I, Claudius (16 page)

"the Chief Vestal, poor woman, being so unworldly".

The sacrifice was customarily held at the house of a Consul, but now always at Augustus' palace, because he ranked above the Consuls. This was convenient for Urgulania, who made the women come into her room there [which was arranged in a way to inspire fear and truthfulness], bound them to tell the truth by the most frightful [i03] oaths, and when they had confessed, dismissed them while she considered the appropriate penanceLivia, who was in the room concealed behind a curtain, would then suggest one. The two got a great deal of amusement out of this game and Livia plenty of useful information and assistance in her plans.

As Mother Confessor in tlie service of the Good Goddess, Urgulania considered herself above the law. Later I shall tell how once, when summoned by a senator to whom she owed a large sum of money to appear before the magistrate in the Debtors' Court, she refused to obey the summons; and how, to avoid the scandal, Livia paid up. On another occasion she was subpoenaed as a witness in a Senatorial enquiry: having no intention of being cross-examined she excused herself from attending and a magistrate was sent to take her deposition down in writing instead. She was a dreadful old woman with a cleft chin and hair kept black with lamp-soot [the grey showing plainly at the roots], and she lived to a great age. Her son, Silvanus, had recently been Consul and was one of those whom ^Emilius approached at the time of his plot. Silvanus went straight to Urgulania and told her about yEmilius' intentions. She passed the news on to Livia and Livia promised to reward them for this valuable information by marrying Silvanus' daughter Urgulanffla to me and so allying them with the Imperial family.

Urgulania was in Livia's confidence and was pretty sure that my uncle Tiberius--not Postumus, though he was Augustus' nearest heir--would be the next Emperor: so this marriage was even more honourable than it seemed.

I had never seen Urgulanilla. Nobody had. We knew that she lived with an aunt at Herculaneum, a town on the slopes of Vesuvius, where old Urgulania had property, but she never came to Rome even on a visit. We concluded that she must be delicate. But when Livia wrote me one of her curt cruel notes, to the effect that it had just been decided at a family council that I should many the daughter of Silvanus Plautius, and that this was a more appropriate match for me, considering my infirmities, than the two previously projected, I suspected that there was something much more seriously wrong with this Urgulanilla than mere ill-health.

A cleft palate, perhaps, or a strawberry mark across half her face? Something at any rate that made her quite unpresentable. Perhaps she was a cripple like myself.

I wouldn't mind that. Perhaps she was a very nice girl really, but misunderstood.

We might have a lot in common. Of course, it would not be like marrying Camilla, but it might at least be better than marrying./Emilia.

The day was chosen for our betrothal. I asked Germanicus about Urgulanilla, but he was as much in the dark as I was, and seemed a little ashamed of having consented to the marriage without making careful enquiries beforehand.

He was very happy with Agrippina and wanted me to be happy too. Well, the day came, a "lucky" one, and there I was again in my chaplet and clean gown again waiting at the family-altar for the bride to arrive. "The third time's lucky,"

said Germanicus. "I am sure she's a beauty, really, and kind and sensible and just the sort for you." But was she? Well, in my life I have had many cruel bad jokes played on me, but I think that this was the cruellest and worst. Urgulanilla was--well, in brief, she lived up to her name, which is the Latin form of Herculanilla. A young female Hercules she indeed was. Though only fifteen years old, she was over six foot three inches in height and still growing, and broad and strong in proportion, with the largest feet and hands I have ever seen on any human being in my life with the single exception of the gigantic Parthian hostage who walked in a certain triumphal procession many years later. Her features were regular but heavy and she wore an almost perpetual scowl. She stooped. She talked as slowly as my uncle Tiberius [whom, by the way, she resembled closely--there was even talk of her being really his daughter]. She had no learning, wit, accomplishments, or any endearing qualities. And it is strange, but the first thoughts that struck roe when I saw her were: "This woman is capable of murder by violence" and "I shall be very careful from the first to hide my repugnance to her, and give her no just cause to harbour resentment against me. For if once she comes to hate me, my life is not safe."

I am a pretty good actor, and though the solemnity of the ceremony was broken by smirks, whispered jokes and repressed titters from the company, Urgulanilla had no [i°5] cause to blame me for this indecorousness. After it was over the two of us were summoned into the presence of Livia and Urgulania.

