priestess too. He raised the money for the initiation fee by making a pathetic appeal to the public, complaining of his poverty and the heavy expenses of fatherhood, and opening a fund, called The Drusilla Fund. He put collecting boxes in every street marked 'Drusilla's Food', 'Drusilla's Drink' and [395] 'Drusilla's Dowry', and nobody dared pass by the Guards posted there without dropping in a copper or two.
Caligula dearly loved his little Drusilla, who turned out as precocious a child as he had himself been. He took delight in teaching her his own 'immovable rigour', beginning the lessons when she was only just able to walk and talk. He encouraged her to torture kittens and puppies and to fly with her sharp nails at the eyes of her little playmates.
'There can be no reasonable doubt as to your paternity, my pretty one,' be used to chuckle when she showed particular promise. And once in my presence he bent down and said slyly to her: 'And the first full-sized murder you commit, Precious, if it's only your poor old grand-uncle Claudius, I'll make a Goddess of you.'
'Will you make me a Goddess if I kill Mamma?' the little fiend lisped. 'I hate Mamma.'
The gold statue for his temple was another expense. He paid for it by publishing an edict that he would receive New-Year's gifts at the main gate of the Palace. When the day came he sent parties of Guards out to herd the City crowds up the Palatine Hill at the sword-point and make them shed every coin they had on them into great tubs put out for the purpose. They were warned that if they tried to dodge the Guards or hold back a single farthing of money they would be liable to instant death. By evening two thousand huge tubs had been filled.
It was about this time that he said to Ganymede and Agrippinilla and Lesbia: 'You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you idle drones. What do you do for your living?
You're mere parasites. Are you aware that every man and woman in Rome works hard to support me? Every wretched baggage-porter gladly pays me one-eighth of his wage, and every poor prostitute the same.'
Agrippinilla said: 'Well, brother, you have stripped us of practically all our money on one pretext or another.
Isn't that enough?'
'Enough? Indeed it isn't. Money inherited is not the same as money honestly earned. I'm going to make you girls and boys work.'
So he advertised in the Senate, by distributing leaflets, that on such and such a night a most exclusive and exquisite brothel would be opened at the Palace, with entertainment to suit all tastes provided by persons of the most illustrious birth. Admission, only one thousand gold pieces. Drinks free. Agrippinilla and Lesbia, I am sorry to say, did not protest very strongly against Caligula's disgraceful proposal, and indeed thought that it would be great fun. But they insisted that they should have the right of choosing their own customers and that Caligula should not take too high a commission on the money earned. Much to my disgust I was dragged into this business, by being dressed up as the comic porter.
Caligula, wearing a mask and disguising his voice, was the bawd-master, and played all the usual bawd- master tricks for cheating his guests of their pleasure and their money. When they protested, I was called upon to act as chucker-out. I am strong enough in the arms, stronger than most men, I may say, though my legs are very little use to me; so I caused a great deal of amusement by my clumsy hobbling and by the unexpectedly heavy drubbing I gave the guests when I managed to get hold of them.
Caligula declaimed in a theatrical voice, the lines from Homer: “Vulcan with awkward grace his office plies And unextinguished laughter shakes the skies.”
This was the passage in the First Book of the Iliad where the lame God goes hobbling about Olympus and the other Gods all laugh at him. I was lying on the floor pounding Lesbia's husband with my fists--it wasn't often that I got such a chance of paying back old scores--and raising myself up I said: “Then from his anvil the lame craftsman rose. Wide, with distorted legs, oblique, he goes”, and staggered over to the refreshment table. Caligula was delighted and quoted another couple of lines which occur just before the 'unextinguished laughter' passage: “If you submit, the Thunderer stands appeased, The Gracious God is willing to be pleased.”
This was how he came to call me Vulcan, a title that I was glad to win, because it gave me a certain protection against his caprices.
Caligula then quietly left us, removed his disguise and reappeared as himself, coming in from the Palace courtyard by the door where he had posted me.
