Caligula even; though some of the things I heard did not altogether please: me. The general opinion seemed to be that it had been a very. fine triumph but that it would have been still finer if I bad distributed money to the citizens as well as to the soldiers, and increased the corn ration. (Corn had been scarce that winter again through no fault of mine.) I was anxious to hear what a battle-scarred captain of the Fourteenth sitting near us had to say: he was with a brother., whom he had apparently not seen for sixteen years: At first he would not talk about the battle, though his brother pressed him to do so, and would only discuss Britain as a military station: he thought that with luck he could count on very pretty pickings. Soon he would be able to retire, he hoped, with the rank of knight: he had made quite a packet of money in the last ten years by selling exemptions from duty to the men of his company, and ‘on the Rhine one doesn’t get a chance of spending much money - it’s not like at Rome’. But in the end he said: ‘Frankly speaking, we officers of the Fourteenth didn’t think much of the Brentwood fighting. The Emperor made it too easy for us. Wonderfully clever man, the Emperor. One of these strategists. Gets it all out of books. That trip-rope, now, that was a typical stratagem. And that great bird, flapping its wings and making weird, sounds. And getting the camels forward on the flank to scare the enemy’s ponies with their stink. A first-class strategist. But strategy isn’t what I call soldiering. Old Aulus Plautius was going straight at that central stockade, and be damned to the consequences. Old Aulus is a soldier. He’d have given us a better bloody battle if it had been left to him. We officers of the Fourteenth like a good bloody battle better than a clever bit of strategy. It’s what we live for, a bloody battle is, and if we lose heavily, why, that’s a soldier’s luck and it means promotion for the survivors. No promotion at all in the Fourteenth this time. A couple of corporals killed, that’s all. No, he made it too easy. I had a better time than most, of course: I got in among the chariots with my leading platoon and killed a good few British, and I won this chain here, so I can’t complain. But speaking for the Regiment as a whole, that battle wasn’t up to the standard of the two others we fought before the Emperor came: the Medway fight was a good one, now, nobody, will deny that.’

An old woman piped up: ‘Well, Captain, you’re very gallant, and we’re all very grateful and proud of you, I’m sure, but for my part I’ve got two boys serving in the Second, and though I’m disappointed that they didn’t get home-leave for to-day, I’m thankful they’re alive. Perhaps if your General Aulus, had had his way, they’d be lying there on Brentwood Hill for the crows to pick at.’

An old Frenchman agreed: ‘For my part, Captain, I shouldn’t care how a battle was won, so long as it was well won. I heard two other officers like yourself discussing the battle to-night. And one of them said: “Yes, a clever bit of strategy, but too clever: smells of the lamp.” What I say is, did the Emperor win a splendid victory or did he not? He did. Then long live the Emperor.”

But the Captain said: ‘Smells of the lamp, they said, did they? That was very well put. A strategical victory, but it smelled of the lamp. The Emperor’s altogether too clever to rank as a good soldier. For my part, I thank the Gods that I never read a book in my life.’

I said shyly to Narcissus as we went home: ‘You didn’t agree with that captain, did you, Narcissus?’

‘No, Caesar,’ said Narcissus, ‘did you? But I thought he spoke like a brave and honest man and as he’s only a captain, perhaps you ought to be rather pleased than otherwise. You don’t want captains in the army who know too much or think too much. And he certainly gave you full credit for the victory, didn’t he?’

But I grumbled: ‘Either I’m an utter imbecile or I’m altogether too clever.’

The triumph lasted for three days. On the second day we had spectacles in the Circus and in the amphitheatre simultaneously. At the first we had chariot-races, ten in all, and athletic contests, and fights between British captives and bears; and boys from Asia Minor performed the national sword-dance. At the other a pageant of the storming and sacking of Colchester and the yielding of the enemy chiefs was re-enacted, arid we had a battle between 300 Catuvellaunians and 300 Trinovants, chariots as well as infantry. The Catuvellaunians won. On the morning of the third day we had more horse-racing and a battle between Catuvellaunian broad-swordsmen and a company of Numidian spearmen, captured by Geta the year before. The Catuvellaunians won easily. The last performance took place in the Theatre - plays, interludes, and acrobatic dancing. Mnester was splendid that day; and the audience made him perform his dance of triumph in Orestes and Pylades he was Pylades three times over. He refused to take a fourth call. He put his head around the curtain and called archly ‘I can’t come, my Lords. Orestes and I are in bed together.’

Messalina said to me afterwards: ‘I want you to, talk to Mnester very sternly, my dearest husband. He’s much too independent for a man; of his profession and origin, though he is a marvellous actor. During your absence he was most rude tome on two or three occasions. When I asked him to make his company rehearse a favourite ballet of mine for a festival you know that I have been supervising all the Games and Shows because Vitellius found it too much for him, and then I found that Harpocras, the secretary, had been behaving dishonestly, and we had to have him executed, and Pheronactus whom I chose in his place has been rather slow in, learning his business - well, anyhow, it was all very difficult for me, and Mnester instead of making things easier was most dreadfully obstinate. Oh, no, he said, he couldn’t put on Ulysses and Circe because he hadn’t anyone capable of playing Circe to his Ulysses, and when I suggested The Minotaur he said that Theseus was a part he greatly disliked playing-but that on the other hand it would be below his dignity to dance in the less important part of King Minos. That’s the sort of obstruction he made all the time. He simply refused to grasp that I was your representative and that he simply must do what I told him: but I didn’t punish him because I thought you might not wish it. I waited until now I called Mnester. ‘Listen, little Greek,’ I said. ‘This is my wife, the Lady Valeria Messalina. The Senate of Rome thinks as highly of her as I do: they have paid her exalted honours. In my absence she has been taking over some of my duties for me and performing them to my entire satisfaction. She now complains that you have been both un-co-operative and insolent. Understand this: if the Lady Messalina tells you to do anything, however much obedience in the matter may happen to hurt your professional vanity, you must obey her. Anything, mark you, little Greek, and no arguments either. Anything and everything.’