From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 (41 page)

Gaius, the sole surviving son of Germanicus and Agrippina born in A.D. 12, was descended through his mother from Julia and through his father from Antony. Brought up among the armies on the Rhine which his father had commanded, he was nicknamed Caligula (Little Boots) from the military dress that he used to wear as a small boy. After his father’s death his life cannot have been happy, since his mother and brothers had been persecuted by Tiberius; after living with his grandmother Antonia, he had finally to join the gloomy Tiberius at Capreae. Though not trained for full responsibility, he was popular with the army and his Julian connexion would commend him to all who hated or feared the Claudians. Supported by Macro, he was acclaimed emperor in March 37 and received all Tiberius’ property since the Senate declared the latter’s will to be invalid. After the years of Tiberius’ oppression hopes now ran high and the young emperor was welcomed with enthusiasm both at Rome and in the provinces.
¹⁸
He adopted Tiberius Gemellus and named him Princeps Iuventutis; he made his uncle Claudius his colleague in the consulship; he checked delation and treason-trials; recalled political exiles and allowed the publication of some suppressed works; abolished the sales-tax; gave shows and distributed largess.

But Rome did not breathe this freer air for long. In October Gaius had a serious illness and when he recovered he emerged, according to tradition, a monster of lust and diabolical cruelty. The balance of his mind was to some degree upset and he developed into a megalomaniac and tyrant: whether he was mad is a matter of definition and in the absence of a clinical-pathological report of the type which some modern writers attempt to establish for such historical figures from somewhat inadequate evidence, the question can hardly be settled. The possibilities of power went to the head of this inexperienced young man and he acted with increasing irresponsibility. He ignored or humiliated the Senate and struck several blows at the ‘diarchic’ ideals of Augustus. Thus he held the consulship each year except in 38; he moved the imperial mint from Lugdunum to Rome; he handed back the elections from the Senate to the People; he transferred the command of the legion in Africa from the senatorial proconsul to an imperial legate; once he smashed the
fasces
of two consuls and deprived them of office. A charge that may be taken less seriously than these is the famous rumour that he intended to make his favourite horse Incitatus consul. Beside these attacks on senatorial privilege, he killed many individuals or drove them to their deaths, including Tiberius Gemellus and Macro. He now encouraged delation and revived treason-trials, which (unlike Tiberius) he used as a method of personal enrichment. He needed money, since with wild prodigality he wasted the large sums that Tiberius had accumulated: he thus did not hesitate to impose new taxes on the people.
^18a

In contrast to his two predecessors, Gaius sought and accepted honours which hardly fell short of deification, and he perhaps intended to turn the Principate into an absolute monarchy, on Hellenistic or Oriental lines. He may have imbibed ideas about the East from his friend Herod Agrippa, and while some Hellenistic monarchs (the Ptolemies) married their sisters, Gaius committed incest with his sister Drusilla; after her death in 38, which removed a restraining influence from him, he ordered her deification. He appeared in public in the dress and with the insignia of various gods and established a special temple for his own divinity. Hardly less offensive, to the nobility at any rate, must have been the way in which he anticipated Nero by performing as a charioteer, gladiator and singer, while one of his most spectacular appearances was when he drove, wearing the breastplate of Alexander the Great, over a bridge of boats which he had constructed across the Bay of Naples from Baiae to Puteoli.

Folly at home, reinforced by folly in foreign affairs that drove Judaea and Mauretania to the point of rebellion (see below), increased the hatred of Senate and people for Gaius and engendered conspiracies; the opposition would become yet more serious if it spread to the armies. The first conspiracy arose in fact in the camp of Cn. Cornelius Gaetulicus, the popular legate of Upper Germany. One of the ringleaders, who was perhaps himself hoping to supplant Gaius, was Aemilius Lepidus, the widower of Gaius’ sister Drusilla and the lover of another sister Agrippina. Gaius hastened to the scene and restored order by his prompt action (39). Lepidus and Gaetulicus were executed, and Gaius’ sisters Agrippina and Julia Livilla, were banished. Gaetulicus was replaced by the future emperor Galba; Gaius had received help also from another future emperor, the praetor Vespasian. To give his troops some employment Gaius directed their attention to Germany and Britain.

