Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina Read online

  What had made Herod come to Alexandria to borrow money from the Alabarch was the rumour that his freedman had brought with him from Acre of the fall of Sejanus. At Alexandria it had been fully confirmed. Sejanus had been my uncle Tiberius’s most trusted minister but had conspired with my sister Livilla to kill him and usurp the monarchy. It was my mother who discovered the plot and warned Tiberius; and Tiberius, with the help of my nephew Caligula and the stony-hearted villain Macro, soon managed to bring Sejanus to book. It was then discovered that Livilla had poisoned her husband Castor seven years previously and that Castor had, after all, never been the traitor to his father that Sejanus had represented him as being. So naturally Tiberius’s strict rule against the reappearance in his presence of any of Castor’s former friends must now be considered cancelled; and my mother’s patronage was more valuable than ever before. Had it not been for this news Herod would not have wasted his time and dignity by trying to borrow from the Alabarch. Jews are generous but very careful. They lend to their own needy fellow-Jews if they have fallen into misfortune through no fault or sin of their own, and they lend without charging any interest, because that is forbidden in their Law: their only reward is a feeling of virtue. But they will lend nothing to any non-Jew, even if he is dying of starvation, still less to any Jew who has put himself ‘outside the congregation’, as they call it, by following un-Jewish customs in foreign lands – unless they are quite sure that they will get some substantial return for their generosity.

  Chapter 3

  MY mother and I were unaware of Herod’s return to Italy until one day a hurried note came from him, saying that he was coming to see us and adding darkly that he counted on our help to tide him over a great crisis of his fortunes. ‘If it’s money that he wants,’ I said to my mother, ‘the answer is that we have none.’ And indeed we did not have any money to throw away at this time, as I have explained in my previous book. But my mother said: ‘It is very base to talk in that strain, Claudius. You were always a boor. If Herod needs money because he is in difficulties we must certainly raise money in some way or other: I owe it to the memory of his dead mother Berenice. In spite of her outlandish religious habits Berenice was one of my best friends. And such a splendid household manager, too!’

  My mother had not seen Herod for some seven years and had missed him greatly. But he had been a most dutiful correspondent, writing to her about each of his troubles in turn and in such an amusing way that they seemed the most delightful adventures that you would find anywhere in Greek story-books, instead of genuine troubles. Perhaps the gayest letter of all was the one that he wrote from Edom shortly after leaving Rome, telling how his sweet, dear, silly wife Cypros had discouraged him from his leap from the fortress battlements. ‘She was quite right,’ he concluded. ‘It was an excessively high tower.’ A recent letter, also written from Edom, was in the same strain; it was while he was waiting for the money from Acre. He told of his shame at having sunk so low morally as to steal a Persian merchant’s riding-camel. However, he wrote, shame had soon turned to a feeling of virtue for having done the owner so signal a service: the beast being apparently the permanent home of seven evil spirits, each worse than the last. The merchant must have been incomparably relieved to have awakened one morning and found his treasured possession really gone, saddle, bridle, and all. It had been a most terrifying journey through the Syrian desert, the camel doing its best to kill him at every dry water-course or narrow pass that they came to and even sneaking up at night to trample on his sleeping body. He wrote again from Alexandria to tell us that he had turned the beast loose in Edom, but that it had stalked him with a wicked look in its eye all the way down to the coast. ‘I swear to you, most noble and learned Lady Antonia, my earliest friend and my most generous benefactress, that it was terror of that horrible camel rather than fear of my creditors that made me give the Governor the slip at Anthedon. It would certainly have insisted on sharing my prison cell with me if I had yielded to arrest.’ There was a postscript: ‘My cousins of Edom were extraordinarily hospitable, but I must not allow you to carry away the impression that they were extravagant. They carry economy so far that they only put on clean linen on three occasions – when they marry, when they die, and when they raid a caravan which supplies them with clean linen free of charge. There is not a single fuller in the whole of Edom.’ Herod naturally put the most favourable construction possible on his quarrel, or misunderstanding as he called it, with Flaccus. He blamed himself for his thoughtlessness and praised Flaccus as a man with almost too high a sense of honour, if that were possible – certainly it was much too high for the people whom he governed to appreciate: they regarded him as an eccentric.