When the door was shut and we stood there facing them--myself nervous and fidgety, Urgulanilla massive and expressionless and clenching and unclenching her great fists--the solemnity of these two evil old grandmothers gave way, and they burst into uncontrolled laughter. I had never heard either of them laugh like that before and the effect was frightening. It was not decent healthy laughter but a hellish sobbing and screeching, like that of two old drunken prostitutes watching a torture or crucifixion. "Oh, you two beauties!" sobbed Livia at last, wiping her'eyes, "What wouldn't I give to see you in bed together on your wedding night!

It would be the funniest scene since Deucalion's Flood!"

"And what happened particularly funny on that famous occasion, my dear?"

asked Urgulania.

'"Why, don't you know? God destroyed the whole world with a flood, except Deucalion and his family, and a few animals that took refuge on the mountain tops. Haven't you read Aristophanes' Flood? It's my favourite play of his. The scene is laid on Mount Parnassus. Various animals are assembled, unfortunately only one of each kind, and each thinks himself the sole survivor of his species. So in order to replenish the earth somehow with animals they have to mate with one another in spite of moral scruples and obvious difficulties. The Camel is betrothed by Deucalion to the She-Elephant."

"Camel and Elephant! That's a fine one!" cackled Urgulania. "Look at Tiberius Claudius' long neck and skinny body and long silly face. And my Urgulanilla's great feet and great flapping ears, and little pig-eyes! Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha!

And what was their offspring? Giraffe? Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha!"

"The play doesn't get that far. Iris comes on the stage for the messenger speech and reports another refuge of animals on Mount Atlas. Iris breaks off the nuptials just in time."

"Was the Camel disappointed?"

"Oh, most bitterly."

"And the Elephant?"

"The Elephant just scowled."

"Did they kiss on parting?'*

"Aristophanes does not tell. But I'm sure they did.

Come on, Beasts. Kiss!"

I smiled foolishly, Urgulanilla scowled.

"Kiss, I say," Livia insisted in a voice that meant that we had to obey.

So we kissed, and started the old women on their hys'• terics again. When we were outside the room again I whispered to Urgulanilla: "I'm sorry. It's not my fault." But she did not answer except to scowl more deeply than before.

There was still a year before we were actually to marry, for the family had decided that I should not come of age until I was fifteen and a half, and much might happen in that time. If only Iris would come!

But she didn'tPostumus had his troubles too: he had already come of age now and it was only a few months before Domitia would be of marriageable age.

My poor Postumus, he was still in love with Livilla, though she was married. But before I continue with the story of Postumus I must tell of my meeting with the

"Last of the Romans".

IX

HIS NAME WAS POLLIO AND I WILL RECALL THE EXACT circumstances of our meeting, which took place }ust a week after my betrothal to Urgulanilla. I was reading in the Apollo Library when along came Livy and a little brisk old man in the robe of a senatoi. Livy was saying: "It seems then, that we may as well abandon all hope of finding it, unless perhaps.... Why, there's Sulpiciusl He'll know if anyone does. Good morning, Sulpicius. I want you to do a favour for Asinius Polho and myself. There's a book we want to look at, a commentary by a Greek called Polemocles on Polybius' Military Tactics. I seem to remember coming across it here once, but the catalogue does [107] not mention it and the librarians, here are perfectly useless." Sulpicius gnawed his beard for awhile and then said: "You've got the name wrong. Polemocrates was the name and he wasn't a Greek, in spite of his name, but a Jew.

Fifteen years ago I remember seeing it on that top shelf, the fourth from the window, right at the back, and the title tag had just 'A Dissertation on Tactics' on it. Let me get it for you. I don't expect it's been moved since then."

Then Livy saw me. "Hullo, my friend, how goes it? Do you know the famous Asinius Pollio?"

I saluted them and Pollio said: "What's that you're reading, boy? Trash, I'll be bound, by the shamefaced way you hide it. Young fellows nowadays read only trash." He turned to Livy: "I bet you ten gold pieces that it's some wretched 'Art of Love', or Arcadian pastoral nonsense, or something of that sort."

"I'll take the bet," said Livy. "Young Claudius is not that sort of young man at all. Well, Claudius, which of us wins?"

I said, stammering, to Pollio: "I'm glad to say, sir, that you lose."

