The Lives of the Twelve Caesars - Suetonius Tranquillus
The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, to which are added his Lives of the
Grammarians, Rhetoricians, and Poets.
The translation of Alexander Thomson, M.D. Revised by T. Forester, M.A.
(London: George Bell and Sons, 1909).
Preface
Julius Caesar
Augustus
Tiberius
Caligula
Claudius
Nero
Galba
Otho
Vitellius
Vespasian
Titus
Domitian
Grammarians
Rhetoricians
Poets
PREFACE.
C. Suetonius Tranquillus was the son of a Roman knight who commanded a legion,
on the side of Otho, at the battle which decided the fate of the empire in
favour of Vitellius. From incidental notices in the following History, we learn
that he was born towards the close of the reign of Vespasian, who died in the
year 79 of the Christian era. He lived till the time of Hadrian, under whose
administration he filled the office of secretary; until, with several others, he
was dismissed for presuming on familiarities with the empress Sabina, of which
we have no further account than that they were unbecoming his position in the
imperial court. How long he survived this disgrace, which appears to have
befallen him in the year 121, we are not informed; but we find that the leisure
afforded him by his retirement, was employed in the composition of numerous
works, of which the only portions now extant are collected in the present
volume.
Several of the younger Pliny’s letters are addressed to Suetonius, with whom he
lived in the closest friendship. They afford some brief, but generally pleasant,
glimpses of his habits and career; and in a letter, in which Pliny makes
application on behalf of his friend to the emperor Trajan, for a mark of favour,
he speaks of him as “a most excellent, honourable, and learned man, whom he had
the pleasure of entertaining under his own roof, and with whom the nearer he was
brought into communion, the more he loved him.”
The plan adopted by Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Cæsars, led him to be
more diffuse on their personal conduct and habits than on public events. He
writes Memoirs rather than History. He neither dwells on the civil wars which
sealed the fall of the Republic, nor on the military expeditions which extended
the frontiers of the empire; nor does he attempt to develope the causes of the
great political changes which marked the period of which he treats.
When we stop to gaze in a museum or gallery on the antique busts of the Cæsars,
we perhaps endeavour to trace in their sculptured physiognomy the
characteristics of those princes, who, for good or evil, were in their times
masters of the destinies of a large portion of the human race. The pages of
Suetonius will amply gratify this natural curiosity. In them we find a series of
individual portraits sketched to the life, with perfect truth and rigorous
impartiality. La Harpe remarks of Suetonius, “He is scrupulously exact, and
strictly methodical. He omits nothing which concerns the person whose life he is
writing; he relates everything, but paints nothing. His work is, in some sense,
a collection of ancedotes, but it is very curious to read and consult.”
Combining as it does amusement and information, Suetonius’s “Lives of the Cæsars”
was held in such estimation, that, so soon after the invention of printing as
the year 1500, no fewer than eighteen editions had been published, and nearly
one hundred have since been added to the number. Critics of the highest rank
have devoted themselves to the task of correcting and commenting on the text,
and the work has been translated into most European languages. Of the English
translations, that of Dr. Alexander Thomson, published in 1796, has been made
the basis of the present. He informs us in his Preface, that a version of
Suetonius was with him only a secondary object, his principal design being to
form a just estimate of Roman literature, and to elucidate the state of
government, and the manners of the times; for which the work of Suetonius seemed
a fitting vehicle. Dr. Thomson’s remarks appended to each successive reign, are
reprinted nearly verbatim in the present edition. His translation, however, was
very diffuse, and retained most of the inaccuracies of that of Clarke, on which
it was founded; considerable care therefore has been bestowed in correcting it,
with the view of producing, as far as possible, a literal and faithful version.
To render the works of Suetonius, as far as they are extant, complete, his Lives
of eminent Grammarians, Rhetoricians, and Poets, of which a translation has not
before appeared in English, are added. These Lives abound with anecdote and
curious information connected with learning and literary men during the period
of which the author treats.
T. F.
THE TWELVE CAESARS.
CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR.
Julius Cæsar, the Divine, lost his father when he was in the sixteenth year of
his age; and the year following, being nominated to the office of high-priest of
Jupiter, he repudiated Cossutia, who was very wealthy, although her family
belonged only to the equestrian order, and to whom he had been contracted when
he was a mere boy. He then married Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, who was four
times consul; and had by her, shortly afterwards, a daughter named Julia.
Resisting all the efforts of the dictator Sylla to induce him to divorce
Cornelia, he suffered the penalty of being stripped of his sacerdotal office,
his wife’s dowry, and his own patrimonial estates; and, being identified with
the adverse faction, was compelled to withdraw from Rome. After changing his
place of concealment nearly every night, although he was suffering from a
quartan ague, and having effected his release by bribing the officers who had
tracked his footsteps, he at length obtained a pardon through the intercession
of the vestal virgins, and of Mamercus AEmilius and Aurelius Cotta, his near
relatives. We are assured that when Sylla, having withstood for a while the
entreaties of his own best friends, persons of distinguished rank, at last
yielded to their importunity, he exclaimed—either by a divine impulse, or from a
shrewd conjecture: “Your suit is granted, and you may take him among you; but
know,” he added, “that this man, for whose safety you are so extremely anxious,
will, some day or other, be the ruin of the party of the nobles, in defence of
which you are leagued with me; for in this one Cæsar, you will find many a
Marius.”
