The Rule of the Generals and Imperial Rome
 

74 B.C.-192 A.D.
 

2 Tiberius

Caligula

Claudius

3 Nero

Tiberius

Tiberius, in full Tiberius Caesar Augustus or Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, original name Tiberius Claudius Nero (born Nov. 16, 42 bc—died March 16, ad 37, Capreae [Capri], near Naples), second Roman emperor (ad 14–37), adopted son of Augustus, whose imperial institutions and imperial boundaries he sought to preserve. In his last years he became a tyrannical recluse, inflicting a reign of terror against the major personages of Rome.

Background and youth
Tiberius’s father, also named Tiberius Claudius Nero, a high priest and magistrate, was a former fleet captain for Julius Caesar. His mother, the beautiful Livia Drusilla, was her husband’s cousin and may have been only 13 years old when Tiberius was born. In the civil wars following the assassination of Julius Caesar, the elder Tiberius gave his allegiance to Mark Antony, Caesar’s protégé. When Augustus, Caesar’s grandnephew and heir, fell out with Antony and defeated him in the ensuing power struggle, the elder Tiberius and his family became fugitives. They fled first to Sicily and then to Greece, but by the time Tiberius was three years old an amnesty was granted and the family was able to return to Rome.

In 39 bc Augustus had the power, if not yet the title, of emperor. Attracted by the beauty of Livia, who was at that time pregnant with a second son, Augustus divorced his own wife, who was also pregnant, and, forcing the elder Tiberius to give up Livia, married her. The infant Tiberius remained with his father, and, when the younger brother, Drusus, was born a few months later, he was sent to join them. At the death of his father, Tiberius was nine years old, and, with Drusus, he went to live with Livia and the emperor. The two boys and the emperor’s daughter, Julia, between them in age, studied together, played together, and took part in the obligatory ceremonials of temple dedication and celebration of victories. They were joined by their cousin Marcellus, the son of Augustus’s sister, Octavia.

In the absence of a clear law designating Augustus’s successor as emperor, all three boys were trained accordingly. They were instructed in rhetoric, literature, diplomacy, and military skills, and soon they also began taking a ceremonial role in the affairs of state. As oldest, Tiberius was the first to do so. In the triumph following Augustus’s victory over Cleopatra and Antony at Actium, the 13-year-old Tiberius rode the right-hand horse of Augustus’s chariot in the procession. Though not a striking figure, he conducted himself well.

Serious by nature, he had become a shy youth, though he was sometimes called sullen. His great talent was application. With the best teachers in the empire at his disposal and, above all, as a participant in life at the palace, the centre of the civilized Western world, he learned rapidly. By age 14, Tiberius was used to dining with kings of the empire, to conducting religious services over the heads of powerful men five times his age, and even to seeing his own form in marble statues.

Years in the shadow of Augustus
Tiberius was not handsome. As a teenager he was tall and broad-shouldered, but his complexion was bad. His nose had a pronounced hook, but that was typically Roman. His manner was disconcerting. He had a slow, methodical way of speaking that seemed intended to conceal his meaning rather than make it plain. But he was diligent. He may not have known he would be emperor, but he cannot have doubted that he would be at least a general at a rather early age and thereafter he would be a high official in the government of Rome. In 27 bc, when Tiberius was 15 years old, Augustus took him and Marcellus to Gaul to inspect outposts. They experienced no fighting, but they learned a great deal about how to rule the marches, keep fortifications intact, and keep garrisons alert. When they returned, Augustus gave Marcellus his daughter Julia as wife.

Then Tiberius himself married. Love matches were infrequent in imperial Rome, but Tiberius’s marriage to Vipsania Agrippina was one. She was the daughter of Marcus Agrippa, Augustus’s son-in-law and lieutenant. Besides his love for his wife, and for his brother, Drusus, now growing into manhood, he was occupied with important work. His first military command at age 22, resulting in the recovery of standards of some Roman legions that had been lost decades before in Parthia, brought him great acclaim. As a reward he asked for another active command and was given the assignment of pacifying the province of Pannonia on the Adriatic Sea. Tiberius not only conquered the enemy but so distinguished himself by his care for his men that he found himself popular and even loved. When he returned to Rome, he was awarded a triumph.

Tiberius’s happy years were coming to an end, however. His beloved brother, Drusus, broke his leg in falling from a horse while campaigning in Germany. Tiberius was at Ticinum, on the Po River, south of what is now Milan, 400 miles away. Riding day and night to be with his brother, he arrived just in time to see Drusus die. Tiberius escorted the body back to Rome, walking in front of it on foot all the way. He also had to give up his wife, Vipsania, the other person he loved. Augustus’s daughter Julia had become a widow for the second time. Her first husband, Marcellus, had died, and the emperor had married her to Agrippa (who, as Vipsania’s father, was Tiberius’s father-in-law). When Agrippa died in 12 bc, Augustus wanted her suitably married at once and chose Tiberius as her third husband. Tiberius had no more choice than his father had had when Augustus decided to marry Livia. Tiberius was as obedient as his father. He divorced Vipsania and married Julia.

