Letter from Sabina to Chloe
Capreae, August.
We arrived late the night before last from Rome, and never have I seen Capreae so crowded. There are hundreds of yachts here, and many from Egypt, Greece, and Asia, and the whole fleet has arrived, and is drawn up ready for inspection. Clothes are, of course, a difficulty, because one is expected to be elegant, and if one wears anything beautiful it is certain to be spoilt when one gets in and out of boats. Clodia looks too absurd in Egyptian silks and gold chains, just as if she were going to the Games, and Lesbia looks sillier still dressed up as a Greek sailor boy. I have tried to steer a middle course between the two extremes, and I have got a plain white peplum with brown sandals; this all looks cool and summer-like, but it is really substantial enough for the fickle, breezy weather.
Yesterday we went with Sejanus to be shown over one of the ships, the Servius Tullius. It was one of the new kind, with three decks and four of what they call turrets. The officers on board were very proud of themselves because in their “battering practice,” which they had just been doing in some outlandish place, they had successfully destroyed the boom (which is a kind of mast sticking out from the ship) of the dummy ship on which they practise. Julius says that these experiments are a waste of money, because each of these dummy ships costs I don’t know how much money. But then Julius is a Little Roman, and I always tell him that if everybody thought as he did, we should have the barbarians in Rome in no time.
The officers have such a hard life on board. They have to get up before sunrise, and if any of them is at all disobedient he is told to climb up the mast and sit in a kind of basket for several hours with nothing to do. As for the sailors, they live in a dark hole with scarcely any light in it and no air at all. I asked one of them whether this didn’t give them a headache, and he said that some clever mathematician had invented a kind of fan which buzzed round and round so as to ventilate their cabin. He said this was a horrible invention, and made such a draught that nobody could sleep. If you live at sea, he told me, you want to be warm in your cabin. You have quite enough fresh air on deck. Julius said this showed how perverse and conservative sailors are. If he was the captain of a ship he would make the sailors sleep on deck in hammocks without any blankets. The sailor said they were all thankful Julius was a politician and not a sailor. And Julius, who has no sense of humour, thought it was meant as a compliment.
There have been heaps of visitors on board all the ships. The captain of the Servius Tullius said it was wonderful what an interest people took in the fleet now, and what intelligent questions they asked, especially the women. I was rather flattered by this, as I have always taken an intelligent interest in naval things, and I had only just said to him (to show I wasn’t ignorant) that my favourite boat was a spinnaker.
To-morrow there are going to be some races. I am going to try to get Lucius Aemilius to take me on board his schooner, the Hirundo. I always think a schooner is a safer boat than a cutter. I don’t really like racing, because nobody will talk to one, and the men are all so rude and absent-minded while the race is going on, and whatever one does one is always in the way and in the wrong place, but I shall get rid of Julius for a whole day, because he is a very bad sailor and nothing would drag him on board a racing yacht.
Capreae is terribly crowded. I was invited upon Sejanus’ yacht, but I think it much more comfortable to live in the most uncomfortable villa than in the most comfortable yacht. There is no privacy in a yacht, and salt water ruins my skin. Our villa, which we have hired for the week, is quite clean, only there is only one bath in it, so that we all have to use it by turn.
Vitellius, the admiral, has put one of the little pinnaces belonging to his ship, the Remus, at our disposal. So we can go backwards and forwards whenever we like. The pinnace is managed by one of the quite young officers—such a nice little boy, and so willing! He doesn’t mind how long I keep him waiting at the pier. It seems extraordinary that such young boys should be able to manage a whole boat full of men, doesn’t it? Ours looks about fifteen years old, but I suppose he is really much older. I asked him to come and dine with us, and Julius was cross about it, and said I was making myself ridiculous by talking to children. But I promise you this boy has much more assurance than many grown-up men. In fact, once or twice I have had to speak severely to him because he was on the point of going too far. As it was, I treated it all as a joke, and told him I was old enough to be his mother.
There have been a lot of the “Lysistratists” here—you know, the women who are in favour of senators being all women. Of course, I have nothing against their principles. If a man is a senator why shouldn’t a woman be? Any woman is cleverer than any man. But I do think their methods are silly and so unwomanly. One of them took a piece of chalk and wrote “Women and Freedom” on Sejanus’ carpet. And another dressed herself up as a Numidian slave, and shouted “Justice for Women” just as he was in the middle of a serious speech at his banquet. But the sailors like them very much, because they are so graceful, and on board one of the ships of the fleet—I think it was the Scipio—one of the chief “Lysistratists,” Camilla, entirely converted one of the men of the “Legio classica”—those kind of half-soldiers, half-sailors, who keep order on board the ships—and he is now a fervent “Lysistratist” himself. The other sailors say this is very curious, as the man in question had such a stern character. But then, you see, Camilla is quite charming. Sejanus is horribly put out about it, and his house has to be guarded day and night by soldiers. It is most inconvenient, because the other day his own daughter Lydia was arrested as she was going into the house. They had mistaken her for a “Lysistratist.”