Chapter LI: Section 7 (8)

Augustus had one child only, a daughter, Julia, who was
brought to him by his second wife Scribonia; but on his last
marriage, with Livia, divorced wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero
(divorced by his command), he had adopted her two sons,
Tiberius and Drusus. He gave his daughter Julia in marriage,
first, to his nephew, Marcellus, the son of his sister
Octavia, by her first husband, C. Marcellus. But Marcellus
soon died, without offspring, and Julia became the spouse of
the emperor's friend and counsellor, Agrippa, to whom she bore
three sons, Caius, Lucius, and Agrippa Posthumus (all of whom
died before the end of the life of Augustus), and two
daughters. Thus the emperor was left with no male heir in his
own family, and the imperial succession fell to his adopted
son Tiberius—the eldest son of his wife Livia and of her first
husband, Tiberius Claudius Nero. There were suspicions that
Livia had some agency in bringing about the several deaths
which cleared her son's way to the throne. When Augustus died,
Tiberius was "in his 56th year, or at least at the close of
the 55th. … He had by this time acquired a perfect mastery in
dissembling his lusts, and his mistrust. … He was anxious to
appear as a moral man, while in secret he abandoned himself to
lusts and debaucheries of every kind. … In accordance with
this character, Tiberius now played the farce which is so
admirably but painfully described by Tacitus; he declined
accepting the imperium, and made the senate beg and intreat
him to accept it for the sake of the public good. In the end
Tiberius yielded, inasmuch as he compelled the senate to
oblige him to undertake the government. This painful scene
forms the beginning of Tacitus' Annals. The early part of his
reign is marked by insurrections among the troops in Pannonia
and on the Rhine. … Drusus [the son of Tiberius] quelled the
insurrection in Illyricum, and Germanicus [the emperor's
nephew, son of his brother Drusus, who had died in Germany, B.
C. 9], that on the Rhine; but, notwithstanding this, it was in
reality the government that was obliged to yield. … The reign
of Tiberius, which lasted for 23 years, that is till A. D. 37,
is by no means rich in events; the early period of it only is
celebrated for the wars of Germanicus in Germany. … The war of
Germanicus was carried into Germany as far as the river Weser
[see GERMANY. A. D. 14-16], and it is surprising to see that
the Romans thought it necessary to employ such numerous armies
against tribes which had no fortified towns. …
{2702}
The history of his reign after the German wars becomes more
and more confined to the interior and to his family. He had an
only son, Drusus, by his first wife Agrippina; and Germanicus,
the son of his brother Drusus, was adopted by him. Drusus must
have been a young man deserving of praise; but Germanicus was
the adored darling of the Roman people, and with justice: he
was the worthy son of a worthy father, the hero of the German
wars. … Germanicus had declined the sovereignty, which his
legions had offered to him after the death of Augustus, and he
remained faithful to his adopted father, although he certainly
could not love him. Tiberius, however, had no faith in virtue,
because he himself was destitute of it; he therefore
mistrusted Germanicus, and removed him from his victorious
legions." He sent him "to superintend the eastern frontiers
and provinces. On his arrival there he was received with the
same enthusiasm as at Rome; but he died very soon afterwards,
whether by a natural death or by poison is a question upon
which the ancients themselves are not agreed. … In the reign
of Augustus, any offence against the person of the imperator
had, by some law with which we are not further acquainted,
been made a 'crimen majestatis,' as though it had been
committed against the republic itself. This 'crimen' in its
undefined character was a fearful thing; for hundreds of
offences might be made to come within the reach of the law
concerning it. All these deplorable cases were tried by the
senate, which formed a sort of condemning machine set in
motion by the tyrant, just like the national convention under
Robespierre. … In the early part of Tiberius' reign, these
prosecutions occurred very rarely; but there gradually arose a
numerous class of denouncers ('delatores'), who made it their
business to bring to trial anyone whom the emperor disliked."

See DELATION.—DELATORS).

This was after the death of the emperor's mother, Livia, whom
he feared, and who restrained his worst propensities. After
her influence was removed, "his dark and tyrannical nature got
the upper hand: the hateful side of his character became daily
more developed, and his only enjoyment was the indulgence of
his detestable lust. … His only friend was Aelius Sejanus, a
man of equestrian rank. … His character bore the greatest
resemblance to that of his sovereign, who raised him to the
office of præfectus praetorio. … Sejanus increased the number
of the praetorian cohorts, and persuaded Tiberius to
concentrate them in the neighbourhood of Rome, in the 'castrum
praetorianum,' which formed us it were the citadel outside the
wall of Servius Tullius, but in the midst of the present city.
The consequences of this measure render it one of the most
important events in Roman history; for the praetorians now
became the real sovereigns, and occupied a position similar to
that which the Janissaries obtained in Algeria: they
determined the fate of the empire until the reign of
Diocletian. …

See PRÆTORIAN GUARDS.

