The Twelve Caesars

by Robert Graves

  After the suppression of Antonius’s rebellion, Domitian grew even more cruel. He hit on the novel idea of scorching his prisoners’ genitals to make them divulge the whereabouts of other rebels still in hiding; and cut off the hands of many more. It is a fact that only two leaders of the revolt—a colonel of senatorial rank and a centurion—earned his pardon; which they did by the simple expedient of proving themselves to have been so disgustingly immoral that they could have exerted no influence at all over either Antonius or the troops.

  11. Domitian was not merely cruel, but hot-headed and cunning into the bargain. He summoned a Palace steward to his bedroom, invited him to share his couch, made him feel perfectly secure and happy, condescended to share a dinner with him—yet had already given orders for his crucifixion on the following day! He was more than usually gracious to the ex-Consul Arrecinius Clemens, a favourite agent, just before his death-sentence, and invited him out for a drive. As they happened to pass the man who had informed on Arrecinius, Domitian asked: ‘Shall we listen to that utter scoundrel tomorrow?’ And he impudently prefaced all his most savage sentences with the same little speech about mercy; indeed, this preamble soon became a recognized sign that something dreadful was on the way. Having brought a group of men before the Senate on a treason charge, he announced that this must be a test of his popularity with the House; and thus easily got them condemned to ‘old-style execution’.113 However, he seems to have become all at once appalled by the cruelty involved, because he pleaded to have the sentence modified. His exact words are interesting: ‘Gentlemen of the Senate, I know that you will not readily grant me anything I ask, but let me beg one favour of you: pray allow these men to choose the manner of their deaths! That will be easier on your eyes; and the world will know that I have done my best with the House.’

  12. Unfortunately, the new building programme, added to his expensive entertainments and the rise in Army pay, were more than Domitian could afford; so he decided to reduce expenditure by cutting down the military establishment. But, then realizing that this would expose his frontiers to barbarian attack, without appreciably easing the financial situation, he resorted to every form of extortion. Any charge, however slight—to have spoken or acted in prejudice of the Emperor’s welfare was enough—might result in the confiscation of a man’s property, even if he were already dead. An unsupported claim that someone had been heard, before his death, to name the Emperor as his heir, even though he were unknown at Court, was sufficient pretext for taking over the estate. Domitian’s agents collected the tax on Jews with a peculiar lack of mercy; and took proceedings not only against those who kept their Jewish origins a secret in order to avoid the tax, but against those who lived as Jews without professing Judaism.114 As a boy, I remember once attending a crowded Court where the Procurator had a ninety-year-old man stripped to establish whether or not he had been circumcised.

  From his earliest years Domitian was consistently discourteous and presumptuous. When Caenis, his father’s former mistress, returned from Istria and, as usual, offered him her cheek to kiss, he held out his hand instead. He objected when his nephew-by-marriage dressed his servants in white—Domitian’s own servants wore white livery—and quoted at him Homer’s line:

  Too many rulers are a dangerous thing.

  13. On his accession Domitian boasted to the Senate of having himself conferred the Imperial power on Vespasian and Titus—it had now merely returned to him! He also spoke of his action in taking Domitia back, after the divorce, as ‘a recall to my divine bed’; and on the day of his public banquet delighted to hear the audience in the Colosseum shout: ‘Long live our Lord and Lady!’ At the festival of Capitoline Juppiter, when unanimously implored to pardon Palfurius Sura, whom he had expelled from the Senate but who had nevertheless won the prize for public speaking, Domitian would not reply and sent a public crier to silence them. Just as arrogantly he began a letter, which his procurators were to circulate, with the words: ‘Our Lord God instructs you to do this!’ and ‘Lord God’ became his regular title both in writing and conversation. Images dedicated to Domitian in the Capitol had to be of either gold or silver, and not below a certain weight; and he raised so many arcades and arches, decorated with chariots and triumphal insignia, in various City districts, that someone scribbled ‘arci’, meaning ‘arches’ on one of them—but used Greek characters, and so spelled out the Greek word for ‘Enough!’ He held seventeen consulships, which was a record. Only the seven middle ones formed a series, and all were sinecures: he relinquished most of them after a few days, and every one of them before 1 May. Having adopted the surname ‘Germanicus’ at his double triumph, he renamed September and October, the months of his accession and birth, respectively, ‘Germanicus’ and ‘Domitianus’.

