The Twelve Caesars

by Robert Graves

  72. During the entire period of Tiberius’s retirement from Rome he only twice attempted to return. On the first occasion he sailed up the Tiber in a trireme as far as the pleasure grounds near Julius Caesar’s artificial lake, having posted troops along both banks to order away anyone who came from the City to meet him; but, after a distant view of the City walls, sailed back, it is not known why. On the second occasion he rode up the Appian Way as far as the seventh milestone, but then retreated because of a frightening portent. This was the death of a pet snake which he used to feed with his own hands. When about to do so as usual he found it half eaten by a swarm of ants; and a soothsayer warned him: ‘Beware the power of the mob.’ He hurried back to Campania, fell ill at Astura, yet felt strong enough to continue with his journey. At Circeii he disguised his ill-health by attending the garrison Games, and even threw javelins from has President’s box at a wild boar let loose in the arena. He twisted the muscles of his side by this effort, and then aggravated his condition by sitting in a draught while overheated. Nevertheless, he resolutely went on to Misenum without any change in daily routine, continuing to enjoy banquets and other diversions—partly because he now never practised self-denial, partly because he wanted nobody to realize how ill he was. Indeed, when the physician Charicles, on leaving the dining table, kissed his hand in farewell, Tiberius suspected a covert attempt to feel his pulse and begged Charicles to sit down again. Then he kept the party going until very late, and when it ended, followed his nightly habit of standing in the middle of the banqueting hall, with a lictor beside him, for a personal good-night to each of the departing guests.

  73. Meanwhile he read in the Proceedings of the Senate a paragraph to the effect that some persons whom he had sent for trial merely as ‘named by an informer’ had been discharged without a hearing. ‘This is contempt!’ he shouted furiously, and decided to make the best of his way back to Capri, the only place where he felt safe when issuing a stern order. But bad weather and increasing sickness delayed his voyage; and he died soon afterwards in a country house which had once belonged to Lucullus. He was then seventy-seven years old and had reigned for nearly twenty-three years. It was 16 March, and the Consuls of the year were Gnaeus Acerronius Proculus and Gaius Pontius Nigrinus.

  Some believe that he had been given a slow, wasting poison by Gaius Caligula; others that, when convalescent after fever, he demanded food but was refused it. According to one account, he fainted and on regaining consciousness asked for the seal-ring which had meanwhile been removed from his left hand. Seneca writes that Tiberius, realizing how near his end was, removed the ring himself, as if as a present for someone; but then clung to it awhile before replacing it on his finger; that he afterwards lay quiet for some little time with the fist clenched, until summoning his servants; and that, when no one answered, he got out of bed, collapsed, and died.

  74. On his last birthday Tiberius dreamed that the enormous, beautiful statue of Apollo which he had brought from Temenos, a suburb of Syracuse, to erect in the library of Augustus’s Temple, came in to announce: ‘Tiberius will never dedicate me!’ A few days before his death the Capri lighthouse was wrecked by an earthquake. At Misenum the dead embers of the fire which had been put into a brazier to warm his dining room suddenly blazed up again, early in the evening, and continued to glow until late that night.

  75. The first news of his death caused such joy at Rome that people ran about yelling: ‘To the Tiber with Tiberius!’ and others offered prayers to Mother Earth and the Infernal Gods to give him no home below except among the damned. There were also loud threats to drag his body off with a hook and fling it on the Stairs of Mourning; for popular resentment against his savage behaviour was now increased by a fresh outrage. It so happened that the Senate had decreed a ten days’ stay of execution in the case of all persons sentenced to death, and Tiberius died the very day on which the period of grace expired for some of them. The unfortunate creatures threw themselves on the mercy of the public but, since Caligula had not yet stepped into Tiberius’s shoes, no court of appeal existed; and the gaolers, afraid of acting illegally, carried out the sentence of strangling them and throwing their bodies on the Stairs of Mourning. Thus the hatred of Tiberius grew hotter than ever—his cruelty, it was said, continued even after his death—and when the funeral procession left Misenum, the cry went up: ‘Take him to the amphitheatre at Atella! Give him only a half-burning.’ (For Atella was the home of popular farces, and half-burning in an amphitheatre would have been a farcical ignominy.) However, the soldiers carried the corpse on to Rome, where it was cremated with due ceremony.

