During his illness, in the first year of his reign, Caligula had bequeathed his inheritance and the succession to the throne to Drusilla; as she was still the legal wife of Lepidus, he had had visions of becoming emperor upon the death of Caligula. But the Emperor recovered and Drusilla died. In his disappointment, Lepidus planned to arrange the assassination of Caligula, who, following his illness, had brought upon himself the hatred of the Senate and the people, the former by his insults, the latter by the burden of the outrageous taxes he imposed.
"The ramifications of the plot are widespread," complained Caligula. "They extend from my sisters here in Rome to Gaetulicus in Germany."
"You mean that Agrippina Minor and Julia are involved?"
"Lepidus has won them over. He hopes to marry Agrippina as soon as she can rid herself of Ahenobarbus, and then, when I have been done away with, he plans to claim the Empire."
"You are sure of all this?" I asked.
"I shall make myself sure," replied Caesar. "I am going to Germany. Gaetulicus is already there, and I shall take my sisters and Lepidus with me. Thus, I believe, I shall find the means of sifting this affair to the very dregs."
While discussing this affair he appeared quite rational. He flew into no fits of maniacal rage but laid his plans with infinite cunning after mature deliberation. I think that he realized that Agrippina, Julia, and Gaetulicus were too popular to be accused lightly or condemned without ample proof of guilt, and he now well knew that he was hated not only by the Senate but by the people.
Gaetulicus was that Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus who had long commanded the legions in Germany with such consideration for his soldiers that their first loyalty would be to him rather than to his brother-in-law, Apronius, who commanded the legions on the Lower Rhine, upon whose support the conspirators could depend. If the suspicions of Caligula were well-founded, the plot against his life and his throne had reached a point of extreme seriousness requiring immediate and drastic action. During the journey to Germany, the Emperor, by bribery and torture, wrung the truth from the slaves and freedmen of Lepidus, Agrippina, and Julia. He obtained much of the correspondence of the conspirators, and this correspondence, which I saw, fixed the guilt of the principals incontrovertibly.
Arrived at the camp of Gaetulicus, Caligula struck. Lepidus and Gaetulicus were arrested. The conspirators were thrown into confusion. Agrippina and Julia, knowing their own guilt, were terrified, but Caligula took no action against them immediately. He left them in suspense, wondering how much he knew and knowing that he was a madman.
The legionaries were restless and grumbling. Because of them and their loyalty to Gaetulicus, Caligula's life hung in the balance. He was constantly guarded by the two cohorts of the Praetorian Guard that had accompanied him from Rome, and Tibur and I were never permitted to leave him.
An arrant coward, he was terrified, but he acted with the caution and wisdom of a sane man. Gaetulicus and Lepidus were brought to trial before a military court over which the Emperor presided, and thus the evidence that they had conspired to take the life of Caligula was revealed to the army. They were condemned to death and almost immediately executed. The fickle soldiery, encouraged by a generous donation of money from Caligula, applauded the Emperor and heaped execrations upon the memory of Gaetulicus. The crisis was passed and Caesar breathed once more.
Shortly after this, he caused his sisters to be brought to trial upon charges of adultery and banished to the Ponza isles. With this solution of his problem he was quite pleased.
"I cannot charge my own sisters with plotting to have me assassinated," he told me. "If the world knew that Julians would cause the murder of a Julian, the example might influence others to attempt the same thing."
Caligula did not send his sisters into exile immediately, but kept them under arrest during his stay in Germany. He took from them all their hereditary honors and confiscated all of their personal property, including their slaves.
Having already spent the more than two billion sestertii accumulated in the public treasury by Tiberius, the Emperor was hard-pressed for funds and resorted to every artifice to raise money. Even before leaving Rome for Germany he had imposed a daily tax upon all prostitutes equal to their charge for one service. He even opened brothels in the palace and sent his agents to the Forum and the baths to solicit men, both young and old, by name, to patronize these imperial lupanars as a mark of loyalty to their emperor.
He sent for the slaves and household goods of his sisters and auctioned them off to the rich provincials of Germany and Gaul, himself describing the rarity or the historic significance of many of the articles, some of which had belonged to Antony, Augustus, or his own father or mother. His cupidity and meanness knew no bounds.
Delighted with the success of these auctions, he sent to Rome for all the furnishings of the palace of Tiberius and auctioned these or whatever else he could lay hands upon in the same manner. There were many shameful incidents connected with these auctions, many tragic and occasionally one that was amusing. I recall one day when old Aponius Saturninus fell asleep, and as he dozed his head would nod forward and then snap back, only to nod again almost immediately. Caligula noticed this and called the attention of the auctioneer to it, reminding him that each nod meant the acceptance of a raise in the bid for the articles under the hammer. When Apponius awoke it was to discover, to his dismay that he had bid in thirteen gladiators for nine million sestertii. But not even by all these expedients could Caligula raise sufficient revenue to cover his mad extravagances; so he must needs find other means by which to replenish the depleted treasury. Nor was that beyond the resources of his diseased mind which, coupled with his unlimited power, made all things possible to Caesar. On trumped-up charges, he condemned wealthy men to death and confiscated their property. In one such case, his victim proving to have far less wealth than Caligula had supposed, he said to me: "I was deceived about him; he might have lived."