Gaius’ tyranny and oppression were intensified by this episode: senators and army-commanders, Stoics and philosophers, jurists and men of letters, were alike threatened, and other conspiracies naturally followed. Even Herod and Gaius’ freedman Callistus began to turn from him. Finally a Praetorian tribune named Cassius Chaerea decided to avenge the insults that he had received from the emperor. The two Prefects of the Guard (Gaius had appointed two after Macro’s death and had raised the number of cohorts to twelve) were privy to the plot, and in January 41 Gaius was struck down in his Palace and was despatched with thirty wounds. Few will have wept.

The half-hearted actions that Gaius took in regard to Germany and Britain are most puzzling: were they the irresponsible antics of a madman or did some sound strategic purpose lie behind them? Whether or not he was
contemplating going to Germany in any case in order to make himself known to some of his troops, his hurried departure thither was caused by the conspiracy of Gaetulicus. After this was crushed, Gaius conducted some raids across the Rhine into Germany. Fantastic stories circulated about this campaign: for his ‘triumph’ he used slaves who had to dye their long hair red and even learn some German. It is possible that some serious manoeuvres, which he planned in order to restore discipline in the Roman army or to overawe German tribes, have been misunderstood and distorted by a tradition hostile to him. He then spent the winter (39/40) in Gaul, where he received a congratulatory embassy from the Senate, led by his uncle Claudius, whom according to ‘rumour’ he ducked in the Rhone; at Lyons he auctioned some imperial property at fantastic prices, and also held a contest in Greek and Latin eloquence with humiliating punishments for the losers.

In the spring of A.D. 40 Gaius drew up his troops on the English Channel, preparatory to an invasion of Britain; here he was joined by Amminius, the exiled son of the British ruler Cunobelinus (Cymbeline), who promised submission. Gaius then suddenly cancelled the expedition, using Amminius’ action as an excuse. His real motive is uncertain; possibly the troops were restless and mutinous or Gaius may suddenly have feared to go so far from Rome. He is said to have ordered his soldiers to pick up sea-shells (
musculi
), ‘the spoils of Ocean’; whether this anecdote arose from a misinterpretation of an order to his engineers to pack up their huts (
musculi
) or reflects the wildness of Gaius’ mind must remain uncertain. Thus it is possible to believe that he planned some serious movements against Germany and Britain or that he merely indulged in some fantastic parades. At any rate he compromised Roman prestige to the extent that his successor resolved upon the conquest of Britain.
¹⁹

Gaius made some unwise changes among the client-kingdoms, partly in order to reward his own friends. Commagene, which Tiberius had organized as a province, was given to the son of its former king. Gaius found kingdoms (Lesser Armenia, Pontus and part of Thrace) for the three sons of the Thracian ruler Cotys who had been brought up at Rome with him. By dethroning the king of Armenia Gaius created a vacuum into which Parthia was drawn. His friend Herod Agrippa was given the tetrarchies of his uncles, Philip and Herod Antipas (Ituraea and Galilee). Ptolemy, the king of Mauretania, who had been summoned to Rome, was ordered to kill himself: Gaius intended to annex his kingdom, but it resisted by force.
^19a

Gaius’ policy towards the Jews was no less disastrous. The persistent requests by the large Jewish community in Alexandria for local citizenship which was denied them by the Alexandrine Greeks, often led to disturbances and anti-Semitic riots. The situation in the city was complicated further by the grievances of the Greeks against Rome; they were jealous that the Jews
were allowed their ethnarch and Senate, while their own municipal rights were limited (they perhaps lacked a Senate).
²⁰
Thus nationalist leaders, as Isodorus and Lampon, arose who in their opposition to Rome were ready to face martyrdom if need be. This anti-Roman movement developed a literature of its own, which is also often anti-Semitic, the so-called ‘acts of the Pagan Martyrs’; it survives only in fragmentary papyri.
²¹
One of the anti-Jewish pogroms flared up in A.D. 38 when Agrippa on his way to the East called in at Alexandria which he had left hastily two or three years before because of his debts.
²²
It was aided by the Prefect of Egypt, Avillius Flaccus, who accepted the demand of the Greeks that statues of the emperor should be placed in the Jewish synagogues. Gaius was glad of the excuse to recall Flaccus, who had been the friend of Tiberius Gemellus and Macro; Flaccus was later put to death.
²³
Meantime both Jews and Greeks in Alexandria sent deputations to Gaius, that of the Jews being led by the philosopher and theologian Philo.

