40. Often, in fact, Claudius showed such absent-mindedness in speech and action that it might have been thought that he neither knew nor cared to whom, or in whose hearing, or when or where, he was speaking. He intervened in a Senatorial debate on the subject of butchers and wine-sellers with the sudden question: ‘But I ask you, my lords, how can anyone live without an occasional snack?’ Then he rambled off into a speech about the abundance of City taverns in his youth and how he often used to go the round of them himself.
One of his reasons for supporting the candidature of a would-be quaestor was: ‘His father brought me a cool drink of water, long ago, when I was sick and very thirsty.’ Of a witness who had been presented before the House, he said: ‘Though in fact my mother’s freedwoman and personal maid, she always treated me as her patron; I stress this point because even now certain members of my household staff refuse to do so.’
Once, when the men of Ostia made a public petition, he lost his temper and shouted from the tribunal that he owed them no consideration, and that surely he was free, if anyone was! Every day, and almost at every hour and minute of the day, he would let fall such remarks as: ‘What? Do you take me for a booby?’ and: ‘Very well, curse me if you like, but hard words break no bones!’ with other more inept ones, such as would have come ill even from a private citizen, let alone an emperor who, far from lacking eloquence and education, had devoted his whole life to liberal studies.
41. While still a boy Claudius had started work on a Roman history, encouraged by the famous historian Livy, and assisted by Sulpicius Flavus. But when he gave his first public reading to a packed audience he found it difficult to hold their attention because at the very beginning of his performance a very fat man came in, sat down, and broke a bench—which sent several of his neighbours sprawling—and excited considerable merriment. Even when silence had been restored Claudius could not help recalling the sight and going off into peals of laughter.
As Emperor he continued work on this history, from which a professional gave frequent readings. It opened with the murder of Julius Caesar, then skipped a few years and started again at the close of the Civil Wars; because he realized, from his mother’s and grandmother’s lectures, that he would not be allowed to publish a free and unvarnished report on the intervening period. Of the first part two volumes survive; of the second, forty-one.
Moreover, he wrote eight volumes of an autobiography which are criticizable for their lack of taste rather than any lack of style; as well as A Defence of Cicero against the Aspersions of Asinius Gallus—quite a learned work. Claudius also added three new letters of his own invention to the Latin alphabet—to represent a vowel between u and i; for ps; and for consonantal v—maintaining that they were most necessary. He had written a book on the subject before his accession, and afterwards met with no obstacle in getting the letters officially adopted. They may still be found in a number of books, in the Official Gazette, and in public inscriptions.
42. Claudius also studied Greek with great application, and took every opportunity of professing his love for this language, which he declared to be the finest of all. Once, when a barbarian addressed him first in Latin and then in Greek, he replied: ‘Since you come armed with both our languages…’ Also, while eulogizing Greece to the Senate, he called it a province which had endeared itself to him by a devotion to the same literary studies as he pursued himself; and often answered Greek envoys with a carefully composed oration in their own tongue. Claudius used to quote Homer from the tribunal and, after punishing a personal enemy or conspirator, made a habit of giving the following hexameter line as a watchword to the Colonel of the Guard:
Let him be first to attack, but be sure that you counter him boldly.
To conclude, he even wrote books in Greek: twenty volumes of Etruscan history, and eight of Carthaginian. The City of Alexandria acknowledged these works by adding a new wing to the Museum called ‘The Claudian’ in his honour; and having the Etruscan history publicly recited from end to end once a year by relays of readers in the old wing; and the Carthaginian history, likewise, in the new.
43. In his last years Claudius made it pretty plain that he repented of having married Agrippina and adopted Nero. For example, when his freedman congratulated him on having found a certain woman guilty of adultery, he remarked that he himself seemed fated to marry wives who ‘were unchaste but remained unchastened’; and presently, meeting Britannicus, embraced him with deep affection. ‘Grow up quickly, my boy,’ he said, ‘and I will then explain what my policy has been.’ With that he quoted in Greek from the tale of Telephus and Achilles:
The hand that wounded you shall also heal,
and declared his intention of letting Britannicus come of age because although immature, he was tall enough to wear a gown; adding ‘which will at last provide Rome with a true-born Caesar.’
