Gore Vidal’s Caligula (29 page)

By now Caligula’s German guards had been alerted, and they poured into the passageway, swords drawn. They battled with Chaerea’s men, killing Chaerea. Inside the Palace, the Roman guards ran everywhere, their swords hungry for blood. They were searching for Mnester, the Emperor’s Greek plaything, for Longinus, who was privy to Caligula’s secrets, and for anybody else who had been favored by the murdered tyrant.

What they found was Uncle Claudius.

He was hiding in a palace bedroom, behind a thick curtain of gold-bordered purple wool. A guardsman pulled the curtain aside, and old Claudius tumbled out on his knees, stammering in terror, and embraced the soldier’s legs beseechingly.

The hunt was over now; the soldiers had found what they were looking for—an Emperor of their own. One whom
they
could proclaim, a proclamation that would give the Praetorian Guard preeminence in the Empire, over the Senate, over the people of Rome. Laughing, they hoisted the terrified, weeping old stumbler onto their shoulders and carried him out.

Longinus, too, had been found, but had been spared; he could be useful. In the Imperial box, he stood next to the nervously swaying Claudius. Sabinus, now Commander of the Guard, stepped forward and raised his hand, ordering the mob to silence.

“Caligula is dead!” Longinus announced.

A great gasp rose from the crowd, and then there was a fearful stillness.

“Hail Claudius!” shouted Longinus. “Hail, Claudius Caesar!”

The silence deepened. Shocked, the people looked at each other, then at the trembling, drooling old man in the plain white toga.

“Hail, Claudius Caesar!” Longinus shouted again.

Sabinus came forward, unsheathing his sword. He held it out in salute, and the citizens in the stadium shuddered at the rusty brown stains upon the blade.

“Hail, Claudius Caesar!” Sabinus cried grimly into the silence.

And now the crowd spoke as if with one voice. “Hail, Claudius!” The chant grew louder and louder, filling the great stadium—the voice of the people. “Hail, Claudius!
Hail Claudius!
HAIL, CAESAR!”

It was finished.

Only one official task remained, to build a funeral pyre for the bodies—Caligula’s, Caesonia’s, Julia’s. Later there would be a state funeral, with hypocritical honors paid to the dead. Today was for the disposal of garbage, the corpses heaped one on the other, twisted, burning. One of the guards remembered the little uniform in the shrine in Caligula’s bedroom. He fetched it and dumped it on top of the pyre.

The last thing to burn was the little pair of boots.