I, Claudius - Robert Graves [209]
Caligula's previous tricks in selling me sword-fighters, and charging me heavily for the privilege of sleeping and boarding at the Palace, had left me with a mere thirty thousand in cash, and no property to sell except my small estate at Capua and the house left me by my mother. I paid Caligula the thirty thousand and told him the same night at dinner that I was putting up all my property for sale at once to enable me to pay him the remainder when I found a buyer. "I've nothing else to sell," I said. Caligula thought this a great joke. "Nothing at all to sell? Why, what about the clothes you're wearing?"
By this time I had found it wisest to pretend I was quite half-witted. "By Heaven," I said. "I forgot all about them.
Will you be good enough to auction them for me to the company? You're the most wonderful auctioneer in the world. I began stripping off all my clothes until I had on nothing but a table-napkin which I hastily wrapped round my loins. He sold my sandals to someone for a hundred gold pieces each, and my gown for a thousand, and so on, and each time I expressed my boisterous delight. He then wanted to auction the napkin. I said, "My natural modesty would not prevent me from sacrificing my last rag, if the money it brought in helped me to pay the rest of the fee. But in this case, alas, something more powerful even than modesty prevents me from selling."
Caligula frowned. "What's that? What's stronger than modesty?"
"My veneration for yourself, Caesar. It's your own napkin. One that you had graciously set for my use at this excellent meal."
This little play only reduced my debt by three thousand.
But it did convince Caligula of my poverty.
I had to give up my rooms and my place at table, and lodged for a time with old Briseis, my mother's former maid, who was caretaker of the house until it found a buyer. Calpurnia came to live with me there, and would you believe it, the dear girl still had the money which I had given her instead of necklaces and marmosets and silk dresses, and offered to lend it to me. And what was more, my cattle hadn't really died as she pretended, nor had the ricks burned. It was just a trick to sell them secretly at a good price and put the money aside for an emergency. She paid it all over to me—two thousand gold pieces—together with an exact account of the transactions signed by my steward. So we managed pretty well. But to keep up the pretence of absolute poverty I used to go out with a jug every night, using a crutch instead of a sedan-chair, and buy wine from the taverns.
Old Briseis used to say, "Master Claudius, people all think that I was your mother's freedwoman. It isn't so. I became your slave when you first grew up to be Master, and it was you who gave me my freedom, not she, wasn't it?"
I would answer, "Of course, Briseis. One day I'll nail that lie in public." She was a dear old thing and entirely devoted to me. We lived in four rooms together, with an old slave to do the porter's work, and had a very happy time, all considered.
Caesonia's child, a girl, was born a month after Caligula married her. Caligula said that this was a prodigy. He took the child and laid her on the knees of the statue of Jove—this was before his quarrel with Jove—as if to make Jove his honorary colleague in fatherhood, and then put her in the arms of Minerva's statue and allowed her to suck at the Goddess' marble breast for awhile. He called her Drusilla, the name that his dead sister had discarded when she became the Goddess Panthea. This child was made a priestess too. He raised the money for the initiation fee by making a pathetic appeal to the public, complaining of his poverty and the heavy expenses