  76. Two years before his death Tiberius had drawn a will in his own handwriting; an identical copy was also found in the handwriting of a freedman. Both these documents had been signed and sealed by witnesses of the very lowest class. In them, Gaius son of Germanicus and Tiberius son of Drusus were named as Tiberius’s co-heirs; and if either should die, the survivor was to be the sole heir. Tiberius left legacies to several other persons, including the Vestals; with a bounty for every serving soldier in the army and every member of the Roman commons. Separate bequests to the City wardmasters were added.

  IV

  GAIUS CALIGULA

  Germanicus, father of the Gaius Caesar who is known to history as Caligula, the son of Drusus and Antonia the Younger was eventually adopted by Tiberius, his paternal uncle. After serving as quaestor for five years, while still legally under age, he became Consul, without holding the usual intermediate offices, and at Augustus’s death the Senate appointed him to command the forces in Germany. Though the legions there were unanimously opposed to Tiberius’s succession and would have acclaimed Germanicus Emperor, he showed a remarkable example of filial respect and personal integrity by diverting their attention from this project; he took the offensive in Germany, and won a triumph. As Consul-elect for the second time he was hurried to the East, where the military situation had grown critical, before being able to take office. There he defeated the King of Armenia, and reduced Cappadocia to provincial status, but succumbed to a protracted illness at Antioch, being only thirty-four years old when he died. Because of the dark stains which covered his body, and the foam on his lips, poison was suspected; significantly, also, they found the heart intact among the ashes after cremation—a heart steeped in poison is supposedly proof against fire.

  2. If we may accept the common verdict, Tiberius craftily arranged Germanicus’s death with the advice and assistance of Gnaeus Piso.54 Piso had been appointed to govern Syria and there, deciding that he must make an enemy cither of Germanicus or of Tiberius, took every opportunity to provoke Germanicus, even when on his sickbed, by the meanest acts and speeches; behaviour for which the Senate condemned him to death on his return to Rome, after he had narrowly escaped a popular lynching.

  3. Germanicus is everywhere described as having been of outstanding physical and moral excellence. He was handsome, courageous, a past-master of Greek and Latin oratory and letters, conspicuously kind-hearted, and gifted with the ability of winning universal respect and affection. Only his legs were somewhat undeveloped, but he strengthened them by assiduous exercise on horseback after meals. He often fought and killed an enemy in hand-to-hand combat; and did not cease to plead causes in the Law Courts even when he had gained a triumph. Some of his Greek comedies are extant, besides other literary works. At home or abroad he always behaved modestly, would dispense with lictors when visiting any free or allied town, and offered sacrifices at whatever tombs of famous men he came across. On deciding to bury under one mound all the scattered bones of Varus’s fallen legionaries, he led the search party himself and took an active part in the collection. Towards his detractors Germanicus showed such tolerance and leniency, regardless of their identity or motives, that he would not even break with Piso (who was cancelling his orders and plaguing his subordinates) until he found that spells and potions were being used against him. And then he did no more than renounce his friendship by uttering the
traditional formula, and leave testamentary instructions for his family to take vengeance on Piso if anything should happen to himself.

  4. Such virtuous conduct brought Germanicus rich rewards. He was so deeply respected and loved by all his acquaintances that Augustus—I need hardly mention his other relatives—wondered for a long time whether to make him his successor, but at last ordered Tiberius to adopt him. Germanicus, the records show, had won such intense popular devotion that he was in danger of being mobbed to death whenever he arrived at Rome or took his leave again. Indeed, when he came back from Germany after suppressing the native uprising, all the Guards battalions marched out in welcome, despite orders that only two were to do so; and the entire people of Rome—all ages and ranks and both sexes—flocked as far as the twentieth milestone to meet him.