Tiberius’s new wife has come down in history with a reputation for licentiousness. It is not certain how much of the reputation she deserved. Roman historians often dealt in gossip, inventing scandal when there was none; but in Julia’s case they had good reason for their opinion. When Julia married Tiberius, he was 30. She was 27, twice a widow, the mother of five children (not all surviving). She was pretty and light-minded and liked the society of men. She did not get along with her mother-in-law (who was also her stepmother), Livia, and after the first few months she tired of Tiberius. It is certain that she committed adultery, and this presented Tiberius with an immense problem, not only personal but also political. A law of Augustus himself required a husband to denounce a wife who committed adultery. But Julia was the emperor’s beloved child, and, as Augustus knew nothing of her vices, to denounce her would be to wound him, and that was dangerous.

With no good course of action to follow, Tiberius asked for and received fighting commands away from Rome. When once in Rome between battles, he chanced to see Vipsania at the home of a friend. She had, at Augustus’s orders, been remarried to a senator. Tiberius was so overcome with sorrow that he followed her through the streets, weeping. Augustus heard of it and ordered Tiberius never to see her again. Although Augustus heaped honours on Tiberius, they did not compensate for Julia’s behaviour. In 6 bc Tiberius was granted the powers of a tribune and shortly thereafter went into a self-imposed exile on the island of Rhodes, leaving Julia in Rome.

Tiberius was now 36 years old and at the pinnacle of his power. He was capable of ruling an empire, conducting a great war, or governing a province of barbarians. In Rhodes he had nothing to do, and all of his ability and strength appear to have turned inward, into strange and unpleasant behaviour. Although the histories of Tiberius’s reign—written either by flatterers, like his old war comrade Velleius Paterculus, or by enemies—are not wholly trustworthy, there can be no question that a change took place in Tiberius at this time. What emerged was a man who seemed interested only in his own satisfactions and the increasingly perverse ways to find them. On Rhodes Tiberius became a recluse—unassuming and amiable at first, resentful and angry later on. Though Tiberius had left Rome of his own free will, daring the emperor’s wrath, he could not return without Augustus’s permission. Augustus withheld that permission for the better part of a decade.

Eventually, Livia secured proofs of Julia’s many adulteries and took them to Augustus, who was furious. Under his own law she should have been executed, but he did not have the heart for that; instead, he exiled her for life to the tiny island of Pandateria. But even then Tiberius was not recalled. There were three young men whom the emperor appeared to favour as heirs, all sons of Julia. One of them, Postumus, reportedly no more than a boor, fell into disfavour with Augustus and was sent into exile with his mother. The other two, Lucius and Gaius, were clearly candidates to succeed. But in 2 bc Lucius died in Massilia (Marseille), and the emperor relented. He called Tiberius back to Rome. By ad 4 Tiberius was in possession of all his honours again, and in that year Gaius was killed in a war in Lycia. Tiberius had become the second man in Rome. Augustus did not like him, but he adopted him as his son. He had no choice, and he was growing old. Tiberius was the least objectionable successor left.

Tiberius became proud and powerful. His statues had been torn down and defaced while he was in Rhodes. Now they were rebuilt. He was given command of an army to quell Arminius, who had destroyed three Roman legions in Germany in ad 9; he succeeded wholly. He was succeeding at everything now, and in ad 14, on August 19, Augustus died. Tiberius, now supreme, played politics with the Senate and did not allow it to name him emperor for almost a month, but on September 17 he succeeded to the principate. He was 54 years old.

Reign as emperor
Although the opening years of Tiberius’s reign seem almost a model of wise and temperate rule, they were not without displays of force and violence, of a kind calculated to secure his power. The one remaining possible contender for the throne, Postumus, was murdered, probably at Tiberius’s orders. The only real threat to his power, the Roman Senate, was intimidated by the concentration of the Praetorian Guard, normally dispersed all over Italy, within marching distance of Rome.

Apart from acts such as these, Tiberius’s laws and policies were both patient and far-seeing. He did not attempt great new conquests. He did not move armies about or change governors of provinces without reason. He stopped the waste of the imperial treasury, so that when he died he left behind 20 times the wealth he had inherited, and the power of Rome was never more secure. He strengthened the Roman navy. He abandoned the practice of providing gladiatorial games. He forbade some of the more outlandish forms of respect to his office, such as naming a month of the calendar after him, as had been done for Julius Caesar and Augustus.

There were, to be sure, occasional wars and acts of savage repression. Tiberius’s legions put down a provincial rebellion with considerable bloodshed. In Rome itself, on the pretext that four Jews had conspired to steal a woman’s treasure, Tiberius exiled the entire Jewish community. The most ominous and least defensible aspect of Tiberius’s first years as emperor was the growth of the practice called “delation.” Most crimes committed by well-to-do citizens were, under Roman law, punished in part by heavy fines and confiscations. These fines contributed in large part to the growth of the imperial treasury, but the money did not all go to the fiscus. Because there were no paid prosecutors, any citizen could act as a volunteer prosecutor, and, if the person he accused was convicted, he could collect a share of the confiscated property. These volunteers, called delatores, made a profitable career of seeking out or inventing crime. Many of the prosecutions were based on rumour or falsified evidence, and there were few Romans who were so honoured or so powerful that they did not need to fear the attack of the delatores on any suspicion, or on none at all.

In ad 23 Tiberius’s son Drusus died. He had not been particularly loved by his father, but his death saddened Tiberius. From then on he spared less and less thought to the work of empire. More and more he delegated his authority in the actual running of affairs over to the man he had entrusted with the important command of the Praetorian Guard, Sejanus. Before long Tiberius was emperor only in name.