Pollio frowned angrily at me; "What's that you say?

Glad that I lose, eh? Is that a proper way to speak to an old man like me, and a senator too?"

I said: "I said it in all respect, sir. I am glad that you lose. I should not like to hear this book called trash. It's your own history of the Civil Wars and, if I may venture to praise it, a very fine book indeed."

Pollio's face changed. He beamed and chuckled and pulled out his purse, pressing the coins on Livy. Livy, with whom he seemed on terms of friendly animosity--if you know what I mean--refused them with mock-serious insistence.

"My dear Pollio, I couldn't possibly take the money. You were quite right: these young fellows nowadays read the most wretched stuff. Not another word, please: I agree that I've lost the bet. Here are ten gold pieces of my own and I'm glad to pay them."

Pollio appealed to me. "Now, sir--I don't know who you are but you seem to be a lad of sense--have you read our friend Livy's work? I appeal to you, isn't that at least trashier writing than mine?"

I smiled. "Well, at least it's easier to read."

"Easier, eh. How's that?"

"He makes the people of Ancient Rome behave and talk as if they were alive now."

Pollio was delighted. "He has you there, Livy, on your weakest spot. You credit the Romans of seven centuries ago with impossibly modern motives and habits and speeches.

Yes, it's readable all right, but it's not history."

Before I record more of this conversation 1 must say a few words about old Pollio, perhaps the most gifted man of his day, not even excepting Augustus. He was now nearly eighty years old but in full possession of his mental powers and seemingly in better physical health than many a man of sixty. He had crossed the Rubicon with Julius Caesar and fought with him against Pompey, and served under my grandfather Antony, before his quarrel with Augustus, and had been Consul and Governor of Further Spain and of Lombardy, and had won a triumph for a victory in the Balkans and had been a personal friend of Cicero's until he grew disgusted with him, and a patron of the poets, Virgil and Horace. Besides all this he was a distinguished orator and writer of tragedies. But he was a better historian than he was either tragedian or orator, because he had a love or literal truth, amounting to pedantry, which he could not square with the conventions or these other literary forms. With the spoils of the Balkan campaign he had founded a public library, the first public library at Rome. There were now two others: the one we were in and another called after my grandmother Octavia; but Pollio's was much better organised for reading purposes than either.

Sulpicius had now found the book, and after a word of thanks to him they renewed their argument.

Livy said: "The trouble with Pollio is that when he writes history he feels obliged to suppress all his finer, more poetical feelings, and make his characters behave with conscientious dullness, and when he puts a speech into their mouths he denies them the least oratorical ability."

Pollio said: "Yes, Poetry is Poetry, and Oratory is Oratory, and History is History, and you can't mix them."

"Can't I? Indeed I can." said Livy. "Do you mean to [109] say that I mustn't write a history with an epic theme because that's a prerogative of poetry or put worthy eve-of-battle speeches in the mouths of my generals because to compose such speeches is the prerogative of oratory?"

"That is precisely what I do mean. History is a true record of what happened, how people lived and died, what they did and said; an epic theme merely distorts the record. As for your general's speeches they are admirable as oratory but damnably unhistorical: not only is there no particle of evidence for any one of them, but they are inappropriate. I have heard more eve-of-battle speeches than most men and though the generals that made them, Caesar and Antony especially, were remarkably fine platform orators, they were all too good soldiers to try any platform business on the troops. They spoke to them in a conversational way, they did not orate. What sort of speech did Caesar make before the Battle of Pharsalia? Did he beg us to remember our wives and children and the sacred temples of Rome and the glories of our past campaigns?

By God, he didn'tl He climbed up on the stump of a pinetree with one of those monster-radishes in one hand and a lump of hard soldiers' bread in the other, and joked, between mouthfuls. Not dainty jokes but the real stuff told with the straightest face: about how chaste Pompey's life was compared with his own reprobate one. The things he did with that radish would have made an ox laugh. I remember one broad anecdote about how Pompey won his surname The Great--oh, that radish!--and another still worse one about how he himself had lost his hair in the Bazaar at Alexandria. I'd tell you them both now but for this boy here, and but for your being certain to miss the point, not having been educated in Caesar's camp. Not a word about the approaching battle except just at the close: 'Poor old Pompey! Up against Julius Caesar and his men!