The Twelve Caesars

by Robert Graves

  ‘Otho in exile?’ ‘Yes and no;

  That is, we do not call it so.’

  ‘And may we ask the reason why?’

  ‘They charged him with adultery.’

  ‘But could they prove it?’ ‘No and yes:

  It was his wife he dared caress.’

  4. Otho, who held the rank of quaestor, governed Lusitania for ten years with considerable restraint, and seized the earliest opportunity of revenging himself on Nero by joining Galba as soon as he heard of the revolt; but the political atmosphere was so uncertain that he did not underrate his own chances of sovereignty. Seleucus, an astronomer who encouraged these ambitions, had already foretold that Otho would outlive Nero, and now arrived unexpectedly with the further prediction that he would soon also become Emperor. After this Otho missed no chance of flattering or showing favour to anyone who might prove useful to him. When he entertained Galba at dinner, for instance, he would bribe the bodyguard with gold and do everything possible to put the rest of the Imperial escort in his debt. Once a friend of Otho’s laid claim to part of a neighbour’s estate, and asked him to act as arbitrator; Otho bought the disputed piece of land himself and presented it to him. No one at Rome questioned his fitness to wear the Imperial purple, and it was openly said that he could hardly avoid doing so.

  5. Galba’s adoption of Piso came as a shock to Otho, who had hoped to secure this good fortune himself. Disappointment, resentment and a massive accumulation of debts now prompted him to revolt. His one chance of survival, Otho frankly admitted, lay in becoming Emperor. He added: ‘I might as well fall to some enemy in battle as to my creditors in the Forum.’ The 10,000 gold pieces, just paid him for a stewardship by one of the Emperor’s slaves, served to finance the undertaking. To begin with he confided in five of his personal guards, each of whom co-opted two others; they were paid 100 gold pieces a head and promised fifty more. These fifteen men recruited a certain number of assistants, but not many, since Otho counted on mass support as soon as he had raised the standard of revolt.

  6. His first plan was to occupy the Guards’ Camp immediately after Piso’s adoption, and to capture Galba during dinner at the Palace. But he abandoned this because the same battalion happened to be on guard duty as when Gaius Caligula had been assassinated, and again when Nero had been left to his fate; he felt reluctant to deal their reputation for loyalty a further blow. Unfavourable omens, and Seleucus’s warnings, delayed matters another five days. However, on the morning of the sixth, Otho posted his fellow-conspirators in the Forum at the gilt milestone near the Temple of Saturn while he entered the Palace to greet Galba (who embraced him in the usual way) and attended his sacrifice. The priests had finished their report on the omens of the victim, when a freedman arrived with the message: ‘The surveyors are here.’ This was the agreed signal. Otho excused himself to the Emperor, saying that he had arranged to view a house that was for sale; then slipped out of the Palace by a back door and hurried to the rendezvous. (Another account makes him plead a chill, and leave his excuses with the Emperor’s attendants, in case anyone should miss him.) At all events he went off in a closed sedan-chair of the sort used by women, and headed for the Camp, but jumped out and began to run when the bearers’ pace nagged. As he paused to lace a shoe, his companions hoisted him on their shoulders and acclaimed him Emperor. The street crowds joined the procession as eagerly as if they were sworn accomplices, and Otho reached his headquarters to the sound of huzzas and the flash of drawn swords. He then dispatched a troop of cavalry to murder Galba and Piso and, avoiding all rhetorical appeals, told the troops merely that he would welcome whatever powers they might give him, but claim no others.

  7. Towards evening Otho delivered a brief speech to the Senate claiming to have been picked up in the street and compelled to accept the Imperial power, but promising to respect the people’s sovereign will. Hence he proceeded to the Palace, where he received fulsome congratulations and flattery from all present, making no protest even when the crowd called him Nero. Indeed, some historians record it as a fact that he replaced some of Nero’s condemned busts and statues, and reinstated procurators and freedmen of his whom Galba had dismissed; and that the first decree of the new reign was a grant of half a million gold pieces for the completion of the Golden House.