Ironically, the death of Drusus, the event that brought Sejanus to power, may have been Sejanus’s own doing. Apparently Sejanus had seduced the wife of the younger Drusus, Livilla, and induced her to become his accomplice in murdering her husband. The evidence is not absolute and has been questioned by many historians, but it was not questioned by Tiberius. In ad 27, at age 67, Tiberius left Rome to visit some of the southern parts of Italy. En route he paused to go to the island of Capri. His intention appears to have been only to stay for a time, but he never returned to Rome. It is the remaining decade or so of Tiberius’s life that has given rise to the legend of Tiberius the monster. It seems probable, to begin with, that Tiberius, never handsome, had become repulsively ugly. First his skin broke out in blotches, and then his complexion became covered with pus-filled eruptions, exuding a bad smell and causing a good deal of pain. He built himself a dozen villas ringing Capri, with prisons, underground dungeons, torture chambers, and places of execution. He filled his villas with treasure and art objects of every kind and with the enormous retinue appropriate to a Caesar: servants, guards, entertainers, philosophers, astrologers, musicians, and seekers after favour. If the near-contemporary historians are to be believed, his favourite entertainments were cruel and obscene. Even under the most favourable interpretation, he killed ferociously and almost at random. It is probable that by then his mind was disordered.

Tiberius had not, however, lost touch with the real world. He came to realize just how strong he had made Sejanus and how weak he had left himself. In ad 31 he allowed himself to be elected consul of Rome for a fifth time and chose Sejanus as his co-consul. He gave Sejanus permission to marry Livilla, the widow of Tiberius’s son. Now Sejanus not only had the substance of power but its forms as well. Golden statues were erected to him, and his birthday was declared a holiday. But Tiberius had come to fear and mistrust him. With the aid of Macro, Sejanus’s successor as commander of the Praetorians, Tiberius smuggled a letter to the Senate denouncing Sejanus and calling for his execution. The Senate was shocked and taken aback by the swift change, but it complied instantly—perhaps moved by the justice of Tiberius’s charges or by the strength of the Praetorian Guard.

Apparently Tiberius now reached a peak of denunciation and torture and execution that lasted for the remaining six years of his life. In the course of this reign of terror his delatores and torturers found evidence for him of the murder of his son, Drusus, by Livilla and Sejanus. Many great Roman names were implicated, falsely or not, and while that inquisition lasted no one on Capri was safe. Tiberius’s chief remaining concern for the empire was who would rule it when he was gone. There were few living successors with any real claim, and Tiberius settled, as Augustus had done before him, on the least offensive of an undesirable lot. His choice was Gaius Caesar, still a young boy and known by the nickname the Roman legions had given him when he was a camp mascot, Caligula, or Little Boots. Caligula, a great-grandson of Augustus through Julia and her daughter, had a claim to the throne as good as any. If his morals and habits were less than attractive, Tiberius did not seem to mind. “I am nursing a viper in Rome’s bosom,” Tiberius observed, and named Caligula his adopted son and successor.

In the spring of ad 37, Tiberius took part in a ceremonial game that required him to throw a javelin. He wrenched his shoulder, took to his bed, became ill, and lapsed into a coma. His physicians, who had not been allowed to examine him for nearly half a century, now studied his emaciated body and declared that he would die within the day. The successor, Caligula, was sent for. The Praetorian Guard declared their support for the new emperor. The news of the succession was proclaimed to the world. Then Tiberius recovered consciousness, sat up, and asked for something to eat. The notables of Rome were thrown into confusion. Only the Praetorian commander, Macro, kept his head, and on the next day he hurried to Tiberius’s bed, caught up a heap of blankets, and smothered Tiberius with them.

Assessment
As an infant Tiberius had been a fugitive and then a pawn. As a man he had been a popular and victorious general and then an exile. He came to supreme power already growing old. When he died, he left the Roman Empire prosperous and stable, and the institution of the principate was so strong that for a long time it was able to survive the excesses of his successors. Without him the later history of Rome might have been less colourful, but probably it would also have been far shorter.

Frederik Pohl

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Caligula

Caligula, byname of Gaius Caesar, in full Gaius Caesar Germanicus (born August 31 12 ce, Antium, Latium—died January 24, 41, Rome), Roman emperor from 37 to 41 ce, in succession to Tiberius, who effected the transfer of the last legion that had been under a senatorial proconsul (in Africa) to an imperial legate, thus completing the emperor’s monopoly of army command. Accounts of his reign by ancient historians are so biased against him that the truth is almost impossible to disentangle.

Born Gaius Caesar, he became known as Caligula (“Little Boot”), a childhood nickname bestowed on him by the soldiers of his father, Germanicus Caesar, nephew and adoptive son of Tiberius. The deaths of his father in 19 ce, of his mother, Agrippina the Elder, in 33, and of his two elder brothers, Julius Caesar Nero in 31 and Drusus Caesar in 23, were popularly ascribed to the machinations of Tiberius. Gaius and his three sisters survived. Adopting his father’s distinguished name, he became Gaius Caesar Germanicus.

He was severely ill seven months after his accession. After this he restored treason trials, showed great cruelty, and engaged in wild despotic caprice; e.g., he bridged the Bay of Naples with boats from Baiae to Puteoli in the summer of 39. In 38 he executed Naevius Sutorius Macro, prefect of the Praetorian Guard, to whose support he owed his accession, and Tiberius Gemellus, grandson of Tiberius, whom he had supplanted in the succession. He made pretensions to divinity and showed extravagant affection for his sisters, especially for Drusilla, who on her death (in 38) was consecrated Diva Drusilla, the first woman in Rome to be so honoured. Some scholars believe that he intended to establish a Hellenistic-type monarchy after the brother-sister marriages of the Ptolemies of Egypt. Others thought that after his illness he was mad; however, much evidence of this is suspect and some—e.g., that he made his horse consul—is untrue.  He may have suffered from epilepsy.

