Claudius the God (53 page)

Ostorius in return sent her back the noble hostages, one of whom she married. Her brother, the prince, she put to death, because he was known to have shown cowardice on the field of battle, unlike her new husband, who had only been captured after receiving even wounds and accounting for five Roman soldiers. This Queen, whose name is Cartimandua, has proved a most loyal ally.

She quarrelled with her husband because he said that he did not regard himself as bound by the old King’s oath to maintain peace with us. He could not persuade the Brigantians to make war on us, so he went down to South Wales and started a fresh revolt there. Our garrison at Caerleron was suddenly attacked in great force. The enemy were beaten off, but our losses included a battalion commander and eight captains of the Second. Not long after this two battalions of French auxiliaries, out foraging, were surprised and annihilated. Ostorius, worn out by three years of incessant fighting, took these reverses too much to heart: he fell sick and died, poor fellow, though it must have been some comfort to him that he was awarded triumphal ornaments just before this. That was two years ago. I sent out a general called Didius to take over the command of the province, but, while he was on his way the Fourteenth were beaten in a pitched battle and had to retreat to their camp, leaving prisoners in the, hands of the enemy.

Cartimandua’s husband then left South Wales and made an attack on Cartimandua herself, who had earned his anger-by putting to death two of his brothers who were plotting against her. She appealed for help to Didius, and-he sent her four battalions of the Ninth and two of Batavians. With these and her own forces she defeated her husband, captured him, and made him swear vassalage to herself and friendship to the Romans. She then pardoned him, and they are reigning together again with apparent friendliness: there have been no border raids reported since: Meanwhile Didius has restored order in South Wales.

So let me now take leave of my province of Britain, which has cost us heavily in men and money and has so far yielded small returns except in glory. But I regard the occupation as a good investment for Rome in the long run, and if we treat the natives with justice and good faith they will become valuable allies and, eventually, valuable citizens. 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.

Caractacus was brought to Rome, and I decreed a general holiday to celebrate his arrival. The whole City came out to look at him. The Guards Division was on parade, outside the Camp, and I was sitting on a tribunal platform erected for the occasion at the Camp gate. Trumpeters sounded and, in the distance a small procession was moving across the turf towards me. First came a detachment of captured British, soldiers; then Caractacus’s household thegns; then wagons heaped with trappings and collars and weapons - not only Caractacus’s own, but all that he had won in wars with his neighbours, captured in that camp at Cefn Carnedd then Caractacus’s wife, daughter, brother-in-law, and-nephews, and lastly Caractacus himself, carrying his head high and looking neither to the right nor the left until he came to my platform. There he made a dignified obeisance, and asked permission to address me. I. granted him permission and he spoke in a frank and noble way, in such remarkably fluent Latin, too, that I positively envied him: I am a wretched speaker and always get entangled in my sentences.

‘Caesar, you see me here in chains before you, suing for my life, after having resisted your country’s arms for seven long years. I might well have held out for seven years longer if I had not trusted Queen Cartimandua to respect the sacred guest-right of our island. In Britain when a man claims hospitality at any house, and is given salt and bread and wine, the host then holds himself answerable for his guest’s life with his own. A man took refuge once at my father Cymbeline’s court and, after having eaten his salt, revealed himself as the murderer of my grandfather. But my father said: “You are my guest. I cannot harm you.” Queen Cartimandua by putting me in these chains and sending me here did more honour to you as her ally than to herself as the Queen of the Brigantians.

‘I make a voluntary confession of my own faults. The letter that my brother Togodumnus wrote to you, and that I did not dissuade him from sending, was as foolish as it was, discourteous. We were young and proud then and trusting to hearsay we underestimated the strength of your Roman armies, the loyalty of your generals, and your own great qualities as a commander. If I had matched the glory of my lineage and of my own feats with a becoming-moderation in prosperity I should no doubt have entered this City as a friend, not as a captive; nor would you then have disdained to welcome me royally, as a son of my father Cymbeline whom your God Augustus honoured as an ally and overlord like him of many a conquered tribe.

