The result would have been little different had I been kicked by a mule, a beast of which Agrippina always reminded me.

I have already mentioned my introduction to the lady. After I had been made to take a bath, which I did not need, being already fully as clean as the members of the imperial family, I was given sandals and a tunic which did not fit me, they having been designed for a legionary, and escorted back to the tent of Germanicus, from which rose screams and howls of a most astounding volume. Especially astounding were they when I discovered that they proceeded from the lungs of a four-year-old child.

Agrippina met me at the entrance. "Come here, you nasty little barbarian," she commanded. Then she turned toward the interior of the tent. "Here he is," she snapped. "Now for the love of Jove, stop your bawling."

At sight of me, Little Boots immediately stopped yelling and grinned at me. There was not a tear in his eye: he had just known how to get what he wanted, and I suppose he wanted me because there were no other children in the camp and he longed for a playfellow. There were some women in the camp but no other children that I ever saw. The women were quartered down below the lines where the cavalry horses and sumpter mules were tethered, and they were not allowed to move freely about the camp, nor were Little Boots and I permitted to approach that part of the camp. I did sneak down there once when Little Boots was taking a nap, but after I saw a number of the ladies and heard their conversation, I understood why they had been segregated.

As any bright child would have done, I picked up the language of my captors quickly. I had to, for I heard nothing else. The first speeches that I heard and which in any way referred to me, I carried fairly well in my memory, so that I soon had the gist of them and was later able to render a rather free translation of them, which I have previously set down in these memoirs. Among the first words that I picked up (and what boy would not have?), were the robust oaths of the soldiers: within a week of my coming, I could curse like a legionary.

All my life I had had a very good name of which I was quite proud, but Agrippina did not even inquire as to what it might be. No. After the custom of the Romans, she gave me a brand new name as they do to all slaves. She named me Britannicus Caligulae Servus. The Britannicus was given me either in derision or because of my origin: I neither knew nor cared. It was a fine, full sounding name, and I liked it. From the beginning, Little Boots called me Brit, and thenceforth I was Brit to him, the members of his household, his intimates, and my own friends; but not to Agrippina. To her I was Britannicus, that Vile Barbarian, or just plain Servus.

I do not know why she took such a violent dislike to me, unless it was due to unconscious jealousy, aroused by the childish passion of Little Boots for me.

She was a terrible woman: proud, arrogant, dictatorial, jealous, cruel. She looked with thinly veiled contempt, or with open contempt, upon all in whose veins did not flow the divine blood of the Julii; even thus upon her husband, who was of the Claudian branch of the family.

Her pride in the Julian blood stemmed from the fact that the family was supposed to have descended directly from a goddess: Venus. But why that should have been anything to boast of, I do not know.