Caligula appeared unexpectedly on the Upper Rhine in October 39 and suppressed an incipient revolt, executing Drusilla’s widower M. Aemilius Lepidus and Gnaeus Lentulus Gaetulicus, commander of the Upper Rhine armies. After his accession Caligula quickly squandered the vast sums Tiberius had accumulated in the state treasury. To procure the revenues needed to finance his extravagances, he then resorted to the extortion of prominent Roman citizens and the confiscation of their estates. Early in 40 Caligula marched with an army into Gaul, whose inhabitants he plundered thoroughly. He marched his troops to the northern shoreline of Gaul as a prelude to the invasion of Britain but then ordered them to collect seashells there, which he called the spoils of the conquered ocean.

Caligula pursued his pretensions to divinity further; in the summer of 40 he ordered his statue to be erected in the Temple at Jerusalem, but, under the suave persuasion of Herod Agrippa, Caligula countermanded this potentially disastrous order. The Roman populace had by now grown weary of this mad and unpredictable tyrant, and several conspiracies were formed against him. In January 41, four months after his return to Rome from Gaul, Caligula was murdered at the Palatine Games by Cassius Chaerea, tribune of the Praetorian guard, Cornelius Sabinus, and others. Caligula’s wife Caesonia and his daughter were also put to death. He was succeeded as emperor by his uncle Claudius.

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Claudius

Claudius, in full Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, original name (until 41 ce) Tiberius Claudius Nero Germanicus (born Aug. 1, 10 bce, Lugdunum [Lyon], Gaul—died Oct. 13, 54 ce), Roman emperor (41–54 ce), who extended Roman rule in North Africa and made Britain a province.

Early life
The son of Nero Claudius Drusus, a popular and successful Roman general, and the younger Antonia, he was the nephew of the emperor Tiberius and a grandson of Livia Drusilla, the wife of the emperor Augustus. Ill health, unattractive appearance, clumsiness of manner, and coarseness of taste did not recommend him for a public life. The imperial family seems to have considered him something of an embarrassment, and he was long left to his own private studies and amusements. It was the historian Livy who recognized and encouraged his inclination for historical studies. Claudius wrote a pamphlet defending the republican politician and orator Cicero, who was executed by the triumvirs; and, having discovered that it was difficult to speak freely on the civil wars toward the end of the Roman Republic, he began a history of Rome with the principate of Augustus. He composed 20 books of Etruscan and 8 books of Carthaginian history, all in Greek; an autobiography; and a historical treatise on the Roman alphabet with suggestions for orthographical reform—which as emperor he later tried not very successfully to implement. He also wrote on dice playing, of which he was fond. All his works are lost, and their importance cannot be measured. The Etruscan history may have had original material: his first wife, Plautia Urgulanilla, had Etruscan blood, and her family was probably able to put Claudius in touch with authentic Etruscan traditions. After divorcing Urgulanilla, he in turn married Aelia Paetina, Valeria Messalina, who was his wife at his accession, and, finally, Agrippina the Younger. By his first three wives he had five children, of whom Drusus and Claudia died before he became emperor. As a young man Claudius was made a member of various religious colleges, but he became consul only under the reign of his older brother’s son Gaius (Caligula) in 37. There was, however, little cordiality between the two.

Emperor and colonizer
Power came to Claudius unexpectedly after Gaius’s murder on Jan. 24, 41, when he was discovered trembling in the palace by a soldier. The Praetorian Guards, the imperial household troops, made him emperor on January 25. By family tradition and antiquarian inclinations, Claudius was in sympathy with the senatorial aristocracy; but soldiers and courtiers were his real supporters, while freedmen and foreigners had been his friends in the days of neglect. Initially, the attitude of the Senate was at best ambiguous. In 42 many senators supported the ill-fated rebellion of the Governor of Dalmatia. Even later, several attempts on Claudius’s life involved senators and knights. Though paying homage to the dignity of the Senate (to whose administration he returned the provinces of Macedonia and Achaea) and giving new opportunities to the knights, Claudius was ruthless and occasionally cruel in his dealings with individual members of both orders. From the very beginning he emphasized his friendship with the army and paid cash for his proclamation as emperor.

Claudius’s decision to invade Britain (43) and his personal appearance at the climax of the expedition, the crossing of the Thames and the capture of Camulodunum (Colchester), were prompted by his need of popularity and glory. But concern with the anti-Roman influence of the Druid priesthood, which he tried to suppress in Gaul, and a general inclination toward expanding the frontiers were other reasons. Claudius planted a colony of veterans at Camulodunum and established client-kingdoms to protect the frontiers of the province; these were afterward a source of trouble, such as the revolt in 47 of Prasutagus, client-king of the Iceni, and later the general revolt instigated by his wife Boudicca (also called Boadicea). He also annexed Mauretania (41–42) in North Africa, of which he made two provinces (Caesariensis in the east and Tingitana in the west), Lycia in Asia Minor (43), and Thrace (46). Though he enlarged the kingdom of Herod Agrippa I, he later made Judaea a province on Agrippa’s death in 44. In 49 he annexed Iturea (northeastern Palestine) to the province of Syria. He was careful not to involve the empire in major wars with the Germans and the Parthians. Claudius supported Roman control of Armenia, but in 52 he preferred the collapse of the pro-Roman government to a war with Parthia, leaving a difficult situation to his successor.

