The Twelve Caesars

by Robert Graves

  Again, when sending Tiberius off to Illyricum and planning to accompany him as far as Benevento, Augustus got held up by a long list of cases, and cried: ‘I will stay here no longer, whoever tries to detain me!’ These words were subsequently recalled as prophetic. He started off for Benevento by road but, on reaching the islet of Astura, met with a favourable breeze and decided to take ship that evening—although night-voyages were against his usual habits—and so caught a chill, the first symptom of which was diarrhoea.

  98. After coasting past Campania, with its islands, he spent the next four days in his villa on Capri, where he rested and amused himself. As he had sailed through the Gulf of Puteoli, the passengers and crew of a recently arrived Alexandrian ship had put on white robes and garlands, burned incense, and wished him the greatest of good for tune—which, they said, he certainly deserved, because they owed their lives to him and their liberty to sail the seas: in a word, their entire freedom and prosperity. This incident gratified Augustus so deeply that he gave each member of his staff forty gold pieces, making them promise under oath to spend them only on Alexandrian trade goods. What was more, he made the last two or three days of his stay on Capri the occasion for distributing among other presents, Roman gowns and Greek cloaks to the islanders; insisting that the Romans should talk Greek and dress like Greeks, and that the Greeks should do the opposite. He sat for a long time watching the gymnastic training of the many local ephebi—Greeks who had reached their nineteenth year but were not yet old enough to become full citizens—Capri being a very conservative settlement. Afterwards he invited these young men to a banquet at which he presided, and not merely allowed, but expected them to play jokes, and freely scramble for the tokens which he threw, entitling the holders to fruit, sweetmeats, and the like. In fact, he indulged in every form of fun.

  Augustus called the residential centre of Capri ‘Lubberland’, because some of his staff, now settled on the island, were growing so lazy; and referred to his friend Masgaba, who had died there in the previous year, as ‘Ktistes’, meaning ‘the Founder’. When he noticed from his dining-room window that a crowd of torchbearers were attending Masgaba’s tomb, he improvised this Greek line:

  I see the Founder’s tomb ablaze with fire…

  then asked Thrasyllus, Tiberius’s astrologer, who was reclining opposite him and did not understand the reference: ‘What poet wrote that?’ Thrasyllus hesitated, and Augustus capped his own line, reciting:

  With torches, look, they honour Masgaba!

  and again asked: ‘Who wrote that?’ Thrasyllus, unable to divine the authorship, mumbled: ‘Both lines are very good, whoever the poet was.’ Augustus burst out laughing and made great fun of Thrasyllus.

  He next crossed over to Naples, although his stomach was weak from an intermittent recurrence of the same trouble, and watched an athletic competition which was held in his honour every five years. Finally, he started off with Tiberius and said good-bye to him at Benevento. Feeling worse on the homeward journey, he took to his bed at Nola, and sent messengers to recall Tiberius—now headed for Illyricum. At his arrival Augustus had a long talk with him in private, after which he attended to no further important business.

  99. On the day that he died, Augustus frequently inquired whether rumours of his illness were causing any popular disturbance. He called for a mirror, and had his hair combed and his lower jaw, which had fallen from weakness, propped up. Presently he summoned a group of friends and asked: ‘Have I played my part in the farce of life creditably enough?’ adding the theatrical tag:

  If I have pleased you, kindly signify

  Appreciation with a warm goodbye.

  Then he dismissed them, but when fresh visitors arrived from Rome, wanted to hear the latest news of his grand-daughter Livilla, who was ill. Finally, he kissed his wife with: ‘Goodbye, Livia: never forget whose husband you have been!’ and died almost at once. He must have longed for such an easy exit, for whenever he had heard of anyone having passed away quickly and painlessly, he used to pray: ‘May Heaven grant the same euthanasia to me and mine!’ The only sign that his wits were wandering, just before he died, was his sudden cry of terror: ‘Forty young men are carrying me off!’ But even this may be read as a prophecy rather than a delusion, because forty Praetorians were to form the guard of honour that conveyed him to his lying-in-state.

