here I'll pack you off to Greece.' Jove was understood to apologise, and Caligula said: 'Oh, keep your wretched Capitoline Hill. I'll go to the Palatine. It's a much finer situation. I'll build a temple there worthy of myself, you shabby old belly-rumbling fraud.' Another curious thing
[59»] happened when he visited the temple of Diana in company with a former governor of Syria called Vitellius. Vitellius had done very well out there, having surprised the King of Parthia, who was about to invade the province, by a forced march across the Euphrates. Caught on ground unfavourable for battle the Parthian King was obliged to sign a humiliating peace and give his sons up as hostages. I should have mentioned that Caligula had the eldest son as a prisoner with him in his chariot when he drove across the bridge. Well, Caligula was jealous of Vitellius and would have put him to death if Vitellius had not been warned by me
[he was a friend of mine] what to do. A letter from me was waiting for him at Brindisi when he arrived, and as soon as he reached Rome and was admitted to Caligula's presence he fell prostrate and worshipped him as a God.
This was before the news of Caligula's Divinity was officially known, so Caligula thought it was a genuine tribute.
Vitellius became his intimate friend and showed his gratitude to me in many ways. As I was saying, Caligula was in Diana's temple talking to the Goddess--not the statue but an invisible presence. He asked Vitellius whether he could see her too, or only the moonlight. . Vitellius trembled violently, as if in awe, and keeping his eyes fixed on the ground said: 'Only you Gods, my Lord, are privileged to behold one another.'
Caligula was pleased. 'She's very beautiful, Vitellius, and often comes to sleep with me at the Palace.'
It was about this time that I got into trouble again. I thought at first that it was a plot of Caligula's to get rid of me. I am still not so sure that it was not. An acquaintance of mine, a man I used to play dice with a good deal, forged a will and took the trouble to forge my seal to it as witness.
Luckily for me he had not noticed a tiny chip on the edge of the agate seal-gem, which always left its mark on the wax. When I was suddenly arrested for conspiracy to defraud and brought to Court, I bribed a soldier to carry a secret appeal to my friend Vitellius, begging him to save my life as I had saved his. I asked him to hint about the chip to Caligula, who was judging the case, and to have a genuine seal of mine ready for Caligula to compare with the forged one.
But Caligula must be encouraged to find the difference for himself and to take all the credit. Vitellius managed the affair very tactfully. Caligula noticed the chip, boasted of his quickness of eye and absolved me with a stern warning to be more careful in future about my associates. The forger had his hands cut off and hung around his neck as a warning. If I had been found guilty I would have lost my head. Caligula told me so at supper that night.
I replied; 'Most merciful God, I really don't understand why you trouble so much about my life.'
It is the nature of nephews to enjoy an uncle's flattery.
He unbent a little and asked me, with a wink to the rest of the table, 'And what precise valuation would you put on your life tonight, may I ask?'
'I have worked it out already: one farthing.'
'And how do you arrive at so modest a figure?'
'Every life has an assessable value. The ransom that Julius Caesar's family actually paid the pirates who had captured him and threatened to kill him--though they asked a great deal more than this at first--was no more than twenty thousand in gold. So Julius Caesar's life was actually worth no more than twenty thousand.
My wife ^Elia was once attacked by footpads, but persuaded them to spare her life by handing over an amethyst brooch worth only fifty. So ^Elia was worth only fifty. My life has just been saved by a chip of agate weighing, I should judge, no more than the fortieth part of a scruple. That quality of agate is worth perhaps as much as a silver-piece a scruple.
The chip, if one could find it, which would be difficult, or find a buyer, which would be still more difficult, would therefore be worth one fortieth part of a silver piece, or exactly one farthing. So my life is also worth exactly one farthing--
'
'--If you could find a buyer,' he roared, delighted with his own wit. How everybody cheered, myself included! For a long time after this I was called
'Teruncius' Claudius at the Palace, instead of Tiberius Claudius. Teruncius is Latin for farthing.
For his worship he had to have priests. He was his own High Priest and his subordinates were myself, Caesonia, Vitellius, Ganymede, fourteen ex-Consuls and his noble friend the horse Incitatus. Each of these subordinates had [393] to pay eighty thousand gold pieces for the honour. He helped Incitatus to raise the money by imposing a yearly tribute in his name on all the horses in Italy: if they did not pay they would be sent to the knackers. He helped Caesonia to raise the money by imposing a tax in her name on all married men for the privilege of sleeping with their wives. Ganymede, Vitellius and the others were rich men; though in some instances they had to sell property at a loss to get the hundred thousand in cash at short notice, they still remained comfortably off. Not so poor Claudius.
Caligula's previous tricks in selling me sword-fighters, and charging me heavily for the privilege of sleeping and boarding at the Palace, had left me with a mere thirty thousand in cash, and no property to sell except my small estate at Capua and the house left me by my mother. I paid Caligula the thirty thousand and told him the same night at dinner that I was putting up all my property for sale at once to enable me to pay him the remainder when I found a buyer. 'I've nothing else to sell,' I said. Caligula thought this a great joke. 'Nothing at all to sell? Why, what about the clothes you're wearing?'
By this time I had found it wisest to pretend I was quite half-witted. 'By Heaven,' I said. 'I forgot all about them.
Will you be good enough to auction them for me to the company? You're the most wonderful auctioneer in the world. I began stripping off all my clothes until I had on nothing but a table-napkin which I hastily wrapped round my loins.
He sold my sandals to someone for a hundred gold pieces each, and my gown for a thousand, and so on, and each time I expressed my boisterous delight. He then wanted to auction the napkin. I said, 'My natural modesty would not prevent me from sacrificing my last rag, if the money it brought in helped me to pay the rest of the fee. But in this case, alas, something more powerful even than modesty prevents me from selling.'
Caligula frowned. 'What's that? What's stronger than modesty?'
'My veneration for yourself, Caesar. It's your own napkin. One that you had graciously set for my use at this excellent meal.'
This little play only reduced my debt by three thousand.
But it did convince Caligula of my poverty.
I had to give up my rooms and my place at table, and lodged for a time with old Briseis, my mother's former maid, who was caretaker of the house until it found a buyer. Calpurnia came to live with me there, and would you believe it, the dear girl still had the money which I had given her instead of necklaces and marmosets and silk dresses, and offered to lend it to me. And what was more, my cattle hadn't really died as she pretended, nor had the ricks burned. It was just a trick to sell them secretly at a good price and put the money aside for an emergency. She paid it all over to me--two thousand gold pieces--together with an exact account of the transactions signed by my steward. So we managed pretty well. But to keep up the pretence of absolute poverty I used to go out with a jug every night, using a crutch instead of a sedan-chair, and buy wine from the taverns.
Old Briseis used to say, 'Master Claudius, people all think that I was your mother's freedwoman. It isn't so. I became your slave when you first grew up to be Master, and it was you who gave me my freedom, not she, wasn't it?'
I would answer, 'Of course, Briseis. One day I'll nail that lie in public.' She was a dear old thing and entirely devoted to me. We lived in four rooms together, with an old slave to do the porter's work, and had a very happy time, all considered.
Caesonia's child, a girl, was born a month after Caligula married her.
Caligula said that this was a prodigy. He took the child and laid her on the knees of the statue of Jove--this was before his quarrel with Jove--as if to make Jove his honorary colleague in fatherhood, and then put her in the arms of Minerva's statue and allowed her to suck at the Goddess' marble breast for awhile. He called her Drusilla, the name that his dead sister had discarded when she became the Goddess Panthea. This child was made a