In the civil administration, many measures demonstrate Claudius’s enlightened policy. He improved in detail the judicial system, and, in his dealings with the provinces, he favoured a moderate extension of Roman citizenship by individual and collective grants: in Noricum, a district south of the Danube comprising what is now central Austria and parts of Bavaria, for instance, five communities became Roman municipalities. He encouraged urbanization and planted several colonies, for example, at Camulodunum and at Colonia Agrippinensis (modern Cologne) in Germany in 51. In his religious policy Claudius respected tradition; he revived old religious ceremonies, celebrated the festival of the Secular Games in 47 (three days and nights of games and sacrifice commemorating the 800th birthday of Rome), made himself a censor in 47, and extended in 49 the pomerium of Rome (i.e., the boundary of the area in which only Roman gods could be worshipped and magistrates ruled with civil, not military, powers). He protected the haruspices (diviners) and probably Romanized the cult of the Phrygian deity Attis. According to the biographer Suetonius in Claudius, during a period of troubles Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome for a short time; Christians may have been involved. Elsewhere he confirmed existing Jewish rights and privileges, and in Alexandria he tried to protect the Jews without provoking Egyptian nationalism. In a surviving letter addressed to the city of Alexandria, he asked Jews and non-Jews “to stop this destructive and obstinate mutual enmity.” Although personally disinclined to accept divine honours, he did not seriously oppose the current trend and had a temple erected to himself in Camulodunum. His public works include the reorganization of the grain supply of Rome and construction of a new harbour at Ostia, which was later improved by the emperor Trajan.

Administrative innovations
Claudius’s general policy increased the control of the emperor over the treasury and the provincial administration and apparently gave jurisdiction in fiscal matters to his own governors in the senatorial provinces. He created a kind of cabinet of freedmen, on whom he bestowed honours, to superintend various branches of the administration. An impressive series of documents, such as a speech for the admission of Gauls to the Senate recorded on a partly defective inscription at Lugdunum (Lyon), the edict for the Anauni (an Alpine population who had usurped the rights of Roman citizenship and whom Claudius confirmed in these rights), and the aforementioned letter to the city of Alexandria (41 ce), survive as evidence of his personal style of government: pedantic, uninhibited, alternately humane and wrathful, and ultimately despotic. The inscription from Lugdunum is an interesting comparison with the version of the historian Tacitus in his Annals, which gives an account of the same speech. The speech as recorded in the inscription, in spite of irrelevance, inconsequence, and fondness for digression (much of which is absent in the version of Tacitus), shows that Claudius knew what he wanted and that he appreciated the latent forces of Roman tradition.

His marriage with Messalina ended in 48, when she apparently conspired against him and, according to Tacitus, conducted a public marriage ceremony with her lover, Gaius Silius. Messalina and Silius were killed, and Claudius married his niece Agrippina, an act contrary to Roman law, which he therefore changed. To satisfy Agrippina’s lust for power, Claudius had to adopt her son Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (later the emperor Nero), to the disadvantage of his own son Britannicus. In addition, the new commander of the guards, Afranius Burrus, was protected by Agrippina. Roman tradition is unanimous in stating that Claudius was poisoned by Agrippina on Oct. 13, 54 ce, though the details differ. A version of poisoning by mushrooms prevailed. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the politician and satirist, who had been exiled by Claudius at his accession but had been recalled at Agrippina’s urging to educate Nero, derided the dead emperor and his apotheosis (duly decreed by the Senate) in the satire Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii (“The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius”; the title and its exact meaning are both subject to dispute).

The picture of Claudius that appears in this work has much in common with that of later Roman historians who give details of the unpopular side of Claudius’s administration. The Apocolocyntosis ridicules his physical appearance and his speaking ability and casts aspersions on his abilities as a judge, depicting him as arbitrary—of giving legal judgments without a fair hearing and of summarily ordering the executions of relatives, senators, and knights.

Tacitus, Suetonius, and the later historian Dio Cassius attribute Claudius’s mistakes to infirmity of character and the influence of his wives and freedmen. They echo the hostility of the upper classes against an emperor who, in spite of his words, had been unfavourable to them. That this tradition is one-sided is shown by the surviving documents of the reign and the energy with which Claudius carried out the affairs of government.

Arnaldo Dante Momigliano

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Nero

Nero, in full Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, also called (50–54 ce) Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus, original name Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (born Dec. 15, 37 ce, Antium, Latium—died June 9, 68, Rome), the fifth Roman emperor (54–68 ce), stepson and heir of the emperor Claudius. He became infamous for his personal debaucheries and extravagances and, on doubtful evidence, for his burning of Rome and persecutions of Christians.

