Vitellius died of a paralytic stroke. A senator who was either drunk or crazy, I can’t say which, had suddenly accused him before the House of aiming at the monarchy. The charge appears to have been directed at Agrippinilla, but naturally no one dared to support it, much as Agrippinilla was hated, so the accuser was himself outlawed. However, Vitellius took the matter to heart and the stroke followed soon after. I visited him as he lay dying. He was unable to move a finger but talked quite good sense. I asked him the question that I had always meant to ask: ‘Vitellius, in a better age you would have been one of the most virtuous men alive: how was it, then, that your upright nature acquired a sort of permanent stoop from playing the courtier?’
He said: ‘It was inevitable under a monarchy, however benevolent the monarch. The old virtues disappear. Independence and frankness are at a discount. Complacent anticipation of the monarch’s wishes is then the greatest of all virtues. One must either be a good monarch like yourself, or a good courtier like myself – either an Emperor or an idiot.’
I said: ‘You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?’
‘Phaemon’s dog was right.’ That was the last thing he said before he lapsed into a coma from which he never recovered.
I could not be content until I had hunted down the reference in the library. It appears that Phaemon the philosopher had a little dog whom he had trained to go to the butcher every day and bring back a lump of meat in a basket. This virtuous creature, who would never dare to touch a scrap until Phaemon gave it permission, was one day set upon by a pack of mongrels who snatched the basket from its mouth and began to tear the meat to pieces and bolt it greedily down. Phaemon, watching from an upper window, saw the dog deliberate for a moment just what to do. It was clearly no use trying to rescue the meat from the other dogs: they would kill it for its pains. So it rushed in among them and itself ate as much of the meat as it could get hold of. In fact, it ate more than any of the other dogs, because it was both braver and cleverer.
The Senate honoured Vitellius with a public funeral and a statue in the Market Place. The inscription that is carved on it reads:
LUCIUS VITELLIUS, TWICE CONSUL,
ONCE CENSOR.
HE ALSO GOVERNED SYRIA.
UNSWERVINGLY LOYAL TO HIS EMPEROR
I must tell about the Fucine Lake. I had lost all real interest in it by now, but one day Narcissus, who was in charge of the work, told me that the contractors reported that the channel was dug through the mountain at last: we had only to raise A.D. 53 the sluice-gates and let the water rush out, and the whole lake would become dry land. Thirteen years, and 30,000 men constantly at work! ‘We’ll celebrate this, Narcissus,’ I said.
I arranged a sham sea-fight, but on a most magnificent scale. Julius Caesar had first introduced this sort of spectacle at Rome, exactly 100 years before. He dug a basin in Mars Field, which he flooded from the Tiber, and arranged for eight ships, called the Tyrian fleet, to engage eight more, called the Egyptian fleet. About 2,000 fighting men were used, exclusive of rowers. When I was eight years old Augustus gave a similar show in a permanent basin on the other side of the Tiber, measuring 1,200 feet by 1,800, with stone seats around it like an amphitheatre. There were twelve ships a side this time, called Athenians and Persians. Three thousand men fought in them. My show on the Fucine Lake was going to dwarf both spectacles. I didn’t care about economy now. I was going to have a really magnificent show for once. Julius’s and Augustus’s fleets had been composed of light craft only, but I gave orders for twenty-four proper war vessels of three banks of oars each to be constructed, and twenty-six smaller vessels; and I cleared the prisons of 1,900 able-bodied criminals to fight in them under the command of famous professional sword-fighters. The two fleets, each consisting of twenty-five vessels, were to be known as the Rhodians and the Sicilians. The hills around the lake would make a fine natural amphitheatre; and though it was a very long way from Rome, I was sure that I could draw an audience there of at least 200,000 people. I advised them by an official circular to bring their own food with them in baskets. But 1,900 armed criminals are a dangerous force to handle. I had to take the whole Guards Division out there and station some of them on shore and the rest on rafts lashed together across the lake. The line of rafts was a semicircle which made a proper naval basin of the southwestern end of the lake, where it tapered to the point at which the channel had been cut. The whole lake would have been too big: it spread over 200 square miles. The Guards on the rafts had catapults and mangonels ready to sink any vessel that tried to ram the line and escape.
