she told me that I was jealous of Silius and that she thought that I was losing my sense of humour and becoming a silly old spoil-sport and pedant. I said no more.
On the morning of the fifth of September I went down to Ostia to dedicate a big new granary there. I had told Messalina that I would not be back until the following morning. Messalina said that she wanted to come too, and it was arranged that we would drive down there together; but at the last moment she had one of her famous sick- headaches and had to stay behind. I was disappointed, but it was too late to change my plans, since a civic reception had been arranged for me at Ostia, and I had promised to sacrifice in the Temple of Augustus there: ever since the occasion on which I had lost my temper with the Ostians for not receiving me properly I had been particularly careful not to hurt their feelings.
Early that afternoon as I was going into the Temple to the sacrifice, Euodus, one of my freedmen, handed me a note. It was now Euodus's duty to protect me from inopportune petitions from the general public: all notes were handed to him, and if he considered them frivolous or insane or not worth my attention I was not bothered with them. It is surprising what reams of nonsense people write in petitions. Euodus said, `Excuse me, Caesar, but I can't read this. A woman handed it to me. Perhaps you can be bothered just this once?' To my surprise it was written in Etruscan, an extinct language known to not more than four or five living people, and read: `Great danger to Rome and yourself. Come to my house at once. Don't waste a moment.' It startled and puzzled me. Why Etruscan? Whose house? What danger? And it was a minute or two before I understood. It must be from Calpurnia, the girl, you remember, who had lived with me before I married Messalina: it had amused me to teach her Etruscan while I was compiling my history of Etruria. Calpurnia had probably sent me the note in Etruscan not only because it would be unintelligible to anyone but myself, but because I would know that it really came from her. I asked Euodus: `Did you see the woman?' He said that she looked like an Egyptian and had a pockmarked forehead but was otherwise very good-looking. I recognized this as Cleopatra, Calpurnia's friend who shared the house with her.
I was due to go down to the docks immediately after the sacrifice and could not decently postpone the engagement: it would be thought that I was more interested in visiting a couple of prostitutes than in attending to Imperial business. Yet I knew that Calpurnia was not the sort of person to send me an idle message, and while I was sacrificing I decided that I must hear what she had to say at all costs. I would sham sick, perhaps. Fortunately the God Augustus came to my assistance: the entrails of the ram I now sacrificed to him were the most unpropitious ones I had ever seen. It had seemed a fine animal, too, but inside it was as rotten as an old cheese. It was plainly impossible for me to transact any public business on that day, particularly so serious a matter as the dedication of the largest granary in the world, as this was. So I excused myself and everyone agreed that my decision was a proper one. 'I went to my own villa and gave out that I would rest there for the remainder of the day, but would be glad to attend the banquet to which I had beers invited that night, so long as it had no official character. I then sent my sedan-chair round to the back entrance of the villa and was soon being carried in it, with the curtains drawn, to Calpurnia's pretty house on a hill just outside the town.
Calpurnia greeted me with a look of such anxious sorrow that I knew at once that something very serious had happened. `Tell me at once 1' I said. 'What's the matter?'
She began to cry. I had never seen Calpurnia cry before, except once on the famous occasion when I was sent for at midnight to the Palace by Caligula's orders and she thought that I was going to my execution. She was a self-possessed girl with none of the tricks and manners of the ordinary prostitute and ‘as true as a Roman sword', as the saying is. 'You promise to listen? But you'll not want to believe me. You'll want to have me tortured and flogged don't want to tell you, either. But nobody else dares tell you, so I must. I promised Narcissus and Pallas that I would. They were good friends to me in the old days when we were all poor together. They said that you'd not believe them, or anyone, but I said that I thought you'd believe me, because once I showed myself your true friend when you were in trouble. I gave you all my savings, didn't I? I was never greedy or jealous or dishonest, was I?'
'Calpurnia, in my life I have known only three really good women, and I'll tell you their names. One was Cypros, a Jewish princess; one was old Briseis, my mother's wardrobe-maid; and the third is you. Now tell me what you have to say.'
'You've left out Messalina.'
`Messalina goes without saying. Very well, then, four really good women. And I don't consider that I'm insulting Messalina by linking her with an Oriental princess, a Greek freedwoman, and a prostitute from Padua. The sort of goodness I mean isn't the prerogative - '
'If you put Messalina in the list, leave me out,' she said, gasping.
'Modest, Calpurnia? You needn't be. I mean what I say.''No. Not modest.'
'Then I don't understand.'
Calpurnia said, very slowly and painfully: 'I hate to hurt you, Claudius. But I mean this. I mean that if Cypros had been a typical princess of the Herod family if she had been blood-thirsty and ambitious and unscrupulous and without any moral restraint; and if Briseis had been a typical wardrobe-maid - If she had been thieving and base- minded and lazy and clever at covering up her tracks; and if your Calpurnia had been a typical prostitute - if I had been vain, lustful, promiscuous, and greedy, and used my beauty as a means for dominating and ruining men - and if you were now listing the three worst types of women you knew and happened to pick on us as convenient examples -'
` Then what? What are you getting at? You talk so slowly.'
`- Then, Claudius, you'd be right to add Messalina to us and to tell me, 'Messalina goes without saying'.
'Am I mad, or are you?'
'Not I'
'Then what do you mean? What's my poor Messalina done to be suddenly attacked in this violent and extraordinary way? I don't think that you and I are going to remain friends much longer, Calpurnia.'
'You left town at seven o'clock this morning.'
`Yes. And what of it?'
'I left at ten. I had been up there with Cleopatra. doing some shopping. I looked in at the wedding. A curious hour of the day for a wedding, wasn't it? They were having a grand time. Everyone drunk. Marvellous show. The whole house decorated with vine-leaves and ivy and enormous bunches of grapes, and wine-vats, and wine- presses. The vintage festival, that was what it was supposed to represent.'
`What wedding? Talk sense.'
`Messalina's wedding to Silius. Weren't you invited? She was there dancing and waving a thyrsus in the biggest wine-vat she could find, dressed in a short wine-stained white tunic with one breast exposed and her hair flying loose. She was almost decent, though, compared with the other women. They only wore leopardskins, because they were Bacchantes. Silius was Bacchus. He was crowned with ivy and wore buskins. He was even drunker than Messalina. He kept tossing his head about in time to the music and grinning like Baba.'
'But ... but ..,' I said stupidly. `The wedding isn't until the tenth. I'm to officiate.'
'They're managing nicely without you. So I went to Narcissus at the Palace, and when he saw me, he said: 'Thank God you're here, Calpurnia. You're the only one he'll believe.' And Pallas `I don't believe. I refuse to believe.'
Calpurnia clapped her' hands. 'Cleopatra, Narcissus!' They came in and fell at my feet. `It's true about the wedding, isn't it-?
They agreed that it was true.
`But I know all about it,' I said feebly. `It's not a real wedding my friends. It's a sort of joke that Messalina: and I planned. She's not going to bed with him at the end of the ceremony. It's all quite innocent.'
Narcissus said: 'Silius caught at her and pulled up her tunic and began kissing her body in full view of the company, and she screamed and laughed and then he carried her off to the nuptial-chamber, and they stayed there nearly an hour before coming out again to do a little more drinking and dancing. That's not innocent, Caesar, surely?'
Calpurnia said: `And unless you act at once, Silius will be master of Rome. Everyone I met told me that Messalina and Silius have sworn by their own heads to restore the Republic, and that they have the whole Senate behind them and most of the Guards.'
`I must hear more,' I said. `I don't, know whether to laugh or cry. I don't know whether to pour gold in your, laps or flog you until the bones show.'