  Otho is said to have been haunted that night by Galba’s ghost in a terrible nightmare; the servants who ran in when he screamed for help found him lying on the bedroom floor. After this he did everything in his power to placate the ghost; but next day, while he was taking the auspices, a hurricane sprang up and caused him a bad tumble—which made him mutter repeatedly: ‘Playing the bagpipe is hardly my trade.’

  8. Meanwhile, the armies in Germany took an oath of loyalty to Vitellius. Otho heard of this and persuaded the Senate to send a deputation, urging them to keep quiet, since an Emperor had already been appointed. But he also wrote Vitellius a personal letter: an invitation to become his father-in-law and share the empire with him. Vitellius, however, had already sent troops forward to march on Rome under their generals, and war was inevitable. Then, one night, the Guards gave such unequivocal proof of their faithfulness to Otho that it almost involved a massacre of the Senate. A detachment of sailors had been ordered to fetch some arms from the Praetorian Camp and take them aboard their vessels. They were carrying out their instructions at dusk when the Guards, suspecting treachery on the part of the Senate, rushed to the Palace in a leaderless mob and demanded that every Senator should die. Having driven away or murdered the senior officers who tried to stop them, they burst into the banqueting-hall, dripping with blood. ‘Where is the Emperor?’ they shouted; but as soon as they saw him busy with his meal they calmed down.

  Otho set gaily out on his campaign, but haste prevented him from paying sufficient attention to the omens. The sacred shields used by the Leaping Priests had not yet been returned to the Temple of Mars—traditionally a bad sign—and this was 24 March, the day when the worshippers of the Goddess Cybele began their annual lamentation. Besides, the auspices were most unfavourable: at a sacrifice offered to Pluto the victim’s intestines had a healthy look, which was exactly what they should not have had. Otho’s departure was, moreover, delayed by a flooding of the Tiber; and at the twentieth milestone he found the road blocked by the ruins of a collapsed building.

  9. Vitellius’s forces being badly off for supplies and having little room for manoeuvre, Otho should have maintained the defensive, yet he rashly staked his fortunes on an immediate victory. Perhaps he suffered from nervousness and hoped to end the war before Vitellius himself arrived; perhaps he could not curb the offensive spirit of his troops. But when it came to the point he made Brescello his headquarters and kept clear of the fighting. Although his army won three lesser engagements—in the Alps, at Piacenza, and at a place called ‘Castor’s’—they were tricked into a decisive defeat near Betriacum. There had been talk of an armistice, but Otho’s troops, preparing to fraternize with the enemy while peace was discussed, found themselves suddenly committed to battle.

  Otho decided on suicide. It is more probable that his conscience prevented him from continuing to hazard lives and treasure in a bid for sovereignty than that his men had become demoralized and unreliable; fresh troops stood in reserve for a counter-offensive and reinforcements came streaming down from Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Moesia. What is more, his defeated army were anxious to redeem their reputation, even without such assistance.

  10. My own father, Suetonius Laetus, a tribune of the people, served with the Thirteenth Legion in this campaign. He often said afterwards that Otho had so deeply abhorred the thought of civil war while still a private citizen that he would shudder if the fates of Brutus and Cassius were mentioned at a banquet. And that he would not have moved against Galba to begin with, unless in the hope of a bloodless victory. Otho had now ceased to care what happened to himself, my father added, because of the deep impression made on him by the soldier who arrived at Brescello to report t
hat the army had been defeated. When the garrison called him a liar and a cowardly deserter, the man fell on his sword at Otho’s feet. Otho, greatly moved, issued a public statement that he would never again risk the lives of such gallant fellows. After embracing his brother, his nephew, and his friends, he dismissed them with orders to consult their own safety. Then he retired and wrote two letters: of consolation to his sister and of apology to Nero’s widow, Messalina, whom he had meant to marry—at the same time begging her to bury him and preserve his memory. He next burned all his private correspondence to avoid incriminating anyone if it fell into Vitellius’s hands, and distributed among the staff whatever loose cash he had with him.