The great occasion finally came; I proclaimed a ten-days’ public holiday. The weather was fine and the number of spectators was more like 500,000 than 200,000. They came from all over Italy, and I must say that it was a wonderfully well-behaved and well-dressed gathering. To prevent overcrowding, I divided up the lake-shore into what I called colonies and put each colony under a magistrate; the magistrates had to make arrangements for communal cooking and sanitation and so on. I built a large canvas field-hospital for the wounded survivors of the battle and for accidents on shore. Fifteen babies were born in that hospital and I made them all take the additional name of Fucinus or Fucina.
Everything was in position by ten o’clock on the morning of the fight. The fleets were manned and came rowing up in parallel lines towards the President, namely, myself, who was sitting on a high throne dressed in a suit of golden armour with a purple cloak over it. My throne was at a point where the shore curved out into the lake and gave the widest view. Agrippinilla sat beside me on an other throne, wearing a long mantle of cloth of gold. The two flagships came close up to us. The crew shouted: ‘Greetings, Caesar. We salute you in Death’s shadow.’
I was supposed to nod gravely, but I was feeling in a gay humour that morning. I answered: ‘And the same to you, my friends.’
The rascals pretended to understand this as a general pardon. ‘Long live Caesar,’ they shouted joyfully. I did not at the moment realize what they meant. The combined fleets sailed past me cheering and then the Sicilians formed up on the west and the Rhodians on the east. The signal for battle was given by a mechanical silver Triton that suddenly appeared from the lake-bottom, when I pressed a lever and blew a golden trumpet. That caused huge excitement among the audience. The fleets met, and expectation ran high. And then – what do you think happened then? They simply sailed through each other, cheering me and congratulating each other! I was angry. I jumped down from my throne and rushed along the shore shouting and cursing. ‘What do you think that I got you all here for, you scoundrels, you scum, you rebels, you bastards? To kiss each other and shout loyal shouts? You could have done that just as well in the prison-yard. Why don’t you fight? Afraid, eh? Do you want to be given to the wild beasts instead? Listen, if you don’t fight now, by God, I’ll make the Guards put up a show. I’ll make them sink every one of your ships with their siege-engines and kill every man Jack who swims ashore.’
As I have told you, my legs have always been weak, and one is shorter than the other, and I am not accustomed to use them much, and I am old and rather stout now, and besides all this I was wearing an extremely heavy corselet, and the ground was uneven, so you can imagine what sort of a figure I cut – stumbling top-heavily along, with frequent falls, shouting at the top of my not very melodious voice, red and stuttering with anger! However, I succeeded in making them fight, and the spectators cheered me with, ‘Well done, Caesar! Well run, Caesar!’
I recovered my good humour and joined in the laugh against myself. You should have seen the murderous look on Agrippinilla’s face. ‘You boor,’ she muttered as I climbed back on my throne. ‘You idiotic boor. Have you no dignity? How do you expect the people to respect you?’
I answered politely: ‘Why, of course, as your husband, my dear, and as Nero’s father-in-law.’
The fleets met. I shall not describe the battle in much detail, b
ut both sides fought splendidly. The Sicilians rammed and sank nine of the big Rhodian vessels, losing three of their own, and then cornered the remainder close to where we were sitting and boarded them one by one. The Rhodians repelled them time and time again, and the decks were slippery with blood, but finally they were beaten and by three o’clock the Sicilian flag was run up on the last vessel. My field hospital was full. Nearly 5,000 wounded were carried ashore. I pardoned the remainder, except the survivors of three big Rhodian vessels who had not put up a proper fight before being rammed, and six of the Sicilian lighter craft who had consistently avoided combat. Three thousand men had been killed or drowned. When I was a lad I couldn’t bear the sight of bloodshed. I don’t mind it at all now: I get so interested in the fighting.
