I, Claudius - Robert Graves [179]
A few days later at supper I happened to be laying down the law, rather drunkenly, about the inheritance of female beauty, and quoting examples of my contention that it usually missed a generation, going from the grandmother to the granddaughter. Unfortunately I wound up by saying, "The most beautiful woman in Rome when I was a boy has reappeared, feature for feature, and limb for limb, in the person of her granddaughter and namesake Lollia, the wife of the present Governor of Greece. With the sole exception of a certain lady whom I will not name, because she is present in this room, Lollia is in my opinion the most beautiful woman alive to-day." I made this exception merely for tactfulness. Lollia was far and away more beautiful than my nieces, Agrippinilla or Lesbia, or than any other member of the company. I was not in love with her, I may say: I had merely noticed one day that she was perfect, and remembered having made exactly the same observation about her grandmother when I was a boy. Caligula grew interested and questioned me about Lollia; I did not realise that I had said too much, and said more.
That evening Caligula wrote to Lollia's husband telling him to return to Rome and accept a signal honour. The signal honour turned out to be that of divorcing Lollia and marrying her to the Emperor.
Another chance remark that I made at supper about this time had an unexpected effect on Caligula. Someone mentioned epilepsy and I said that Carthaginian records showed Hannibal to have been an epileptic, and that Alexander and Julius Casar were both subject to this mysterious disease, which seemed to be an almost inevitable accompaniment of superlative military genius. Caligula pricked up his ears at this, and a few days later he gave a very good imitation of an epileptic fit, falling on the floor in the Senate House and screaming at the top of his voice, his lips white with foam—soap-suds, probably.
The people of Rome were still happy enough. Caligula continued giving them a good time with theatrical shows and sword-fights and wild-beasts hunts and chariot-races and largesse thrown from the Oration Platform or from the upper windows of the Palace. What marriages he contracted or dissolved, or what courtiers he murdered, they did not much care. He was never satisfied unless every seat in the theatre or Circus was occupied and all the gangways crowded; so whenever there was a performance he postponed all lawsuits and suspended all mourning to give nobody any excuse for not attending. He made several other innovations. He allowed people to bring cushions to sit on and in hot weather to wear straw hats, and to come barefooted—even senators, who were supposed to set an example of austerity.
When I eventually managed to visit Capua for a few days, for the first time for nearly a year, almost the first thing Calpurnia asked me was: "How much is left in the Treasury, Claudius, of that twenty million?"
"Less than five million, I believe. But he's been building pleasure-barges of cedar-wood and overlaying them with gold and studding them with jewels and putting baths and flower-gardens in them, and he's started work on sixty new temples and talks of cutting a canal across the isthmus of Corinth. He takes baths in spikenard and oil of violet. Two days ago he gave Eutychus, the Leek Green charioteer, a present of twenty thousand in gold for winning a close race."
"Does Leek Green always win?"
"Always. Or almost always. Scarlet happened to come in first the other day and the people gave it a big cheer. They were tiring of the monotony of Leek Green. The Emperor was furious. Next day the Scarlet charioteer and his winning team were all dead. Poisoned. The same sort of thing has happened before."
"By this time next year things will be going badly with you, my poor Claudius. By the way, would you like to look at your accounts? It's been an unlucky year, as I wrote to you. Those valuable cattle dying, and the slaves stealing right and left, and the corn-ricks burned. You're the poorer by two thousand or more gold pieces. It's not the steward's fault, either. He does his best and at least he's honest. It's because you are not here to act as overseer that these things happen."