He pretended to be utterly surprised and shocked at what was going oa and stood declaiming Homer again--Ulysses' shame and anger at the behaviour of the palace-women: As thus pavilioned in the porch he lay, Scenes of lewd loves his wakeful eyes survey; Whilst to nocturnal joys impure repair With wanton glee, the prostituted fair.
His heart with rage this new dishonour stung, Wavering his thought in dubious balance hung.
Or, instant should he quench the guilty Same With their own blood, and intercept the shame; Or to their lust indulge a last embrace, And let the peers consummate the disgrace; Round his swoln heart the murmurous fury rolls; As o'er her young the mother-mastiff growls, And bays the stranger groom: so wrath compress'd Recoiling, mutter'd thunder in his breast.
'Poor, suffering heart', he cried, 'support the pain Of wounded honour and thy rage restrain! Not fiercer woes thy fortitude could foil When the brave partners of thy ten-year toil Dire Polypheme devoured: I then was freed By patient prudence from the death decreed.'
'For ‘Polypheme' read Tiberius',' he explained. Then he clapped his hands for the Guard, who came running up at the double. 'Send Cassius Chserea here at once!' Cassius was sent for and Caligula said: 'Cassius, old hero, you who acted as my war-horse when I was a child, my oldest and most faithful family-friend, did you ever see such a sad and degrading sight as this? My two sisters prostituting their bodies to senators in my very Palace, my uncle Claudius standing at the gate selling tickets of admission!
Oh, what would my poor mother and father have said if they had lived to see this day!'
'Shall I arrest them all, Caesar?' asked Cassius, eagerly.
'No, to their lust indulge a last embrace And let the peers consummate the disgrace,' Caligula replied resignedly, and made mother-mastiff noises in his throat. Cassius was told to march the Guard off again.
It was not the last orgy of this sort at the Palace and thereafter Caligula made the senators who had attended the show bring their wives and daughters to assist Agrippinilla and Lesbia. But the problem of raising money was becoming acute again and Caligula decided to visit France and see what he could do there.
He first gathered an enormous number of troops, sending for detachments from all the regular regiments, and forming new regiments, and raising levies from every possible quarter. He marched out of Italy at the head of one hundred and fifty thousand men and increased them, in France, to a quarter of a million. The expense of arming and equipping this immense force fell on the cities through which he passed: and he commandeered the necessary food supplies from them too. Sometimes he went forward at a gallop and made the army march forty-eight hours or more on end to catch up with him, sometimes he went forward at the rate of only a mile or two a day, admiring the scenery from a sedan-chair carried on eight men's shoulders and frequently stopping to pick flowers.
He sent letters ahead ordering the presence at Lyons, where he proposed to concentrate his forces, of all officials in France and the Rhine provinces who were over the rank of captain. Among those who obeyed the summons was Gaetulicus, one of my dear brother Germanicus' most valued officers, who had been in command of the four regiments of the Upper Province for the last few years. He was very popular among the troops because he kept up the tradition of mild punishments and of discipline based on love rather than on fear. He was popular with the regiments in the Lower Province too, commanded by his father-in-law Apronius--for Gaetulicus had married a sister of that Apronia whom my brother-
in-law Plautius was supposed to have thrown out of the window. At the fall of Sejanus he would have been put to death by Tiberius because he had [399]
promised his daughter in marriage to Sejanus' son, but he escaped by writing the Emperor a bold letter. He said that so long as he was allowed to retain his command his allegiance could be counted on, and so could that of the troops.
Tiberius wisely let him alone. But Caligula envied him his popularity and almost as soon as he arrived had him arrested.
Caligula had not invited me on this expedition, so I missed what followed and cannot write about it in detail.
All I know is that Ganymede and Gaetulicus were accused of conspiracy--Ganymede with designs on the monarchy, Gaetulicus with abetting him, and that both were put to death without trial. Lesbia and Agrippinilla [the
