Some of Caligula’s other measures, political in the narrower sense, were more successful. At the New Year oaths were usually sworn to uphold the decrees of previous emperors; in the year 38 Tiberius was excluded, in a nod to the Senate, which had desired to expunge his memory. In addition Caligula rescinded Tiberius’s ban on the historical writings of Titus Labienus, Cremutius Cordus and Cassius Severus, announcing that he attached great importance to full historical records for later generations. He also reintroduced the custom of publishing and presenting to the Senate the rationes imperii, the accounts of the officials responsible for administering military and financial matters in the Empire. Because the relationship between the emperor’s own assets and the public treasury was a complex one, it is unclear exactly which outlays were included, but in any case the measure corresponded well to his announced intention of sharing rule with the Senate. Further innovations were aimed at the judicial system. Caligula limited the legal cases that could be appealed to him as emperor, a move to enhance the importance of work done by judges of senatorial rank. He created a fifth decuria or panel of judges to expedite hearing cases. And finally the emperor carried out a long overdue reform of the equestrian order, expelling unworthy members and admitting new ones, with special attention to high-ranking and wealthy officials of cities around the Empire. To many of them he granted the privilege of wearing senatorial rather than equestrian insignia of rank, even though they were not members of the Senate.
For all of Italy Caligula waived the general sales tax, which had probably been earlier reduced to one half of one percent. This measure benefited the lower classes above all. A return to the old procedure for electing magistrates was aimed at the people of Rome. Under Tiberius these elections had been removed from the popular assemblies and given to the Senate. The change had made it easier for the emperor to exert control, had relieved senators of ruinous campaign expenses, mostly from sponsoring games. Cassius Dio makes it clear that the aristocracy responded to the revival of popular elections with skepticism. The emperor’s goal may have been to restore the advantages the common people enjoyed when candidates had to try to win their favor. The measure had no noticeable effect in the political sphere, however, since there was rarely more than one candidate for any given office. The voters paid so little attention to the reinstated electoral process that Caligula was forced to abolish it later. Presumably the renewal of permission to found collegia was also granted as a boon to the plebs. These were corporations and social clubs, and sometimes economic ventures as well, most of whose members came from the lower classes; they had been banned during the late Republic for political reasons. Caligula held lavish gladiatorial games whose cost in both blood and money was extravagant. And finally he had the floor removed from the Saepta—originally a gathering place for elections — and flooded it, so that naval battles could be presented there. It was later replaced by a wooden amphitheater.
Most of the political measures introduced early in the year 38, around the time that Macro and Silanus fell from power, were enthusiastically received. The Senate responded by voting special honors to the emperor. Every year on a particular date, for example, a golden bust of Caligula was to be carried to the Capitol, with the entire Senate marching in the procession and boys and girls from the leading senatorial families singing songs in praise of the emperor’s virtues. The first day of Caligula’s reign was designated Parilia like 21 April, the date of Rome’s founding, implying that he had founded the city anew.
Caligula’s policies were undoubtedly aimed at reconciling the various politically relevant populations to his rule. A clear difference emerges, however, from earlier actions at the time of Macro and Silanus, which still bore the stamp of the Augustan Principate. Caligula accommodated the Senate — which continued to look to the ideal of the “free” Republic, now long gone — by making the finances of the Empire public and by changing the appellate procedure for legal cases, but he also took the Republican ideal seriously in instances where it jarred with the senators’ interests. Historians could circulate their works uncensored in keeping with the notion of Republican freedom, but there were disadvantages. As Tacitus showed in his account of Tiberius’s reign in the Annals, a frank account of past events documented not only the emperor’s despotism but also the unscrupulous opportunism of some senators and the submissiveness of the Senate as a whole — discreditable behavior which the Senate would have preferred forgotten. Reintroduction of popular elections for magistrates was similarly two-edged. Elections were a fundamental element of the Republican political order, but they had been contrary to the interests of the senatorial aristocracy for some time. Now that the Empire was administered by the emperor, senators had lost their former opportunities for enriching themselves as administrators in the provinces. Because many senators could thus no longer run exorbitant election campaigns, they had come to terms with holding elections in the Senate, though it was tantamount to appointment of magistrates by the emperor. Caligula’s renewal of old traditions outdid the Senate in its conservatism and simultaneously forestalled its objections; the senators could not criticize without exposing the selectivity in their glorification of the past, so that they were forced to remain silent.
In his ingenious positioning vis-à-vis the Senate, Caligula at the same time made good use of his support among the plebs, who profited more than the aristocracy from his political and economic changes. The emperor was not afraid to give the lower classes greater scope for political action through popular elections and collegia. He elevated upper-class inhabitants of the provinces to the equestrian order and smoothed their path to the Senate by awarding them the symbols of senatorial rank in advance. All this was definitely in the emperor’s own interest as well. As already apparent under Augustus, “new men” who were indebted to the emperor for their advancement to the Senate tended to be considerably more compliant than members of the old aristocratic families (at least in the first generation). The changes were presented, however, as a return to the good old ways, an aim that no senator could publicly oppose.
