Ten Caesars

by Barry Strauss

  Vespasian’s success illustrates Rome’s flexibility, adaptability, and creativity. But it also demonstrates the empire’s cruelty. His most famous building was a place for men to kill one another as entertainment for tens of thousands of spectators. He came to power through civil war after a bloody and ruinous year of four emperors. In addition to the death and destruction in that conflict, there were the casualties Vespasian caused in Britain and Judea (where he had Titus finish his work). According to Josephus, 1.1 million Jews died in the siege of Jerusalem, and 97,000 Jews were taken prisoner in the entire war with Rome. The first figure is a vast exaggeration, but the truth was probably appalling enough. The second figure is likely to be roughly accurate.

  The Romans were destroyers as well as builders, and Vespasian and Titus engaged in one of history’s most momentous acts of destruction by burning down the temple and sacking Jerusalem. It was an act of calculated terror aimed at ending Jewish political resistance. It was neither genocidal nor especially anti-Semitic. Jews dispersed outside Israel (in what is called the Diaspora), including Rome, were unharmed, except for the new tax. Jewish communal life continued in the Land of Israel outside Jerusalem. Vespasian personally allowed rabbis to turn the city of Yavneh (in what is today central Israel) into a theological and cultural center. It was there that the foundations were laid for what would become modern Judaism. Meanwhile, the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem tended to widen the gulf between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. After the year 70 the early Church moved further away from its Jewish roots.

  Upon Vespasian’s death, Titus became emperor. Perhaps because he knew his reputation as his father’s hatchet man, Titus went on a charm offensive. He wooed the Senate by promising never to kill any senator, but he had to make an additional concession to public opinion. Titus had to send the much-hated Berenice, his queen, from Rome at once, “against his will and hers,” according to Suetonius.

  So Titus was lonely, but he was popular. Yet his rule was neither long nor easy. Italy suffered a series of major disasters during his reign: a fire in Rome, a plague, and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in October 79, which destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. It was the worst volcanic eruption in Italy’s recorded history. Titus cleverly turned these calamities to his political advantage by responding with kind words and material relief. He moved efficiently and rapidly to rebuild after the fire, and he provided financial aid to the stricken region around the volcano. He died on September 13, 81, after a brief illness, just short of forty-two.

  Power now passed to Titus’s younger brother, Domitian. He, too, was a Flavian, but, as we shall see, he quickly veered off the smooth trail that his father had blazed.

  Bust of Trajan.

  5

  TRAJAN

  THE BEST PRINCE

  On the night of December 13, 115, an earthquake struck Antioch. At the time, located in Syria, Antioch was the third largest city in the Roman world, with an estimated population of about a half million people. Only Alexandria and Rome were bigger. The quake was felt all over the Near East and generated a tsunami that reached Judea, but the earthquake hit Antioch hardest of all. It began there with a bellowing roar. The ground shook, and trees and buildings went up in the air and came crashing down, raising an almost impenetrable cloud of dust. With an estimated magnitude of a ferocious 7.3 or 7.5, the quake destroyed much of the town and caused a loss of life made worse by the recent influx of soldiers and civilians. They thronged what had become in effect a temporary capital because the emperor was there. Imperator Caesar Nerva Traianus Divi Nervae filius Augustus, or, as we call him, Trajan, was wintering in Antioch between military campaigns.

  The quake killed one of the consuls, who was also in Antioch. Trajan was luckier: he managed to escape from a damaged building by climbing out a window, suffering only minor injuries. He proceeded to live outdoors in the city’s hippodrome for the next few days while the aftershocks continued to rumble. For a man who compared himself to Hercules and Jupiter, it was a humiliating turn of events. To soften the blow, Trajan let it be known that a being of superhuman stature had led him to safety. Still, it was a far cry from the official art that showed Jupiter lending his thunderbolt to Trajan as his divinely chosen deputy on earth.

