With these bequests from Livia and Tiberius I was now quite well off.
Caligula astonished me by further paying me back the fifty thousand that I had found for Germanicus at the time of the mutiny: he had heard the story from his mother. He did not allow me to refuse it and said that if I made any further protest he would insist on paying me the accumulated interest too: it was a debt he owed his father's memory. When I told Calpurnia about my new wealth she seemed more sorry than pleased. "It won't bring you any luck," she said. "Much better be modestly well off, as you have been, than run the risk of having your whole fortune stripped from you by informers on a charge of treason."
Calpurnia was Acte's successor, you remember. She was very shrewd for her years--seventeen.
I said, "What do you mean, Calpurnia? Informers?
There are no such things in Rome now, and no treason trials."
She said; "I didn't hear that the informers were packed off in the same boat with the Spintrians." [For Tiberias' painted "orphans" had been banished by Caligula. As a public gesture of pure-mindedness he had sent the whole crew of them off to Sardinia, a most unhealthy island, and told them to labour honestly for their living as roadmakers. Some of them just lay down and died when picks and shovels were put into their hands, but the rest were whipped into work, even the daintiest of them. Soon-they had a stroke of luck. A pirate vessel made a sudden raid, captured them, and carried them off to Tyre, where they were sold as slaves to rich Eastern profligates.]
"But they wouldn't dare to try their old tricks again, Calpurnia?"
She put down her embroidery. "Claudius, I'm no politician or scholar, but I can at least use my prostitute's wit and do simple sums. How much money did the old Emperor leave?"
"About twenty-seven million gold pieces. That's a lot of money."
"And how much has the new one paid out in legacies and bounties?"
"About three million and a half. Yes, at least that amount."
"And since he has been Emperor how many panthers and bears and lions and tigers and wild bulls and things has he imported for the huntsmen to kill in the amphitheatres and the Circus?"
"About twenty thousand, perhaps. Probably more."
"And how many other animals have been sacrificed in the temples?"
"I don't know. I should guess between one and two hundred thousand."
"Those flamingoes and desert antelopes and zebras and British beavers must have cost him something! So what with buying all those animals and paying the huntsmen in the amphitheatres, and then the gladiators, of course--gladiators get four times what they got under Augustus, I'm told--and all the State banquets and decorated cars and the theatre shows--they say that when he recalled the actors whom the old Emperor banished he paid them for all the years they were out of work--handsome, eh?--and my goodness the money he has spent on racehorses!
Well, what with one thing and the other he can't have much change left out of twenty million, can he?"
"I think you're right there, Calpurnia."
"Well, seven million in three months! How is the money going to last at that rate, even if all the rich men who die leave him all their money? The Imperial revenue is less now than it used to be when your old grandmother ran the business and went over the accounts."
"Perhaps he'll be more economical after the first excitement of having money to spend. He's got a good excuse for spending; he says that the stagnation of money in the Treasury under Tiberius had a most disastrous effect on trade. He wants to put a few million into circulation again."
"Well, you're better acquainted with him than I am.
Perhaps he'll know just when to stop. But if he goes on at this rate he won't have a penny left in a couple of years, and then who's going to pay? That's why I spoke of informers and treason-trials."
I said: "Calpurnia, I'm going to buy you a pearl necklace while I still have the money. You're as clever as you are beautiful. And I only hope you are as discreet."
"I'd prefer cash," she said, "if you don't mind." And I gave her five hundred gold pieces the next day. Calpurnia, a prostitute and the daughter of a prostitute, was more intelligent and loyal and kind-hearted and straightforward than any of the four noblewomen I have married. I soon began to take her into my confidence about my private affairs and I may say at once that I never regretted having done so.
The moment that Tiberius' funeral was over, Caligula had taken ship, in spite of very bad weather, to the islands where his mother and his brother Nero had been buried; he gathered up their remains, half-bumed, and brought them back, burned them properly, and piously interred them in Augustus' tomb. He instituted a new annual festival, with sword-fighting and horse races, in his mother's memory and annual sacrifices to her ghost and that of his brothers. He called the month of September "Germanicus", as the previous month had been called after Augustus. He also heaped on my mother by a single decree as many honours as Livia had been given in her lifetime, and appointed her High-Priestess of Augustus.
He next pronounced a general amnesty, recalling all banished men and women and releasing all political prisoners. He even brought together a large batch of criminal records covering the cases of his mother and brothers and publicly burned them in the Market Place, swearing that he had not read them and that anyone who had acted as informer or contributed in any other way to the deplorable fate of his loved ones need have no fear: all record of those evil days was destroyed. As a matter of fact, what he burned were only copies: he kept the originals. He followed Augustus' example by making a strict scrutiny of the Orders and rejecting all unworthy members of either, and Tiberius' example in refusing all titles of honour except those of Emperor and Protector of the People and in forbidding statues of himself to be set up. I wondered how long this mood of his would last, and how long he would keep by the promise he had made to the Senate on the occasion that they voted him the Imperial power, to share it with them and be their faithful servant.
After six months of his monarchy, in September, the Consuls in office finished their term and he undertook a Consulship for himself for a while. Whom do you suppose he chose as a colleague? He actually chose me! And I who had twenty-three years before begged Tiberius to be given real honours, not empty ones, would now willingly have resigned my appointment in anyone's favour. It was not that I wanted to go back to my writing [for I had just completed and revised my Etruscan history and had begun on [359] no new work], but that I had quite forgotten all the rules of procedure and legal formulas and precedents that I had once studied so painfully, and that I felt thoroughly ill at ease in the Senate.
From being so little at Rome, too, I knew nothing about how to pull strings and get things done quickly, or who were the men with real power. I got into great trouble with Caligula almost at once. He entrusted me with the task of having statues made of Nero and Drusus, to be set up and consecrated in the Market Place, and the Greek firm from whom I commissioned them promised faithfully to have them ready on the day fixed for the ceremony early in December. Three days before I went along to see how the statues looked. The rogues hadn't begun on them. They made some excuse about the right coloured marble having only just come in. I flew into a temper [as I often do on occasions of this sort, but my anger doesn't last long] and told them that if they didn't get workmen busy on the blocks and keep them at the job night and day I would have the whole firm--owner, managers and men--thrown out of the City. Perhaps I made them nervous, because though Nero was done on the afternoon before the ceremony--it was a good likeness too--a careless sculptor somehow broke Drusus' hand off at the wrist. There are ways of repairing a break of this sort, but the join always shows and I couldn't present Caligula with a botched piece of work on so important an occasion. All that I could do was to go at once and tell him that Drusus wouldn't be ready. Heavens, how angry he was! He threatened to degrade me from my Consulship and wouldn't listen to any explanation. Fortunately he had decided to resign his own Consulship the next day, and ask me to resign mine, in favour of the men who had originally been chosen for it; so nothing came of his threat and I was even chosen again as Consul with him for four years ahead.