The Judge: Then, perhaps you’ll tell me if your husband’s living?
The Young Girl: Your Honour, I didn’t come here to be accused of this and that in the most insulting way.
The Judge: Sh. Sh. I just thought I saw a snowflake in your hand. [Murderers were popularly believed to suffer from a scrofulous flaking of the skin in the palm of the hand.] Tell me, my dear, did you always take tender care of your father and mother?
The Young Girl: Oh, I did, I did. I helped them to their last breath.
The Judge: A loving daughter. And have you been kind to your pretty brothers?
The Young Girl: Your Honour, I’ve refused them nothing.
The Judge: You haven’t gone beyond the bounds of modesty, I hope. [Modesty was a village and temple ten miles north of Rome.]
The Young Girl: Oh, no, sir! Not beyond the city gates. We kept it all in the home.
The Judge: A paragon! A paragon! Now tell me, little sweetness, why are you dressed in rags?
The Young Girl: You may well ask, kind gentleman. There’s no more money circulating in Rome. I think Mammurra has taken it all up to Lower Gaul. [In a previous episode, Mammurra, dressed as a wise woman of Gaul, received a prize of virtue for ‘sweeping the house clean.’] My older brother brings no money in, of course, because he’s a pensioner of the Veined Nose [i.e. Caesar. The frugality of Caesar’s domestic life had long led to the charge that he was parsimonious]. My second brother brings in no money, because all his holdings were beetled into The Tiber. [Caesar had recently straightened the course of the Tiber by digging away portions of its banks under the Vatican and Janiculan hills. The Roman populace had been particularly fascinated by this operation, because of a new excavating device or machine which had been employed. This machine, invented by Caesar during his military campaigns, was promptly labeled a ‘beetle.’ The region sacrificed to the river had contained the lowest resorts of the city.]
The Judge: And you, little butterfly? Haven’t I heard that you pick up many a fourpenny bit?
[And so on.]
XLV
Abra, Pompeia’s maid, to the Headwaiter at the Taverns of Cossutius (an agent of Cleopatra’s Information Service).
[October 17.]
Like you say first I will answer your questions by number.
I. I worked for the lady Clodia Pulcher for five years. During the war we left Rome and lived in her house in Baiae. I will be free in two years. I have worked here two years. I am thirty-eight years old. I have no children.
II. This month I am not allowed to leave the house. None of the servants are. They have found that somebody is stealing things. That’s what they say, but I do not think it is that. We all think that it is the secretary, the one from Crete, that they are watching.
III. My husband is allowed to visit me every five days. He is searched when he goes out. No peddlers can come in. They come to the garden door and we buy there.
IV. Yes, I send letters to the Lady Clodia Pulcher every time that Hagia, the midwife, comes. [I t is presumed that the midwife was attending a servant in Caesar’s household.] She is not searched. The things I write the Lady Clodia Pulcher are like this: how the Queen of Egypt came to call on my Mistress; when my Master is away from the house all night; sometimes things that the wine butler says they are talking about at table; when the Master has the falling sickness. The Lady Clodia Pulcher does not pay me money. She has made a tavern for my husband on the Appian Way by the Tomb of Mops. If my letters are satisfactory to you, my husband and I would like a cow.
V. No, I am sure, nothing definite. But I think my Master does not like me. Six months ago they had a big quarrel about me, and a bigger quarrel two days ago. But my Mistress would never let him send me away she would cry so. She is never tired of talking about jewels, clothes, hair, et cetera, and there is nobody but me to talk to. That’s how it is.
VI. About my Mistress’s letters. Last year my Master told the Porter that all letters for my Mistress should be put with his. When they arrived during the day they were kept in the Porter’s room until they were sent to the Master’s offices. But several times a day my mistress went to the Porter and said are there any letters for me and he would give them to her. She made a big quarrel and cried and now all letters come to her. Only he said all anonymous letters must be destroyed without being read. Most are. There are many. Some are exciting. Some not.
