Gore Vidal’s Caligula (10 page)

Caligula stiffened, petrified.

“Would
be,” Tiberius corrected himself, “if you were not my heir.”

I can never relax, Caligula thought. The old whoreson bastard won’t let me rest easy for a minute. It’s his way of torturing me.

By now, he was so worn out from physical and emotional stress that he had given up all thought of a bath and a meal, and would have settled for a straw mattress in a dark room. But Tiberius was far from tired, and there was still much for Caligula to see. On they marched, the three of them, Tiberius still leaning on his beautiful “crutch”.

CHAPTER FOUR

In the years since Caligula had last visited Capri, Tiberius had grown more dissolute than ever. While Sejanus, the Captain of the Praetorian Guard was alive and scheming, he and the Emperor had turned almost their full attention to Rome, determined, it appeared, to eradicate the most noble citizens, particularly the Senatorial class. Their ferocity was boundless, and what time they had left over from murder was spent in orgies of drinking, eating and debauchery. Even as a young Roman officer, Tiberius had been known as a hard-drinking man. There had been a barracks joke about him in those days. Instead of Tiberius Claudius Nero, the soldiers called him “Biberius Caldius Mero,” Latin for “drinker of straight wine,” meaning wine unmixed with water.

After Sejanus’ execution, Tiberius began to spend less time on murder, although it was still a favorite occupation, and more time at the banquet tables and on the couches. His favorite wine cup was worth ten times its weight in gold. Almost five hundred years old, it had come down the centuries from Athens, and in its painted bowl were depicted a drunken satyr and a willing Maenad in sexual congress. The cup itself was almost never empty, filled to the brim with Raetian wine, Tiberius’ favorite, and served more often at his tables than the more common Falernian.

The Emperor’s orgies at Capri had become the talk of Rome, but the common citizen, with his limited experience, could not in his wildest imaginings picture what really went on in the Villa of the Monsters. For the Emperor, jaded and impotent with old age, had built himself a “pleasure palace” several stories high, and had peopled it with curiosities of gross sexuality brought at incredible expense from every corner of the Empire. This afternoon Tiberius wished to display for Caligula the vilest, most scrofulous, scabbed beatings of a depraved heart—his Villa of the Monsters.

They approached the villa with the setting sun behind them, its last rays making the marble building glow with a sickly phosphorescent radiance. Troops of Tiberius’ sex slaves came running to greet their master—midgets, dwarfs, hunchbacks, cripples of every description. Along the roadside, giant pillars had been erected, bizarre parodies of the crosses on which the Romans crucified their condemned. These pillars were shaped like phalluses and, chained to them in grotesque positions, were naked prisoners, both men and women, impaled fore and aft by immense dildoes.

Tiberius’ sense of humor had led him to build his temple in the form of a whore-house, with separate cubicles on three floors housing separate depravities. It was a Roman
insula,
or tenement, but built on so lavish and expensive a scale that the art adorning it alone would have financed several campaigns against the Gauls.

The mosaic floor of the main entrance hall, for example. It depicted the labors of Hercules, not an uncommon subject. But these labors were uncommon—indeed, they were all sexual. Instead of slaying the many-headed Hydra, the mighty Hercules was depicted trying to copulate with a women of many cunts. In another section of the mosaic, he stood cleaning out the Augean stables, not with a rushing river, but with a rushing stream of yellow piss. The part of the mosaic that showed him gaining the magic sash of Queen Hippolyte depicted him ripping it off with his teeth, his hands and the other parts of him being otherwise occupied with her body. As for the Golden Apples of the Hesperides; Hercules has the nymphs that guard them kneeling at his feet, taking turns with his stout tool in their mouths, while he casually plucks the apples from the tree.

Caligula stopped to look down at the mosaic, for the work was artistically done, but Tiberius urged him on, still lecturing him with republican sentiments.

“When Rome was just a city and we were all citizens, known to one another—why, we had to be good, frugal, dignified. But then we had to conquer the earth.” Mounting to the first storey, the Emperor pushed aside a gauzy curtain that closed off a cubicle.