The influence of Sejanus over Tiberius increased every day,
and he contrived to inspire his imperial friend with
sufficient confidence to go to the island of Capreae. While
Tiberius was there indulging in his lusts, Sejanus remained at
Rome and governed as his vicegerent. … Prosecutions were now
instituted against all persons of any consequence at Rome; the
time when Tiberius left the capital is the beginning of the
fearful annals of his reign." The tyrannical proceedings of
Sejanus "continued for a number of years, until at length he
himself incurred the suspicion of Tiberius," and was put out
of the way. "But a man worse even than he succeeded; this was
Macro, who had none of the great qualities of Sejanus, but
only analogous vices. … The butchery at Rome even increased. …
Caius Caesar, the son of Germanicus, commonly known by the
name of Caligula, formed with Macro a connexion of the basest
kind, and promised him the high post of 'praefectus praetorio'
if he would assist him in getting rid of the aged monarch.
Tiberius was at the time severely ill at a villa near cape
Misenum. He fell into a state of lethargy, and everybody
believed him to be dead. He came to life again however; on
which he was suffocated, or at least his death was accelerated
in some way, for our accounts differ on this point. Thus
Tiberius died in the 23d year of his reign, A. D. 37, at the
age of 78."

_B. G. Niebuhr,
Lectures on the History of Rome,
lectures 111-112 (volume 3)._

ALSO IN:
_Tacitus,
Annals,
books 1-6._

_C. Merivale,
History of the Romans under the Empire,
chapters 42-46 (volume 5)._

ROME: A. D. 37-41.
Reign of Caligula, the first of the imperial madmen.

Cains Cæsar, son of Germanicus, owed his nickname, Caligula,
to the soldiers of his father's command, among whom he was a
great favorite in his childhood. The name was derived from
"Caliga," a kind of foot covering worn by the common soldiers,
and is sometimes translated "Little Boots." "Having … secured
the imperial power, he fulfilled by his elevation the wish of
the Roman people, I may venture to say, of all mankind: for he
had long been the object of expectation and desire to the
greater part of the provincials and soldiers, who had known
him when a child; and to the whole people of Rome, from their
affection for the memory of Germanicus, his father, and
compassion for the family almost entirely destroyed. …
Immediately on his entering the city, by the joint
acclamations of the senate, and people, who broke into the
senate-house, Tiberius's will was set aside, it having left
his other grandson, then a minor, coheir with him; the whole
government and administration of affairs was placed in his
hands; so much to the joy and satisfaction of the public that,
in less than three months after, above 160,000 victims are
said to have been offered in sacrifice. … To this
extraordinary love entertained for him by his countrymen was
added an uncommon regard by foreign nations. … Caligula
himself inflamed this devotion by practising all the arts of
popularity. … He published accounts of the proceedings of the
government—a practice which had been introduced by Augustus,
but discontinued by Tiberius. He granted the magistrates a
full and free jurisdiction, without any appeal to himself. He
made a very strict and exact review of the Roman knights, but
conducted it with moderation; publicly depriving of his horse
every knight who lay under the stigma of any thing base and
dishonourable. … He attempted likewise to restore to the
people their ancient right of voting in the choice of
magistrates. … He twice distributed to the people a bounty of
300 sesterces a man, and as often gave a splendid feast to the
senate and the equestrian order, with their wives and
children. …
{2703}
He frequently entertained the people with stage-plays of
various kinds, and in several parts of the city, and sometimes
by night, when he caused the whole city to be lighted. … He
likewise exhibited a great number of circensian games from
morning until night; intermixed with the hunting of wild
beasts from Africa. … Thus far we have spoken of him as a
prince. What remains to be said of him bespeaks him rather a
monster than a man. … He was strongly inclined to assume the
diadem, and change the form of government from imperial to
regal; but being told that he far exceeded the grandeur of
kings and princes, he began to arrogate to himself a divine
majesty. He ordered all the images of the gods which were
famous either for their beauty or the veneration paid them,
among which was that of Jupiter Olympius, to be brought from
Greece, that he might take the heads off, and put on his own.
Having continued part of the Palatium as far as the Forum, and
the temple of Castor and Pollux being converted into a kind of
vestibule to his house, he often stationed himself between the
twin brothers, and so presented himself to be worshipped by
all votaries; some of whom saluted him by the name of Jupiter
Latialis. He also instituted a temple and priests, with
choicest victims, in honour of his own divinity. … The most
opulent persons in the city offered themselves as candidates
for the honour of being his priests, and purchased it
successively at an immense price. … In the day-time he talked
in private to Jupiter Capitolinus; one while whispering to
him, and another turning his ear to him. … He was unwilling to
be thought or called the grandson of Agrippa, because of the
obscurity of his birth. … He said that his mother was the
fruit of an incestuous commerce maintained by Augustus with
his daughter Julia. … He lived in the habit of incest with an
his sisters. … Whether in the marriage of his wives, in
repudiating them, or retaining them, he acted with greater
infamy, it is difficult to say." Some senators, "who had borne
the highest offices in the government, he suffered to run by
his litter in their togas for several miles together, and to
attend him at supper, sometimes at the head of his couch,
sometimes at his feet, with napkins. Others of them, after he
had privately put them to death, he nevertheless continued to
send for, as if they were still alive, and after a few days
pretended that they had laid violent hands upon themselves. …
When flesh was only to be had at a high price for feeding his
wild beasts reserved for the spectacles, he ordered that
criminals should be given them to be devoured; and upon
inspecting them in a row, while he stood in the middle of the
portico, without troubling himself to examine their cases he
ordered them to be dragged away, from 'bald-pate to bald-pate'
[a proverbial expression, meaning, without
distinction.—Translator's foot-note]. … After disfiguring many
persons of honourable rank, by branding them in the face with
hot irons, he condemned them to the mines, to work in
repairing the high-ways, or to fight with wild beasts; or
tying them, by the neck and heels, in the manner of beasts
carried to slaughter, would shut them up in cages, or saw them
asunder. … He compelled parents to be present at the execution
of their sons. … He generally prolonged the sufferings of his
victims by causing them to be inflicted by slight and
frequently repeated strokes; this being his well-known and
constant order: . Strike so that he may feel himself die.' …
Being incensed at the people's applauding a party at the
Circensian games in opposition to him, he exclaimed, 'I wish
the Roman people had but one neck.' … He used also to complain
aloud of the state of the times, because it was not rendered
remarkable by any public calamities. … He wished for some
terrible slaughter of his troops, a famine, a pestilence,
conflagrations, or an earthquake. Even in the midst of his
diversions, while gaming or feasting, this savage ferocity,
both in his language and actions, never forsook him. Persons
were often put to the torture in his presence, whilst he was
dining or carousing. A soldier, who was an adept in the art of
beheading, used at such times to take off the heads of
prisoners, who were brought in for that purpose. … He never
had the least regard either to the chastity of his own person,
or that of others. … Besides his incest with his sisters …
there was hardly any lady of distinction with whom he did not
make free. … Only once in his life did he take an active part
in military affairs. … He resolved upon an expedition into
Germany. … There being no hostilities, he ordered a few
Germans of his guard to be carried over and placed in
concealment on the other side of the Rhine, and word to be
brought him after dinner that an enemy was advancing with
great impetuosity. This being accordingly done, he immediately
threw himself, with his friends, and a party of the pretorian
knights, into the adjoining wood, where, lopping branches from
the trees, and forming trophies of them, he returned by
torch-light, upbraiding those who did not follow him with
timorousness and cowardice. … At last, as if resolved to make
war in earnest, he drew up his army upon the shore of the
ocean, with his balistæ and other engines of war, and while no
one could imagine what he intended to do, on a sudden
commanded them to gather up the sea shells, and fill their
helmets and the folds of their dress with them, calling them
'the spoils of the ocean due to the Capitol and the Palatium.'
As a monument of his success he raised a lofty tower. … He was
crazy both in body and mind, being subject, when a boy, to the
falling sickness. … What most of all disordered him was want
of sleep, for he seldom had more than three or four hours'
rest in a night; and even then his sleep was not sound."

