Augustus was a fine-looking man himself, though somewhat short, with curly fair hair that went grey only very late in his life, bright eyes, merry face and upright graceful carriage.
I remember once overhearing an elegiac epigram that he [53] made about me, in Greek, for the benefit of Athenodorus, an old Stoic philosopher, from Tarsus in Syria, whose simple serious advice he often asked. I was about seven years old and they came upon me by the carp-pool in the garden of my mother's house. I cannot remember the epigram exactly, but the sense of it was: 'Antonia is old-fashioned: she does not buy a pet marmoset at great expense from an Eastern trader. And why? Because she breeds them herself.' Athenodorus thought for a moment and replied severely in the same metre: 'Antonia, so far from buying a pet marmoset from Eastern traders, does not even cosset and feed with sugar-plums the poor child of her noble husband.' Augustus looked somewhat abashed. I should explain that neither he nor Athenodorus, to whom I had always been represented as a half-wit, guessed that I could understand what they were saying.
So Athenodorus drew me towards him and said playfully in Latin: 'And what does young Tiberius Claudius think about the matter?' I was sheltered from Augustus by Athenodorus' big body and somehow forgot my stammer. I said straight out, in Greek: 'My mother Antonia does not pamper me, but she has let me learn Greek from someone who learned it directly from Apollo.' All I meant was that I understood what they were saying. The person who had taught me Greek was a woman who had been a priestess of Apollo on one of the Greek islands but had been captured by pirates and sold to a brothel-keeper in Tyre. She had managed to escape, but was not permitted to be priestess again because she had been a prostitute. My mother Antonia, recognizing her gifts, took her into the family as a governess. This woman used to tell me that she had learned directly from Apollo, and I was merely quoting her: but as Apollo was the God of learning and poetry my remark sounded far wittier than I intended. Augustus was startled and Athenodorus said: 'Well spoken, little Claudius: marmosets don't understand a word of Greek, do they?' I answered; 'No, and they have long tails, and steal apples from the table.'
However, when Augustus began eagerly questioning me, taking me from Athenodorus' arm, I grew self- conscious and stammered as badly as ever. But from thenceforth Athenodorus was my friend.
There is a story about Athenodorus and Augustus which does great credit to both. Athenodorus told Augustus one day that he did not take nearly enough precaution about admitting visitors to his presence; one day he would get a dagger in his vitals. Augustus replied that he was talking nonsense. The next day Augustus was told that his sister, the Lady Octavia, was outside and wished to greet him on the anniversary of their father's death. He gave orders for her immediate admittance. She was an incurable invalid when this happened--it was the year she died--and was always carried about in a covered sedan. When the sedan was brought in, the curtains parted and out sprang Athenodorus with a sword, which he pointed at Augustus' heart.
Augustus, so far from being angry, thanked Athenodorus and confessed that he had been very wrong to treat his warning so casually.
One extraordinary event in my childhood I must not forget to record. One summer when I was just eight years old my mother, my brother Germanicus, my sister Livilla, and I were visiting my Aunt Julia in a beautiful country-house close to the sea at Antium. It was about six o'clock in the evening and we were out taking the cool breeze in a vineyard. Julia was not with us, but Tiberius' son, that Tiberius Drusus whom we afterwards always called 'Castor', and Postumus and Agrippina, Julia's children, were in the party. Suddenly we heard a great screeching above us. We looked up and saw a number of eagles fighting. Feathers floated down. We tried to catch them. Germanicus and Castor each caught one before it fell and stuck it in his hair.
Castor had a small wing feather, but Germanicus a splendid one from the tail. Both were stained with blood. Spots of blood fell on Postumus' upturned face and on the dresses of Livilla and Agrippina. And then something dark dropped through the air. I do not know why I did so, but I put out a fold of my gown and caught it. It was a tiny wolf-cub, wounded and terrified. The eagles came swooping down to retrieve it, but I had it safe hidden and when we shouted and threw sticks they rose baffled, and flew screaming off. I was embarrassed. I didn't want the cub.
