I, Claudius - Robert Graves [71]
As for me, nobody noticed that I had fainted for some time, and when they did I was already coming to. They propped me up again in my place until the show had formally ended. To have been carried out would have been a disgrace for everyone.
The next day the Games continued, but I was not there.
It was announced that I was ill. I missed one of the most spectacular contests ever witnessed in the amphitheatre, between an Indian elephant—they are much bigger than the African breed—and a rhinoceros. Experts betted on the rhinoceros, for although it was by far the smaller animal its hide was much thicker than the elephant's and it was expected to make short work of the elephant with its long sharp hom. In Africa, they were saying, elephants had learned to avoid the haunts of the rhinoceros, which holds undisputed sway in its own territory. This Indian elephant however—as Postumus described the fight to me afterwards—showed no anxiety or fear when the rhinoceros came charging into the arena, meeting him each time with his tusks and lumbering after him with clumsy speed when he retired discomfited. But finding himself unable to penetrate the thick armour of tne beast's neck as he charged, this fantastic creature had recourse to cunning. He picked up with his trunk a rough broom made of a thorn bush which a sweeper had left on the sand and darted it in his enemy's face the next time he charged: he succeeded in blinding first one eye and then the other. The rhinoceros, distracted with rage and pain, dashed here and there in pursuit of the elephant and finally ran full tilt against the wooden barrier, going right through it and shattering his hom and stunning himself on the marble barrier behind.
Then up came the elephant with his mouth open as if he were laughing and, first enlarging the breach in the wooden barrier, began trampling on his fallen enemy's skull, which he crushed in. He then nodded his head as if in time to music and presently walked quietly away. His Indian driver came running out with a huge bowl full of sweetmeats, which the elephant poured into his mouth while the audience roared applause. Then the beast helped the driver up on his neck, offering his trunk as a ladder, and trotted over to Augustus; where he trumpeted the royal salute—which these elephants are taught only to utter for monarchs—and knelt in homage. But, as I say, I missed this performance; That evening Livia wrote to Augustus: "MY DEAR AUGUSTUS, "Claudius' unmanly behaviour yesterday in fainting at the sight of two men fighting, to say nothing or the grotesque twitchings of his hands and head, which at a solemn festival in commemoration of his father's victories were all the more shameful and unfortunate, has at least had this advantage, that we can now definitely decide once and for all that except in the dignity of priest—for the vacancies in the colleges must be filled some/low and Plautius has managed to coach him well enough in his duties—Claudius is perfectly unfit to appear in public. We must be content to write him off as a loss, except perhaps for breeding purposes, for I hear he has now done his duty by Urgulanilla—but I won't be sure of that until I see the child, which may well be a monster like him.
"Antonia has to-day abstracted from his study what appears to be a notebook of historical material which he has been collecting for a life of his father; with it she found a painfully composed introduction to the projected work, which I send you herewith. You will observe that Claudius has singled out for praise his dear father's one intellectual foible—that wilful blindness of his to the