to France and the huge dark River Rhone, the huge dark River Rhone ... of which no mention whatsoever appears in Classical legend, apart from a doubtful visit by Hercules, in the course of his Tenth Labour, on his way to win the oxen of Geryones. But I do not think,...' I was interrupted by a tittering that soon swelled into a roar of laughter. It, appears that when I repeated `the huge dark River Rhone' and hesitated for a moment, in search of a phrase, Silius had remarked in an audible voice - but he was sitting on my deaf side, so I had not heard the interruption - `Yes, the huge dark River Rhone,, where, if historians do not lie,
Claudius most delights to bathe his hair.'
A reference to the occasion when I was flung over a bridge into that river at Caligula's orders and nearly drowned. You can imagine how angry I was when Narcissus explained what the laughter was about. It is all very well to make little personal jokes at a private supper table or at the baths, or more boisterous ones during Saturn's All Fools' Festival (to which, by the way, I had restored the fifth day removed by Caligula), but for my own part it would never occur to me to make any sort of personal joke in the Senate which could raise an unkind laugh against a fellow member; and that a Consul-Elect had done so at my expense, and in the presence too of a group of prominent Frenchmen whom I had brought into the House, I took very ill. I shouted out: 'My Lords, I invited you to give your opinions on my motion, but from the noise that you are making anyone would, mistake this for the cheapest sort of knocking-shop. Please observe the rules of the House. Whatever will these French gentlemen think of us?' The noise stopped instantly. It always did when they saw I was angry.
Messalina said that she would like very much to marry Silius, not only because of his rudeness to me, which certainly merited astral vengeance, but because by the way he looked at her she felt sure that his rudeness was based on jealousy and that he was passionately in love with her. It would be a neat punishment for his presumption if she told him that she was being divorced and would marry him, and then only at the very last minute let him discover that it was to be a marriage in form only.
So we chose Silius, and that very day I signed a document repudiating Messalina as my wife and permitting her to return to her paternal roof. There were a lot of jokes about itbetween. us
. Messalina pretended to plead for permission to stay, falling on 'her knees before me and asking pardon for her errors. She also weepingly embraced the children, who did not know what to make of the business: `Must these poor darlings suffer for a mother's faults, cruel man?'
I replied that her faults were unpardonable: she was too clever, too beautiful and too industrious to stay with me an hour longer. She set an impossible standard for other wives to live up to, and made me the object of- universal jealousy.
She whispered in my ear `If I come into the Palace some night next week and commit adultery with you, will you banish me? I might be tempted, you know.'
`Yes, I'll banish you, all right. I'll banish myself too. Where shall we go? I'd like to visit Alexandria. They say it's an ideal place for banishment.'
'And take the children too? They'd love it.'
'I don't think the climate would suit them. They'd have to stay here with your mother, I'm afraid.'
`Mother knows nothing about the proper bringing-up of children: look at the way she brought me up! If you won't bring the children too, I won't come and commit adultery with you.'
`Then I'll marry Lollia Paulina, just to spite you.'
'Then I'll murder Lollia Paulina. I'll send her poisoned cakes; like the ones Caligula used to send people who had made him their heir.'
'Well, here's your divorce document all signed and sealed, you slut. Now you're restored to all the rights and privileges of an unmarried woman.' -
'Let us kiss, Claudius, before we part.'
'It reminds me of the famous farewell between Hector and Andromache in the Sixth Book of the Iliad:
His princess parts with a prophetic sigh,' Unwilling parts, and oft reverts her eye
That streamed at every look; then, moving slow, Sought her own palace and indulged her woe:’
Here, don't be in such a hurry to run off stage with your divorce. You ought to take a few private lessons in acting from Mnester.'
'I'm my, own mistress now. If you're not careful I'll marry Mnester.'