Caligula’s eyes widened. Reclining on a couch was a creature that he had heard of, but until this moment had considered only a tale from mythology. It was beautiful, with large, red-tipped breasts, at which a black slave knelt, suckling. From between its long, milk-white thighs protruded a large, thick penis—its own. A hermaphrodite, by Isis! Named for Hermes, the male sexual god, and Aphrodite, the female.

Tiberius grinned at Caligula’s astonishment. “Amazing, isn’t it?” he chuckled. “Cost me a fortune. Both boy”—he stooped to fondle the creature’s penis—“and girl.” He stroked its breasts. “Lucky creature.”

A tall youth slipped into the cubicle and sat on the bed facing the hermaphrodite. Stroking the creature’s penis into full erection, the lad raised his tunic, baring his buttocks, mounted the creature, and impaled himself. The black slave continued to suck at the hermaphrodite’s nipples as it fucked the boy hard, with rocking movements of his hips.

Growing bored Tiberius drew Caligula’s arm through his own and led him onward.

“We stole for ourselves the wealth of the world. And look at us! The Romans that I rule are not what they were. No. They lust for money, pleasure, other men’s wives. Yes! I am a true moralist. As stern as any Cato. Unfortunately, Fate chose me to govern swine. I have become a swineherd in my old age . . .” The Emperor continued to mouth pieties as he revealed to his grandson room after room of grotesqueries.

Here a grossly obese woman was clutching three slender youths at once to her monstrous body, looking as though she intended to swallow them all. There a woman so ancient she might have been Tiberius’ own grandmother was fucking a fifteen-year-old boy with all the energy and lust of a woman of forty. In another room a tall black slave was pinioned by leather thongs to a cot, spread-eagled and helpless as beautiful white girls, half-naked, teased his pulsating ebony body with ostrich plume fans. In another room a young black girl was chained belly-down to a wheel, which rolled cruelly under her as a tall soldier rammed himself between her buttocks.

And, everywhere, a king’s ransom in erotic art. The lamps were fashioned of clay in the shape of squatting comic figures with huge phalluses. From the holes in the tips of the cocks came oily flames that sent long shadows leaping to the ceilings. In some of the rooms, painted friezes depicted the positions of lovemaking—some were heterosexual, others showed men with men or women with women. On tall Greek vases set on pedestals, black satyrs carried off white nymphs, supporting them on their hugely erect
phalloi;
youths making love to other youths or older men in daisy-chain fashion circled other vases.

Herms stood everywhere, pillars of ancient stone with the horned deity’s head on top, and a large, thick phallus in front. On these Herms, Caligula saw live slave-girls impaling themselves with evident joy, pushing themselves deeply onto the erect cocks of stone or marble. And Caligula saw that the stone around the base of the cocks was flecked with dried blood.

In one room, reserved for Tiberius, the furniture was simple—a wide, low bed covered in silks and fur throws; a long brazier that stood on lion’s paws; a tall, polished silver mirror in which Tiberius could watch the happenings on the bed; and an easel painting. The painting was by Parrhasius, and valued at ten thousand gold pieces. Cunningly painted it showed the beautiful Atlanta behaving with gross indecency with her suitor Meleager.

There was so much to see that Caligula’s head began to swim, and Tiberius took pity on him at last, promising the rest of the viewing tomorrow. When they left the
insula,
Caligula took deep gulps of the fresh evening air as he followed Tiberius and his “crutch.”

Torches burned brightly, and the loggia was in full light. Nerva stood waiting for them there, accompanied by a slave who held a table covered with documents that required the Emperor’s signature. In the Emperor’s chair, the imprisoned sentry was writhing in agony. The guards were still pouring wine down his throat, and he was almost unconscious. His stomach was swollen hugely, since no release was possible. His penis had turned black, the lacing was still tight around his penis, and the man’s breath stunk now not only of wine but also of urine. Nerva’s face wore an expression of deep revulsion.

Looking at the soldier, Tiberius smiled. “Well, I think the boy has had enough celebration for one day, don’t you?” He turned to Caligula with a significant look.

