it.'
My mother came to see me. 'I am about to kill myself, Claudius,' she said.
'You will find all my affairs in order.
There will be a few small debts outstanding: pay them punctually. Be good to my household staff; they have been loyal workers, every one of them. I am sorry that your little daughter will have nobody now to look after her; I think that you had better marry again to give her a mother.
She's a good child.'
I said: 'What, Mother! Kill yourself? Why? O don't do that!'
She smiled sourly. 'My life's my own, isn't it? And why should you dissuade me from taking it? Surely you won't miss me, will you?'
'You are my mother,' I said. 'A man only has one mother.'
'I am surprised that you speak so dutifully. I have been no very loving mother to you. How could I have been expected to be so? You were always a great disappointment to me--a sick, feeble, timorous, woolly-witted thing. Well, I have been prettily punished by the Gods for my neglect of you. My splendid son Germanicus murdered, and my poor grandsons, Nero and Drusus and Gemellus murdered, and my daughter Livilla punished for her wickedness, her abominable wickedness, by my own hand--that was the worst pain I suffered, no mother ever suffered a worse--and my four granddaughters all gone to the bad, and this filthy impious Caligula.... But you'll survive him. You'd survive a Universal Deluge, I believe.' Her voice, calm at first, had risen to its usual angry scolding tone.
I said: 'Mother, have you no kindly word to give me even at a time like this? How did I ever intentionally wrong you or disobey you?'
But she did not seem to hear. 'I have been prettily punished,” she repeated.
Then: 'I wish you to come to my house in five hours' time. By that time I shall have completed my arrangements. I count on you to pay me the last rites. I don't want you to catch my dying breath. If I am not dead when you arrive wait in the ante-room until you get the word from my maid Briseis. Don't make a muddle of the valedictory: that would be just like you. You will find full instructions written out for the funeral. You are to be chief mourner. I want no funeral oration.
Remember to cut off my hand for separate burial: because this will be a suicide. I want no perfumes on the pyre: it's often done but it's strictly against the law and I have always regarded it as a most wasteful practice. I am giving Pallas his freedom, so he'll wear the cap of liberty in the procession, don't forget. And just for once in your life try to carry one ceremony through without a mistake.' That was all, except-a formal 'Good-bye'. No kiss, no tears, no blessing. As a dutiful son I carried out her last wishes, to the letter. It was odd her giving my own slave Pallas his freedom. She did the same with Briseis.
Watching her pyre burning, from his dining-room window, a few days later, Caligula said to Macro: 'You stood by me well against that old woman. I'm going to reward you. I'm going to give you the most honourable appointment in the whole Empire. It's an appointment which, as Augustus laid down as a principle of State, must never fall into the hands of an adventurer. I am going to make you Governor of Egypt.' Macro was delighted: he did not quite know, these days, how he stood with Caligula and if he went to Egypt he would be safe. As Caligula had said, the appointment was an important one: the Governor of Egypt had the power of starving Rome by cutting off the corn-supply, and the garrison could be strengthened by local levies until it was big enough to hold the province against any invading army that could be brought against it.
So Macro was relieved of his command of the Guards.
Caligula appointed nobody in his place for a time, but let the nine colonels of battalions each command for a month in turn. He gave out that at the end of this time the most loyal and efficient of them would be given the appointment permanently. But the man to whom he secretly promised it was the colonel of the battalion which found the Palace Guard--none other than the same brave Cassius Chaerea whose name you cannot have forgotten if you have read this story with any attention--the man who killed the German in the amphitheatre, the man who led his company back from the massacre of Varus' army, and who afterwards saved the bridgehead; the man too who cut his way through the mutineers in the camp at Bonn and who carried Caligula on his back that early morning when Agrippina and her friends had to trudge on foot from the camp under his protection. Cassius was white-haired now, though not yet sixty years of age, and stooped a little, and his hands trembled because of a fever that had nearly killed him in Germany, but he was still a fine swordsman and reputedly the bravest man in Rome. One day an old soldier of the Guards went mad and ran amok with his spear in the courtyard of the Palace. He thought he was killing French rebels.