Here begins my letter:
My Master is very kind to my mistress. From the time he comes home from the offices he spends almost all the time with her. When he has visitors on business he talks to them in the next room and keeps the door open and makes the visits as short as possible. When she goes to bed, he has friends come to see him for an hour or two because he does not like to sleep much, I mean does not need to sleep much. As these friends, like Hirtius, Mammurra, Oppius, drink much and laugh loud, they go to the Master’s workroom on the cliff over the river. As it takes my Mistress almost two hours to get ready to go to bed, she is often still awake when he comes back. Often while she is getting ready, he leaves his friends and sits by us and talks to her while I am combing her hair, etc. Now what I mean to say is this: she almost always finds something to quarrel about. She almost always cries. Many times he sends me from the room while they talk about something. She quarrels about the sumptuary laws, about the leopard cub which the Queen of Egypt gave her, about the Lady Clodia Pulcher not being invited to come to the house, about what days we go to the villa at Lake Nemi, about going to the theater.
Now there has been a great quarrel two days ago. When my Mistress left the room for a moment I think my Master quickly pushed his hand around among all the jars and bottles on her toilet table and he found an anonymous letter that came to her many weeks ago. I think he read it and put it back where it was. When she came back he pretended to find it all over again. That’s what I think happened. It was a letter saying that Clodius Pulcher, the man that burned Cicero’s house and that threatened to kill all the Senators, that man, that he loved my mistress like madness, and that she must be warned against him because maybe he could not control his love. My Master was very calm, but I know him he was also white with rage. He said that the letter was obviously written by Clodius Pulcher himself and that only a man who really despised a woman and wished to make a fool of her would write a letter like that. My Mistress said she hated Clodius Pulcher, but that it was obvious that he did not write that letter. Then I was made to leave the room. When I came back she had cried and she began to cry again and she kept saying that life was impossible, simply not to be endured.
My Master sent for me and said that I had brought the letter in. I swore by a terrible oath that he gave me that I had known nothing about the letter; but I think he knows. I do not think, however, that he will send me away.
Do you want me to write to you what nights my Master stays away from the house all night?
The wine butler says that he heard the Master talking to Balbus and Brutus – Decimus Brutus, that is, not the good-looking one – about moving Rome to Troy. Troy is in Egypt, I think.
The secretary, the one from Sicily, says that he has changed his mind, there will be no war against the Parthians. The Cretan secretary said you fool, of course, there will. That’s all I know about that.
There’s going to be an edict about no carts coming into the center of town after ten o’clock and they can only stay an hour.
I forgot to say that Clodius Pulcher rode up on his horse while my Mistress was in her litter going to Lake Nemi and began talking to her until Affius came up and said he had orders no one was to speak to our party. Affius is head of the farm and in charge of our journeys. He was with the Master in the wars and has only one arm.
Now I will stop.
I wish to say this that I do not like it here, I am uncomfortable. I have asked the Lady Clodia Pulcher to take me back, but she says I must stay here. I know a way that I could leave here. If this letter to you is what you want I will stay and write
a few more.
The cow we would like is a tawny spotted one.
XLVI
Caesar’s Journal – Letter to Lucius Mamilius Turrinus on Capri.
[About October 13.]
1012. The Queen of Egypt and I have been quarreling. It is not the quarrel habitual in boudoirs, though it frequently arrives at a termination which cannot be said to be new.
Cleopatra declares that I am a God. She is shocked to discover that I have not long since come to acknowledge that I am a God. Cleopatra is very certain that she is a Goddess and the worship of her people confirms her daily in this belief. She assures me that the divinity which lives in her has endowed her with unusual perspicuity in recognising divinity. Through that endowment she is in a position to assure me that I am one also.
All this makes for conversation of a very flattering sort, interrupted by droll byplay. I pinch the Goddess and the Goddess squeals. I put my hand over the Goddess’s eyes and, by the Immortal Gods, she is unable to see a thing. She has answers for all these sophistries. It is the one subject, however, on which the great Queen is not accessible to reason and on which I have learned not to permit our conversations to take a serious turn. On that subject alone she is, perhaps, oriental.
