69 AD: The Year of Four Emperors

by Gwyn Morgan

  Like Plutarch, Tacitus held that authors and readers could and should draw lessons from history, this being a vital function of Roman as it was of Greek historiography. Nor was he averse to fitting incidents into larger themes, the luck that attended Vespasian’s bid for power, for example, or the irresponsibility of the senate, or the mutinous spirit of armies, or the general decline in people’s respect for laws and gods—provided that the similarity of the events or their progression in one direction, more often than not downhill, permitted it. But he presented his case studies (exempla) as the particular and specific results of the individual behavior of individual men or women on individual occasions. It was their uniqueness that justified describing them, and he refused flatly, and rightly, to force them into some kind of preordained, theoretical construct warranting the sweeping generalizations that so entranced Plutarch.

  If we take Tacitus as our guide, therefore, it emerges that the soldiery played a significant role in the upheavals of 68/69, but not in the simplistic manner that Plutarch champions. As Tacitus tells the story, for example, rankers gave their emperor loyalty far deeper and more enduring than their officers were ever able to develop—no small thing, in that this tended to prolong both the fighting and the bitterness that went with defeat. Similarly, military discipline was obviously undermined by these civil wars, and the men were perfectly capable of picking and choosing which officers to obey and when to obey them. Much depended on the respect they felt for their commanders. But the results could vary. In Otho’s case the consequences were dire, since his troops did in fact help usher him off the stage, albeit not by design. In the concluding stages of the campaign against Vitellius, on the other hand, the Flavian commander Antonius Primus exploited the troops’ mutinous spirit in order to nullify the other officers’ opposition to his plan of campaign. So rankers were normally the raw material used by emperors or officers to get their own way, and it was certainly not rankers who set in motion the events that put Galba, or Otho, or Vitellius, or Vespasian on the throne.

  Once we recognize that we can give less weight to the soldiery and more to their officers, we can restore a political or, better, a personal dimension to these struggles that permits a more rounded explanation of what was going on. Like Tacitus himself, for example, all these officers accepted the principate. None had ideas of restoring a republic. But their aims tended to be self-serving and immediate. The loyalists who defended the status quo wanted to preserve or raise their status within the political élite. And those opposed to the reigning emperor hoped to accelerate their own advancement within the élite as they helped set their own candidate on the throne. In both groups the overriding consideration was fear or ambition, not principle. This is the basis for Tacitus’ assertion that only one of the officers who took part in the war against Vitellius “brought good qualities to this campaign.” And whether fear or ambition animated these men, they expressed these drives almost invariably in what may well seem an incredibly shortsighted manner. Academics, unfortunately, have tended to discount this opportunism, perhaps because—like conspiracy theorists—they prefer to assume that only planning could have produced the results for which shortsightedness, inadvertence, or downright incompetence were responsible. But when Tacitus talks of the “madness” of civil war, it denotes the loss of any sense of proportion among the officers as often as it does the loss of any sense of discipline and decorum among the men.

  To this view of the situation, it can—and no doubt will—be objected that we should not trust Tacitus. This is reasonable, up to a point. As recent events have shown, it is not enough merely to assemble information or to pick out only the bits and pieces that happen to agree with opinions we have already formed. We have to evaluate all the evidence before us, and that evaluation requires that we start from the proposition that all information is suspect until proved otherwise. Yet over time we must rank the sources of that information according to the quality and the coherence of the material they provide. We have to allow for bias, conscious and unconscious, on our part as well as on that of our informants. And we should strive to ensure that no misapprehensions cloud or distort the picture as the result, say, of a failure to recognize that the informant is in every sense speaking a different language than the evaluator. Nobody today can hope to get inside the head of an ancient writer, since different languages are the products of different thought patterns and different value systems. But this does not absolve us from trying. And in Tacitus’ case much of the criticism rests on a misunderstanding of his aims and methods, on an inability to come to grips with the quirkiness of his syntax and style, and on an almost Pavlovian refusal even to consider the possibility that he was as conscientious in the evaluation of his material as he was artful in its presentation.3

  Since it is precisely the artfulness with which Tacitus presents his material that has proved the greatest stumbling block to any understanding of his aims and methods, it will be as well to make a basic point here, that in Greece and Rome history and biography were regarded as branches of literature. In the scale of values that went with this approach, the writing of history belonged on the highest level, since it dealt with the great deeds of great men, and qualified as the prose equivalent of an epic poem (one reason why Tacitus’ narratives are suffused with diction from Vergil’s Aeneid). Biography belonged further down the scale. Though it too dealt often enough with great men, the biographer was allowed to use trivial incidents or apocryphal tales to characterize the man he was describing (hence Suetonius’ delight in the rumors that are too often taken by moderns as hard facts). Still, one rule applied to historians and biographers alike, that the medium must match the message, that the writer must aim at literary artistry in the presentation of his material. As a result, it was accepted practice for a historian or a biographer to lift huge slabs of material, without acknowledgement, from an earlier writer, usually the earlier writer who was thought to have given the most authoritative account to date (for the events of 68/69 the so-called common source). The later writer could abridge this material, as did Plutarch, or he could expand it, as did Tacitus. He could alter its arrangement, and change the emphasis and the interpretation to suit his own purposes, as did Suetonius, above all in his Life of Vitellius.4 And none of this qualified as plagiarism, because the later writer recast the story in his own way and in his own style. The ancients’ definition of originality, in short, was not unlike the modern justification for remaking a movie.