Before letting the water out of the lake I thought that I had better satisfy myself that the channel was deep enough to carry it off. I sent out someone to take careful soundings in the middle of the lake. He reported that the channel would have to be dug at least a yard deeper if we were not to be left with a lake a quarter of its present size! So the whole spectacle had been wasted. Agrippinilla blamed Narcissus and accused him of fraud. Narcissus blamed the engineers who, he said, must have been bribed by the contractors to send in a false report as to the depth of the lake, and protested that Agrippinilla was being most unjust to him.
I laughed. It didn’t matter. We had witnessed a most enjoyable show and the channel could be dug to the proper depth within a few months. Nobody was to blame, I said: probably there had been a natural subsidence of the lake-bottom. So we all went home again and in four months’ time back we came. On this occasion I did not have enough criminals available for a big sea-battle, and did not wish to repeat the spectacle on a smaller scale, so I had another idea. I built a long, wide pontoon-bridge across the end of the lake and arranged for two forces of two battalions apiece, called Etruscans and Samnians, appropriately dressed and armed, to fight on it. They marched towards each other along the bridge, to the accompaniment of martial music, and engaged in the centre, where the bridge widened out to 100 yards or so, and there fought a vigorous battle. The Samnians twice took possession of this battle-field, but Etruscan counter-attacks forced them back and eventually the Samnians were on the run, losing heavily, some run through by bronze-headed Etruscan lances or chopped down by two-headed Etruscan battle-axes, some thrown off the bridge into the water. My orders were that no combatant must be permitted to swim ashore. If he was thrown into the water he must either drown or climb back on the bridge. The Etruscans were victorious and erected a trophy. I gave all the victors their freedom, and a few of the Samnians, too, who had fought particularly well.
Then at last the moment came for the water to be let out of the lake. A huge wooden dining-hall had been erected close to the sluice-gates and the tables were spread with a magnificent luncheon for me and the Senate, and the families of senators, and a number of leading knights and their families, and all senior Guards officers. We would dine to the pleasant sound of rushing water. ‘You’re sure that the channel is deep enough now?’ I asked Narcissus.
‘Yes, Caesar. I’ve taken the soundings myself.’
So I went to the sluice-gates and sacrificed and uttered a prayer or two – they included an apology to the nymph of the lake, whom I now begged to act as guardian deity of the farmers who would till the recovered land – and finally lent a hand to the crank at which a group of my Germans was posted, and gave the order, ‘Heave away!’
Up came the gates and the water rolled crashing into the channel. An immense cheer went up. We watched for a minute or two and then I said to Narcissus: ‘Congratulations, my dear Narcissus. Thirteen years’ work and thirty thousand – –’
I was interrupted by a roar like thunder, followed by a general shriek of alarm.
‘What’s that?’ I cried.
He caught me by the arm without ceremony and fairly dragged me up the hill. ‘Hurry!’ he screamed. ‘Faster, faster!’ I looked to see what was the matter, and a huge brown-and-white wall of water, I wouldn’t like to say how many feet high, on the model of the one that runs yearly up the Severn River in Britain, was roaring up the channel. Up the channel, mark you! It was some time before I realized what had happened. The sudden rush of water had overflowed the channel a few hundred yards down, forming a large lake in a fold of the hills. Into this lake, its foundations sapped by the water, slid a whole hillside, hundreds of thousands of tons of rock, completely filling it and expelling the water with awful force.
All but a few of us managed to scramble to safety, though with wet legs – only twenty persons were drowned. But the dining-chamber was torn to pieces and tables and couches and food and garlands carried far out into the lake. Oh, how vexed Agrippinilla was! She blazed up at Narcissus, telling him that he had arranged the whole thing on purpose to conceal the fact that the channel was still not dug deep enough, and accused him of putting millions of public money into his own pocket, and Heaven only knows what else besides.
Narcissus, whose nerves were thoroughly upset now, lost his temper too and asked Agrippinilla who she thought she was – Queen Semiramis? or the Goddess Juno? or the Commander-in-Chief of the Roman Armies? ‘Keep your paws out of this pie,’ he screamed at her.
I thought it all a great joke. ‘Quarrelling won’t give us back our dinners,’ I said.