“Yes, Lord,” said Caligula hastily. “Shall we relieve his poor bladder?”

“I think that would be the kindest thing,” nodded Tiberius.

At once, Caligula drew his dagger and plunged it deep into the man’s swollen belly. There was a single high, strangled, scream as the belly burst and blood, wine and urine gushed like a waterfall down the sentry’s legs. In a moment he was dead.

Tiberius glanced without pity at the corpse. “He was quite full,” he noted.

“Pity we used red wine,” commented Caligula. “The white is so much prettier when you mix it with blood.”

Tiberius turned to Nerva, who approached them wordlessly. “Nerva, stop scowling at us! Now let us get to work.”

The slaves brought the table up to the Emperor, holding it at the level of his chest. Nerva held up the first document. “The revised list of candidates for the equestrian order,” he said.

Without glancing at the list, Tiberius took the heavy Imperial seal off his left forefinger and passed it across the warmed wax. Pronouncing the Imperial formula, “I, Tiberius Caesar, command in the name of the Senate and the People of Rome . . .” he stamped the document with the seal, making it official.

“Tax assessments,” said Nerva, putting the next batch of papers under the Emperor’s nose. “For Asia. Britain. Gaul.”

Tiberius disposed quickly of the documents, signing, sealing and intoning the sacred formula. Caligula watched, fascinated by the process of ruling and the business of Empire.

Now Nerva seemed to hesitate. He held out a document then drew it back slightly, as though reluctant to pass it to the Emperor. Tiberius looked at him quizzically, and Nerva handed him the list.

“Senators
allegedly
guilty of treason,” he said coldly, barely glancing at Tiberius.

The Emperor gave him a sardonic smile, then signed and sealed the list of names with evident relish.

“The Senate is the natural enemy of any Caesar,” he said. “Every Senator thinks of himself as Caesar. Therefore every Senator is guilty of treason in thought if not in deed. Are you listening, Caligula?”

“Yes, Lord,” said Caligula. But he hadn’t been. His eyes were fixed on the seal in Tiberius’ hand, and he’d been wondering how well the ring would fit on his own, smaller finger. He’d
make
it fit, if he ever got the chance!

Dinner that night was in a small dining room—Tiberius’ villa boasted four such, as well as a great banqueting hall in which elaborate feasts were given. There were only three couches in the room, each low and broad, with a bolster at the front end to support the elbows of the diner. Tiberius, naturally, held the place of honor, on the center couch, while Caligula held the upper couch, the consul’s place, as befitted a guest, and Nerva the lower one. Before them stood a low, wide marquetry table covered with dishes and winejugs. At Caligula’s place, and Nerva’s, were tall water-jugs with Egyptian ibises worked in low relief on the gold plating, but Tiberius drank his wine unmixed with water.

Caligula reclined lazily, refreshed from his bath and wrapped in fresh linen robes. On his head was a wreath of flowers. The Romans believed that the odor of fresh flowers would stave off drunkeness, so floral wreaths were generally handed out to the gentlemen toward the end of the meal. But at Tiberius’ table, wreaths were worn from the first course onward, because the wine never stopped flowing. Only Nerva sipped decorously at his Greek pottery cup.

Food arrived in a stream of courses, naked female slaves bearing heavy dishes. Tiberius was particularly fond of the fish and shellfish that abounded in the waters around Capri, and the floor near his couch was littered with the shells of prawns and the bones of mullet. Now he was crunching honey-drenched ortolans whole—bones, beak and all—as he continued lecturing his grandson on the state of the Empire and the inadequacies of the Senate.

“You know,” he said, belching and wiping his greasy hands on his costly robe, ignoring the perfumed water in the silver hand-basin, “the Senate offered to approve any law I made
before
I made it. Imagine! So I said to them, what if I go mad? What then?” He simpered at Caligula, as if to show how impossible that was. “What then? No answer, of course. They are born slaves, Caligula. Never forget that. Why, they wanted to make me a god in my own lifetime!”