II. His first campaign was served in Asia, on the staff of the prætor, M.
Thermus; and being dispatched into Bithynia, to bring thence a fleet, he
loitered so long at the court of Nicomedes, as to give occasion to reports of a
criminal intercourse between him and that prince; which received additional
credit from his hasty return to Bithynia, under the pretext of recovering a debt
due to a freed-man, his client. The rest of his service was more favourable to
his reputation; and when Mitylene was taken by storm, he was presented by
Thermus with the civic crown.
III. He served also in Cilicia, under Servilius Isauricus, but only for a short
time; as upon receiving intelligence of Sylla’s death, he returned with all
speed to Rome, in expectation of what might follow from a fresh agitation set on
foot by Marcus Lepidus. Distrusting, however, the abilities of this leader, and
finding the times less favourable for the execution of this project than he had
at first imagined, he abandoned all thoughts of joining Lepidus, although he
received the most tempting offers.
IV. Soon after this civil discord was composed, he preferred a charge of
extortion against Cornelius Dolabella, a man of consular dignity, who had
obtained the honour of a triumph. On the acquittal of the accused, he resolved
to retire to Rhodes, with the view not only of avoiding the public odium which
he had incurred, but of prosecuting his studies with leisure and tranquillity,
under Apollonius, the son of Molon, at that time the most celebrated master of
rhetoric. While on his voyage thither, in the winter season, he was taken by
pirates near the island of Pharmacusa, and detained by them, burning with
indignation, for nearly forty days; his only attendants being a physician and
two chamberlains. For he had instantly dispatched his other servants and the
friends who accompanied him, to raise money for his ransom. Fifty talents having
been paid down, he was landed on the coast, when, having collected some ships,
he lost no time in putting to sea in pursuit of the pirates, and having captured
them, inflicted upon them the punishment with which he had often threatened them
in jest. At that time Mithridates was ravaging the neighbouring districts, and
on Cæsar’s arrival at Rhodes, that he might not appear to lie idle while danger
threatened the allies of Rome, he passed over into Asia, and having collected
some auxiliary forces, and driven the king’s governor out of the province,
retained in their allegiance the cities which were wavering, and ready to
revolt.
V. Having been elected military tribune, the first honour he received from the
suffrages of the people after his return to Rome, he zealously assisted those
who took measures for restoring the tribunitian authority, which had been
greatly diminished during the usurpation of Sylla. He likewise, by an act, which
Plotius at his suggestion propounded to the people, obtained the recal of Lucius
Cinna, his wife’s brother, and others with him, who having been the adherents of
Lepidus in the civil disturbances, had after that consul’s death fled to
Sertorius; which law he supported by a speech.
VI. During his quæstorship he pronounced funeral orations from the rostra,
according to custom, in praise of his aunt Julia, and his wife Cornelia. In the
panegyric on his aunt, he gives the following account of her own and his
father’s genealogy, on both sides: “My aunt Julia derived her descent, by the
mother, from a race of kings, and by her father, from the Immortal Gods. For the
Marcii Reges, her mother’s family, deduce their pedigree from Ancus Marcius, and
the Julii, her father’s, from Venus; of which stock we are a branch. We
therefore unite in our descent the sacred majesty of kings, the chiefest among
men, and the divine majesty of Gods, to whom kings themselves are subject.” To
supply the place of Cornelia, he married Pompeia, the daughter of Quintus
Pompeius, and grand-daughter of Lucius Sylla; but he afterwards divorced her,
upon suspicion of her having been debauched by Publius Clodius. For so current
was the report, that Clodius had found access to her disguised as a woman,
during the celebration of a religious solemnity, that the senate instituted an
enquiry respecting the profanation of the sacred rites.
VII. Farther-Spain fell to his lot as quæstor; when there, as he was going the
circuit of the province, by commission from the prætor, for the administration
of justice, and had reached Gades, seeing a statue of Alexander the Great in the
temple of Hercules, he sighed deeply, as if weary of his sluggish life, for
having performed no memorable actions at an age at which Alexander had already
conquered the world. He, therefore, immediately sued for his discharge, with the
view of embracing the first opportunity, which might present itself in The City,
of entering upon a more exalted career. In the stillness of the night following,
he dreamt that he lay with his own mother; but his confusion was relieved, and
his hopes were raised to the highest pitch, by the interpreters of his dream,
who expounded it as an omen that he should possess universal empire; for that
the mother who in his sleep he had found submissive to his embraces, was no
other than the earth, the common parent of all mankind.
VIII. Quitting therefore the province before the expiration of the usual term,
he betook himself to the Latin colonies, which were then eagerly agitating the
design of obtaining the freedom of Rome; and he would have stirred them up to
some bold attempt, had not the consuls, to prevent any commotion, detained for
some time the legions which had been raised for service in Cilicia. But this did
not deter him from making, soon afterwards, a still greater effort within the
precincts of the city itself.
