The Dedalus Book of Roman Decadence: Emperors of Debauchery

by Geoffrey Farrington

  Edited by Geoffrey Farrington

  and translated by Brian & Adrian Murdoch

  Titles in the Decadence from Dedalus series include:

  Senso (and other stories) - Boito £6.99

  The Victim (L'Innocente) - D'Annunzio £7.99

  Les Diaboliques - D'Aurevilly 07.99

  Angels of Perversity - de Gourmont £6.99

  The Dedalus Book of Roman Decadence - Farrington £8.99

  The Dedalus Book of German Decadence - Furness £9.99

  La-Bas - Huysmans £7.99

  The Road to Darkness - Leppin £7.99

  Monsieur de Phocas - Lorrain £8.99

  The Green Face - Meyrink £7.99

  Abbe Jules - Mirbeau £8.99

  The Diary of a Chambermaid - Mirbeau £7.99

  Le Calvaire - Mirbeau £7.99

  Sebastien Roch - Mirbeau £9.99

  Torture Garden - Mirbeau £7.99

  Monsieur Venus - Rachilde £6.99

  The Marquise de Sade - Rachilde £8.99

  The Great Shadow - Sa-Carneiro £8.99

  Lucio's Confessions - Sa-Carneiro £6.99

  Dedalus Book of Decadence - Stableford _f 7.99

  The Second Dedalus Book of Decadence - Stableford £8.99

  Autumn & Winter Sonatas - Valle-Inclan £7.99

  Spring & Summer Sonatas - Valle-Inclan £7.99

  Contents

  Introduction 9

  Introduction to Ovid 17

  Ovid's Amores 19

  Introduction to Suetonius 23

  Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars 25

  Introduction to Suetonius's Life of Caligula 27

  Life of Caligula 29

  (translated by Philemon Holland & revised by Steve Gove) Ovid 111.14 60

  Introduction to Tacitus 63

  Tacitus's the Annals 65

  Introduction to the Murder of Claudius 73

  Tacitus's The Murder of Claudius 75

  Introduction to Seneca 77

  Seneca's The Apocolocyntosis 79

  Introduction to the Fall of Agrippina 93

  Tacitus's The Fall of Agrippina 95

  Introduction to Petronius 101

  Tacitus's description of Petronius from the Annals 103

  Petronius's The Satyricon 105

  Introduction to The Fire of Rome 117

  Suetonius's Nero, 38 (from The Fire of Rome) 119

  Introduction to the Banquet of Tigellinus 121

  Tacitus's A Typical Neronian Orgy 123 Introduction to Martial 125

  Martial's Epigrams 127

  Introduction to Josephus 131

  Josephus's The Triumph of Vespasian 133

  An Adventure in the East (from the Satyricon) 137

  Introduction to Cassius Dio 141

  Cassius Dio's The Roman History 143

  Introduction to Juvenal 145

  juvenal's Satires 147

  Introduction to Commodus 153

  Cassius Dio's Commodus (from The Roman History) 155

  Introduction to the Accession of Didius Julianus 159

  Cassius Dio's Didius Julianus LXXIV, 10-12 161

  Introduction to Apuleius 163

  Apuleius's The Golden Ass 165

  Introduction to The Augustan History 183

  Lampridius's Augustan History 185

  Introduction to Juvenal's Satire VI 211

  Satire VI 213

  Advert for The Acts of the Apostates 235

  (Unless stated otherwise all the translations are by either Brian or Adrian Murdoch)

  THE EDITOR

  Geoffrey Farrington was born in London in 1955. After drama school he worked as a scriptwriter and performer in theatre, radio and television, along with helping to run the family business in South London. He is the author of a decadent novel set in the reign of Nero, The Acts of the Apostates (Dedalus 1990), and a vampire novel, The Revenants (Dedalus 1984).

  THE TRANSLATORS

  Adrian Murdoch was educated in Scotland and at the Queen's College, Oxford. After graduation he taught in Berlin for a year, working as well for the Ministry of Education as a translator and interpreter. He now works as a journalist in London.

