The Twelve Caesars

by Robert Graves

  68. As a young man Augustus was accused of various improprieties. For instance, Sextus Pompey jeered at his effeminacy; Mark Antony alleged that Julius Caesar made him submit to unnatural relations as the price of adoption; Antony’s brother Lucius added that, after sacrificing his virtue to Caesar, Augustus had sold his favours to Aulus Hirtius, the Governor-General of Spain, for 3,000 gold pieces, and that he used to soften the hair on his legs by singeing them with red-hot walnut shells. One day at the Theatre an actor came on the stage representing a eunuch priest of Cybele, the Mother of the Gods; and, as he played his timbrel, another actor exclaimed:

  ‘Look, how this invert’s finger beats the drum!’

  Since the Latin phrase could also mean: ‘Look how this invert’s finger sways the world!’ the audience mistook the line for a hint at Augustus and broke into enthusiastic applause.

  69. Not even his friends could deny that he often committed adultery, though of course they said, in justification, that he did so for reasons of state, not simple passion—he wanted to discover what his enemies were at by getting intimate with their wives or daughters. Mark Antony accused him not only of indecent haste in marrying Livia, but of hauling an ex-consul’s wife from her husband’s dining-room into the bedroom—before his eyes, too! He brought the woman back, says Antony, blushing to the ears and with her hair in disorder. Antony also writes that Scribonia was divorced for having said a little too much when ‘a rival’ got her claws into Augustus; and that his friends used to behave like Toranius, the slave-dealer, in arranging his pleasures for him—they would strip mothers of families, or grown girls, of their clothes and inspect them as though they were up for sale. A racy letter of Antony’s survives, written before he and Augustus had quarrelled privately or publicly:

  ‘What has come over you? Do you object to my sleeping with Cleopatra? But we are married; and it is not even as though this were anything new—the affair started nine years ago. And what about you? Are you faithful to Livia Drusilla? My congratulations if, when this letter arrives, you have not been in bed with Tertullia, or Terentilla, or Rufilla, or Salvia Titisenia—or all of them. Does it really matter so much where, or with whom, you perform the sexual act?’

  70. Then there was Augustus’s private banquet, known as ‘The Feast of the Divine Twelve’, which caused a public scandal. The guests came dressed as gods or goddesses, Augustus himself representing Apollo; and our authority for this is not only a spiteful letter of Antony’s, which names all the twelve, but the following well-known anonymous lampoon:

  Those rogues engaged the services

  Of a stage manager;

  So Mallia29 found six goddesses

  And six gods facing her!

  Apollo’s part was lewdly played

  By impious Caesar; he

  Made merry at a table laid

  For gross debauchery.

  Such scandalous proceedings shocked

  The Olympians. One by one

  They quit and Jove, his thunders mocked,

  Vacates the golden throne.

  What made the scandal even worse was that the banquet took place at a time of food shortage; and on the next day people were shouting: ‘The Gods have gobbled all the grain!’ or ‘Caesar is Apollo, true—but he’s Apollo of the Torments’—this being the god’s aspect in one City district. Some found Augustus a good deal too fond of expensive furniture, Corinthian bronzes, and the gaming table. While the proscriptions were in progress someone had scrawled on the base of his statue:

  I do not take my father’s line;

  His trade was silver coin, but mine

  Corinthian vases—

  the belief being that he enlarged the proscription lists with names of men who owned vases of this sort.

  During the Sicilian War another rhyme was current:

  He took a beating twice at sea,

  And threw two fleets away.

  So now to achieve one victory

  He tosses dice all day.