‘For my prolonged resistance to you, once I found that you were bent on annexing my kingdom and the kingdoms of my allies, I have no apologies to offer. I had men and arms, chariots; horses, and treasure: do you wonder that I was unwilling to part with them? You Romans aim at extending your sway over all mankind, but it does not follow that all mankind will immediately accept that sway. You must first prove your right to rule, and prove it with the sword. It has been a long war between us, Caesar, and your armies have pursued me from tribe to tribe, and from fort to fort, and I have taken heavy toll of them; but-now I am caught and the victory is yours at last. If I had surrendered to your lieutenant Aulus Plautius at that first engagement on the Medway I should have been proved an, unworthy foe and Aulus Plautius would not have sent for you, and so, you would never have celebrated your deserved triumph. Therefore respect your enemy, now that he is humbled, grant him his life, and your noble clemency will never be forgotten either by your own country or by mine. Britain will reverence the clemency of the victor, if Rome approves the courage of the conquered.’

I called. Aulus to me. ‘For my part I am willing to let this brave king go free. To restore him to his throne in Britain would be everywhere regarded as weakness, so that I cannot do: But I am inclined to let him stay; here in Rome as a guest of, the City, with a pension suited; to his needs; and also to release his. family and household thegns. What do you say?’ - Aulus answered: ‘Caesar, Caractacus has shown himself a gallant enemy. He has tortured or executed no prisoners, poisoned no wells, fought fair, and kept faith. If you release him I shall be proud to take him by the hand, and offer him my friendship.’

I freed Caractacus, He thanked-me gravely: ‘I wish for every Roman citizen a heart like yours.’ That night he and his family dined at the Palace. Aulus was there, too and we old campaigners fought the battle of Brentwood over again as the wine went round. I told Caractacus how nearly he and I had met in a hand-to-hand conflict. He laughed and said: ‘If I had only known! But if you are still eager for the fight, I’m your man; Tomorrow morning on Mars Field, you on your mare and me on foot? The disparity of ourages will make that fair.’ Another remark of his has since become famous: I cannot understand, my Lords, how as, rulers of a City as glorious as this is, with its houses like marble cliffs, its shops like royal treasuries, its temples like the dreams that our Druids report when they return from magical visits to the Kingdom of the Dead, you can ever find it in your hearts to covet the possession of our poor island huts.’

EXPIATORY games, called Tarentine or Saecular, are celebrated at Rome to mark the beginning of each now cycle, or age of men. They take the form of a festival of three days and nights in honour of Pluto and Proserpine, the Gods of the Underworld. Historians agree that these games were first formally established as a public ritual by Publicola, a Valerian, in the two hundred and fiftieth year after the foundation of Rome - which was also the year in which the Claudians came to Rome from Sabine country; but they had been celebrated 110 years previously as a family ritual of the Valerians, in accordance with an oracle of Delphic Apollo. Publicola made a vow that they should be performed at the beginning of every new cycle thereafter so long as the City stood. Since his time there have been five celebrations, but at irregular intervals because of differences of opinion as to when each new cycle started. Sometimes the cycle has been taken as the natural cycle of 110 years, which is the ancient Etruscan method of reckoning, and sometimes as the Roman civil cycle of 100 years, and sometimes the Games have been celebrated as soon as it was clear that nobody survived who had taken part on the previous occasion.

