Ten Caesars
Page 36
chaste, old-school mother: One of the characters in Tacitus’s Dialogue on Orators, 28, esp. 28.6 (ca. 102) describes her thus, perhaps harkening back to Augustus’s autobiography.
Venus, who drives her son, Aeneas, forward: Virgil, Aeneid, here and there. See the discussion in Susan Dixon, The Roman Mother (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 74.
Atia remarried, this time to another prominent public figure: He was Lucius Marcius Philippus, consul in 56 BC.
Octavian was eager to join Caesar at the front in 46 BC: Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Caesar Augustus, 157.14.
Burning with ambition, Octavian was a natural politician: Jürgen Malitz offers an excellent discussion of young Octavius’s career in “ ‘O puer qui omnia nomini debes,’ Zur Biographie Octavius bis zum Antritt seines Erbes,” Gymnasium 111 (2004): 381–409.
her son’s father was not really Gaius Octavius but the god Apollo: Perhaps the tale comes from a later period, when Augustus’s divinity was commonly spoken of, but it might just be early. Suetonius, Augustus, 94.4 and D. Wardle, Suetonius: Life of Augustus = Vita Divi Augusti (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 512–15; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 45.1.2; Domitius Marsus Hollis, Fragments of Roman Poetry, ca. 60 BC–AD 20 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 313n181.
Caesar supposedly even visited his bedside before departing Rome: Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Caesar Augustus, 158.20.
Mark Antony later accused: Suetonius, Augustus, 68.
Caesar himself had gone to bed with a powerful older man: Suetonius, Julius Caesar, 2.1, 22.2, 49.1–4.
he is supposed to have given up sex for a year: Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Caesar Augustus, 159.36.
“now he had to be a man”: Ibid., 91.38.
Octavian gave a speech that he later proudly circulated: Cicero, Letters to Atticus, 16.15.3.
swore by his hopes of attaining his father’s honors: Ibid., trans. Shackleton Bailey.
His mother was the first person to address him as Caesar: Nicolaus of Damascus, Life of Caesar Augustus, 93.54. Appian, Civil Wars, 3.11, says that the army at Brundisium accepted the name first. Toher thinks that it was only later that Atia called her son by the name of Caesar. See Nicolaus, The Life of Augustus and the Autobiography, ed. Mark Toher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 258.
But she advised cunning and patience: Appian, Civil Wars, 3.14.
he sealed documents with the image of a sphinx: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 51.3.
“chameleon”: Julian, The Caesars, 309.
Octavian got his sphinx seal from Atia: Pliny, Natural History, 37.4.10.
“At the age of nineteen at my own initiative”: Augustus, Res Gestae, 1.1–3.
Antony . . . hurled a charge of cowardice at Octavian: Suetonius, Augustus, 10.4.
he drank no more than three glasses of wine at dinner: Suetonius, Augustus, 77; See the commentary by Wardle, Suetonius: Life of Augustus, 468.
“The young man should be honored and lifted up—and out”: Cicero, Letters to Friends, 11.20.1.
“Here, stranger, the ashes of Atia”: Hic Atiae cinis est, genetrix hic Caesaris, hospes,/condita; Romani sic voluere patres. Epigrammata Bobiensia 40; A. S. Hollis, Fragments of Roman Poetry c. 60 BC–AD 20 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 313n182.
probably around three hundred were killed: On the numbers, see Josiah Osgood, Caesar’s Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 63n6.
“the victorious general Caesar son of a god”: IMPERATOR CAESAR DIVI FILIUS, Frederik Juliaan Vervaet, “The Secret History: The Official Position of Imperator Caesar Divi Filius from 31 to 27 BCE,” Ancient Society 40 (2010): 79–152, esp. 130–31.
He said later that he was ill: Suetonius, Augustus, 91.1; compare Appian, Civil Wars, 4.110; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 41.3.
“It’s time to die”: Suetonius, Augustus, 15.
“The lucky have children in three months”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 48.44.5, trans. Loeb Classical Library, here and throughout.
“He loved and esteemed her to the end”: Suetonius, Augustus, 62.2.
“Poor Antony,” he said in effect. “An alien queen had unmanned him.” See, for example, Plutarch, Antony, 60.1; Appian, Civil Wars, 5.1, 8, 9; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 50.4.3–4.
He said that he would spare them for three reasons: the memory of Alexander the Great, the size and beauty of the city, and as a favor to his teacher: Plutarch, Antony, 80.1–3; Moralia, 207A–B; compare Cassius Dio, Roman History, 51.16.3–4.