The political measures accompanying the removal of Gemellus, his supporters, and the two leading figures from the reign of Tiberius were thus clever and astute. They furthered the interests of the senatorial aristocracy, the equestrian order, the upper class in the provinces, and the plebeians in Rome itself, while also strengthening the emperor’s hand. It is probably a credit to them that no threat to Caligula’s position emerged in the period immediately following.
How much was Caligula himself responsible for these successful efforts to consolidate power and how much should be ascribed to his advisers? It is difficult to know. A number of people besides Lepidus, Drusilla, Agrippina, and Livilla probably influenced him, and the two new Praetorian prefects and other senior officers of the imperial guard undoubtedly played an important role. Individuals like King Julius Agrippa, who is supposed to have been on friendly terms with the emperor, and perhaps a few senators presumably turned their proximity to him to account. Finally, probably already active behind the scenes was a group whose significance would not become evident until later — the freedmen who acted as secretaries and administrators in the imperial household. Such men were employed in all large aristocratic households, and because of their dependent status and specific skills they often possessed important specialized knowledge that their noble masters were unwilling or unable to acquire themselves.
A hint of Caligula’s own personal stamp on the measures described above is provided by a strange episode immediately after his illness. A Roman citizen named Afranius Potitus had sworn a vow to offer his own life if the emperor recovered, while a knight named Atanius Secundus had vowed that he would fight as a gladiator. After regaining his health Caligula insisted that both men fulfill their promises, to keep them from perjuring themselves. Instead of receiving the rewards they had hoped to obtain by their exaggerated devotion, both met their deaths. Caligula’s reaction is telling. It has affinities with his meas
ures in 38 and typifies behavior to emerge in crasser form more and more frequently as time passed. Caligula began, like Augustus, by enjoying flattery, but this changed after the first few months of his reign. He did not respond like Tiberius, however, seeking to avoid flatterers by withdrawing from the public sphere entirely. Instead, Caligula framed a new response to the ambiguous communication that had become normal in dealing with the emperor. The two men’s vows were ambiguous in that the explicit wish — for the emperor’s recovery — did not match the unstated wish — to be rewarded for their flattery. Caligula showed that he would abjure this form of communication, by taking it at face value. One could say that he simply outed them. He attributed to their utterances a sincerity that they could not deny without admitting that the emperor’s health had not been foremost in their minds — and the consequences of such an admission were foreseeable.
In Caligula’s dealings with the Senate after the fall of Macro and Silanus too, he took the declared ideals — derived from the old Republic — at face value and implemented them. This contravened the real interests of men who had professed the ideals, but they could not complain without losing face. The principle behind the emperor’s actions was cynical, but not without wit of a kind. At this point it took fairly harmless form, apart from the fate of Afranius and Atanius. Later, however, the principle would operate in much more unpleasant forms.
HOLDING POWER
Never before had Rome been ruled by a young man. For centuries a handful of experienced older men, the principes of the Roman aristocracy, had been the leaders and made the decisions. The first two sole rulers, Julius Caesar and Augustus, had won their positions by victories in protracted civil wars and were middle-aged when they began to govern. Tiberius had been a successful general in the provinces for many years before he became emperor at the age of fifty-four. Now the question was: How would a young man measure up? Caligula came from a prestigious family, certainly, and had survived the webs of intrigue spun around the old emperor, but he had no experience at all in politics. How would the aristocracy, led as always by old men of great experience, deal with a young man on the throne?
A provisional answer has already been given. At first Caligula played the part of an Augustan princeps, but then went on to secure his power by eliminating his rivals. He took specific measures to stabilize his position as ruler with different segments of the population, without making too many concessions to the aristocracy. The nobles seemed to find this acceptable. The situation remained fluid, however, because of an aspect of politics omitted in our discussion thus far: Politics in ancient Rome was not limited to specifically political institutions like the Senate, the magistracy and — for a time under Caligula — the popular assemblies. In fact the household, which the Romans called “private” and which they contrasted with the res publica, was itself a scene of politics. In Rome the private sphere was in a certain sense also public, and the political sphere operated to a large extent through personal relationships.