  Trajan thrived on drama as long as it put him on center stage. Despite all the devastation, an earthquake had elements that Trajan liked: violence, divine intervention, and the opportunity for him to display his benevolence, protection, and humanity to a suffering world and hence win more popularity among the people who loved him. He was, after all, the Father of the Fatherland—a title granted him by the Senate. Almost immediately, he put the process of rebuilding Antioch into effect. And Trajan was one of the greatest builders Rome would know.

  The glimpse of Trajan climbing out of the rubble is a precious one for no ancient biography of him survives. Aside from brief references in ancient histories we have only oratory, architecture, and art—official opinion—and it closes around him like a legionary unit going into a tortoise formation and covering itself with its shields. These sources reveal little of the man. They show us Trajan as he wanted to be seen; and, like most emperors, he wanted the public to see the marble façade that he worked hard to erect and not the brick and concrete behind it.

  The public did not object. In fact, the Senate and people rewarded him with the title of the Best Prince, sounding to modern ears almost as if he were in some kind of Academy Award competition with his predecessors. Later Roman tradition looked back on Trajan as one of Rome’s greatest emperors. By the mid–third century, people welcomed each new emperor with the wish that he be “luckier than Augustus, better than Trajan.”

  Yet upon closer look, the real Trajan begins to emerge in all his talent and paradox. He was a much more cunning and complicated man than appears in the image of dull perfection that he put forth. Despite his claim of being the man in charge, he depended on the powerful women in his household as much as any emperor did.

  He wasn’t born to the imperial family, nor did he come to power during a civil war. He was an outsider who worked his way in, a shrewdly political general who knew how to survive in a tyranny, and a leader who quietly made himself indispensable. The story of Trajan’s rise to power begins in the days of his predecessor, Domitian.

  DOMITIAN

  After Titus’s short reign, his brother, Domitian, replaced him in the year 81. Titus had a seventeen-year-old daughter, Julia Flavia, but the Romans never considered the possibility of a ruling empress.

  A talented and hardworking administrator, Domitian was arrogant. He put on the airs of a king and married a glamorous and imperious woman. The Senate, used to rugged Vespasian and charming Titus, took it hard. Domitian allegedly began one letter, issued in the name of his officials, with the statement “Our Master and Our God orders that this be done.” Far from showing an interest in Senate meetings, he often conducted public business from his estate outside Rome. Senators were angry; informers stirred the pot; conspiracies arose and were put down forcefully. We know the names of fourteen senators who were executed, including twelve ex-consuls. Domitian also twice expelled philosophers from Rome, including many Stoics, a group whose philosophy many senators found congenial.

  The Senate eventually got its revenge by poisoning Domitian’s reputation in the history books. One of many hostile anecdotes has him sitting alone in his room every day for hours, catching flies and stabbing them with a stylus. Depending on the version of the story, it portrays the man as bored, cruel, obsessive, and tyrannical.

  The irony is that Domitian offered good government in many ways. During his fifteen-year-rule, he showed himself to be a responsible financial steward, a fair-minded administrator of the provinces, and an able manager of border and defense policy. He gained popularity for his shows, banquets, and cancellation of debts. His gladiatorial games included such crowd-pleasers as night fights by torchlight and bouts between women gladiators.

  H
e was a great builder, too, whose projects included a new hippodrome, the outline of which is still seen today in Rome’s Piazza Navona. Domitian completed the Colosseum as well. Both benefited the public, but Domitian’s grandest project was a monument to his own ego rivaling Nero’s Golden House: an immense new palace on the Palatine Hill.

  Tall and handsome when young, Domitian grew into a man with a fleshy face and a prominent nose like his father, as well as a wrinkled brow and a potbelly. Portrait busts give him a full head of curly hair, but, in fact, he was bald and sensitive about it. But he had a beautiful if highhanded wife.