  What set Tacitus apart from our other four sources is that an unusual and arresting style was considered essential for a first-rate historian from Thucydides’ time onward, both to hook the audience and hold its attention, and to reassure it that the author had taken the same immense pains with the evaluation of his subject matter as he had with the creation and application of his style. Tacitus carried this approach to extremes. Since he lived in an age when brevity was prized and long-windedness suspect, his Latin exhibits a terseness that even headlines in a modern newspaper cannot match. And since it was an age that esteemed epigrammatic turns of phrase, sound bites with real teeth, he obliged with gems like his six-word “everybody agreed that Galba would have made a great emperor, if only he had not become emperor” (omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset). This jibe, moreover, encapsulates another weapon Tacitus used to achieve his effects, antithesis or the juxtaposition of opposites. This turns up constantly, not just in individual sentences or chapters. So Tacitus constructed his account of Vitellius’ march to Rome after the defeat and death of Otho (a process that occupied the four months between mid-April and mid-July 69) as a series of episodes grouped by category and contrasted with one another by juxtaposition. The account may look linear, and it has been interpreted as such, because there is little in the way of overt comment. But there is little overt comment because Tacitus was a subtle writer and the arrangement made his point.

  This has caused enormous problems. For a start, these are all rhetorical techniques, and these days the
term “rhetoric” raises suspicions, even hackles, implying deception, exaggeration, and spin. And this is the basis for the widespread assumption that Tacitus is out to hoodwink his readers. For a Greek or Roman writer in any genre, however, rhetoric provided the means of approaching a subject, of arranging the material, and of presenting a case or reaching a conclusion (Plutarch’s on the soldiery, for example). All five of our literary sources used the techniques listed in their handbooks—the other four less competently perhaps, less often, and less overtly than Tacitus—to organize everything they had to say. And the original audiences for whom they wrote had no objection to this. It may be arguable whether any but the smartest among them were able to deconstruct a speech or a narrative as fast as its author constructed it. Nonetheless, literate Greeks and Romans were not merely trained in rhetoric. They lived and breathed it. For them it was a way of thinking, a way of speaking, a way of writing, and a way of acting.

  Now, in the nineteenth century Leopold von Ranke proclaimed it the historian’s function to write history “as it actually happened” (wie es eigentlich gewesen). Although still quoted with approval by nonspecialists, this dictum is little honored in academe. Since Ranke’s day the study of history and literature has become immensely more sophisticated. This has had its advantages, among them the realization that no matter how reasonable Ranke’s aim may look, it is impossible to achieve: history is only a record of the past, a historical fact only something historians think important. But there have been disadvantages too. This specialization has been carried so far that there is now a massive disconnect between students of history and students of literature. The historians seldom pay attention to the literary rules that guided Tacitus, and the students of literature ignore the historical matter he presents. So Tacitus, who saw himself simultaneously as historian and as literary artist, now falls between two stools. Modern historians of Rome distrust or dismiss his style, taking it for granted that whenever he says anything they find incomprehensible or unacceptable, he is guilty of inaccuracy, carelessness, or bias. Modern students of Latin literature discount the historical content of his work and talk, usually in the abstract, of his exploitation of irony and innuendo, or the way in which oddities in his vocabulary supposedly reflect the Roman political unconscious or his delight in ambiguity. Both schools emphasize analysis, rightly, but the result of both approaches is to tear down his narrative and to find fault with almost everything it contains.

  It would be absurd to claim that Tacitus makes no mistakes, but how many and how serious they are is another question. There are occasions, for example, when he sacrifices substance to style, but they are far less frequent than it has become fashionable to claim. His epigrams certainly qualify, since they rely on overstatement for their effect. His descriptions of battles may fall into this category too, since they resort sometimes to formulaic modes of expression, but most ancient battles followed much the same lines anyway. He certainly refused to fuss about terrain, but why should he have, when most of his readers were likely as ignorant of the area being described as were the troops trudging or fighting their way across it, had no atlases to consult, and almost certainly did not care anyway? He credits characters with speeches they may or may not have delivered, but in antiquity these served as the equivalent of a modern analysis of the situation or as the presentation of the speaker’s assessment of it, accurate or not. And despite his claims to be writing without partiality, some hold that he shows bias in his readiness to think the worst of just about everybody. But one can also argue either that civil wars seldom bring out the best in people, or that Tacitus—like Galba— held his subjects to standards they simply could not reach.

  How, then, are we to approach our subject? I have made Tacitus’ account the framework within which to describe the military and political history of the Year of the Four Emperors as best it can be recovered. To that extent this book may be able to function as a kind of companion to the Histories. But at the same time I have tried to indicate, more often than is customary in a book like this, which material is being drawn from which author. This, I hope, will allow my readers to make their own assessment of the quality of the informant as well as of his information, and so to decide for themselves how well founded any particular interpretation, ancient or modern, may be.