I was more amused than ever when the engineers reported that it would take two more years to cut a new passage through the obstruction. ‘I’m afraid that I’ll not be spared to exhibit another fight on these waters, my friends,’ I said gravely. Somehow, the whole business seemed beautifully symbolic. Labour in vain, like all the industrious work that I had done in my early years of monarchy as a gift to an undeserving Senate and People. The violence of that wave gave me a feeling of the deepest satisfaction. I liked it better than all the sea-fighting and bridge-fighting.
Agrippinilla was complaining that a precious set of gold dishes from the Palace had been carried away by the wave and only a few pieces recovered: the others were at the lake-bottom. ‘Why, that’s nothing to worry about,’ I teased. ‘Listen! You take off those beautiful shining clothes of yours – I’ll see that Narcissus doesn’t steal them – and I’ll make the Guards keep the crowd back and you can give a special diving display from the sluice-gate. Everyone will enjoy that tremendously: they like nothing so much as the discovery that their rulers are human after all.… But, my dear, why not? Why shouldn’t you? Now, don’t lose your temper. If you can dive for sponges, you can dive for gold dishes, surely? Look, that must be one of your treasures over there, shining through the water, quite easy to get. There, where I’m throwing this pebble!’
To console Agrippinilla for her losses, I gave her, some days later, a very valuable present – a snow-white nightingale, the first ever reported of that colour. Narcissus, as an apology for his rudeness, gave her a talking blackbird. The blackbird talked almost as well as a parrot, and the white nightingale sang quite as well as the ordinary brown sort. Agrippinilla could not easily conceal her delight in these birds. My family, by the way, has always shown a weakness for pet animals. There was Augustus with his watchdog, Typhon; Tiberius with his wingless dragon; Caligula with the horse Incitatus. My sister Livilla kept a thievish, mischievous marmoset; my brother Germanicus a black squirrel, and my mother Antonia a large pet carp. This fish would answer to its name, which was ‘Leviathan’, swimming up from its lair among the water-lilies in its pool and allowing my mother to feed and tickle it. It was a present from Herod Agrippa, who had fixed a little pair of jewelled ear-rings in its gills. She used to claim that when it opened and shut its mouth it was addressing her, and that she understood it. I never had a pet myself. I have always felt that in these cases one gives more than one gets, and there is a temptation to believe the creature both more affectionate and more sagacious than it really is.
Chapter 32
IT is now September in the fourteenth year of my reign. Barbillus
has lately read my horoscope and fears that I am destined to die about the middle of next month. Thrasyllus once told me exactly the same thing: for he allowed me a life of sixty-three years, sixty-three days, sixty-three watches, and sixty- A.D. 54 three hours. That works out to the thirteenth of next month. Thrasyllus was more explicit about it than Barbillus: I remember that he congratulated me on this combination of multiplied seven and nines: it was a very remarkable one, he said. Well, I am prepared to die. In court this morning I begged the lawyers to behave with a little more consideration for an old man; I said that next year I shouldn’t be among them, and they could treat my successor as they pleased. I also told the court, in the case of a noblewoman charged with adultery, that I had now been married several times, and that each of my wives in turn had proved bad, and that I had showed them indulgence for a while, but not for long: so far I had divorced three. Agrippinilla will get to hear of this.
Nero is seventeen. He goes about with the affected modesty of a high-class harlot, shaking his scented hair out of his eyes every now and then; or with the affected modesty of a high-class philosopher, pausing to ponder privately, every now and then, in the middle of a group of admiring noblemen – right foot thrown out, head sunk on breast, left arm akimbo, right hand raised, with the finger tips pressing lightly on his forehead as if in the throes of thought. Soon he comes out with a brilliant epigram or a happy couplet or a profound piece of sententious wisdom; not however his own – Seneca is earning his porridge, as the saying is. I wish Nero’s friends joy of him. I wish Rome joy of him. I wish Agrippinilla joy of him, and Seneca too. I heard privately, by way of Seneca’s sister (a secret friend of Narcissus’s who gives us a lot of useful information about the nation’s latest darling), that the night before Seneca received my order for his recall from Corsica he dreamed that he was acting as schoolmaster to Caligula. I take that as a sign.