Upbringing
Nero’s father, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, died in about 40 ce, and Nero was brought up by his mother, Agrippina the Younger, a great-granddaughter of the emperor Augustus. After poisoning her second husband, Agrippina incestuously became the wife of her uncle, the emperor Claudius, and persuaded him to favour Nero for the succession, over the rightful claim of his own son, Britannicus, and to marry his daughter, Octavia, to Nero. Having already helped to bring about the murder of Valeria Messalina, her predecessor as the wife of Claudius, in 48, and ceaselessly pursuing her intrigues to bring Nero to power, Agrippina eliminated her opponents among Claudius’s palace advisers, probably had Claudius himself poisoned in 54, and completed her work with the poisoning of Britannicus in 55. Upon the death of Claudius she at once had Nero proclaimed emperor by the Praetorian Guard, whose prefect, Sextus Afranius Burrus, was her partisan; the Senate thus had to accept a fait accompli. For the first time absolute power in the Roman Empire was vested in a mere boy, who was not yet 17.

Early reign
Agrippina immediately eliminated the powerful freedman Narcissus, who had always opposed her aims. She hoped to control the government, but Burrus and Nero’s old tutor, the Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca, though they owed their influence to Agrippina, were not content to remain her tools. They encouraged Nero to act independently of her, and a growing coolness resulted in Nero’s relations with his mother. In 56 Agrippina was forced into retirement. From that time until 62, Burrus and Seneca were the effective rulers of the empire.

Brought up in this atmosphere, Nero might well have begun to behave like a monster upon his accession as emperor in 54 but, in fact, behaved quite otherwise. He put an end to the more odious features of the later years of Claudius’s reign, including secret trials before the emperor and the dominance of corrupt freedmen, and he accorded more independence to the Senate. The testimony of contemporaries depicts Nero at this time as a handsome young man of fine presence but with soft, weak features and a restless spirit. Up to the year 59, Nero’s biographers cite only acts of generosity and clemency on his account. His government forbade contests in the circus involving bloodshed, banned capital punishment, reduced taxes, and accorded permission to slaves to bring civil complaints against unjust masters. Nero himself pardoned writers of epigrams against him and even those who plotted against him, and secret trials were few. The law of treason was dormant: Claudius had put 40 senators to death, but, between the murders instigated by Agrippina in 54 and the year 62, there were no like incidents in Nero’s reign. Nero also inaugurated competitions in poetry, in the theatre, and in athletics as counterattractions to gladiatorial combats. He saw to it that assistance was provided to cities that had suffered disaster and, at the request of the Jewish historian Josephus, gave aid to the Jews.

Artistic pretensions and irresponsibility
While directing the government themselves, Burrus and Seneca had largely left Nero uncontrolled to pursue his own tastes and pleasures. Seneca urged Nero to use his autocratic powers conscientiously, but he obviously failed to harness the boy’s more generous impulses to his responsibilities. At first Nero hated signing death sentences, and the extortions of Roman tax collectors upon the populace led him in 58 to unrealistically suggest that the customs dues should be abolished. Even later Nero was capable of conceiving grandiose plans for conquests or the creation of public works, but for the most part he used his position simply to gratify his own personal pleasures. His nocturnal rioting in the streets was a scandal as early as 56, but the emergence of real brutality in Nero can be fixed in the 35-month period between the putting to death of his mother at his orders in 59 and his similar treatment of his wife Octavia in June 62. He was led to the murder of Agrippina by her insanity and her fury at seeing her son slip out of her control, to the murder of Octavia by his having fallen in love with Poppaea Sabina, the young wife of the senator (and later emperor) Otho, and by his fear that his repudiated wife was fomenting disaffection at court and among the populace. He married Poppaea in 62, but she died in 65, and he subsequently married the patrician lady Statilia Messalina.

Seeing that he could do what he liked without fear of censure or retribution, Nero began to give rein to inordinate artistic pretensions. He fancied himself not only a poet but also a charioteer and lyre player, and in 59 or 60 he began to give public performances; later he appeared on the stage, and the theatre furnished him with the pretext to assume every kind of role. To the Romans these antics seemed to be scandalous breaches of civic dignity and decorum. Nero even dreamed of abandoning the throne of Rome in order to fulfill his poetical and musical gifts, though he did not act on these puerile ambitions. Beginning about 63 he also developed strange religious enthusiasms and became increasingly attracted to the preachers of novel cults. By now Seneca felt that he had lost all influence over Nero, and he retired after Burrus’s death in 62.

The great fire that ravaged Rome in 64 illustrates how low Nero’s reputation had sunk by this time. Taking advantage of the fire’s destruction, Nero had the city reconstructed in the Greek style and began building a prodigious palace—the Golden House—which, had it been finished, would have covered a third of Rome. During the fire Nero was at his villa at Antium 35 miles (56 km) from Rome and therefore cannot be held responsible for the burning of the city. But the Roman populace mistakenly believed that he himself had started the fire in Rome in order to indulge his aesthetic tastes in the city’s subsequent reconstruction. According to the Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus and to the Nero of the Roman biographer Suetonius, Nero in response tried to shift responsibility for the fire on the Christians, who were popularly thought to engage in many wicked practices. Hitherto the government had not clearly distinguished Christians from Jews; almost by accident, Nero initiated the later Roman policy of halfhearted persecution of the Christians, in the process earning himself the reputation of Antichrist in the Christian tradition.

The approaching end
Meanwhile, the imperial government had had some success in the east. The great foreign-policy problem of the time was that of Armenia. Since the reign of Augustus, it had been Roman policy to appoint vassal kings there and so make Armenia a buffer state against Parthia, Rome’s implacable foe in the east. But the Armenians had long chafed under Roman rule, and in the emperor Claudius’s last years a Parthian prince named Tiridates had made himself king of Armenia with the support of its people. In response, Nero’s new government took vigorous action, appointing an able general, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, to the command. Prolonged military operations by Corbulo led in 66 to a new settlement; Tiridates was recognized as king, but he was compelled to come to Rome to receive his crown from Nero.

