To administer the empire, Claudius relied on powerful freedmen. Senators complained bitterly about government by ex-slaves—and Greeks to boot—but the emperors found them indispensable as bureaucrats. Nowadays we might praise Claudius’s power shift from privileged Romans to striving Greeks come up from slavery. This, along with the increasing authority of imperial women, might seem like praiseworthy diversity. We would also note that while emperors came and went, the bureaucrats provided continuity. But the Romans thought differently, particularly the elite senators who wrote the history books.
At the start of his reign, Claudius was married to his third wife, a noblewoman named Messalina, who bore him a son and a daughter. A statue shows her in a formal robe, carefully coiffed and serene, cradling her infant son, who reaches out to her. It is a far cry from the many more modern works of art that claim she was domineering, unfaithful, cruel, and murderous. But she eventually betrayed Claudius by marrying a rival behind his back.
The sources are full of stories about Messalina’s sexuality. “Augusta the whore,”—or Female Wolf-Dog, to use her supposed professional name—she worked secretly all night in a brothel and even outdid a prostitute in an all-night sex competition. None of these stories is credible. All probably derive from the propaganda of the victorious faction that replaced the emperor’s wife after her fall. Messalina fought hard, but she was no monster. If she betrayed her husband for another man, it was because she no longer trusted Claudius to put her and their children first. But Messalina didn’t move fast enough. When a rival discovered her adultery, he exposed it to Claudius, which led to her execution. Afterward, her image was removed from monuments and her name erased from inscriptions.
With Messalina’s death in the year 48, the emperor was a widower. Claudius needed a new wife. Enter Nero and his mother.
YOUNG NERO
Nero’s mother, Agrippina the Younger (hereafter, Agrippina) was one of the most eligible noblewomen in Rome. She had the magic of her father’s name, Germanicus, and of the descent of her mother, Agrippina the Elder, from the divine Augustus. She also numbered Livia and Mark Antony among her ancestors. Her pedigree persuaded Claudius to marry her, even though she was his niece, and hence the marriage was technically incestuous. The Senate had to pass a special decree to permit it.
A statue of Agrippina shows a woman with delicate features. She has a small mouth, a slightly turned-up nose, and a pronounced chin. Her hair is carefully arranged into ringlets in the style of the day. The statue shows her as a priestess, with head veiled. Other statues and coins associate Agrippina with fertility goddesses, even more explicitly than Livia was associated with them. But Agrippina was no saint. She was a tough lady. First she witnessed the near destruction of her family and then watched her brother Caligula’s sudden triumph followed by tyranny. After being implicated in a plot against Caligula, possibly involving adultery on her part, she was sent into exile. Since returning, Agrippina had regrouped and planned to use Claudius to achieve her ambition: making her son emperor with her as the power behind the throne. She published a memoir, now lost, which might be the source of the detail that she had an extra canine tooth on her right upper jaw, which was a sign of good luck for the Romans but which surely also symbolized aggression.
The ancient literary sources are hostile to Agrippina, as they are to all women in politics. They depict her as a scheming, power-hungry, incestuous murderer. Visual images, on the other hand—coins, sculpture, and cameos—show a dignified, attractive woman who is a symbol of motherhood and dynasty. The truth probably lies somewhere in between.
Agrippina was a fierce competitor who unhesitatingly had rivals executed. But other leading Romans behaved similarly. In seeking power for Nero, Agrippina was selfish, but she was also public spirited. She knew that he represented the only chance to continue the house of Augustus and Germanicus, and she believed that the dynasty represented the best hope for Rome and the empire.
When she married Claudius, Agrippina saw herself not just as his wife but also as his coruler. She was named Augusta, a title that no wife of a reigning emperor had held before. She sometimes joined Claudius while he was conducting public business and sat on a separate tribunal, in a power play that shocked contemporaries. She collected friends and banished enemies. Above all, she cleared a path to the throne for her son.
