I, Claudius - Robert Graves [201]
Incitatus was given a house and servants. He had a marble bedroom with a big straw mat for a bed, a new one every day, also an ivory manger, a gold bucket to drink from, and pictures by famous artists on the walls. He used to be invited to dinner with us whenever he won a race, but preferred a bowl of barley to the meat and fish that Caligula always offered him. We had to drink his health twenty times over.
The money went faster and faster and at last Caligula decided to make economies. He said one day, for instance, "What is the use of putting men in prison for forgery and theft and breaches of the peace? They don't enjoy themselves there and they are a great expense for me to feed and guard; yet if I were to let them go they would only start their career of crime again. I'll visit the prisons to-day and look into the matter." He did. He weeded out the men whom he considered the most hardened criminals, and had them executed. Their bodies were cut up and used as meat for the wild beasts waiting to be killed in the amphitheatre: which made it a double economy. Every month now he made his round of the prisons. Crime decreased slightly.
One day his Treasurer, Callistus, reported only a million gold pieces left in the Treasury and only half a million in the Privy Purse. He realised that economy was not enough: revenue had to be increased. So first he began selling priesthoods and magistracies and monopolies, and that brought him in a great deal, but not enough; and then, as Calpurnia had foreseen, he began using informers to convict rich men of real or imaginary crimes, in order to get their estates. He had abolished the capital charge for treason as soon as he became Emperor, but there were plenty of other crimes punishable with death.
He celebrated his first batch of convictions with a particularly splendid wild-beast hunt. But the crowd was in an ugly temper. They booed and groaned and refused to pay any attention to the proceedings. Then a cry began at the other end of the Circus from the President's Box where Caligula was sitting: "Give up the informers! Give up the informers!" Caligula rose to command silence, but they howled him down. He sent Guards with truncheons along to the part where noise was loudest and they whacked a few men on the head, but it began again more violently elsewhere. Caligula grew alarmed. He hurriedly left the amphitheatre, calling on me to take on the presidency from him.
I did not welcome this at all and was much relieved, when I rose to speak, that the crowd gave me a courteous hearing and even shouted "Feliciter" which means "Good luck to you!" My voice is not strong. Caligula's was very strong: he could make himself heard from one end of Mars Field to the other. I had to find someone to repeat my speech after me. Mnester volunteered, and made it sound much better than it was.
I announced that the Emperor had unfortunately been called away on important State business. That made everyone laugh; Mnester did some beautiful gestures illustrative of the importance and urgency of this State business. Then I said that the President's duties had devolved on my unfortunate and unworthy self. Mnester's hopeless shrug and the little twiddle with a forefinger at his temples expressed this excellently. Then I said: "Let us go on with the Games, my friends." But at once the shout rose again, "Give up the informers!" But I asked, and Mnester repeated the question winningly: "And if the Emperor does consent to give them up, what then? Will someone inform against them?" There was no answer to this but a confused buzzing. I asked them a further question. I asked them which was the worst sort of criminal—an informer? or an informer against an informer? or an informer against an informer against an informer? I said that the further you took the offence the more heinous it became, and the more people it polluted. The best policy was to do nothing which might give informers any ground for action. If everyone, I said,