  1

  The Fall of Nero and the Julio-Claudian House

  Tacitus opens his account of the Year of the Four Emperors on 1 January 69, with the entry into the consulship of the emperor Servius Sulpicius Galba and his henchman Titus Vinius. Though he offers a brief survey of the overall situation, he refers to earlier events only in flashback, and as infrequently and tersely as possible. For what happened in the earlier year we must turn to Suetonius for the fullest account of Nero’s last days, to Dio for the only surviving narrative of the revolt of Julius Vindex, the man who set off the events that led to Nero’s fall, and to Plutarch for the most comprehensive report on Galba, the man who harvested the fruits of Vindex’s endeavors. So why does Tacitus write as he does? Because he was following—and exploiting—the rules for writing history in Rome. An account was organized around an annalistic or year-by-year framework (how smoothly the narrative flowed over or around these breaks depended on the literary skills of the writer), and it was taken for granted that the reader was familiar with the years prior to the chosen starting point or else knew where to find the details. From the starting point onward, each year began with the entry into office of the new consuls on 1 January, since they were—in theory—the highest magistrates or chief executives in the state. And using their names to mark the year had been the custom since that formative event in all Roman history, the foundation of the republic (509 B.C.).

  There was another method of indicating the passage of time, reckoning from the year when Romulus supposedly founded the city (753 B.C.). This was less common and more cumbersome. But it could be used to remind the reader how long the city had lasted, especially as there had been occasional predictions that Rome would fall in such-and-such a year. That is why Tacitus brings it up next. The consulship of Galba and Vinius, he says, was the eight hundred and twenty-first year of Rome’s existence, so that he can add “and very nearly its last.” In one sense the comment is obvious exaggeration, but every historian was expected to open with dramatic claims to justify his choice of theme and capture the readers’ attention. In another sense the remark is highly misleading. Whether or not the troubles of 69 nearly brought down the empire and warranted Tacitus’ plunging immediately into what he considered the year of crisis, they had not come out of nowhere. As we know from Suetonius, Dio, and Plutarch, the previous year had also seen revolts and civil wars, riots and massacres, murders and suicides. But it had seen only two emperors, Nero, a suicide, and Galba, now shrouding beneath his consular robes the fact that he was a usurper.

  So why did Tacitus pick 69 rather than 68 as his starting point? All sorts of explanations have been offered, but he had no real choice. As Nero’s reign ended in June 68, it could not be fitted easily into an annalistic frame. Tacitus had either to go back to the start of Nero’s reign, when Nero could not be separated from his predecessors, or to move forward to the start of 69 and the last two weeks of Galba’s reign. This was not the tidiest turning point either (hence the opening survey of the empire), but it served his purposes better. Since Galba was in his early seventies and childless, even his few ardent supporters recognized that his rule would be brief and, unless he named an acceptable heir, would precipitate another, still more massive storm. Besides, the city of Rome had suffered little in the upheavals of 68, whereas in 69 it was to see the deaths of two more emperors (Galba and Vitellius), and become a battlefield itself. When its inhabitants were brought up to believe that Rome was both the center of the empire and the one place where important events could occur, their historians naturally shared this viewpoint. This is another key to Tacitus’ observation that in 69 “a secret of empire was disclosed, that an emperor could be made elsew
here than in Rome.” The point being made is geographical as well as constitutional.

  To understand how this situation came about, we have to go back a century, to Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Most of the problems that came to a head in 69 can be traced back to the arrangements he made. The Roman state was never a democracy, and it was never a despotism. From start to finish it was an oligarchy. Much was made, before and after Augustus’ day, of the rival claims of “liberty” and “tyranny,” but this was rhetoric. During the republic’s last century it was prompted by the endless factionalism within the governing class. Once Augustus had created the principate, a settlement that took its name from the claim that the emperor was merely “first among equals” (princeps), it reflected the constant tensions between the emperor and his governing class.

  The title princeps applied to Augustus only in the civil sphere, that is, in Rome and Italy. Outside these limits he was the commander in chief (imperator) of almost all Rome’s armed forces and of the provinces where they were stationed. The vast bulk of the troops, some 25 to 30 legions of Roman citizens (the number varied) and an equivalent number of auxiliary, non-Roman soldiers, were organized on a permanent basis and stationed on the frontiers, facing out. Though the ancient sources and modern writers play up the importance of these troops, they were seldom prime movers. When Tiberius succeeded Augustus in 14, there were mutinies in the units on the German frontier and in Pannonia (more or less modern Hungary). These, however, were triggered by the men’s justifiable discontent over conditions of service imposed on them by Augustus, and both were settled fairly easily once the men’s immediate needs were met. Without officers to give them a strong lead and point them in a predetermined direction, angry soldiers tended to stand rooted to the spot, or to mill around in confusion, or to do something even more shortsighted than the actions of which their officers were capable. What made the situation so dangerous in 68/69 was precisely that the discontent of the troops was combined with the audacity and unscrupulousness of officers willing to back this or that contender for the throne.