I, Claudius - Robert Graves [164]
Now almost everyone has a certain "natural enemy"—if I may call it that. To some people honey is a violent poison. Others are made ill by touching a horse or entering a stable or even by lying on a couch stuffed with horse-hair.
Others again are most uncomfortably affected by the presence of a cat, and going into a room will sometimes say, "There has been a cat here, excuse me if I retire." I myself feel an overpowering repugnance to the smell of hawthorn in bloom. Agrippina's natural enemy was the apple.
She took the present from Tiberius and thanked him, but with an ill-concealed shudder, and said that she would keep it, if she might, to eat when she reached home.
"Just one bite now, to taste how good it is."
"Please forgive me, but really I could not." She handed the apple to a servant and told him to wrap it carefully in a napkin for her.
Why did Tiberius not immediately try her on a treason charge, as Sejanus urged? Because Agrippina was still under Livia's protection.
XXV
AND SO I COME TO THE ACCOUNT OF MY DINNER with Livia. She greeted me very graciously, seeming genuinely delighted with my gift. During the meal, at which nobody else was present but old Urgulania and Caligula, now aged fourteen—a tall pale boy with a blotched complexion and sunken eyes—she surprised me by the sharpness of her mind and the clearness of her memory. She asked me about my work, and when I began talking about the First Punic War and discrediting certain particulars given by the poet Naevius [he had served in this war] she agreed with my conclusions but caught me out in a misquotation. She said: "You're grateful to me now, grandson, aren't you, for not letting you write that biography of your father! Do you think that you'd be dining here to-day if I hadn't intervened?"
Every time the slave filled my cup I had drunk it straight up, and now at the tenth or twelfth draught I felt like a lion. I answered boldly: "Extremely grateful. Grandmother, to be safe among the Carthaginians and Etruscans. But will you tell me just why I'm dining here today?"
She smiled: "Well, I admit that your presence at table still causes me a certain amount of... But never mind.
If I have broken one of my oldest rules that is my affair, not yours. Do you dislike me, Claudius? Be frank."
"Probably as much as you dislike me. Grandmother."
[Could this be my own voice speaking?]
Caligula sniggered, Urgulania tittered, Livia laughed: "Frank enough! By the way, have you noticed that monster there? He's been keeping unusually quiet during the meal."
"Who, Grandmother?"
"That nephew of yours."
"Is he a monster?"
"Don't pretend you don't know it. You are a monster aren't you, Caligula?"
"Whatever you say, Great-grandmother," Caligula said with downcast eyes.
"Well, Claudius, that monster there, your nephew—I'll tell you about him. He's going to be the next Emperor."
I thought it was a joke. I said smilingly: "If you tell me so. Grandmother, it is so. But what are his recommendations? He's the youngest of the family and though he has given evidences of great natural talent..."
"You mean that they won't any of them stand a chance against Sejanus and your sister Livilla?"
I was astounded at the freedom of the conversation. "I didn't mean anything of the sort. I never concern myself with high politics. I only meant that he's young yet, much too young to be Emperor; and that as a prophecy it seems rather a long shot."
"Not a long shot at all. Tiberius will make him his successor. No question