“Too many Caesars is not a good thing”: Plutarch, Antony, 81.2.
“I wished to see a king, not corpses”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 51.16.
Cassius of Parma: Not to be confused with the famous assassin Cassius (Velleius Paterculus, History of Rome, 2.87.3; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Deeds and Sayings 1.7.7).
Augustus was unique: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 53.16; Suetonius, Augustus, 7.2.
Coins issued in 27 and 26 BC: for instance RIC I (second edition) Augustus, 277, 488–91, 493–94, http://numismatics.org/ocre/results?q=Augustus%20AND%20year_num%3A%5B-27%20TO%20-27%5D&start=0.
The personal decadence of the elite bothered him: You can take the erotic temperature of the wicked old days of the Late Republic—the world that Augustus enjoyed as a young man and then legislated against as emperor—in Daisy Dunn, Catullus’ Bedspread: the Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, 1st US ed. (New York: Harper), 2016.
“a cunning fox imitating a noble lion”: Horace, Satires, 2.3.186.
Augustus himself would eulogize Agrippa: P. Köln, 4701, lines 12–14, in Köln et al., Kölner Papyri (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1987), 113–14.
who advised usurpers: Machiavelli, The Prince, bk. 8.
Augustus did not start soft: see Seneca, On Clemency, 1.9.1 and 1.11.1.
he killed more than a hundred senators: see, for example, Suetonius, Augustus, 15, and Appian, Civil Wars, 4.5.
He satisfied his troops: See Tacitus, Annals, 1.2.
“empire without end”: Virgil, Aeneid, 1.278–79.
“Make haste slowly”: Suetonius, Augustus, 25.4; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, 10.11.5; Macrobius, Saturnalia, 6.8.8; Polyaenus, Stratagems, 8.24.4.
“Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!”: Suetonius, Augustus, 23.
auctoritas: Res Gestae Divi Augusti, 34.3.
a mere “semblance of the republic”: Tacitus, Annals, 13.8.
Augustus spent another decade outside Italy: Suetonius, Augustus, 47; D. Wardle, Suetonius, 351.
he made sure to greet every member by name, without a prompter: Suetonius, Augustus, 53.3.
“Lord”: (Dominus) Ibid., 53.1.
“the transfer of the state to the free disposal of the senate and the people”: Augustus, Res Gestae, 34.14–15.
He used language that suggested that he had restored the republic: res publicam restituit. E.g. the Praenestine Fasti ad January 13, 27 BC: Victor Ehrenberg and A. H. M. Jones, Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), 45. Compare E. T. Salmon, “The Evolution of Augustus’ Principate,” Historia 5.4 (1956): 456–78, esp. 457; Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996) 42–79.
Augustus paid for the new forum with the spoils of war: Augustus, Res Gestae, 21.
“I found a Rome of bricks; I leave to you one of marble”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 56.30.3.
Rome as the Eternal City: Stephanie Malia Hom, “Consuming the View: Tourism, Rome, and the Topos of the Eternal City,” Annali d’Italianistica, “Capital City: Rome 1870–2010,” 28 (2010): 91–116.
he made sure the crowd saw him: Suetonius, Augustus, 43–46.
he wore lifts in his shoes to look taller: Ibid., 73.
pouring wine as an offering to the emperor at every banquet: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 51.19.7.
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sp; Heloise once defiantly wrote: “The Personal Letters: Letter 1. Heloise to Abelard,” in Abelard, Peter, Héloïse, Betty Radice, and M. T. Clanchy, The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, rev. ed. (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 51.
“Ulysses in a stola”: Ulixes stolatus, Suetonius, Caligula, 23.
young and ageless, with a sweet face: Compare Augustus of Prima Porta, Vatican Museums, Cat. 2290.
Livia saved her husband’s letters: Suetonius, Augustus, 84.2, and Tiberius, 54.1.
Hostile and sometimes brilliant literary tradition: Tacitus, Annals, here and there. Compare Robert Graves’s novel I Claudius.
“the first woman in the history of the West to be depicted systematically in portraits.” Elizabeth Bartman, Portraits of Livia: Imaging the Imperial Woman in Augustan Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), xxi.
“the Hen Roost”: Ad Gallinas in Latin (Suetonius, Galba, 1; Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 15.136–37; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 48.52.3–4).
