33 280 B.C.
34 264 B.C.
35 207 B.C.
36 249 B.C.
37 204 B.C.
38 246 B.C.
39 60 B.C.; see Julius Caesar 20.
40 143 B.C.
41 204 B.C.
42 283 B.C.
43 390 B.C.
44 53 B.C.
45 40 and 36 B.C.
46 7 and 9 B.C.
47 20 B.C.
48 See Augustus 97.
49 18, 21, and 31 A.D.
50 27 A.D.
51 The ‘Cyrenius’ of Luke II. 2; he ordered the Jewish census in 7 A.D., while Governor-general of Syria.
52 See Caligula 15.
53 31 A.D.
IV. GAIUS CALIGULA
54 See Tiberius 52.
55 See Tiberius 54.
56 See Tiberius 51.
57 An error. He was Consul in the years 37, 39, 40 and 41 A.D.
58 See Augustus 29.
59 See Augustus 62.
60 See Augustus 23.
61 See Tiberius 40.
62 No: Gaius, Julius Caesar’s father, had died without violence; and so had Augustus’s grandson, Gaius Caesar.
V. CLAUDIUS, AFTERWARDS DEIFIED
63 9 B.C.
64 See Augustus 21.
65 See Caligula 24.
66 22 B.C.
67 See Caligula 44.
68 i.e., Christ.
69 One was Drusilla, daughter of Agrippa I, whom Felix enticed from her husband, the King of Emesa.
70 See Nero 49.
71 Mr and Mrs R. Gordon Wasson’s forthcoming treatise on mushrooms shows pretty conclusively that Claudius was poisoned by an edible boletus cooked in the sauce of a very similar poisonous variety; that he then vomited up the poison; that he was poisoned a second time with the juice of the Palestinian wild-gourd, or colocynth (2 Kings, iv. 40) administered both orally and by enema; and that he was finally smothered. Seneca seems to have been party to the plot.
VI. NERO
72 498 B.C.
73 An error; his father had done this.
74 It collapsed just after the audience had dispersed.
75 The Bees made a loud humming noise. The Roof-tiles clapped with their hollowed hands; the Brick-bats, flat-handed.
76 Anicetus, the freedman who had designed the collapsible boat, was now commanding the fleet at Misenum.
77 One is recorded in 60; A.D. the other in 64. A.D.
78 Camulodunum (Meldon) and Verulamium (St Albans), with the loss of 80,000 lives.
79 Numerals were expressed by letters; and in Greek the letters of Nero’s name, when converted into numerals, had the aggregate value of 1005; and so had the letters of ‘murdered his own mother’.
VII. GALBA
80 38 B.C.
81 See Nero 3.
82 A rare, but not unrecorded, phenomenon.
83 See Julius Caesar 79.
VIII. OTHO
84 See Claudius 13 and 35.
IX. VITELLIUS
85 32 A.D.
86 34 A.D.
87 52 A.D., by a senator named Junius Lupus.
88 See Tiberius 43.
89 390 B.C.
X. VESPASIAN, AFTERWARDS DEIFIED
90 There is no modern English equivalent for the Latin anteambulo: meaning a client who goes in front of his important patron to clear the way.
91 See Caligula 48 and 49.
92 See Claudius 9.
93 See Claudius 17.
94 See Nero 22.
95 Every year from 70 A.D. to 79 A.D., except 78 A.D.
96 See Claudius 25.
97 See Augustus 36.
98 See Claudius 35.
99 The Latin is Morbalia: there was no such place.
100 Consecrated in the new Temple of Peace; apparently a copy of Praxiteles’s Venus of Cos.
101 The colossal statue of Nero (see Nero 31). It was afterwards moved by Hadrian to the north of the Colosseum (Coliseum), where its base is still shown (Pliny: Natural History, xxxiv. 18).
102 See Augustus 74.
103 See Augustus 100.
XI. TITUS, AFTERWARDS DEIFIED
104 See Nero 33.
105 Born 28 A.D., eldest daughter of Herod Agrippa, King of the Jews. She had two sons by a marriage to her uncle Herod, King of Calchis; then lived in incest with her brother, King Agrippa II, whose favour Paul courted at Caesarea (see Acts xxv and xxvi); married King Polemon of Cilicia; deserted him and returned to her brother; did her best to prevent the Roman procurator Gessius Florus from massacring the Jews in 65 A.D.; joined the Romans just before the Revolt, and afterwards went with Vespasian to Rome. She was over forty when Titus fell in love with her.
106 See Vespasian 9.
107 See Augustus 43.
108 Perhaps he repented his impious entry into the forbidden Holy of Holies at Jerusalem. It was a capital crime for a Roman even to trespass in the Court of Israel. The Jews, at any rate, ascribed his early death to this cause and Queen Berenice must have reproached him with the act. Perhaps, on the other hand, the story of his incest with Domitia may have been true (see Domitian 2).
XII. DOMITIAN
109 See Vitellius 15.
110 84 A.D.
111 86 A.D.
112 See Nero 37 and Vespasian 15.
113 See Claudius 34 and Nero 49.
114 Titus had ordered that the Jewish Sanctuary Tax, due from every Jew throughout the world for Temple expenses (Exodus, xxx. 13; Matthew, xvii. 25), should be collected even though the Temple had been destroyed; and that Jews who paid were thereby permitted to practise their religion. However, a great many Greek converts to the Jewish ethical system, the so-called ‘God-fearers’, had declined to undergo circumcision (which would have made them technically ‘Children of Abraham’), and were therefore not subject to the tax, though they kept the Sabbath and worshipped Jehovah as the One God. Suetonius probably refers to these rather than the Christians, who rejected the Sabbath and did all they could to prove they were not Jews.
115 See Nero 49.
116 He was suspected of having been converted to Judaism; not (as is usually claimed) to Christianity.
117 The raven was supposed to say ‘Cras, cras’—‘tomorrow, tomorrow’—and mediaeval painters therefore adopted it as an emblem of hope.
Robert Graves, The Twelve Caesars
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