  Herod now told us the parts of his story that he had omitted from his letters, concealing nothing, or practically nothing, for he knew that this was the best way to behave with my mother; and he especially delighted her – though of course she pretended to be dreadfully shocked – with his story of the kidnapping of the soldiers and his attempt to bluff the Alabarch. He also described his voyage from Alexandria in a dangerous storm when everyone but himself and the captain had, so he said, been prostrated by sea–sickness for five days and nights. The captain had spent all his time weeping and praying, leaving Herod to navigate the vessel single-handed.

  Then he went on: ‘When at last, standing in the forecastle of our gallant ship, which had now stopped its rolling and pitching, and heedless of the thanks and praises of the now convalescent crew, I saw the Bay of Naples stretched shining before me, its shores gleaming with beautiful temples and villas, and mighty Vesuvius towering above, and reeking with wisps of cloud, like a domestic hearth – I confess I wept. I realized that I was coming home to my first and dearest homeland. I thought of all my beloved Roman friends from whom I had been so long parted, and especially of you, most learned and beautiful and noble Antonia – of you too, Claudius, naturally – how happy we would be to greet one another again. But first, it was clear, I had to establish myself decently. It would have been most unsuitable for me to have presented myself at your door like a beggar or poor client, asking for relief. As soon as we had landed and I had cashed the Alabarch’s draft, which was on a Naples bank, I wrote at once to the Emperor, at Capri, begging to be allowed the privilege of an audience. He granted it most graciously, saying that he was pleased to hear of my safe return, and we had a most encouraging talk together the next day. I am sorry to say that I felt bound to divert him – for he was in a rather morose humour at first – with some Asiatic stories that I certainly would not injure your modesty by repeating here. But you know how it is with the Emperor: he has an ingenious mind and is very catholic in his tastes. Well, when I had told him a particularly characteristic story in that style he said, “Herod, you’re a man after my own heart. I wish you to undertake an appointment of great responsibility – the tutoring of my only grandchild, Tiberius Gemellus, whom I have here with me. As an intimate friend of his dead father you will surely not refuse it, and I trust that the lad will take to you. He is, I am sorry to say, a sullen, melancholy little fellow and needs an open-hearted lively elder companion on whom to model himself.”

  ‘I stopped the night at Capri, and by morning the Emperor and I were better friends than ever – he had disregarded his doctors’ advice and drunk with me all night. I thought that my fortunes were restored at last, when suddenly the single horse-hair, by which the sword of Damocles had so long been suspended over my unlucky head, contrived to snap. A letter arrived for the Emperor from that idiot of a Governor at Anthedon reporting that he had served a warrant on me for non-payment of a twelve-thousand debt to the Privy Purse and that I had “eluded arrest by an artifice” and had escaped, kidnapping two of his garrison, who had not yet returned and had probably been murdered. I assured the Emperor that the soldiers were alive and that they had stowed away in my vessel without my knowledge and that no warrant had been served on me. Perhaps they had been sent to serve it, I said, but had decided to go f
or a holiday to Egypt. At all events we found them hiding in the cargo when we were half-way to Alexandria. I assured the Emperor that at Alexandria I had returned them at once to Anthedon for punishment.’

  ‘Herod Agrippa,’ said my mother severely, ‘that was a deliberate lie and I am most ashamed of you.’

  ‘Not so ashamed as I have been of myself since, dear Lady Antonia,’ said Herod. ‘How often have you told me that honesty is the best policy? But in the East everyone tells lies and one naturally discounts nine-tenths of what one hears, and expects one’s hearers to do the same. For the moment I had forgotten that I was back in a country where it is considered dishonourable to deviate a hair’s breadth from the strict truth.’

  ‘Did the Emperor believe you?’ I asked.