When the deputations reached Italy they heard that Gaius had ordered that a statue of himself should be set up in the temple at Jerusalem: this was his reply to an incident in Jamnia in Palestine where the Jews had pulled down an altar which the Greeks had erected to Gaius. Philo has left a vivid account of how his deputation had to chase Gaius from room to room and obtained no greater concession than the remark that ‘men who think me no god are more unfortunate than criminal’. Gaius’ intended action in Palestine was more serious. The governor of Syria, P. Petronius, who had to enforce the order, knew that it would provoke widespread resistance and so he wisely ‘went slow’, while Agrippa bravely persuaded Gaius to revoke it. Soon, however, the emperor changed his mind, ordered the statue for Jerusalem to be made in Rome and instructed Petronius to commit suicide. Only news of Gaius’ death prevented revolt in Palestine. Petronius also was saved because the news reached him before the death-warrant.
²⁴

With Judaea on the point of revolt and Mauretania in open rebellion, Gaius’ death did not come too soon. With disorder abroad and autocracy at home, the Augustan system was subjected to a severe strain which fortunately was not prolonged to breaking point. But these years, short though they were, left their mark, not least upon the Senate and nobility who realized that behind a Princeps might lurk a despot.

In the confusion that followed the murder of Gaius a soldier of the Praetorian Guard found Claudius hiding behind a curtain in the palace on the Palatine and rushed him off to the camp of the Guard. At first uncertain whether he was going to be killed or made emperor Claudius soon found that the Praetorians realized that their own interest demanded the continuance of the Principate and that a son of Drusus and a brother of Germanicus, even if not a soldier himself, had at least a family tradition to commend him. Meantime the Senators were debating whether the Republic might be restored or, if not, who among them might be made Princeps, but, in Gibbon’s famous words, ‘While the Senate deliberated, the Praetorian Guards had resolved.’ Their resolution was in fact fortified by a promise from Claudius to give a donative of 15,000 sesterces to each man; this attempt to reward, if not to buy, the loyalty of troops, though not without precedent, did not provide a healthy example for future emperors.
²
After Claudius had rejected a demand from the Senate to submit, his friend Herod Agrippa negotiated for him, and the Senate, which lost the support of the Urban Cohorts, was compelled to give in: on 25 January A.D. 41 it accepted Claudius as the new Princeps, on whom the titles and powers of his predecessors were then conferred.

The Senate might be pardoned for having forgotten the claims of Claudius, since he had deliberately been kept in the background by his own family throughout his fifty years. This was due in part to his physical infirmities, which resulted perhaps from a form of infantile paralysis: he had weak legs, a shambling walk, a slobbery mouth and a shaky head, though Suetonius admitted that when standing still or seated he ‘possessed majesty and dignity
of appearance’. His own mother Antonia disliked him and clearly he would not follow in the soldierly footsteps of his father, the elder Drusus, or his brother Germanicus. Augustus, although not unconscious of his intelligence, had not considered him suitable for public office, and Tiberius had followed this lead; Claudius had not even been admitted to the Senate. Gaius had brought him more into the open, with a consulship in 37, but chiefly as a butt for his own malicious wit. Scorned or neglected, Claudius is alleged to have become a glutton, a drunkard and a gambler (vices that he shared with many another Roman noble), but, more important, he developed a love of history and his country’s past. Encouraged by Livy, he had started a History of the Civil War from the death of Julius Caesar, but after he had written two books his friends persuaded him to move to a less controversial period and he composed forty-one books on Augustus whom he much admired, covering probably the forty-one years from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14. He also wrote a defence of Cicero, an autobiography in eight books, a History of the Etruscans in twenty books and a History of the Carthaginians in eight (these last two works were written in Greek); another work was on the Latin Alphabet, to which he wished to add three new letters.
³
His historical studies will have exercised an important influence on his thought and action: his youthful enthusiasm for the Republic developed into a wider appreciation of the past and above all of the fact that Rome’s greatness owed much to her ability to introduce change and reform while still preserving essential traditions. He thus looked back, past Tiberius’ years of attempted conformity, to the more creative period when Augustus tried to reconcile Republic and Principate, and even beyond him back to the masterful developments initiated by Julius Caesar.

