are made to suffer.'
This was what I wanted. I dismissed from my, presence all but the representatives of the Greater and Lesser Chaucian tribes. (The Chaucians lived on. the North German coast between the Dutch Lakes and the Elbe; they had been confederates of Hermann's.) Then I said to these: `I have no intention of asking you Chaucians where the Eagle is, but if any of you have not sworn an oath about it, please tell me so at once.' The Greater Chaucians, the western half of the nation, all declared that they had not sworn any such oath. I believed them, because the second Eagle that my brother Germanicus won back had been found in a temple of theirs. It was unlikely that one tribe would have been awarded two Eagles in the distribution of spoils that followed Hermann's victory. I then addressed the chief man of the Lesser Chaucians: `I do not ask you to tell me where the Eagle is, or to what God you swore the oath. But perhaps you will tell me in what town or village you took that oath. If you tell me this I shall suspend my order for your repatriation.
`Even to say as much as that would be a violation of my oath, Caesar.'
But I used an old trick on him that I had read about in my historical studies: once, when a certain Phoenician judge visiting a village on his assizes wished to find out where a man had hidden a gold cup that he had stolen, he told the man that he did not believe him capable of theft and would discharge him. `Come, sir, let us go for a friendly walk instead and you will perhaps show me your interesting village.' The man guided him down every street but one. The judge found by inquiry that one of the houses in this street was occupied by the man's sweetheart; and the cup was discovered hidden in the thatch of her roof. So in the same way I said: `Very well, I shall not press you further.' I then turned to another member of the tribe who also seemed, by his sullen, uncomfortable looks, to be in the secret, and asked conversationally: `Tell me: in what towns or villages in your territory are these temples raised to your German Hercules' It was probable that the Eagles had been dedicated to this God. He gave me a list of seven names, which I noted down. `Is that all?' I asked.
`I cannot recall any more,' he answered.
I appealed to the Great Chaucians. `Surely there must be more than seven temples in so important a territory as Lesser Chaucia between the great rivers of Weser and Elbe?'
`Oh, yes, Caesar,' they replied. 'He has not mentioned the famous temple at Bremen on the eastern bank of the Weser.'
That is how I was able to write to Gabinius: `You will, I think find the Eagle somewhere hidden in the temple of the German Hercules at Bremen on the eastern bank of the Weser. Don't spend too much time at first in punishing the Istaevonians, march in close formation straight through their territory and that of the Ansibarians, rescue the Eagle and do the burning, killing, and pillaging on your return.'
Before I forget it, there is another story that I want to tell about a stolen gold cup, and it may as well go in here as anywhere. Once I invited a number of provincial knights to supper - and would you believe it, one of the rogues, a Marseilles man, went off with the gold, wine-cup that had been put before him. I didn't say a word to him, but invited him to supper again the next day, and this time gave him only a stone cup. This apparently frightened him, for the next morning the gold cup was returned with a fulsomely apologetic note explaining that he had taken the liberty of borrowing the cup for two days in order to get the engravings on it, which he much admired, copied by a goldsmith: he wished to, perpetuate the memory of the enormous honour that I had done him, by drinking from a similarly chased gold cup every day for the rest of his life. In answer I sent him the stone cup, asking, in exchange, for the reproduction of the gold one as a memento of the charming incident.
I arranged a date in May for both Galba's and Gabinius's expeditions to start, increased their forces by levies in France and Italy to six regiments apiece leaving two regiments to hold the Upper Rhine, and two to hold the Lower - allowed them each a maximum of 2,000 casualties, and gave them until July the First to conclude their operations and be on the way home. Galba's objective was a line of three Chattian towns originally built when the country was under Roman rule Nuaesium, Gravionarium, and Melocavus - which lie parallel with the Rhine about 100 miles inland from Mainz.