Despite this success, the provinces were increasingly uneasy, for they were oppressed by exactions to cover Nero’s extravagant expenditures on his court, new buildings, and gifts to his favourites; the last expenditures alone are said to have amounted to more than two billion sesterces, a sum that was several times the annual cost of the army. A revolt in Britain was headed by Queen Boudicca (Boadicea) in 60 or 61, and an insurrection in Judaea lasted from 66 to 70. Nero had many antagonists by this time. The great conspiracy to make Gaius Calpurnius Piso emperor in 65 reveals the diversity of his enemies—senators, knights, officers, and philosophers. That the conspiracy included military officers was an ominous sign, but Nero did not give way to panic; slaves kept him out of danger by warning him of plots that were hatching among their masters. And he did not altogether abandon his lenient attitude. Out of 41 participants in the Piso conspiracy, only 18 died (including Seneca and the poet Lucan), either by order or from fear; the others were exiled or pardoned.

At the end of the year 66, Nero undertook a long visit to Greece that was to keep him away from Rome for 15 months, and during his absence he entrusted the consulate to one of his freedmen. On this trip Nero engaged in new displays of his artistic prowess, and he walked about garbed as an ascetic, barefoot and with flowing hair. His enthusiasm for Greek culture also prompted him to free a number of Greek cities in honour of their glorious past. In the four months following his return to Rome in February 68, his delirious pretensions as both an artist and a religious worshiper aroused the enmity not only of the Senate and those patricians who had been dispossessed by him but also of the Italian middle class, which had old-fashioned moral views and which furnished most of the officers of the army. Even the common soldiers of the legions were scandalized to see the descendant of Caesar publicly perform on stage the parts not only of ancient Greek heroes but of far lower characters. “I have seen him on stage,” Gaius Julius Vindex, the legate who rebelled against him, was to say, “playing pregnant women and slaves about to be executed.”

At the news of revolts brewing throughout the empire—that of the provincial governor Servius Sulpicius Galba in Spain, the rebellion of the provincial governor Julius Vindex at Lyon in Gaul (France), and others on the eastern frontier—Nero only laughed and indulged in further megalomaniacal displays instead of taking action. “I have only to appear and sing to have peace once more in Gaul,” he is reported to have said. Meanwhile, the revolt spread and the legions made Galba emperor; the Senate condemned Nero to die a slave’s death: on a cross and under the whip. The Praetorian Guard, his palace guard, abandoned him, and his freedmen left to embark on the ships he kept in readiness at Ostia, the port of Rome. Nero was obliged to flee the city. According to Suetonius, he stabbed himself in the throat with a dagger. According to another version (recounted by Tacitus and almost certainly fiction) he reached the Greek islands, where the following year (69) the governor of Cythnos (modern Kíthnos) recognized him in the guise of a red-haired prophet and leader of the poor, had him arrested, and executed the sentence that had been passed by the Senate.

The Roman populace and the Praetorian Guard later came to regret that they had lost such a liberal patron, but to his subjects in general, Nero had been a tyrant, and the revolt his misrule provoked sparked a series of civil wars that for a time threatened the survival of the Roman Empire and caused widespread misery.

Encyclopaedia Britannica

The death of Seneca, by Luca Giordano, 1684
 

The Death of Seneca,
by Peter Paul Rubens, 1615

4 Persecution of Christians after the fire in Rome in 64 a.d.

4 Christians were persecuted and blamed for the
devastating fire in Rome in 64.

With revolts in the provinces Nero killed himself in 68,
ending the Julio-Claudian dynasty.






 

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Roman philosopher and statesman [4 BC–AD 65]
byname Seneca The Younger
born c. 4 bc, Corduba, Spain
died ad 65, Rome

Main
Roman philosopher, statesman, orator, and tragedian. He was Rome’s leading intellectual figure in the mid-1st century ad and was virtual ruler with his friends of the Roman world between 54 and 62 during the first phase of the emperor Nero’s reign.

Early life and family
Seneca was the second son of a wealthy family. The father, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Elder), had been famous in Rome as a teacher of rhetoric; the mother, Helvia, was of excellent character and education; the older brother was Gallio, met by St. Paul in Achaea in ad 52; the younger brother was the father of the poet Lucan. An aunt took Lucius as a boy to Rome; there he was trained as an orator and educated in philosophy in the school of the Sextii, which blended Stoicism with an ascetic neo-Pythagoreanism. Seneca’s health suffered, and he went to recuperate in Egypt, where his aunt was the wife of the prefect, Gaius Galerius. Returning to Rome about the year 31, he began a career in politics and law. Soon he fell foul of the emperor Caligula, who was deterred from killing him only by the argument that his life was sure to be short.
In 41 the emperor Claudius banished Seneca to Corsica on a charge of adultery with the princess Julia Livilla, the Emperor’s niece. In that uncongenial milieu he studied natural science and philosophy and wrote the three treatises entitled Consolationes. The influence of Agrippina, the Emperor’s wife, had him recalled to Rome in 49. He became praetor in ad 50, married Pompeia Paulina, a wealthy woman, built up a powerful group of friends, including the new prefect of the guard, Sextus Afranius Burrus, and became tutor to the future emperor Nero.
The murder of Claudius in 54 pushed Seneca and Burrus to the top. Their friends held the great army commands on the German and Parthian frontiers. Nero’s first public speech, drafted by Seneca, promised liberty for the Senate and an end to the influence of freedmen and women. Agrippina, Nero’s mother, was resolved that her influence should continue, and there were other powerful enemies. But Seneca and Burrus, although provincials from Spain and Gaul, understood the problems of the Roman world. They introduced fiscal and judicial reforms and fostered a more humane attitude toward slaves. Their nominee Corbulo defeated the Parthians; in Britain a more enlightened administration followed the quashing of Boudicca’s rebellion. But as Tacitus, the historian (c. 56–117), says, “Nothing in human affairs is more unstable and precarious than power unsupported by its own strength.” Seneca and Burrus were a tyrant’s favourites. In 59 they had to condone—or to contrive—the murder of Agrippina. When Burrus died in 62 Seneca knew that he could not go on. He received permission to retire, and in his remaining years he wrote some of his best philosophical works. In 65, Seneca’s enemies denounced him as having been a party to the conspiracy of Piso. Ordered to commit suicide, he met death with fortitude and composure.
 

