lasted for three days and turned every sandy hollow into a brimming pool of water. The army was saved. The nomads, taking the abundant rain as an undeniable token of Father Gwa Gwa's favour towards the Romans, came humbly forward with offers of alliance. Geta refused this unless they first delivered-up Salabus to him. Salabus was presently brought to the camp in bonds. Presents were exchanged between Geta and the nomads and a treaty made; then Geta marched back without further loss to the mountains; where he caught Salabus's men, who were still holding the pass, in the rear, killing or capturing the whole detachment. The other Moorish forces, seeing their leader brought back to Tangier as a prisoner, surrendered without further fighting. So two or three pints of beer had saved the lives of more than 2,000 Romans and gained Rome a new province. I ordered the dedication of a shrine to Father Gwa-Gwa in the desert beyond the mountains, where he ruled; and Morocco, which I now divided up into two provinces - Western Morocco with its capital at Tangier-and Eastern Morocco with its capital at Caesarea. had to furnish it with a yearly tribute of 100 goat-skins of the best beer. I awarded Geta triumphal ornaments and would have asked the Senate to confer on him the hereditary title of Maurus (of Morocco') had he not exceeded his powers by putting Salabus to death at Tangier without first consulting me. There was no military necessity for this act; he only did it for vainglory.
I mentioned just now the birth of my daughter Octavia. Messalina had come to be much courted by the Senate and People, because it was-well known that I had delegated to her most of the duties which fell tome in my capacity as Director of Public Morals. She acted, in theory, only as my adviser, but had, as I have explained, a duplicate seal of mine to ratify documents with; and within certain limits I let her decide what knights or senators to degrade for social offences and whom to appoint to the resulting vacancies. She had now also undertaken the laborious task of deciding on the fitness of all candidates for the Roman Citizenship. The Senate wished to vote her the title of Augusta and made the birth of Octavia the pretext.. Much as I loved Messalina, I did not think that she had yet earned this honour: it was something for her, to look forward to in middle life. She was as yet only seventeen, whereas my grandmother Livia had earned the title only after her death and my mother in extreme old age. So I refused it to her. But the Alexandrians, without asking my permission - and once the thing was done I could not undo it - struck a coin with my; head on the obverse and on the reverse a full-length portrait of Messalina in the dress of the Goddess Demeter, holding in the palm of one hand two figurines representing her little boy and girl, and in the other a sheaf of corn representing fertility. This was a flattering play on the name Messalina,- the Latin word messis meaning the corn-harvest. She was delighted. She came to me shyly one evening, peeped. up at my face without saying anything, and at last asked, plainly embarrassed, and after one or two false starts: `Do you love me, dearest husband?'
I assured her that I loved her beyond anyone else in the world.
`And what did you tell me, the other day were the Three Main Pillars of the Temple of Love?'
'I said that the Temple of True Love was pillared on kindness, frankness, and understanding. Or rather I quoted the philosopher Mnasalcus as having said so.'
`Then will you show me the greatest kindness and understanding that your love for me is capable of showing? My love will have to provide only the frankness. I'll come straight to the point. If it's not too hard for you, would you - could you possibly - allow me to sleep in a bedroom apart from you for a little while? It isn't that I don't love you every bit as much as you love me, but now that we have had two children in less than two years of marriage, oughtn't we to wait a little before we risk having a third? It is a very disagreeable thing to be pregnant: I have morning-sickness and heartburn and my digestion goes wrong, and I don't feel I could go through that again just yet. And, to be honest, quite apart: from this dread, I somehow feel less passionately towards you than I did. I swear that I love you as much as ever, but now it's rather as my dearest friend and as the father of my children than as my lover. Having children uses up a lot of a woman's emotions, I suppose. I'm not hiding anything from you. You do believe me, don't you?'
'I believe you and I love you'
She stroked my face. `And I'm not like any ordinary woman, am I, whose business is merely to have children and children and children until she wears out? I am your wife - the Emperor's wife - and I help him in his Imperial work, and that should take precedence over everything, shouldn't it? Pregnancy interferes with work terribly.'
