Caligula: A Biography (16 page)

All the above-named people acquired political prominence only after the great conspiracy and Caligula’s sojourn in Gaul. After his experiences in 39 the emperor consciously embarked on a new path in exercising rule. He removed all the aristocrats from his inner circle and thereby also from the political nerve center of the Roman Empire. The background for this measure was the emperor’s need for personal security, and it was directed against Rome’s traditional political institutions, the Senate and magistrates. At the same time, some people outside the center gained importance in political operations although they had no connection at all with the old institutions. Thus, for example, after the events on the shore of the English Channel Caligula authorized his procurators—financial agents—to confiscate funds as they saw fit to pay for his triumph in Rome (the one that was later called off). Officers of the Praetorian Guard were authorized to collect taxes and unpaid tribute as well. In other words, the emperor used the structures available in his household and in the military to administer political tasks for which they had previously had no responsibility.

The fundamental changes were not limited to the ways in which central rule was organized, for Caligula also dealt with a problem no emperor before him had addressed: the social rank of the emperor himself. Up to that point he had followed his predecessors’ example in allowing the Senate to confer extraordinary honors on him that, although they had raised the emperors far above the other members of the aristocracy, had at the same time remained permanently linked to the traditional aristocratic ranking. In its turn this system of rank was based on the various classes of senatorial office (consular, Praetorian, etc.) and thus ultimately on the structures of the old Republican magistracy, that is, on a political order that had not merely not foreseen the possibility of a monarchy, but had excluded it on principle. Thus at the heart of the matter was a paradoxical process: Precisely by undermining the traditional ranking system in order to place himself at the top of it, the emperor provided proof both of its continuing validity and of his having no independent claim to monarchical rank. When he allowed the Senate to award him distinctions, he confirmed that he needed the old Republican institution in order to manifest his social standing. By accepting honors he emphasized that he lacked them on his own.

Caligula is the only Roman emperor of whom it is reported that he grasped this very paradox and made an issue of it himself. Cassius Dio, writing about the first delegation from the Senate after the great conspiracy had been uncovered, reports that Caligula’s response was to prohibit the Senate from passing any furthers honors to him: “For he did not for a moment wish it to appear that anything that brought him honor was in the power of the senators, since that would imply that they were his superiors and could grant him favors as if he were their inferior. For this reason he frequently found fault with various honors conferred
upon him, on the ground that they did not increase his splendor but rather destroyed his power” (Dio 59.23.3–4).

But what would a monarchical position of honor look like once it surpassed the limits of the old Republican order of ranking, which was the only such order existing in Rome, and had been in place for centuries? The coming weeks and months would reveal Caligula’s plans on the subject. His first priority was display of material splendor, since after the old political ranking this was the second way Romans showed off their social status. Caligula had begun to exceed conventional limits of luxury some time before, but in this respect, too, he altered his behavior after the sojourn in Gaul. The auction of the household goods of his predecessors can be interpreted not only as a source of income but also as a conscious break with elements that had previously served to represent the emperor’s social position. Thus fundamental changes in the way the emperor’s role was shaped were taking place here as well. Yet the decisive question remained: What, for the emperor, would replace traditional manifestations of rank? It was true not just of ancient Rome but of all pre-modern aristocratic societies that each individual’s social status became a reality only when it achieved visibility in public.

The circle of people closest to Caligula during his stay in Gaul was not entirely free of aristocrats; it was free only of Roman aristocrats. According to Cassius Dio, among the emperor’s entourage were the rulers of two client kingdoms in the Hellenic East whom he had placed on their thrones in 37, Julius Agrippa of Judaea and Antiochus IV of Commagene. Another such ruler, Ptolemy of Mauretania, seems to have gone to Lyon as well, but was then condemned to death by Caligula under circumstances that are unclear but may have had something to do with political changes in the province of Africa. These kings embodied another
tradition, of sole rule established over the course of centuries in the Hellenic empires of the East. Such kings were independent of urban political structures and urban aristocrats; they headed political administrations that had grown out of their own household staffs and answered to the monarch alone. The rank of the aristocrats and nobles around such kings was linked to a court hierarchy at whose apex the king stood unchallenged. And, last but not least: Since the third century
B.C
. it had become customary in the East for the kings, who occupied a position so far above everyone else, to be worshiped as godlike beings, with cultic rites. In describing the turn of the year 39/40 during Caligula’s reign, Cassius Dio mentions particular concern in Rome when the news arrived “that King Agrippa and King Antiochus were with him, like two tyrant-trainers” (Dio 59.24.1). What looked liked tyranny from the perspective of Roman senators can be described in other words: Caligula was starting to alter the paradoxical and dangerous role he had played up to that point as an emperor in a republic, and to create an openly monarchical system.

Caligula’s swift return journey to Italy ended before the gates of Rome. He was at the shrine of the Arval Brethren outside the city walls near the end of May in 40, and possibly about the same time he received on the first occasion the embassy of Alexandrian Jews, led by Philo, in the gardens of his mother, Agrippina, which likewise lay outside Rome. Two circumstances above all probably kept Caligula from entering the capital immediately. Events over the previous few months must have made the situation in Rome extremely volatile; for that reason alone, concern
for the emperor’s safety would have ruled out an official entry amid large crowds of people. Then again, a return from Germania without any ceremony at all would have looked like an admission of defeat. On the other hand, the emperor had expressly forbidden the Senate to provide any formal welcome and other honors, so that a triumphal procession of the usual kind was out of the question. In its place Caligula chose a new way to stage his return, one without precedent in Rome. It alluded to the events of the northern campaigns, surpassed all previous triumphs, and was so imposing that even Suetonius includes it among the few deeds of the “good” ruler Caligula. To achieve this, the emperor proceeded to his luxurious villas near Puteoli in Campania and prepared to demonstrate his power as he had been prevented from doing at the English Channel: by triumphantly crossing the sea.