  100. Augustus died in the same room as his father Octavius. That was 19 August 14 A.D., at about 3 p.m., the Consuls of the year being Sextus Pompey and Sextus Appuleius. Before the close of the following month he would have attained the age of seventy-six. Senators from the neighbouring municipalities and veteran colonies bore the body, in stages, all the way from Nola to Bovillae—but at night, owing to the hot weather—laying it in the town hall or principal temple of every halting place. From Bovillae, a party of Roman knights carried it to the vestibule of the Palace at Rome.

  The senators vied with one another in proposing posthumous honours for Augustus. Among the motions introduced were the following: that his funeral procession should pass through the Triumphal Gate preceded by the image of Victory from the Senate House, and that boys and girls of the nobility should sing his dirge; that on the day of his cremation iron rings should be worn instead of gold ones; that his ashes should be gathered by priests of the leading Colleges; that the name ‘August’ should be transferred to September, because Augustus had been born in September but had died in the month now called August; and that the period between his birth and death should be officially entered in the Calendar as ‘the Augustan Age’.

  Though the House as a whole decided not to pay him such excessive honours, he was given two funeral eulogies—by Tiberius from the forecourt of Julius Caesar’s Temple, and by Tiberius’s son Drusus from the original Rostrum—after which a party of Senators shouldered the body and took it to a pyre on the Campus Martius, where it was burned; and an ex-praetor actually swore that he had seen Augustus’s spirit soaring up to Heaven through the flames. Leading knights, barefoot, and wearing unbelted tunics, then collected his ashes and placed them in the family Mausoleum. He had built this himself forty-two years previously, during his sixth consulship, between the Flaminian Way and the Tiber; at the same time converting the neighbourhood into a public park.

  101. Augustus’s will, composed on 3 April of the previous year, while Lucius Plancus and Gaius Silius were Consuls, occupied two note-books, written partly in his own hand, partly in those of his freedmen Polybius and Hilarion. The Vestal Virgins to whose safekeeping he had entrusted these documents now produced them, as well as three rolls, also sealed by him. All were opened and read in the House. It proved that he had appointed Tiberius and Livia heirs to the bulk of his estate, directing that Tiberius should take two-thirds and adopt the name ‘Augustus’, while Livia took the remaining third and adopted the name ‘Augusta’. If either of these two beneficiaries could not, or would not, inherit, the heirs in the second degree were to be Tiberius’s son Drusus, entitled to one-third of the reversion; and Augustus’s great-grandson Germanicus, with his three sons, jointly entitled to the remainder. Many of Augustus’s relatives and friends figured among the heirs in the third degree. He also left a bequest of 400,000 gold pieces to the Roman commons in general; 35,000 to the two tribes with which he had family connexions; ten to every Praetorian guard; five to every member of the City companies; three to every legionary soldier. These legacies were to be paid on the nail, because he had always kept enough cash for the purpose. There were other minor bequests, some as large as 200 gold pieces, which were not to be settled until a year after his death because:

  ‘…my estate is not large; indeed, my heirs will not receive more than 1,500,000 gold pieces; for, although my friends have bequeathed me some 14,000,000 in the last twenty years, nearly the whole of this sum, besides what came to me from my father, from my adoptive father, and from others, has been used to buttress the national economy.’

  He had given orders that ‘should anything happe
n’ to his daughter Julia, or his grand-daughter of the same name, their bodies must be excluded from the Mausoleum. One of the three sealed rolls contained directions for his own funeral; another, a record of his reign, which he wished to have engraved on bronze and posted at the entrance to the Mausoleum; the third, a statement of how many serving troops were stationed in different parts of the Empire, what money reserves were held by the Public Treasury and the Privy Purse, and what revenues were due for collection. He also supplied the names of freedmen and slave-secretaries who could furnish details, under all these heads, on demand.