  5. But the most spectacular proof of the devotion in which Germanicus had been held appeared on the day of his death and immediately afterwards. The populace stoned temples and upset altars; heads of families threw their household-gods into the street and refused to acknowledge their newly-born children. Even the barbarians who were fighting us, or one another, are said to have made immediate peace as though a domestic tragedy had afflicted the whole world; some princes shaving their own beards, and their wives’ heads, in token of profound grief. The King of Kings himself cancelled his hunting parties and banquets, which is a sign of public mourning in Parthia.

  6. While Rome was still stunned by the first news of his illness, and waiting for further bulletins, a rumour that he had recovered went the rounds one evening after dark, and sent people rushing to the Capitol with torches and sacrificial victims. So eager were they to register their vows that the Temple gates were almost torn down. Tiberius was awakened by the joyful chant:

  All is well again at Rome,

  All is well again at home,

  Here’s an end to all our pain:

  Germanicus is well again!

  When the news of his death finally broke, neither edicts nor official expressions of sympathy could console the commons; mourning continued throughout the festal days of December. The bitterness of their loss was aggravated by the horrors which followed; for everyone believed, and with good reason, that moral respect for Germanicus had alone kept Tiberius from displaying the cruelty of his wicked heart.

  7. Germanicus married Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Agrippa and Julia, who bore him nine children. Two died in infancy, and a third, an extremely likeable boy, during early childhood. Livia dedicated a statue of him, dressed as a cupid, to Capitoline Venus; Augustus kept a replica in his bedroom and used to kiss it fondly whenever he entered. The other children—three girls, Agrippina, Drusilla, and Livilla, born in successive years; and three boys, Nero, Drusus, and Gaius, afterwards Caligula Caesar—survived their father; but Tiberius later brought charges against Nero and Drusus, whom he persuaded the Senate to execute as public enemies.55

  8. Gaius Caligula was born on 31 August, 12 A.D., during the consulship shared by his father with Gaius Fonteius Capito. His birthplace is disputed. According to Gnaeus Lentulus Gaetulicus, he was born at Tivoli; but, according to Pliny the Younger, near Trèves, in the village of Ambitarvium, just above the junction of the Moselle and the Rhine. Pliny supports his view by mentioning certain local altars inscribed ‘IN HONOUR OF AGRIPPINA’S PUERPERIUM’ (i.e. child-bearing), also a verse, which went the rounds at Caligula’s accession and suggests that he was born in the winter quarters of the legions:

  Born in a barracks,

  Reared in the arts of war:

  A noble nativity

  For a Roman Emperor!

  The Gazette, however, gives his birthplace as Antium; and my researches convince me that this is correct. Pliny shows that Gaetulicus tried to flatter the proud young monarch by pretending that he came from Tivoli, a city sacred to Hercules; and that he lied with greater confidence because Germanicus did have a son named Gaius Caesar born there, whose sadly premature death I have already mentioned. Nevertheless, Pliny is himself mistaken since Augustus’s biographers agree that Germanicus’s first visit to Gaul took place after he had been consul, by which time Caligula was already born. Moreover, the inscriptions on the altars do not prove Pliny’s point, since Agrippina bore Germanicus two daughters in Gaul, and any confinement is a puerperium, regardless of the child’s sex—girls were then still called puerae as often as puellae, and boys puelli as often as pueri. Finally, I have found a letter which Augustus wrote a few months before he died, to his grand-daughter Agrippina; the Gaius mentioned in it must have been Caligula because no other child of that name was alive at the time. It reads: ‘Yesterday I made arrangements for Talarius and Asillius to bring your son Gaius to you on the eighteenth of May, if the gods will. I am also sending with him one of my slaves, a doctor who, as I have told Germanicus in a letter, need not be returned to me if he proves of use to you. Goodbye, my dear Agrippina! Keep well on the way back to your Germanicus.’ Clearly, Caligula could not have been born in a country to which he was first taken from Rome at the age of nearly two! These details also weaken my confidence in that anonymous verse about his birth in a barracks. So we are, I think, reduced to accepting the only other authority, namely the Gazette, especially since Gaius Caligula preferred Antium to any other city, and treated it as his native place; he even planned, they say, to transfer the seat of Imperial government there, when he wearied of Rome.

