The Magic Circle by Katherine Neville (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

“Good heaven!” he chortled. “No, no, I hadn’t guessed such a thing at all—and what a surprise! Indeed, how could I have guessed? I mean, you’ve said ‘my sister,’ but in fact you have three of them, and each one lovelier than the next!”

“Everyone in the family is right about you, Uncle Claudius,” said Caligula coldly. “You are a complete fool. Now I’m rather sorry I’ve made you my first co-consul, to rule the state with me. Though I’ve always liked you better than anyone in the family, I really might have chosen someone more astute.”

“Now, now, that appointment can always be changed at any time—though of course I’m pleased and overjoyed at the honor,” said Claudius hastily, wondering what on earth to do. He waited, praying for divine guidance, until at last his nephew spoke.

“I’m not talking about my sister!” Caligula hissed under his breath, though the guards posted around the field weren’t even within shouting distance to overhear them. “Don’t you understand? I was speaking of the goddess.”

“Ah—the goddess,” said Claudius, trying hard not to avoid Caligula’s gaze, though his dark eyes were burning into him like awful coals.

“The goddess!” Caligula screamed. His hands were balled into fists in fury. His face had resumed its blackened color. “Don’t you understand? I can’t make a mere mortal my empress! Mortal brothers and sisters cannot marry! But gods always marry their sisters—it’s always done—that’s how they do it! That’s how we know that they’re really gods, you see: because they all fuck their sisters!”

“Of course,” said Claudius, tapping his head as if he’d just had a revelation. “But you didn’t say it was the goddess, that’s why I was confused. Your sister the goddess. Of course. So you’re speaking of—Drusilla!” he finished, praying wildly to all the real goddesses he could possibly think of that this was the right answer.

Caligula smiled.

“Uncle Claudius,” he said, “you’re a fox. You knew all along, but were just pretending in order to make me have to tell you. Now, let me share with you all my ideas on what I think we should do to save the empire.”

Caligula’s ideas on how to save the empire were astounding even to Claudius, whose predilection for expensive women and lavish, drunken banquets was well known. In the one hour they spent touring the Augustan mausoleum and temple together, discussing how the structure might be completed, Claudius quickly calculated what such ideas must represent in terms of cost.

Caligula had already bestowed rare jewels upon the comedian Mnester and many of his other favorites. And when Herod Agrippa, brother-in-law of the Galilean tetrarch Herod Antipas, was released from the prison where he’d languished by order of Tiberius these past six months, Caligula had made a public display of replacing the iron chains he’d worn in prison with gold ones of equal weight. If only a small portion of his other projects went forward as planned, Claudius calculated, it would consume all of Tiberius’s private fortune—a legacy of twenty-seven million gold pieces—and would substantially deplete the state treasury as well.

“Here at Rome, I’ll complete the Augustan temple and the theater of Pompey,” the young emperor said, ticking it all off on his fingers. “I’ll expand the imperial palace across Capitoline Hill, connect it with the temple of Castor and Pollux, add an aqueduct for the gardens, and create a new amphitheater for Mnester to perform in. At Syracuse I’ll rebuild all the ruined temples. I’ll dig a canal through the isthmus to Greece, restore the palace of Polycrates on the isle of Samos, bring back the statue of Olympian Jupiter to Rome where it belongs—and I also plan to create a new temple to Didymaean Apollo at Ephesus, the design and construction of which I shall personally supervise myself.…”

It went on this way the whole of the morning until they reached the palace. It was only then, once they were within Caligula’s private apartments, that Claudius was able to ask a question that had been nagging his mind all morning.

“What a paragon of altruism you’ve proven to be to the Roman people, my dear Gaius!” he told his nephew, who had seated himself on a bejeweled throne atop a small flight of steps that placed him several feet above his uncle, so Claudius had to strain to be heard. “They will surely be gratified for their love and the faith they’ve placed in you. And you say you’ve even arranged to resume the bread and circuses, as resplendently as in the days before Tiberius put a halt to all such things! But the role of tax collector hardly seems your style. Therefore, it’s clear you’ve hatched some clever way to replenish your coffers?”

“You’d speak to a god about grubbing after money?” Caligula replied disdainfully.

Taking up the golden Thunderbolt of Jove he liked to carry about at public affairs of state, he meditatively began cleaning his fingernails with its tip.

“Very well, since you’re my co-consul, I suppose I should tell you,” Caligula said, looking down at Claudius from his golden perch. “You recall Publius Vitellius, the aide-de-camp to my father Germanicus? He was there when Father died, at only age thirty-three, on his last campaign in Syria.”

“I knew Publius very well,” said Claudius. “He was my brother’s most trusted ally, even in death. You were only a child at the time, so perhaps you don’t know it was he who brought Piso—an agent and friend of Tiberius—to trial on charges of poisoning your father. Tiberius too might have been charged in the murder, if he hadn’t burned Piso’s secret instructions when they were presented before him. But Tiberius had a long memory for such betrayals, and did not soon forget the Vitellii. Publius was later arrested and accused of being a member of the Sejanus conspiracy. He tried to slash his wrists, then fell ill and died in prison. Later his brother Quintus, the senator, was publicly degraded in one of