The semi-legendary founder of the gens Claudia was App. Claudius Sabinus Inregillensis (Stemma Claudiorum no. 1). He was born Attius Clausus in Regillus in the Sabine (Sabinium) territories of Latium and sought peace with his Roman neighbour after they had overthrown their king and founded a republic.27It was not a popular position among the Sabines, but he left his hometown around the year 504 BCE and was joined by others. Arriving in Rome, Claudius was received warmly and made a senator while his followers became Roman citizens. He was elected consul of Rome in 495 BCE but, according to Livy, he was “harsh by nature” and “loved tyranny”. His enforcement of debt laws forced a secession of the plebians in 494–493 BCE. Notwithstanding his tough autocratic leanings, he established one the most important dynasties in Roman history.
Several of his successors held high office as consuls and censors, defended the state in times of crisis and led wars against Rome’s enemies. The Claudian family tree was a case study in leadership. In the five centuries following App. Claudius Sabinus, “it was honoured with twenty-eight consulships, five dictatorships, seven censorships, six triumphs, and two ovations”.28The gens Claudia was peopled with men of character and principle, bold, sometimes bloody-minded and stubborn individuals who had virtus in abundance and were prepared to take on the vested interests in the name of aequitas and libertas, and more often than not left Rome a better place.29
As censor in 312 BCE App. Claudius Caecus ‘the blind’ (c.340 BCE–273 BCE, Stemma Claudiorum no. 10) sought to enfranchise the sons of freedmen and the rural tribes who had no land. He commissioned the construction of the Via Appia that connected Rome to Capua and the aqueduct that brought fresh water to the City. He published for the first time a list of legal procedures and the legal calendar, knowledge of which, until that time, had been monopolised by the pontifices. Twice consul and once dictator he was remembered for a speech he gave against Cineas, an envoy of Pyrrhus of Epirus, declaring that Rome would never surrender.30
Claudians fought and won – occasionally acting stupidly rather than boldly – in the war against Rome’s sworn enemy Carthage. In 265 BCE, App. Claudius Caudex (Stemma Claudiorum no. 11), whose cognomen meant ‘blockhead’, was the first to cross the Straits of Misenum with a fleet to come to the aid of the Mamertines, and drove the Carthaginians from Sicily. In so doing he caused the First Punic War (264–241 BCE).31Caudex’s nephew P. Claudius (Stemma Claudiorum no. 13) demonstrated he had less humility than humour. He was also the first of the Claudii to receive the cognomen Pulcher meaning ‘beautiful’, although it was intended as a cruelly sarcastic joke (a characteristically Roman trait) since he was far from handsome. In 249 BCE
when, off the coast of Sicilia, the pullets used for taking augury would not eat, in contempt of the omen [he] threw them overboard, as if they should drink at least, if they would not eat. After his defeat, when he was ordered by the senate to name a dictator, making a sort of jest of the public disaster, he named Glycias, his apparitor.32
He was tried for incompetence and impiety and fined, dying shortly after, possibly by his own hand.
One of the four sons of App. Claudius Caecus founded the branch of the family known as the Claudii Nerones. In 214 CE C. Claudius Nero (a descendant of T. Claudius Nero, Stemma Claudiorum no. 15) was sent to crush Hasdrubal Barca on his arrival from Hispania with a vast army before he could unite with his brother Hannibal. Either he did not have enough time to arrive or he lost his way but the engagement between the Carthaginian and Consul Marcellus took place without him. Seven years later as Consul Claudius Nero, he redeemed himself in 207 BCE when he won the Battle of Metaurus, a pivotal victory for the Romans in the Second Punic War (218–201 BCE).33He cut off Hasdrubal’s head and threw it into Hannibal’s camp.
By adoption of his mother’s grandfather into the family, the blood of the Livii also mingled in Drusus’ veins.34Although plebian they were upright citizens who, like their nobler Claudian counterparts, had distinguished themselves “having had the honour of eight consulships, two censorships, three triumphs, one dictatorship and the office of master of the horse”.35One such was M. Livius Drusus (Stemma Drusorum no. 6). He was a plebian tribune in 91 BCE who had revolutionary ideas about reforming the Roman state. While his vision aimed to strengthen the rule of the senatorial class, it had the practical effect of extending influence to the plebian class and offering citizenship to Rome’s Italian allies. Realizing the cost to their monopoly of power, Livius Drusus gradually lost the support of the moneyed middle class (called knights, equites) as well as the senatorial class. Later that year he was assassinated. The Italian allies revolted and the terrible Social War that followed consumed Italy for four years. The Romans finally suspended the war, offered the Italians concessions and Livius Drusus passed into Roman history as a folkloric hero in the mould of the Gracchi brothers.
