Ten Caesars
Page 39
an age of gold ended to be replaced by one of rust and iron: Cassius Dio, History of Rome, 71.36.4.
CHAPTER 8: SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, THE AFRICAN
Lepcis Magna: Also known as Leptis Magna.
dark skinned: John Malalas, Chronicle, 12.18.
One contemporary image: Severan Tondo, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Antikenmuseum, Inv. No. 31329.
Dio knew Severus personally and had mixed feelings: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 77.16–17; compare 75.2 and 72.36.4.
a man of few words but many ideas: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 77.12.
As a boy, he supposedly played at being judge: “Septimius Severus,” in Historia Augusta, 1.4.
energetic: Herodian, History of the Roman Empire Since the Death of Marcus Aurelius, 2.9.2.
inquisitive: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 76.13.
blunt: Ibid., 75.8.1, 76.8.1.
quick witted and decisive: Herodian, History of the Roman Empire Since the Death of Marcus Aurelius, 2.9.2.
He had a temper: “Septimius Severus,” in Historia Augusta, 2.6.
ruthless and deceitful: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 75.2.1–2; Herodian, History of the Roman Empire Since the Death of Marcus Aurelius, 2.14.4.
Severus did not suffer a low opinion: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 77.15.3.
served as the model for Venus de Milo: See Barbara Levick, Julia Domna, Syrian Empress (London: Routledge, 2007), 3.
images of Domna: For example, bust in Glyptothek, Munich Inv. 354; coins, for example, RIC IV Septimius Severus 540, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.4.ss.540_aureus; RIC IV Septimius Severus 857, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.4.ss.857.
Greek man of letters who settled in Rome: Philostratus of Athens.
the Wise or the Philosopher: Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, 622.
coin portraits: For example, RIC IV Pertinax 1, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.4.pert.1.
The spectacle proved the most brilliant of any that I have witnessed: LCL translation 1927 modified, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/75*.html.
“The men of Italy, long unused to arms and war”: Herodian, History of the Roman Empire Since the Death of Marcus Aurelius, trans. Edward C. Echols (Herodian of Antioch’s History of the Roman Empire, 1961 Berkeley and Los Angeles), www.livius.org/sources/content/herodian-s-roman-history/herodian-2.11.
compared his reign to bloody Tiberius’s: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 58.14.1.
Marius and Sulla: Ibid., 76.8.1.
Augustus, whom Severus also cited: Ibid.
One Roman wit congratulated Severus for finding a father: Ibid., 76.9.4.
A contemporary critic complained about its expense: Ibid., 75.3.3.
“most holy” had already been used to describe several emperors: Hermann Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae. Berlin, vol. 2, pt. 1 (1902), nos. 6472, 6988. Hadrian and Antonius Pius were both “most holy” princes.
“Here’s your Plautianus!”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 77.4.4.
an often-overlooked monument on a quiet street in Rome: Arch of the Argentarii.
“Come, give it here”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 77.17.4.
Mother of the Camp: CIL XII 4345; XIV 120.
“Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 77.15.2.
“You shall hold the bones of a man”: Ibid., 77.15.3.
a strong-looking man with blunt features: For example, bust in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples inv. 6603.
According to a contemporary, the purpose: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 77.9.5.
Coin portraits show Maesa: For example, RIC IV Elagabalus 256, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.4.el.256.
In coin portraits, Elagabalus: For example, ibid., 25, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.4.el.25.
A marble bust depicts a slim, curly headed teenager: Rome, Capitoline Museums, Inv. MC 470.
A coin from early in the new reign: RIC IV Severus Alexander 7d, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.4.sa.7d.
In some later coins, he is bearded: For example, ibid., 648a http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.4.sa.648a.
A marble bust shows him in a toga: Rome, Capitoline Museums Inv. MC 471.
Mamaea is depicted with her family’s characteristic wavy hair: For example, RIC IV Severus Alexander 670, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.4.sa.670.
“the principal author of the decline and fall”: Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, 148.
“the emperor is not bound by the laws”: princeps legibus solutus est, Justinian, Institutes, 2.17.8.
