I, Claudius - Robert Graves [173]
Life at the Palace I found extremely disorderly. I don't mean that I wasn't made very comfortable or that the servants were not well trained or that the ordinary formalities and courtesies were not observed towards visitors. But I never quite knew what tender relations existed between this person and that: Agrippinilla and Lesbia seemed to have exchanged husbands at one time, and at another Apelles seemed somehow intimately connected with Lesbia and the charioteer with Agrippinilla. As for Caligula and Ganymede—but I have said enough to show what I mean by "disorderly". I was the only one among them past middle-age, and did not understand the ways of the new generation at all. Gemellus also lived in the Palace: he was a frightened, delicate boy who bit his nails to the quick and was usually to be found sitting in a corner and drawing designs of nymphs and satyrs and that sort of thing for vases. I can't tell you much more about Gemellus than that I got into talk with him once or twice, feeling sorry for him because he was not really one of the party, any more than I was; but perhaps he thought that I was trying to draw him out and force him into saying something against Caligula, for he would only answer in monosyllables. On the day that he put on his manly-gown Caligula adopted him as his son and heir, and appointed him Leader of Cadets; but that wasn't the same thing by any means as sharing the monarchy with him.
Caligula fell ill and for a whole month his life was despaired of. The doctors called it brain-fever. The popular consternation at Rome was so great that a crowd of never less than ten thousand people stood day and night around the Palace, waiting for a favourable bulletin. They kept up a quiet muttering and whispering together; the noise, as it reached my window, was like that of a distant stream running over pebbles.
There were a number of most remarkable manifestations of anxiety. Some men even pasted up placards on their house-doors, to say that if Death held his hand and spared the Emperor, they vowed to give him their own lives in compensation. By universal consent all traffic noises and street cries and music ceased within half a mile or more of the Palace. That had never happened before, even during Augustus' illness, the one of which Musa was supposed to have cured him. The bulletins always read: "No change."
One evening Drusilla knocked at my door and said, "Uncle Claudius! The Emperor wants to see you prgently.
Come at once. Don't stop tor anything."
"What does he want me for?"
"I don't know. But for Heaven's sake humour him. He's got a sword there. He'll kill you if you don't say what he wants you to say. He had the point at my throat this morning. He told me that I didn't love him. I had to swear and swear that I did love him. 'Kill me, if you like, my darling,' I said .O Uncle Claudius, why was I ever born?
He's mad. He always was. But he's worse than mad now.
He's possessed."
I went along to Caligula's bedroom, which was heavily curtained and thickly carpeted. One feeble oil-lamp was burning by the bedside. The air smelt stale. His querulous voice greeted me. "Late again? I told you to hurry," He didn't look ill, only unhealthy. Two powerful deaf-mutes with axes stood as guards, one on each side of his bed.
I said, saluting him, "Oh, how I hurried! If I hadn't had a lame leg I'd have been here almost before I started. What joy to see you alive and to hear your voice again, Caesar! Can I dare to hope that you're better?"
"I have never really been ill. Only resting. And undergoing a metamorphosis. It's the most important religious event in history. No wonder the City keeps so quiet."
I felt that he expected me to be sympathetic, nevertheless. "Has the metamorphosis been painful, Emperor? I trust not."
"As painful as if I were my own mother. I had a very difficult delivery. Mercifully, I have forgotten all about it.
Or nearly all. For I was a very precocious child and distinctly remember the midwives' faces of admiration as they washed me after my emergence into this world, and the taste of the wine they put between my lips to refresh me after my struggles."