He caused a law to be enacted which required that he have a share of all fortunes left by will, and if a rich man kept him waiting too long for his legacy, he sent him poison. Under the rule of this divine Julian, I was glad to be a poor slave.
While we were in Germany, Caligula decided to win military glory by an incursion of the territory of one of the unconquered tribes beyond the Rhine. He coveted a legitimate triumph-he, the most arrant of cowards. He made great preparations and even crossed the river himself, but when a messenger arrived from the advance guard bringing a false report of the approach of the enemy, Caligula leaped from his chariot and, throwing himself upon a horse, raced back to the bridge. Finding this filled with the carts and sumpter beasts of the transport, he had himself passed from hand to hand above the baggage train until he reached the safety of the left bank.
I was so disgusted by this act of cowardice, as was the entire army that I so far failed to restrain my tongue that it is a wonder that I did not ornament the Via Flaminia for what I said to Caligula when he was safe within his tent. He was still wild-eyed and panting from his exertion as he asked, "Do you think the enemy will cross the river?"
"If he does not, it will be through no valor of yours," I replied, and then I added, "It was not thus that Julius Caesar fought."
"I was ill," said Caligula. "See that the word is spread that it was illness that caused Caesar to seek his tent." He was almost pleading. Suddenly--he brightened. "I will show them," he exclaimed. "Wait! They shall yet see that Caius Caesar Caligula is a great general."
I did not know how he was going to prove it, but a couple of days later I witnessed the execution of his plan. It was at a banquet. Word was brought to him that the Germans had appeared, whereupon he leaped from the table and went out against the enemy at the head of his troops, a picture of stern, uncompromising valor. After some little time he returned with prisoners-members of his German auxiliaries whom he had caused to hide in a wood and be "captured."
Such exhibitions as these, together with the machinations of
his enemies and the hatred of all classes of the people, had tended to alienate the loyalty and affection of the army.
Both Tibur and I warned him of his danger, and he sought to win back the troops by lavishing upon them extravagant donations from the money derived from his auctions, his thefts, and his murders. But even this failed to quiet their unrest, and so he determined to compel their fidelity through terror. "I shall provide them such an example of my ruthlessness and power," he said, "that they will never dare rise against me."
"Be careful," warned Tibur. "Too many men hate you already."
"Let men hate me," exclaimed Caligula, "if only they fear me."
Tibur and I wondered what new turn his madness would take, and we were quite relieved when he summoned the most mutinous legion to gather to enjoy an entertainment and receive further largess. We thought that he had decided to propitiate the legionaries rather than to further antagonize them. He issued orders to their officers that the men should come without arms, and as they started to congregate they saw that they were being slowly surrounded by a cordon of mounted auxiliariescavalry recruited in the far provinces of the Empire-and then the truth leaked out: that it was Caligula's intention to have the entire legion massacred.
The soldiers ran to their tents and procured their arms, while Caesar fled. He did not slow down until he reached Italy, and he did not stop short of Rome.
He took his sisters with him. Ahenobarbus, Agrippina's husband, had died, and Caligula compelled Agrippina to carry in her arms all the way to Rome the ashes of Lepidus, her lover. Such was the petty and contemptible meanness of the ruler of the world.
Chapter XIX
A.U.C.792 [A.D. 39]
DURING THE return journey to Rome, Caligula was morose and irritable. He must have felt humiliation for his cowardly actions on the Rhine, and his thoughts played constantly with ideas of revenge. Afraid of the army, afraid of the people, he determined to launch the full force of his fury upon the unhappy Senate; and when an embassy of that august body met him upon the way to welcome him to Rome, he struck the pommel of his sword with his hand and exclaimed, "Yes, yes! I shall soon arrive in Rome and this shall come with me." Then he sent a proclamation which was to be posted on the walls of the city announcing that he was returning to his faithful knights and people, but not to the Senate that loved him not.
Shortly before we left for Germany, Lollia Paulina, the wife of Memmius Regulus, had arrived in Rome from Macedonia, sent by her husband on orders from Caligula. The Emperor was greatly taken with her beauty, and after divorcing her from her husband, immediately married her. In a few days he discarded her.
Upon his return to Rome, he picked up anew the threads of his affair with Caesonia, and very shortly afterward he married her, an event which pleased me if it pleased no one else, as it brought Attica to live at the palace on the Palatine.
Caligula was still cursed with insomnia, and he used to pace the porticoes of the palace at night for hour upon hour. I never have suffered from insomnia, and I often had great difficulty in keeping awake as I drove my weary legs beside him. During these dismal, nocturnal vigils, Caligula customarily kept up a running fire of talk. It was seldom conversation, as I was rarely included in it. Often it was but muttering and grumbling. Occasionally he would laugh aloud, and his laugh was maniacal, horrible. I did not enjoy these midnight rambles, although I learned much from them that I might have used to my advantage had I been a politician.