  9. He won his surname, Caligula (‘Bootikin’) from an army joke, because he grew up among the troops and wore the miniature uniform of a private soldier, including the caliga, or half-boot. An undeniable proof of the hold on their affections which this early experience of camp-life gave him is that when they rioted at the news of Augustus’s death and were ready for any madness, the mere sight of little Gaius calmed them down. As soon as they realized that he was being removed to a neighbouring city to protect him from their violence, they were overcome by contrition; some of them seized and stopped his carriage, pleading to be spared this disgrace.

  10. Gaius also accompanied Germanicus to Syria. On his return he lived with his mother and next, after she had been exiled, with his great-grandmother Livia Augusta, whose funeral oration he delivered from the Rostra though he had not yet come of age. He then lived with his grandmother Antonia until Tiberius summoned him to Capri, at the age of nineteen. He assumed his manly gown and shaved his first beard as soon as he arrived there; but this was a most informal occasion, compared with his brothers’ coming-of-age celebrations. The courtiers tried every trick to force him into making complaints against Tiberius; always, however, without success. He not only failed to show any interest in the murder of his relatives, but affected an amazing indifference to his own ill-treatment, behaving so obsequiously to his adoptive grandfather and to the entire household, that someone said of him, very neatly: ‘Never was there a better slave, or a worse master!’

  11. Yet even in those days Caligula could not control his natural brutality. He loved watching tortures and executions; and, disguised in wig and robe, abandoned himself nightly to the pleasures of feasting and scandalous living. Tiberius was ready enough to indulge a passion which Caligula had for theatrical dancing and singing, on the ground that it might have a civilizing influence on him. With characteristic shrewdness, the old Emperor had exactly gauged the young man’s vicious inclinations, and would often remark that Caligula’s advent portended his own death and the ruin of everyone else. ‘I am nursing a viper in Rome’s bosom,’ he once said. ‘I am educating a Phaëthon who will mishandle the fiery sun-chariot and scorch the whole world.’

  12. Caligula presently married Junia Claudilla, daughter of the distinguished senator Marcus Silanus; after which he was first appointed Augur, in place of his brother Drusus, and then promoted to the Pontificate, in compliment to his dutiful behaviour and exemplary life. This encouraged him in the hope of becoming Tiberius’s successor, because Sejanus’s downfall had reduced the Court to a shadow of its former self—and when Junia d
ied in childbirth, he seduced Ennia Naevia, wife of Macro, the Guards Commander; not only swearing to marry her if he became Emperor, but putting the oath in writing. Ennia helped him to win Macro’s support, which was how he found no trouble in poisoning Tiberius. Apparently he issued orders for the Imperial ring to be removed while Tiberius was still breathing, and when he would not let it go, had him smothered with a pillow. According to one account he throttled Tiberius with his own hands, and when a freedman cried out in protest at this wicked deed, crucified him at once. All this may be true; some writers report that Caligula later confessed at least to intended parricide. He would often boast, that is to say, of having carried a dagger into Tiberius’s bedroom with the virtuous intention of avenging his mother and brothers; but, according to his own account, found Tiberius asleep and, restrained by feelings of pity, threw down the dagger and went out. Tiberius, he said, was perfectly aware of what had happened, yet never dared question him, or take any action in the matter.

  13. Caligula’s accession seemed to the Roman people—one might almost say, to the whole world—like a dream come true. The memory of Germanicus and compassion for a family that had been practically wiped out by successive murders, made most provincials and soldiers, many of whom had known him as a child, and the entire population of Rome as well, show extravagant joy that he was now Emperor. When he escorted Tiberius’s catafalque from Misenum to Rome he was, of course, dressed in mourning, but a dense crowd greeted him uproariously with altars, sacrifices, torches, and such endearments as ‘star’, ‘chicken’, ‘baby’, and ‘pet’.

  14. On his arrival in the City the Senate (and a mob of commoners who had forced their way into the House) immediately and unanimously conferred absolute power upon him. They set aside Tiberius’s will—which made his other grandson, then still a child, joint-heir with Caligula—and so splendid were the celebrations that 160,000 victims were publicly sacrificed during the next three months, or perhaps even a shorter period.