Philosophical works and tragedies.
The Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii (The Pumpkinification of the Divine Claudius) stands apart from the rest of Seneca’s surviving works. A political skit, witty and unscrupulous, its theme is the deification—or “pumpkinification”—of Claudius. The rest divide into philosophical works and the tragedies. The former expound an eclectic version of “Middle” Stoicism, adapted for the Roman market by Panaetius of Rhodes (2nd century bc), and developed by his compatriot Poseidonius in the 1st century bc. Poseidonius lies behind the books on natural science, Naturales quaestiones, where lofty generalities on the investigation of nature are offset by a jejune exposition of the facts. Of the Consolationes, Ad Marciam consoles a lady on the loss of a son; Ad Helviam matrem, Seneca’s mother on his exile; Ad Polybium, the powerful freedman Polybius on the loss of a son but with a sycophantic plea for recall from Corsica. The De ira deals at length with the passion of anger, its consequences, and control. The De clementia, an exhortatory address to Nero, commends mercy as the sovereign quality for a Roman emperor. De tranquillitate animi, De constantia sapientis, De vita beata, and De otio consider various aspects of the life and qualities of the Stoic wise man. De beneficiis is a diffuse treatment of benefits as seen by giver and recipient. De brevitate vitae demonstrates that our human span is long enough if time is properly employed—which it seldom is. Best written and most compelling are the Epistulae morales, addressed to Lucilius. Those 124 brilliant essays treat a range of moral problems not easily reduced to a single formula.
Of the 10 “Senecan” tragedies, Octavia is certainly, and Hercules Oetaeus is probably, spurious. The others handle familiar Greek tragic themes, with some originality of detail. Attempts to arrange them as a schematic treatment of Stoic “vices” seem too subtle. Intended for playreadings rather than public presentation, the pitch is a high monotone, emphasizing the lurid and the supernatural. There are impressive set speeches and choral passages, but the characters are static, and they rant. The principal representatives of classical tragedy known to the Renaissance world, these plays had a great influence, notably in England. Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and Cyril Tourneur’s Revengers Tragaedie, with their ghosts, witches, cruel tyrants, and dominant theme of vengeance, are the progeny of Seneca’s tragedies.

Stature and influence.
Hostile propaganda pursued Seneca’s memory. Quintilian, the 1st-century ad rhetorician, criticized his educational influence; Tacitus was ambivalent on Seneca’s place in history. But his views on monarchy and its duties contributed to the humane and liberal temper of the age of the Antonines (Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus; ad 138–192). Meanwhile, the spread of Stoicism kept his philosophy alive: new horizons opened when it was found to have Christian affinities. There was a belief that he knew St. Paul and a spurious collection of letters to substantiate it. Studied by Augustine and Jerome, Seneca’s works consoled Boethius in prison. His thought was a component of the Latin culture of the Middle Ages, often filtered through anthologies. Known to Dante, Chaucer, and Petrarch, his moral treatises were edited by Erasmus; the first complete English translation appeared in 1614. In the 16th to 18th century Senecan prose, in content and style, served the vernacular literatures as a model for essays, sermons, and moralizing. Calvin, Montaigne, and Rousseau are instances. As the first of “Spanish” thinkers, his influence in Spain was always powerful. Nineteenth-century specialization brought him under fire from philosophers, scientists, historians, and students of literature. But later scholarly work and the interest aroused by the bimillenary commemorations of his death in Spain in 1965 suggested that a Senecan revival might be under way. In his 40 surviving books the thoughts of a versatile but unoriginal mind are expressed and amplified by the resources of an individual style.


Donald Reynolds Dudley

Encyclopaedia Britannica

see also:


Virgil

"The Aeneid"

The Peace Realm of Augustus

Virgil, The Aeneid, book 1, foretelling the reign of Augustus:

"Then dire debate and impious war shall cease,
And the stern age be soften'd into peace:
Then banish'd Faith shall once again return,
And Vestal fires in hallow'd temples burn:
And Remuswith Quirinus shall sustain.
The righteous laws, and fraud and force restrain...."
 

text

Ovid

"Metamorphoses"


illustrations by

Francois Chauveau

and Noel Le Mire

Virgil and two muses,
mosaic from the house of Virgil in Hadrumetum, Sousse, Tunisia