Proud of his country’s past, Claudius wanted to rule well, and in many respects he achieved his desire. Yet the main trend of the surviving literary tradition about his rule is contemptuous when it is not hostile, and depicts him as the victim of unscrupulous exploitation by his ambitious freedmen and scheming wives, particularly his third wife Messalina, who was put to death in 48, and her successor Agrippina the younger. But luckily sufficient imperial enactments survive in inscriptions or upon papyri to reveal the thought of Claudius himself and these, though sometimes tortuous in manner, show that he possessed great administrative common sense. He not only showed skill in his choice of efficient freedmen-servants and outstanding generals (as Corbulo, Galba, Vespasian, Hosidius Geta and Suetonius Paulinus), but he also impressed his own mind and policy upon public affairs. In the last few years of his reign, however, his powers began to fail and the traditional view of him as a pawn in the hands of more determined men and women approximates more closely to the truth.

Like many another emperor, he started off well. Since he could hardly
overlook the murder of a Caesar, he punished Chaerea and a few conspirators but not any senators who were suspected. He cancelled Gaius’ ‘acts’ and allowed a return of exiles under a general amnesty, including Gaius’ two sisters; nor did he hesitate to refer to Gaius as a madman in a public document. By assuming the name of Caesar he identified himself with the Julian family. He showed respect to the Senate and magistrates, dropped treason trials in the Senate and enhanced his popularity by giving gladiatorial shows and abolishing Gaius’ new taxes. Long honoured by the Equestrian Order, which more than once had chosen him as its representative, he now had the support of the Praetorians, and he was accepted by the armies whose interests he cultivated; during his principate he was saluted as Imperator by the army no less than twenty-seven times. In A.D. 42 Furius Camillus Scribonianus, the legate of Dalmatia, was persuaded by some senators to revolt, but his two legions would not support him for more than four days, and the revolt did not spread; Claudius rewarded these loyal legions with the titles of Claudia Pia Fidelis. It was chiefly the Senate that Claudius had to watch.

Claudius reacted sharply from Gaius’ autocracy and sincerely tried to co-operate with the Senate on Augustan lines. Gaius may have restored the elections to it, but Claudius made frequent use of
senatus consulta
; he held the consulship only four times: he tried to maintain the social position of senators and developed Augustus’ provision of the best seats in the Circus for them; he restored Achaea and Macedonia to the Senate in 44; he shared the new provinces acquired during his principate between senatorial and equestrian legates, the former receiving Britain and Lycia. He showed the Senate outward respect and assiduously attended its meetings. But his revival of the office of censor which he held himself in A.D. 47–8, gave offence, since one of his objects will have been to adjust membership of the Senate by means of
adlectio
. Besides expelling some old members he added a number of provincials, including some Gallic chiefs (see p. 251); his creation of new patricians will also have been designed to infuse new blood into the aristocracy.

Claudius further insisted that the Senate should work with efficiency. He thus enforced attendance. In an interesting fragment from a speech he delivered on procedure in trials, which is preserved on papyrus, he put forward proposals designed to break ‘the tyranny of the accusers’ and urged the Senate to vote honestly on them: ‘If you disapprove, find another solution, but here and now … it is unbecoming to the majesty of this assembly that one man alone, the consul-designate, should repeat the remarks of the consuls word for word as his opinion and that the rest of you utter only
one word, “I agree” and then when you leave say, “We debated”.’
⁵
This denunciation of ‘yesmen’ reveals the increasing inadequacy of the Senate, and it was this, not a desire to humiliate it, that led Claudius to encroach on its activities in various ways. Chief among these was his creation of a centralized administrative machine, staffed by freedmen, which is described below, but a few other specific examples may be mentioned. Thus he abolished the senatorial
quaestores classici
because the prefects of the fleets at Misenum and Ravenna could do their work; an imperial ‘procurator portus Ostiensis’ replaced the quaestor Ostiensis; in 44 Claudius himself nominated two quaestors to administer the Aerarium for three years; imperial officials relieved the quaestors of the care of the roads in Rome: Claudius may on occasion have interfered in the appointment of governors to senatorial provinces; and in 53 powers of jurisdiction in financial questions in senatorial provinces were transferred from the proconsul to imperial procurators.
⁶
He may also have made some adjustments in the distribution of corn.
⁷
All changes of this kind were no doubt made by him in an attempt to secure greater administrative efficiency, and in part the Senate may have had only itself to blame for its losses, but clearly such measures would increase the difficulty of friendly co-operation between the Princeps and Senate. In fact by infringing senatorial administrative duties, by interfering with the composition of the Senate, and by his attacks on individual senators (Claudius is said to have executed thirty or thirty-five during his reign), he alienated still further a body with which he wished to be on good terms. He perhaps underestimated the resentment of some of the older aristocratic families when they found their members being turned, through his drive for efficient administration, from independent officers of state into officials of an emperor.

