I, Claudius - Robert Graves [25]
However, when Augustus began eagerly questioning me, taking me from Athenodorus' arm, I grew self-conscious and stammered as badly as ever. But from thenceforth Athenodorus was my friend.
There is a story about Athenodorus and Augustus which does great credit to both. Athenodorus told Augustus one day that he did not take nearly enough precaution about admitting visitors to his presence; one day he would get a dagger in his vitals. Augustus replied that he was talking nonsense. The next day Augustus was told that his sister, the Lady Octavia, was outside and wished to greet him on the anniversary of their father's death. He gave orders for her immediate admittance. She was an incurable invalid when this happened—it was the year she died—and was always carried about in a covered sedan. When the sedan was brought in, the curtains parted and out sprang Athenodorus with a sword, which he pointed at Augustus' heart.
Augustus, so far from being angry, thanked Athenodorus and confessed that he had been very wrong to treat his warning so casually.
One extraordinary event in my childhood I must not forget to record. One summer when I was just eight years old my mother, my brother Germanicus, my sister Livilla, and I were visiting my Aunt Julia in a beautiful country-house close to the sea at Antium. It was about six o'clock in the evening and we were out taking the cool breeze in a vineyard. Julia was not with us, but Tiberius' son, that Tiberius Drusus whom we afterwards always called "Castor", and Postumus and Agrippina, Julia's children, were in the party. Suddenly we heard a great screeching above us. We looked up and saw a number of eagles fighting. Feathers floated down. We tried to catch them. Germanicus and Castor each caught one before it fell and stuck it in his hair.
Castor had a small wing feather, but Germanicus a splendid one from the tail. Both were stained with blood. Spots of blood fell on Postumus' upturned face and on the dresses of Livilla and Agrippina. And then something dark dropped through the air. I do not know why I did so, but I put out a fold of my gown and caught it. It was a tiny wolf-cub, wounded and terrified. The eagles came swooping down to retrieve it, but I had it safe hidden and when we shouted and threw sticks they rose baffled, and flew screaming off. I was embarrassed. I didn't want the cub.
Livilla grabbed at it, but my mother, who looked very grave, made her give it back to me. "It fell to Claudius/' she said. "He must keep it."
She asked an old nobleman, a member of the College of Augurs, who was with us, "Tell me what this portends."
The old man answered, "How can I say? It may be of great significance or none."
"Don't be afraid. Say what it seems to mean to you-"
"First send the children away," he said.
I do not know whether he gave her the interpretation which, when you have read my story, will be forced on you as the only possible one. All I know is that while we other children kept our distance—dear Germanicus had found another tail-feather for me, sticking in a hawthorn bush, and I was putting it proudly in my hair—Livilla crept up inquisitively behind a rose-hedge and overheard something.
She interrupted, laughing noisily: "Wretched Rome, with him as her protector! I hope to God I'll be dead before then!"
The Augur turned on her and pointed with his finger.
"Impudent girl," he said, "God will no doubt grant your wish in a way that you won't like!"
"You're going to be locked up in a room with nothing to eat. Child," said my mother. Those were ominous words too, now I come to recall them. Livilla was kept in bounds for the rest of her holidays. She revenged herself, on me, m a variety of ingeniously spiteful ways. But she could not tell us what the Augur had said, because she had been bound by an oath by Vesta and our household gods never to refer to the portent either directly or in a roundabout way, in the lifetime of anyone present. We were all made to take that oath. Since I have now for many years been the only one left alive of that party—my mother and the Augur, though so much older, surviving all the rest