_Suetonius,
Lives of the Twelve Cæsars: Caligula
(translated by A. Thomson)._

ALSO IN:
_C. Merivale,
History of the Romans under the Empire,
chapters 47-48 (volume 5)._

_S. Baring-Gould,
The Tragedy of the Cæsars,
volume 2._

ROME: A. D. 41.
The murder of Caligula.
Elevation of Claudius to the throne by the Prætorians.
Beginning of the domination of the soldiery.

"If we may believe our accounts, the tyrant's overthrow was
due not to abhorrence of his crimes or indignation at his
assaults on the Roman liberties, so much as to resentment at a
private affront. Among the indiscretions which seem to
indicate the partial madness of the wretched Caius, was the
caprice with which he turned from his known foes against his
personal friends and familiars. … No one felt himself secure,
neither the freedmen who attended on his person, nor the
guards who watched over his safety.
{2704}
Among these last was Cassius Chærea, tribune of a prætorian
cohort, whose shrill woman's voice provoked the merriment of
his master, and subjected him to injurious insinuations. Even
when he demanded the watchword for the night the emperor would
insult him with words and gestures. Chærea resolved to wipe
out the affront in blood. He sought Callistus and others … and
organized with them and some of the most daring of the nobles
a plot against the emperor's life. … The festival of the
Palatine games was fixed on for carrying the project into
effect. Four days did Caius preside in the theatre, surrounded
by the friends and guards who were sworn to slay him, but
still lacked the courage. On the fifth and last, the 24th of
January 794 [A. D. 41], feeling indisposed from the evening's
debauch, he hesitated at first to rise. His attendants,
however, prevailed on him to return once more to the shows;
and as he was passing through the vaulted passage which led
from the palace to the Circus, he inspected a choir of noble
youths from Asia, who were engaged to perform upon the stage.
… Caius was still engaged in conversation with them when
Chærea and another tribune, Sabinus, made their way to him:
the one struck him on the throat from behind with his sword,
while the other was in the act of demanding the watchword. A
second blow cleft the tyrant's jaw. He fell, and drawing his
limbs together to save his body, still screamed, 'I live! I
live!' while the conspirators thronging over him, and crying,
'again! again!' hacked him with thirty wounds. The bearers of
his litter rushed to his assistance with their poles, while
his body-guard of Germans struck wildly at the assassins, and
amongst the crowd which surrounded them, killed, it was said,
more than one senator who had taken no part in the affair. …
When each of the conspirators had thrust his weapon into the
mangled body, and the last shrieks of its agony had been
silenced, they escaped with all speed from the corridor in
which it lay; but they had made no dispositions for what was
to follow, and were content to leave it to the consuls and
senate, amazed and unprepared, to decide on the future destiny
of the republic. … Some cohorts of the city guards accepted
the orders of the consuls, and occupied the public places
under their direction. At the same time the consuls, Sentins
Saturninus and Pomponins Secundus, the latter of whom had been
substituted for Caius himself only a few days before, convened
the senate. … The first act of the sitting was to issue an
edict in which the tyranny of Caius was denounced, and a
remission of the most obnoxious of his taxes proclaimed,
together with the promise of a donative to the soldiers. The
fathers next proceeded to deliberate on the form under which
the government should be henceforth administered. On this
point no settled principles prevailed. Some were ready to vote
that the memory of the Cæsars should be abolished, their
temples overthrown, and the free state of the Scipios and
Catos restored; others contended for the continuance of
monarchy in another family, and among the chiefs of nobility
more than one candidate sprang up presently to claim it. The
debate lasted late into the night; and in default of any other
specific arrangement, the consuls continued to act as the
leaders of the commonwealth. … But while the senate
deliberated, the prætorian guards had resolved. … In the
confusion which ensued on the first news of the event, several
of their body had flung themselves furiously into the palace,
and begun to plunder its glittering chambers. None dared to
offer them any opposition; the slaves and freedmen fled or
concealed themselves. One of the inmates, half hidden behind a
curtain in an obscure corner, was dragged forth with brutal
violence; and great was the intruders' surprise when they
recognised him as Claudius, the long despised and neglected
uncle of the murdered emperor. He sank at their feet almost
senseless with terror: but the soldiers in their wildest mood
still respected the blood of the Cæsars, and instead of
slaying or maltreating the suppliant, the brother of
Germanicus, they hailed him, more in jest perhaps than
earnest, with the title of Imperator, and carried him off to
their camp. … In the morning, when it was found that the
senate had come to no conclusion, and that the people crowding
about its place of meeting were urging it with loud cries to
appoint a single chief, and were actually naming him as the
object of their choice, Claudius found courage to suffer the
prætorians to swear allegiance to him, and at the same time
promised them a donative of 15,000 sesterces apiece. … The
senators assembled once again in the temple of Jupiter; but
now their numbers were reduced to not more than a hundred, and
even these met rather to support the pretensions of certain of
their members, who aspired to the empire … than to maintain
the cause of the ancient republic. But the formidable array of
the prætorians, who had issued from their camp into the city,
and the demonstrations of the popular will, daunted all
parties in the assembly. … Presently the Urban cohorts passed
over, with their officers and colours, to the opposite side.
All was lost; the prætorians, thus reinforced, led their hero
to the palace, and there he commanded the senate to attend
upon him. Nothing remained but to obey and pass the decree,
which had now become a formal act of investiture, by which the
name and honours of Imperator were bestowed upon the new chief
of the commonwealth. Such was the first creation of an emperor
by the military power of the prætorians. … Surrounded by drawn
swords Claudius had found courage to face his nephew's
murderers, and to vindicate his authority to the citizens, by
a strong measure of retribution, in sending Chærea and Lupus,
with a few others of the blood-embrued, to immediate
execution. … Claudius was satisfied with this act of vigour,
and proceeded, with a moderation but little expected, to
publish an amnesty for all the words and acts of the late
interregnum. Nevertheless for thirty days he did not venture
to come himself into the Curia. … The personal fears, indeed,
of the new emperor contributed, with a kindly and placable
disposition, to make him anxious to gain his subjects'
good-will by the gentleness and urbanity of his deportment. …
His proclamation of amnesty was followed by the pardon of
numerous exiles and criminals, especially such as were
suffering under sentence for the crime of majestas. … The
popularity of the new prince, though manifested, thanks to his
own discretion, by no such grotesque and impious flatteries as
attended on the opening promise of Caius, was certainly not
less deeply felt. …
{2705}
The confidence indeed of the upper classes, after the bitter
disappointment they had so lately suffered, was not to be so
lightly won. The senate and knights might view their new ruler
with indulgence, and hope for the best; but they had been too
long accustomed to regard him as proscribed from power by
constitutional unfitness, as imbecile in mind, and which was
perhaps in their estimation even a worse defect, as misshapen
and half-developed in physical form, to anticipate from him a
wise or vigorous administration. … In another rank he would
have been exposed perhaps in infancy; as the son of Drusus and
Antonia he was permitted to live: but he became from the first
an object of disgust to his parents, who put him generally out
of their sight, and left him to grow up in the hands of
hirelings without judgment or feeling. … That the judgment of
one from whom the practical knowledge of men and things had
been withheld was not equal to his learning, and that the
infirmities of his body affected his powers of decision, his
presence of mind, and steadfastness of purpose, may easily be
imagined: nevertheless, it may be allowed that in a private
station, and anywhere but at Rome, Claudius would have passed
muster as a respectable, and not, perhaps, an useless member
of society. The opinion which is here given of this prince's
character may possibly be influenced in some degree by the
study of his countenance in the numerous busts still existing,
which represent it as one of the most interesting of the whole
imperial series. If his figure, as we are told, was tall, and
when sitting appeared not ungraceful, his face, at least in
repose, was eminently handsome. But it is impossible not to
remark in it an expression of pain and anxiety which forcibly
arrests our sympathy. It is the face of an honest and
well-meaning man, who feels himself unequal to the task
imposed upon him. … There is the expression of fatigue both of
mind and body, which speaks of midnight watches over books,
varied with midnight carouses at the imperial table, and the
fierce caresses of rival mistresses. There is the glance of
fear, not of open enemies, but of pretended friends; the
reminiscence of wanton blows, and the anticipation of the
deadly potion. Above all, there is the anxious glance of
dependence, which seems to cast about for a model to imitate,
for ministers to shape a policy, and for satellites to execute
it. The model Claudius found was the policy of the venerated
Augustus; but his ministers were the most profligate of women,
and the most selfish of emancipated slaves. … The commencement
of the new reign was marked by the renewed activity of the
armies on the frontiers."