His adopted son, App. Claudius Pulcher, who later took the name M. Livius Drusus Claudianus (Stemma Drusorum no. 7), was a direct descendant of App. Claudius Caecus and was the father of Livia Drusilla. He firmly believed in the institutions of the res publica and staunchly opposed G. Iulius Caesar. Following the assassination he supported the leaders M. Iunius Brutus and C. Cassius Longinus and joined their cause. When they were finally defeated at Philippi in 42 BCE and took their own lives, M. Livius Drusus Claudianus committed suicide himself to avoid capture by Octavianus and Antonius.
The wax masks of many of these men (imagines maiores) made while they were very much alive and in rude health would have filled cupboards (armaria) at the houses of Nero, Octavianus and Livia in which Drusus lived as a boy.36The masks captured the actual features, warts and all, of the ancestors and they were brought out and worn in public at funerals along with the ceremonial clothes they had worn in life to remind the living of the men who had gone before.37In Roman society tradition was cherished and people were expected to show a profound respect for the ways of the ancestors, the mos maiorum.38In the face of this family history young Drusus must have wondered how his descendants would remember him and what his legacy would be.
Growing Up with Augustus
In one key respect, Drusus and Tiberius had an unconventional education. As members of Octavianus’ family they would have mixed with Rome’s great and good. They attended formal dinners at which men versed in the arts of words and music recited epic poems and sang elegies; and they listened to men versed in the arts of government and war who talked of grand strategy and military tactics. Among the most influential of these was M. Vipsanius Agrippa, Octavianus’ friend since childhood and most trusted confidant. The Claudian boys would have heard first hand his accounts of negotiations with allies, of battles with Rome’s enemies and plans for the development of the army and navy.
The world of Roman politics and international diplomacy was changing quickly. In 31 BCE Octavianus finally scored his decisive victory over M. Antonius and Kleopatra at the Battle of Actium masterminded by Agrippa. The following year Octavianus was in Egypt receiving the complete surrender of the army and submission of the city of Alexandria. The triumvirate, which had been empowered to rule the dominions of Rome, was now effectively a one-man show. With Antonius dead, Lepidus, who had always been very much a distant third man in the group, resigned. Octavianus was left sole ruler of the Roman world.
He returned to Rome and in 29 BCE celebrated his victories at Actium, Egypt and Illyricum (Dalmatia) with a triple triumph. Octavianus was not the first man to achieve the distinction of being awarded three triumphs. Iulius Caesar’s one time ally turned rival, Gn. Pompeius Magnus, was celebrated as a ‘three time general’.39What made Octavianus’ triumphal celebration so memorable was that they were all held on consecutive days, starting on 13 August. In doing so, Octavianus had proved to the world that he was at least the equal to Pompeius. For the adopted son of Caesar, this was a crowning moment. For the members of his family these were proud days, and there is evidence that nine-year old Drusus actively participated in them in a very public way
.