  She was Domitia, the daughter of Nero’s talented but ill-starred general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo. A smitten Domitian persuaded her to divorce her husband and marry him. She looks serenely lovely in a portrait bust, with a smooth-skinned face underneath a mountain of hair. She has tightly wound ringlets rising in a bouffant. But there were problems. Domitia bore Domitian two or three sons, but they all died very young. She had an affair with an actor, which caused Domitian to separate from her and to have the actor executed. Later, Domitian took her back, after his niece Julia Flavia had served as his companion. People gossiped that they were having an affair, especially after Domitian executed Julia’s husband for treason. When Julia died a few years later, in 91, rumor said that it was a botched abortion and that Domitian was the father. He in turn calmly had her deified.

  TRAJAN’S EARLY RISE

  Trajan’s father, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, who was born in Hispania, served Vespasian as a legionary commander. Afterward, Traianus rose very high in Roman public life. Traianus’s wife—Trajan’s mother—was probably a certain Marcia, possibly from a prominent Italian senatorial family. They had two children, Trajan and his sister, Ulpia Marciana. They lived in a rich agricultural region of Hispania known for its olives, but the life of a gentleman farmer interested neither father nor son. For them, it was Rome or nothing. And Rome was willing to give them a chance.

  One of the strengths of the empire was its ability to co-opt the wealthy elite of the provinces. First it offered them citizenship, if they weren’t Roman citizens already, as Trajan’s family was. Then it gave them a seat in the Senate. Finally it made them emperor. Trajan was the first man from the provinces to become emperor.

  He was born around the year 53. One of the few things we can surmise about Trajan’s youth is that he admired his father. Years later, when emperor, Trajan deified his father, an exceptional honor. Trajan was about sixteen years old when Vespasian became emperor. By then, Trajan might well have lived in Rome because an ambitious father from the provinces would want his son to finish his education in the imperial city. Trajan was never much of a student, but he certainly knew how to network. Rome had a Spanish community, and Trajan need not have felt alone. One has to wonder if, beneath Trajan’s proud exterior as a grownup, there remained a boy from the provinces who wanted to show the Romans that he could outdo them both at home and abroad.

  Trajan served as a colonel (military tribune) for several years, including a period under his father in Syria around the year 75 and then some time on the Rhine. He did a longer stint than usual as colonel, and, if we can trust an obsequious source, he threw himself into his work. It was probably not long after this that Trajan took a wife, since elite Roman men usually married in their early twenties. His father probably arranged the alliance with Pompeia Plotina.

  Like Trajan, Plotina came from a provincial family. Her home was in southern Gaul, in the city of Nemausus (Nîmes). No details survive about her family but it was no doubt wealthy and prominent because Trajan would not have settled for less. We don’t know when Plotina was born, but, since wives in the Roman elite were typically about ten years younger than their husbands, we might estimate her birth year as 65. A shrewd, capable, educated woman, Plotina would play a major role as her husband’s supporter. Some said she was his manipulator.

  In 89 Trajan had command of a legion in the sleepy backwater of northern Hispania when a rebellion broke out against Emperor Domitian on the German frontier. It was Trajan’s big chance. He marched rapidly to Germany in Domitian’s defense. Although the revolt failed before Trajan got there, he impressed the emperor with his efficiency. As a reward, he received an ordinary consulship and probably the governorship of Upper Germania and a senior command on the Danube front, where he won a victory.

  The emperor got on well with soldiers like Trajan. At home, among civilians, he flaunted his power and baited his enemies. After Domitian executed his cousin in 95, a man whose sons he had adopted as heirs, nobody felt safe anymore. Although not known for his wit, Domitian got off a few bon mots, including the observation that no one believes in a conspiracy against an emperor until it has succeeded.

  In his case, one finally did. On September 19, 96, a small group of conspirators stabbed Domitian to death in his bedroom. The two Praetorian prefects were aware of the plot. His old childhood nurse cremated Domitian’s body, and his ashes were buried in secret in the Temple of the Flavians in Rome. The Senate condemned his memory, and therefore most statues of him were destroyed, and his name was erased from inscriptions—but not from Domitia’s memory. She survived her husband by about thirty-five years, living in great wealth, and referred to herself proudly as Domitian’s wife. That casts doubt on the rumor that she helped the men who killed him—unless, of course, she had a change of heart later.

