I, Claudius - Robert Graves [202]
"Let's get on with the Games, my friends," I repeated, and this time the shouting stopped. The games turned out very good ones. Two sword-fighters killed each other, with simultaneous thrusts in the belly: this is a very rare happening. I ordered the weapons to be brought to me and had little knives made of them; such little knives are the most effective charms known for the use in cases of epilepsy.
Caligula would appreciate the gift—if he forgave me for quieting the crowd where he had failed. For he had been in such a fright that he had driven out of Rome at full speed in the direction of Antium; and did not reappear for several days.
It turned out all right. He was pleased with the little knives which gave him an opportunity of enlarging on the splendour of his disease; and when he asked what had happened at the amphitheatre I said that I had warned the crowd of what he would do if they did not repent of their disloyalty and ingratitude. I said that they had then changed their rebellious cries into howls of guilty fear and pleas for forgiveness. "Yes," he said, "I was too gentle with them. I am determined now not to yield an inch. 'Immovable rigour' is the watchword from henceforward." And to keep himself reminded of this decision, he used every morning now to practise frightful faces before a mirror in his bedroom and terrible shouts in his private bathroom, which had a fine echo.
I asked him: "Why don't you publicly announce your Godhead? That would awe them as nothing else wouldl"
He answered: "I have still a few acts to perform in my human disguise."
The first of these acts was to order harbourmasters throughout Italy and Sicily to detain all vessels that were over a certain tonnage, put their cargoes in bond and send them empty under the convoy of warships to the Bay of Naples. Nobody understood what this order meant. It was supposed that he contemplated an invasion of Britain and wanted the vessels for use as transports. But nothing of the sort. He was merely about to justify Thrasynus' statement that he could no more become Emperor than ride a horse across the Bay of Baize. He collected about four thousand vessels, including a thousand built especially for the occasion, and anchored them across the bay, thwart to thwart in a double line from the docks of Puteoli to his villa at Bauli.
The prows were outward and the sterns interlocked. The sterns stuck up too high for his purpose, so he had them trimmed flat, sawing off the helmsman's seat and the figurehead for every one; which made the crews very unhappy, because the figurehead was the guardian deity of the ship.
Then he boarded the double line across and threw earth on the boards and had the earth watered and rammed flat; and the result was a broad firm road, some six thousand paces long from end to end. When more ships arrived, just back from voyages to the East, he lashed them together into five islands which he linked to the road, one at every thousand paces. He had a row of ships built all the way across and ordered the ward-masters of Rome to have them stocked and staffed within ten days. He installed a drinking-water system and planted gardens. The islands he made into villages.
Fortunately the weather was fine throughout these preparations and the sea glassy smooth. When everything was ready he put on the breastplate of Alexander [Augustus was unworthy to use Alexander's ring, but Caligula wore his very breastplate]