_C. Merivale,
History of the Romans under the Empire,
chapters 48-49 (volume 5)._

ALSO IN:
_W. W. Capes,
The Early Empire,
chapters 3-4._

ROME: A. D. 42-67.
St. Peter and the Roman Church: The question.

See PAPACY: ST. PETER AND THE CHURCH AT ROM[E.

ROME: A. D. 43-53.
Conquests of Claudius in Britain.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 43-53.

ROME: A. D. 47-54.
The wives of Claudius, Messalina and Agrippina.
Their infamous and terrible ascendancy.
Murder of the emperor.
Advent of Nero.

The wife of Claudius was "Valeria Messalina, the daughter of
his cousin Barbatus Messala, a woman whose name has become
proverbial for infamy. His most distinguished freedmen were
the eunuch Posidus; Felix, whom he made governor of Judæa, and
who had the fortune to be the husband of three queens; and
Callistus, who retained the power which he had acquired under
Caius. But far superior in point of influence to these were
the three secretaries (as we may term them), Polybius,
Narcissus, and Pallas. … The two last were in strict league
with Messalina; she only sought to gratify her lusts; they
longed for honours, power, and wealth. … Their plan, when they
would have anyone put to death, was to terrify Claudius … by
tales of plots against his life. … Slaves and freedmen were
admitted as witnesses against their masters; and, though
Claudius had sworn, at his accession, that no freeman should
be put to the torture, knights and senators, citizens and
strangers, were tortured alike. … Messalina now set no bounds
to her vicious courses. Not content with being infamous
herself, she would have others so; and she actually used to
compel ladies to prostitute themselves even in the palace, and
before the eyes of their husbands, whom she rewarded with
honours and commands, while she contrived to destroy those who
would not acquiesce in their wives' dishonour." At length (A.
D. 48) she carried her audacity so far as to go publicly
through a ceremony of marriage with one of her lovers. This
nerved even the weak Claudius to resolution, and she was put
to death. The emperor then married his niece, Julia Agrippina,
the daughter of Germanicus. "The woman who had now obtained
the government of Claudius and the Roman empire was of a very
different character from the abandoned Messalina. The latter
had nothing noble about her; she was the mere bond-slave of
lust, and cruel and avaricious only for its gratification; but
Agrippina was a woman of superior mind, though utterly devoid
of principle. In her, lust was subservient to ambition; it was
the desire of power, or the fear of death, and not wantonness,
that made her submit to the incestuous embraces of her brutal
brother Caius, and to be prostituted to the companions of his
vices. It was ambition and parental love that made her now
form an incestuous union with her uncle. … The great object of
Agrippina was to exclude Britannicus [the son of Claudius by
Messalina], and obtain the succession for her own son, Nero
Domitius, now a boy of twelve years of age. She therefore
caused Octavia [daughter of Claudius] to be betrothed to him,
and she had the philosopher Seneca recalled from Corsica,
whither he had been exiled by the arts of Messalina, and
committed to him the education of her son, that he might be
fitted for empire. In the following year (51) Claudius,
yielding to her influence, adopted him." But, although
Britannicus was thrust into the background and treated with
neglect, his feeble father began after a time to show signs of
affection for him, and Agrippina, weary of waiting and fearful
of discomfiture, caused poison to be administered to the old
emperor in his food (A. D. 54). "The death of Claudius was
concealed till all the preparations for the succession of Nero
should be made, and the fortunate hour marked by the
astrologers be arrived. He then (October 13) issued from the
palace, … and, being cheered by the cohort which was on guard,
he mounted a litter and proceeded to the camp. He addressed the
soldiers, promising them a donative, and was saluted emperor.
The senate and provinces acquiesced without a murmur in the
will of the guards. Claudius was in his 64th year when he was
poisoned."

_T. Keightley,
History of the Roman Empire,
part 1, chapter 5._

ALSO IN:
_C. Merivale,
History of the Romans under the Empire,
chapter 50 (volume 5)._

_Tacitus,
Annals,
books 11-12._

{2706}

ROME: A. D. 54-64.
The atrocities of Nero.
The murder of his mother.
The burning of the city.