  14. All this made him everywhere hated and feared. Finally, his friends and freedmen conspired to murder him, with Domitia’s connivance. Early astrological predictions had warned him how and when he would die; they even specified the day and hour. Vespasian once teased him openly at dinner for refusing a dish of mushrooms, saying that it would be more in keeping with his destiny to be afraid of swords. As a result, Domitian was such a prey to anxiety that the least sign of danger unnerved him. The real reason for his reprieving the vineyards, which he had ordered to be rooted up, is said to have been the publication of this stanza:

  You may tear up my roots, goat,

  But what good will that do?

  I shall still have some wine left

  For sacrificing you.

  Though he loved honours of all kinds, this same anxiety made him veto a Senatorial decree that, whenever he held the consulship, a group of knights should be picked by lot to walk, dressed in purple-striped robes and armed with lances, among the lictors and attendants who preceded him.

  As the critical day drew near his nervousness increased. The gallery where he took his daily exercise was now lined with plaques of highly-polished moonstone, which reflected everything that happened behind his back; and no Imperial audiences were granted to prisoners unless Domitian were alone with them, and had tight hold of their fetters. To remind his staff that even the best of intentions could never justify a freedman’s complicity in a master’s murder, he executed his secretary Epaphroditus, who had reputedly helped Nero to commit suicide after everyone else had deserted him.115

  15. The occasion of Domitian’s murder was that he had executed, on some trivial pretext, his own extremely stupid cousin, Flavius Clemens,116 just before the completion of a consulship; though he had previously named Flavius’s two small sons as his heirs and changed their names to Vespasian and Domitian.

  So much lightning had fallen during the past eight months that Domitian cried out: ‘Now let the Almighty strike whomever he pleases!’ The Almighty did, in fact, strike the Temple of Capitoline Juppiter, the Temple of the Flavians, the Palace, even Domitian’s own bedroom; and a hurricane wrenched the inscription plate from the base of a triumphal statue of his and hurled it into a near-by tomb. The famous cypress-tree which had been blown down but had then taken root again, while Vespasian was still a private citizen, now collapsed a second time. Throughout his reign Domitian had made a practice of commending each new year to the care of the Goddess Fortune at Palestrina, and every year she had granted him the same favourable omen; but this year the omen was a dreadful one, portending bloodshed. Domitian also dreamed that Minerva, whom he worshipped fervently, emerged from her shrine to tell him that she had been disarmed by Juppiter and could no longer protect him. What disturbed him most, however, was a prediction by the astrologer Ascletarion, and its sequel. This man, when charged, made no secret of having revealed the future, which he had foreseen by magical means. Domitian at once asked whether he could prophesy the manner of his end, and upon Ascletarion’s replying that he would very soon be torn to pieces by dogs, had him executed on the spot, and gave orders for his funeral rites to be conducted with the greatest care, as a further proof that all magicians lied. But while the
funeral was in progress a sudden gale scattered the pyre and a pack of stray dogs mangled the astrologer’s half-burned corpse. Latinus, the comic actor, who happened to witness this incident, mentioned it at dinner when he brought Domitian the latest City gossip.

  16. On the day before Domitian’s assassination someone brought him a present of apples. ‘Serve them tomorrow,’ he told the servants, adding: ‘—if tomorrow ever comes.’ Then, turning to his companions he remarked: ‘There will be blood on the Moon as she enters Aquarius, and a deed will be done for everyone to talk about.’ With the approach of midnight Domitian became so terrified that he jumped out of bed; and at dawn condemned to death a soothsayer from Germany who was charged with having said that the lightning portended a change of government. Domitian then scratched a pimple on his forehead and made it bleed, muttering: ‘I hope this is all the blood required.’ Presently he asked for the time. As had been prearranged, his freedmen answered untruthfully: ‘The sixth hour,’ because they knew it was the fifth he feared. Convinced that the danger had passed, Domitian went off quickly and happily to take a bath; whereupon his head valet, Parthenius, met him with the news that a man had called on very urgent and important business, and was now waiting in the Imperial bedroom. So Domitian dismissed his attendants and hurried there.