CHAPTER 9: DIOCLETIAN, THE GREAT DIVIDER
“If only you could see at Salona”: Pseudo-Aurelius Victor, Epitome de Caesaribus, 39.6, trans. Thomas M. Banchich modified, www.roman-emperors.org/epitome.htm.
One marble bust shows a rough-hewn thug: J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, Malibu, CA 78.AA.8.
Another striking bust in black basalt: Worcester Art Museum, “Head of a Man (possibly Diocletian),” 1974.297.
quoted a line from Virgil’s The Aeneid: “Carus, Carinus and Numerianus,” in Historia Augusta, 13.3–5.
Aper means “boar” in Latin: Ibid., 14.1–15.6.
an officer whose wife Carinus had seduced: Pseudo-Aurelius Victor, Epitome de Caesaribus, 38.8.
the loss of one soldier hardly mattered: Ibid., 29.5; Jordanes, Getica, 18.
another major epidemic: Harper, Fate of Rome, 136–45.
brought an end to the favorable climate: Ibid., 129–36, 167–75.
A surviving portrait bust that might be Maximian: Civico Museo Archeologico, Milan, www.comune.milano.it/wps/portal/luogo/museoarcheologico/lecollezioni/milanoromana/ritratto_massimiano/lut/p/a0/04_Sj9CPykssy0xPLMnMz0vMAfGjzOItLL3NjDz9Dbz9Az3NDBx9DIMt_UxMjc28DfQLsh0VAba4yro!. For a coin image, see RIC V Diocletian 342, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.5.dio.342.
fierce, wild, and uncivilized: Eutropius, Abridgment of Roman History, 2.9.27.
estimated that he traveled ten miles a day: Timothy D. Barnes, The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1982), 51–52.
“an undivided inheritance”: “Genathliacus of Maximian Augustus,” Panegyrici Latini 11.6.3, trans. C. E. V. Nixon and Barbara Saylor Rodgers, In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini: Introduction, Translation, and Historical Commentary, with the Latin Text of R.A.B. Mynors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 91.
Coins show Valeria as a pretty young woman: For example, RIC VI Serdica 34, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.6.serd.34.
One ancient source, admittedly hostile: Lactantius, On the Death of Persecutors, 9.
temple of Jupiter: Jasna Jeličić-Radonić, “Aurelia Prisca,” Prilozi povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji (Contributions to Art History in Dalmatia), 41, no. 1 (August 2008): 5–25, http://hrcak.srce.hr/109683.
Galerius claimed that she had mated with Mars: Pseudo-Aurelius Victor, Epitome de Caesaribus 40.17; Lactantius, On the Death of Persecutors, 11.21.
statue group of the four rulers: www.basilicasanmarco.it/basilica/scultura/la-decorazione-delle-facciate/la-facciata-orientale/?lang=en and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_the_Four_Tetrarchs. Found on the south façade of the Basilica of San Marco, Venice, Italy.
Diocletian humiliated him: Ammianus Marcellinus, History, 14.11.10; 22.7.1; Eutropius, Abridgment of Roman History, 9.24; Festus, Breviarum, 25.
RESTORER OF THE EVERLASTING LIGHT: The Arras Medallion, British Museum B.1147.
“a peace which was earned with much sweat”: Diocletian, Edict of Maximal Prices, as cited in Roger Rees, Diocletian and the Tetrarchy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 139.
in September 298 an Egyptian blacksmith failed to show up for work: P. Beatty Panop. 1.213–16 (September 17, 298); Rees, Diocletian and the Tetrarchy, II.21, 149.
“What a vision your piety granted”: Panegyrici Latini 11(3) (July 21, 291, Trier) (I Chapter 4.2), 11.1.1, Roger Re
es, Diocletian and the Tetrarchy, 132.
“Do you see Diocletian?”: Panegyrici Latini 11(3) (July 21, 291, Trier) (I Chapter 4.2), 11.11.4, Roger Rees, Diocletian and the Tetrarchy, 132.
“How many divisions does the Pope have?”: Winston Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1 (London: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 105.
