I, Claudius - Robert Graves [154]
In his introduction to the present piece he brushed all these claims aside as trifling, saying that the hare and pheasant alone had the right to dispute the parsley-crown—their flesh alone had dignity without heaviness, delicacy without paltriness, He was just searching for a discourteous adjective with which to qualify the oyster when he heard a sudden rustling from the thom-bushes below him and a tousleheaded wild-looking man appeared. His clothes were wet and torn to rags, his face bleeding and an open knife was in his hand. He burst through the thicket shouting: "Here you are, Caesar, isn't it a beauty?'' From the sack he was carrying over his shoulder he pulled out a monstrous barbel and threw it, still kicking, on the turf at Tiberius' feet.
He was only a simple fisherman who had just made this remarkable catch and, seeing Tiberius at the cliff top, had decided to present it to him. He had moored his boat to a rock, swum to the cliff, struggled up a precipice path to the belt of thorn-bushes, and hacked himself a path through them with his clasp-knife.
But Tiberius had been startled nearly out of his senses.
He blew a whistle and shouted out in German: "Help, help! Come at once! Wolfgang! Siegfried! Adelstan! An assassin!"
"Coming, all-highest, noblest-born, gift-bestowing Chief," the Germans instantly replied. They had been on sentry-duty to his left and right and behind him, but there was nobody posted in front, naturally. They came bounding along, brandishing their assegais.
The man did not understand German, and shutting his clasp-knife said cheerfully: "I caught him by the grotto yonder. What do you guess he weighs? A regular whale, eh? Nearly pulled me out of the boat."
Tiberius, somewhat reassured, but with his imagination now running on poisoned fish, shouted to the Germans: "No, don't spear him. Cut that thing in two and rub the pieces in his face."
Burly Wolfgang from behind clasped the fisherman around the middle so that he could not move his arms, while the other two scrubbed his face with raw fish. The unfortunate fellow called out: "Hey, stop it! That's no joke! What luck that I didn't first offer the Emperor the other thing in my sack."
"See what it is," Tiberius ordered.
Edelstein opened the sack and found in it an enormous lobster. "Rub his face with that," said Tiberius. "Rub it well in!"
The wretched man lost both his eyes. Then Tiberius said: "That's enough, men. You may let him go!" The fisherman stumbled about screaming and raving with pain, and there was nothing to be done but toss him into the sea from the nearest crag.
I am glad to say that I was never invited to visit Tiberius on his island and have carefully avoided going there since, though all evidences of his vile practices have long ago been removed and his twelve villas are said to be very beautiful.
I had asked Livia's permission to marry Elia and she had given it with malicious good wishes. She even attended the wedding. It was a very splendid wedding—Sejanus saw to that—and one effect of it was to alienate me from Agrippina and Nero and their friends. It was thought that I would not be able to keep any secrets from Elia and that Elia would tell Sejanus all that she found out. This saddened me a great deal, but I saw that it was useless trying to reassure Agrippina [who was now in mourning for her sister Julilla, who had just died after a twenty-years exile in that wretched little island of Tremerus]. So gradually I stopped visiting her house, to avoid embarrassment. I and EIia were man and wife only in name. The first thing she said to me when we went into our bridal-chamber was: "Now understand, Claudius, that I don't want you to touch me and that if we ever have to sleep together again in one bed, like to-night, there'll be a coverlet between us, and the least movement you make—out you go. And another thing: you mind your own business, and I'll mind mine..."
I said. "Thank you: you have taken a great load off my mind."
She was a dreadful woman. She had the loud persistent eloquence of an auctioneer in the slave-market. I soon gave up trying to answer her back. Of course I still lived at Capua, and Elia never came to see me there, but Sejanus insisted that whenever I visited Rome I should be seen in her company as much as possible.