44. Soon afterwards he composed his will and made all the City magistrates put their seals to it as witnesses; but Agrippina, being now accused of many crimes by informers as well as her own conscience, prevented him from doing anything further on Britannicus’s behalf.
Most people think that Claudius was poisoned; but when, and by whom, is disputed. Some say that the eunuch Halotus, his official taster, administered the drug while he was dining with the priests of Juppiter in the Citadel; others, that Agrippina did so herself at a family banquet, poisoning a dish of mushrooms, his favourite food. An equal discrepancy exists between the accounts of what happened next. According to many of my informants, he lost his power of speech, suffered frightful pain all night long, and died shortly before dawn. A variant version is that he fell into a coma but vomited up the entire contents of his stomach and was then poisoned a second time, either by a gruel—the excuse being that he needed food to revive him—or by means of an enema, the excuse being that his bowels must be emptied too.71
45. Claudius’s death was not revealed until all arrangements had been completed to secure Nero’s succession. As a result, people made vows for his safety as though he still lived, and a troop of actors were summoned, under the pretence that he had asked to be diverted by their antics. He died on 13 October 54 A.D., during the consulship of Asinius Marcellus and Acilius Avola, in his sixty-fourth year, and the fourteenth of his reign. He was given a princely funeral and officially deified, an honour which Nero later neglected and then cancelled; but which Vespasian restored.
46. The main omens of Claudius’s death included a comet, lightning that struck his father’s tomb, and an unusual mortality among magistrates of all ranks. There is also evidence that he foresaw his end and made no secret of it: while choosing the Consuls he provided for no appointment after the month in which he died; and on his last visit to the House offered an earnest plea for harmony between Britannicus and Nero, begging the Senate to guide both of them with great care through the difficult years of their youth. During a final appearance on the tribunal he said more than once that he had reached the close of his career; though everyone present cried: ‘The Gods forbid!’
VI
NERO
Two branches of the Domitian family distinguished themselves—the Calvini and the Ahenobarbi. The Ahenobarbi were named after their founder, Lucius Domitius; the tradition being that once, on his return to Rome from the country, he met a pair of twins looking more like gods than men, who told him to inform the Senate and the people that the battle of Lake Regillus, which had not seemed imminent, was already fought and won.72 In proof of their divinity the twins stroked him on both sides of his chin and thereby turned his beard from black to the colour of bronze—a physical peculiarity which became dominant among his descendants. Having gained seven consulships, a triumph, and two censorships, and been raised to patrician rank, they all continued to use the same surname, with no other forenames than Gnaeus and Lucius. They gave an interesting twist to this practice by sometimes having successive members of the family known by the same forename and sometimes varying the two—for instance we know that eac
h of the first three Ahenobarbi was a Lucius, each of the second three was a Gnaeus, after which Lucius alternated with Gnaeus. A closer study of the Domitian family history would probably suggest that many of Nero’s vices were inherited, although indeed he made a ghastly caricature of his ancestors’ virtues.
2. Let me go back quite a long way to Nero’s great-great-great-grandfather, Gnaeus Domitius. While Tribune of the People he deprived the Pontifical College of their power to fill vacancies in the priesthood, and awarded it to the people; he hated the College for not having appointed him to succeed his father. As Consul he subdued the Allobroges73 and the Avernians, and then rode through the province on an elephant with an escort of soldiers, as though he were celebrating a triumph. Licinius Crassus, the orator, remarked: ‘Should his bronze beard really surprise use After all, he has an iron face and a heart of lead.’
Gnaeus’s son and namesake, while Praetor, summoned Julius Caesar before the Senate, at the close of his consulship, to be examined on the charge of having defied the laws and auspices. Afterwards, when Consul, he tried to remove Caesar from the command in Gaul, and had himself named as his successor by the Pompeian party. Then the Civil War broke out and he was soon taken prisoner by Caesar at Corfinium, but set free; whereupon he went to Marseilles and supported the city fathers during the difficult days of their siege. However, he abruptly deserted them; and fell a year later in the battle of Pharsalus. This Gnaeus was a remarkably indecisive man. Once, in a fit of desperation, he attempted suicide by poison, but the prospect of immediate death so terrified him that he changed his mind and vomited up the dose—the family physician knew him well enough to have made it a mild one, which earned the wise fellow his freedom. Early in the Civil War, when Pompey raised the question of how neutrals should be treated, Gnaeus was the sole Senator who wanted them classified as enemies.