  Brian Murdoch studied at Exeter University and at Jesus College, Cambridge, and is currently Professor of German at Stirling University. He has published a large number of books and articles on medieval (and modern) Germanic, Celtic (especially Cornish) and comparative literature, as well as translations of medieval Latin and German epics. He is currently editing the Dedalus Book of Medieval Decadence, which will appear in 1995.

  INTRODUCTION

  Throughout history nothing has been more synonymous with decadence than imperial Rome. There are a good many reasons for this - aside from hackneyed images of gladiatorial combats and orgies - and foremost among them are probably the Roman emperors themselves. Certainly these men held more personal power than any other individuals in history, but the unique tradition and history of Rome meant that their power was very fiercely resented.

  Rome grew from a small, monarchic city state, expelling the last of its Etruscan kings, the tyrannical Tarquinius Superbus, in the sixth century BC, and founding a republican system (or more accurately an oligarchical system) whose dubious concept of freedom became ingrained within its citizens as their greatest pride. This pride, and the dedication it engendered, did much to raise Rome to its eventual imperial glory, but the political system which guided Rome to greatness became finally the victim of its own success; citizens voting and senators debating was a method of government wholly inadequate to rule a world empire. And with empire came wealth, and with wealth ever greater corruption. Numerous upheavals among members of the leading Roman families as they vied for position and advantage led ultimately to civil war and the irrevocable collapse of the republican system.

  The dictator Julius Caesar - granted special authority at a time of emergency - despite his contrived and ostentatious refusal of the title `king', was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 Bc by those men faithful to the republican ideal who saw that Caesar aimed at kingship in all but the hated title (Caesar's own title of perpetual dictator would seem similarly odious to modern ears) but who also believed that his assassination would be sufficient to save the republic. This was tantamount to supposing that Caesar, his body lacerated by twenty-three stab wounds, might be revived by artificial respiration.

  But the lesson to Caesar's adopted son and heir, his grandnephew Octavian (later the Emperor Augustus) was clear. The Romans - more specifically the Roman nobles - would not yet accept a ruler outright. A less flamboyant figure than Caesar, but no less ambitious (it is historically astonishing that two such different but remarkable men should have risen in succession to combine their abilities in such a monumental undertaking), Augustus set about painstakingly imposing his own solution to the problem. Having delivered Rome finally from the turmoil of civil war, and defeated at the naval battle of Actium his once colleague and later rival, Caesar's lieutenant Mark Antony in his alliance with Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, Augustus declared himself `Imperator' (supreme military commander) from which the title `emperor' was to derive and 'Princeps' (first citizen), who exceeded others not in power but in authority (Augustus' own words). To which any astute senator might have replied: `Yes. And I am the Queen of Parthia's aunt Betty.'

  Through a facade of empty republican traditions and titles, Augustus used this `authority' to rule absolutely for forty years, and to pass on his powers to his chosen successor, his stepson Tiberius, when he died.

  As time passed the pretence naturally wore thinner as subsequent emperor
s - particularly Caligula and Nero - became ever less discreet about cloaking the reality of their power. They were, of course, greatly resented by those senators, members of the old nobility whose forbears had survived the ruthless proscriptions upon their number by Augustus after the civil wars, and whose ancestral power and authority the emperors had usurped. They might still achieve the great republican offices of state - become quaestors, aediles, praetors and ultimately consuls - but these titles were finally little more than mere honours. All true promotion and advancement lay in the hands of the emperor. Political impotence bred indignation, and a nostalgia for the republican system, whose instabilities and impracticality these later generations had never experienced. Conspiracies against emperors became commonplace, and so consequently did the executions of those among the nobility whom emperors mistrusted. This frequently was most of them, given the enmity that grew between emperors and senate, and the progressive exclusion of senators from all real areas of power. The purges were particularly fierce within the imperial family itself. Every emperor after Augustus regarded his relatives as his closest potential rivals, and a likely focus for malcontents and conspirators; as indeed they often were. When Nero died in 68 AD the once abundant line of Augustus became extinct.