A bridge of ships a little more than three miles long was constructed in the Gulf of Baiae between Puteoli and Bauli (near Misenum). It consisted of a double row of cargo ships assembled from many places, with earth piled on top of them to make a road as solid as the Via Appia. At various intervals the road was widened to make space for resting places and shelters with running fresh water. When the entire structure was finished, Caligula put on the breastplate of the most famous ruler of the Greek world, Alexander the Great, which had been taken from his grave; over it he wore a purple cloak of the kind used by Greek military commanders, with gold decorations and jewels from India. Wearing a sword at his side, carrying a shield, and with a crown of oak leaves on his head, he sacrificed to the gods, first of all to Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Invidia, the goddess of envy, so that he himself would not be a target for envy. Then he rode onto the bridge from Bauli, accompanied by troops of cavalry and
infantry. On reaching the other side he stormed into the town of Puteoli like a general bent on conquering it.

The following day the troops rested, as if after a victory, and then the return march began. This time Caligula wore a tunic embroidered with gold and drove a chariot pulled by the most famous race horses of the day. Behind him followed a long column with articles of plunder that had obviously been brought back from the North, as well as a Parthian prince who was being kept in Rome at that time as a hostage. Next came a procession of chariots carrying his
cohors amicorum
, the “friends” who made up the aristocratic retinue of a Roman general, wearing cloaks of blossoms, followed by the Praetorian Guard, the army, and further supporters who had decorated their clothing however they saw fit. The entire train proceeded to the center of the bridge, where a stage had been erected on top of the ships. There the emperor gave a speech: “First he extolled himself as an undertaker of great enterprises, and then he praised the soldiers as men who had undergone great hardships and perils, mentioning in particular this achievement of theirs in crossing the sea on foot. For this he gave them money” (Dio 59.17.7). After this speech a festive banquet was held on the bridge and on ships anchored nearby for the rest of the day and the following night, during which bonfires illuminated the bridge, the bay, and the surrounding mountains like a stage set.

At the end of the celebration “he hurled many of his companions off the bridge into the sea and sank many of the others by sailing about and attacking them in boats equipped with beaks. Some perished, but the majority, though drunk, managed to save themselves” (Dio 59.17.9–10). The emperor boasted that he had turned the sea into dry land and the night into day, mocking the Persian rulers Darius and Xerxes (who had crossed the Bosporus
and the Hellespont on bridges of ships in the years 513 and 480
B.C
.) because he himself had crossed a much wider expanse of water.

Caligula’s horseback ride over the sea made a deep impression, as the ancient sources attest. According to Seneca, while the emperor was amusing himself with the resources of the Empire, the dearth of available ships was endangering grain supplies to Rome. Both Seneca and Josephus use the event to illustrate the emperor’s insanity. Suetonius mentions contemporary interpretations that come closer to the heart of the matter. These averred that Caligula wanted to outdo Xerxes (as Dio also reports) and at the same time to inspire fear in the Germanic tribes and Britons, whose borders he was threatening. The reason given by Suetonius himself reflects the web of anecdotes that was spun around the event in the next hundred years. When Suetonius was a child he had heard court gossip from his own grandfather that Tiberius, concerned about his grandson Gemellus’s prospects for rule, had consulted the astrologer Thrasyllus. Thrasyllus told him that Caligula had about as much chance of becoming emperor as of crossing the Gulf of Baiae on horseback. The story does not quite add up, since Caligula was already emperor by then and had been for some time, but it does exemplify how incredible the deed was. According to Dio, the crossing should be seen as Caligula’s disdain for a triumph: The emperor would have regarded being pulled by horses across dry land as too ordinary, and hence had wanted to cross the sea.

In fact, in addition to its demonstration of unlimited power, the staging of the crossing contains several symbolic references. The connection with events on the coast of the Channel is obvious: The emperor showed that in Italy, unlike the distant North, he was not dependent on the goodwill of his troops and the
cooperation of his senatorial generals; at home he had the power to lead his soldiers on foot even across the sea. The ride from Bauli to Puteoli was thus a symbolic demonstration of the emperor’s potential power to conquer Britain. The return journey, with the emperor driving a chariot followed by trophies and spoils, was modeled on a triumphal procession, and the ensuing feast on the bridge was in a sense designed to outshine the triumph he did not have in Rome (which he himself had rejected). The ironic praise for the bravery of his “friends” and soldiers and the dunking that followed also point clearly to the events of the spring. They designated who was really responsible for the fiasco at the Channel and simultaneously expressed Caligula’s bent for mocking and humiliating those who resisted his assertions of power.

The events at the Gulf of Baiae are revealing in yet another respect, however. They manifested imperial grandeur by means of ceremonies that broke through the conventional Roman semiotic system for assigning social rank. Traditionally the achievement and display of social honor was connected to holding political offices in the Roman polity and functioning as a magistrate of the city: It was office that conferred honor on the man who held it. Accordingly a Roman aristocrat achieved the highest possible distinction if the political institution of the Senate voted him a triumphal procession, which wended its way through the city with great splendor before the assembled citizenry of Rome and reached its ceremonial culmination on the Capitoline Hill. Hence when Caligula demonstrated his imperial superiority to all others in a new manner and with great publicity, it is noteworthy that he did so for the first time outside the city of Rome and independently of the Senate and the Roman polity. This corresponded precisely to his announcement that he would not permit the Senate to vote him any more honors, and to his perceiving
the paradoxical situation that arose if honors for an emperor were granted by the Senate and aristocracy. The triumphal ride across the sea thus represented Caligula’s first attempt, through new ceremonial practices, to make real his position as a monarch who stood above the aristocracy. But were these practices in fact new?