I, Claudius - Robert Graves [215]
On the third day the road lay through a narrow pass.
The army had to move in column instead of in skirmishing order. Cassius said to Caligula, "It was in a place rather like this, Caesar, that Varus got ambushed. I shall never forget that day so long as I live—I was marching at the head of my company and had just reached a bend in the road, as it might be this one we are coming to, when suddenly there was a tremendous war-cry, as it might be from that clump of firs yonder, and three or four hundred assegais came whizzing down on us...."
"Quick, my mare!" called Caligula in a panic. "Clear the road!" He sprang from his sedan, mounted Penelope [Incitatus was at Rome, winning races] and galloped back down the column. In four hours' time he was at the bridge again, but found it so choked with baggage-wagons and was in such a hurry to cross that he dismounted and made soldiers hand him in a chair from wagon to wagon until he was safely on the other side. He recalled his army at once, announcing that the enemy were too cowardly to meet him in battle, and that he would therefore seek new conquests elsewhere. When the whole force had reassembled at Cologne he marched down the Rhine and then across to Boulogne, the nearest port to Britain. It so happened that the son of Cymbeline, the King of Britain, had quarrelled with his father and, hearing of Caligula's approach, he fled across the Channel with a few followers and put himself under Roman protection. Caligula, who had already informed the Senate of his total subjugation of Germany, now wrote to say that King Cymbeline had sent his son to acknowledge Roman suzerainty over the entire British archipelago from the Scilly Islands to the Orkneys.
I was with Caligula throughout this expedition and had a very difficult time trying to humour him. He complained of sleeplessness and said that his enemy Neptune was plaguing him all the time with sea-noises in his ears, and used to come by night and threaten him with a trident. I said: "Neptune? I wouldn't allow myself to be browbeaten by that saucy fellow if I were you. Why don't you punish him as you punished the Germans? You threatened him once before, I remember, and if he continues to flout you, it would be wrong to stretch your clemency any further."
He looked at me, uncomfortably, through narrowed eyelids. "Do you think I'm mad?" he asked, after a time.
I laughed nervously. "Mad, Caesar? You ask whether I think you mad? Why, you set the standard of sanity for the whole habitable world."
"It's a very difficult thing, you know, Claudius,'' he said confidentially, "to be a God in human disguise. I've often thought I was going mad. They say that the hellebore Cure at Anticyra is very good. What do you think of it?"
I said: "One of the greatest Greek philosophers, though I can't remember now which of them it was, took the hellebore cure just to make his clear brain still clearer. But if you are asking me to advise you, I should say, "Don't take it. Your brain is as clear as a pool of rock-water."
"Yes," he said. "but I wish I could get more than three hours' sleep a night."
"Those three hours are because of your mortal disguise, "I said. "Undisguised Gods never sleep at all."
So he was comforted and the next day drew up his army in order of battle on the sea-front: archers and slingers in front, then the auxiliary Germans armed with assegais, then the main Roman forces, with the French in the rear.
The cavalry were on the wings and the siege-engines, mangonels and catapults, planted on sand-dunes. Nobody knew what on earth was going to happen. He rode forward into the sea as far as Penelope's knees and cried: "Neptune, old enemy, defend yourself. I challenge you to mortal fight. You treacherously wrecked my father's fleet, did you? Try your might on me, if you dare." Then he quoted from Ajax's wrestling match with Ulysses, in Homer: Or let me lift thee, Chief, or lift thou me.
Prove we our force,..
A little wave came rolling past. He