Of the liberal arts he gave his mind least to deep literature and sound learning, but most to eloquence, although he was by nature already fair-spoken and of a quick tongue. With no doubt, he had at will both words and sentences with which to plead and declaim against any, were he but once angered. His action, gesture and voice also served him well, insomuch as when, for very heat and earnestness of speech scarcely was he able to stand his ground and keep still in one place, and yet still might no less be heard by them who stood afar off. When he was about to make an oration, his manner was to threaten in these terms, namely that he would draw forth and let drive at his adversary the keen weapon of his night-study; dismissing with contempt the milder kind of writing so far that he said of Seneca, a writer in those days widely favoured, that his compositions were plain exercises for mere show, and that he was no better than sand without lime. His wont was also to answer by writing the orations of those orators who had argued well and to acclaim; too, to meditate and devise accusations and defences of great persons who were impeached in the senate; and having called thither by edict the gentlemen of the city to hear him speak, either to bring low by additional charges, or to ease and give relief to each man by his sentence.
The arts, moreover, and many masteries of different nature, he practised most studiously. A fine sword-fencer he was and charioteer, and yet too a singer and a dancer. He would fight in earnest and with full weaponry, and run a chariot-race in the arenas, which he had built in many places. As for chanting and dancing, so passionate was he that he could not forbear, in the very public theatres and show-places, to join singing with the tragedian as he pronounced, and also openly to copy and imitate the gesture of the player, as it were by way of praise or correction. And truly (as it is thought), on the very day on which he was murdered, he did proclaim a wake or vigil all night long for no other cause than that, by taking the opportunity of the night's licentiousness, he might begin to make his entrance upon the stage. And many times he danced by night; but once above the rest he raised from their beds three honourable persons who had been consuls and sent for them late to the palace; and afraid as they were that some fearful calamity had befallen, he had them raised aloft, and then suddenly, with a great noise of trumpets and sound of horns and cymbals, he came leaping forth in a robe reaching down to his ankles; and after he had danced out the measures to a song, vanished again from their sight. And yet this man, so excellent a scholar as he was in the learning of all other feats, had no skill at all in swimming.
Now those to whom he took a love and a liking, he favoured exceedingly and beyond all reason. Mnester the famous pantomime he had such an affection for, that he did not abash to kiss him even in the open theatre; and if any one, whilst he was dancing or acting a part, made whatsoever little noise in interruption, he commanded that person to be pulled from his place and with his own hand scourged him. A gentleman of Rome chanced to make some stirring whilst the said Mnester was upon the stage; unto him he sent word forthwith by a centurion to depart without delay and go down to Ostia, there to take sea; and he was to carry to King Ptolemy into Mauretania letters, the tenor of which was this: 'To the bearer of these missives, whom I have sent hither to you, see you do neither good nor harm.' Certain of the fencers he made captains over his squires and his bodyguard. A swordsman named Columbus fortuned to wound his favourite and win the victory, but thereby gained he some small hurt; Gaius made no more ado but put poison into the wound, calling it thereupon Columbinum. So devoted was he to the green faction of charioteers that he would take his suppers and make his abode in their quarters. Upon a certain Eutychus, a chariot-driver, he bestowed at a banquet gifts of two millions of sesterces. For the sake of their chariot-steed named Incitatus, he was wont the day before the games in the circus, to send by his soldiers to command the neighbours there adjoining to keep silence, lest the horse be disturbed; and besides he had built for the beast a stable all of marble, and a manger of ivory; over and above this his tackle and harness of purple, with a brooch of precious stones at his bit; and he furnished this stable with servants and household, all to the end that guests invited in his name might be more finely and gaily entertained. It is reported, moreover, that he intended to prefer this very steed to a consulship.
As he thus made riot and carried on outrageously, there were many who lacked neither heart nor will to assault his person. But after one or two conspiracies detected, while other men for lack of opportunity stayed their hands, two at last plotted together and indeed performed their design; and in the knowledge of the highest of his court and the captains of his guard. For even they, being named (though untruly) as privy to a certain conspiracy, perceived themselves suspected and odious to him for that reason. For at once he had them brought to a secret place, and protested with sword drawn that he would die by his own hand, if they also thought him worthy of death. And he did not cease from that time onward, to accuse one privately to another, and to set them one against the other. Now these conspirators resolved to assail him during the Palatine games, as he departed out of the theatre at noontide; and Cassius Chaerea, tribune of the praetorian cohort, took it upon him to play the first part in this action, that very man now advanced far in years, whom Gaius was wont to mock in most opprobrious terms as a wanton and effeminate person, as on such occasion as that when he came to him for a password, he would give him Priapus or Venus, or if at any while he rendered thanks, would gesture to him with his hand, wagging in an obscene and filthy manner.
