A schoolmaster always appears a very queer fellow to his pupils. He has certain stock-phrases which they come to notice-and giggle at whenever he uses them. Everyone in the world has stock-phrases or tricks of speech, but unless he is in a position of authority - as a schoolmaster; or an army captain or a judge - nobody notices, them particularly. Nobody noticed them in my case until I became Emperor, but, then of course they became world-famous. I had only to remark in court, `No malice or favour whatsoever' (turning to my legal secretary after summing-up a case), `That's right, isn't it?' or `When once my mind is made up, the thing is fixed with a nail,' or quote the old tag:
As the rascal did he must
Himself be done by And that's just;
or utter the family oath, 'Ten thousand furies and serpents!' and a great roar of laughter would go up about me as though I had let fall either the most absurd solecism imaginable or the most exquisitely witty epigram.
In the course of my first year in the courts I must have made hundreds of ridiculous mistakes, but I did get the: cases settled and sometimes surprised myself by my brilliance. There was one case, I remember, where one of the witnesses for the defence, a woman, denied any relationship with the accused man, who was alleged by the prosecution to be really her son. When I told her that I would take her word for it and that in my quality as High Pontiff I would immediately join her and him in marriage she was so frightened by the prospect of having incest forced upon her that she pleaded guilty to perjury. She said that she had concealed her relationship in order to seem an impartial witness. That gave me a great reputation, which I lost almost at once in a case where the treason charge covered one of forgery. The prisoner was a freedman of one of Caligula's freedmen, and there were no extenuating circumstances to his crime. He had forged his master's, will just before his death - whether he was responsible for the death could not be proved - and had, left his mistress and her children completely destitute. I grew very angry with this man as I heard-his story unfolded and determined to inflict the maximum penalty. The defence was very weak no denial of the charge, only a stream of Telegonian irrelevancies. It was long past my dinner-time and I had been sitting in judgement solidly for six hours. A delicious whiff of cooking came floating into my nostrils from the dining-chamber of the Priests of Mars near by. They eat better than any other priestly fraternity : Mars never lacks for sacrificial victims. I felt faint with hunger. I said to the` senior of the magistrates who were sitting with me, `Please take over this, case from me and impose the maximum penalty, unless the defence has any better evidence evidence to offer than has yet been produced.'
`Do you really mean the maximum penalty?' he asked.
'Yes, indeed, whatever it may be. The man deserves no mercy.'
`Your orders shall be obeyed, Caesar,'' he replied.
So my chair was brought and I joined the priests at their dinner. When I' returned' that afternoon I found that the accused man's hands had been chopped off and hung around his neck. That was a punishment ordained for forgery by Caligula and had not yet been removed from the penal code. Everyone considered that I had acted' most cruelly, for the judge had told the Court that it was my sentence, not his own. It was hardly my fault, though.
I recalled all the exiles who had been banished on treason charges but only after asking the Senate's permission. Among these were my nieces Agrippinilla and Lesbia who had been sent to an island off the coast of Africa. For my own part, though I would certainly not have allowed them to remain there, neither would I have invited them to return to Rome. They had both behaved very insolently to me and had both committed incest with their brother Caligula, whether willingly or unwillingly I do not know, and their other adulteries had been a matter of public scandal. It was Messalina who interceded with me for them. I realize now that it gave her a delightful sense of power to do this. Agrippinilla and Lesbia had always treated her with great haughtiness, and now that they, were told that they were being recalled to Rome as a result of her generosity they would feel obliged to humble themselves before her. But at the time I thought it was plain goodness of heart in Messalina. So my nieces returned and I found that exile had by no means broken their spirits, though their delicate skins had become sadly tanned by the African sun, By Caligula's orders they had been forced to earn their living on the island by diving for sponges. However, the only comment that Agrippinilla made on her experiences was that she had not altogether wasted her time. `I have become a first-class swimmer. If anyone ever wants to kill me, he had better not try drowning,' They decided to brazen out the disgracefully slave-girlish colour of their faces, necks, and arms,, by inducing some of their noble friends to adopt sunburn as a fashion. Walnut-juice became a favourite toilet-water. Messalina's intimates, however, kept their natural pinkand-white complexions and referred contemptuously to the sunburn party as 'The Sponge Divers'. Lesbia's thanks to Messalina were most perfunctory and I was hardly thanked at, all. She, was positively unpleasant: `You kept us waiting ten days longer than was necessary,' she complained, `and the ship that was sent tofetch. us
was full of rats.' Agrippinilla was wiser: she made both of us very graceful speeches of gratitude.
I confirmed Herod's kingship of Bashan, Galilee, and Gilead, and added, to it Judaea, Samaria, and Edom, so that his dominions were now as large as those of his grandfather. I rounded off the northern part with Abilene, which had formed part of Syria. He and I entered upon a solemn league, confirmed by oaths in the open Market Place in the presence of an immense crowd, and by the ritual sacrifice of a pig, an ancient ceremony revived for the occasion. I also conferred; on him the honorary dignity of Roman Consuclass="underline" this had never before been .given to a man of his race. It signalized that in the recent crisis the Senate had come for advice to him, not finding a native Roman capable of clear and impartial thought. At Herod's request I also conferred the little kingdom of Chalcis on his younger brother, Herod Pollio: Chalcis lay to the east of the Orontes, near Antioch. He asked nothing for Aristobulus, so Aristobulus got nothing. I also gladly freed Alexander the Alabarch and his brother Philo, who were still in prison at Alexandria. While on the subject, I may mention that when the Alabarch's son, to whom Herod had married his daughter Berenice died, Berenice then married her uncle Herod Pollio. I confirmed Petronius in his governorship of Syria and sent him a personal letter of congratulation on his sensible behaviour in the matter of the statue.