From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68
Page 39
7. GAIUS (CALIGULA)17
Gaius, the sole surviving son of Germanicus and Agrippina born in A.D. 12, was descended through his mother from Julia and through his father from Antony. Brought up among the armies on the Rhine which his father had commanded, he was nicknamed Caligula (Little Boots) from the military dress that he used to wear as a small boy. After his father’s death his life cannot have been happy, since his mother and brothers had been persecuted by Tiberius; after living with his grandmother Antonia, he had finally to join the gloomy Tiberius at Capreae. Though not trained for full responsibility, he was popular with the army and his Julian connexion would commend him to all who hated or feared the Claudians. Supported by Macro, he was acclaimed emperor in March 37 and received all Tiberius’ property since the Senate declared the latter’s will to be invalid. After the years of Tiberius’ oppression hopes now ran high and the young emperor was welcomed with enthusiasm both at Rome and in the provinces.18 He adopted Tiberius Gemellus and named him Princeps Iuventutis; he made his uncle Claudius his colleague in the consulship; he checked delation and treason-trials; recalled political exiles and allowed the publication of some suppressed works; abolished the sales-tax; gave shows and distributed largess.
But Rome did not breathe this freer air for long. In October Gaius had a serious illness and when he recovered he emerged, according to tradition, a monster of lust and diabolical cruelty. The balance of his mind was to some degree upset and he developed into a megalomaniac and tyrant: whether he was mad is a matter of definition and in the absence of a clinical-pathological report of the type which some modern writers attempt to establish for such historical figures from somewhat inadequate evidence, the question can hardly be settled. The possibilities of power went to the head of this inexperienced young man and he acted with increasing irresponsibility. He ignored or humiliated the Senate and struck several blows at the ‘diarchic’ ideals of Augustus. Thus he held the consulship each year except in 38; he moved the imperial mint from Lugdunum to Rome; he handed back the elections from the Senate to the People; he transferred the command of the legion in Africa from the senatorial proconsul to an imperial legate; once he smashed the fasces of two consuls and deprived them of office. A charge that may be taken less seriously than these is the famous rumour that he intended to make his favourite horse Incitatus consul. Beside these attacks on senatorial privilege, he killed many individuals or drove them to their deaths, including Tiberius Gemellus and Macro. He now encouraged delation and revived treason-trials, which (unlike Tiberius) he used as a method of personal enrichment. He needed money, since with wild prodigality he wasted the large sums that Tiberius had accumulated: he thus did not hesitate to impose new taxes on the people.18a
In contrast to his two predecessors, Gaius sought and accepted honours which hardly fell short of deification, and he perhaps intended to turn the Principate into an absolute monarchy, on Hellenistic or Oriental lines. He may have imbibed ideas about the East from his friend Herod Agrippa, and while some Hellenistic monarchs (the Ptolemies) married their sisters, Gaius committed incest with his sister Drusilla; after her death in 38, which removed a restraining influence from him, he ordered her deification. He appeared in public in the dress and with the insignia of various gods and established a special temple for his own divinity. Hardly less offensive, to the nobility at any rate, must have been the way in which he anticipated Nero by performing as a charioteer, gladiator and singer, while one of his most spectacular appearances was when he drove, wearing the breastplate of Alexander the Great, over a bridge of boats which he had constructed across the Bay of Naples from Baiae to Puteoli.
Folly at home, reinforced by folly in foreign affairs that drove Judaea and Mauretania to the point of rebellion (see below), increased the hatred of Senate and people for Gaius and engendered conspiracies; the opposition would become yet more serious if it spread to the armies. The first conspiracy arose in fact in the camp of Cn. Cornelius Gaetulicus, the popular legate of Upper Germany. One of the ringleaders, who was perhaps himself hoping to supplant Gaius, was Aemilius Lepidus, the widower of Gaius’ sister Drusilla and the lover of another sister Agrippina. Gaius hastened to the scene and restored order by his prompt action (39). Lepidus and Gaetulicus were executed, and Gaius’ sisters Agrippina and Julia Livilla, were banished. Gaetulicus was replaced by the future emperor Galba; Gaius had received help also from another future emperor, the praetor Vespasian. To give his troops some employment Gaius directed their attention to Germany and Britain.