The most recent celebration under the Republic was in the six hundred and seventh year from the foundation of the City, and the only celebration that had taken place since then was Augustus’s in the seven hundred and thirty-sixth year. The year of Augustus’s celebration could not be justified as marking the hundredth’ or hundred-and-tenth year from the previous celebration, nor as marking the death of the last man who had taken part in it; nor could it be understood as a date arrived at by calculation from Publicola’s time, reckoning in 100 or 110 year terms. Augustus, or rather the Board of Fifteen, his religious advisers, were reckoning from a supposed first celebration of the Games in the ninety-seventh year from the foundation of the City. I admit that in my history of his religious reforms I had accepted this date as the correct one, but only because to criticize him on this important point would have got me into serious trouble with my grandmother Livia. The fact was (not to go into the matter in detail) that his reckoning; was incorrect even if the first celebration had taken place when he said it did, which was not so. I reckoned forward from Publicola’s festival in natural cycles of 110 years (for this clearly was what a cycle meant to Publicola himself) until I reached the six hundred and ninetieth year from the foundation of the City. That was when the last celebration should have really taken place, and then not again until the eight hundredth year, the date which we have just reached in this story, namely, the seventh year of my own monarchy.

Now, each cycle has a certain fatal character, which is given it by the events of the inaugurating year. The first year of the previous cycle had been marked by the birth of Augustus, the death of Mithridates the Great, Pompey’s victory over the Phoenicians and his capture of Jerusalem, Catiline’s unsuccessful attempt at a popular revolution, and Caesar’s assumption of the office of High Pontiff. Is it necessary for me to point out the significance of each of these events? that for the next cycle our arms were destined to be successful abroad, and the Empire to be greatly extended, popular liberty to be suppressed, and the Caesars to be the mouthpieces of the Gods? Now it was my intention to, expiate the sins and crimes of this old cycle, and inaugurate a new one with solemn sacrifices. For it was in this year that I counted on completing my work of reform. I would then hand the government of a now prosperous and well-organized nation -back to the -Senate and People, from whom it had so long been withheld.

I had thought the whole plan out in detail. It was clear that government by the Senate under Consuls elected annually had great disadvantages: the single-year term was not long enough. And the Army did not wish to have its Commanderin-Chief constantly changed. My plan, briefly, was to make a free gift to the nation of the Privy Purse,, except so much of it as was needed to support me as a private citizen, and the Imperial lands, including Egypt, and to introduce a law providing for a change of government every fifth year. The ex-Consuls of the previous five-year period together with certain representatives of the People and of the Knights would form a cabinet to advise and assist one of their number, chosen by religious lot and known as the Consul-in-Chief, in the government of the country. Each member of the cabinet would be responsible to the Consul-in-Chief for a department corresponding with the departments that I - had been building up under my freedmen, or for the government of one of the frontier provinces. The Consuls of the year would act as a link between the Consul-in-Chief and the Senate, and would perform their usual duties as appeal judges; the Protectors of the People would act as a link between the Consul-in-Chief and the People. The Consuls would be elected from the Senatorial order by popular election, and in national emergencies recourse would be had to a plebiscite. I had thought out a number of ingenious safeguards for this constitution and congratulated myself that it was a workable one: my freedmen would remain as permanent officials in charge of the clerical staff, and the new government would benefit by their advice. Thus the redeeming features of monarchical government would be retained without prejudice to republican liberty. And to keep the Army contented I would embody in the new constitution a measure providing for a bounty of money to be paid every five years, proportionate to the success of our arms abroad and to the increase of wealth at home. The governorships of home provinces would be distributed between knights who had risen to high command in the Army, and senators.. For the present I told nobody of my plans, but continued with a light heart at my work. I was convinced that as soon as I proved by a voluntary resignation of the monarchy that my intentions had never been tyrannical and that such summary executions as I, had ordered had been forced on me, I would be forgiven all my lesser errors for the sake of the great work of reform that I had accomplished, and all suspicions would be put to rest. I told myself: ‘Augustus always said that he would resign and restore the Republic: but somehow never did, because of Livia. And Tiberius always said the same, but somehow he never did, because he was afraid of the hatred that he had earned by his cruelty and tyranny. But I really am going to resign: there’s nothing to prevent me. My conscience is clear, and Messalina’s no Livia.’