by Mary Beard
It was not, however, quite as simple as that. Pliny was not blithely unaware of what had happened to some of the emperor’s opponents while he himself prospered during the rule of Domitian. In fact, his letters are carefully arranged repeatedly to highlight his close relationship with Domitian’s victims. One of these memorably records the grave illness of an old lady called Fannia (‘a constant fever and a cough that is getting worse’), who was none other than the daughter of Thrasea Paetus and the widow of Helvidius Priscus. It provides Pliny with the opportunity to praise her noble career among a family of senatorial dissidents and to emphasise his support for them (‘My services were theirs in good times and bad; I comforted them in exile and avenged them when they returned’). This does not entirely square with his success under Domitian, and an unflattering interpretation would cast Pliny as the guilty collaborator, back-pedalling under Trajan’s new regime and inventing a record of support for the opposition. But there was something more to it than that.
Most Roman senators chose a mixture of collaboration and dissidence, which the first Augustus’ awkward compromise between senatorial power and senatorial service made almost inevitable. The outspoken opponents of the regime were no doubt men and women of trenchant principles, but also blind – bloody-minded, we might say – to the careful balancing act and delicate choreography that in practice gave the relationship between emperor and senate its fragile stability. The majority of the senators were different: more realistic, less stubborn and less confident in their own moral judgement. In the evenings, among friends, they may well have entertained one another with those horror stories of humiliation and the abuse of power that we still read. They no doubt warmed to the heroic opposition of martyrs in the cause of freedom. But, by and large, like Tacitus and most other ancient historians, they fought their battles in the past, against emperors whom it was now safe to demonise. In the day, like Pliny, they got on with the job of being senators – as most of us would.
Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god …
One of the big questions that lay behind many of the clashes between the emperor and his senatorial opponents was how the power of the ruler of the known world, and of his family, was to be defined, described and understood. The idea that the emperor was simply ‘first among equals’ was at one end of a wide spectrum of possibilities, and the status of a god, or something very close to it, was at the other. Helvidius Priscus tactlessly stuck out for the former by refusing to use Vespasian’s imperial titles. Thrasea Paetus objected to the extension of divine honours not just to emperors but also to their female relatives. He staged one of his public absences from the senate in 65 CE when the vote was taken to declare honours for Poppaea Sabina, Nero’s wife who apparently died after her husband kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant (whether tragic accident or terrible domestic abuse is still, fruitlessly, debated). Among those honours, she was declared a goddess. It was too much for Thrasea Paetus to take.
Poppaea, however, was not the first. She joined several other female members of the imperial family who had been added to the Roman pantheon since Julius Caesar had been declared a god in 42 BCE. In addition to the first Augustus, and Claudius in 54 CE, the new deities formally decreed by the senate were Gaius’ sister Drusilla, followed by Livia ‘Augusta’, as she then was, and Poppaea’s baby daughter, Claudia, who had been deified in 63 CE after her death at the age of just four months. Official deification entitled them all to a temple and priests and to receive sacrifices. There is no surviving trace of any temple for little Claudia, but according to Dio, a temple was soon dedicated to Poppaea under the title ‘Venus Sabina’.
The idea of a tiny baby becoming a goddess must have outraged more than the diehard dissidents at Rome. But we have already seen that it had long been the practice in many places of the ancient Mediterranean world to represent overwhelming political power using language and imagery cast in divine terms. The kings who followed Alexander the Great in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, like the Roman generals who took their place, had been offered festivals on the model of religious festivals and used epithets shared with the gods (such as ‘Saviour’). This was one logical way of making sense of men who had far transcended ordinary human power and of finding an existing category into which such superhuman people might more or less fit. The representation of the successful general as Jupiter in the ceremony of triumph and Cicero’s attempt to reinterpret his loss of Tullia in terms of deification are other examples of the flexibility of a polytheistic religion such as Rome’s.
It is largely the legacy of the two main monotheisms of the ancient world – Judaism and its offshoot Christianity – that has encouraged us to see the invention of new gods, the adjustment and the extension of the pantheon and the fluidity of the boundary between humans and gods as faintly ludicrous. Christians, in particular, both ridiculed the very notion that the obviously human emperor was divine and occasionally paid with their lives for their refusal to give him any kind of religious honour. But that is not to say that the divine status of the emperor was unproblematic for pre-Christian Romans or that there were no debates and disagreements about just how godlike the human ruler, let alone his family, was. It was another awkward balancing act bequeathed to his successors by Augustus, who straddled the boundary between the human and the divine with greater success than some of those who followed.
Some imperial claims to divine status were always thought undeniably wrong. For most inhabitants of the Roman Empire, it would have been a crass category mistake and a hyperbolic affront for an emperor to declare himself a living god, as if there were no difference between himself and Jupiter. The Romans were hardly stupid: they knew the difference between bona fide Olympians and a living emperor. If it is true (rather than a vicious slur) that Gaius turned the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum into the vestibule of his residence on the Palatine above and sat there between the statues of the gods to enjoy the worship of anyone who chose to give it, then that was a memorable symbol of imperial megalomania and it broke all the official protocols of imperial worship. It was likewise an abuse of power for an emperor to attempt to stretch the official Roman pantheon to accommodate dead babies, boyfriends and even favourite sisters; Hadrian was no better on this score than Nero or Gaius in having his young male companion, Antinous, made a god after his mysterious death by drowning in the Nile in 130 CE. The theology of the emperor and the imperial family was far more subtle than this and has to be seen in two parts: first the divine status of the living emperor, second that of the dead.