Nothing seems to me to be more dangerous – not only for us rulers, but for those who gaze upon us with varying degrees of adoration – than this ascription of divine attributes. It is not difficult to understand that many persons will feel at times as though they were inflated by unusual powers or caught up into currents of some inexplicable rightness. I had this feeling frequently when I was younger; I now shudder at it and with horror. How often I have had it thrown back at me, generally by flatterers, that I said to the timid boatman in the storm: ‘Have no fear; you bear Caesar.’ What nonsense! I have had no more exemption from the ills of life than any other man.
But that is not all. The history of nations shows how deeply rooted is our propensity to impute a more than human condition to those remarkable for gifts or to those merely situated in conspicuous position. I have little doubt that the demigods and even the Gods of antiquity are nothing more than ancestors about whom these venerations have been fostered. All this has been fruitful; it expands the imagination of the growing boy and it furnishes sanctions for good manners and public institutions. It must be outgrown, however – outgrown and discarded. Every man that has ever lived has been but a man and his achievements should be viewed as extensions of the human state, not interruptions in it.
There is no one but you with whom I can talk of this. Every year this discomfiting deification increases about me. I remember with shame that there was a time when I endeavored, for administrative reasons, to fan it: sufficient evidence that I am a man and a most fallible one, for there is no human weakness equal to that of trying to inculcate the notion that one is a God. I had a dream one night that Alexander appeared at the door of my tent with sword lifted, about to slay me. I said to him: ‘But you are no God,’ and he vanished.
The older I grow, dear Lucius, the more I rejoice in being a man – mortal, mistaken, and unabashed. Today my secretaries timidly brought me a succession of documents on which I had made various kinds of errors (to myself I call them Cleopatra-errors, so obsessive is that enchantress). I corrected them one after one another, laughing. My secretaries frowned. They could not understand that Caesar would be delighted at his mistakes. Secretaries are not exhilarating companions.
The words ‘divinity’ and ‘God’ have been in use among us for some time. They have a thousand meanings and for any one person a score.
The other night I found my wife under strong emotion imploring the Gods to send a sunny day for her trip to Lake Nemi. My aunt Julia is a farmer and she does not believe that they will alter the weather for her convenience, but she is certain that they are watching over Rome and have placed me here as governor. Cicero does not believe that they would hesitate to let Rome glide into ruin (he would not wish to share with them the honour of having saved the state from Catiline), but he has no doubt that they placed the conception of justice in men’s hearts. Catullus probably believes that men have developed an idea of justice from quarreling with one another over property and over boundary lines, but he is certain that love is the only manifestation of the divine and that it is from love, even when it is traduced and insulted, that we can learn the nature of our existence. Cleopatra holds that love is the most agreeable of activities and that her attachment to her children is the most compelling emotion she has ever experienced, but that these are certainly not divine – divinity for her resides in the force of one’s will and the energy of one’s personality. And none of these meanings are meanings for me, though at various times in my life I have held all of them. With the loss of each of them I have been filled with an increased strength. I feel that if I can rid myself of the wrong ones, I shall be coming closer to the right one.
But I am an aging man. Time presses.
XLVI-A
From the Commonplace Book of Cornelius Nepos.
The Dictator has issued an edict that no more towns may change their names to a form of his own. The reason for this is, I think, that he has discovered that he is being more literally worshipped than he cares to be. He has ceased sending presents to townships and regimental headquarters; they are invariably placed in shrines and become centers of pilgrimage for healing and supplication.
There is no doubt that this is taking place, and not only in the barbarous outposts of the Republic and in the mountains of Italy, but here in the City.
It is said that his servants are continually being bribed to steal his garments, the parings of his nails, the refuse of his shaving, and his very urine – all of these are said to possess magical properties and are preserved for adoration.