"Nero … was but a variety of the same species [as Caligula].
He also was an amateur, and an enthusiastic amateur, of
murder. But as this taste, in the most ingenious hands, is
limited and monotonous in its modes of manifestation, it would
be tedious to run through the long Suetonian roll-call of his
peccadilloes in this way. One only we shall cite, to
illustrate the amorous delight with which he pursued any
murder which happened to be seasoned highly to his taste by
enormous atrocity, and by almost unconquerable difficulty. …
For certain reasons of state, as Nero attempted to persuade
himself, but in reality because no other crime had the same
attractions of unnatural horror about it, he resolved to
murder his mother Agrippina. This being settled, the next
thing was to arrange the mode and the tools. Naturally enough,
according to the custom then prevalent in Rome, he first
attempted the thing by poison. The poison failed: for
Agrippina, anticipating tricks of this kind, had armed her
constitution against them, like Mithridates; and daily took
potent antidotes and prophylactics. Or else (which is more
probable) the emperor's agent in such purposes, fearing his
sudden repentance and remorse, … had composed a poison of
inferior strength. This had certainly occurred in the case of
Britannicus, who had thrown off with ease the first dose
administered to him by Nero," but who was killed by a second
more powerful potion. "On Agrippina, however, no changes in
the poison, whether of kind or strength, had any effect; so
that, after various trials, this mode of murder was abandoned,
and the emperor addressed himself to other plans. The first of
these was some curious mechanical device, by which a false
ceiling was to have been suspended by bolts above her bed; and
in the middle of the night, the bolt being suddenly drawn, a
vast weight would have descended with a ruinous destruction to
all below. This scheme, however, taking air from the
indiscretion of some amongst the accomplices, reached the ears
of Agrippina. … Next, he conceived the idea of an artificial
ship, which, at the touch of a few springs, might fall to
pieces in deep water. Such a ship was prepared, and stationed
at a suitable point. But the main difficulty remained, which
was to persuade the old lady to go on board." By complicated
stratagems this was brought about. "The emperor accompanied
her to the place of embarkation, took a most tender leave of
her, and saw her set sail. It was necessary that the vessel
should get into deep water before the experiment could be
made; and with the utmost agitation this pious son awaited
news of the result. Suddenly a messenger rushed breathless
into his presence, and horrified him by the joyful information
that his august mother had met with an alarming accident; but,
by the blessing of Heaven, had escaped safe and sound, and was
now on her road to mingle congratulations with her
affectionate son. The ship, it seems, had done its office; the
mechanism had played admirably; but who can provide for
everything? The old lady, it turned out, could swim like a
duck; and the whole result had been to refresh her with a
little sea-bathing. Here was worshipful intelligence. Could
any man's temper be expected to stand such continued sieges? …
Of a man like Nero it could not be expected that he should any
longer dissemble his disgust, or put up with such repeated
affronts. He rushed upon his simple congratulating friend,
swore that he had come to murder him, and as nobody could have
suborned him but Agrippina, he ordered her off to instant
execution. And, unquestionably, if people will not be murdered
quietly and in a civil way, they must expect that such
forbearance is not to continue for ever; and obviously have
themselves only to blame for any harshness or violence which
they may have rendered necessary. It is singular, and shocking
at the same time, to mention, that, for this atrocity, Nero
did absolutely receive solemn congratulations from all orders
of men. With such evidences of base servility in the public
mind, and of the utter corruption which they had sustained in
their elementary feelings, it is the less astonishing that he
should have made other experiments upon the public patience,
which seem expressly designed to try how much it would
support. Whether he were really the author of the desolating
fire which consumed Rome for six days and seven nights [A. D.
64], and drove the mass of the people into the tombs and
sepulchres for shelter, is yet a matter of some doubt. But one
great presumption against it, founded on its desperate
imprudence, as attacking the people in their primary comforts,
is considerably weakened by the enormous servility of the
Romans in the case just stated: they who could volunteer
congratulations to a son for butchering his mother (no matter
on what pretended suspicions), might reasonably be supposed
incapable of any resistance which required courage, even in a
case of self-defence or of just revenge. … The great loss on
this memorable occasion was in the heraldic and ancestral
honours of the city. Historic Rome then went to wreck for
ever. Then perished the 'domus priscorum ducum hostilibus
ad-huc spoliis adornatæ'; the 'rostral' palace; the mansion of
the Pompeys; the Blenheims and the Strathfieldsayes of the
Scipios, the Marcelli, the Paulli, and the Cæsars; then
perished the aged trophies from Carthage and from Gaul; and,
in short, as the historian sums up the lamentable desolation,
'quidquid visendum atque memorabile ex antiquitate duraverat.'
And this of itself might lead one to suspect the emperor's
hand as the original agent; for by no one act was it possible
so entirely and so suddenly to wean the people from their old
republican recollections. … In any other sense, whether for
health or for the conveniences of polished life, or for
architectural magnificence, there never was a doubt that the
Roman people gained infinitely by this conflagration. For,
like London, it arose from its ashes with a splendour
proportioned to its vast expansion of wealth and population;
and marble took the place of wood. For the moment, however,
this event must have been felt by the people as an
overwhelming calamity.
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And it serves to illustrate the passive endurance and timidity
of the popular temper, and to what extent it might be provoked
with impunity, that in this state of general irritation and
effervescence Nero absolutely forbade them to meddle with the
ruins of their own dwellings—taking that charge upon himself,
with a view to the vast wealth which he anticipated from
sifting the rubbish."

_T. De Quincey,
The Cæsars
chapter 3._

ALSO IN:
_Suetonius,
Lives of the Twelve Cæsars: Nero._

_Tacitus,
Annals,
books 13-16._

_S. Baring-Gould,
The Tragedy of the Cæsars,
volume 2._

ROME: A. D. 61.
Campaigns of Suetonius Paulinus in Britain.

See BRITAIN: A. D. 61.

ROME: A. D. 64-68.
The first persecution of Christians.
The fitting end of Nero.