To some extent the Equestrian Order benefited from Claudius’ policy towards the Senate and from his provincial policy: there were more posts for equestrian officials. But although his outward relations with them continued to be friendly and he was careful to preserve the integrity of the Order (his reorganization of their
cursus honorum
was short-lived), they too found themselves often overshadowed by him, even in commercial activities, and they were increasingly becoming merely his agents. Their discontent sometimes resulted in conspiracies, and Claudius is said to have put to death up to three hundred Equites.

One of the fundamental causes of Claudius’ difficulties with the Senate and the Equestrian Order was that beside making them more dependent on himself he was at the same time becoming more independent of them through the creation of a private secretariat. Augustus, following the normal Roman
practice, had used the freedmen and slaves of his own household as secretaries and clerks, and his successors had perhaps slightly increased their staff. But it was Claudius who first developed a centralized bureaucracy by creating specialized departments, each under a freedman, which were miniature Ministries and formed the basis of an Imperial Civil Service, which was independent of the older authorities, the Senate and Knights. Further, this chancery was staffed with men, mostly of non-Italian origin, who were not imbued with the Roman tradition and who owed loyalty to the Princeps alone. Thus in the interest of more efficient administration Claudius unwittingly sowed the seeds from which was to spring that gigantic bureaucratic machine which two or three centuries later began to choke the free life of the whole Roman world.

The immediate cause of this development was the growing complexity of the business which the emperor had to handle, arising in part from the great increase of imperial property and estates and the addition of new provinces. The new departments and their freedmen heads were: Narcissus, the chief secretary (
praepositus ab epistulis
), through whose office all official correspondence must have passed; Pallas, the financial secretary (
a rationibus
);
⁸
Callistus, a secretary (
a libellis
) who dealt with petitions to the emperor and also (unless this was the work of a separate department) with judicial inquiries (
cognitiones
); and Polybius (
a studiis
) whose functions probably included those of librarian and literary adviser. The new imperial freedmen, by fair means or foul, gained great wealth and power, but during most of the reign they remained essentially the servants of the master who appointed them. Their existence caused continual annoyance to the old senatorial aristocracy and at the same time greatly increased the personal power of the Princeps. Greater efficiency in administration was thus obtained at a high cost.

Finance in particular was closely concentrated in the hands of Claudius and his servants. It is perhaps not likely that he established a centralized Fiscus in Rome (in the sense of a Treasury where he kept public money), but the development of the office of
a rationibus
(which had existed under Tiberius, and probably even under Augustus) will have led to a closer organization of the imperial provincial
fisci
(see p. 187). The emperor also had a vast private fortune, and this was contained in a treasury known as a
fiscus
; the accounts of these personal monies (the
ratio patrimonii
) were kept by a
procurator a patrimonio
, a post perhaps first created by Claudius. He also established an official
procurator vicesimarum hereditatum
to control the inheritance tax, while the procurators secured more financial authority in senatorial provinces (p. 245). He himself gained greater control over the Aerarium when he received the right to appoint quaestors to administer it (p. 245), and in practice he would presumably not be held accountable for monies that he drew from it, because any formal vote of funds to the emperor would be made without a time limit,
since all emperors from Tiberius onwards at their accession were given their powers for life (and not for specific periods, as with Augustus).