  ‘I hope so, with all my heart,’ said Herod. ‘He asked me, “But what about the debt?” I told him that it was a loan granted me in proper form and on good security by the Privy Purse, and that if a warrant had been issued for my arrest on that account it must have been that traitor Sejanus’s doing: I would speak to the Treasurer at once and settle the matter with him. But the Emperor said: “Herod, unless that debt is paid in full within a week you shall not be tutor to my grandson.” You know how strict he is about debts to the Privy Purse. I said in as casual a tone as I could command, that I would certainly pay it within three days. But my heart was like lead. And so I immediately wrote to you, my dear benefactress, thinking that perhaps…’

  My mother said again, ‘It was very, very wrong of you, Herod, to tell the Emperor such lies.’

  ‘I know it, I know it,’ said Herod, feigning deep repentance. ‘If you had been in my position you would undoubtedly have told the truth: but I lacked the courage. And, as I say, these seven years in the East away from you have greatly blunted my moral sensibilities.’

  ‘Claudius,’ said my mother with sudden resolution, ‘how can we raise twelve thousand in a hurry? What about the letter you had from Aristobulus this morning?’

  By a pretty coincidence I had had a letter from Aristobulus only that morning asking me to invest some money for him in landed property, which was going cheap at that time, because of the scarcity of coin. He had enclosed a banker’s draft for 10,000. My mother told Herod about it.

  ‘Aristobulus!’ cried Herod. ‘How in the world did he rake ten thousand together? The unprincipled fellow must have been making use of his influence with Flaccus to take bribes from the natives.’

  ‘I consider, in that case,’ said my mother, ‘that he behaved very shabbily towards you in reporting to my old friend Flaccus that the Damascenes were sending you a present for having pleaded their cause so well. I should have thought better of Aristobulus than that. And now perhaps it would only be justice if that ten thousand were used as a temporary – temporary, mind you, Herod – loan to help you on your feet again. There will be no difficulty about the remaining two thousand – will there, Claudius?’

  ‘You forget that Herod still has eight thousand from the Alabaren, Mother. Unless he has already spent it. He’ll be better off than we are if we entrust Aristobulus’s money to him.’

  Herod was warned that he must repay the debt within three months without fail or I would be guilty of a breach of fiduciary trust. I did not like the business in the least, but I preferred it to mortgaging our house on the Palatine Hill to raise the money, which would have been the only other course. However, everything turned out unexpectedly well. Not only was Herod’s appointment as tutor to Gemellus confirmed, as soon as he had paid the Privy Purse the 12,000, but he also repaid me the whole amount of the Aristobulus loan two days before it was due and, besides that, a former debt of 5,000 which we had never expected to see again. For Herod, as Gemellus’s tutor, was thrown a great deal into the company of Caligula, whom Tiberius, now seventy-five years old, had adopted as his son and who was his heir-presumptive. Tiberius kept Caligula very short of money, and Herod, after gaining Caligula’s confidence by some fine banquets, handsome presents and the like, became his accredited agent for borrowing large sums, in the greatest secrecy, from rich men who wanted to stand in well with the new Emperor. For Tiberius was not expected to live much longer. When Caligula’s confidence in Herod was thus proved and a matter of common knowledge in financial circles, he found it easy to borrow money in his own name as well as in Caligula’s. His unpaid debts of seven years before had mostly settled themselves by the death of the creditors: for the ranks of the rich had been greatly thinned by Tiberius’s treason trials under Sejanus, and under Macro, Sejanus’s successor, the same destructive process continued. About the rest of his debts Herod was easy enough in his mind: nobody would dare to sue a man who stood so high in Court favour as himself. He paid me back with part of a loan of 40,000 gold pieces which he had negotiated with a freedman of Tiberius’s, a fellow who, as a slave, had been one of the warders of Caligula’s elder brother Drusus, when he was starved to death in the Palace cellars. Since his liberation he had become immensely rich by traffic in high-class slaves – he would buy sick slaves cheap and doctor them back to health in a hospital which he managed himself – and was afraid that Caligula when he became Emperor would take vengeance on him for his ill-treatment of Drusus; but Herod undertook to soften Caligula’s heart towards him.