"Nero was so secure in his absolutism, he had hitherto found
it so impossible to shock the feelings of the people or to
exhaust the terrified adulation of the Senate, that he was
usually indifferent to the pasquinades which were constantly
holding up his name to execration and contempt. But now [after
the burning of Rome] he felt that he had gone too far, and
that his power would be seriously imperilled if he did not
succeed in diverting the suspicions of the populace. He was
perfectly aware that when the people in the streets cursed
those who set fire to the city, they meant to curse him. If he
did not take some immediate step he felt that he might perish,
as Gaius [Caligula], had perished before him, by the dagger of
the assassin. It is at this point of his career that Nero
becomes a prominent figure in the history of the Church. It
was this phase of cruelty which seemed to throw a blood-red
light over his whole character, and led men to look on him as
the very incarnation of the world-power in its most demoniac
aspect—as worse than the Antiochus Epiphanes of Daniel's
Apocalypse—as the Man of Sin whom (in language figurative,
indeed, yet awfully true) the Lord should slay with the breath
of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.
For Nero endeavoured to fix the odious crime of having
destroyed the capital of the world upon the most innocent and
faithful of his subjects—upon the only subjects who offered
heartfelt prayers on his behalf—the Roman Christians. … Why he
should have thought of singling out the Christians, has always
been a curious problem, for at this point St. Luke ends the
Acts of the Apostles, perhaps purposely dropping the curtain,
because it would have been perilous and useless to narrate the
horrors in which the hitherto neutral or friendly Roman
Government began to play so disgraceful a part. Neither
Tacitus, nor Suetonius, nor the Apocalypse, help us to solve
this particular problem. The Christians had filled no large
space in the eye of the world. Until the days of Domitian we
do not hear of a single noble or distinguished person who had
joined their ranks. … The slaves and artisans, Jewish and
Gentile, who formed the Christian community at Rome, had never
in any way come into collision with the Roman Government. …
That the Christians were entirely innocent of the crime
charged against them was well known both at the time and
afterwards. But how was it that Nero sought popularity and
partly averted the deep rage which was rankling in many hearts
against himself, by torturing men and women, on whose agonies
he thought that the populace would gaze not only with a stolid
indifference, but even with fierce satisfaction? Gibbon has
conjectured that the Christians were confounded with the Jews,
and that the detestation universally felt for the latter fell
with double force upon the former. Christians suffered even
more than the Jews because of the calumnies so assiduously
circulated against them, and from what appeared to the
ancients to be the revolting absurdity of their peculiar
tenets. 'Nero,' says Tacitus, 'exposed to accusation, and
tortured with the most exquisite penalties, a set of men
detested for their enormities, whom the common people called
Christians. Christus, the founder of this sect, was executed
during the reign of Tiberius by the Procurator Pontius Pilate,
and the deadly superstition, suppressed for a time, began to
burst out once more, not only throughout Judaea, where the
evil had its root, but even in the City, whither from every
quarter all things horrible or shameful are drifted, and find
their votaries.' The lordly disdain which prevented Tacitus
from making any inquiry into the real views and character of
the Christians, is shown by the fact that he catches up the
most baseless allegations against them. … The masses, he says,
called them 'Christians;' and while he almost apologises for
staining his page with so vulgar an appellation, he merely
mentions in passing, that, though innocent of the charge of
being turbulent incendiaries, on which they were tortured to
death, they were yet a set of guilty and infamous sectaries,
to be classed with the lowest dregs of Roman criminals. But
the haughty historian throws no light on one difficulty,
namely, the circumstances which led to the Christians being
thus singled out. The Jews were in no way involved in Nero's
persecution. … The Jews were by far the deadliest enemies of
the Christians; and two persons of Jewish proclivities were at
this time in close proximity to the person of the Emperor. One
was the pantomimist Aliturus, the other was Poppaea, the
harlot Empress. … If, as seems certain, the Jews had it in
their power during the reign of Nero more or less to shape the
whisper of the throne, does not historical induction drive us
to conclude with some confidence that the suggestion of the
Christians as scapegoats and victims came from them? … Tacitus
tells us that 'those who confessed were first seized, and then
on their evidence a huge multitude were convicted, not so much
on the charge of incendiarism as for their hatred to mankind.'
Compressed and obscure as the sentence is, Tacitus clearly
means to imply by the 'confession' to which he alludes the
confession of Christianity; and though he is not sufficiently