During the Republic the houses of the Roman aristocracy had developed into informal centers of communication, where political action took preliminary shape before being introduced in official bodies. Reciprocal visits at morning receptions and evening banquets both constituted and manifested the personal relationships, linking those who appeared at these events as friends or clients. Patronage structured the relationships. Participants helped each other in the law courts, in money matters, and in elections and political disputes. They left each other legacies. There were clear rules for the support friends and clients owed one another, rules that made the participants’ behavior predictable and reliable. The size of an aristocrat’s household, along with the number and rank of the friends and clients who met there, affected his chances for exercising real power in the institutional sphere, in politics in the narrower sense. The material luxury in such households was politically relevant, too. Carved marble ornamentation, costly paintings and furniture, gold and silver tableware, the lavishness of the food and entertainment offered at banquets — all these attested to the owner’s wealth and potential value as a patron, his social status, and the political influence he possessed or felt entitled to claim. Aristocrats took precise note of the size and opulence of each other’s houses and tried not to fall behind in the competition.
Just like sessions of the Senate, gatherings at aristocrats’ homes were regulated by ceremonial customs illustrating the political and social rank of the participants. In the case of the morning salutatio, visitors’ status and their relationship to the host were reflected in the rooms they were permitted to enter and the order in which he greeted them. Banquets were typically attended by nine people ranged around a table on three banqueting couches with different levels of prestige. The importance of these ceremonial customs, which may seem alien from the perspective of today’s largely egalitarian society, is shown in the conflicts that arose when they were not observed.
But how should an emperor organize his household? Who should be received at home, in what luxury and according to which ceremonial rules? How should the emperor shape his “personal” relationships with aristocrats? As noted above, Augustus and Tiberius had set virtually no precedents. Their desire to keep the emperor’s actual status as far in the background as possible had led to preservation of the old customs to a large extent, even though they were becoming increasingly impracticable. The emperor’s house was small, the furnishings modest, and the crush at the salutatio great, since on certain occasions the entire aristocracy appeared. Because banquets remained limited to the usual size, Augustus was obliged to give them “constantly,” often arriving late and leaving early due to other demands on his time. During the last years of Tiberius’s rule when he was living in seclusion on Capri, no imperial “household” had existed in Rome any more at all. So how was the new young emperor to run his house? Should he keep it as it was, below the standards of size and sumptuousness long since adopted by the rest of the aristocracy? Should he regularly admit all senators and the most prominent knights to morning receptions? Should he surround himself with venerable old men at evening banquets and make sure that their respective ranks were reflected at the table?
Tiberius had left more than two billion sesterces at his death. He thus offers a prime demonstration that frugality by itself could not make a Roman emperor popular. It is reported that Caligula went through this sum and more in either one year (Suetonius) or two (Cassius Dio). Most was undoubtedly spent on the immense gifts he made to soldiers and the people of Rome at the start of his rule, but a considerable portion seems to have flowed into running his household as well. His household expenditure reached a level far exceeding the aristocrats’. He began extensive construction on the Palatine Hill, enlarging the complex of freestanding houses belonging to the emperor in the direction of the Forum, so that most of the hill — the most prestigious residential area in Rome — was now reserved exclusively for his use.
Caligula built extensively outside Rome as well, on a much grander scale than his fellow aristocrats. Villas and palaces in rural settings raised previous efforts to incorporate nature and dominate the landscape to a new level. Caligula tried to realize plans that others considered impossible: “He built moles out into the deep and stormy sea, tunneled rocks of hardest flint, built up plains to the height of mountains, and razed mountains to the level of the plain, all with incredible dispatch” (Suet. Cal. 37.3). For sea journeys he had galleys built “with ten banks of oars, with sterns set with gems, particolored sails, huge, spacious baths, colonnades, and banquet halls, and even a great variety of vines and fruit trees; that on board them he might recline at table from an early hour and coast along the shores of Campania amid songs and choruses” (Suet. Cal. 37.2).
It is striking that on the subject of the morning salutatio at Caligula’s house, only a single account exists — although it reveals that the ceremony took place regularly. Philo notes that King Julius Agrippa came “to pay his wonted respects” during his vis
it to Rome and that others were present (Phil. Leg. 261). The odd dearth of information can probably be attributed to later efforts by senators in particular, who had been obliged to be “friends” of the emperor, to obliterate their contacts with him from the record as far as they could; the aristocratic sources reveal traces of such alteration in other contexts as well. Thus it is not certain whether Caligula performed the expected ceremonial rituals during the first two years of his reign or not. He clearly did not behave in the expected manner at banquets, which were extremely lavish yet at the same time informal.
Early on Macro is supposed to have cautioned the young princeps not to show too much enjoyment in the music and dance offered as dinner entertainment, and certainly not to participate; he should not snigger like a boy at coarse jokes or fall asleep during the banqueting, as none of this befitted the emperor’s dignity. Later Caligula ignored the usual protocol for seating guests: His sisters lay on the couches to his right, the places normally given to a wife and children, while his wife was permitted to lie to his left in the place of honor. When his uncle Claudius arrived late he could obtain a place only with effort and after several attempts.
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