Everyone fled but Cassius, who though unarmed stood his ground until the madman charged him, when he calmly gave the parade-ground order, 'Company, halt! Ground arms!' and the crazy fellow, to whom obedience to orders had become second-nature, halted and laid his spear flat along the ground. 'Company about turn,' Cassius ordered again. 'Quick march!' So he disarmed him. Cassius, then, was the first temporary commander of the Guards and kept them in order while Macro was being tried for his life.
For Macro's appointment to the governorship of Egypt was only a trick of Caligula's, the same sort of trick that Tiberius had played on Sejanus. Macro was arrested as he went aboard his ship at Ostia and brought back to Rome in chains.
He was accused of having brought about the deaths of Arruntius and several other innocent men and women.
To this charge Caligula added another, namely that Macro had played the pander, trying to make him fall in love with his wife Ennia--a temptation to which in his youthful inexperience, he admitted, he had nearly succumbed, Macro and Ennia were both forced to kill themselves. I was surprised how easily he got rid of Macro.
One day Caligula as High Pontiff went to solemnise a marriage between one of the Piso family and a woman called Orestilla. He took a fancy to Orestilla and when the ceremony was completed and most of the high nobility of Rome were gathered at the wedding feast, having great fun, as one does on these occasions, he suddenly called out to the bridegroom: 'Hey, there. Sir, stop kissing that woman! She's my wife.' He then rose and, in the hush of surprise that followed, ordered the guards to seize Orestilla and carry her off to the Palace.
Nobody dared to protest. The next day he married Orestilla: her husband was forced to attend the ceremony and give her away. He sent a letter to the Senate to inform them that he had celebrated a marriage in the style of Romulus and Augustus--referring, I suppose, to Romulus' rape of the Sabine women and Augustus' marriage with my grandmother [when my grandfather was present].
Within two months he had divorced Orestilla and banished her, and her former husband too, on the grounds that they had been committing adultery when his back was turned. She was sent to Spain and he to Rhodes. He was only allowed to take ten slaves with him: when he asked as a favour to be allowed double that number Caligula said: 'As many as you like, but for every extra slave you take you’ll have to have an extra soldier to guard you.'
Drusilla died. I am certain in my own mind that Caligula killed her but I have no proof. Whenever he kissed a woman now, I am told, he used to say: 'As white and lovely a neck as this is, I have only to give the word, and slash! It will be cut clean through.' If the neck was particularly white and lovely he could sometimes not resist the temptation of giving the word and seeing his boast proved true. In the case of Drusilla I think that he struck the blow himself. At all events nobody was allowed to see her corpse. He gave out that she died of a consumption and gave her a most extraordinary rich funeral. She was deified under the name of Panthea and had temples built to her, and noblemen and noblewomen appointed her priests, and [373] a great annual festival instituted in her honour, more splendid than any other in the Calendar. A man earned ten thousand gold pieces for seeing her spirit being received into Heaven by Augustus. During the days of public mourning that Caligula ordered in her honour, it was a capital crime for any citizen to laugh, sing, shave, go to the baths, or even have dinner with his family.
The law-courts were closed, no marriages were celebrated, no troops performed military exercises. Caligula had one man put to death for selling hot water in the streets, and another for exposing razors for sale. The resulting gloom was so profound and widespread that he could not himself bear it [or it may have been remorse], so one night he left the City and travelled down towards Syracuse, alone except for a guard of honour. He had no business there, but the journey was a distraction. He got no further then Messina, where Etna happened to be in slight eruption. The sight frightened him so much that he turned back at once. When he reached Rome again he soon set things going as usual, particularly sword-fighting, chariot-racing, and wild-beast hunting. He suddenly remembered that the men who had vowed their lives in exchange for his during his illness had not yet committed suicide; and made them do it, not only on general principles to keep them from the sin of perjury, but more particularly to prevent Death from going back on the bargain they had struck with him.