  71. Augustus easily disproved the accusation (or slander, if you like) of prostituting his body to men, by the decent normality of his sex-life, then and later; and that of having over-luxurious tastes by his conduct at the capture of Alexandria, where the only loot he took from the Palace of the Ptolemies was a single agate cup—he melted down all the golden dinner services. However, the charge of being a womanizer stuck, and as an elderly man he is said to have still harboured a passion for deflowering girls—who were collected for him from every quarter, even by his wife! Augustus did not mind being called a gambler; he diced openly, in his old age, too, simply because he enjoyed the game—not only in December, when the licence of the Saturnalia justified it, but on other holidays, too, and actually on working days. That this is quite true a letter in his own handwriting proves:

  My dear Tiberius,

  …we had the same company for dinner, except that Vinicius and the elder Silius were also invited; and we gambled like old men all through the meal, and until yesterday turned into to-day. Anyone who threw the Dog—two aces—or a six, put a silver piece in the pool for each of the dice; and anyone who threw Venus—when each of the dice shows a different number—scooped the lot.

  And another letter runs:

  My dear Tiberius,

  We spent the five-day festival of Minerva very pleasantly keeping the gaming table warm by playing all day long. Your brother Drusus made fearful complaints about his luck, yet in the long run was not much out of pocket. He went down heavily at first, but we were surprised to see him slowly recouping most of his losses. I lost two hundred gold pieces; however, that was because, as usual, I behaved with excessive sportsmanship. If I had dunned every player who had forfeited his stakes to me, or not handed over my legitimate winnings when dunned myself, I should have been at least five hundred to the good. Well, that is how I like it: my generosity will gain me immortal glory, you may be sure!

  And to his daughter Julia he wrote:

  Enclosed please find two and a half gold pieces in silver coin: which is the sum I give each of my dinner guests in case they feel like dicing or playing ‘odd and even’ at table.

  72. Augustus’s other personal habits are generally agreed to have been unexceptionable. His first house, once the property of Calvus the orator, stood close to the Roman Forum at the top of the Ring-makers’ Stairs; thence he moved to what had been Hortensius’s house on the Palatine Hill. Oddly enough, his new palace was neither larger nor more elegant than the first; the courts being supported by squat columns of peperino stone, and the living-rooms innocent of marble or elaborately tessellated floors. There he slept in the same bedroom all the year round for over forty years; although the winter climate of Rome did not suit his health. Whenever he wanted to be alone and free of interruptions, he could retreat to a study at the top of the house, which he called ‘Syracuse’—perhaps because Archimedes of Syracuse had a similar one—or ‘my little workshop’. He would hide himself away either here or else in a suburban villa owned by one of his freedmen; but, if he fell ill, always took refuge in Maecenas’s mansion. He spent his holidays at seaside resorts, or on some island off the Campanian coast, or in country towns near Rome, such as Lanuvium, or Palestrina, or Tivoli—where he often administered justice in the colonnades of Hercules’s Temple. Such was his dislike of all large pretentious country houses that he went so far as to demolish one built by his grand-daughter Julia on too lavish a scale. His own were modest enough and less remarkable for their statuary and pictures than for their landscape gardening and the rare antiques on display: for example, at Capri he had collected the huge skeletons of extinct sea and land monsters popularly known as ‘Giants’ Bones’; and the weapons of ancient heroes.

  73. How simply Augustus’s palace was furnished may be deduced by examining the couches and tables still preserved, many of which would now hardly be considered fit for a private citizen. He is said to have always slept on a low bed, with a very ordinary coverlet. On all but special occasions he wore ho
use clothes woven and sewn for him by either Livia, Octavia, Julia, or one of his grand-daughters. His gowns were neither tight nor full, and the purple stripe on them was neither narrow nor broad; but his shoes had rather thick soles to make him look taller. And he always kept a change of better shoes and clothes at hand; he might be unexpectedly called upon to appear in an official capacity.

  74. He gave frequent dinner parties, very formal ones, too; paying strict attention to social precedence and personal character. Valerius Messala writes that the sole occasion on which Augustus ever invited a freedman to dine was when he honoured Menas for delivering Sextus Pompey’s fleet into his power; and even then Menas was first enrolled on the list of free-born citizens. However, Augustus himself records that he once invited an ex-member of his bodyguard, the freedman whose villa he used as a retreat. At such dinner parties he would sometimes arrive late and leave early, letting his guests start and finish without him. The meal usually consisted of three courses, though in expansive moods Augustus might serve as many as six. There was no great extravagance, and a most cheerful atmosphere, because of his talent for making shy guests, who either kept silent or muttered to their neighbours, join in the general conversation. He also enlivened the meal with performances by musicians, actors, or even men who gave turns at the Circus—but more often by professional story-tellers.