Silius was supposed to be the best-looking nobleman in Rome and Messalina had long been fascinated by him. But he was not by any means an easy victim of her passion. In the first place he was a virtuous man, or at least prided himself on his virtue, and then he was married to a noblewoman of the Silanus family, a sister of Caligula's first wife, and finally, though Messalina attracted him physically in the highest degree, he knew of the indiscriminate generosity with which she had been conferring her favours on nobleman, commoner, sword-fighter, actor, guardsman, even on one of the Parthian ambassadors, and did not consider himself particularly honoured by being asked to join their company. So she had to hook and play her fish with great cunning. The first difficulty lay in persuading him to visit her privately. She invited him several times, but he excused himself. She managed it in the end only by an arrangement with the Commander of the Watchmen, a former lover of hers, who invited Silius to supper and then had him shown into a room where she was waiting for him with supper laid for two. Once he was there he could not easily escape, and she was very clever: she did not talk love at all at first, she talked revolutionary politics! She reminded him of his murdered father and asked him whether he could bear to see the murderer's nephew, a bloodier tyrant still, clamping the yoke of slavery tighter and tighter on the neck of a once free people. (This was myself, in case you do not recognize me.) Then she told him that she was in danger of her life because she had been constantly reproaching me for not restoring the Republic and for my cruel murders of innocent men and women. She said, too, that I had despised her beauty and preferred housemaids and common prostitutes and that it was only in revenge for my disregard that she had ever been unfaithful to me; her promiscuity had been the result of extreme despair and loneliness. He, Silius, was the only man she knew who was virtuous and bold enough to help her in the task to which she had now dedicated her life - the restoration of the Republic. Would he forgive the innocent trick that she had played in decoying him there?
Frankly I cannot blame Silius for being deceived by her: she deceived me daily for nine years. Remember that she was very beautiful; and you can assume, too, that she had doctored his wine. Naturally he tried to comfort her, and before he realized what was happening, they were lying in each other's arms on the couch mixing the words 'love' and 'liberty' with kisses and sighs. She said that only now did she know what true love meant, and he swore that with her help he would restore the Republic at the earliest opportunity, and she swore to remain everlastingly faithful to his love if he divorced his wife, who, she knew, was secretly unfaithful to him, and was barren too - Silius ought not to let his family die out - and so on, and so on. She had hooked him, and now she played him for all her worth.
But Silius was cautious as well as virtuous, and did not feel himself strong enough to raise an armed revolt. He divorced his wife but told Messalina, on second thoughts, that it would be best if they waited for me to die before restoring the Republic. Then he would marry her and adopt Britannicus, and this would make the City and Army look to him as their natural leader. Messalina saw that she would have to take action herself. So she worked the Barbillus trick on me as I have described, and Silius (if what he told me afterwards was the truth) knew nothing of the divorce until she went to him with the document, without explaining how she came by it, and told him joyfully that they could now get married and live happily ever afterwards, but that he must tell nobody about it until she gave him permission.
Everyone at Rome was astounded at the news of Messalina's divorce, particularly as it seemed to make no difference to me: I continued to show her as much respect as before, or even more, and she continued her political work at the Palace. But every day she visited Silius at his house, quite openly, with a full retinue of attendants. When I suggested that she was carrying the joke rather too far, she told me that she was finding some difficulty in, consenting to make him marry her. `I'm afraid that he suspects that there's some catch in it, and he's very polite. and reserved, but underneath he's boiling with passion for me, the beast!' After a few days of this she gleefully reported that he had consented and would marry her on the tenth of September. She asked me to officiate as High Pontiff and see the fun. `Won't it be lovely to watch his baffled face when he finds he's been cheated?' By this time I had begun to repent of the whole business, especially of this practical joke on Silius, although he had insulted me in the Senate again with another ill-mannered interruption. I decided that I should not have taken the prophecy seriously and that I had only done so because I was half-awake when Messalina told me of it. And if the prophecy was really true, how could it be evaded by a mock-marriage? It occurred to me that no marriage is recognized as such by law until it has been physically consummated. I tried to persuade Messalina to drop the whole business, but