I said rather ruefully: `Of course, my dearest, if you really feel like that, I am not the sort of husband to. insist on forcing anything on you. But is it really necessary for us to sleep apart? Couldn't we at least occupy the same bed, for company's sake?'
'0 Claudius,' she said, nearly crying, `it has been difficult enough for me to make up my mind to ask you about this, because I love you so much and don't want to hurt you in the least. Don't make it more difficult. And now that I have frankly told you how I feel, wouldn't it be dreadfully difficult for you if you had violently passionate feelings for me while we were sleeping together and I could not honestly return them? If I repulsed you that would be as destructive of our love as if I yielded against my will; and I am sure you would feel very remorseful afterwards if anything happened to destroy my love for you. No, can't you see now how much better it would be for us to sleep apart until I feel about you again as I used to do? Suppose, just to distance myself from temptation, I were to move across to my suite in the New Palace? It's more convenient for my work to be over there. I can get up in the morning and go straight to my papers. This lying-in has put me greatly behind-hand with my Citizens' Roll.'
I pleaded: `How long do you think you will want to be away?'
'We'll see how it works out,' she said, kissing the back of my neck tenderly. `Oh, how relieved I am that you aren't angry. How long? Oh, I don't know. Does it matter so much? After all, sex is not essential to love if there is any other strong bond between lovers such as common idealistic pursuit of Beauty or Perfection. I do agree with Plato about that. He thought sex positively an obstruction to love.'
`He was talking of, homosexual love,' I reminded her, trying not to sound depressed.
`Well, my dear,' she said lightly, `I do a man's work, the same as you,- and so it comes to much the same thing, doesn't it? And as for a common idealism, we have to be very idealistic indeed to get through all this drudgery in the name of attempted political perfection, don't we? Well, is that really settled? Will you really be a dear, dear Claudius, and not insist on my sharing your bed in a literal sense, I mean? In all other senses I am still your devoted little Messalina, and do remember that it has been very, very painful for me to ask you this.'
I told her that I respected and loved her all the more for her frankness, and of course she must have her way. But that naturally I should be impatient for the time when she felt again for me as she once had done.
`Oh, please don't be impatient,' she cried. `It makes it so difficult for me. If you were impatient I should feel that I was being unkind to you, and should probably pretend feelings; that I didn't have. I may be an exception, but somehow sex doesn't mean much to me. I suspect, though, that many women get bored with it without ceasing to love their husbands or to want their husbands to love them. But I'll always continue to be suspicious of other women. If you were to have affairs with other women, I think I should go mad with jealousy. It isn't that I mind the thought of your sleeping with someone other than me; it's the fear that you might come to love her better than me, not merely regarding her as a pleasant sexual convenience, and then want to divorce me. I mean, if you were to sleep with a pretty housemaid occasionally, or some nice clean woman too low in rank for me to be jealous of, I should be very glad, really delighted, to think that you were having a nice time with her; and if you and I ever slept together afterwards we wouldn't consider it as anything that had come between us. We'd merely think of it as a measure that you had taken for the sake of your health -like a purge or an emetic. I shouldn't expect you even to tell me the woman's name, in fact I'd prefer you not to, so long as you first promised not to have doings with anyone about whom I would have a right to feel jealous. Wasn't that how Livia is said to have felt about Augustus?'
`Yes, in a way. But she never really loved him. She told me so. That made it easier for her to be attentive to him. She used to pick out young women from the slave-market and bring them secretly - into his bedroom at night. Syrians, mostly, I believe.'
`Well, you're not asking me to do that, are you? I'm human, after all.'
This was how Messalina played, very cleverly and very cruelly, on my blind love for her. She moved over to the New Palace that very evening. And for a long time I said nothing further, hoping that she would come back to me. But she said nothing, only indicating by her tender behaviour that a very fine understanding existed between us. As a great concession she did sometimes consent to sleep with me. It was seven years before I heard so much as a whisper of what went on in her suite at the New Palace, when the old cuckold-husband was away at his work or safely snoring in his bed at the Old Palace.
And this brings me to the story of the fate of Appius Silanus, an ex-Consul who had been Governor of Spain since Caligula's reign. It may be recalled that it was marriage with this Silanus that Livia had made the bribe for