Gaius’ tyranny and oppression were intensified by this episode: senators and army-commanders, Stoics and philosophers, jurists and men of letters, were alike threatened, and other conspiracies naturally followed. Even Herod and Gaius’ freedman Callistus began to turn from him. Finally a Praetorian tribune named Cassius Chaerea decided to avenge the insults that he had received from the emperor. The two Prefects of the Guard (Gaius had appointed two after Macro’s death and had raised the number of cohorts to twelve) were privy to the plot, and in January 41 Gaius was struck down in his Palace and was despatched with thirty wounds. Few will have wept.
8. THE PROVINCIAL POLICY OF GAIUS
The half-hearted actions that Gaius took in regard to Germany and Britain are most puzzling: were they the irresponsible antics of a madman or did some sound strategic purpose lie behind them? Whether or not he was contemplating going to Germany in any case in order to make himself known to some of his troops, his hurried departure thither was caused by the conspiracy of Gaetulicus. After this was crushed, Gaius conducted some raids across the Rhine into Germany. Fantastic stories circulated about this campaign: for his ‘triumph’ he used slaves who had to dye their long hair red and even learn some German. It is possible that some serious manoeuvres, which he planned in order to restore discipline in the Roman army or to overawe German tribes, have been misunderstood and distorted by a tradition hostile to him. He then spent the winter (39/40) in Gaul, where he received a congratulatory embassy from the Senate, led by his uncle Claudius, whom according to ‘rumour’ he ducked in the Rhone; at Lyons he auctioned some imperial property at fantastic prices, and also held a contest in Greek and Latin eloquence with humiliating punishments for the losers.
In the spring of A.D. 40 Gaius drew up his troops on the English Channel, preparatory to an invasion of Britain; here he was joined by Amminius, the exiled son of the British ruler Cunobelinus (Cymbeline), who promised submission. Gaius then suddenly cancelled the expedition, using Amminius’ action as an excuse. His real motive is uncertain; possibly the troops were restless and mutinous or Gaius may suddenly have feared to go so far from Rome. He is said to have ordered his soldiers to pick up sea-shells (musculi), ‘the spoils of Ocean’; whether this anecdote arose from a misinterpretation of an order to his engineers to pack up their huts (musculi) or reflects the wildness of Gaius’ mind must remain uncertain. Thus it is possible to believe that he planned some serious movements against Germany and Britain or that he merely indulged in some fantastic parades. At any rate he compromised Roman prestige to the extent that his successor resolved upon the conquest of Britain.19
Gaius made some unwise changes among the client-kingdoms, partly in order to reward his own friends. Commagene, which Tiberius had organized as a province, was given to the son of its former king. Gaius found kingdoms (Lesser Armenia, Pontus and part of Thrace) for the three sons of the Thracian ruler Cotys who had been brought up at Rome with him. By dethroning the king of Armenia Gaius created a vacuum into which Parthia was drawn. His friend Herod Agrippa was given the tetrarchies of his uncles, Philip and Herod Antipas (Ituraea and Galilee). Ptolemy, the king of Mauretania, who had been summoned to Rome, was ordered to kill himself: Gaius intended to annex his kingdom, but it resisted by force.19a
Gaius’ policy towards the Jews was no less disastrous. The persistent requests by the large Jewish community in Alexandria for local citizenship which was denied them by the Alexandrine Greeks, often led to dist
urbances and anti-Semitic riots. The situation in the city was complicated further by the grievances of the Greeks against Rome; they were jealous that the Jews were allowed their ethnarch and Senate, while their own municipal rights were limited (they perhaps lacked a Senate).20 Thus nationalist leaders, as Isodorus and Lampon, arose who in their opposition to Rome were ready to face martyrdom if need be. This anti-Roman movement developed a literature of its own, which is also often anti-Semitic, the so-called ‘acts of the Pagan Martyrs’; it survives only in fragmentary papyri.21 One of the anti-Jewish pogroms flared up in A.D. 38 when Agrippa on his way to the East called in at Alexandria which he had left hastily two or three years before because of his debts.22 It was aided by the Prefect of Egypt, Avillius Flaccus, who accepted the demand of the Greeks that statues of the emperor should be placed in the Jewish synagogues. Gaius was glad of the excuse to recall Flaccus, who had been the friend of Tiberius Gemellus and Macro; Flaccus was later put to death.23 Meantime both Jews and Greeks in Alexandria sent deputations to Gaius, that of the Jews being led by the philosopher and theologian Philo.