Nero was the product of Agrippina’s first marriage. He was born December 15, 37, in a seaside town south of Rome. He was named Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (“bronze beard”), after his father, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. The family were diehard republicans, with noble ancestors going back centuries. They were known for generalship, arrogance, and cruelty as well as for racing chariots and also for sponsoring an indecent theatrical production. Nero’s father supposedly said of their young son, “It is impossible for any good man to be sprung from me and this woman.”
He would not find out, however, as he died when Nero was three. Like Augustus, Nero lost his father at an early age and was raised by his mother (except for a few months with a paternal aunt). Like Augustus’s mother, Atia, Agrippina worked tirelessly to advance Nero’s career but she would pay a severe price for her success.
Nero was eleven when his mother married Claudius. Within a year, she had convinced Claudius to adopt Nero, who dropped his previous name and became Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. Nero was older than Claudius’s own son, which meant that he now stood first in the inheritance. Claudius also betrothed his daughter, Octavia, to Nero and decided to put Agrippina’s son ahead of his own.
Claudius was now about sixty. Was he just an old man fooled by his new, young wife? Perhaps. Or possibly he thought his dynasty stood a better chance of surviving through the heirs of his daughter and of Nero—heir of Germanicus, the divine Augustus, and Mark Antony—than through his son by the disgraced Messalina. In any case, Agrippina did not hold back. She lined up friends at court and got enemies dismissed. Her most important move was to persuade Claudius to hire a new Praetorian prefect who was solidly in her camp. He was Sextus Afranius Burrus, a Roman knight from Gaul. He had once worked in Livia’s household. Not only was Burrus a loyal supporter of Agrippina but also so were many of the officers under his command—men she had handpicked.
For Nero’s tutor, Agrippina chose Lucius Annaeus Seneca. He came from a wealthy, influential, and highly literary Roman family from Hispania. His father was a famous writer of rhetoric and history, while his mother studied philosophy. Seneca went to Rome and rose in law and politics while also proving to be a brilliant man of letters. He was an orator, philosopher, essayist, and playwright. But he made enemies.
Caligula had called Seneca “sand without lime”—in other words, flaccid cement—and came close to having him executed. After Caligula’s death, Seneca returned the favor by writing that the object of Caligula’s whole life was to change a free state into a Persian despotism. Seneca judged Caligula to be bloodthirsty.
Messalina, too, disliked Seneca. She accused him of committing adultery with Caligula’s youngest sister. Both lovers were convicted and exiled, but only Seneca survived. After eight years of exile on the island of Corsica, he found himself recalled to Rome by Agrippina.
In 54, five years after he married Agrippina, Claudius decided to advance the career of his biological son, Britannicus, who had turned thirteen. Then, before Claudius could make a move, he died suddenly. People naturally suspected poisoning by Agrippina, but the truth about his death is unrecoverable today. He might have died from a poisonous (but not poisoned) mushroom or from natural causes. In any case, Agrippina was prepared to put her son on center stage. The Praetorians hailed Nero as emperor, and he rewarded them with a big cash payout. The Senate tamely voted Nero the necessary powers and rewarded Agrippina with honors. The new era had begun.
NERO THE GOOD
At first, Rome welcomed the handsome new emperor. After the old and doddering Claudius, here was youth and vigor. Besides, Nero had even bluer blood. With him,
the dynasty of Augustus was back in power. And Nero was fashionable—was he ever!
He had blue-gray eyes, light-blond hair, and, we are told, a face that had regular but not especially pleasing features. True, at just short of his seventeenth birthday, Nero was young, but young leaders sometimes succeed. Augustus was only nineteen when he entered politics and shot to the top ranks, while Alexander the Great ascended to the throne at just age twenty. A ruler with intelligence, talent, good advisors, and a good character shaped by a fine upbringing can succeed in spite of youth. Nero had excellent advisors. Nobody knew the ins and outs of court better than Agrippina, while Burrus guaranteed the support of the Praetorians. Nero’s tutor Seneca took on a new role as the emperor’s counselor, and he argued that clementia, or mercy, should be the hallmark of the new ruler’s reign. Burrus offered the model of a severe military man, while Seneca contributed eloquence and dignity.