Fanatics occasionally are able to penetrate into his house where they are mistaken for assassins. One of these prowlers, dagger in hand, was surprised one night near to where Caesar was sleeping. A summary trial was held on the spot and Caesar himself conducted the interrogation. The man was all but incoherent, but not with fear. As the interview proceeded he lay on the floor gazing ecstatically at the Dictator’s face and babbling that all he wanted was ‘one drop of Caesar’s blood with which to sanctify himself.’ Caesar, to the consternation of the guards and servants who had collected, asked him many questions and finally extracted from him the whole story of his life. This close interest, which many a consul has not been able to arouse, raised the poor man’s veneration to a still more delirious state and at the end he was imploring Caesar to kill him with his own hand.
Turning to the bystanders, Caesar is reported to have said with a smile: ‘It is often difficult to distinguish hate from love.’
Caesar’s physician Sosthenes to dinner.
He was talking about the effect of Caesar on others.
‘Of what other men have such stories been told and believed?
‘Until recently scores of ill persons were placed nightly by their families to sleep against the wall which surrounds his house. They have been driven away; now you will see them, row by row, lying under and around his statues. On his journeys farmers beseech him to plant his foot on their less productive fields.
‘And the stories! You hear them in the soldiers’ songs; you see them in verses and drawings scrawled in public places. It is said that he was conceived by his mother of a bolt of lightning; that he was born through her mouth or ear; that he came into the world without organs of generation and that those he ultimately possessed were grafted onto him from a mysterious stranger he met among the oak trees of the Temple of Zeus at Dodona whom he slew for that purpose; or that they came from a statue of Zeus by Phidias. There is no abnormality that has not been charged against him and it is believed that, like Jupiter, he has predilections within the animal kingdom. It is widely held that he is literally the father of his country and that he has left hundreds of children in Spain, Britain, Gaul, and Africa.
‘And yet superstition and po
pular belief do not shrink from inconsistency. It is said, on the other hand, that he guards so austere a continence that the unchaste feel intolerable pain when he passes near them.
‘What man, what mere man, has fired the imaginations of the people to so luxuriant a body of legend? And now that Cleopatra has come to town, what do we not hear? – Cleopatra, the rich mud of the Nile. Go to the taverns, go to the barracks – the heads of the Roman people are swimming at the thought of those embraces. We are celebrating the nuptials of the Unconquered Sun and the Fecund Earth.
‘I am his physician. I have tended that body through convulsions and have bound its wounds. Yes, it is mortal; but we physicians learn to listen to our patients’ bodies as musicians listen to the various lyres which are placed in their hands. His is bald, aging, and covered with the wounds received from many wars; but every portion is informed by mind. Its powers of self-repair are extraordinary. Illness is discouragement. The illness from which Caesar suffers is the one illness which denotes overreaching enthusiasm. It is related to the character of his mind.
‘The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men’s. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive each day a score of challenges; we must say yes or no to decisions that will set off chains of consequences. Some of us deliberate; some of us refuse the decision, which is itself a decision; some of us leap giddily into the decision, setting our jaws and closing our eyes, which is a sort of decision of despair. Caesar embraces decision. It is as though he felt his mind to be operating only when it is interlocking itself with significant consequences. Caesar shrinks from no responsibility. He heaps more and more upon his shoulders.
‘It may be that he lacks some forms of imagination. It is very certain that he gives little thought to the past and does not attempt to envisage the future clearly. He does not cultivate remorse and does not indulge in aspiration.
‘From time to time he permits me to put him through certain tests. I ask him to exercise strenuously, then lie in repose while I engage in various observations, and so on. During one of these enforced immobilities he asked me, ‘If I were to escape assassination and live into old age, of what organ’s weakness, would I die?’ ‘Sire,’ I said, ‘of an apoplexy.’ He seemed very pleased. I knew what was in his mind. There are two things he dreads: physical pain, to which he is most unusually sensitive, and indecorousness.
The Woman of Andros / the Ides of March Page 24