  The humbler citizens of Rome, meanwhile suffering from an ever increasing chasm between rich and poor, and denied much gainful occupation in a slave-rich society, had declined into an ominous underclass, a mob whom the emperors must divert and placate constantly with `bread and circuses'. Yet the imperial system brought with it a stability, peace and prosperity unknown in former times. Rome became a magnet and a melting pot for many diverse cultures. Luxuries from across the world flooded into its markets. It is hard to see how in such circumstances a decadent society might not have flourished. In the past the Romans had been a crude and pragmatic people - essentially soldiers and farmers - the inhabitants of a small city state which struggled for its right to survive against initially larger and more powerful neighbours. To increase and protect their city, to raise large families and work their fields, to form an ordered society and create stability and law: these are imperatives that allow little time for the development of sophisticated culture, for art or philosophy; little chance also for sexual activities to be directed at much beyond procreation. Thus in the early history of Rome we find none of the influence of Greek culture that was later to affect the Romans so profoundly. The Augustan poet Virgil enshrined the Roman ideal in the Aeneid, when Aeneas, legendary Trojan ancestor of the Roman people, descends into the underworld to meet with the spirit of his father, and hear foretold the destiny of his descendants. `The art of Rome shall be to rule the world, to impose the tradition of peace, to spare the meek and crush the proud'.

  So it may be seen that the early Roman was practical and primitive, without the opportunity or incentive to develop the spiritual capacity of the poet, artist and thinker. The decadent society is naturally one that affords its inhabitants sufficient leisure to divert themselves from the essential and the commonplace.

  Under the imperial system, however, with administration carried out by the imperial court, the frontiers defended by professional armies, and a vast slave population to perform the many menial duties, leisure was a benefit enjoyed by many, and many also had the wealth to make full use of it. The old Roman character, however, refused to die away, but remained deep in the Roman psyche, becoming manifest in various ways, and creating an element of discomfort admidst all the extravagance and pleasure seeking. Amongst the senatorial classes it rose to complain of un-Roman degeneracy and vice. The Augustan historian Livy made great play of this in his Ab Urbe Condita (From the Foundation of the City) calling to account the excesses of the present by comparing them with his stirring but contrived and sparsely researched stories of the virtues of older, simpler times. Other historians followed his example - indeed it must be remembered that Roman historians generally came from the senatorial class, who as we have seen were prone to carry an inbred prejudice against emperors in general (or otherwise from the equestrian class, the `knights' who were the wealthy middle classes); we must therefore read their works with our critical faculties engaged - and indeed amidst all the crimes and follies that are ascribed to Nero, what seems to cause the most opprobrium is the fact that he was artistic and habitually sang and acted upon the public stage, thereby disgracing his position as ruler of the Roman world. Also the fact that Nero was unwarlike, concluding successful peace treaties and with no great inclination to extend the boundaries of empire, seems to attract as much disapproval as the fact that he killed his mother.

  More than this senatorial pride in Rome's martial history, the basic earthiness of the Roman temperament was manifested in the general addiction to the cruelty and violence of the arena - itself a debased remnant of ancient religious rites. Again it was Nero - in spite of his popular image as a depraved and cruel tyrant who delighted in the death and carnage of the gladiatorial combats - who actually attempted to ban the killing of gladiators in the arena, so much did he clearly dislike it (there are grounds for believing that Nero initially had the makings of a liberal emperor but was opposed and frustrated in his attempts at various reforms by reactionary elements in the senate; one cannot help but speculate that the senate was perhaps sometimes its own worst enemy) but was forced to abandon the attempt by the Roman mob, who were indignant at having their bloodthirsty pleasures so emasculated. Whatever Nero's faults - and they were many - he is at least to be commended for his determined if clumsy efforts to raise the level of his subjects' cultural aspirations.