3. Gnaeus left one son Lucius, without any doubt the best member of the family. Although he had taken no part in Caesar’s assassination, he was condemned to die as a conspirator, under the Pedian Law, and subsequently threw in his lot with his relatives Brutus and Cassius. After their deaths he continued to command, and even to enlarge, the Pompeian fleet, which he would not surrender to Mark Antony until his associates had been everywhere routed; and then did so as though he were granting an immense favour. Of all those sentenced under the Pedian Law he alone was granted repatriation and, once home again, held all the highest offices of state in succession. When civil war broke out once more he joined Antony’s staff, and was later offered the supreme command by those who found Cleopatra’s presence at headquarters an embarrassment; but a sudden illness made him wary of accepting it, although he never gave a definite refusal. Instead, he transferred his allegiance to Augustus; and died a few days afterwards. Antony, however, said rather unkindly that his real motive in changing sides was to be with Servilia Nais, his mistress.
4. His son, the Lucius Domitius who became Augustus’s chief executor, had been a famous charioteer in his youth, and gained triumphal decorations for his part in the German campaign; but was notorious for his arrogance, extravagance, and extreme rudeness. While holding the office of aedile, he ordered Lucius Plancus, then Censor, to make way for him in the street. As Praetor and again as Consul, he made knights and married women of rank act in stage pantomimes. The cruelty of the wild animal hunts presented by him in the Circus and elsewhere at Rome, and of one gladiatorial contest, obliged Augustus—whose private warnings he had disregarded—to issue a cautionary edict.
5. Gnaeus Domitius, his son by Antonia the Elder, became Nero’s father; and was a wholly despicable character. As a young man he served in the East on Gaius Caligula’s staff, but forfeited his friendship by killing one of his own freedmen for refusing to drink as much as he was told. Yet even then he behaved no better. Once, driving through a village on the Appian Way, he whipped up his horses and deliberately ran over a boy; and when a knight criticized him rather freely in the Forum he gouged out his eyes there and then. He was also remarkably dishonest: cheating his bankers of payment for goods they had bought him and, while Praetor, even swindling victorious charioteers of their prize money. His sister Domitia Lepida openly teased him about this; and when the managers of the teams complained he decreed that in future all prizes must be paid on the spot. Just before Tiberius died he was charged with treason, adultery, and incest with Domitia Lepida; however, Caligula’s accession saved him and he died of dropsy at Pyrgi, first formally acknowledging the paternity of Nero, his son by Germanicus’s daughter Agrippina.
6. Nero was born at Antium on 15 December 37 A.D., nine months after Tiberius’s death. The sun was rising and his earliest rays touched the newly-born boy almost before he could be laid on the ground, as the custom was, for his father either to acknowledge or disavow. Nero’s horoscope at once occasioned many ominous predictions; and a significant comment was made by his father in reply to friendly congratulations: namely, that any child born to himself and Agrippina was bound to have a detestable nature and become a public danger. Another promise of ill-luck occurred on the day of his baptism: when Agrippina asked her brother Caius Caligula to give the boy whatever name he pleased, he glanced at his uncle Claudius (later Emperor, and Nero’s adoptive father) and said with a grin: ‘I name him Claudius.’ Since Claudius was then the butt of the Court, Agrippina was not amused, and ignored the suggestion.