“the peace of the gods”: For example, Cicero, For Marcus Fonteius, 30; Livy, History of Rome, 1.31.7.
like poisonous and evil snakes: Manichaean rescript. Collation of the Laws of Moses and Rome 15.3 (March 31, 302(?), Alexandria) as cited in Rees, Diocletian and the Tetrarchy, 174.
the driving force behind Galerius was his mother: Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, 11.1–3.
According to a Christian source: Lactantius, On the Deaths of the Persecutors, 12–14.
he ordered them to sacrifice to the gods: Ibid., 15.1.
Christians reacted to persecution in various ways: Herbert Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 260–65, 266–71, 302–9.
As for Romula, after she died: See Dragoslav Srejovic and Cedomir Vasic, Imperial Mausolea and Consecration Memorials in Felix Romuliana (Gamzigrad, East Serbia) (Belgrade: Centre for Archaeological Research, Faculty of Philosophy, The University of Belgrad, 1994), 149–51. Cited in Bill Leadbetter, “Galerius, Gamzigrad and the Politics of Abdication,” ASCS [Australasian Society for Classical Studies] 31 (2010): 8–9. These at least are plausible conclusions from the archaeological evidence.
Julius Caesar called an act of political illiteracy: Suetonius, Julius Caesar, 77.
CHAPTER 10: CONSTANTINE, THE CHRISTIAN
In the courtyard of Rome’s Capitoline Museums: In ancient times, the statue stood not here but in the Basilica of Maxentius, on the far side of the Roman Forum.
colossal marble bust of Constantine: Rome, Capitoline Museums, Inv. MC0757.
a right hand with pointed finger: Actually, two versions of the hand survive.
“With the power of this God as ally”: Constantine, Letter to Shapur II, in Eusebius, Life of Constantine 4.9, trans. by Averil Cameron, and Stuart George Hall, Eusebius, Life of Constantine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 153.
born at Naissus (today’s Niš, Serbia) on February 27, 273: T. D. Barnes, The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 36, 39–42.
They fell in love and married: As reconstructed by Barnes, New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine, 36–37, 39–42. Possible, but less likely, they never married, making Constantine a bastard.
Our most important source for the life of Constantine says otherwise: Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 3.47.2, a text completed shortly after the emperor’s death in 337. T. D. Barnes, Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 44–45, rejects Eusebius’s statement as mere flattery of the emperor.
later church historians say that Helena: For example, Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, 1.18. See Cameron and Hall, Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 395.
“the light of the world”: John 8:12.
Jesus’s face shone like the sun: Matthew 17:2.
God Himself had entrusted him with the direction of human affairs: Letter of Constantine to Ablavius (or Aelafius). Found in the third appendix of Optatus of Milevis, Against the Donatists. See Optatus: Against the Donatists, trans. Mark Edwards, Translated Texts for Historians 27 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1997), 183–84.
TO THE INVINCIBLE SUN, COMPANION OF THE EMPEROR: For example, RIC VII Treveri 135, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.7.tri.135.
“divine inspiration”: instinctu divinitatis, CIL VI.1139.
Helena’s coins: See for example, RIC VII Treveri 481, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.7.tri.481.
Fausta’s coins: See, for example, RIC VII Treveri 484. 1944.100.13272, http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.7.tri.484.
We strive to the best of our ability: Constantine, Speech to the Assembly of the Saints 11.1, trans. T. D. Barnes, Constantine, 119.
a waste of public money: Zosimus, New History, 2.32.
“the venerable day of the sun”: Theodosian Code, 2.8.1.
render unto Caesar: Matthew 22:21.
“a fellow worshipper of the most high God”: Letter of Constantine to Ablavius (or Aelafius) Found in the third appendix of Optatus of Milevis, Against the Donatists. See Optatus: Against the Donatists, trans. Edwards, 183–84.
good shepherd: John 10:11.
the most likely explanation: Zosimus, New History, 2.29.2; Epitome de Caesaribus 42.11–12; Barnes, Constantine, 144–50.
“murderers of the Lord”: Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 4.27.1, compare 3.18.2; Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History, 1.9.
“the dollar of the Middle Ages”: Robert Sabatino Lopez, “The Dollar of the Middle Ages,” Journal of Economic History 11, no. 3 (1951): 209–34.