  III

  TIBERIUS

  The patrician branch of the Claudian House—there was a plebeian branch, too, of equal influence and distinction—came to Rome, which had then been only recently founded, from the Sabine town of Regilli, bringing with them a large train of dependants. They did so at the invitation of Titus Tatius, who was either Romulus’s co-king or (according to a more widely held version of the story) reigned at a later period and shared the government of the City with Atta Claudius, the head of the Claudians, about six years after the expulsion of the Kings. The Claudians were enrolled among the patrician houses, and also publicly decreed an estate beyond the Anio for their dependants to farm, and a family burial ground at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. In course of time they amassed twenty-eight consulships, five dictatorships, seven censorships, six triumphs, and two ovations. Many different forenames and surnames were used by members of the House, but they unanimously decided to ban the forename Lucius, because one Lucius Claudius had been convicted as a highwayman and another as a murderer; and added the surname Nero, which is Sabine for ‘strong and energetic’.

  2. History records many distinguished services and equally grave injuries done to the state by Claudians. Let me quote only a few instances. Appius Claudius the Blind prudently advised the Senate that an alliance with King Pyrrhus33 would not be in the national interest. Claudius Caudex was the first to take a fleet across the Straits of Messina, and expelled the Carthaginians from Sicily.34 Tiberius Nero intercepted Hasdrubal as he arrived in Italy from Spain with powerful reinforcements for his brother Hannibal, and defeated him before a junction could be effected.35

  On the debit side of the ledger must be set Claudius Regillianus’s attempt, while one of the ten commissioners for codifying the laws, to enslave and seduce a free-born girl—a wicked act which made the commons desert Rome in a body, for the second time, leaving the patricians to their own devices. Then there was Claudius Russus, who set up a crowned image of himself at the town called Appius’s Forum, and attempted to conquer Italy with the help of his armed dependants. And Claudius the Fair who, as Consul, took the auspices before a naval battle off Sicily and, finding that the sacred chickens had refused their feed, cried: ‘If they will not eat, let them drink!’ He threw them into the sea, fought the battle in defiance of their warning, and lost it.36 When the Senate then ordered Claudius to appoint a dictator, he made a joke of the critical military situation by choosing one Glycias, his despatch-rider.

  An equal disparity may be found between the records of the Claudian women. There was a Claudia who, when the ship which was bringing the sacred image of the Idaean Mother-goddess to Rome grounded on a Tiber mud-bank, publicly prayed that she might be allowed to refloat it, in proof of her perfect chastity; and did so.37 Against her achievement may be set that of Claudius the Fair’s sister. She was riding through the crowded streets in a carriage, and making such slow progress that she shouted: ‘If only my brother were alive to lose another fleet! That would thin out the population a little!’ She was consequently tried for treason in the People’s Court, as had happened to no woman before her.38 All these Claudians were aristocrats and pillars of the patrician party, with the sole exception of Publius Clodius, who found he could best expel Cicero from Rome by becoming the adoptive son of a plebeian—as it happened, a man younger than himself.39 Moreover, they were so rude and violent in their attitude towards the commons that, not even when tried on a capital charge, would any of them condescend to wear suppliant dress or sue for mercy; and some, in their constant quarrels with the tribunes of the people, actually dared to strike them, though their persons were officially sacrosanct. Once, when a Claudian was about to celebrate a triumph without first obtaining the commons’ consent, his sister, a Vestal Virgin, mounted the decorated chariot and rode with him all the way to the Capitol, thus making it sacrilege for the tribunes of the people to halt the procession.40

