The Twelve Caesars

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The Twelve Caesars Page 34

by Matthew Dennison


  Poussin, ref1

  Poynter, Edward ref1

  Proculus, Barbius ref1, ref2

  Propertius ref1, ref2

  Propinquus, Pompeius ref1

  Psylli, ref1

  Ptolemaeus ref1, ref2

  Ptolemy XIII ref1

  Publius Afranius Potitus

  Publius Clodius Pulcher

  Pulchra, Claudia ref1

  Pythagoras (freedman) ref1

  Racine ref1 ref2

  Remus ref1

  Roberts, David ref1

  Rochegrosse, Georges ref1

  Romulus ref1, ref2, 535

  Rubens, Peter Paul ref1

  Rufus, Cluvius ref1

  Rufus, Faenius ref1, ref2

  Rufus, Verginius ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  Rusticus, Arulenus ref1

  Rusticus, Fabius ref1

  Sabina, Poppaea ref1

  Sabinus, Cornelius ref1

  Sabinus, Flavius ref1, ref2

  Sallust ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4

  Scaevinus, Flavius ref1

  Scipio, ref1

  Scribonia ref1, ref2

  Seleucus see Ptolemaeus

  Seneca ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18

  Sestilia ref1, ref2

  Severus, Sulpicius ref1,

  Shakespeare ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6

  Siculus, Calpurnius ref1

  Silanus, Appius ref1, ref2, ref3

  Silva, Flavius ref1

  Silvia, Rhea ref1

  Sporus ref1, ref2

  Spurinna ref1

  Statius ref1

  Suetonius ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35, ref36, ref37, ref38, ref39, ref40, ref41, ref42, ref43, ref44, ref45, ref46, ref47, ref48, ref49, ref50, ref51, ref52, ref53, ref54, ref55, ref56, ref57, ref58, ref59, ref60, ref61, ref62, ref63, ref64, ref65, ref66, ref67, ref68, ref69, ref70, ref71, ref72, ref73, ref74, ref75, ref76, ref77, ref78, ref79, ref80, ref81, ref82, ref83, ref84, ref85, ref86, ref87, ref88, ref89, ref90, ref91, ref92, ref93, ref94, ref95, ref96, ref97, ref98, ref99, ref100, ref101, ref102, ref103, ref104, ref105, ref106

  Sulla ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  Tacitus ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34

  Terpnus ref1, ref2

  Tertulla, ref1

  Thrasyllus ref1

  Tiberius (E) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22, ref23, ref24, ref25, ref26, ref27, ref28, ref29, ref30, ref31, ref32, ref33, ref34, ref35

  Tigellinus ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5

  Titian ref1

  Titianus Salvius ref1, ref2

  Titus (E) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7

  Tityrus ref1

  Torianus Gaius, ref1

  Turpillianus, Petronius ref1

  Urgulanilla, Plautia ref1, ref2

  Varro, Cingonius ref1, ref2

  Varus, Quinctilius ref1

  Veiento, Aulus Didius Gallus Fabricius ref1

  Vercingetorix ref1, ref2, ref3

  Verginius Rufus, Lucius ref1

  Vespasian (E) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12, ref13, ref14, ref15, ref16, ref17, ref18, ref19, ref20, ref21, ref22

  Veturius ref1

  Vinicianus, Annius ref1, ref2

  Vinius, Titus ref1

  Virgil ref1, ref2, ref3

  Vitellius (E) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9

  Vitellius Publius ref1, ref2

  Vitellius, Aulus ref1, ref2

  Vitellius, Lucius ref1, ref2, ref3

  Vologaesus ref1

  West, Benjamin ref1

  Woolf, Virginia ref1

  Xenophon (doctor) ref1

  Endnotes

  1. Despite a cultivated abstemiousness in his private life, Caesar spent hugely on elections, invariably other people’s money, with predictable results. Suetonius suggests, for example, that such were his debts by the end of 62 that he was forced to leave Rome under cover of darkness to escape his creditors.

  2. Ahenobarbus had first attempted to initiate an inquiry into Caesar’s conduct as consul as long ago as the end of 59, in company with his fellow praetor Gaius Memmius: as we see, neither the implication nor the impulse behind that motion had disappeared.

  3. Given persistent pockets of disaffection among the now largely disenfranchised senate, Caesar would have recourse to these powers in order to advance his wide-ranging, essentially benevolent legislative programme. He increased senate membership from 600 to 900, including non-patricians and provincial representatives sympathetic to his cause.

  4. This latter may not have been as great a sacrifice as we suspect. Dio describes Tiberius’ son Drusus as ‘most licentious and cruel, so cruel in fact that the sharpest words were called Drusian after him’.6

  5. Five years later, West returned to the plight of Agrippina and her children in the more overtly sentimental Agrippina and her Children Mourning over the Ashes of Germanicus. In this image it is the liveliness and cherubic good health of the couple’s younger children, who again occupy the painting’s central space, which highlight the suffering of their drooping, milk-skinned mother.

  6. Britannicus did suffer from epilepsy: in the event that Nero had killed him with poison, the taunt is spiteful given the recent association of epilepsy with those destined to rule – the Divine Julius and Gaius.

  7. Although it was true that in ten years of marriage Octavia had failed to conceive a child, the obvious explanation was not her infertility. The poisonous Anicetus again came to Nero’s rescue in substantiating fictitious claims of adultery.

  8. Galba did not forget Rufus’ tergiversation. Replaced by the ineffectual Hordeonius Flaccus, he was among a number of provincial governors to lose their posts during the new reign. Flaccus’ weakness in turn passed the baton of revolt to Lower Germany, which Galba entrusted to the future emperor Vitellius. In an echo of the mistakes made by Nero in Galba’s own case and that of another future emperor, Vespasian, Galba chose Vitellius for his apparent harmlessness, persuaded by his reputation for gluttony and his galloping bankruptcy.

  9. Funds for this extravagant act of homage may have been raised by confiscating the fortune so rapidly acquired by Vinius. Those ill-gotten gains were described by Otho on the day of his coup as evidence of greater rapacity and lawlessness than Vinius would have dared even had he been emperor.8

  10. This also served to confirm belief in Otho’s love for Poppaea and that version of earlier events in which Nero’s appropriation of his wife, far from being planned by Otho, arose unforeseen and unwelcome. Such an explanation had the added benefit of appearing to justify Otho’s anger against his former friend and lessen the culpability of his revenge.

  11. His rejection extended to titles only and did not compromise his power. Indeed, almost in the same breath, this bloated gourmand conferred upon himself perpetual consulship. Neither ‘Augustus’ nor ‘Caesar’, he accepted no less a settlement than Augustus had devised.

  12. Pollio’s thanks for these youthful embraces was to preserve a letter of assignation written by Domitian and afterwards to display it to prurient gazes; Nerva pursued a dignified course of silence.

  13. Last laugh in the saga of Domitian’s marital discord probably went to Domitia, who survived her husband by three decades. Her revenge – possibly no more than a suggestion and appropriately served cold – waited thirteen years until she joined the conspirators in her husband’s overthrow.

  14. In time Domitian would fall prey to similar unease. In
84 or 85, he recalled to Rome the distinguished British commander Agricola. Agricola remained loyal. The revenge of his implacable son-in-law Tacitus continues to this day.

  15. As it happened, the Dacian problem was not wholly resolved until 106, when fearsome retaliatory action under the emperor Trajan forced Decebalus’ suicide and a sullen truce. It is the Dacian campaign which supplied those highly wrought vignettes that even now encircle Trajan’s Column.

 

 

 


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