Often he pretended that he was conversing with Jupiter, and, after speaking at length, he would cock his head on one side and listen to the god's reply, pursing his lips and nodding his head in simulation of complete understanding. At such times he would often get into violent arguments with Jupiter, ending up by threatening the god with annihilation.
Again, he might take me into his confidence relative to the most intimate affairs, such as his relations with women, often expounding the physical attractions of his wife. "I do not know why I so love Caesonia," he once said to me. "She is far from beautiful, she is the mother of three children by another man, and she is, furthermore, a notorious wanton. Perhaps it is that last characteristic which makes me love her, or perhaps she is giving me a love philter. I have often contemplated putting her on the rack to force a confession from her."
I once heard him say at a banquet, laughingly, as he touched Caesonia's neck, "When I give the word, this beautiful throat will be hacked through." Had he lived a little longer, I have no doubt but that Milonia Caesonia would have lived only a little longer than she did.
Caesar's humor was as baroque as his excesses and cruelties were extravagant, and he loved to embarrass senators, and even the two consuls, in public. He had less conception of the duties of a host than the meanest shepherd upon the outer slopes of the Janiculan Hill, and I believe that he invited great men to his table for the sole purpose of insulting them. Upon one occasion, when he had the two consuls as guests at a banquet, he suddenly burst into raucous laughter, and when one of them asked to be told the joke at which the great Caesar laughed, he said, "Oh, nothing but that at a single nod of mine you would both have your throats cut." The laughter of the consuls was pale and anemic.
His cruelties were such as could have been conceived only by a maniacal monster. He had senators and Roman knights whipped and tortured in his presence, not that he expected to obtain information from them, but simply because it amused him to see them suffer. Upon one occasion he had a number of such noble Romans beheaded by torchlight while he walked in his garden where he might watch the butchery. Death by whip and fire, the death of the common slave, was the lot of many a knight and senator.
He once told me, during one of those pre-dawn pacings of the porticoes, that he was planning to massacre the whole Senate; then he added: "I wish that the Roman people had but one neck, that I might cut it through with a single blow, thus relieving me of the necessity of doing it piecemeal and at different places." He often had an executioner in attendance at his banquets and had people beheaded for his amusement during the meal. How right was Tiberius in feeling that he was committing a great wrong in permitting Caligula to live!
But all was not blood and butchery. Caligula still enjoyed the chariot races in the Circus, though I often thought that he was disappointed if there were no fatal accidents. He would lean far forward, his eyes gleaming with suppressed excitement, as he watched a driver being dragged to death by four terrified horses.
I drove for the Green quite often now and had become a popular charioteer, as I won far more often than I lost. The cheers of my supporters followed me around the arena as I passed in review with the other drivers in the procession which always preceeded the races, and a storm of applause followed me as I drove through the Gate of Triumph with the palm of victory in my hand when I had won. But the adulation and plaudits of the Roman populace left me cold because of the contempt in which I held all Romans. A nod of approval from a barbarian Briton chief would have meant infinitely more to me than the acclaim of all the Caesars and their degraded subjects. I hope, my son, that when you are old enough to read these memoirs of mine that you will grasp the fact that I hold neither respect nor admiration for the Romans, a race of people whose only contribution to human "progress" has been the invention of new means for destroying human life and whose only noble achievements have been copied from older and nobler civilizations which they sought to destroy. Let it always be your chiefest pride that no drop of Roman blood flows in your veins.
Those days, as I have said, were not all horror. Attica and I were often together, which gave me the opportunity to continually urge her to reach a decision between Numerius and myself before we were all laid low by senility.
Once she said to me, "You race tomorrow against Numerius. Perhaps I shall reach my decision after that race." Had another than Attica made such a statement, I should have assumed that the winne r of the race would be the winner of her hand, but I knew that Attica meant nothing of the sort. She was too fine to pla
ce herself as the amount of a wager, like so many sestertii. It was just her way of putting me off again. I supposed that my importunities bored her, so that she would adopt any artifice to win even a brief respite from them.
However, I could not but recall her words as the barriers were dropped the following day and the sixteen horses and the four chariots lunged onto the arena. It was the last race of the day, a race that I was confident I should win as I was driving by far the best team.
I had drawn the outside position, Numerius the inside, which gave him considerable advantage. As we were turning the far end of the spina for the fourth time, Numerius and the Red driver were racing neck and neck. I had maneuvered from the outside to the inside, where I was trailing directly behind Numerius; the Blue chariot was on my right, the noses of its horses opposite the rear of my car.
Numerius had not been urging his team, but I knew that he soon would and would draw ahead of the Red. I would follow through the opening, and when Numerius and I had left the other two cars in the rear and had the race to ourselves, I could pull to the right and easily take the lead and win the race in the remaining two and a half laps. My confidence was not based upon egotism: I knew my team and I knew that which Numerius was driving in this race. Mine so far outclassed his that there was no comparison.
Burroughs, Edgar Rice - I Am A Barbarian Page 16