I, Claudius - Robert Graves [23]
Because of one or other of these various illnesses I have all my life been so weak in the hams that to run or walk long distances has never been possible for me: a great deal of my travelling has had to be done in a sedan-chair. Then there is the appalling pain that catches me often, after eating, in the pit of my stomach. It has been so bad that on two or three occasions, if my friends had not intervened, I would have /plunged a carving-knife [which I madly snatched up] into the place of torment I have heard it said that this pain, which they call "the cardiac passion", is worse than any other pain known to man except the strangury. Well, I must be thankful, I suppose, that I have never had the strangury.
It will be supposed that my mother Antonia, a beautiful and noble woman brought up to the strictest virtue by her mother Octavia, and the one passion of my father's life, would have taken the most loving care of me, her youngest child, and even made a particular favourite of me in pity for my misfortunes. But such was not the case. She did all for me that could be expected of her as a duty, but no more. She did not love me. No, she had a great aversion to me, not only because of my sickliness but also because she had had a most difficult pregnancy of me, and then a most painful delivery from which she barely escaped with her life and which left her more or less an invalid for years.
My premature birth was due to a shock that she got at the feast given in honour of Augustus when he visited my father at Lyons to inaugurate the "Altar of Roma and Augustus" there: my father was Governor of the Three Provinces of France, and Lyons was his headquarters. A crazy Sicilian slave who was acting as waiter at the feast suddenly drew a dagger and flourished it in the air behind my father's neck. Only my mother saw this happening.
She caught the slave's eye and had presence of mind enough to smile at him and shake her head in deprecation, signing to him to put the dagger back. While he hesitated two other waiters followed her glance and were in time to overpower and disarm him. Then she fainted and immediately her pains began. It may well be because of this that I have always had a morbid fear of assassination; for they say that a pre-natal shock can be inherited. But of course there is no real reason for any pre-natal influences to be mentioned. How many of the Imperial family have died a natural death?
Since I was an affectionate child my mother's attitude caused me much misery. I heard from my sister Livilla, a beautiful girl but cruel, vain and ambitious—in a word a typical Claudian of the bad variety—that my mother had called me "a human portent" and said that when I was born the Sibylline books should have been consulted. Also that Nature had begun but never finished me, throwing me aside in disgust as a hopeless start. Also that the ancients were wiser and nobler than ourselves: they exposed all weakly infants on a bare hillside for the good of the race.
These may have been embroideries by Livilla on less severe remarks—for seven-months' children are very horrible objects—but I know that once when my mother grew angry on bearing that some senator had introduced a foolish motion in the House she burst out: "That man ought to be put out of the way! He's as stupid as a donkey—what am I saying? Donkeys are sensible beings by comparison—he's as stupid as... as... Heavens, he's as stupid as my son Claudius!"
Germanicus was her favourite, as he was everyone's favourite, but so far from envying him for the love and admiration that he won wherever he went I rejoiced on his behalf. Germanicus pitied me and did the most he could to make my life happier, and recommended me to my elders as a good-hearted child who would repay generous and careful treatment. Severity only frightened me, he would say, and made me more sickly than I need be. And he was right. The nervous tic of my hands, the nervous jerking of my head, my stammer, my queasy digestion, my constant dribbling at the mouth, were principally due to the terrors to which, in the name of discipline, I was subjected. When Germanicus stood up for me my mother used to laugh indulgently and say, "Noble heart, find some better object for your overflow!" But my grandmother Livia's way of talking was: "Don't be a fool, Germanicus.