“Livia was destined to hold in her lap even Caesar’s power”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 48.52.3–4.
Julia grew up to be bright and witty: Macrobius, Saturnalia, 2.5.
soon make old men of them: Ibid., 2.5.6.
that she only took on passengers when the ship was full: Ibid., 2.5.9–10.
Father of his Country: Res Gestae, 35.1.
a small and barren island off the Italian coast: The ancient island of Pandateria, today, Ventotene.
“A copy of the military exploits of the deified Augustus”: Res Gestae, 1.1.
in one version of the story, he reached his adoptive father in time: Suetonius, Tiberius, 21.1.
the “mime” of life: Suetonius, Augustus, 99.1.
“If the play has anything of merit, clap and send us out joyfully”: Ibid.
“Livia, live mindful of our marriage and farewell”: Ibid.; trans. Wardle, Suetonius: Life of Augustus, 77.
People noticed the irony that Augustus died in the very same room: Suetonius, Augustus, 100.1.
as she began a year of mourning: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 56.42.
CHAPTER 2: TIBERIUS, THE TYRANT
“Is it really you that we see, Commander?”: Velleius Paterculus, The Roman History, 2.104.3.
rose and addressed the senators: On this senate meeting, see Tacitus, Annals, 1.5–13; Suetonius, Tiberius, 23–25, and Augustus, 100–101; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 57.2–7.
He was good at hiding what he felt: Tacitus, Annals, 4.71; compare Cassius Dio, Roman History, 57.1.1–6.
(Tiberius remembered the man’s slight): The man in question was Gaius Asinius Gallus, who married Vipsania after Tiberius divorced her (Tacitus, Annals, 1.2, 6.23; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 58.23).
“Until I reach the point that it seems fair”: Suetonius, Tiberius, 24.2, in what Suetonius claims to be Tiberius’s own words and not a paraphrase or invention.
“holding a wolf by the ears”: Ibid., 25.1.
“just as a father would”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 48.44.3.
“considered an exalted rank for a woman to be a diminution of his own”: Tacitus, Annals, 1.14. See also Suetonius, Tiberius, 50.3.
so stiff and stern that he came off as unpleasant: Suetonius, Tiberius, 68.
tough and obstinate jaws: Ibid., 21.2.
overbearing mother: Tacitus, Annals, 5.1.
Tiberius was so upset when he once happened to see Vipsania: Suetonius, Tiberius, 7.2–3.
He said that he was exhausted: On Tiberius’s motives for going to Rhodes, see Velleius Paterculus, The Roman History, 2.99; Tacitus, Annals, 1.4.4, 1.53.1–2, 2.42–43, 4.57; Suetonius, Tiberius, 10.1–2; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 55.9.
praises Tiberius as a wise, prudent: Velleius Paterculus, The Roman History, 2.111.3.
A coin of the year 13: e.g., RIC I (2nd ed.) Augustus 225, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.1(2).aug.225.
“too many Caesars is not a good thing”: Plutarch, Antony, 81.2.
It was said that Julia gave up: Tacitus, Annals, 1.53.
He acknowledged the senators’ freedom of speech: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 57.7.4.
“I am master of the slaves”: Ibid., 57.8.2.
“kind, just, and indulgent masters”: Suetonius, Tiberius, 29.
“the body of the republic is one”: Tacitus, Annals, 1.12.
“Men fit to be slaves!”: Ibid., 3.65.
the affability and thoughtfulness: Suetonius, Julius Caesar, 72.1.
as such only in his fluency in Greek: Suetonius, Tiberius, 71.1.
his real temples would be in people’s hearts: Tacitus, Annals, 4.38.
“Tiberius possessed a great many virtues”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 58.28.5.
dishonest and cruel: Ibid., 57.6.3, compare 57.1–2; Suetonius, Tiberius eius diritatem 21.2, saeva ac lenta natura 57.1.
an elderly noble widow died at the end of the year 22: Tacitus, Annals, 3.76.
Germanicus was easygoing: Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 18.207–208; Tacitus, Annals, 1.33.
Portraits show his wife, Agrippina the Elder: e.g. RIC I (2nd ed.) Gaius/Caligula 55, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.1(2).gai.55.
an epic poem trumpeting his boldness: Albinovanus Pedo in Seneca the Elder, Suasoriae, 1.15; see Tacitus, Annals, 2.23–24.