Throughout the Roman world, the living emperor was treated very like a god. He was incorporated into rituals celebrated in honour of the gods, he was addressed in language that overlapped with divine language, and he was assumed to have some similar powers. Augustus’ name, for example, was included in the wording of some religious litanies. Runaway slaves could claim asylum by clinging to a statue of the emperor, just as to a statue of a god. At the town of Gytheum, near Sparta in the Peloponnese, a surviving inscription lays out in great detail the procedures for a regular festival to be held over several days, with processions around the town, musical contests and sacrifices, honouring a pair of local benefactors, the ruling emperor, Tiberius, and various members of his family, the Republican general Titus Quinctius Flamininus, as well as the traditional Olympian deities.
There may well have been many people, especially far outside the city of Rome, for whom the emperor was about as remote, and powerful, a figure as an Olympian deity, and who did not see much difference between the two. But wherever the formal details were spelled out, a careful distinction was drawn between the emperor and the Olympians. In Gytheum, for example, and elsewhere, a technical but crucial difference was expressed. The animal sacrifices were to be performed to the traditional gods, but they were performed on behalf of or for the protection of the living emperor and his family; the emperor, in other words, was still under the protection of the Olympian gods rather than being
their equal. In Rome, it was usually the numen, or the ‘power’, of the living emperor that received sacrifice, not the emperor himself. More widely, the package of honours offered to the imperial family in the Greek world were known as isotheoi timai: that is, honours equivalent (iso-) to those of the gods (theoi), but not identical. It was always transgressive to ignore the difference between the gods and the living emperor, however godlike he might be.
It was not the same when they were dead. Following the pattern of Julius Caesar, the senate might choose to incorporate a dead emperor or one of his close relations into the official pantheon; for it was a decision that was, formally at least, in the hands of the senate and a posthumous power over their ruler that some senators must have enjoyed. In this case the distinction between gods and emperors was negligible; there were priests and temples, sacrifices carried out to them, not on their behalf, and some wonderful surviving images that literally put the imperial gods in the Olympian heavens (see plate 20). But the differences were not entirely eroded. Roman writers, intellectuals and artists repeatedly wondered about the nature of the transition from emperor to god and how someone who had been a human being one day was divine the next. In a way reminiscent of the modern Catholic Church’s requirement of authenticated miracles in making a new saint, they claimed to ask for proof or witnesses; the appearance of a comet apparently demonstrated the apotheosis of Julius Caesar, but the stories of Livia’s suspiciously large cash reward to the senator who was prepared to say that he had seen Augustus ascend to heaven suggest some uncertainty about the process.
The transition was fraught enough to prompt jokes and satire. According to Suetonius, Vespasian continued his down-to-earth line in self-deprecating wit right up until his last words: ‘Oh dear, I think I’m becoming a god …’ The whole process of becoming, or not becoming, a god is the theme of a long skit probably written in the mid 50s CE by Lucius Annaeus Seneca – Nero’s one-time tutor and later victim, reputedly on the margins of a conspiracy against him, and forced to a difficult suicide. He was so old and desiccated that, according to another ghastly set piece from Tacitus, he found it hard to get enough blood to flow from his slashed arteries. The subject of his skit is the attempt of the emperor Claudius to be admitted to the company of the gods. We find him, just having died (last words: ‘Oh dear, I think I’ve shat myself …’), limping up to heaven to join the gods. Things look promising at first, especially when Hercules is the first deity to greet him, quoting Homer, which impresses the dead emperor. But when the adjudication of his case begins, the divine Augustus, giving his maiden speech in the heavenly senate (the implication is that deified emperors are rather low in the pecking order), holds up Claudius’ vicious cruelty against him: ‘This man, fellow senators, who looks to you as if he couldn’t hurt a fly, used to kill people as easily as a dog squats.’ And there is a dark reference to those thirty-five senators put to death.
There is no doubt that, in real-time Roman politics, Claudius was made a god; he had priests and a temple, the remains of which have been excavated. But in this fantasy he fails the test, and a tailor-made punishment is devised for him. Given his known passion for gambling, he is to spend eternity shaking dice in a bottomless dice shaker. Or that is exactly what would have happened, had not the emperor Gaius appeared from nowhere, claimed Claudius as his slave and handed him over to one of his staff to work for eternity as a very junior secretary in the imperial legal department. This is a nice glimpse into the new bureaucracy of the imperial regime, with all its specialist departments. It is a hilarious example of the way dead rulers were safer and easier targets than their living counterparts. It sends up the whole unlikely process by which a human emperor became a manifest god. And, in fantasy, it upturns the assassination with which this chapter started. Claudius may have become emperor, but here Gaius has the last laugh.