I shall content myself by recording that both campaigns were a complete success. Galba burned 150 stockaded villages, destroyed thousands of acres of crops, killed great numbers of Germans, armed and unarmed, and had sacked the three towns indicated by the middle of June. He took about 2,000 prisoners of both sexes, including men and women of rank to hold, as hostages for the Chattians good behaviour. He lost 1,200 men, killed or disabled, of whom 400 were Romans. Gabinius had the harder task and accomplished it with the loss of only 800 men. He took a last minute suggestion of mine, which was not to make straight for Bremen but to invade the territory of the Angrivarians, who live to the south of the Lesser Chaucians; and from there to send a flying column of cavalry against Bremen, in the, hope of capturing the town before the Chaucians: thought it worth while to remove the Eagle to some safer repository. It all worked out exactly to plan. Gabinius's cavalry, which he commanded personally, found the Eagle just where I had expected, and he was so pleased with himself that he called up the rest of his force: and drove right through Lesser Chaucia from end to end, burning the timber shrines of the German Hercules one after the other, until none was left standing. His destruction of crops and villages was not so methodical as Galba's; but on the way back he gave the Istaevonians plenty to remember him by He took 2,000 prisoners.
The news of the rescue of the Eagle came to Rome simultaneously with that, of Galba's successful sacking of the Chattian towns, and the Senate immediately voted me the title of Emperor, which this time I did not refuse. I considered that I had earned it by my location of the Eagle and by suggesting the long-distance cavalry raid, and by the care that I had taken to make both campaigns a' surprise; Nobody knew anything about them until I signed the order, instructing the French and -Italian levies to be under arms- and on their way to the Rhine within three days.
Galba and Gabinius were given triumphal ornaments. I should have had them granted triumphs if the, campaigns had been more than mere punitive-expeditions. But I persuaded the Senate to honour Gabinius with the hereditary surname Chaucias' in commemoration of his feat. The Eagle was carried in solemn procession to the Temple of Augustus, where I sacrificed and gave thanks for his divine aid: and dedicated to him the wooden gates of the temple where the Eagle had been found - Gabinius had sent them to me as a gift. I could not dedicate the Eagle itself to Augustus; because. there was a socket long ago prepared for its reception in the temple of Avenging Mars, alongside the other two rescued Eagles. I took it there later and dedicated it, my heart swelling with pride;
The soldiers composed ballad verses- about the rescue of the Eagle. But this time, instead of building them on to their original ballad, `The Three Griefs of Lord Augustus', they made them into a new one called `Claudius and the Eagle'. It was by no means flattering to me, but: I enjoyed some of the verses. The theme was that I was an absolute fool in some respects and did the most ridiculous things - I stirred, my porridge with my foot, and shaved myself with a comb, and when I went to the Baths used to drink the oil handed me to rub: myself with and rub myself with the wine handed me to drink. Yet I had amazing learning, for all that: I knew the names of every one of the stars in Heaven and could recite all the poems that had ever been written, and had read all the books in all the libraries of the world. And the fruit of this wisdom was that I alone was able to tell the Romans where the Eagle was that had been lost so many years and had resisted all efforts to recapture it. The first part of the, ballad-contained a dramatic account of my acclamation as Emperor by the Palace Guard; and t shall quote three verses to show the sort of ballad it was:
Claudius hid behind a curtain,
Gratus twitched the thing away.
`Be our Leader,' said bold Gratus.
`All your orders we'll obey.'
'Be our Leader,' said bold Gratus,
`Learned Claudius, courage take!
There's an Eagle to be rescued
For the God Augustus' sake.'
Learned Claudius, feeling thirsty, -
Drank a mighty pot of ink. `Owl was it you said, or Eagle? `
I could rescue both, I think.'
Early in August, twenty days after I had been voted the title of Emperor,. Messalina bore me her child. It was a boy, ands for the first time I experienced all the pride of fatherhood. For my son. Drusillus, whom I had lost some twenty years before at the age of eleven, I had felt no warm paternal feelings at all, and very few for my daughter