In a speech to the Senate, the new emperor promised to stop the abuses of the past and to restore its power. This was a modest concession rather than a major change, but it was real. For roughly the first five years of his reign, guided by Seneca and Burrus and coaxed by Agrippina, Nero kept his promises and shared power with the senators. He abolished closed-door trials and restrained the power of his freedmen.
So far, so good, but there were inherent problems in the situation, beginning with Nero’s character. He was insecure and vain. He wanted to be popular, and he tolerated no rivals. As one source put it, “He was carried away above all by popularity, and he was jealous of everyone who in any way stirred the feeling of the common people.”
When Nero didn’t get his way, he lashed out in vengeance. A fatherless child, raised in an atmosphere of conspiracy and blood by a stage-door mother, the new emperor was understandably wounded. He was the product of one of history’s most dysfunctional families. Now all Rome would pay a price.
Agrippina was determined to exercise power. At the beginning of Nero’s reign, she had her own German bodyguards, her own unit of the Praetorian Guard, and two official attendants (lictors) to accompany her in public. (Livia had had only one.) Young Nero accepted all this at first. The password that he gave the Praetorians was “the best mother” (optima mater), a favorable reference to Agrippina. Nero agreed to hold Senate meetings in the palace (not unprecedented) so that Agrippina could watch through a curtain (definitely unprecedented). On coins, she was depicted facing Nero, as if she were coruler. But Agrippina soon ran into obstacles. Roman public opinion would not tolerate a woman overtly exercising too much power. Meanwhile, the teenage Nero hated being criticized by his mother for not watching his spending. He retaliated by publicly stopping Agrippina from joining him on the tribunal to hear a foreign embassy; he did it tactfully, with Seneca’s help, but a rebuke is still a rebuke. Agrippina, it was said, was fuming: she could give her son the empire but not bear him ruling it.
Nero’s Rome is known as an era of wit. It started immediately after Claudius’s death. Seneca referred not to Claudius’s “deification” but to his “pumpkinification,” an obscure joke in a savage satire attacking the late emperor. Seneca’s brother said that Claudius had been raised to heaven by a hook, the way Roman executioners dragged the bodies of their victims to the Tiber. Finally, Nero supposedly said that mushrooms are the food of the gods, since Claudius had died after eating mushrooms and was then deified. Agrippina was surely not amused by the way her late husband was now mocked.
Nero’s marriage with Claudius’s daughter was unhappy. He fell in love with a freedwoman from Asia Minor and was smitten, even talking about marrying her. Agrippina, horrified, let her son know it, but he wouldn’t budge. He strengthened his position by getting rid of a powerful freedman who was Agrippina’s strongest ally at court.
Agrippina supposedly retaliated by threatening Nero. She pointed out how many other descendants of the divine Augustus there were in Rome, not to mention Claudius’s son. Still, she would not have seriously considered driving Nero from the throne. Then in the year 55, Claudius’s son took sick suddenly at a court banquet and died shortly afterward. The evidence suggests natural causes, but many people at the time believed that he had been poisoned on Nero’s order.
For the next four years, Agrippina was shut out of power, although she tried to work her way back. During this period, Nero made it a habit to go on nocturnal escapades with friends in the streets of Rome. They visited taverns and brothels in search of fun and trouble, such as brawls and breaking and entering. He was dressed in slave’s clothes and a wig to avoid being recognized. Bad as it was, such behavior was not unusual for young Roman aristocrats, and most people were willing to wink at it. They were less forgiving, though, when Nero encouraged fights in the theater. To restore order, actors were banished and soldiers were called in.
By the year 59, when he was twenty-one, Nero was ready to settle down, but first he decided to get rid of his mother. Love, power, and control each played a part in his motivation. It is plausible that Agrippina flirted with Nero in a highly inappropriate manner. That the two actually committed incest, as rumor had it, is less believable, but it can’t be ruled out. What is clear is that once again she expressed disapproval of his love life, this time over his new infatuation.
