"A big humbug," said the shoemaker. Caligula was puzzled. "Humbug?" he repeated. "I a humbugl"
"Yes," said the Frenchman, "I'm only a poor French shoemaker and this is my first visit to Rome. And I don't know any better. If anyone at home did what you're doing he'd be a big humbug."
Caligula began to laugh too. "You poor half-wit," he said. "Of course he would be. That's just the difference."
The whole crowd laughed like mad, but whether at Caligula or at the shoemaker was not clear. Soon after this he had a thunder-and-lightning machine made. He lit a fuse and it made a roar and a flash and catapulted stones in whatever direction he wanted. But I have it on good authority that whenever there was a real thunderstorm at night he used to creep under the bed. There is a good story about that. One day a storm burst when he was parading about dressed as Venus. He began to cry: "Father, Father. spare your pretty daughter!"
The money he had won in France was soon spent and he invented new ways of increasing the revenue. His favourite one now was to examine judicially the wills of men who had just died and had left him no money: he would then give evidence of the benefits that the testators had received from him and declare that they had been either ungrateful or of unsound mind at the time of drawing their wills and that he preferred to think that they had been of unsound mind. He cancelled the wills and appointed himself principal heir. He used to come into Court in the early morning and write up on a blackboard the sum of money that he intended to win that day, usually two hundred thousand gold pieces. When he had won it, he closed the Court. He made a new edict one morning about the hours of business permitted in various sorts of shops. He had it written in very small letters on a tiny placard posted high on a pillar in the Market Place where nobody troubled to read it, not realising its importance. That afternoon his officers took the names of several hundred tradesmen who had unwittingly infringed the edict.
When they were brought to trial he allowed any of them who could do so to plead in mitigation of sentence that they had named him as co-heir with their children.
Few of them could.
It now became customary for men with money to notify the Imperial Treasurer that Caligula was named in-their wills as the principal heir. But in several cases this proved unwise. For Caligula made use of the medicine chest that he had inherited from my grandmother Livia. One day he sent round presents of honied fruits to some recent testators. They all died at once. He also summoned my cousin, the King of Morocco, to Rome and put him to death, saying simply: "I need your fortune, Ptolemy."
During his absence in France there had been comparatively few convictions at Rome and the prisons were nearly empty: this meant a shortage of victims for throwing to the wild beasts. He made the shortage up by using members of the audience, first cutting out their tongues so that they could not call out to their friends for rescue. He was becoming more and more capricious. One day a priest was about to sacrifice a young bull to him in his aspect of Apollo. The usual sacrificial procedure was for a deacon to [41?] stun the bull with a stone axe, and for the priest then to cut its throat. Caligula came in dressed as a deacon and asked the usual question: "Shall I?" When the priest answered, "Do so," he brought the axe down smash on the priest's head.
I was still living in poverty with Briseis and Calpurnia, for though I had no debts, neither had I any money except what little income came to me from the farm. I was careful to let Caligula know how poor I was and he graciously permitted me to remain in the Senatorial Order though I no longer had the necessary financial qualifications. But I felt my position daily more insecure. One midnight early in October I was awakened by loud knocking at the front door. I put my head out of the window. "Who's there?" I asked.
"You're wanted at the Palace immediately."
I said: "Is that you, Cassius Chaerea? Am I going to be killed, do you know?"
"My orders are to fetch you to him immediately."
Calpurnia cried and Briseis cried and both kissed me good-bye very tenderly. As they helped me to dress I hurriedly told them how to dispose of my few remaining possessions, and what to do with little Antonia, and about my funeral, and so on. It was a most affecting scene for all of us, but I did not dare prolong it. Soon I was hopping along at Cassius' side to the Palace. He said gruffly, "Two more ex-Consuls have been summoned to appear with you." He told me their names and I was still more alarmed. They were rich men, just the sort whom Caligula would accuse of a plot against him. But why me? I was the first to arrive.
The two others came rushing in almost immediately after, breathless with haste and fear. We were taken into the Hall of Justice and made to sit on chairs on a sort of scaffold looking down on the tribunal platform. A guard of German soldiers stood behind us, muttering together in their own language. The room was in complete darkness but for two tiny oil lamps on the tribunal. The windows behind were draped, we noticed, with black hangings embroidered with silver stars. My companions and I silently clasped hands in farewell. They were men from whom I had had many insults at one time or another, but in the shadow of death such trifles are forgotten. We sat there waiting for something to happen until just before daybreak.
Suddenly we heard a clash of symbols and the gay music of oboes and Eddies. Slaves filed in from a door at the side of the tribunal, each carrying two lamps, which they put on tables at the side; and then the powerful voice of a eunuch began singing the well-known song, When the long watches of the night.
The slaves retired. A shuffling sound was heard and presently in danced a tall ungainly figure in a woman's pink silk gown with a crown of imitation TQSfS on its head. It was Caligula.
The rosy-fingered Goddess then
Will roll away the night of stars...
Here he drew away the draperies from the window and disclosed the first streaks of dawn, and then, when the eunuch reached the part about the rosy-fingered Goddess blowing out the lamps one by one, brought this incident into the dance too. Puff. Puff. Puff.
And where clandestine lovers lie
Entangled in sweet passion's toils...
From a bed which we had not noticed, because it was in an alcove, the Goddess Dawn then pulled out a girl and a man, neither of them with any clothes on, and in dumb show indicated that it was the time for them to part. The girl was very beautiful. The man was the eunuch who was singing. They parted in opposite directions as if profoundly distressed. When the last verse came: O Dawn, of Goddesses most fair, Who with thy slow and lovely tread Dost give relief to every care...
I had the sense to prostrate myself on the ground. My companions were not slow in following my example. Caligula capered off the stage and soon afterwards we were summoned to breakfast with him. I said "O God of Gods, I have never in my life witnessed any dance that gave me such profound joy as the one I have just witnessed. I have no words for its loveliness."
My companions agreed with me and said that it was a million pities that so matchless a performance had been given to so tiny an audience. He said, complacently, that it was only a rehearsal. He would give it one night soon in the amphitheatre to the whole City. I didn't see how he would manage the curtain-drawing effect in an open-air amphitheatre hundreds of yards long, but I said nothing about that. We had a very tasty breakfast, the senior ex-Consul sitting on the floor alternately eating thrush-pie and kissing Caligula's foot. I was just thinking how pleased Calpurnia and Briseis would be to see me back when Caligula, who was in a very pleasant humour, suddenly said: "Pretty girl, wasn't she, Claudius, you old lecher?"
"Very pretty indeed, God."