The Twelve Caesars

  He also abolished the right of sanctuary in temples and holy places, which criminals enjoyed throughout the Empire; and punished the people of Cyzicus, on the Sea of Marmara, for their outrageous treatment of certain Roman citizens, by withdrawing the freedom conferred on them as a reward for services in the Mithridatan War. Immediately after his accession he delegated the task of dealing with frontier incidents to his generals, but sanctioned aggressive action only if it seemed unavoidable. He disciplined foreign kings suspected of ill-will towards Rome by threats and reprimands rather than punitive expeditions; and decoyed some of them with glowing promises to Rome—where they were detained at his pleasure. Among them were Marbodus the German, Rhascuporis the Thracian, and Archelaus of Cappadocia—whose kingdom he reduced to provincial status.

  38. In the first two years of his reign Tiberius did not once set foot outside the gates of Rome; and even after that the farthest town he visited was Antium, where he occasionally spent a few days. Yet he announced from time to time that he would make a tour of the provinces and inspect the troops there; and almost every year went through the farce of chartering transport and requesting the free towns and colonies to have supplies of food and drink ready when he approached. At last he even allowed people to make vows for his safe return from the promised tour, which earned him the nickname of ‘Callipedes’—the original Callipedes having been a comic actor, famous for his realistic imitation of a long-distance runner, in which he never moved from the same spot.

  39. After the loss of his son Drusus at Rome, and his adopted son Germanicus, in Syria, Tiberius retired to Campania—from which almost everyone swore he would not return, but would soon die there. This prediction was not far out, because Rome had, in fact, seen the last of him, and he narrowly escaped death a few days later. He was dining at a country house called ‘The Cavern’, near Terracina, when some huge rocks fell from the roof of the natural cave which served as a banqueting hall and gave the house its name, killing several guests and attendants close to him.

  40. His pretext for the progress through Campania was that he must dedicate a temple to Capitoline Juppiter at Capua, and a temple to Augustus at Nola. But, these tasks done, he crossed over to the isle of Capri, which fascinated him by having only one small landing-beach—the remainder of its coast consisted of sheer cliffs surrounded by deep water. However, a catastrophe at Fidenae recalled him to the mainland almost at once: the amphitheatre had collapsed during a gladiatorial show, and more than 20,000 people lay dead in the ruins. Tiberius now gave audiences to everyone who demanded them, and was the readier to be gracious because he had given orders on leaving the City some days previously that he must not be disturbed throughout his journey. This sudden courtesy was by way of amends.

  41. On his return to Capri he let all affairs of state slide: neither filling vacancies that occurred in the Equestrian Order, nor making new appointments to senior military commands in any province. Spain and Syria were left without governors of consular rank for several years. He allowed the Parthians to overrun Armenia; the Dacians and Sarmatians to ravage Moesia; and the Germans to invade Gaul—a negligence as dangerous to the Empire as it was dishonourable.

  42. But having found seclusion at last, and no longer feeling himself under public scrutiny, he rapidly succumbed to all the vicious passions which he had for a long time tried, not very successfully, to disguise. I shall give a faithful account of these from the start. Even as a young officer he was such a hard drinker that his name, Tiberius Claudius Nero, was displaced by the nickname ‘Biberius Caldius Mero’—meaning: ‘Drinker of wine with no water added’. When already Emperor and busily engaged on the reform of public morals, he spent two whole days and the intervening night in an orgy of food and drink with Pomponius Flaccus and Lucius Piso—at the conclusion of which he made Flaccus Governor-general of Syria; and Piso, City Prefect—actually eulogizing them in their commissions as ‘good fellows at all hours of the day or night’. Being invited to dinner by Cestius Gallus, a lecherous old spendthrift whom Augustus had ignominiously removed from the Senate and whom he had himself reprimanded for his ill-living only a few days previously, Tiberius accepted on condition that the dinner should follow Gallus’s usual routine; and that the waitresses should be naked. At another banquet a very obscure candidate for the quaestorship drained a huge two-handled tankard of wine at Tiberius’s challenge, whereupon he was preferred to rival candidates from the noblest families. Tiberius also paid Asellius Sabinus 2,000 gold pieces, to show his appreciation of a dialogue in which a mushroom, a fig-picker, an oyster, and a thrush competed for a culinary prize; and established a new office, Comptroller of Pleasures, first held by a knight named Titus Caesonius Priscus.