When the deputations reached Italy they heard that Gaius had ordered that a statue of himself should be set up in the temple at Jerusalem: this was his reply to an incident in Jamnia in Palestine where the Jews had pulled down an altar which the Greeks had erected to Gaius. Philo has left a vivid account of how his deputation had to chase Gaius from room to room and obtained no greater concession than the remark that ‘men who think me no god are more unfortunate than criminal’. Gaius’ intended action in Palestine was more serious. The governor of Syria, P. Petronius, who had to enforce the order, knew that it would provoke widespread resistance and so he wisely ‘went slow’, while Agrippa bravely persuaded Gaius to revoke it. Soon, however, the emperor changed his mind, ordered the statue for Jerusalem to be made in Rome and instructed Petronius to commit suicide. Only news of Gaius’ death prevented revolt in Palestine. Petronius also was saved because the news reached him before the death-warrant.24
With Judaea on the point of revolt and Mauretania in open rebellion, Gaius’ death did not come too soon. With disorder abroad and autocracy at home, the Augustan system was subjected to a severe strain which fortunately was not prolonged to breaking point. But these years, short though they were, left their mark, not least upon the Senate and nobility who realized that behind a Princeps might lurk a despot.
XIV
CLAUDIUS AND NERO
1. THE ACCESSION OF CLAUDIUS1
In the confusion that followed the murder of Gaius a soldier of the Praetorian Guard found Claudius hiding behind a curtain in the palace on the Palatine and rushed him off to the camp of the Guard. At first uncertain whether he was going to be killed or made emperor Claudius soon found that the Praetorians realized that their own interest demanded the continuance of the Principate and that a son of Drusus and a brother of Germanicus, even if not a soldier himself, had at least a family tradition to commend him. Meantime the Senators were debating whether the Republic might be restored or, if not, who among them might be made Princeps, but, in Gibbon’s famous words, ‘While the Senate deliberated, the Praetorian Guards had resolved.’ Their resolution was in fact fortified by a promise from Claudius to give a donative of 15,000 sesterces to each man; this attempt to reward, if not to buy, the loyalty of troops, though not without precedent, did not provide a healthy example for future emperors.2 After Claudius had rejected a demand from the Senate to submit, his friend Herod Agrippa negotiated for him, and the Senate, which lost the support of the Urban Cohorts, was compelled to give in: on 25 January A.D. 41 it accepted Claudius as the new Princeps, on whom the titles and powers of his predecessors were then conferred.