  75. Augustus spared no expense when celebrating national holidays and behaved very light-heartedly on occasion. At the Saturnalia, for instance, or whenever else the fancy took him, he whimsically varied the value of his gifts. They might consist of rich clothing and gold or silver plate; or every sort of coin, including specimens from the days of the early monarchy, and foreign pieces; or merely lengths of goat-hair cloth, or sponges, or pokers, or tongs—all given in return for tokens inscribed with misleading descriptions of the objects concerned.30

  At some dinner parties he would also auction tickets for prizes of most unequal value, and paintings with their faces turned to the wall, for which every guest present was expected to bid blindly, taking his chance like the rest: he might either pick up most satisfactory bargains, or throw away his money.

  76. In this character sketch I need not omit his eating habits. He was frugal and, as a rule, preferred the food of the common people, especially the coarser sort of bread, whitebait, fresh hand-pressed cheese, and green figs of the second crop; and would not wait for dinner, if he felt hungry, but ate anywhere. The following are verbatim quotations from his letters:

  I had a snack of bread and dates while out for my drive to-day…

  and:

  On the way back in my litter from King Numa’s Palace on the Sacred Way, I munched an ounce of bread and a few hard-skinned grapes.

  and again:

  My dear Tiberius,

  Not even a Jew fasts so scrupulously on his sabbaths,31 as I have done to-day. Not until dusk had fallen did I touch a thing; and that was at the baths, before I had my oil rub, when I swallowed two mouthfuls of bread.

  This failure to observe regular mealtimes often resulted in his dining alone, either before or after his guests; but he came to the dining hall nevertheless and watched them eat.

  77. Augustus was also a habitually abstemious drinker. During the siege of Mutina, according to Cornelius Nepos, he never took more than three cups of wine-and-water at dinner. In later life his limit was a pint; if he ever exceeded this he would deliberately vomit. Raetian was his favourite, but he seldom touched wine between meals; instead, he would moisten his throat with a morsel of bread dunked in cold water; or a slice of cucumber or the heart of a young lettuce; or a sour apple off the tree, or from a store cupboard.

  78. After luncheon he used to rest for a while without removing clothes or shoes; one hand shading his eyes, his feet uncovered. When dinner was over he would retire to a couch in his study, where he worked late until all the outstanding business of the day had been cleared off; or most of it. Then he went to bed and slept seven hours at the outside, with three or four breaks of wakefulness. If he found it hard to fall asleep again on such occasions, as frequently happened, he sent for readers or story-tellers; and on dropping off would not wake until the sun was up. He could not bear lying sleepless in the dark with no one by his side; and if he had to officiate at some official or religious ceremony that involved early rising—which he also loathed—would spend the previous night at a friend’s house as near the venue as possible. Even so, he often needed more sleep than he got, and would doze off during his litter journeys through the City if anything delayed his progress and the bearers set the litter down.

  79. Augustus was remarkably handsome and of very graceful gait even as an old man; but negligent of his personal appearance. He cared so little about his hair that, to save time, he would have two or three barbers working hurriedly on it together, and meanwhile read or write something, whether they were giving him a haircut or a shave. He always wore so serene an expression, whether talking or in repose, that a Gallic chief once confessed to his compatriots: ‘When granted an audience with the Emperor during his passage across the Alps I would have carried out my plan of hurling him over a cliff had not the sight of that tranquil face softened my heart; so I desisted.’