A similar desire for efficiency is shown in Claudius’ judicial administration. He had so great a personal interests in jurisdiction that he was mocked for the time that he spent in the courts, but he set right many abuses in the judicial system, not least by expediting the transaction of business (cf. his speech mentioned on p. 291). Here as elsewhere his actions were inspired by a spirit of equity. A less pleasant aspect was that he himself often judged criminal cases such as his predecessors might have remitted to the Senate. The hearing of such trials
intra cubiculum principis
became unpopular, especially when it was thought that they were used by Claudius’ freedmen or wives as a means of getting rid of their personal enemies by playing upon his fears of conspiracy: sometimes uncertainty of himself, combined with a touch of naïveté, may have misled him into acts of cruelty. But his essential sense of justice is shown in a considerable body of minor legislation for which he was responsible. Details cannot be given here, but two examples may illustrate its humanity and equity: usurers were forbidden to lend money to a son in expectation of a father’s death; and sick slaves, for whom Roman masters sometimes callously disclaimed responsibility by exposing them in the temple of Aesculapius, were, if they recovered, to obtain their freedom.

Claudius was not backward in his public help and works. An S. C. Hosidianum punished those who purchased and demolished buildings for profit; the bill aimed especially at preventing the destruction of farms and the consequent reversion of the farmland to grazing. Claudius helped the corn supply by insuring ships and cargoes against damage by storm, and by granting privileges to aliens who built ships. At Ostia, the port of Rome, where the Tiber mouth was silting up, he built a harbour some two miles to the north, linked to the Tiber by canal, and constructed moles, a lighthouse and granaries.
⁹
He completed two aqueducts for Rome which Gaius had started: remains of the Aqua Claudia still stride across the countryside outside the city. Thirty thousand men, working for eleven years, tunnelled a three-mile long
emissarium
which drained the Fucine Lake into the river Liris and reclaimed a large area in central Italy for agriculture, though this was later partly lost again through the choking of the channel. Both in this work and in his harbour works at Ostia, Claudius was following earlier schemes of Julius Caesar. He built roads in Italy (continuing the Via Valeria as the Via Valeria Claudia to the Adriatic) and in Alpine districts (e.g. the Via Claudia Augusta from Altinum to the Danube). And, as will be seen, he was no less concerned about the well-being of the provinces.

In his religious policy Claudius, though conservative by nature and antiquarian in interest, did not avoid all novelty. He did much to restore the old religion of the State, e.g. he reorganized the college of
haruspices
, and in 47 he
managed to celebrate the Secular Games by reckoning their start from 613 B.C. instead of 666 B.C., the date used by Augustus; the Games were thus made to coincide with the eight-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Rome. In another ceremony in 49 he extended the old sacred boundary of Rome (the
pomerium
) to include the Aventine and part of the Campus Martius; this privilege belonged to generals who had extended the imperial frontiers, within which Claudius had brought Britain, Mauretania and Thrace. Towards emperor-worship, in reaction against the wild extravagances of Gaius, Claudius reverted to the sensible attitude of Tiberius. In the famous letter that he wrote to the Alexandrians in 41 he said that he did not want a high priest or temples, ‘for I do not wish to be offensive to my contemporaries’, but naturally he did not in general receive less honours than had Tiberius. Towards foreign religions he was tolerant where he regarded them as harmless to older Roman ideas. Thus he thought of transferring the Eleusinian Mysteries to Rome, but he expelled astrologers from Italy. Towards Druidism he went further than his predeccessors (see p. 235): if Tiberius had not already done so, Claudius decreed its complete suppression. Towards the Jews he reverted to the more generous attitude prevailing before Gaius, and restored to them throughout the Empire freedom of worship and exemption from the imperialcult. But in Rome he was more severe. Though Tiberius’ expulsion order had not been revoked, a large Jewish colony had re-established itself in Rome: in 41 Claudius denied them the right to hold meetings (other than those of the individual synagogues?), presumably to stop them proselytizing and perhaps as the result of some disturbance; at any rate in this same year he wrote angrily to the Alexandrine Jews, accusing them of ‘fomenting a universal plague’.
¹⁰
In 49 there was a further clash with the Jews in Rome, and they were apparently expelled; whether the emerging new religion of Christianity had nay influence on these events is uncertain, but Suetonius says that a riot was provoked ‘impulsore Chresto’.
¹¹
Claudius also admitted the festival of Attis into the Roman calendar and reorganized its priestly colleges: the cult was robbed of some of its wilder features and was ‘romanized’; the chief priest, the
archigallus
, now had to be a Roman citizen and not an eastern eunuch.