  So Herod’s star grew daily brighter, and he settled several matters in the East to his entire satisfaction. For instance, he wrote to friends in Edom and Judaea – and anyone to whom he now wrote as a friend was greatly flattered – and asked them whether they could provide him with any detailed evidence of maladministration against the Governor who had tried to arrest him at Anthedon. He collected quite an imposing amount of evidence in this way and had it embodied in a letter purporting to come from leading citizens of Anthedon; which he then sent to Capri. The Governor lost his appointment. Herod paid back his debt in Attic drachmae to the corn-factor at Acre, less twice the amount which had been unwarrantably deducted from the money sent to him in Edom; explaining that these 5,000 drachmae which he was retaining represented a sum which the corn-factor had borrowed from the Princess Cypros some years back and had never returned. As for Flaccus, Herod made no attempt to be revenged on him, for my mother’s sake; and Flaccus died shortly afterwards. Aristobulus he decided to forgive magnanimously, knowing that he must be feeling not only ashamed of himself but most vexed at his lack of foresight in antagonizing a brother now grown so powerful. Aristobulus could be made very useful, once he was properly chastened in spirit. Herod also revenged himself on Pontius Pilate, from whom the order for his arrest at Anthedon had originated, by encouraging some friends of his in Samaria to protest to the new Governor of Syria, my friend Vitellius, about Pilate’s rough handling of civil disturbances there and to charge him with bribe-taking. Pilate was ordered to Rome to answer these charges before Tiberius.

  One fine spring day as Caligula and Herod were out riding together in an open coach in the country near Rome, Herod remarked gaily, ‘It is high time, surely, for the old warrior to be given his wooden foil.’ By the old warrior he meant Tiberius, and by the wooden foil he meant the honourable token of discharge that worn-out sword-fighters are given in the arena. He added, ‘And if you will pardon what may sound suspiciously like flattery, my dear fellow, but is my honest opinion, you will make a far finer showing at the game of games than he ever made.’

  Caligula was delighted, but unfortunately Herod’s coachman overheard the remark, understood it, and stored it in his memory. The knowledge that he had power to ruin his master encouraged this turnip-witted fellow to attempt a number of impertinences towards him, which for a time, as it happened, passed unnoticed. But at last he took it into his head to steal some very fine embroidered carriage-rugs and sell them to another coachman whose master lived at some distance from Rome. He reported that they had been accidentally ruined by the leakings of a tar-barrel through the planks of the stable-loft, and Herod was content to believe him; but one day, happening to go for a pleasure-drive with the
knight to whose coachman they had been sold, he found them tucked about his knees. And so the theft came out. But the knight’s coachman gave the thief timely warning and he ran away at once to avoid punishment. His original intention had been to face Herod, if he were found out, with the threat to reveal to the Emperor what he had overheard. But he lost courage when the appropriate moment came, suddenly realizing that Herod was quite capable of killing him if he tried blackmail and of producing witnesses that the blow had been struck in self-defence. The coachman was one of those people whose muddled minds get everyone into trouble, themselves most of all.

  Herod knew the fellow’s probable haunts in Rome and, not realizing what was at stake, asked the City officers to arrest him. He was found and brought up in court on a charge of theft, but claimed the privilege as a freedman of appealing to the Emperor instead of being summarily sentenced. He added: ‘I have something to tell the Emperor which concerns his personal security. It is what I once heard when driving a coach on the road to Capua.’ The magistrate had no alternative but to send him under armed escort to Capri.

  From what I have already told you about the character of my uncle Tiberius you will perhaps be able to guess what course he took when he read the magistrate’s report. Though he realized that the coachman must have overheard some treasonable remark of Herod’s, he did not yet wish to know precisely what it was: Herod obviously was not the sort of man to make any very dangerous statement in a coachman’s hearing. So he kept the coachman in prison, unexamined, and instructed young Gemellus, now about ten years old, to keep a sharp watch on his tutor and to report any word or action of his that seemed to have any treasonable significance. Herod meanwhile grew anxious at Tiberius’s delay in examining the coachman and talked the matter over with Caligula. They decided that nothing had been said by Herod, on the occasion to which the coachman was apparently referring, that could not be explained away. If Herod himself pressed for an investigation Tiberius would be the more likely to take his word that the ‘wooden foil’ was intended literally. For Herod would say that they had been discussing Yellow Legs, a famous sword-fighter who had since retired, and that he had merely been congratulating Caligula on his fencing abilities.