At the age of three Nero lost his father and inherited one-third of the estate; but Caligula, who was also named in the will, not only took everything, but banished Agrippina. Nero therefore grew up in very poor circumstances under the care of his aunt Domitia Lepida, who chose a dancer and a barber to be his tutors. However, when Claudius succeeded Caligula, Nero had his inheritance restored to him in full, and a legacy from his uncle by marriage, Crispus Passienus, left him well off. His mother’s recall from banishment allowed him to enjoy once more the benefits of her powerful influence; and it transpired later that Claudius’s wife Messalina, realizing that Nero would become a rival to her son Britannicus, had sent assassins to strangle him during his siesta. They were driven away in terror, people said, by a snake which suddenly darted from beneath Nero’s pillow; but this was a mere surmise based on the discovery of a sloughed snake-skin close by. Agrippina persuaded him to have this skin set in a golden bracelet, which he wore for a long time on his right wrist. After she died he threw it away because it reminded him too vividly of her; but when his situation grew desperate, hunted for it in vain.
7. While still very young he gave an exceptionally good performance in the Troy Game at the Circus and earned loud applause. When he reached the age of eleven, Claudius adopted him and appointed Annaeus Seneca, who was already a senator, as his tutor. On the following night, the story goes, Seneca dreamed that his pupil was really Caligula; and, indeed, Nero soon made sense of the dream by giving signs of a naturally cruel heart. Since Britannicus continued to call him ‘Ahenobarbus’ even after his adoption, he revenged himself by trying to convince Claudius that Britannicus was a supposititious child; and also testified in public against Domitia Lepida, just to please his mother who had engineered the trial—Domitia was charged with having cursed Claudius’s marriage-bed.
Nero celebrated his maiden speech in the Forum by giving largesse to the people and a bounty to the troops, and leading a ceremonial march past of the Guards, shield in hand. Afterwards, in the Senate, he made a speech of thanks to Claudius. While Claudius was Consul, Nero pleaded two cases in his hearing: one in Latin on behalf of the Bolognese, the other in Greek on behalf of the Rhodians and Trojans. He first appeared on the tribunal as City prefect during the Latin Festival; eminent lawyers gave him a number of important cases to try, instead of the dull and trivial ones that normally come up on such occasions—although Claudius had expressly forbidden this. Next, Nero married his adoptive sister Octavia; and held Games and a wild-beast hunt in the Circus, by way of wishing Claudius good health.
8. He had reached the age of seventee
n when Claudius’s death occurred, and presented himself to the Palace Guard that day between the sixth and seventh hours—ugly omens having ruled out an earlier appearance. After being acclaimed Emperor on the Palace steps, he was taken in a litter to the Guards’ Camp, where he briefly addressed the troops. He then visited the Senate House, where he remained until nightfall, refusing only one of the many high honours voted him, namely the title ‘Father of the Country’, and this because of his youth.
9. Nero started off with a parade of virtue: giving Claudius a lavish funeral, at which he delivered the oration in person, and finally deifying him. He also exalted the memory of his father Domitius, and turned over all his public and private affairs to Agrippina’s management. On the day of his accession the password he gave to the colonel on duty was ‘The Best of Mothers’; and she and he often rode out together through the streets in her litter. Nero founded a colony at Antium consisting of Guards veterans, augmented by a group of rich retired centurions, whom he forced to move there; and also built them a harbour, at great expense.
10. As a further guarantee of his virtuous intentions, he promised to model his rule on the principles laid down by Augustus, and never missed an opportunity of being generous or merciful, or of showing what a good companion he was. He lowered, if he could not abolish, some of the heavier taxes; and reduced by three-quarters the fee for denouncing evasions of the Papian Law, which obliged noblemen to marry. Moreover, he presented the commons with forty gold pieces each; settled annual salaries on distinguished but impoverished senators—to the amount of 5,000 gold pieces in some cases—and granted the Guards battalions a free monthly issue of grain. If asked to sign the usual execution order for a felon, he would sigh: ‘Ah, how I wish that I had never learned to write!’ He seldom forgot a face, and would greet men of whatever rank by name without a moment’s hesitation. Once, when the Senate passed a vote of thanks to him, he answered: ‘Wait until I deserve them!’ He allowed even the commons to watch him taking exercise on the Campus Martius, and often gave public declamations. Also, he recited his own poems, both at home and in the Theatre: a performance which so delighted everyone that a special Thanksgiving was voted him, as though he had won a great victory, and the passages he had chosen were printed in letters of gold on plaques dedicated to Capitoline Juppiter.