  3. Tiberius was doubly a Claudian: his father having been descended from the original Tiberius Nero, and his mother from Appius the Fair, both of them sons of Appius the Blind. His maternal grandfather had, however, been adopted into the Livian family. The Livians were originally plebeians, but had also achieved great distinction: winning eight consulships, two censorships, three triumphs, and the titles of Dictator and Master of the Horse. Among the best-known members of this House were Livius the Salter, and the two Drusi. Livius the Salter had been convicted of malpractices while Consul, and fined; yet was re-elected by the commons to a second term and even appointed Censor—whereupon he set a mark of ignominy against the names of every tribe that had voted for him, to register his disapproval of their fickleness.41 The first Drusus gained this honourable surname by killing an enemy chieftain called Drausus in single combat, and it became hereditary.42 He is also said to have brought back from Gaul, where he was a governor of praetorian rank, the gold which his ancestors had paid to the Senonians in ransom for captured Rome;43 this contradicts the tradition that the treasure had already been redeemed by the dictator Camillus. His great-great-grandson, known as ‘The Senate’s Patron’ because of his stalwart opposition to the reforms of the Gracchi brothers, left a son who was treacherously murdered by the popular party while carrying on the same policy in similar circumstances and with equal resolution.

  4. Tiberius’s father Nero, a quaestor, commanded Julius Caesar’s fleet during the Alexandrian War and was largely responsible for his eventual victory. Caesar showed his appreciation by making Nero Chief Pontiff, in substitution of Publius Scipio, and sent him to plant colonies in Gaul, including those of Narbonne and Aries. Yet at Caesar’s death when, to prevent further rioting, all the other senators voted for an amnesty, Nero moved that rewards should be conferred on the assassins. Later he was elected praetor; but towards the end of his term two of the triumvirs, Mark Antony and Lepidus, quarrelled among themselves; so he retained the emblems of office longer than was his legal right and followed Mark Antony’s brother Lucius, then Consul, to Perugia. When Perugia fell, only Nero of all Roman magistrates in the city scorned to capitulate. He stood loyally by his convictions, and escaped to Palestrina, thence to Naples, and after a vain attempt at enlisting a force of slaves with a promise of arms and freedom, took refuge in Sicily. There Sextus Pompey, still carrying on his dead father’s war against the Caesareans, was slow to grant him an audience and disapproved of his refusal to lay down the fasces. Taking offence, Nero crossed over to Greece where he joined Mark Antony. On the conclusion of peace he presently returned in Antony’s train to Rome; and with him came his wife Livia Drusilla, who had borne him one son and was pregnant of another. Yet when Augustus wanted to marry Livia, Nero surrendered her to him, and died soon afterwards. The elder son was named Tiberius Nero; the younger, Drusus.

  5. Some believe that Tiberius was born at Fundi, but their only evidence is that his maternal grandmother originated there, and that a statue of Prosperity has since been set up in the town by decree. The bulk of trustworthy opinion makes him born on the Palatine Hill in the course of the civil war which was to be decided at Philippi; the date being given as 16 November, and the Consuls as Aemilius Lepidus and Lucius Munatius Plancus—the latter for his second term. Both date and birthplace are, indeed, recorded in the calendar and the official gazette; yet some writers still insist that he was born in the previous year, during the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa, or in the following year, duri
ng that of Servilius Isauricus and Mark Antony’s brother Lucius.

  6. His childhood and youth were beset with hardships and difficulties, because Nero and Livia took him wherever they went in their flight from Augustus. When the Caesareans broke into the city of Naples, and the couple secretly slipped down to the port, their companions tried to assist them by snatching little Tiberius first from his nurse’s breast, and then from Livia’s arms—but he bawled out so loud that he nearly betrayed the whole party. He was next hurried all over Sicily, where Sextus Pompey’s sister Pompeia gave him a cloak, a brooch, and some gold buttons; which are still on show at Baiae near Naples. His parents finally fled to Greece, and entrusted him to the public care of the Spartans, who happened to be vassals of the Claudians. Augustus’s men followed in pursuit, and while Livia was escaping with him from Sparta by night she ran into a sudden forest fire which scorched her hair and part of her robe. On their return to Rome, a senator named Marcus Gallius made a will adopting Tiberius; he accepted the inheritance, but soon dropped the name of Gallius, the testator having been one of Augustus’s political opponents.