The Twelve Caesars

by Matthew Dennison

  In place of military glory, a daredevil escapade. Titus had accompanied his father to Judaea in 67; two years later it was Domitian’s turn to experience human nature red in tooth and claw. In his case, the occasion was provided by the re-eruption of civil war in Rome, that bloody contest of Vitellians and Flavians which soon transformed Domitian’s world. The subjection of the Jews by Vespasian and Titus followed a dogged progression: Domitian’s ‘glory’ emerged in an anarchic free-for-all of fire and fear in which his own role was essentially passive (appropriately, given that his was a nature described as ‘incapable of exertion’: he would later go to war in a litter).

  The events of the night in question permit varying interpretations: a ‘true’ account may be beyond recall. Aside from broader Flavian propaganda determined to gloss the butchery of the dynasty’s seizure of power, Domitian himself afterwards appropriated the incident (and a version of his own part in it) as the basis of a narrative of personal heroism. He exploited it, like Vespasian’s long and distinguished military career and Titus’ conquest of Jerusalem, as grounds of proof of his own fitness to rule.

  Clearly Domitian was fortunate to escape with his life. The night Vitellian troops sacked the Capitol, burning the temple to the ground, they were in no mood to behave with kindliness towards the younger son of their enemy. In Suetonius’ account, Domitian is hiding in the Capitol before the Vitellians make their entry. With him is his uncle, Sabinus, reinstated as city prefect by Otho, and a number of the troops at Sabinus’ disposal. Despite Vitellian advances, Domitian successfully hides all night in the house of a temple attendant close by the temple precincts. He escapes the following morning, disguised as a follower of Isis, that Egyptian cult associated with Cleopatra, which Augustus had been at such pains to curb. His destination is a house on the further side of the Tiber belonging to the mother of a schoolfriend. Tacitus also has Domitian escaping in the linen robes of a devotee of Isis (in this case improvised for him by a dexterous freedman). His destination in Tacitus’ recounting is the house of one of Vespasian’s clients, where he was able to hide in safety. Either way, it was a hair-raising escapade. Sabinus’ grizzly end reinforced Domitian’s consciousness of the miraculous nature of his escape. Captured in the burning temple, Vespasian’s elder brother was taken in chains to Vitellius and decapitated. His headless body was hurled into the Tiber.

  Relief inspired braggadocio. Domitian again turned to poetry, that pastime Tacitus dismisses as a deliberate feint ‘to throw a veil over his character’.10 The subject of his poem on this occasion was his own survival. He also, as we have seen, built a shrine to Jupiter Custos on the site of the temple attendant’s house. Later that shrine became a fully fledged temple, at its centre a statue of himself seated in the god’s lap.11 It was a heavy-handed gesture of gratitude and self-assertion on Rome’s most sacred hill. By then, Domitian had succeeded his father and brother as princeps. In his own words dominus et deus (‘master and god’) of the Roman world, he found it increasingly easy to align his existence with that of the firmament. This assumption of divinity may have been politically motivated. Like Gaius’ posturing with wig and caduceus, it was a means of elevating his own position above that of the senate, a riposte to senatorial dismay at his lack of experience, prestige or noble birth. First seeds of this dangerous self-aggrandizement were sown on that night of Turneresque conflagration on the Capitol.