generous to acquit the Christians absolutely of all complicity
in the great crime, he distinctly says that they were made the
scapegoats of a general indignation. The phrase—'a huge
multitude'—is one of the few existing indications of the
number of martyrs in the first persecution, and of the number
of Christians in the Roman Church. When the historian says
that they were convicted on the charge of 'hatred against
mankind' he shows how completely he confounds them with the
Jews, against whom he elsewhere brings the accusation of
'hostile feelings towards all except themselves.' Then the
historian adds one casual but frightful sentence—a sentence
which flings a dreadful light on the cruelty of Nero and the
Roman mob.
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He adds, 'And various forms of mockery were added to enhance
their dying agonies. Covered with the skins of wild beasts,
they were doomed to die by the mangling of dogs, or by being
nailed to crosses; or to be set on fire and burnt after
twilight by way of nightly illumination. Nero offered his own
gardens for this show, and gave a chariot race, mingling with
the mob in the dress of a charioteer, or actually driving
about among them. Hence, guilty as the victims were, and
deserving of the worst punishments, a feeling of compassion
towards them began to rise, as men felt that they were being
immolated not for any advantage to the commonwealth, but to
glut the savagery of a single man.' Imagine that awful scene,
once witnessed by the silent obelisk in the square before St.
Peter's at Rome! … Retribution did not linger, and the
vengeance fell at once on the guilty Emperor and the guilty
city. The air was full of prodigies. There were terrible
storms; the plague wrought fearful ravages. Rumours spread
from lip to lip. Men spoke of monstrous births; of deaths by
lightning under strange circumstances; of a brazen statue of
Nero melted by the flash; of places struck by the brand of
heaven in fourteen regions of the city; of sudden darkenings
of the sun. A hurricane devastated Campania; comets blazed in
the heavens; earthquakes shook the ground. On all sides were
the traces of deep uneasiness and superstitious terror. To all
these portents, which were accepted as true by Christians as
well as by Pagans, the Christians would give a specially
terrible significance.… In spite of the shocking servility
with which alike the Senate and the people had welcomed him
back to the city with shouts of triumph, Nero felt that the
air of Rome was heavy with curses against his name. He
withdrew to Naples, and was at supper there on March 19, A. D.
68, the anniversary of his mother's murder, when he heard that
the first note of revolt had been sounded by the brave C.
Julius Vindex, Præfect of Farther Gaul. He was so far from
being disturbed by the news, that he showed a secret joy at
the thought that he could now order Gaul to be plundered. For
eight days he took no notice of the matter. … At last, when he
heard that Virginius Rufus had also rebelled in Germany, and
Galba in Spain, he became aware of the desperate nature of his
position. On receiving this intelligence he fainted away, and
remained for some time unconscious. He continued, indeed, his
grossness and frivolity, but the wildest and fiercest schemes
chased each other through his melodramatic brain. … Meanwhile
he found that the palace had been deserted by his guards, and
that his attendants had robbed his chamber even of the golden
box in which he had stored his poison. Rushing out, as though
to drown himself in the Tiber, he changed his mind, and begged
for some quiet hiding-place in which to collect his thoughts.
The freedman Phaon offered him a lowly villa about four miles
from the city. Barefooted, and with a faded coat thrown over
his tunic, he hid his head and face in a kerchief, and rode
away with only four attendants. … There is no need to dwell on
the miserable spectacle of his end, perhaps the meanest and
most pusillanimous which has ever been recorded. The poor
wretch who, without a pang, had caused so many brave Romans
and so many innocent Christians to be murdered, could not
summon up resolution to die. … Meanwhile a courier arrived for
Phaon. Nero snatched his despatches out of his hand, and read
that the Senate had decided that he should be punished in the
ancestral fashion as a public enemy. Asking what the ancestral
fashion was, he was informed that he would be stripped naked
and scourged to death with rods, with his head thrust into a
fork. Horrified at this, he seized two daggers, and after
theatrically trying their edges, sheathed them again, with the
excuse that the fatal moment had not yet arrived! Then he bade
Sporus begin to sing his funeral song, and begged some one to
show him how to die. … The sound of horses' hoofs then broke
on his ears, and, venting one more Greek quotation, he held
the dagger to his throat. It was driven home by Epaphroditus,
one of his literary slaves. … So died the last of the Cæsars!
And as Robespierre was lamented by his landlady, so even Nero
was tenderly buried by two nurses who had known him in the
exquisite beauty of his engaging childhood, and by Acte, who
had inspired his youth with a genuine love."

