Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

by Robert Graves

  ‘As regards the position of the Anaumans, the Tulliassians, and the Sindunians, I understand from authoritative sources that some of these have become incorporated in the government of the Southern Tyrol, though not all. Now although I observe that the claims of men of these tribes to Roman citizenship rest on none too secure a foundation, yet, since they may be said to have come into possession of it by squatter’s right and to have mixed so closely with the Southern Tyrolese that they could not be separated from them now without serious injury being done to that distinguished body of citizens, I hereby voluntarily grant them permission to continue in the enjoyment of the rights which they have assumed. I do this all the more readily because a large number of the men whose legal status is affected are reported to be serving in the Guards Division – a few of them have risen to command companies – and some of their compatriots have been enrolled for jury-service at Rome and are carrying out their duties there.

  ‘This favour carries with it retrospective legal sanction for whatever actions they have performed, and whatever contracts they have entered into under the impression that they were Roman citizens, either among themselves or among the Southern Tyrolese, or in any other circumstances; and such names as they have hitherto borne, as though they were Roman citizens, I hereby permit them to retain.’

  SURVIVING FRAGMENTS OF CLAUDIUS’S SPEECH TO THE

  SENATE, PROPOSING THE EXTENSION OF THE ROMAN

  CITIZENSHIP TO THE FRENCH OF THE AUTUN DISTRICT

  A.D. 48

  I must beg you in advance, my Lords, to revise your first shocked impressions, on listening to the proposal I am about to make, that it is a most revolutionary one: such feelings, I foresee, will be the strongest obstacle which I shall encounter to-day. Perhaps the best way for me to negotiate this obstacle is to remind you how many changes have been made in our constitution in the course of Roman history, how extremely plastic, indeed, it has proved from the very beginning.

  At one time Rome was ruled by kings, yet the monarchy never became hereditary. Strangers won the crown and even foreigners: such as Romulus’s successor, King Numa, who was a native of Sabinum (then still a foreign state though lying so close to Rome), and Tarquin the First, who succeeded Ancus Martius. Tarquin was of far from distinguished birth – his father was Demarathus, a Corinthian, and his mother was so poor that though she came of the noble Tarquin family she was forced to marry below her – so, being debarred from holding honourable office at Corinth, Tarquin came here and was elected king. He and his son, or perhaps his grandson – historians are unable to agree even on this point – were succeeded by Servius Tullius, who, according to Roman accounts, was the son of Ocresia, a captive woman. Etruscan records make him the faithful companion of the Etruscan Caele Vipinas and sharer in all his misfortunes: they say that when Caele had been defeated, Servius Tullius left Etruria with the remnants of Caele’s army and seized the Caelian hill yonder, which he named after their former commander. He then changed his Etruscan name – it was Macstrna – to Tullius, and won the Roman crown, and made a very good king too. Later, when Tarquin the Proud and his sons began to be loathed for their tyrannical behaviour, the Roman people, please observe, grew tired of monarchical government and we had Consuls, annually elected magistrates, instead.

  Need I then remind you of the dictatorship, which our ancestors found a stronger form of government even than the consular power in difficult times of war or political discord? Or of the appointment of Protectors of the People to defend the rights of the commons against encroachment? Or of the Board of Ten which for a time took over the government from the Consuls? Or of the sharing of the consular power between several persons? Or of the irregular appointment of army colonels to the Consulship – it happened seven or eight times? Or of the granting to members of the commons not only the highest magistracies but admission to the priesthood too? However, I shall not dilate on the early struggles of our ancestors and what the outcome of it all has been; you might suspect that I was immodestly making this historical survey an excuse for boasting of our recent extension of the Empire beyond the northern seas.…

  It was the will of my uncle, the Emperor Tiberius, that all leading colonies and provincial towns in Italy should have representatives sitting in this House; and representatives were indeed found with the necessary qualifications of character and wealth. ‘Yes,’ you will say, ‘but there is a great difference between an Italian senator and a senator from abroad.’ Well, when I begin justifying to you this part of my action, as Censor, in extending the full Roman citizenship to the provinces, I shall show you just how I feel about the matter. But let me say briefly that I do not think that we ought to debar provincials from a seat in this House, if they can be a credit to it, merely because they are provincials. The renowned and splendid colony of Vienne, in France, has been sending us senators for a long time now, has it not? My dear friend Lucius Vestinus comes from Vienne: he is one of the most distinguished members of the Noble Order of Knights and I employ him here to assist me in my administrative duties. (I have, by the way, a favour to ask from you for Vestinus’s children: I wish to have the highest honours of the priesthood conferred on them – I trust that later they will earn distinctions by their own merits to add to those granted them on their father’s account.) There is, however, one Frenchman whose name I shall keep out of this speech, because he was a rascally robber and I hate the very mention of him. He was a sort of wrestling-school prodigy and carried a Consulship back to his colony before the place had even been granted the Roman citizenship. I have an equally low opinion of his brother – such a miserable and unworthy wretch that he could not possibly be of any use to you as a senator.