A full triumph (pompa triumphalis) was an extraordinary spectacle, part tickertape and part Fourth of July parade. As triumphator Octavianus rode on a decorated gilded victor’s chariot (inaurati carrus). Over a tunica palmata, so named presumably because it was adorned with a palm leaf, he wore the purple dyed toga purpurea, or toga picta, which is also known from representations on coins to have been a gown elaborately embroidered – probably in thread wrapped with gold – with borders, tendrils and curlicues.40Adding to the dramatic effect his face, possibly his entire body, was daubed red with cinnabar or red lead.41As he stood holding the reins in one hand and a sceptre surmounted with an eagle in the other, a public slave or companion held a laurel wreath, and uttered the words “look behind you; remember you are a man”. It was becoming customary for members of the family of the triumphant commander to ride with him in the chariot – if they were small enough – or on horseback riding alongside. On a recently discovered monument at Nikopolis, the site of the Battle of Actium, there is a depiction of the triumph of 29 BCE. It shows a boy and a girl beside the figure of Octavianus. In the written record, imperial biographer Suetonius says Tiberius rode on the left trace horse, while M. Claudius Marcellus, the eldest son of Octavia, rode on the right. If the sculpture is an accurate depiction of the triple triumph, this leaves the likely identities of the two children to be Iulia (from Octavianus’ marriage with Scribonia) and Drusus.42
Cheering crowds thronged the route from the Campus Martius outside the walls on a plain northwest of the city, to the Forum Romanum, lying below the Capitol Hill. Behind Octavianus and his guests followed the men of the legions who had fought for him, and a procession laden with magnificent war spoils and trophies. These were described on placards carried on poles so they could be read by the crowd. Floats displayed exotic captives from foreign lands wearing their colourful costumes, and their strange and varied arms and armour hung decoratively from posts. The Roman poet P. Vergilius Maro (Vergil) captured the atmosphere and drama of the occasion in his Aeneid, which set in words of great power the foundation myth of Augustus’ Rome, in a passage which reads:
The victor to the gods his thanks express’d,
And Rome, triumphant, with his presence bless’d.
Three hundred temples in the town he plac’d;
With spoils and altars ev’ry temple grac’d.
Three shining nights, and three succeeding days,
The fields resound with shouts, the streets with praise,
The domes with songs, the theaters with plays.
All altars flame: before each altar lies,
Drench’d in his gore, the destin’d sacrifice.
Great Caesar sits sublime upon his throne,
Before Apollo’s porch of Parian stone;
Accepts the presents vow’d for victory,
And hangs the monumental crowns on high.
Vast crowds of vanquish’d nations march along,
Various in arms, in habit, and in tongue.
Here, Mulciber assigns the proper place
For Carians, and th’ ungirt Numidian race;
Then ranks the Thracians in the second row,
With Scythians, expert in the dart and bow.
And here the tam’d Euphrates humbly glides,
And there the Rhine submits her swelling tides,
And proud Araxes, whom no bridge could bind;
The Danes’ unconquer’d offspring march behind,
And Morini, the last of humankind.
These figures, on the shield divinely wrought,
By Vulcan labor’d, and by Venus brought,
With joy and wonder fill the hero’s thought.
Unknown the names, he yet admires the grace,
And bears aloft the fame and fortune of his race.43
To a nine-year old boy standing next to the man of the moment in one of the greatest spectacles on earth, for not one but three days, the experience must have been thrilling and made a profound and lasting impression.
Following his victory celebrations, Octavianus dedicated the Temple of Iulius Caesar and the Curia Iulia in the Forum. The temple stood on the spot where Caesar’s body had been burned and marked the eastern end of the Forum. The following year he dedicated the Temple of Apollo on the Palatinus hill and construction began on his massive mausoleum. In the newly built Curia, the senate met and it was in here, in 27 BCE, he reached a landmark power sharing accord with the Senate that gave him authority over certain provinces along the perimeter of the empire and crucially the legions located there, while the senate agreed to govern the inner provinces closer to Rome.44For his generosity, he was declared Augustus, a title meaning ‘revered one’, by which he was thereafter known.45By these means, he had effectively become the head of state and secured the means to hold it – all while seeming to preserve the institutions of the res publica. Drusus was now a member of the first and most powerful family of the empire.
One of Augustus’ first acts was to head to Gallia Comata and Hispania to deal with the unrest there. Ever since Iulius Caesar had campaigned in the regions there had been niggling pockets of resistance. The Gauls (Galli) showed their resentment of their Roman masters periodically, while in the north of the Iberian Pennisula the Astures (living in the region of modern Asturias) and Cantabri (in Santander and Bilbao) had not yet accepted defeat. The situation called for a massive military response and Augustus decided to lead the campaign. He would have called upon Agrippa, to whom he normally turned to fight his wars, but he was occupied elsewhere. Augustus’ decision meant he would be away from Rome for three years. Tiberius accompanied him and on his arrival in Hispania, assumed his first military posting as a tribune with one of the several legions stationed there.46Livia may well have gone abroad with them. It was not customary for the wife of a military commander to accompany her husband, but Augustus was no ordinary commander and Livia no ordinary wife. This raises the possibility that Drusus also accompanied her since it was unlikely she would leave her fifteen-year old son alone in Rome. She would, however, have stayed away from the combat zone and remained in the pacified areas and usefully used her time there. Livia certainly had many agri-business interests throughout Italy and the provinces that made her independently wealthy. One of these was a copper mine, possibly located in the Rhône valley, the product of which Pliny the Elder rated very highly and remarked was called by its own name, aes Livianum – ‘Livian copper’.47If he was with her Drusus may have accompanied her on visits to the farms and learned the rudiments of business management by listening to his mother discussing affairs with her administrators and bailiffs. Except for agriculture, business through trade was not something the patrician class usually handled directly, but at arms length. Manufacturing enterprises were generally the preserve of private contractors and the equites.
