I then took the census of Roman citizens.
The total number of citizens, including women and children, now stood at 5,984,072, compared with the 4,937,000 given by the census of the year that Augustus died, and again with the 4,233,000 given by the census taken in the year after my father died. Written briefly on a page these numbers are not impressive, but think of them in human terms. If the whole Roman citizenry were to file past me at a brisk walk, toe to heel, it would be two whole years before the last one came in sight. And these were only the true citizens. If the entire population of the Empire went past, over 70,000,000 in number, now that Britain, Morocco, and Palestine had to be reckoned in, it would take twelve times as long, namely, twenty-four years, for them to pass, and in twenty-four years an entire new generation has time to be born, so that I might sit a lifetime and the stream would still glide on,
Would glide and slide with still perpetual flow, and never the same face appear twice. Numbers are a nightmare. To think that Romulus's first Shepherds' Festival was celebrated by no more than 3,300 souls. Where will it all end?
What I wish to emphasize most of all in this account of my activities as Emperor is that up to this point at least I acted, so
far as I knew how,, for the public good in the widest possible sense. I was no thoughtless revolutionary and no cruel tyrant and no obstinate reactionary: I tried to combine generosity with common sense wherever possible and nobody can accuse me of not having done my best.
Two Documents Illustrating Claudius's Legislative Practice, also his Epistolary and Oratorical Style
CLAUDIUS'S EDICT ABOUT CERTAIN TYROLESE TRIBES
Published at the Residence at Baiae in the year of the Consulship of Marcus Junius Silanus and of Quintus Sulpicius Camerius, on the fifteenth day of March, by order of Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus.
Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, High Pontiff, Protector of the People for the sixth time, Emperor, Father of the Country, Consul-Elect for the fourth time, issues the following official statement:
As regards certain ancient controversies, the settlement of which had already been left pending for some years when my uncle Tiberius was Emperor: my uncle had sent one Pinarius Apollinaris to inquire into such of these' controversies as concerned the Comensians (so far as I recall) and the Bergalians, but no others; and this Pinarius had neglected his commission because of my uncle's obstinate absence from Rome; and then when my nephew Gaius became Emperor and did not call for any report from him either, he offered none - he was no fool in the circumstances - and after that I had a report from Camurius Statutus to the effect that much of the agricultural and forest land in those parts was really under my own jurisdiction so then, to come down to the present day, I recently sent my good friend Planta Julius there and, when he called a meeting of my governors, both the local governors and those whose districts lay some distance away, he went thoroughly into all these questions and drew his conclusions. I now approve the wording of the following edict which - first justifying it with a lucid report - he has drawn up for my signature; though it embodies wider decisions than Pinarius was called upon to make:
`As regards the position of the Anaunians, 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
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 Martins. 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 f
rom 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.
r
But it is now high time, Tiberius Claudius Germanicus, for you 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 today, 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....
*A Joking reference to himself. - R.G.
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 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 abjection, 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 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.'
Claudius the God c-2 Page 46