  In Suetonius’ Life, Domitian’s damnation is a matter of personal choice, the reason for its particular viciousness. Unlike earlier ‘bad’ emperors, he possesses few of the characteristics of a victim. Inconsistent, inclined to contradictions, Gaius had been forced to vice by mental illness; Nero, by contrast, had failed to transcend ambiguous genetics. He ‘degenerated from the good qualities of his ancestors… [and] reproduced the vices of each of them, as if transmitted to him by natural inheritance’. Iniquitous and inexcusable, in neither case are their failings wholly deliberate. Suetonius’ Domitian claims no such exoneration. The historical record is voluble in praise of Vespasian and Titus. Suetonius takes pains to dismiss rumours that Vespasian’s grandfather Titus Flavius Petro, an associate of Pompey’s, turned tail at Pharsalus, or that his great-grandfather was a labour-contractor from Reate; the honesty of earlier Flavians is matter for comment. Although Domitian shared with Gaius, Claudius and Nero inheritance of the throne through family descent, his humbler background offered no default mode of perniciousness. Instead, the bloody impulse arose alongside tyranny, after Domitian had abandoned those ‘strong proofs not merely of integrity but even of liberality’ which the author discerned in the first years of his reign: a preference for savage self-fulfilment above service to the state. Afraid for his life once misbehaviour made him a target for assassins, Suetonius’ Domitian succumbed to cruelty; his greed increased in line with his spending, confiscations from Rome’s propertied classes inspired not by malice but by need. Attempting tentative neutrality, Suetonius treats Domitian with a degree of deliberate evenhandedness, balancing later venalities with earlier promise. But he omits to remind us of the long duration of Domitian’s reign, itself proof that this blackguard emperor’s savagery cannot have been as far-reaching as we might assume – nor the man himself as ‘universally odious’ as Eutropius insists.12 Dio, Pliny and Tacitus eschew equivocation. Dio’s Domitian is ‘not only bold and quick to anger but also treacherous and secretive’, characterized by impulsiveness and craftiness.13 It is a combination from which no good can be expected.

  All the ancient authors provide instances of Domitian’s treachery, the smiling face that masked a blackened heart, a delight in wrong-footing friend and foe alike, ‘the preliminary declaration of clemency that… came to be [a] certain indication of a cruel death’, that pretence of amity towards the person whom he wished dead above all others. Dio’s portrait is a template of wickedness scarcely differentiated from the villains of pantomime and fairytale. It is the author’s ultimate revenge: to rob his subject even of individualism.

  With hindsight we see that Domitian did not choose villainy unprovoked. The senate too made choices. In greeting Domitian’s accession with renewed nostalgia for the vanished Republic none had experienced, a vocal minority of its members – their motivation self-interest as often as disinterest – opposed a system of which Domitian was the embodiment but not the architect. Insecure and lacking the easy bonhomie of his father and brother, a truculent emperor responded on the back foot with mulish self-assertion. Was he mindful of the deaths of Nero, Galba, Otho and Vitellius? If so, he understood the perils and precariousness of the purple. Increasingly he forswore futile attempts to win patrician favour. Perhaps his mind had been made up long ago, observing Vespasian’s and Titus’ careful handling of that critical and envious body of men; or informed by his reading of the memoirs of Tiberius, ominously his only literary diversion. From the moment of his accession, Domitian placed his trust in the army. He raised their pay for the first time since Augustus, a significant strain on an imperial purse soon to be depleted by the demands of an extensive building programme. In the main, the troops responded to Domitian’s attentiveness with loyalty (the behaviour of legions in Upper Germany during Saturninus’ revolt of 89 came as a jolt). Still, in the long term it was not enough. Domitian was murdered in Rome, out of sight of the legions he had cultivated. The hand that dealt the blow belonged to a freedman – a conspiracy with the appearance of a palace coup. Members of the Praetorian Guard and senators too were prepared for the events of that September morning. Distant legions, admiring the Flavian gens and indebted to Domitian, were too far away, too late.

  When it came, Domitian’s death was expected. The emperor himself, still just forty-five, was alert to it, attentive to the instinct for survival, only put off his guard by a slave who lied to him about the time of day and led him into the arms of his assassin. All had been foretold by Ascletarion, an astrologer with a track record for accuracy. It was a quick, agonizing struggle – again an intimate-turned-avenger; a
n orgy of stabbing including, as always, blows to the emperor’s groin; panic and confusion within palace precincts; burial of the mangled remains by a superannuated nursemaid, Phyllis in this instance, the last who loved. Afterwards the senate greeted the news with euphoria, ‘assailing the dead emperor with the most insulting and stinging kind of outcries’, according to Suetonius. Reprieve unleashed volubility of a sort that only hours previously would have been treasonable. The vote of damnatio memoriae passed swiftly; the gleeful task of destroying Domitian’s images began at once. ‘It was a delight to smash those arrogant faces to pieces in the dust,’ wrote Pliny the Younger, quaestor and praetor under Domitian, ‘to threaten them with the sword, and savagely attack them with axes, as if blood and pain would follow every single blow.’14 The elation of aggrieved senators was not shared by Rome’s legions, which, with equal alacrity, called for the emperor’s deification. Nor did the people respond with revelry; Suetonius indicates indifference. The senate’s wishes prevailed. Domitian’s reign had unnerved and frightened them too thoroughly to forswear vengeance. Once, in dealing with magistrates, the emperor had quoted from the Iliad: ‘I dislike a number of rulers.’ It was not idle posturing. Few would-be rulers survived. Too many senators had died.