Livilla grabbed at it, but my mother, who looked very [55] grave, made her give it back to me. 'It fell to Claudius/' she said. 'He must keep it.'
She asked an old nobleman, a member of the College of Augurs, who was with us, 'Tell me what this portends.'
The old man answered, 'How can I say? It may be of great significance or none.'
'Don't be afraid. Say what it seems to mean to you-'
'First send the children away,' he said.
I do not know whether he gave her the interpretation which, when you have read my story, will be forced on you as the only possible one. All I know is that while we other children kept our distance--dear Germanicus had found another tail-feather for me, sticking in a hawthorn bush, and I was putting it proudly in my hair--Livilla crept up inquisitively behind a rose-hedge and overheard something.
She interrupted, laughing noisily: 'Wretched Rome, with him as her protector! I hope to God I'll be dead before then!'
The
Augur
turned
on her and pointed with his finger.
'Impudent girl,' he said, 'God will no doubt grant your wish in a way that you won't like!'
'You're going to be locked up in a room with nothing to eat. Child,' said my mother. Those were ominous words too, now I come to recall them. Livilla was kept in bounds for the rest of her holidays. She revenged herself, on me, m a variety of ingeniously spiteful ways. But she could not tell us what the Augur had said, because she had been bound by an oath by Vesta and our household gods never to refer to the portent either directly or in a roundabout way, in the lifetime of anyone present. We were all made to take that oath. Since I have now for many years been the only one left alive of that party--my mother and the Augur, though so much older, surviving all the rest--I am no longer bound to silence. For some time after this I often caught my mother looking curiously at me, almost respectfully, but she treated me no better than before.
I was not allowed to go to the Boys’ College, because the weakness of my legs would not let me take part in the gymnastic exercises which were a chief part of the education, and my illnesses had made me very backward in lessons, and my deafness and stammer were a handicap. So I was seldom in the company of boys of my own age and class, the sons of the household slaves being called in to play with me: two of these. Gallon and Pallas, both Greeks, were later to be my secretaries, entrusted with affairs of the highest importance. Gallon became the father of two other secretaries of mine, Narcissus and Polybius. I also spent much of my time with my mother's women, listening to their tails; as they sat spinning or carding or weaving. Many of them, such as my governess, were women of liberal education and, I confess, I found more pleasure in their society than in that of almost any society of men in which I have since been placed: they were broadminded, shrewd, modest, and kindly.
My tutor I have already mentioned, Marcus Porcius Cato who was, in his own estimation at least, a living embodiment of that ancient Roman virtue which his ancestors had one after the other shown. He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about. He boasted particularly of Cato the Censor, who of all characters in Roman history is to me perhaps the most hateful, as having persistently championed the cause of 'ancient virtue' and made it identical in the popular mind with churlishness, pedantry and harshness. I was made to read Cato the Censor's self-glorifying works as text- books, and the account that he gave in one of them of his campaign in Spain, where he destroyed more towns than he had spent days in that country, rather disgusted me with his inhumanity than impressed me with his military skill or patriotism. The poet Virgil has said that the mission of the Roman is to rule; 'To spare the conquered and with war the proud, To overbear.' Cato overbore the proud, certainly, but less with actual warfare than with clever management of inter-tribal jealousies in Spain; he even employed assassins to remove redoubtable enemies. As for sparing the conquered, he put multitudes of unarmed men to the sword even when they unconditionally surrendered their cities, and he proudly records that many hundreds of Spaniards committed suicide, with all their families, rather than taste of Roman vengeance.
Was it to be wondered that the tribes rose again as soon as they could get a few
[57] arms together, and that they have been a constant thorn in our side ever since?
All that Cato wanted was plunder and a triumph: a triumph was not granted unless so-and-so many corpses--I think it was five thousand at this time--could be counted, and he was making sure that no one would