74. The base of the (lost) column of Antoninus Pius shows the apotheosis of the emperor and his wife Faustina. It is in many ways an awkward image. Though they are represented going up to heaven together, Faustina died twenty years before her husband. The winged creature transporting them seems a rather desperate attempt to conjure up the processes by which emperors became gods.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
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THE HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
Rich and poor
RICH ROMANS HAD a lifestyle that was luxurious by any standards, ancient or modern. The emperor, with his palatial residences, acres of parkland, the occasional revolving dining room (how well these worked, or by what mechanism, is another question), jewelled walls and consumption on a scale that mesmerised most Roman observers, was at the very top of the spectrum, outbidding even the super-rich. His fortune was founded on the proceeds of vast imperial estates, across the Roman world, that passed from one ruler to the next and included mines and industrial properties as well as farms; on the blurred lines between the finances of the state and of the emperor himself; and, so it was sometimes alleged, on various forms of extractions, such as forced legacies, if ready cash ran short (see plate 13).
But many well-off inhabitants of the empire also led lives of privileged comfort. Vociferous Roman disapproval of ‘luxury’ and admiration of the simple, old-fashioned peasant life coexisted, as they often do, with massive expenditure and luxurious habits. Disapprovers always need something to disapprove of; and, in any case, the distinction between exquisite good taste (mine) and vulgar ostentation (yours) is necessarily a subjective one.
Pliny the Younger – whose uncle ‘the Elder’ was one of the most strident critics of extravagance, in everything from one-legged tables to wearing several rings on the same finger – described his own country villa, a few miles outside Rome, in one of his letters. It was, he explained, ‘fit for purpose and not too expensive to maintain’. Despite that modest description, it was actually a vast pile, with dining rooms for use in different seasons, a private bathing suite and swimming pool, courtyards and shady porticoes, central heating, ample running water, a gymnasium, sunny lounges with picture windows overlooking the sea, and garden hideaways where Pliny, who was not a man for raucous fun, could escape the noise of the parties on those rare days when the slaves took a holiday.
All over the empire the rich paraded their wealth in large and expensive accommodations for themselves, measured not by floor area but by the number of tiles on the roof (to qualify as a local councillor, one law states, you needed to have a house with 1,500 roof tiles). And they indulged in the many pleasures that money could buy, from silks to oriental spices, skilled slaves to pricey antiques. They also paraded their wealth in sponsoring amenities for their local communities. The emperor had a monopoly on public building in Rome, but in the towns of Italy and the provinces, the elite, both men and women, built themselves into prominence in much the same way.
Pliny was typical in ploughing some of his money into construction projects in his home town of Comum in northern Italy, including a new public library, which cost a million sesterces to construct (that is the equivalent of the minimum fortune required to be a senator). His elderly friend Ummidia Quadratilla, who died around 107 CE, did similar things in her home town south of Rome. Though Pliny wrote her up as a tough old lady with a fondness for board games, surviving inscriptions show that she also sponsored a new amphitheatre and temple, and restored the theatre and funded a public banquet (‘for the local council, the people and the women’) in celebration of the new facilities. As far away as the small town of Timgad in North Africa, originally established on the edges of the Sahara in 100 CE as a settlement of veteran Roman soldiers, one local married couple around 200 CE were building themselves a mini-palace on at least two floors, not so grand as Pliny’s villa but still equipped with multiple dining rooms, a private bathhouse, internal gardens, fancy water features, expensive mosaic floors and central heating for the cold African winters. And they sponsored a huge new temple and a splendid new market, decorated with a dozen statues – of themselves.
Money cou
ld not protect the rich from all the discomforts and harsher sides of ancient life. Although in Rome the emperor lived at a safe remove from the masses, and the wealthy tended to favour one or two areas in particular (the Palatine Hill before the imperial palace encroached is an obvious example), for the most part ancient cities were not zoned as modern cities are. Rich and poor lived side by side, large houses with many tiles sharing the same streets and districts with tiny hovels. The Romans had no Mayfairs or Fifth Avenues. Travel in a curtained sedan chair, carried by a team of hefty slaves, might have protected a few ladies and gentlemen from the worst aspects of the public highway in any big city of the empire. But the lack of any organised refuse collection, the use of the road as a public lavatory (with the contents of chamber pots chucked on all comers from upper-floor windows, as the poet Juvenal pictures the scene, probably with some satiric exaggeration) and the noise and congestion of carts and carriages fighting for space in streets often too narrow for two-way traffic would have been at the very least an assault on the senses of rich and poor alike, and sometimes dangerous. Although it is often claimed that, among notable pieces of Roman enlightenment, wheeled transport was banned from city streets during the daytime (as if in some modern pedestrian precinct), this applied at most to heavy transport, or the ancient equivalent of juggernaut lorries. And that itself, as Juvenal also complains, could make the noise at night almost intolerable for anyone of any rank: ‘it would even steal sleep from a drowsy emperor’.