Seated on a garden bench under a cedar, looking across a smooth green lawn and down a wide grassy avenue of hornbeams, with nobody about except my German guards posted out of sight in the shrubbery, and with a long strip of paper on my knee and a pen in my hand, I began solemnly working out just where and how I stood. I have this paper by me as I now write and will copy out what I put down exactly as I find it. My statements fell, for some reason or other, into related groups of three, like the `tercets' of the British Druids (their common metrical convention for verse of a moralistic or didactic sort)
I love liberty: I detest tyranny.
I have always been a patriotic Roman.
The Roman genius is Republican.
I am now, paradoxically, an Emperor.
As such I' exercise monarchical power.
The Republic hasbeen suspended for three generations.
The Republic was torn by Civil Wars.
Augustus instituted this monarchical power.
It was an emergency measure only.
Augustus found that he could not resign his power.
In my mind I condemned Augustus as hypocritical.
I remained a convinced Republican.
Tiberius became Emperor.
Against his inclination?
Afraid of some enemy seizing power?
Probably forced into it by his mother Livia.
In his reign I lived in retirement.
I considered him a blood-thirsty hypocrite.
I remained a convinced Republican.
Caligula suddenly appointed me Consul.
I only desired to be back at my books.
Caligula tried to rule like an Oriental monarch.
I was a patriotic Roman.
I should have attempted to kill Caligula.
Instead I saved my skin by playing the imbecile.
Cassius Chaerea was perhaps a patriotic Roman.
He broke his oath, he assassinated Caligula.
He attempted, at least, to restore the Republic.
The Republic was not then restored.
Instead there was a new Emperor appointed.
That Emperor was myself, Tiberius Claudius.
If I had refused I should have been killed.
If I had refused there would have been Civil War.
It was an emergency measure only.
I put Cassius Chaerea to death.
I found that I could not yet resign my power.
I became a second Augustus.
I worked hard and long, like Augustus,
I enlarged and strengthened the Empire, like Augustus,
I was an absolute monarch, like Augustus.
I am not a conscious hypocrite.
I flattered myself that I was acting for the best.
I planned to restore the Republic this very year.
Julia's disgrace was Augustus's punishment.
Would I had never wed, and childless died.
I feel just the same about Messalina.
I should have killed myself rather than rule:
I should never have allowed Herod Agrippa to persuade me.
With the best of intentions I have become a tyrant.
I was blind to. Messalina's follies and villainies.
In my name she shed the blood of innocent men and women.
Ignorance is no justification for crime.
But am I the only guilty person?
Has not the whole nation equally sinned?
They made me Emperor and courted my favour.
And if I now carry out my honest intentions?
If I restore the Republic, what then?
Do I really suppose that Rome will be grateful? -
`You know how it is when one talks of liberty.
Everything seems beautifully simple.
One expects every gate to open and every wall to fall flat.'
The world is, perfectly content with me as Emperor,
All but the people who want to be Emperor themselves.
Nobody really wants the Republic back.
Asinius Pollio was right:
'It will have to be much worse before it can be any better.
Decided: I shall not, after all, carry out my plan.
The frog-pool wanted a king.
Jove sent them Old King Log.
I have been as deaf and blind and wooden as a log.
The frog-pool wanted a king.
Let Jove now send them Young King Stork.
Caligula's chief fault: his stork-reign was too brief.'
My chief fault: I have been far too benevolent.
I repaired the ruin my predecessors spread
I reconciled Rome and the world to monarchy again.
Rome is fated to bow to another Caesar.
Let him be mad, bloody, capricious, wasteful, lustful.
King Stork shall prove again the nature of kings.
By dulling the blade of tyranny fell into great error.
By whetting the same blade I might redeem that error.
Violent disorders call for violent remedies.
Yet I am, I must remember, Old King Log.
I shall float inertly in the stagnant pool.
Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.
I kept my resolution. I have kept it strictly ever since. I have allowed nothing to come between me and it. It was very painful at first. I had told Narcissus that I felt like the Spanish sword-fighter whose shield-arm was suddenly lopped off in the arena; but the difference was that the Spaniard died of his wound, and I continue to live. You have perhaps heard maimed men complain, in damp, cold weather, of sensations of pain in the leg or arm they have lost? It can be a most precise pain too, described as a sharp pain running up the wrist from the thumb, or as a settled pain in the knee. I felt like this often. I used to worry what Messalina would think of some decision I had taken, or about what effect a long boring play in the theatre was having on her; if it thundered I would remember how frightened she was of thunder.