  Domitian’s policy of overt disdain was at odds with that of Vespasian or Titus. It differed too from that of the majority of his predecessors. Pragmatic or guileful, they had recognized that the smooth running of the principate demanded a degree of hoodwinking. Possibly no one believed in the Augustan diarchy, that fiction of the founder which contextualized the princeps within an enduring Republican power structure. But the effort of lip-service on the part of the current incumbent flattered and reassured a senate house greedy for lost privileges. Like Gaius before him, Domitian discarded deceits he deplored. It was an approach revealed fitfully over time.

  To start, affability and generosity. A considered liberality – as we know, the Flavian way. Integrity. Concern for the institutions of state and the welfare of the people, essential components of paternalism. ‘He constantly gave grand and costly entertainments,’ Suetonius writes, extravaganzas which filled to capacity the still-new Colosseum. The very building proclaimed his fitness to rule, this monument to Flavian populism and fatherly love. An emperor of bread and circuses, Domitian instituted a five-yearly festival of music, equestrianism and gymnastics and, following in the footsteps of Augustus and Claudius, celebrated spectacular Secular Games in which spectators were treated to a hundred races a day. On three occasions he gave the people donations of 300 sesterces each, as well as lavish civic banquets which replaced the earlier grain dole. ‘All this naturally gave pleasure to the populace,’ Dio comments. Swiftly he twists the blade:

  But it was a cause of ruin to the powerful. For as he had no funds from which to make his expenditures, he murdered many men, arraigning some of them before the senate, but bringing charges against others when they were not even present in Rome. He even went so far as to put some out of the way treacherously by means of drugs secretly administered.15

  We have learned to treat with caution these charges of ‘secret’ poisoning. In the sources, there is always a shadow across the face of the sun. It is doubtful whether the people suspected the source of their entertainments; uncertain, too, when Domitian first looked to senatorial appropriations to fund his bounty.

  He restored Rome’s libraries destroyed by fire in 80, commissioning from the scribes at Alexandria replacements for burned books. Earnestly, with every appearance of conscientiousness and scruple, he applied himself to the princeps’ judicial functions, targeting deceit and corruption where he found it. He took measures against Rome’s underground satirists and parodists. He was vigilant in gathering taxes, notably the fiscus Judaicus payable by Jews, immensely valuable as a source of revenue; and conservative in his religious policy, demanding stringent punishments for Vestal Virgins who broke their vows. Dio notwithstanding, his later qualities of cruelty and avarice are not to the fore. He went so far as to overrule wills in the emperor’s favour in instances where the inheritance rightly belonged to a child of the testator, and cancelled debt proceedings of long duration. So extreme was Domitian’s youthful aversion to bloodshed in 69 that we read of him contemplating outlawing bulls’ sacrifice. Blood and thunder were not uppermost in his thoughts in 81. Instead, he offered to Rome and her people a roundelay of civic-mindedness unglimpsed since Augustus. Suetonius enumerates his benefactions unhurriedly: we know already that it is too good to last.

  If only the senate could have met him halfway. Suspecting his motives, senators reportedly belittled the achievements of his military sorties. Is this revisionism on the part of the ancient authors? Perhaps. Perhaps those nearest to him, known to Domitian and he to them since 69, greeted his reign with an accurate assessment of his true nature.