  17. All that has come to light about either the plot or the assassination is that his niece Domitilla’s steward, Stephanus, had been accused of embezzlement; and that when he approached the conspirators, they were already debating whether it would be better to murder Domitian in his bath or at dinner. Stephanus offered them his services, which were accepted; and then, to divert suspicion, feigned an arm injury and went around for several days with a dagger concealed in the woollen bandages. Finally he told Parthenius that he had discovered a plot, and was admitted to Domitian’s bedroom, where he produced a list of names; but suddenly stabbed him in the groin while he was reading it. Domitian put up a good fight. The boy who was, as usual, attending to the household-gods in the bedroom, witnessed the murder and later described it in some detail. On receiving the first blow, Domitian grappled with Stephanus, and screamed at the boy to hand him the dagger which was kept under his pillow and then run for help; the dagger, however, proved to have no blade, and the doors to the servants’ quarters were locked.

  Domitian fell on top of Stephanus and, after cutting his own fingers in a prolonged effort to disarm him, began clawing at his eyes; but succumbed to seven further stabs, his assailants being a subaltern named Clodianus, Parthenius’s freedman Maximus, Satur a head-chamberlain, and one of the Imperial gladiators.

  He died at the age of forty-four, on 18 September, 96 A.D., after reigning not much more than fourteen years. The body was carried away on a common litter by the public undertakers, as though he were a pauper; and cremated by his old nurse Phyllis in her garden on the Latin Way. She secretly took the ashes to the Temple of the Flavians and mixed them with those of his niece Julia, who had also been one of her charges.

  18. Domitian had a ruddy complexion; large, rather weak eyes; and not at all an imperious expression. He was tall and well-made, except for his feet which had hammer-toes; and so conscious of his handsome features that he once told the Senate: ‘Hitherto my intentions and my face have been equally acceptable to you.’ Later, he lost his hair and developed a paunch; and, as a result of protracted illness, his legs grew spindling. He took as a personal insult any reference, joking or otherwise, to bald men, being extremely sensitive about his own appearance; yet in his manual Care of the Hair, dedicated to a friend, he wrote by way of mutual consolation:

  Cannot you see that I, too, have a tall and beautiful person?

  and added to this Homeric quotation the following prose comment:

  ‘Yet my hair will go the same way, and I am resigned to having an old man’s head before my time. How pleasant it is to be elegant, yet how quickly that stage passes!’

  19. Domitian hated to exert himself. While in Rome he hardly ever went for a walk, and during campaigns and travels seldom rode a horse, but almost always used a litter. Weapons did not interest him, though he was an exceptionally keen archer. He shot hundreds of wild animals on his Alban estate, and many eye-witnesses report that he sometimes brought down a quarry with two successive arrows so dexterously placed in the head as to resemble horns. Occasionally he would tell a slave to post himself at a distance and hold out one hand; then shot arrows between his fingers with amazing skill.

  20. Although, at the beginning of his reign, he went to a great deal of trouble and expense in restocking the burned-out libraries, hunting for lost volumes, and procuring transcriptions and copies from Alexandria, this did not mean that he was a student himself. No longer bothering with either history or poetry, or taking pains to acquire even the rudiments of a style, he now read nothing but Tiberius’s note-books and official memoirs, and let secretaries polish his own correspondence, edicts, and speeches. Still, Domitian had a lively turn of phrase, and some of his remarks are well worth recording. Once he said: ‘Ah, to be as good-looking as Maecius thinks he is!’ and on another occasion compared a friend’s red hair, which was turning white, to ‘mead spilt on snow’.

