Julius Caesar and say that he never succeeded in conquering Britain but was forced to flee her coasts without ever accomplishing his task. Naturally, what you say, which in itself is not without foundation, enhances Emperor Claudius’ honor, when he, thanks to the British tribal wars, has succeeded in making such a large part of the country peaceful. But it is not a good thing to insult the god Julius Caesar publicly. You ought to know that.”
When he talked to me in this fatherly way, my heart began to thump, and I realized that while writing I had fled from the dark winter and my own loneliness into a dreamlike summer in which I forgot the trials I had suffered and remembered only the beautiful things. I had missed Lugunda as I had been writing, and because of the brotherhood in which I joined with the Brigantes, I felt myself more of a Briton than a Roman. And in the way of all authors, I was not pleased to hear this criticism and was deeply offended.
“I’m sorry I’ve not fulfilled your hopes,” I said. “I’d better gather up my belongings and go back to Rome, as long as it is possible to cross over to Gaul in the winter storms.”
Vespasian put his great fist on my shoulder and said gently, “You are still young, so I’ll forgive your touchiness. Perhaps you’d better come with me on a tour of inspection to Colchester, the veteran town. Then I’ll give you a cohort for a few months, so that as a prefect you can have all the formal military training you need. Your British blood brothers will only respect you more when you go back to them in the spring. Then in the autumn you can rewrite your book.”
In this way I received my rank of tribune in the same year, although I was only eighteen. This appealed to my vanity and I did my best to show myself worthy of the responsibility, although active service in winter was confined to garrison inspection, building work and practice marches. Somewhat later I received from my father a considerable sum of money and the following letter:
Marcus Mezentius Manilianus greets his son Minutus Lausus. You will have heard by now of the changes that have taken place in Rome. In order to reward more fully my wife Tullia for her services in exposing the conspiracy, rather than my own services, Emperor Claudius has bestowed on me the privilege of wearing the broad purple band. I have now a seat in the Curia. Behave accordingly. I am sending you a money order to London. Here it is said that the Britons have made Claudius a god and raised a temple with a turf roof in his honor. You would be wise to take a
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suitable votive gift to the temple. Aunt Laelia is well, as far as I know. Your freedman, Minutius, lives with her at the moment, making and selling a Gallic soap. My wife Tullia sends her greetings. Drink to my memory from your mother’s goblet.
So my father was a senator, something I could never have imagined. I was no longer surprised that Vespasian had been in such a hurry to promote me to tribune. What had happened in Rome had reached him more quickly than it had me. I felt bitter and my respect for the Senate lessened considerably.
Following my father’s advice, I went to the wooden temple the Britons had built in Colchester in honor of Claudius and presented a brightly painted wooden carving as a votive gift. I dared not give anything more valuable as the Britons’ own gifts were worthless articles-shields, weapons, cloths and clay jars. Vespasian had given nothing but a broken sword so as not to offend the British kings with a too valuable gift. At least, that is what he told me.
As the summer came in, I gladly shed my insignia of rank and Roman armor, painted blue stripes on my cheeks and threw the colored cloak of honor of the Brigantes over my shoulders. Vespasian pretended that he could not possibly let the son of a Roman senator loose to be murdered by savage Britons in the forests, but he knew perfectly well that under the protection of the Druids, I was safer traveling in all the countries of the Britons than I would be at home in the streets of Rome.
Recklessly, I promised I would be responsible for myself and my upkeep. Out of vanity, I should have liked to have taken my own horse to prance in front of the noble British youths, but Vespasian decisively refused to allow me to and praised, as usual, the staying power of mules in British terrain. He had had a horse dealer crucified for trying to smuggle a shipload of horses in from Gaul, to sell at high prices to the Britons. My stallion, he said, would be much too great a temptation to them. They had been trying in vain to breed up their own small horses after experiencing the superiority of the Roman cavalry over war chariots.
So I had to content myself with buying suitable gifts for my hosts. First I loaded my mules with jars of wine, for the British nobles were if possible even more given to wine than the legionaries. That summer I spent the longest day of the year at the Sun God service in the round temple of giant stones. I found gold ornaments and amber in an ancient tomb, and I made a journey to the tin mines, to the harbor of which the Carthaginians used to sail hundreds of years ago to buy tin. But the
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