Germanicus had to ask the Alexandrians to tone it down: M. G. L. Cooley, ed., Tiberius to Nero (Cambridge: London Association of Classical Teachers, 2011), 163.
allegedly suspected Piso and Plancina: Tacitus, Annals, 2.71; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 57.18.9.
universal outpouring of grief: Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 18.209.
“I, Hades, declare”: Bassus 5, On the Death of Germanicus = Palatine Anthology 7.39, translation in Cooley, Tiberius to Nero, 164.
“A Prince Uninterested in Extending the Empire”: Tacitus, Annals, 4.32.
typically accounting for more than half the annual budget: E. Cascio, “The Early Roman Empire: The State and the Economy,” in The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World, ed. W. Scheidel, I. Morris, and R. Saller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 624n26.
devotes less of its budget to the military: www.cbo.gov/topics/defense-and-national-security.
Rome had already conquered the best part of the world: Strabo, Geography, 17.839; compare William V. Harris, Roman Power: A Thousand Years of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 129.
daring, wicked, and crafty: Tacitus, Annals, 4.1–2.
“Rome is where the emperor is”: Herodian, History of the Roman Empire Since the Death of Marcus Aurelius, 1.6.5.
a ruler 150 years later: Commodus ruled from 180 to 193.
It seems unlikely that Tiberius left Rome to escape his mother, Livia, as some said: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 57.12. See also Tacitus, Annals, 4.57; Suetonius, Tiberius, 51.
pulling out old letters from Augustus: Suetonius, Tiberius, 51.1.
The senate also voted to honor Livia with a triumphal arch: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 58.2.3–6.
“A good shepherd shears his flock”: Suetonius, Tiberius, 32.2.
The “old goat”: Ibid., 45.
“minnows”: Ibid., 44.1.
“the last of the Romans”: Ibid., 61.3.
forced to commit suicide: Tacitus, Annals, 4.34–35.
so eager to rule that: Ibid., 6.25.
he accused her of adultery: Ibid., 6.25.
as if to imply that he wanted to poison her: Suetonius, Tiberius, 53.
a rumor that she was starved to death: Tacitus, Annals, 6.25.
“Let them hate me”: Suetonius, Tiberius, 5.
If the sources can be trusted: Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 18.6.6.
said to be as beautiful as Venus: Nikos Kokkinos, Antonia Augusta, Portrait of a Great Roman Lady (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 15–119.
she wouldn’t so much as spit: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 7.80.
viper: Suetonius, Caligula, 11.
“When I am dead”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 58.23.2.
Some said that Gaius had Tiberius poisoned: Tacitus, Annals, 6.50; Suetonius, Tiberius, 73.2; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 58.28.3.
“To the Tiber with Tiberius!”: Suetonius, Tiberius, 75.1.
“riveted the fetters of his country”: Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, ed. David Womersley (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Press, 1994), 128.
CHAPTER 3: NERO, THE ENTERTAINER
“A rumor had gone forth everywhere”: Tacitus, Annals, 15.39. Many other similar accounts are found in the ancient sources except that they all treat Nero’s behavior as a fact and not as merely a rumor. See Suetonius, Nero, 38; Cassius Dio, Roman History, 62.18.1; Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 17.1.5.
lyre: technically, a cithara, a two-stringed instrument played by professional musicians.
a short-lived marriage to one of his sisters and incest: Suetonius, Caligula, 24.1.
stabling his favorite horse in marble and ivory: Ibid., 55.3.
boast to his horrified, aristocratic grandmother: Ibid., 29.
a man ought either to be frugal or be Caesar: Ibid., 37.
“If only the Roman people had but one neck!”: Ibid., 30.2.
A statue shows her in a formal robe: Louvre Museum, MR 280.
“Augusta the whore”: Juvenal, Satires, 6.118.
Female Wolf-Dog: Ibid., 6.123.
all-night sex competition: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 10.83.
A statue of Agrippina: Centrale Montemartini, Rome, inv. MC 1882; Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek inv. 753.
extra canine tooth: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 7.71.
“It is impossible for any good man to be sprung”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 61.2.
“sand without lime”: Suetonius, Caligula, 53.2.
change a free state into a Persian despotism: Seneca, On Benefits, 2.12.
judged Caligula to be bloodthirsty: Ibid., 4.31.
She accused him of committing adultery with Caligula’s youngest sister: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 60.80.5.
He had blue-gray eyes . . . regular but not especially pleasing features: Suetonius, Nero, 51.1.
He was carried away above all by popularity: Ibid., 53.