  Augustus’s eyes were clear and bright, and he liked to believe that they shone with a sort of divine radiance: it gave him profound pleasure if anyone at whom he glanced keenly dropped his head as though dazzled by looking into the sun. In old age, however, his left eye had only partial vision. His teeth were small, few and decayed; his hair, yellowish and rather curly; his eyebrows met above the nose; he had ears of normal size, a Roman nose, and a complexion intermediate between dark and fair. Julius Marathus, Augustus’s freedman and recorder, makes his height 5 feet 7 inches; but this is an exaggeration, although, with body and limbs so beautifully proportioned, one did not realize how small a man he was, unless someone tall stood close to him.

  80. His body is said to have been marred by blemishes of various sorts—a constellation of seven birthmarks on his chest and stomach, exactly corresponding with the Great Bear; and a number of hard, dry patches suggesting ringworm, caused by an itching of his skin and a too vigorous use of the scraper at the baths. He had a weakness in his left hip, thigh, and leg, which occasionally gave him the suspicion of a limp; but this was improved by the sand-and-reed treatment. Sometimes the forefinger of his right hand would be so numbed by cold that it hardly served to guide a pen, even when strengthened with a long horn finger-stall. He also suffered from bladder pains which, however, ceased to trouble him once he had passed gravel in his urine.

  81. Augustus survived several dangerous illnesses at different periods. The worst was after his Cantabrian conquest, when abscesses on the liver reduced him to such despair that he consented to try a remedy which ran counter to all medical practice: because hot fomentations afforded him no relief, his physician Antonius Musa successfully prescribed cold ones. He was also subject to certain seasonal disorders: in early spring a tightness of the diaphragm; and when the sirocco blew, catarrh. These so weakened his constitution that either hot or cold weather caused him great distress.

  82. In winter he wore no fewer than four tunics and a heavy woollen gown above his undershirt; and below that a woollen chest protector; also underpants and woollen gaiters. In summer he slept with the bedroom door open, or in the courtyard beside a fountain, having someone to fan him; and could not bear the rays even of the winter sun, but always wore a broad-brimmed hat to protect himself against glare, whether in the Palace grounds or elsewhere. He preferred to travel by litter, at night, and his bearers kept so leisurely a pace that they were two days in arriving at Palestrina or Tivoli; yet, whenever it was possible to reach his destination by sea, he did so. Indeed, he pampered his health, especially by not bathing too often and being usually content with an oil rub—or with a sweat-bath, after which he took a douche of water either warmed over a fire or allowed to stand in the sun until it had lost its chill. When hot brine or s
ulphur water from the Anio springs was prescribed for his rheumatism he did no more than sit on a wooden bath-seat—calling it by the Spanish name dureta—and alternately dip his wrists and feet into the bath.

  83. As soon as the Civil Wars were over Augustus discontinued his riding and fencing exercises on the Campus Martius and used, instead, to play catch with two companions, or hand-ball with several. But soon he was content to go hacking, or take walks, muffled in a cloak or blanket, that ended with a sharp sprint across rough ground. Sometimes he went fishing as a relaxation; sometimes he played at dice, marbles, or nuts in the company of little boys, and was always on the lookout for ones with cheerful faces and cheerful chatter, especially Syrians and Moors—he loathed people who were dwarfish or in any way deformed, regarding them as freaks of nature and bringers of bad luck.

  84. Even in his boyhood Augustus had studied rhetoric with great eagerness and industry, and during the Mutina campaign, busy though he was, is said to have read, written, and declaimed daily. He kept up his interest by carefully drafting every address intended for delivery to the Senate, the popular Assembly, or the troops; though gifted with quite a talent for extempore speech. What is more, he avoided the embarrassment of forgetting his words, or the drudgery of memorizing them, by always reading from a manuscript. All important statements made to individuals, and even to his wife Livia, were first committed to notebooks and then repeated aloud; he was haunted by a fear of saying either too much or too little if he spoke off-hand. His articulation of words, constantly practised under an elocution teacher, was pleasant and rather unusual; but sometimes, when his voice proved inadequate for addressing a large crowd, he called a herald.