I, Claudius - Robert Graves [211]
This was how he came to call me Vulcan, a title that I was glad to win, because it gave me a certain protection against his caprices.
Caligula then quietly left us, removed his disguise and reappeared as himself, coming in from the Palace courtyard by the door where he had posted me. He pretended to be utterly surprised and shocked at what was going oa and stood declaiming Homer again—Ulysses' shame and anger at the behaviour of the palace-women: As thus pavilioned in the porch he lay, Scenes of lewd loves his wakeful eyes survey; Whilst to nocturnal joys impure repair With wanton glee, the prostituted fair.
His heart with rage this new dishonour stung, Wavering his thought in dubious balance hung.
Or, instant should he quench the guilty Same With their own blood, and intercept the shame; Or to their lust indulge a last embrace, And let the peers consummate the disgrace; Round his swoln heart the murmurous fury rolls; As o'er her young the mother-mastiff growls, And bays the stranger groom: so wrath compress'd Recoiling, mutter'd thunder in his breast.
"Poor, suffering heart", he cried, "support the pain Of wounded honour and thy rage restrain! Not fiercer woes thy fortitude could foil When the brave partners of thy ten-year toil Dire Polypheme devoured: I then was freed By patient prudence from the death decreed."
"For ‘Polypheme' read Tiberius'," he explained. Then he clapped his hands for the Guard, who came running up at the double. "Send Cassius Chserea here at once!" Cassius was sent for and Caligula said: "Cassius, old hero, you who acted as my war-horse when I was a child, my oldest and most faithful family-friend, did you ever see such a sad and degrading sight as this? My two sisters prostituting their bodies to senators in my very Palace, my uncle Claudius standing at the gate selling tickets of admission!
Oh, what would my poor mother and father have said if they had lived to see this day!"
"Shall I arrest them all, Caesar?" asked Cassius, eagerly.
"No, to their lust indulge a last embrace And let the peers consummate the disgrace," Caligula replied resignedly, and made mother-mastiff noises in his throat. Cassius was told to march the Guard off again.
It was not the last orgy of this sort at the Palace and thereafter Caligula made the senators who had attended the show bring their wives and daughters to assist Agrippinilla and Lesbia. But the problem of raising money was becoming acute again and Caligula decided to visit France and see what he could do there.
He first gathered an enormous number of troops, sending for detachments from all the regular regiments, and forming new regiments, and raising levies from every possible quarter. He marched out of Italy at the head of one hundred and fifty thousand men and increased them, in France, to a quarter of a million. The expense of arming and equipping this immense force fell on the cities through which he passed: and he commandeered the necessary food supplies from them too. Sometimes he went forward at a gallop and made the army march forty-eight hours or more on end to catch up with him, sometimes he went forward at the rate of only a mile or two a day, admiring the scenery from a sedan-chair carried on eight men's shoulders and frequently stopping to pick flowers.
He sent letters ahead ordering the presence at Lyons, where he proposed to concentrate his forces, of all officials in France and the Rhine provinces who were over the rank of captain. Among those who obeyed the summons was Gaetulicus, one of my dear brother Germanicus' most valued officers, who had been in command of the four regiments of the Upper Province for the last few years. He was very popular among the troops because he kept up the tradition of mild punishments and of discipline based on love rather than on fear. He was popular with the regiments in the Lower Province too, commanded by his father-in-law Apronius—for Gaetulicus had married a sister of