  21. He also claimed that all Emperors are necessarily wretched, since only their assassination can convince the public that the conspiracies against their lives are real. His chief relaxation, at all hours, even in the morning and on working days, was to throw dice. He used to bathe before noon, and then eat such an enormous luncheon that a Matian apple and a small pitcher of wine generally contented him at dinner. His many large banquets were never prolonged past sunset, or allowed to develop into drinking bouts; and he spent the rest of the day strolling idly by himself in a quiet part of the Palace.

  22. Domitian was extremely lustful, and called his sexual activities ‘bed-wrestling’, as though it were a sport. Some say that he preferred to depilate his concubines himself, and would go swimming with the commonest of common prostitutes. He had been offered the hand of his young niece Julia, Titus’s daughter, but persistently refused to marry her on account of his infatuation for Domitia. Later, when Julia took another husband, Flavius Sabinus, he seduced her, though Titus was still alive; and after both Titus and Flavius Sabinus were dead, demonstrated his love for her so openly and ardently that, in the end, she became pregnant by him and died as the result of an abortion which he forced on her.

  23. Though the general public greeted the news of Domitian’s fate with indifference, it deeply affected the troops, who at once began to speak of Domitian the God—they would have avenged him had anyone given them a lead—and insisted that his assassins should be brought to justice. The Senators, on the other hand, were delighted, and thronged to denounce Domitian in the House with bitter and insulting cries. Then, sending for ladders, they had his images and the votive shields engraved with his likeness, brought smashing down; and ended by decreeing that all inscriptions referring to him must be effaced, and all records of his reign obliterated.

  A few months before the murder a raven perched on the Capitol and croaked out the words: ‘All will be well!’—a portent which some wag explained in the following verse:

  There was a raven, strange to tell,

  Perched upon Jove’s own gable, whence

  He tried to tell us ‘All is well!’—

  But had to use the future tense.117

  Domitian is said to have dreamed that a golden hump sprouted from his back, deducing from this that the Empire would be far richer and happier when he had gone; and soon the wisdom and restraint of his successors proved him right.

  THE END

  THE JULIAN HOUSE

  THE FLAVIAN HOUSE

  Endnotes

  I. JULIUS CAESAR, AFTERWARDS DEIFIED

  1 85–84 B.C.

  2 Gaius Marius (157–86 B.C.), the most famous popular leader, was Consul seven times, and involved Rome in Civil War.

  3 81 B.C.

  4 78 B.C.

  5 67 B.C.r />
  6 65 B.C.

  7 62 B.C.

  8 52 B.C.

  9 46 B.C.

  10 From a large mussel; some were recently found in Leg of Mutton Pond at Hampstead, London.

  11 Catullus, Poems 29 and 57.

  II. AUGUSTUS, AFTERWARDS DEIFIED

  12 205 B.C.

  13 63 B.C.

  14 27 B.C.

  15 43–35 B.C.

  16 53 B.C.

  17 40 and 36 B.C.

  18 In the reign of King Numa and in 235 B.C., after the first Punic War.

  19 15 B.C.; 9 A.D.

  20 See Julius Caesar 70.

  21 43 B.C.

  22 33 B.C.

  23 5 B.C.

  24 See Julius Caesar 81 and 88.

  25 See Tiberius 8.

  26 See Julius Caesar 20.

  27 See Julius Caesar 39.

  28 If this was Lucius Nonius Asprenas, Consul in 6 A.D., and not the otherwise obscure Gaius Nonius Asprenas, whom Augustus surnamed ‘Torquatus’ as a consolation for his broken leg, he must have been acquitted; since he is said by Tacitus (Annals, i.53) to have been the proconsul who ordered Agrippa Postumus’s execution when the news of Augustus’s death reached Rome.

  29 Livia.

  30 Examples are given in Petronius’s Satyricon 57. Cenatoria et forensia ‘things for dining; things for the Forum’—were not, as might have been supposed, evening dress and formal city wear; but a joint of meat and a set of writing tablets.

  31 Augustus is confusing the sabbaths, when the Jews ate particularly well, with the annual Day of Atonement.

  32 See Julius Caesar 15.

  III. TIBERIUS