  But it is now high time, Tiberius Claudius Germanicus, for you to reveal to the House the theme of your speech: you have already reached the frontiers of the South of France.…

  … This House should be no more ashamed of these noble gentlemen, now standing before me, were they raised to the quality of senators, than my distinguished friend Periscus is ashamed when he finds the French name Allobrogicus among the funeral masks of his ancestors. If you agree that all this is as I say, what more do you want of me? Do you want me to prove to you from the map, putting my finger on the very spot, that you are already getting senators from beyond the frontier of Southern France, that no shame, in fact, has been felt about introducing men into our order who were born at Lyons?* O my Lords, I protest that it is with the greatest timidity that I venture beyond the familiar home-boundaries of Southern France! However, the cause of the rest of that great country must now definitely be pleaded. I grant you that the French fought against Julius Caesar (now deified) for ten years, but in return you must grant me that for a whole century since then they have preserved a more devoted loyalty to us, in times of disorder too, than we could ever have believed possible. When my father Drusus was engaged in the conquest of Germany the entire land of France remained at peace in his rear; and that, too, at a time when he had been called away from the business of taking a census of property-holders – a new and disquieting experience for the French. Why, even to-day, as I have only too good reason to know by personal experience, this taking of the census is a most arduous task, though it now means no more than a public review of our material resources.…

  Chapter 28

  ONE morning in August, the year of the census, Messalina came early into my bedroom and woke me up. It always takes me a long time to collect my wits when I first wake up, especially if I have

  been unable to sleep between midnight and dawn, as is A.D. 48 often the case. She bent over me and kissed me and

  stroked my hair and told me in tones of the greatest concern that she had terrible news for me. I asked drowsily and rather crossly what it was.

  ‘Barbillus the astrologer – you know that he never makes a mistake, don’t you? Well, I asked him to read my stars yesterday, because he’d not done it for two or three years, and he observed them last night, and do you know what he has
just come and told me?’

  ‘Of course I don’t know. Out with it and let me go on sleeping. I’ve had a wretched night.’

  ‘Darling, I wouldn’t dare to disturb you like this if it wasn’t terribly important. What he said was, “Lady Messalina, a frightful fate is in store for one very near to you. This is Saturn’s baleful influence once more. He is in his most malignant aspect. The blow will fall within thirty days, not later than the Ides of September.” I asked him whom he meant, but he wouldn’t tell me. He just kept on hinting, and at last I dragged it out of him by threatening to have him flogged. And guess what he said!’

  ‘I hate guessing when I’m half-asleep.’

  ‘But I hate telling you directly, it’s so frightening. He said: “Lady Messalina, your husband will die a violent death”.’

  ‘He really said that?’

  She nodded solemnly.

  I sat up, my heart pounding. Yes, Barbillus was always right in his forecasts. And that meant that I would not survive my attempted introduction of the new constitution by more than a few days. I had planned my speech for the seventh of September, the anniversary of my victory at Brentwood: but I had kept the whole business a complete secret from everyone, even Messalina, from whom otherwise I had no secrets. I said: ‘Is there nothing to be done? Can’t we cheat the prophecy somehow?’

  ‘I can’t think of anything. You’re my husband, aren’t you? Unless… unless… listen, I have an idea! Suppose that just for this next month you aren’t my husband.’

  ‘But I am. You can’t pretend I’m not.’

  ‘You can divorce me, can’t you, just for a month? And marry me again when Barbillus reports that Saturn has moved away to a safe distance.’

  ‘No, that’s not possible. If I divorce you we can’t legally remarry unless there has been a marriage in between.’

  ‘I didn’t think of that. But don’t let us be beaten by a mere technicality. Suppose, then, that I do marry someone – anyone – just as a matter of form. A cook or a porter or one of the Palace Guards. Only the ceremonial part of the marriage, of course. We’d go into the nuptial-chamber by one door and then come right out again by another. That’s not a bad idea, is it?’

  I thought that there was something in it; but obviously she must marry someone of rank and importance, or it would create a bad impression. First I suggested Vitellius, and she said smiling that Vitellius already felt so sentimentally about her that it would be cruel to marry him and not allow him to spend the night with her. Besides, what about the prophecy? I didn’t want to doom Vitellius to a violent death, did I?

  So we discussed various husbands for her. The only one that we could agree on was Silius, the Consul-Elect, a son of that Silius, my brother Germanicus’s general, whom Tiberius had accused of high treason and forced to suicide. I disliked him because he had led the opposition in the Senate to my measure for the extension of the franchise and had been very insolent to me. After my speech about the franchise, he had been asked to give his opinion. He said that he thought it strange that our ancient allies, the noble and illustrious Greek cities of Lycia, should remain deprived of their freedom (I had annexed Lycia five years previously because of continued political unrest there, and also the neighbouring island of Rhodes, where they had impaled some Roman citizens) while the Celtic barbarians of the north should be admitted to the fullest rights of Roman citizenship. When I came to answer this objection, which was almost the only one raised, I did so in the pleasantest possible way. I began, ‘It is indeed a long way from famous Lycia, from

  Xanthus’ lucid stream,

  where, in the poet Horace’s words that we heard sung last year at the Saecular Games,

  Apollo most delights to bathe his hair,

  to France and the huge dark River Rhône, the huge dark River Rhône… 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 Rhône’ 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 Rhône, 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 it between 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 then-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?