  11. While making final preparations for suicide Otho heard a disturbance outside, and was told that the men who had begun to drift away from camp were being arrested as deserters. He forbade his officers to award them any punishment, and saying: ‘Let us add one extra night to life,’ went to bed, but left his door open for several hours, in case anyone wished to speak with him. After drinking a glass of cold water and testing the points of two daggers, he put one of them under his pillow, closed the door and slept soundly. He awoke at dawn and promptly stabbed himself in the left side. His attendants heard him groan and rushed in; at first he could not decide whether to conceal or reveal the wound, which proved fatal. They buried him at once, as he had ordered them to do. His age was thirty-seven; and he had reigned for ninety-five days.

  12. Otho, who did not look like a very courageous man, was of medium height, bow-legged, and with splay feet; but almost as fastidious about appearances as a woman. His entire body had been depilated, and a well-made toupee covered his practically bald head. He shaved every day, and since boyhood had always used a poultice of moist bread to retard the growth of his beard. He used publicly to celebrate the rites of Isis, wearing the approved linen smock.

  The sensation caused by Otho’s end was, I think, largely due to its contrast with the life he had led. Several soldiers visited the death-bed where they kissed his hands and feet, praising him as the bravest man they had ever known and the best Emperor imaginable; and afterwards they committed suicide themselves close to his funeral pyre. Stories are also current of men having killed one another in an access of grief when the news of his death reached them. Thus many who had hated Otho while alive, loved him for the way he died; and he was even commonly believed to have killed Galba with the object not so much of becoming Emperor as of restoring the country’s lost liberties.

  IX

  VITELLIUS

  Vitellius’s family may have been an old and noble one; or it may have been of undistinguished and even mean extraction. Both views are held, and either might reasonably be discounted as due to the prejudice excited by his reign, were it not that these origins had been hotly argued about many years previously.

  Writing to Quintus Vitellius, one of Augustus’s quaestors, Quintus Elogius described the family as follows:

  You Vitellians are descended from Faunus, an aboriginal king of Italy, and Vitellia, who was widely worshipped as a goddess. At one time, you ruled over the whole of Latium, but later the surviving members of the family moved from Sabine territory to Rome, where they became patricians. For centuries after, Vitellians were to be found along the Vitellian Way, which runs from the Janiculum to the sea; and the people of one settlement in that region asked the Senate’s permission to defend themselves against the Aequicolians, under their own officers. Another group of Vitellians, serving in the Roman army during the Samnite War, were despatched to Apulia and established themselves at Nuceria; but eventually their descendants went back to resume senatorial privileges at Rome.

  The popular story, on the other hand, was that the family had been founded by a freedman, one Cassius Servius, described as a shoemaker, whose son made a comfortable living first as an informer and then as a dealer in confiscated property, before marrying a common prostitute, the daughter of a baker named Antiochus, and fathering on her a Roman knight. The truth probably lies somewhere between these anecdotal extremes.

  2. At all events, whether his ancestry should have inspired pride or shame, this Publius Vitellius of Nuceria was certainly a knight, and steward to Augustus. He passed on his name to four worthy sons: Aulus, Quintus, Publius, and Lucius. Aulus, an epicure and a famous host, died during his consulship, as partner to Nero’s father Domitius. Quintus, the second brother, was degraded in a purge of subversive senators proposed by Tiberius. Publius, the third, was an aide-decamp to Germanicus, whose murderer, Gnaeus Piso, he arrested and brought to justice. He attained the praetorship, but was himself arrested in the aftermath of Sejanus’s conspiracy.85 When handed over to the custody of his own brother, Aulus, he cut his wrists with a penknife; yet allowed them to be bandaged up, not through any fear of death, but because his friends begged him to stay with them. Later, he fell ill and died in prison. Lucius, the youngest son, became first Consul, and then Governor-general of Syria86 where, with masterly diplomacy, he induced King Artabanus of Parthia to attend a parley and even do obeisance to the Roman Eagles. Afterwards, Lucius shared two regular consulships with the Emperor Claudius, held the office of Censor, and took full charge of the Empire while Claudius was away on the British expedition. Lucius’s integrity and industry were outstanding; the only blot on his fame being a scandalous infatuation for a certain freedwoman, whose spittle he would mix with honey and use every day, quite openly, as a lotion for his neck and throat. A skilful flatterer, he instituted the practice of worshipping Gaius Caligula as a god; and on his return from Syria, never dared enter the Imperial presence without uncovering his head, averting his gaze, and finally prostrating himself. Since Claudius, Caligula’s successor, was ruled by his wives and freedmen, Lucius, who lost no chance of advancement, begged Messalina to grant him the tremendous privilege of removing her shoes; whereupon he would nurse the right shoe inside his gown, and occasionally take it out to kiss it. He placed golden images of Claudius’s secretaries Narcissus and Pallas among his household-gods; and the ‘May you do this very often!’ joke in congratulation of Claudius at the Secular Games—held once every century—is attributed to him.