  43. On retiring to Capri he made himself a private sporting-house, where sexual extravagances were practised for his secret pleasure. Bevies of girls and young men, whom he had collected from all over the Empire as adepts in unnatural practices, and known as spintriae, would perform before him in groups of three, to excite his waning passions. A number of small rooms were furnished with the most indecent pictures and statuary obtainable, also certain erotic manuals from Elephantis in Egypt; the inmates of the establishment would know from these exactly what was expected of them. He furthermore devised little nooks of lechery in the woods and glades of the island, and had boys and girls dressed up as Pans and nymphs posted in front of caverns or grottoes; so that the island was now openly and generally called ‘Caprineum’, because of his goatish antics.

  44. Some aspects of his criminal obscenity are almost too vile to discuss, much less believe. Imagine training little boys, whom he called his ‘minnows’, to chase him while he went swimming and get between his legs to lick and nibble him. Or letting babies not yet weaned from their mother’s breast suck at him—such a filthy old man he had become! Then there was a painting by Parrhasius, which had been bequeathed him on condition that, if he did not like the subject, he could have 10,000 gold pieces instead. Tiberius not only preferred to keep the picture but hung it in his bedroom. It showed Atalanta committing a grossly intimate act with Meleager.

  The story goes that once, while sacrificing, he took an erotic fancy to the acolyte who carried the incense casket, and could hardly wait for the ceremony to end before hurrying him and his brother, the sacred trumpeter, out of the temple and indecently assaulting them both. When they protested at this dastardly crime he had their legs broken.

  45. What nasty tricks he used to play on women, even those of high rank, is clearly seen in the case of Mallonia whom he summoned to his bed. She showed such an invincible repugnance to complying with his aged lusts that he set informers on her track and during her very trial continued to shout: ‘Are you sorry?’ Finally she left the court and went home; there she stabbed herself to death after a violent tirade against ‘that filthy-mouthed, hairy, stinking old beast’. So a joke at his expense, slipped into the next Atellan farce, won a loud laugh and went the rounds at once:

  The old goat goes

  For the does

  With his tongue.

  46. Tiberius was close-fisted to the point of miserliness, never paying his staff a salary when on a foreign mission, but merely providing their keep. On the sole occasion that he behaved liberally to these friends of his, Augustus bore the expense. Tiberius then arranged them in three categories according to their rank; the first were given 6,000 gold pieces, the second 4,000 and the third, whom he described not as ‘friends’ but as ‘favourites’, 2,000.

  47. No magnificent public works marked his reign: his only two undertakings, the erection of Augustus’s Temple and the restoration of Pompey’s Theatre, still remained uncompleted at the end of all those years. He hardly ever attended public shows given by others, because he gave none himself and did not want to be asked for any—especially after the crowd forced him, on one of his rare visits to the theatre, to buy the freedom of a slave-comedian named Actius. Though relieving the financial distress of a few senators at his accession
, he avoided having to repeat this generous act by announcing that, in future, imperial assistance would be restricted to such persons as could prove to the satisfaction of the Senate that they were not responsible for their financial embarrassment. Shame and pride then prevented many impoverished senators from making an application; among these Hortalus, grandson of the orator Quintus Hortensius, whose income was very moderate indeed but whom Augustus’s impassioned pleas had encouraged to beget four children.