  The Italian poet Pietro Cossa wrote truly of Nero that `His heart is Roman, but his mind is Greek.' Here we are at the root of what so many Romans found objectionable. Though Roman culture was based upon that of Greece, the conquered Greek nation of imperial times was a degenerate shadow of its classical self. The satirist Juvenal writes with fury and indignation of a Rome struck by Greece, and filled with wily Greeks and oily orientals. These people, he complains, drifting into Rome admidst the imported comestibles, win precedence over true-born Romans by their talent for flattery, dishonesty and intrigue; they shamelessly court the wealthy and influential in a fashion no poor Roman can match. They are, he implies, practised in such arts by their history of slavish obedience to despotic kings and foreign conquerors, the past degradations of their race equipping them perfectly to thrive in this new imperial age, against which the proud history of Rome has never armed its own sons. Juvenal, true to human nature, consoles himself with the thought that he is at least morally superior to those more successful than he. It makes him perhaps the most vivid and sympathetic of Roman authors.

  Another author whose equally gloomy and embittered, if more subtle, personality has combined with his own sheer brilliance to irrevocably colour, if not dominate, the whole view of posterity upon the period of early empire, is the historian Tacitus, who is the prime exponent of the senatorial faction wreaking its revenge upon the imperial system. At the outset of his Annals of Imperial Rome, which survives piecemeal, covering the Julio-Claudian dynasty from the death of Augustus, Tacitus asserts disingenuously that he will write free from animosity or prejudice since, writing decades after the death of Nero, last of the Julio- Claudians, he lacks any personal motive for these. He proceeds to give us a series of masterly character assassinations which are never less than compelling, but often we suspect less than fair. What Tacitus truly gives us is a fictionalized account of the facts - `faction' is the modern term - offering psychological insights and motivations of which he could not possibly have been certain. But as most writers of fiction will probably admit, the whole process has much to do with the exorcising of personal obsession (although in my experience it has as much to do with the exercising of obsession).

  Tacitus' own obsession is clear. In his early work, the Agricola, a biography of his father-in-law the great general, Tacitus writes of the difficulty of serving with integrity as a state official during the terrible re
ign of the emperor Domitian - last and most paranoid of the upstart Flavian dynasty. Conscious perhaps of the relatively humble origins of his family, Domitian was relentlessly suspicious and savage towards the senate. Tacitus' own terror and hatred of Domitian is horribly clear to us, and although he survived the reign to live and write under the more enlightened rule of Trajan and Hadrian, he never recovered from it mentally, and it colours his works on the lives of earlier emperors, particularly in his hostile study of Tiberius - a study considered unjust by most modern historians - whom Domitian admired, or at least sympathized with, and with whom he shared certain personality traits; not least a liking for solitude which could only seem strange and profoundly sinister to a people as enormously gregarious as the Romans.

  So it may be seen that we are to expect a degree of one-sidedness in the works of many Roman authors, and in a volume which devotes itself to Roman decadence we must further expect an unbalanced view of things by the very nature of the subject. But this should not' obscure the very remarkable and enduring achievements of these final custodians of the civilization of the ancient world. It is certainly true that they were in general a materialistic people, not possessing any great spiritual capacity. Their observance of the traditional state religion - the agriculturally based rituals and nature gods of their ancestors - had become largely a matter of mere form by imperial times. Educated people had grown too cynical and sophisticated for it. They were superstitious however, and more inclined to favour strange exotic rites - most foreign religions were tolerated in pre-Christian Rome - and addicted to the occult; fortune tellers, astrologers, mystics of all types were popular, in an attempt to fill the spiritual vacuum of the day. They often held pretensions to culture and good taste, yet these were not truly innate Roman qualities, and their love of extravagance and vulgar spectacle must have inspired surreptitious sneers even from the degenerate Greeks of Juvenal's time. Truly creative thought in the spiritual realms of religion and art remained always beyond the reach of most Romans. They must be content to plunder these things from other nations, which was their greatest talent.