  NERVA

  The Senate moved quickly to name one of its own as Domitian’s successor. Marcus Cocceius Nerva was an experienced politician from an old and distinguished family. Twice consul, he was a courtier and a survivor who got along with Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian. He seemed like a safe pair of hands.

  Nerva pleased the Senate by releasing prisoners, making amends for past treason trials, and ruling out future ones. He appealed to the people through grain and land distribution and by carrying out various other welfare programs. According to the historian Tacitus, Nerva managed to combine what had seemed incompatible: liberty and imperial power.

  But the army had liked Domitian and was not impressed. One army nearly mutinied upon his death, and another was in the hands of an unreliable provincial governor. In the year 97 the Praetorian Guard decided the time was right for revenge on Domitian’s assassins. Mutinying, they besieged Nerva in his palace and forced him against his will to give up the culprits, whom they executed, torturing one of them first. Then they forced Nerva to thank them in public.

  Realizing his weakness, Nerva conferred with his council of advisors and decided not to abdicate. Instead, he chose a successor. He was in his sixties, widowed and childless, so he turned to an outsider. Having made his decision, he went to the speaker’s platform in the Roman Forum and proclaimed in a loud voice, “May good success attend the Roman Senate and people and myself. I hereby adopt Marcus Ulpius Nerva Trajan.”

  The most likely other candidate belonged to a faction opposed to Nerva. Trajan was politically friendly and the son of a famous father with an impressive personal record to boot. Last but not least, he had a number of legions ready to march on Rome at his command, so choosing him protected the peace.

  Nerva’s choice was an exercise in Roman pragmatism. Without any fuss or bother, he broke two barriers. For the first time, an emperor adopted a son who was related to him neither by blood nor by marriage. And, for the first time, he nominated a successor from outside Italy.

  But in a deeper sense, Trajan represented continuity because the army was the real driver of change. As usual, the army was the most egalitarian and innovative force in Roman society.

  Nerva sent Trajan a diamond ring as a sign of his adoption, along with a letter that asked, in an elegant and roundabout way, for revenge on the Praetorians who had humiliated him. He also gave Trajan the titles of Caesar and Imperator, marking him as his chosen successor. Meanwhile, Nerva ensured Trajan’s constitutional position as his successor by calling together the Senate to endow him with both power and authority.

 
Nerva died within three or four months, in January 98, and Trajan became emperor. He quickly avenged his predecessor by executing the leaders of the Praetorians’ revolt against him. Never mind that the revolt had led to Trajan’s elevation: emperorship was family, and when it came to family, honor was everything. And so Trajan avenged his adoptive father. He had Nerva deified as well and buried in the mausoleum of Augustus, making him the last emperor to enjoy that honor.

  TRAJAN SHOWS HOW TO BE AN EMPEROR

  Domitian pleased the army but not the Senate. Nerva pleased the Senate but not the army. Trajan showed from the very start that he was the man to gratify both, while also making the people happy. He garnered impressively widespread support.

  Trajan stayed in the north until late 99, building up the army’s strength on the Rhine and Danube frontiers against the Germanic tribes. When he finally entered Rome, he did so with a shrewd show of public relations. Instead of riding on a litter or chariot, he walked. He greeted the assembled senators and knights warmly and sacrificed to Jupiter on the Capitoline before finally going up to the imperial residence on the Palatine Hill.

  Plotina captured the spirit of the new regime when she first entered the palace. Turning to face the crowd, she said, “I enter here as the same kind of woman as I would like to be when I depart.” She could hardly have struck a more different tone from the haughty Domitia.

  In his forties when he became emperor, Trajan was in the prime of life, strong physically and mentally, and full of energy and plans. His portrait busts, of which many survive, have the determined look of an aging athlete. His hair is arranged carefully in a style reminiscent of Augustus. His features are regular and could be called classical except for thin, tightly pressed lips. A modern detractor said that Trajan looked stupid and was believed to be honest. Some of the statues do have dull expressions, yet the man depicted in Trajan’s coin portraits appears no less shrewd than other emperors.