I, Claudius - Robert Graves [170]
The Guards were to receive a bounty of fifty gold pieces a man; Caligula, to ensure their loyalty when the time came for Macro's removal, doubled the amount. He paid the people of Rome the four hundred and fifty thousand gold pieces bequeathed them and added three gold pieces a head; he said that he had intended to give them this when he came of age, but the old Emperor had forbidden it. The armies were awarded the same bounty as under Augustus' will, but this time it was paid promptly. What was more, he paid all the sums owing under Livia's will, which we legatees had long ago written off as bad debts. To me the two most interesting items in Tiberius' will were: the specific bequest to me of the historical books which Pollio had left me but which I had been cheated of, together with a number of other valuable volumes, and the sum of twenty thousand gold pieces; and a bequest to the Chief Vestal, the granddaughter of Vipsania, of a hundred thousand gold pieces to be spent as she pleased, either on herself or on the College. The Chief Vestal, as the granddaughter of the murdered Gallus, melted the coin down and made it into a great golden casket for his ashes.
With these bequests from Livia and Tiberius I was now quite well off. Caligula astonished me by further paying me back the fifty thousand that I had found for Germanicus at the time of the mutiny: he had heard the story from his mother. He did not allow me to refuse it and said that if I made any further protest he would insist on paying me the accumulated interest too: it was a debt he owed his father's memory. When I told Calpurnia about my new wealth she seemed more sorry than pleased. "It won't bring you any luck," she said. "Much better be modestly well off, as you have been, than run the risk of having your whole fortune stripped from you by informers on a charge of treason."
Calpurnia was Acte's successor, you remember. She was very shrewd for her years—seventeen.
I said, "What do you mean, Calpurnia? Informers?
There are no such things in Rome now, and no treason trials."
She said; "I didn't hear that the informers were packed off in the same boat with the Spintrians." [For Tiberias' painted "orphans" had been banished by Caligula. As a public gesture of pure-mindedness he had sent the whole crew of them off to Sardinia, a most unhealthy island, and told them to labour honestly for their living as roadmakers. Some of them just lay down and died when picks and shovels were put into their hands, but the rest were whipped into work, even the daintiest of them. Soon-they had a stroke of luck. A pirate vessel made a sudden raid, captured them, and carried them off to Tyre, where they were sold as slaves to rich Eastern profligates.]
"But they wouldn't dare to try their old tricks again, Calpurnia?"
She put down her embroidery. "Claudius, I'm no politician or scholar, but I can at least use my prostitute's wit and do simple sums. How much money did the old Emperor leave?"
"About twenty-seven million gold pieces. That's a lot of money."
"And how much has the new one paid out in legacies and bounties?"
"About three million and a half. Yes, at least that amount."
"And since he has been Emperor how many panthers and bears and lions and tigers and wild bulls and things has he imported for the huntsmen to kill in the amphitheatres and the Circus?"
"About twenty thousand, perhaps. Probably more."
"And how many other animals have been sacrificed in the temples?"
"I don't know. I should guess between one and two hundred thousand."
"Those flamingoes and desert antelopes and zebras and British beavers must have cost him something! So what with buying all those animals and paying the huntsmen in the amphitheatres, and then the gladiators, of course—gladiators get four times what they got under Augustus, I'm told—and all the State banquets and decorated cars and the theatre shows—they say that when he recalled the actors whom the old Emperor banished he paid them for all the years they were out of work—handsome, eh?—and my goodness the money he has spent on racehorses! Well, what with one thing and the other he can't have much change left out of twenty million, can he?"