  48. Tiberius showed large-scale generosity no more than twice. On the first occasion he offered a public loan of a million gold pieces, free of interest, for three years, because a decree which he had persuaded the Senate to pass—ordering all money-lenders to invest two-thirds of their capital in agricultural land, provided that their debtors at once disbursed in cash two-thirds of what they owed—failed to relieve the acute economic crisis. On the second occasion,50 he paid for the rebuilding of certain blocks of houses on the Caelian Hill which had been destroyed in a fire. This, too, was an emergency measure during bad times; yet he made such a parade of his open-handedness as to rename the whole hill ‘The Augustan’. After doubling the legacies bequeathed by Augustus to the army, Tiberius never gave them anything beyond their pay; except for the ten gold pieces a head which the Praetorian Guard won for not joining Sejanus’s revolt, and a small sum awarded the troops in Syria for their refusal to set consecrated statues of Sejanus among their regimental standards. He granted few veterans their discharge, reckoning that, if they died while still with the Colours, he would be spared the expense of the customary discharge bounty. The only free money grant any province got from him was when an earthquake destroyed some cities in Asia Minor.

  49. As the years went by, this stinginess turned to rapacity. It is notorious that he forced the wealthy Gnaeus Lentulus Augur to name him as his sole heir, and then to commit suicide, by playing on his nervous apprehensions; and that he gratified Quirinius,51 a rich and childless ex-Consul, by executing the noble Aemilia Lepida—she was Quirinius’s divorced wife and he accused her of an attempt to poison him twenty years previously! Tiberius also confiscated the property of leading Spanish, Gallic, Syrian, and Greek provincials on trivial and absurd charges, such as keeping too much of their wealth in ready cash—as if they were hoarding it for revolutionary purposes! He made many states and individuals forfeit their ancient immunities and mineral rights, and the privilege of collecting taxes. As for Vonones, King of Parthia, whom his subjects had dethroned but who, under the impression that he was confiding himself to Roman protection, escaped to Antioch with a huge treasure: Tiberius treacherously robbed and killed him.

  50. Tiberius’s first hostile action against his own family was when his brother Drusus wrote to him privately suggesting that they should jointly persuade Augustus to restore the Republican constitution; Tiberius placed the letter in Augustus’s hands. After coming to power he showed so little pity for his exiled wife Julia that he did not have the decency to confirm Augustus’s decree which merely forbade her to set foot outside the town of Reggio; but restricted her to a single house where visitors were forbidden. He even deprived her of the annual sums hitherto paid her by Augustus, as both his daughter and his daughter-in-law, on the pretext that no mention of these had appeared in his will and that consequently, under common law, she was no longer entitled to draw them. Tiberius then complained that his mother Livia vexed him by wanting to be co-ruler of the Empire; which was why he avoided frequent meetings or long private talks with her. Although he did occasionally need and follow Livia’s advice, he disliked people to think of him as giving it serious consideration. A senatorial decree adding ‘Son of Livia’ as well as ‘Son of Augustus’ to his honorifics so deeply offended him that he vetoed proposals to confer ‘Mother of the Country’ or any similarly high-sounding title on her. What is more, he often warned Livia to remember that she was a woman and must not interfere in affairs of state. He became especially insistent on this point when a fire broke out near the Temple of Vesta and news reached him that Livia was directing the civilian and military fire-fighters in person, as though Augustus were still alive, and urging them to redouble their efforts.

  51. Afterwards Tiberius quarrelled openly with his mother. The story goes that she repeatedly urged him to enrol in the jurors’ list the name of a man who had been granted a citizenship. Tiberius agreed to do so on one condition—that the entry should be marked ‘forced upon the Emperor by his mother’. Livia lost her temper and produced from a strong-box some of Augustus’s old letters to her commenting on Tiberius’s sour and stubborn character. Annoyance with her for hoarding these documents so long, and then spitefully confronting him with them, is said to have been his main reason for retirement to Capri. At all events he visited her exactly once in the last three years of her life, and only for an hour or two at that; and when she presently fell sick, made no effort to repeat the visit. Livia then died, and he spoke of attending her funeral, but did not come. After several days her corpse grew so corrupt and noisome that he sent to have it buried; but vetoed her deification on the pretext that she had herself forbidden this. He also annulled her will, and began taking his revenge on all her friends and confidants—even those whom, as she died, she had appointed to take charge of her funeral rites—and went so far as to condemn one of them, a knight, to the treadmill.