Many prodigious signs were seen, presaging his future death and murder. The statue of Jupiter at Olympia, which he desired to have broken in pieces and brought to Rome, set up all on a sudden such a mighty laughter that the workmen around it let their engines and vices slip and ran so all away. And at once appeared a man whose name was also Cassius, swearing that he had warning and command in a dream to sacrifice a bull to Jupiter. The Capitol in Capua on the ides of March was smitten with lightning, and likewise in Rome the porter's lodge belonging to the prince's palace. And there were many to give their conjecture that the one prodigy portended danger to the master of the house from his guard and the attendants of his person; and the other that some notable murder would be done, such as in times past had been committed upon the same day. Also Sulla the astrologer, when Gaius asked him his counsel and opinion concerning the horoscope of his nativity, told him plainly that most certain and inevitable death approached near at hand. In similar wise the oracle at Antium gave him a warning to beware of Cassius; for which very cause he had given order and commandment that Cassius Longinus, then proconsul in Asia, should be killed, not remembering that the foresaid Chaerea was named Cassius.
The day before he lost his life he dreamt that he stood in heaven close to the throne of Jupiter, and that Jupiter spurned him with the great toe of his right foot, and therewith threw him down headlong to the earth. And that same day, each occurrence that happened to him appeared as a prodigy and foretokening of his fall. As he made his sacrifices, he was besprinkled with the blood of the flamingo. And Mnester, the skilful actor abovenamed, presented that very tragedy which once upon a time Nep- tolemus the tragedian acted at those games wherein Philip, king of the Macedonians, was killed. And when in the show or interlude entitled Laureolus, wherein the chief player, making haste to escape the catastrophe, vomited blood, many more of the minor actors strove to attempt the like artifice, and the whole stage was set flowing with blood. There was prepared likewise at night-time another show, wherein the dark tales reported of hell and its infernal spirits were to be exhibited and unfolded by Egyptians and Ethiopians.
Upon the ninth day before the kalends of February, at about one of the clock after noon, wondering to himself whether he should rise to dine or no (for his stomach was still raw and weak from a surfeit of banqueting the day before), at last with the persuasion of friends he went forth. Now, when he met in the cloister with certain boys of noble birth (who had been brought out of Asia to sing hymns and to act out battles upo
n the stage), who were there preparing themselves, he stood still and stayed there to view and encourage them; and but that the leader of the company said he was very cold, he would have returned and had them perform. But what befell after this is reported in two manner of ways. Some say that, as he spoke to these boys, Chaerea came behind his back, and with the blade of his sword grievously wounded his neck, with the words, `Mind this'; whereupon Cornelius Sabinus, another of the conspirators, encountered him afront and ran him through in the breast. Others write that Sabinus, after the gathered crowds had been cleared by the centurions (who were privy to the conspiracy), called for a watchword, and when Gaius gave him the word Jupiter, cried out aloud, `Here take it sure,' and with that Cassius, as Gaius looked behind him, with one slash cut his jaw quite through. Also, as he lay on the ground cowering and cried that he was yet alive, the rest of their accomplices with thirty wounds dispatched and made an end of him. For `Strike again' was their signal and watchword; and some of them thrust their swords even through his privy members. At the very first noise and outcry, his litter-bearers came running to help with their litter-staves; soon after, the Germans who were his squires came in, and as they slew some of the murderers, so too they killed certain senators who were all innocent.
He lived twenty-nine years and ruled the empire three years, ten months and eight days. His corpse was conveyed secretly to the Lamian orchards where, being but halfburnt in a hastily prepared pyre, it was covered with a few turves of earth cast lightly over it; but afterwards by his sisters now returned from exile, it was taken up, burned to ashes and interred. It is for certain known that before the completion of these solemnities, the keepers of those orchards were troubled by the walking of spirits and ghosts; and in that house wherein he was murdered there passed not a night without some terror or fearful apparition, until the very house itself was consumed by fire. There died together with him both his wife Caesonia, stabbed with a sword by a centurion, and also a daughter of his, whose brains were dashed out against a wall.
What the condition and state was of those days, these particulars will make plain to any man. For when this massacre was divulged and made known abroad, men gave such reporting no credit in the beginning, but there went a suspicion that Gaius himself had feigned and given out a rumour of his murder, by such means to test men's minds and discover how steadfast was their loyalty to him; nor, indeed, had the conspirators destined the empire to anyone, and Rome was headless. And the senators, in recovering their ancient freedoms, agreed that the consuls should be assembled not at the first in the Curia, because it bore the name Julia, but in the Capitol; truly some of them, when their turns came to speak, opined that the memory of the Caesars should be utterly abolished and erased, giving advice that their temples be pulled down. Moreover, it has been especially noted and observed that those of the Caesars, who had the forename of Gaius, beginning with him who was slain in the troublesome days of Cinna, died all of them a violent death.
OVID
III, 14
Tacitus
Born 56/7 AD
Historian
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, the most brilliant and influential of imperial historians, writes here in his magnum opus `The Annals of Imperial Rome' of the emperor Claudius, uncle and successor to Gaius Caligula, and his wife Valeria Messalina, whose name has become a byword for depravity. Claudius was a sympathetic but absurd figure, physically infirm and grotesque he had been kept from the public eye by his family, and was made emperor at the age of fifty by the Praetorians - the emperor's personal Guard - upon Caligula's assassination. Messalina, more than thirty years her husband's junior, bore him two children, Britannicus and Octavia, but became notorious for her viciousness and promiscuity. The trusting Claudius seems to have remained ignorant of his wife's true nature, until in AD 48 she made an extraordinary attempt to marry her lover, the consul-elect, Gaius Silius, and to wrest power from her husband.
