My wife ^Elia was once attacked by footpads, but persuaded them to spare her life by handing over an amethyst brooch worth only fifty. So ^Elia was worth only fifty. My life has just been saved by a chip of agate weighing, I should judge, no more than the fortieth part of a scruple. That quality of agate is worth perhaps as much as a silver-piece a scruple.
The chip, if one could find it, which would be difficult, or find a buyer, which would be still more difficult, would therefore be worth one fortieth part of a silver piece, or exactly one farthing. So my life is also worth exactly one farthing--
"
"--If you could find a buyer," he roared, delighted with his own wit. How everybody cheered, myself included! For a long time after this I was called
"Teruncius" Claudius at the Palace, instead of Tiberius Claudius. Teruncius is Latin for farthing.
For his worship he had to have priests. He was his own High Priest and his subordinates were myself, Caesonia, Vitellius, Ganymede, fourteen ex-Consuls and his noble friend the horse Incitatus. Each of these subordinates had [393] to pay eighty thousand gold pieces for the honour. He helped Incitatus to raise the money by imposing a yearly tribute in his name on all the horses in Italy: if they did not pay they would be sent to the knackers. He helped Caesonia to raise the money by imposing a tax in her name on all married men for the privilege of sleeping with their wives. Ganymede, Vitellius and the others were rich men; though in some instances they had to sell property at a loss to get the hundred thousand in cash at short notice, they still remained comfortably off. Not so poor Claudius.
Caligula's previous tricks in selling me sword-fighters, and charging me heavily for the privilege of sleeping and boarding at the Palace, had left me with a mere thirty thousand in cash, and no property to sell except my small estate at Capua and the house left me by my mother. I paid Caligula the thirty thousand and told him the same night at dinner that I was putting up all my property for sale at once to enable me to pay him the remainder when I found a buyer. "I've nothing else to sell," I said. Caligula thought this a great joke. "Nothing at all to sell? Why, what about the clothes you're wearing?"
By this time I had found it wisest to pretend I was quite half-witted. "By Heaven," I said. "I forgot all about them.
Will you be good enough to auction them for me to the company? You're the most wonderful auctioneer in the world. I began stripping off all my clothes until I had on nothing but a table-napkin which I hastily wrapped round my loins.
He sold my sandals to someone for a hundred gold pieces each, and my gown for a thousand, and so on, and each time I expressed my boisterous delight. He then wanted to auction the napkin. I said, "My natural modesty would not prevent me from sacrificing my last rag, if the money it brought in helped me to pay the rest of the fee. But in this case, alas, something more powerful even than modesty prevents me from selling."
Caligula frowned. "What's that? What's stronger than modesty?"
"My veneration for yourself, Caesar. It's your own napkin. One that you had graciously set for my use at this excellent meal."
This little play only reduced my debt by three thousand.
But it did convince Caligula of my poverty.
I had to give up my rooms and my place at table, and lodged for a time with old Briseis, my mother's former maid, who was caretaker of the house until it found a buyer. Calpurnia came to live with me there, and would you believe it, the dear girl still had the money which I had given her instead of necklaces and marmosets and silk dresses, and offered to lend it to me. And what was more, my cattle hadn't really died as she pretended, nor had the ricks burned. It was just a trick to sell them secretly at a good price and put the money aside for an emergency. She paid it all over to me--two thousand gold pieces--together with an exact account of the transactions signed by my steward. So we managed pretty well. But to keep up the pretence of absolute poverty I used to go out with a jug every night, using a crutch instead of a sedan-chair, and buy wine from the taverns.
Old Briseis used to say, "Master Claudius, people all think that I was your mother's freedwoman. It isn't so. I became your slave when you first grew up to be Master, and it was you who gave me my freedom, not she, wasn't it?"
I would answer, "Of course, Briseis. One day I'll nail that lie in public." She was a dear old thing and entirely devoted to me. We lived in four rooms together, with an old slave to do the porter's work, and had a very happy time, all considered.
Caesonia's child, a girl, was born a month after Caligula married her.
Caligula said that this was a prodigy. He took the child and laid her on the knees of the statue of Jove--this was before his quarrel with Jove--as if to make Jove his honorary colleague in fatherhood, and then put her in the arms of Minerva's statue and allowed her to suck at the Goddess' marble breast for awhile. He called her Drusilla, the name that his dead sister had discarded when she became the Goddess Panthea. This child was made a priestess too. He raised the money for the initiation fee by making a pathetic appeal to the public, complaining of his poverty and the heavy expenses of fatherhood, and opening a fund, called The Drusilla Fund. He put collecting boxes in every street marked "Drusilla's Food", "Drusilla's Drink" and [395] "Drusilla's Dowry", and nobody dared pass by the Guards posted there without dropping in a copper or two.
Caligula dearly loved his little Drusilla, who turned out as precocious a child as he had himself been. He took delight in teaching her his own "immovable rigour", beginning the lessons when she was only just able to walk and talk. He encouraged her to torture kittens and puppies and to fly with her sharp nails at the eyes of her little playmates.
"There can be no reasonable doubt as to your paternity, my pretty one," be used to chuckle when she showed particular promise. And once in my presence he bent down and said slyly to her: "And the first full-sized murder you commit, Precious, if it's only your poor old grand-uncle Claudius, I'll make a Goddess of you."
"Will you make me a Goddess if I kill Mamma?" the little fiend lisped. "I hate Mamma."
The gold statue for his temple was another expense. He paid for it by publishing an edict that he would receive New-Year's gifts at the main gate of the Palace. When the day came he sent parties of Guards out to herd the City crowds up the Palatine Hill at the sword-point and make them shed every coin they had on them into great tubs put out for the purpose. They were warned that if they tried to dodge the Guards or hold back a single farthing of money they would be liable to instant death. By evening two thousand huge tubs had been filled.
It was about this time that he said to Ganymede and Agrippinilla and Lesbia: "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you idle drones. What do you do for your living?
You're mere parasites. Are you aware that every man and woman in Rome works hard to support me? Every wretched baggage-porter gladly pays me one-eighth of his wage, and every poor prostitute the same."
Agrippinilla said: "Well, brother, you have stripped us of practically all our money on one pretext or another.
Isn't that enough?"
"Enough? Indeed it isn't. Money inherited is not the same as money honestly earned. I'm going to make you girls and boys work."
So he advertised in the Senate, by distributing leaflets, that on such and such a night a most exclusive and exquisite brothel would be opened at the Palace, with entertainment to suit all tastes provided by persons of the most illustrious birth. Admission, only one thousand gold pieces. Drinks free. Agrippinilla and Lesbia, I am sorry to say, did not protest very strongly against Caligula's disgraceful proposal, and indeed thought that it would be great fun. But they insisted that they should have the right of choosing their own customers and that Caligula should not take too high a commission on the money earned. Much to my disgust I was dragged into this business, by being dressed up as the comic porter.