_F. W. Farrar,
The Early Days of Christianity,
book 1, chapter 4._

ALSO IN:
_T. W. Allies,
The Formation of Christendom,
chapter 10 (volume 2)._

ROME: A. D. 68-96.
End of the Julian line.
The "Twelve Cæsars" and their successors.
A logical classification.

"In the sixth Caesar [Nero] terminated the Julian line. The
three next princes in the succession were personally
uninteresting; and, with a slight reserve in favor of Otho, …
were even brutal in the tenor of their lives and monstrous;
besides that the extreme brevity of their several reigns (all
three, taken conjunctly, having held the supreme power for no
more than twelve months and twenty days) dismisses them from
all effectual station or right to a separate notice in the
line of Caesars. Coming to the tenth in the succession,
Vespasian, and his two sons, Titus and Domitian, who make up
the list of the twelve Caesars, as they are usually called, we
find matter for deeper political meditation and subjects of
curious research. But these emperors would be more properly
classed with the five who succeed them—Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian,
and the two Antonines; after whom comes the young ruffian,
Commodus, another Caligula or Nero, from whose short and
infamous reign Gibbon takes up his tale of the decline of the
empire. And this classification would probably have prevailed,
had not the very curious work of Suetonius, whose own life and
period of observation determined the series and cycle of his
subjects, led to a different distribution. But as it is
evident that, in the succession of the first twelve Caesars,
the six latter have no connection whatever by descent,
collaterally, or otherwise, with the six first, it would be a
more logical distribution to combine them according to the
fortunes of the state itself, and the succession of its
prosperity through the several stages of splendour,
declension, revival, and final decay. Under this arrangement,
the first seventeen would belong to the first stage; Commodus
would open the second; Aurelian down to Constantine or Julian
would fill the third; and Jovian to Agustulus would bring up
the melancholy rear."

_T. De Quincey,
The Cæsars,
chapter 3._

ROME: A. D. 69.
Revolt of the Batavians under Civilis.

See BATAVIANS: A. D. 69.

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ROME: A. D. 69.
Galba, Otho, Vitellius.
Vespasian.
The Vitellian conflict.