I, Claudius - Robert Graves [147]
This was reported to Tiberius [though not by Afer]; the word "Agamemnon" caused him fresh alarm.
Agrippina fell ill and thought that she was being poisoned. She went in her sedan to the Palace to make a last appeal to Tiberius for mercy. She looked so thin and pale that Tiberius was charmed: perhaps she would die soon. He said: "My poor Agrippina, you look seriously ill. What's wrong with you?"
She answered in a weak voice: "It may be that I have done you a wrong in thinking that you persecute my friends just because they are my friends. It may be that I am unlucky in my choice of them, or that my judgment is often at fault. But I swear you have done me equal wrong in thinking that I have the least feeling of disloyalty towards you or that I have any ambition to rule either directly or indirectly. All that I ask is to be left alone, and your forgiveness for any injuries that I have unintentionally done you, and... and.. -" She ended in sobs.
"And what else?"
"O Tiberius, be good to my children! And be good to me! Let me marry again. I am so lonely. Since Germanicus died I have never been able to forget my troubles. I can't sleep at night. If you let me marry I'll settle down and lose all my restlessness and be quite a different person, and then perhaps you won't suspect me of plotting against you.
I am sure it's only because I look so unhappy that you think I have bad feelings towards you."
"Who's the man you want to marry?"
"A good, generous, unambitious man, past middle age and one of your most loyal ministers."
"What's his name?"
"Gallus. He says that he is ready to marry me at once."
Tiberius turned on his heel and walked out of the room without another word.
A few days later he invited her to a banquet. He used often to invite people to dine with him whom he particularly mistrusted and stare at them throughout the meal as if trying to read their secret thoughts: which shook the self-possession of all but very few. If they looked alarmed he read it as a proof of guilt. If they met his eye steadily he read it as an even stronger proof of guilt, with insolence added. On this occasion Agrippina, still ill and unable to eat any but the lightest food without nausea, and stared constantly at by Tiberius, had a miserable time. She was not a talkative person, and the conversation, which was about the relative merits of music and philosophy, did not interest her in the least and she found it impossible to contribute anything to it. She made a pretence of eating, but Tiberius, who was watching her attentively, saw that she sent away plate after plate untouched. He thought that she suspected him of trying to poison her, and to test this he carefully picked an apple from the dish in front of him and said: "My dear Agrippina, you haven't made much of a meal. At any rate, try this apple. It's a splendid one. I had a present of young apple trees from the King of Parthia three years ago and this is the first time they have borne fruit."
Now almost everyone has a certain "natural enemy"—if I may call it that. To some people honey is a violent poison. Others are made ill by touching a horse or entering a stable or even by lying on a couch stuffed with horse-hair.
Others again are most uncomfortably affected by the presence of a cat, and going into a room will sometimes say, "There has been a cat here, excuse me if I retire." I myself feel an overpowering repugnance to the smell of hawthorn in bloom. Agrippina's natural enemy was the apple.
She took the present from Tiberius and thanked him, but with an ill-concealed shudder, and said that she would keep it, if she might, to eat when she reached home.
"Just one bite now, to taste how good it is."
"Please forgive me, but really I could not." She handed the apple to a servant and told him to wrap it carefully in a napkin for her.
Why did Tiberius not immediately try her on a treason charge, as Sejanus urged? Because Agrippina was still under Livia's protection.
XXV
AND SO I COME TO THE ACCOUNT OF MY DINNER with Livia. She greeted me very graciously, seeming genuinely delighted with my gift. During the meal, at which nobody else was present but old Urgulania and Caligula, now aged fourteen