I, Claudius - Robert Graves [187]
Caligula said: "Ganymede, we are no longer friends."
"Oh," said Ganymede, "don't tell me that, my dear! I said nothing to offend you, did I?"
"Leave the table," ordered Caligula.
I knew at once what Ganymede's mistake was. It was a double one. Ganymede, as Caligula's cousin on the maternal side, was descended from Augustus and Agrippa, but not from Antony. All his ancestors had been of Augustus' party. So he should have been careful to avoid the subject.
And Caligula disliked any reminder of his descent from Agrippa, a man of undistinguished family. But he took no action against Ganymede yet.
He divorced Lollia, saying that she was barren, and married a woman called Caesonia. She was neither young nor good-looking and was the daughter of a captain of the Watchmen, and married to a baker, or some such person, by whom she already had three children. But there was something about her that attracted Caligula in a way that nobody could explain, himself least of all. He used often to say that he would fetch the secret out of her, even if he had to do it with the fiddle-string torture, why it was that he loved her so entirely. It was said that she won him with a love-philtre, and further that it sent him mad. But the love-philtre is only a guess, and he had begun to go mad long before he met her. In any case, she was with child by him and he was so excited at the thought of being a parent, that, as I say, he married her. It was shortly after his marriage with Caesonia that he first publicly declared his own Divinity. He visited the temple of Jove on the Capitoline Hill. Apelles was with him. He asked Apelles, "Who's the greater God—Jove or myself?" Apelles hesitated, thinking that Caligula was joking, and not wishing to blaspheme Jove in Jove's own temple. Caligula whistled two Germans up and had Apelles stripped and whipped in sight of Jove's statue. "Not so fast," Caligula told the Germans. "Slowly, so that he feels it more." They whipped him until he fainted, and then revived him with holy water and whipped him until he died. Caligula then sent letters to the Senate announcing his Divinity and ordered the immediate building of a great shrine next door to the temple of Jove, "in order that I may dwell with my brother Jove". Here he set up an image of himself, three times the size of life, made of solid gold and dressed every day in new clothes.
But he soon quarrelled with Jove and was heard to threaten him angrily: "If you can't realise who's master here I'll pack you off to Greece." Jove was understood to apologise, and Caligula said: "Oh, keep your wretched Capitoline Hill. I'll go to the Palatine. It's a much finer situation. I'll build a temple there worthy of myself, you shabby old belly-rumbling fraud." Another curious thing happened when he visited the temple of Diana in company with a former governor of Syria called Vitellius. Vitellius had done very well out there, having surprised the King of Parthia, who was about to invade the province, by a forced march across the Euphrates. Caught on ground unfavourable for battle the Parthian King was obliged to sign a humiliating peace and give his sons up as hostages. I should have mentioned that Caligula had the eldest son as a prisoner with him in his chariot when he drove across the bridge. Well, Caligula was jealous of Vitellius and would have put him to death if Vitellius had not been warned by me [he was a friend of mine] what to do. A letter from me was waiting for him at Brindisi when he arrived, and as soon as he reached Rome and was admitted to Caligula's presence he fell prostrate and worshipped him as a God.
This was before the news of Caligula's Divinity was officially known, so Caligula thought it was a genuine tribute.
Vitellius became his intimate friend and showed his gratitude to me in many ways. As I was saying, Caligula was in Diana's temple talking to the Goddess—not the statue but an invisible presence. He asked Vitellius whether he could see her too, or only the moonlight. . Vitellius trembled violently, as if in awe, and keeping his eyes fixed on the ground said: "Only you Gods, my Lord, are privileged to behold one another."