EPILOGUE: THE GHOSTS OF RAVENNA
the last ruler of “the Western Empire of the Roman race”: Jordanes, Getica, 46.243.
Gibbon suggested long ago that Christianity played a big role in the fall of Rome: Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 3 (1994): cp. LXXI.II, 1068–70.
“Solomon, I have outdone thee!”: Narratio de Aedificatione Templi S. Sophiae 27, in Scriptores Originum Constantinopolitanarum, ed. Theodor Preger (Leipzig, Ger.: B. G. Teubner, 1901), 105.
“Royal purple is the noblest shroud”: Procopius, History of the Wars, 1.24.37.
A NOTE ON SOURCES
The bibliography on the Roman emperors is vast. Here I emphasize accessible books in English that might provide the basis of further reading.
GENERAL AND REFERENCE
Cancik, Hubert, Helmuth Schneider, Christine F. Salazar, and David E. Orton, eds. Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World. English ed. Leiden, Ned.: Brill, 2002.
Hornblower, Simon, Anthony Spawforth, and Esther Eidinow. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
OCRE, “Online Coins of the Roman Empire,” http://numismatics.org/ocre/.
“Orbis, The Stanford Geospatial Network of the Ancient World,” http://orbis.stanford.edu.
Talbert, Richard J. A., ed. The Barrington Atlas of the Ancient Greco-Roman World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
ANCIENT SOURCES
Many ancient sources are available online both in translation and in the original languages. Several good websites are Lacus Curtius: Into the Roman World, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/home.html; Perseus Digital Library, www.perseus.tufts.edu; and Livius.org, Articles on Ancient History, www.livius.org, which offers both texts and encyclopedia articles.
Most of the ancient sources referred to in this book are available in bilingual editions in the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press). Here, in addition, are some readily available English-language translations of important sources:
Birley, Anthony. Lives of the Later Caesars: The First Part of the Augustan History, with Newly Compiled Lives of Nerva and Trajan. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1976.
Cocceianus, Cassius Dio. The Roman History: the Reign of Augustus. Translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1987.
Josephus. The Jewish War. Edited by Martin Goodman. Translated by Martin Hammond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Marcus Aurelius. Meditations. Translated by and with a foreword by Gregory Hays. Modern Library ed. New York: Modern Library, 2002.
Pliny the Younger. Complete Letters. Translated by P. G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Suetonius. Lives of the Caesars. Translated by Catherine Edwards. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Tacitus. The Annals. Translated by A. J. Woodman. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004.
———. The Histories. Rev. ed. Edited by Rhiannon Ash. Translated by Kenneth Wellesley. London: Penguin Classics, 2009.
THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Beard, Mary. SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome. New York: Liveright, 2015.
Bowman, Alan K. et al. The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., vol. 10: The Augustan Empire, 43 B.C.–A. D. 69; vol. 11: The High Empire, A.D. 70–192; vol. 12: The Crisis of Empire, A. D. 193–337. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996–2005.
Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 3 vols. Edited by David Womersley. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1994.
———, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Abbr. ed. Edited by David Womersley. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 2001.
Harris, William V. Roman Power: A Thousand Years of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Potter, D. S. Ancient Rome: A New History, with 200 Illustrations, 149 in Color. 2nd ed. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2014.
Scheidel, Walter, ed. State Power in Ancient China and Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Woolf, Greg. Rome: An Empire’s Story. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
ROMAN EMPERORS
INTRODUCTION AND REFERENCE
Barrett, Anthony, ed. Lives of the Caesars. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008.
“De Imperatoribus Romanis: An Online Encyclopedia of Roman Rulers and their Families,” www.roman-emperors.org/impindex.htm.
Grant, Michael. The Roman Emperors: A Biographical Guide to the Rulers of Imperial Rome, 31 BC–AD 476. New York: Scribner, 1985.
Meijer, Fik. Emperors Don’t Die in Bed. Translated by S. J. Leinbach. London: Routledge, 2004.
Potter, David. The Emperors of Rome: The Story of Imperial Rome from Julius Caesar to the Last Emperor. London: Quercus Publishing, 2016.
Scarre, Chris. Chronicle of the Roman Emperors: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial Rome. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1995.