Poppaea Sabina was a woman fit for a king. She was wealthy, intelligent, and ambitious. Her family came from Pompeii, where they owned at least five houses, including two grand ones. Poppaea was probably born there. She independentally owned brickworks in the vicinity as well as a stylish seaside villa.
Poppaea’s father, a Roman knight named Titus Ollius, was on his way up in Roman government when he was executed after Sejanus’s fall for his support of the deposed schemer. Afterward, Poppaea took the name of her maternal grandfather, Gaius Poppaeus Sabinus, a consul and successful provincial governor, so as not to be tarred with her father’s brush. She married twice. Her first husband was a Praetorian prefect, and they had a son. After divorcing him, she married Marcus Salvius Otho, a consul’s son and a member of Rome’s smart set. When she caught Nero’s eye, he sent Otho off to govern Lusitania (roughly, Portugal), even though the man was only twenty-six and inexperienced.
Poppaea was broad-minded enough to take an interest in Judaism, although she displayed no interest in conversion. In any case, she did Jews no favor by pushing the appointment of Gessius Florus as governor of Judea, husband of one of her friends. Florus’s misgovernment provoked the great Jewish revolt in the year 66. It took Rome seven years to repacify Judea, and only at a great cost in blood and destruction for both sides.
Poppaea was one of the great beauties of the day. No wonder she has been played in films by actresses Claudette Colbert and Brigitte Bardot. Nero wrote a poem about Poppaea’s amber hair. She is said to have bathed daily in the milk of five hundred asses to preserve her skin and even inspired in her day a line of cosmetics named after her. She was six years older than Nero and married, but so was he. Nero was deeply in love with her. Some claim that she urged him to kill Agrippina.
Entirely aside from his love life, Nero might have feared Agrippina’s continuing influence with the Praetorian Guard, although that hardly justifies murder. But consciously and deliberately, Nero chose to kill his mother.
Poison was out of the question—too suspect after the sudden deaths of Claudius and his son, and, besides, Agrippina took enough antidotes to protect her. The Praetorian Guard was unreliable, so Nero turned to an ally in the Roman navy. On a spring night in the Bay of Naples, a plot unfolded. First Nero invited his mother to a banquet at his villa on the bay in order to settle past differences and to soften her up. Then he planned to drown her in a specially constructed collapsing boat. So the story goes; more likely a warship deliberately rammed her boat. In any case, Agrippina fell into the sea and was injured but survived and was brought back to shore.
Terrified of Agrippina’s revenge, Nero turned to Burrus but he refused to help. The Praetorian Guard, he said, would not injure the daughter of Germanicu
s. So Nero went back to the navy and sent a detachment of marines after Agrippina. He claimed to have discovered that she was trying to kill him.
When the troops reached Agrippina, she refused to believe their announcement that they were there to execute her on Nero’s orders. Her son wouldn’t do that, she insisted. Then they hit her, and she realized the truth. The story goes that she bared her belly, pointed to the womb that bore Nero, and told the men to strike there. If Agrippina did, in fact, say that, it is unlikely that she admitted her own failings as a mother that had made Nero into the fiend that he was.
Nero’s freedman and head of the major naval base nearby killed Agrippina. Nero said afterward that this day had given him rule of the empire, but later he hated the man for killing his mother because, as the historian Tacitus said, “we look on accomplices in evil deeds with a kind of reproach.” Wanting to get rid of the man, Nero first used him to give false testimony in another matter and then sent him off to a comfortable exile.
In later years, when he performed roles in Greek tragedy, Nero included in his repertory both a man who slept with his mother and a man who killed his mother. The choice might indicate, as the sources claim, that he felt remorse for his crime. If so, he didn’t show it at the time. Nero announced that he had foiled a plot by Agrippina to kill him. Seneca even wrote a letter to the Senate vouching for that cover story. Whatever they really thought, most people accepted Nero’s excuse. Days of thanksgiving were proclaimed for his safety, and sacrifices were made upon his safe return to Rome from the Bay of Naples.
Ten Caesars Page 10