  52. Tiberius had no paternal feelings either for his son Drusus, whose vicious and dissolute habits offended him, or for his nephew and adopted son Germanicus. When Drusus died Tiberius appeared to be perfectly unconcerned, and went back to his usual business almost as soon as the funeral ended, cutting short the period of official mourning; in fact, when a Trojan delegation arrived with condolences, a month or two later, Tiberius grinned, having apparently got over his loss, and replied: ‘May I condole with you, in return, on the death of your eminent fellow-citizen Hector?’ Also, he described Germanicus’s glorious victories as wholly ineffective, and far more than the country could afford; so little affection did he feel for him! He actually sent the Senate a letter of complaint when Germanicus hurried to Alexandria and there relieved a sudden disastrous famine, saying that he had not been consulted about this invasion of his own private domain. It is even believed that he arranged for Gnaeus Piso, the Governor of Syria, to poison Germanicus; and that Piso, when tried on this charge, would have produced his instructions had they not been taken from him when he confronted Tiberius with them. Piso was then executed; which is why ‘Give us back Germanicus!’ was written on the walls throughout Rome and shouted all night. Tiberius later strengthened popular suspicion by his cruel treatment of Germanicus’s wife Agrippina and her children.

  53. When Agrippina said more than was wise about her husband’s death, Tiberius took her by the hand, quoting the Greek line:

  ‘And if you are not queen, my dear, have I then done you wrong?’

  and this was the last question that he ever condescended to ask her. Indeed, since she seemed scared of tasting an apple which he handed her at dinner, the invitation to his table was never repeated; he said that she had charged him with attempted poisoning. Yet the whole scene had been carefully stage-managed: he would offer the apple as a test of her feelings for him, and she would suspect that it carried sudden death, and refuse it. At last he falsely accused her of planning to take sanctuary beside the image of her grandfather Augustus, or with the army abroad; and exiled her to the prison island of Pandataria. In punishment for her violent protests he ordered a centurion to give her a good flogging; in the course of which she lost an eye. Then she decided to starve herself to death and, though he had her jaws prized open for forcible feeding, succeeded. So he wickedly slandered her memory, persuading the Senate to decree her birthday a day of ill-omen, and boasting of his clemency in not having her strangled and thrown out on the Stairs of Mourning. He even allowed a bill to be passed congratulating him on this pious attitude and voting a golden commemorative gift to Capitoline Juppiter.

  54. By Ger
manicus, Tiberius had three adoptive grandsons; and a true grandson by Drusus. Of these he recommended Nero and Drusus, the eldest of Germanicus’s sons—the youngest being Gaius, nicknamed Caligula—to the Senate; and celebrated their coming-of-age ceremonies by giving the commons largesse. But when he found that, at the New Year celebrations, prayers for their safety were being added to his own, he asked the Senate to decide whether this was a proper procedure; suggesting that such honours should be conferred only on men who had served their country long and meritoriously. After this he made no secret of his dislike for the young pair and arranged that all sorts of false charges should be brought against them; then cleverly contrived that whenever they expressed their natural indignation at his schemes a witness would always be standing by. This gave him grounds for writing the Senate so harsh a letter of complaint that both were declared public enemies and starved to death—Nero on the island of Pontia, Drusus in a Palace cellar. It is believed that Nero was forced to commit suicide when an executioner, announcing that he had come with the Senate’s warrant, displayed the noose for hanging him and the hooks for dragging his corpse to the Tiber. As for Drusus, his hunger was such that he tried to eat the flock from his mattress; and their bodies were chopped in so many pieces that Gaius Caligula later found great difficulty in collecting them for burial.52

  55. Tiberius had asked the Senate to choose him a Council of Foreign Affairs, consisting of twenty men—in addition to certain old friends and members of his military staff—only two or three of whom died natural deaths. All the rest he killed, one way or another; including Aelius Sejanus, who dragged several of his colleagues to ruin with him. Tiberius felt no affection for Sejanus, but had given him plenary powers as being efficient and cunning enough to do what was required of him—namely, to make away with Germanicus’s children and ensure that Tiberius’s true grandson and namesake should become the next Emperor.