The Guards cavalry were also ordered to attend but instructed to bring their lances as well as their sabres. I found a sergeant who looked as though he might have fought at Philippi, he was so old and scarred. I said, "Sergeant, do you know who I am?"
"No, sir. Can't say that I do, sir. You seem to be an exConsul, sir."
"I am the brother of Germanicus."
"Indeed, sir. Never knew that there was such a person, sir."
"No, I'm not a soldier or anyone important. But I've got an important message for you fellows. Don't leave your swords too far away when you go to this afternoon's assembly!"
"Why, sir, if I may ask?"
"Because you may need them. Perhaps there will be an attack by the Germans. Perhaps by someone else."
He stared hard at me and then saw that I really meant it.
"Much obliged to you, sir, I'll pass the word around," he answered.
The infantry were massed in front of the tribunal platform and Caligula spoke to them with an angry scowling face, stamping his feet and sawing with his hands. He began reminding them of a certain night in early autumn, many years before, when under a starless and bewitched sky... Here some of the men began sneaking away through a gap between two troops of cavalry. They were going to fetch their swords. Others boldly pulled theirs out from under their military cloaks where they had been hiding them. Caligula must have noticed what was happening, for he suddenly changed his tone, in the middle of a sentence. He began drawing a happy contrast between those bad days, happily forgotten, and the present reign of glory, wealth and victory. "Your little playfellow grew to manhood," he said, "and became the mightiest Emperor this world has ever known. No foeman however fierce, dares challenge his unconquerable arms."
My old sergeant rushed forward. "All is lost, Caesar," he shouted. "The enemy has crossed the river at Cologne--three hundred thousand strong. They're out to sack Lyons--then they'll cross the Alps and sack Romel"
Nobody believed this nonsensical story but Caligula. He turned yellow with fear, dived from the platform, grabbed hold of a horse, tumbled into the saddle and was out of the camp like a flash. A groom galloped after him and Caligula [4°9]
called back to him, "Thank God I still hold Egypt. I’ll be safe there at least. The Germans aren't sailors."
How everyone laughed! But a colonel went after him on a good horse and caught him before very long. He assured Caligula that the news was exaggerated.
Only a small force, he said, had crossed the river and had been beaten back: the Roman bank was now quite clear of the enemy. Caligula stopped at the next town and wrote a dispatch to the Senate, informing them that all his wars were now successfully over and that he was coming back at once with his laurel-garlanded troops. He blamed those cowardly stay-at-homes most severely for having, from all accounts, lived life in the City just as usual--theatres, baths, supper-parties--
while he had been undergoing the severest hardships of campaign. He had eaten, drunk and slept no better than a private soldier.
The Senate was puzzled how to pacify him, being under strict orders from him to vote him no honours on their own initiative. They sent him an embassy, however, congratulating him on his magnificent victories and begging him to hasten back to Rome where his presence was so sadly missed. He was dreadfully angry that no triumph had been decreed him even in spite of his orders, and that he was not referred to as Jove in the message but merely as the Emperor Gaius Caesar. He rapped his hand on his sword pommel and shouted: "Hasten back?
Indeed I will, and with this in my hand."
He had made preparations for a triple triumph: over Germany, over Britain and over Neptune. For British captives he had Cymbeline's son and his followers, to which were added the crews of some British trading vessels whom he had detained at Boulogne. For German captives he had three hundred real ones and all the tallest men he could find in France, wearing yellow wigs and German clothes and talking together in a jargon supposed to be German.
But, as I say, the Senate had been afraid to vote him a formal triumph, so he had to be content with an informal one. He rode into the City in the same style as he had ridden across the bridge at Bais, and it was only on the intercession of Caesonia, who was a sensible woman, that he refrained from putting the entire Senate to the sword. He rewarded the people for their alms-giving generosity to him in the past by showering gold and silver from the Palace roof. But he mixed red-hot discs of iron with this largesse, to remind them that he had not yet forgiven them for their behaviour in the amphitheatre. His soldiers were told that they could make as much disturbance as they pleased and get as drunk as they liked at the public expense. They took full advantage of this licence, sacking whole streets of shops and burning down the prostitutes' quarter. Order was not restored for ten days.
This was in September. While he was away the workmen had been busy on the new temple on the Palatine Hill at the other side of the Temple of Castor and Pollux horn the New Palace. An extension had been made as far as the Market Place. Caligula now turned the Temple of Castor and Pollux into a vestibule for the new temple, cutting a passage between the statues of the Gods. "The Heavenly Twins are my doorkeepers," he boasted. Then he sent a message to the Governor of Greece to see that all the most famous statues of Gods were removed from the temples there and sent to him at Rome. He proposed to take off their heads and substitute his own. The statue he most coveted was the colossal one of Olympian Jove. He had a special ship built for its conveyance to Rome. But the ship was struck by lightning just before it was launched. Or this, at least, was the report--I believe really, that the superstitious crew burned it on purpose. However, Capitoline Jove then repented of his quarrel with Caligula [or so Caligula told us]
and begged him to return and live next to him again. Caligula replied that he had now practically completed a new temple; but since Capitoline Jove had apologised so humbly he would make a compromise--he would build a bridge over the valley and join the two hills. He did this: the bridge passed over the roof of the Temple of Augustus.
Caligula was now publicly Jove. He was not only Latin Jove but Olympian Jove, and not only that but all the other Gods and Goddesses, too, whom he had decapitated and reheaded. Sometimes he was Apollo and sometimes Mercury and sometimes Pluto, in each case wearing the appropriate dress and demanding the appropriate sacrifices. I [4"] have seen him go about as Venus in a long gauzy silk robe with face painted, a red wig, padded bosom and highheeled slippers. He was present as the Good Goddess at her December festivaclass="underline" that was a scandal. Mars was a favourite character with him, too. But most of the time he was Jove: he wore an olive-wreath, a beard of fine gold wires and a bright blue silk cloak, and carried a jagged piece of electrum in his hand to represent lightning. One day he was on the Oration Platform in the Market Place dressed as Jove and making a speech. "I intend shortly," he said, "to build a city for my occupation on the top of the Alps.
We Gods prefer mountain-tops to unhealthy river-valleys.
From the Alps I shall have a wide view of my Empire--France, Italy, Switzerland, the Tyrol and Germany. If I see any treason hatching anywhere below me, I shall give a warning growl of thunder so! [He growled in his throat.]
If the warning is disregarded I shall blast the traitor with this lightning of mine, so! [He hurled his piece of lightning at the crowd. It hit a statue and bounced off harmlessly.]
A stranger in the crowd, a shoemaker from Marseilles on a sight-seeing visit to Rome, burst out laughing. Caligula had the fellow arrested and brought nearer the platform, then bending down he asked frowning: "Who do I seem to you to be?"