The Senate might be pardoned for having forgotten the claims of Claudius, since he had deliberately been kept in the background by his own family throughout his fifty years. This was due in part to his physical infirmities, which resulted perhaps from a form of infantile paralysis: he had weak legs, a shambling walk, a slobbery mouth and a shaky head, though Suetonius admitted that when standing still or seated he ‘possessed majesty and dignity of appearance’. His own mother Antonia disliked him and clearly he would not follow in the soldierly footsteps of his father, the elder Drusus, or his brother Germanicus. Augustus, although not unconscious of his intelligence, had not considered him suitable for public office, and Tiberius had followed this lead; Claudius had not even been admitted to the Senate. Gaius had brought him more into the open, with a consulship in 37, but chiefly as a butt for his own malicious wit. Scorned or neglected, Claudius is alleged to have become a glutton, a drunkard and a gambler (vices that he shared with many another Roman noble), but, more important, he developed a love of history and his country’s past. Encouraged by Livy, he had started a History of the Civil War from the death of Julius Caesar, but after he had written two books his friends persuaded him to move to a less controversial period and he composed forty-one books on Augustus whom he much admired, covering probably the forty-one years from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14. He also wrote a defence of Cicero, an autobiography in eight books, a History of the Etruscans in twenty books and a History of the Carthaginians in eight (these last two works were written in Greek); another work was on the Latin Alphabet, to which he wished to add three new letters.3 His historical studies will have exercised an important influence on his thought and action: his youthful enthusiasm for the Republic developed into a wider appreciation of the past and above all of the fact that Rome’s greatness owed much to her ability to introduce change and reform while still preserving essential traditions. He thus looked back, past Tiberius’ years of attempted conformity, to the more creative period when Augustus tried to reconcile Republic and Principate, and even beyond him back to the masterful developments initiated by Julius Caesar.
Proud of his country’s past, Claudius wanted to rule well, and in many respects he achieved his desire. Yet the main trend of the surviving literary tradition about his rule is contemptuous when it is not hostile, and depicts him as the victim of unscrupulous exploitation by his ambitious freedmen and scheming wives, particularly his third wife Messalina, who was put to death in 48, and her successor Agrippina the younger. But luckily sufficient imperial enactments survive in inscriptions or upon papyri to reveal the thought of Claudius himself and these, though sometimes tortuous in manner, show that he possessed great administrative common sense. He not only showed skill in his choice of efficient freedmen-servants and outstanding generals (as Corbulo, Galba, Vespasian, Hosidius Geta and Suetonius Paulinus), but he also impressed his own mind and policy upon public affairs. In the last few years of his reign, however, his powers began to fail and the traditional view of him as a pawn in the hands of more determined men and women approximates more closely to the truth.
Like many another emperor, he started off well. Since he could hardly overlook the murder of a Caesar, he punished Chaerea and a few conspirators but not any senators who were suspected. He cancelled Gaius’ ‘acts’ and allowed a return of exiles under a general amnesty, including Gaius’ two sisters; nor did he hesitate to refer to Gaius as a madman in a public document. By assuming the name of Caesar he identified himself with the Julian family. He showed respect to the Senate and magistrates, dropped treason trials in the Senate and enhanced his popularity by giving gladiatorial shows and abolishing Gaius’ new taxes. Long honoured by the Equestrian Order, which more than once had chosen him as its representative, he now had the support of the Praetorians, and he was accepted by the armies whose interests he cultivated; during his principate he was saluted as Imperator by the army no less than twenty-seven times. In A.D. 42 Furius Camillus Scribonianus, the legate of Dalmatia, was persuaded by some senators to revolt, but his two legions would not support him for more than four days, and the revolt did not spread; Claudius rewarded these loyal legions with the titles of Claudia Pia Fidelis. It was chiefly the Senate that Claudius had to watch.
2. CLAUDIUS AND THE SENATE4
; Claudius reacted sharply from Gaius’ autocracy and sincerely tried to co-operate with the Senate on Augustan lines. Gaius may have restored the elections to it, but Claudius made frequent use of senatus consulta; he held the consulship only four times: he tried to maintain the social position of senators and developed Augustus’ provision of the best seats in the Circus for them; he restored Achaea and Macedonia to the Senate in 44; he shared the new provinces acquired during his principate between senatorial and equestrian legates, the former receiving Britain and Lycia. He showed the Senate outward respect and assiduously attended its meetings. But his revival of the office of censor which he held himself in A.D. 47–8, gave offence, since one of his objects will have been to adjust membership of the Senate by means of adlectio. Besides expelling some old members he added a number of provincials, including some Gallic chiefs (see p. 251); his creation of new patricians will also have been designed to infuse new blood into the aristocracy.