  He campaigned in the first place on the German frontier, focus of military attention throughout the Flavian period. Undoubtedly he was overhasty in claiming victory. There are grounds for our sympathy. By 83 Domitian had waited so long. Vespasian had routinely denied him opportunities to prove himself militarily; as a result he lacked the prestige not only of his immediate predecessors but of his own best generals. His first campaign, probably begun the year after his accession, was against the Chatti north of the upper Rhine. Poets of the regime including Martial celebrated a ‘triumph’ which cut little ice in Rome: improved frontier defences, improved lines of communication for Roman troops, improved efficiency. The Chatti themselves, however, warlike and truculent, were not comprehensively defeated. Dio described Domitian as returning to Rome ‘without so much as having seen hostilities anywhere’.

  He would reiterate that taunt two years later, when Decebalus of the Dacians, an accomplished militarist, led his soldiers from their homeland – modern-day Romania – across the Danube to invade Moesia. In the aftermath of the death of the governor of Moesia, Oppius Sabinus, Domitian hastened eastwards in company with Sabinus’ successor, Cornelius Fuscus. Even at this juncture, with Roman hegemony seriously at risk, Dio asserts that Domitian failed to take an active role:

  Instead, he remained in one of the cities of Moesia, indulging in riotous living, as was his wont. For he was not only indolent of body and timorous of spirit, but also most profligate and lewd towards women and boys alike. He therefore sent others to conduct the war and for the most part got the worst of it.17

  Early Roman victories under Fuscus created an artificial buoyancy. In a speedy reversal of fortune, Fuscus was killed along with most of a regiment. In Rome, Domitian took time to regroup. His successful counter-attack occurred in 89, after which Dacia became a client kingdom under Decebalus. It was not an outcome to win plaudits in Rome.15

  The princeps prepared to parley with Decebalus in 89 was older, graver and more circumspect. For the year had begun with the most serious threat to date of Domitian’s reign.

  Suetonius offers neither explanations nor context. He is content to record the name of the malefactor, Lucius Antonius Saturninus, and the conspiracy’s locale: Upper Germany. Suetonius’ interest, characteristically, is in the mystical aspect of the crisis – a magnificent eagle which enfolded in its wings a statue of the emperor in Rome, accompanying the action with exultant shrieks. This grandiose and unambiguous spectacle was vouchsafed to Domitian on the same day rebellion was roundly quashed by the governor of Lower Germany, Lappius Maximus Norbanus. Borrowing a leaf from Suetonian portent, the weather too lent assistance. German tribesmen enlisted in his cause by Saturninus were prevented from intervening by the sudden and untimely thawing of the Rhine, which left them stranded on the wrong side of the river. South of the Alps, Domitian continued full tilt towards rebel headquarters, determined to exact ferocious retribution. He had developed a novel form of torture, which combined Roman fire with the victim’s genitalia.

  For Domitian, victory was not as sweet as it might have been. In Rome the Arval Brethren, that priestly college reputedly formed by Romulu
s, gave thanks for a happy outcome. None can have overlooked the sacrifices the unsuspecting brotherhood had previously offered: ‘that the conspiracy of evil-doers may be detected.’18

  Something in the atmosphere had changed. In Suetonius’ account, it is Saturninus’ revolt that unleashes the full force of Domitian’s cruelty, characterized henceforth as ‘savage’, ‘excessive’, ‘cunning’ and ‘sudden’. An emperor who mistrusted the senate had placed his confidence in the army. Parts of that army had failed him. It was a recipe for isolation. Domitian’s response was an increase in that tendency to keep his own counsel which had marked his reign from the outset. And so he took a further step away from the senate, compounding his sins in their eyes. He pursued policies which bore his own stamp, among them an escalation in that witch-hunt-style moral prurience at odds with the easy loucheness of Rome’s upper classes. His spotlight returned to the Temple of Vesta, where age-old standards of chasteness had deteriorated and errant Vestals had already been executed earlier in the reign. In 91 his focus was the principal Vestal herself, Cornelia. On this occasion, Domitian stood on precedent. He insisted that Cornelia receive the punishment reserved for her transgression since time immemorial. She was buried alive. Her lovers, with the exception of the Praetorian Valerius Licinianus, were beaten to death with rods.19 Faithful to the spirit of Republican piety, Domitian’s martinet stance spoke as much of his own compromised authority as of that religious conservatism which Romans once held dear. It was a chilling, distasteful incident from which none emerged unscathed.