I, Claudius - Robert Graves [173]
He said..."
"That's all right. Grandmother. You'll have the laugh of him in the end. When you're the Queen of Heaven and he's being slowly broken on an eternal wheel by Minos' men in Hell..."
"And to think that I ever called you a fool," she said.
"I'm going now, Claudius. Close my eyes and put the coin in my mouth that you'll find under the pillow. The Ferryman will recognise it. He'll pay proper respect...."
Then she died and I closed her eyes and put the coin in her mouth. It was a gold coin of a type I had never seen before, with Augustus' head and her own facing each other, on the obverse, and a triumphant chariot on the reverse.
Nothing had been said between us about Tiberius. I soon heard that he had been warned about her condition in plenty of time to pay her the last offices. He now wrote to the Senate excusing himself for not having visited her but saying he had been exceedingly busy and would at all events come to Rome for the funeral. Meanwhile the Senate had decreed various extraordinary honours in her memory, including the title Mother of the Country, and had even proposed to make her a demi-goddess. But Tiberius reversed nearly all of these decrees, explaining in a letter that Livia was a singularly modest woman, averse to all public recognition of her services, and with a peculiar sentiment against having any religious worship paid to her after death. The letter ended with reflections on the unsuitability of women's meddling in politics "for which they are not fitted, and which rouse in them all those worst feelings of arrogance and petulance to which the female sex is naturally prone".
He did not of course come to the City for the funeral though, solely with the object of limiting its magnificence, he made all arrangements for it. And he took so long over them that the corpse, old and withered as it was, had reached an advanced stage of putrefaction before it was put on the pyre. To the general surprise, Caligula spoke the funeral oration, which Tiberius himself should have done, and if not Tiberius, then Nero, as his heir. The Senate had decreed an arch in Livia's memory—the first time in the history of Rome that a woman had been so honoured. Tiberius allowed this decree to stand but promised to build the arch at his own expense: and then neglected to build it. As for Livia's will, he inherited the greater part of her fortune as her natural heir, but she had left as much of it as she was legally permitted to members of her own household and other trusted dependents. He did not pay anybody a single one of her bequests. I was to have benefited to the extent of twenty thousand gold pieces.
XXVII
I COULD NEVER HAVE THOUGHT IT POSSIBLE THAT I would miss Livia when she died. When I was a child I used secretly, night after night, to pray to the Infernal Gods to carry her off. And now I would have offered the richest sacrifices I could find—unblemished white bulls and desert antelopes and ibises and flamingoes by the dozen—to have had her back again. For it was clear that it had long been only the fear of his mother that had kept Tiberius within bounds. A few days after her death he struck at Agrippina and Nero. Agrippina had by now recovered from her illness. He did not charge them with treason. He wrote to the Senate complaining of Nero's gross sexual depravity and of Agrippina's "haughty bearing and mischief-making tongue", and suggested that severe steps should be taken for keeping both of them in order.
When the letter was read in the Senate nobody said a word for a long time. Everyone was wondering on just how much popular support Germanicus' family could count now that Tiberius was preparing to victimise them; and whether it would not be safer to go against Tiberius than against the populace. At last a friend of Sejanus' rose to suggest that the Emperor's wishes should be respected and that some decree or other should be passed against the two persons mentioned. There was a senator who acted as official recorder of the Senate's transactions, and what he said carried great weight. He