The war against the Astures and Cantabri dragged on as the Romans battled against opponents who used the country’s rugged mountainous landscape to their fullest advantage. In 25 or 24 BCE Augustus fell seriously ill – typhoid fever is suspected, though Dio suggests “fatigue and anxiety” brought on by the war. The situation became grave enough for Augustus to pass his political authority (maius) to Agrippa. Many were taken aback by the choice, expecting that his nephew Marcellus, who was younger in age and seen as being groomed for the succession, would be favoured.48However, the older man still had Augustus’ confidence. Indeed, rather than delay the ceremony, Augustus asked Agrippa to officiate at the wedding of Marcellus to Iulia since he was still in Hispania.49Meanwhile Augustus retired to Taracco (Taragona) where he convalesced for almost a year. Livia would surely have been at his side to try and nurse him back to good health. Though army doctors and surgeons were proficient in repairing wounds and broken limbs, Roman medicine relied heavily on the knowledge and insights accumulated by the Greeks such as Hippokrates. In the event, the treatments that were applied by his personal Greek physician, Antonius Musa, worked and Augustus made a spectacular recovery.50The family
returned gratefully to Rome in 24 BCE.
Entering Public Life
When a Roman boy reached puberty, he officially came of age, put away childish things and became a man. Tiberius was fifteen when he marked his coming of age in 27 BCE, so assuming Drusus was the same age when he marked his event this places the event in 23 BCE. It was a cause for great celebration and normally occurred on 17 March on the day of the Festival of Liber and Libera, just as winter waned and the first signs of spring became evident. In the morning Drusus took off the bulla, a small bag shaped gold amulet, which he had worn around his neck as a boy, for the last time and placed it in the shrine of the family gods (lararium).51Drusus put on his best white tunic and wore, for the first time, the all-white toga pura (plate 4) instead of the striped toga praetexta he had worn as a boy. He then led a procession of his family and friends called the deductio in forum to the Tabularium, the public records office located under the Capitolinus hill. There he was registered as a full Roman citizen (civis) and his name was entered on the roll of his tribe. A lavish coming of age party would have rounded off Drusus’ special day.52Then it was back to school.
That same year 19-year old Marcellus’ career was boosted when Augustus permitted him to stand for election as a public official and for selection to the consulship ten years earlier than was customary.53As aedile (aedilis) he was responsible for maintaining public works and supervising public festivals. A lavish spectacle was laid on to celebrate the young man’s appointment.54With financial help from his father-in-law he also laid the foundation stone of the theatre in Rome that still bears his name.55While Marcellus seemed to enjoy the full favour of Augustus as a potential successor yet he still had to prove his judgement and capabilities. Fate would not afford him the opportunity to prove himself. Tragedy struck Augustus’ household later that year when Marcellus died suddenly while in Baiae, near Neapolis (Naples). The circumstances of his sudden end are not known, though the typhoid epidemic of the previous year appears to have continued through 23 BCE killing many; but that did not prevent gossipers suspecting the hand of Livia in Marcellus’ death, perceiving her own sons’ careers disadvantaged by him while he was alive.56Rome mourned the loss of its young prince. Augustus presided over the funeral of his son-in-law, giving the eulogy, placing his ashes in his own mausoleum, commissioning statues of him and requiring his memory to be marked at public spectacles.57The poet Vergil added Marcellus to his epic Aeneid as one of the illustrious men Aeneas met in the underworld and readings of the great work were given to Augustus and Octavia.58Even Agrippa hastened back from Syria to console his friend. He was rewarded with the hand of Marcellus’ widow Iulia in marriage, which made Agrippa the princeps’ son-in-law.59For the foreseeable future, Agrippa was the confirmed heir apparent.
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