'And good staff-officers, certainly--though he's never actually handled a sword or shield in his life.'
I was bold enough to ask Pollio why he was often called 'The Last of the Romans'. He looked pleased at the question and replied: 'Augustus gave me the name. It was when he invited me to join him in his war against your grandfather Antony. I asked him what sort of a man he took me for: Antony had been one of my best friends.
'Asinius Pollio,' he said, 'I believe that you're the last of the Romans. The title is wasted on that assassin, Cassius.'
'And if I'm the last of the Romans,' I answered, 'whose fault is that? And whose fault will it be when you've destroyed Antony, that nobody but myself will ever dare hold his head up in your presence or speak out of turn?'
'Not mine, Asinius,' he said apologetically, 'it is Antony who has declared war, not I. And as soon as Antony is beaten I shall of course restore Republican government.'
'If the Lady Livia does not interpose her veto,' I said.'
The old man then took me by the shoulders. 'By the way, I'll tell you something, Claudius. I'm a very old man and though I look brisk enough I have reached the end. In three days I shall be dead; and I know it. Just before one dies there comes a strange lucidity. One speaks prophetically. Now listen! Do you want to live a long busy life, with honour at the end of it?'
'Yes.'
'Then exaggerate your limp, stammer deliberately, sham sickness frequently, let your wits wander, jerk your head and twitch with your hands on all public or semi-public occasions. If you could see as much as I can see, you would know that this was your only hope of safety and eventual glory.'
I said: 'Livy's story of Brutus--the first Brutus, I mean--may be unhistorical, but it's apt. Brutus pretended to be a half-wit, too, to be better able to restore popular liberty.'
'What's that? Popular liberty? You believe in that? I thought that phrase had died out among the younger generation.'
'My father and grandfather both believed in it----'
'Yes,' Pollio interrupted sharply, 'that's why they died.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean that's why they were poisoned.'
'Poisoned! By whom?'
'Hm! Not so loud, boy. No. I'll not mention names.
But I'll give you a sure token that I'm not just repeating groundless scandal.
You're writing a life of your father you say?'
'Yes.'
'Well, you'll see that you won't be allowed to get beyond a certain point in it. And the person who stops you----'
Sulpicius came shuffling back at this point and nothing more was said of any interest except when I took my leave of Pollio and he drew me aside and muttered: 'Little Claudius, good-bye! But don't be a fool about popular liberty.
That cannot come yet. Things must be far worse before they can be better.' Then he raised his voice: 'And one thing more If, when I'm dead, you ever come across any important point in my histories that you find unhistorical I give you permission--I'll stipulate that you have the authority--to put the corrections in a supplement.
Keep them up to date. Books when they grow out of date only serve as wrappings for fish.' I said that this would be an honourable duty.
Three days later Pollio died. He left me in his will a collection of early Latin histories, but they were withheld from me. My uncle Tiberius said that it was a mistake: that they were intended for him, our names being so similar. His stipulation about my having the authority to make corrections everyone treated as a joke; but I kept my promise to Pollio some twenty years later. I found that he had written very severely on the character of Cicero--a vain, vacillating, timorous fellow--and while not disagreeing with this verdict I felt it necessary to point out that he was not a traitor too, as Pollio had made him out. Pollio was relying on some correspondence of Cicero's which I was able to prove a forgery by Clodius Pulcher. Cicero had incurred Clodius' enmity by witnessing against him when he was accused of attending the sacrifice of the Good Goddess disguised as a woman-musician. This Clodius was another of the bad Claudians.
X
WHEN I CAME OF AGE, TIBERIUS HAD LATELY BEEN ORdered by Augustus to adopt Germanicus as his son, though he already had Castor as an heir, thus bringing him over from the Claudian into the Julian family. I now found myself head of the senior branch of the Claudians A.D. 6] and in indisputable possession of the money and estates inherited from my rather. I became my mother's guardian--for she had never married again--which she felt as a humiliation. She treated me [ii9] with rather more severity than before, though all business documents had to come to me for signature and I was the family priest.
My coming of age ceremony contrasted curiously with that of Germanicus. I put on my manly-gown at midnight and without any attendants or procession was carried into the Capitol in a sedan, where I sacrificed and was then carried back to bed. Germanicus and Postumus would have come, but in order to call as little attention to me as possible Livia had arranged a banquet that night at the Palace which they could not be excused from attending.
When I married Urgulanilla, the same sort of thing happened. Very few people were aware of our marriage until the day after it had been solemnised.
There was nothing irregular about the ceremony. Urgulanilla's saffron-coloured shoes and flame-coloured veil, the taking of the auspices, the eating of holy cake, the two stools covered with sheepskin, the libation I poured, the anointing by her of the doorposts, the three coins, my present to her of fire and water--everything was in order, except that the torchlight procession was omitted and that the whole performance was carried through perfunctorily, and hurriedly and with bad grace.
In order not to stumble over her husband's threshold the first time she enters, a Roman bride is always lifted over it. The two Claudians who had to do the lifting were both elderly men and unequal to Urgulanilla's weight. One of them slipped on the marble and Urgulanilla came down with a bump, pulling them with her in a sprawling heap. There is no wedding omen worse than that. And yet it would be untrue to say that it turned out an unhappy marriage: there was not enough strain between us to justify the term unhappy. We slept together at first because that seemed expected of us, and even occasionally had sexual relations--my first experience of sex--because that too seemed part of marriage, and not from either lust or affection. I was always as considerate and courteous to her as possible and she rewarded me by indifference, which was the best that I could hope from a woman of her character. She became pregnant three months after our marriage and bore me a son called Drusillus, for whom I found it impossible to have any fatherly feeling. He took after my sister Livilla in spitefulness and after Urgulanilla's brother Plautius in the rest of his character. Soon I shall tell you about Plautius, who was my moral exemplar and paragon, appointed by Augustus.
Augustus and Livia had a methodical habit of never coming to any decision on any important matter relating to the family or the State without recording in writing both the decision and the deliberations that led up to it, usually in the form of letters exchanged between each other. From the mass of correspondence left behind them on their deaths I have made transcripts of several which illustrate Augustus' attitude to me at this time. My first extract is dated three years before my marriage.
'MY DEAR LIVIA, 'I wish to put on record a strange thing that happened to-day. I hardly know what to make of it. I was talking to Athenodorus and happened to say to him: 'I fear that tutoring young Tiberius Claudius must be rather a weary task. He seems to me to grow daily more miserable-looking and nervous and incapable.' Athenodorus said: 'Don't judge the boy too harshly. He feels most keenly the family's disappointment in him and the slights that he everywhere meets. But he's very far from incapable and, believe it or not, I get great pleasure from his society. You never heard him declaim, did you?'
'Declaim!' I said, laughing.
'Yes, declaim,' Athenodorus repeated. 'Now let me make a suggestion. You set a subject for declamation and in half an hour's time come and hear what he makes of it. But hide behind a curtain or you'll hear nothing worth listening to.' I set for a subject 'Roman Conquests in Germany' and, listening half an hour later behind that curtain, I