TACITUS
from the Annals
XI, 25-38: The Death of Messalina, Wife of Claudius.
But now came the end of Claudius' blindness to what was happening in his own home. Before long he was forced to take notice of, and to punish his wife's excesses - only to be caught up after that in an incestuous marriage.
Messalina was by now finding adultery so easy that it bored her, and she was beginning to turn gradually towards more unusual libidinous practices, at which point her lover, Gaius Silius, started urging her that they should drop the pretence - either out of a deadly foolishness, or because he reckoned that the threat of danger was best countered by doing something dangerous oneself. He did not think that they needed to wait for old age to remove the emperor; planning was only innocent for those who were not actually guilty already, whereas manifest guilt needed the support of bold action. He was, he said, unmarried, childless, willing to marry, and prepared to adopt Britannicus; Messalina would keep the same powers as she had before, and would also have peace of mind if they could only get over the problem of Claudius, who, if slow on the uptake as far as deceit was concerned, was very quick-tempered. She listened to her lover's words without particular enthusiasm - not because of any love for her husband, but for fear that Silius, once he had reached the top, would then reject his mistress and come to see this crime, committed under pressure, for what it was. But for all that, she still wanted to be called `wife,' simply because it was so massively wicked, wickedness for its own sake being the ultimate pleasure of the very bad. Therefore they waited only until Claudius had left for Ostia to make a religious sacrifice before they went through a full solemnization of their marriage.
I know it must seem amazing that any human beings could have felt safe doing something in a city where everybody knows all and tells all, especially when the something is this: a consul-designate and the emperor's wife get together before witnesses on a given day to celebrate a marriage 'for the procreation of children;' the woman listens to the auguries, puts on the bridal veil and sacrifices to the gods; they have a dinner with guests, kiss, and then spend the night together under the licence of matrimony. But I have added no extra touches; and what I shall tell you is truth as it was heard and written down by older men.
And so the imperial household shuddered, the chief secretaries more than anyone else; they were the ones most afraid of any change in the set-up, and they no longer whispered, but now said openly that when Mnester the actor had been defiling the emperor's bed, this might have been humiliating, but actual disaster had still been a long way off. But now a young and handsome nobleman, intelligent and about to take up a consulship, was preparing himself for something even better than that. It was hardly difficult to work out what would follow on from a marriage like this. They became very frightened indeed when they took into account Claudius's complete and utter subservience to his wife, and the many killings already ordered by Messalina. On the other hand, the fact that the emperor was easily swayed led them to hope that if they could get the upper hand by showing up the audacity of her crime, then they might manage to get her judged and condemned before she even came to trial. But everything hung on whether her defence was heard, and whether they could close Claudius's ears to her confession.
First of all the secretaries, Callistus (whom I mentioned earlier in the context of the killing of Caligula), Narcissus (who had contrived the murder of Silanus, Messalina's stepfather), and Pallas, who was at that time at the high point of his influence, all discussed whether they could still use undercover threats to make Messalina give up this love-affair with Silius, while pretending not to know any details. But Pallas and Callistus decided against acting, for fear that ifthey failed, it might lead to their own destruction-Pallas through cowardice, and Narcissus because he had learned under Caligula that caution was a better way of keeping power than precipitate action. Only Narcissus persisted, with the one modification that no-one should warn Messalina of the charge or the accuser. Narcissus waited for his chance while Claudius delayed at Ostia, and then persua
ded two mistresses, with whom the emperor spent a lot of time, to go and tell him, using bribery and also promises of the greater powers that they would enjoy when his wife had fallen.
Next, one of these women, whose name was Calpurnia, was allowed to speak to him in private, threw herself at his feet and told him that Messalina had married Silius. Then she quickly asked the other woman, Cleopatra (who was standing by ready for this) whether she knew as well. When she agreed, Calpurnia asked for Narcissus to be sent for. He began by saying that he was sorry for having in the past pretended not to know about lovers like Vettius Valens or Plautius Lateranus; nor, indeed, would he now accuse Messalina of these adulteries, and would not even want to demand that she hand back Claudius's home, slaves and other imperial property. No, let the other man enjoy these things - but he must give Claudius back his wife and tear up the new marriage-contract! `Did you know,' he asked, `that you were divorced? The people, the Senate and the soldiers have all seen the marriage of Silius. If you don't act quickly, this "husband" will hold Rome!'
At this, the emperor summoned his closest friends and questioned first of all Turranius, the prefect in charge of the grain-supply, and after him Lucius Geta, the Praetorian commander. They confirmed what had happened, and others in the group told him to go to the camp and ensure the loyalty of the Praetorian Guard - to make sure about security before thinking of revenge. It is sufficiently well documented that Claudius, confused and terrified, kept on asking if he were emperor, and Silius a private citizen.
The Dedalus Book of Roman Decadence- Emperors of Debauchery Page 5