  3. Lucius died of paralysis on the day after he had been accused of high treason;87 but lived to see his two sons by Sestilia—a noble-hearted woman of distinguished family—achieve the consulship in the same year; the younger following the elder in the July appointment. The Senate awarded him a public funeral and a statue on the Rostra inscribed: ‘Steadfast in loyalty to the Emperor’.

  Lucius’s son Aulus Vitellius, the Emperor-to-be, was born on 24 September 14 A.D., or perhaps on 7 September, while Drusus Caesar and Norbanus Flaccus were Consuls. The boy’s horoscope read so appallingly that Lucius did everything in his power to prevent him from winning a provincial governorship; and when he was proclaimed Emperor in Germany, his mother gave him up for lost. Vitellius had spent his boyhood and adolescence on Capri, among Tiberius’s profligates. There he won the nickname ‘Spintria’,88 which clung to him throughout his life; by surrendering his chastity to Tiberius, the story goes, he secured his father’s first advancement to public office.

  4. Vitellius who, as he grew up, was notorious for every sort of vice, became a fixture at Court. Caligula admired his skill in chariot-driving; Claudius, his skill at dice; Nero not only appreciated these talents, but was indebted to him for one particular service. At the festival celebrated in his own honour, Nero was always anxious to compete in the lute-playing contest, but never dared do so without express invitation; so he used to leave his seat, while the whole theatre clamoured for him enthusiastically, and disappear until Vitellius, as President of the Games, came in pursuit and, on behalf of the audience, persuaded him to reconsider his decision.

  5. Since he was the favourite of three emperors, Vitellius won the usual magistracies and several fat priesthoods, and later served as Governor-general of Africa and as Minister of Public Works. His reputation and energies, however, varied with the emp
loyment given him. Though exceptionally honest during the two-year administration of Africa, where he temporarily acted for his brother, Vitellius’s behaviour at Rome was by no means so commendable: he used to pilfer offerings and ornaments from the temples, or replace gold and silver with brass and tin.

  6. He married Petronia, a consul’s daughter who, in her will, made their one-eyed son, Petronianus, her heir, though stipulating that Vitellius must renounce paternal rights. To this he consented; but his subsequent story—that Petronianus, having shown parricidal leanings, had been overcome by feelings of guilt and drunk the poison with which he had intended to orphan himself—won little credence; most people believed simply that Vitellius had done away with the boy. Next, he married Galeria Fundana, whose father was a praetor; she bore him one daughter, and a son who had so bad a stammer that he could hardly force out a word.

  7. Galba’s appointment of Vitellius to the governorship of Lower Germany was an unpopular one; the accepted view to-day is that Titus Vinius arranged it. This Vinius, a man of great influence, was well-disposed towards Vitellius because they were fellow-supporters of the ‘Blues’ in the Circus. Yet since Galba had openly stated that a glutton was the sort of rival whom he feared least, and that he expected Vitellius to cram his belly with the fruits of the province, the appointment must have been made in contempt, not approval. Vitellius was so short of funds at the time, and in such low water generally—this is common knowledge-that he rented an attic for his wife and children at Rome, let his own house for the remainder of the year and, to finance the journey, actually pawned a pearl torn from an ear-ring in his mother’s ear. The only means by which he could shake off the huge crowd of creditors who were continuously waylaying him—these included the people of Sinuessa and Formiae whose public funds he had embezzled—was to scare them with false accusations. Thus he pressed an action for assault against a freedman who had dunned him once too often, claiming to have been struck and kicked, and demanding damages in the amount of 500 gold pieces.