IX. For, only a few days before he entered upon the edileship, he incurred a
suspicion of having engaged in a conspiracy with Marcus Crassus, a man of
consular rank; to whom were joined Publius Sylla and Lucius Autronius, who,
after they had been chosen consuls, were convicted of bribery. The plan of the
conspirators was to fall upon the senate at the opening of the new year, and
murder as many of them as should be thought necessary; upon which, Crassus was
to assume the office of dictator, and appoint Cæsar his master of the horse.
When the commonwealth had been thus ordered according to their pleasure, the
consulship was to have been restored to Sylla and Autonius. Mention is made of
this plot by Tanusius Geminus in his history, by Marcus Bibulus in his edicts,
and by Curio, the father, in his orations. Cicero likewise seems to hint at this
in a letter to Axius, where he says, that Cæsar had in his consulship secured to
himself that arbitrary power to which he had aspired when he was edile. Tanusius
adds, that Crassus, from remorse or fear, did not appear upon the day appointed
for the massacre of the senate; for which reason Cæsar omitted to give the
signal, which, according to the plan concerted between them, he was to have
made. The agreement, Curio says, was that he should shake off the toga from his
shoulder. We have the authority of the same Curio, and of M. Actorius Naso, for
his having been likewise concerned in another conspiracy with young Cneius Piso;
to whom, upon a suspicion of some mischief being meditated in the city, the
province of Spain was decreed out of the regular course. It is said to have been
agreed between them, that Piso should head a revolt in the provinces, whilst the
other should attempt to stir up an insurrection at Rome, using as their
instruments the Lambrani, and the tribes beyond the Po. But the execution of
this design was frustrated in both quarters by the death of Piso.
X. In his edileship, he not only embellished the Comitium, and the rest of the
Forum, with the adjoining halls, but adorned the Capitol also, with temporary
piazzas, constructed for the purpose of displaying some part of the
superabundant collections he had made for the amusement of the people. He
entertained them with the hunting of wild beasts, and with games, both alone and
in conjunction with his colleague. On this account, he obtained the whole credit
of the expense to which they had jointly contributed; insomuch that his
colleague, Marcus Bibulus, could not forbear remarking, that he was served in
the manner of Pollux. For as the temple erected in the Forum to the two
brothers, went by the name of Castor alone, so his and Cæsar’s joint munificence
was imputed to the latter only. To the other public spectacles exhibited to the
people, Cæsar added a fight of gladiators, but with fewer pairs of combatants
than he had intended. For he had collected from all parts so great a company of
them, that his enemies became alarmed; and a decree was made, restricting the
number of gladiators which any one was allowed to retain at Rome.
XI. Having thus conciliated popular favour, he endeavoured, through his interest
with some of the tribunes, to get Egypt assigned to him as a province, by an act
of the people. The pretext alleged for the creation of this extraordinary
government, was, that the Alexandrians had violently expelled their king, whom
the senate had complimented with the title of an ally and friend of the Roman
people. This was generally resented; but, notwithstanding, there was so much
opposition from the faction of the nobles, that he could not carry his point. In
order, therefore, to diminish their influence by every means in his power, he
restored the trophies erected in honour of Caius Marius, on account of his
victories over Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and the Teutoni, which had been demolished
by Sylla; and when sitting in judgment upon murderers, he treated those as
assassins, who, in the late proscription, had received money from the treasury,
for bringing in the heads of Roman citizens, although they were expressly
excepted in the Cornelian laws.
XII. He likewise suborned some one to prefer an impeachment for treason against
Caius Rabirius, by whose especial assistance the senate had, a few years before,
put down Lucius Saturninus, the seditious tribune; and being drawn by lot a
judge on the trial, he condemned him with so much ammosity, that upon his
appealing to the people, no circumstance availed him so much as the
extraordinary bitterness of his judge.
XIII. Having renounced all hope of obtaining Egypt for his province, he stood
candidate for the office of chief pontiff, to secure which, he had recourse to
the most profuse bribery. Calculating, on this occasion, the enormous amount of
the debts he had contracted, he is reported to have said to his mother, when she
kissed him at his going out in the morning to the assembly of the people, “I
will never return home unless I am elected pontiff.” In effect, he left so far
behind him two most powerful competitors, who were much his superiors both in
age and rank, that he had more votes in their own tribes, than they both had in
all the tribes together.
XIV. After he was chosen prætor, the conspiracy of Catiline was discovered; and
while every other member of the senate voted for inflicting capital punishment
on the accomplices in that crime. he alone proposed that the delinquents should
be distributed for safe custody among the towns of Italy, their property being
confiscated. He even struck such terror into those who were advocates for
greater severity, by representing to them what universal odium would be attached
to their memories by the Roman people, that Decius Silanus, consulelect, did not
hesitate to qualify his proposal, it not being very honourable to change it, by
a lement interpretation; as if it had been understood in a harsher sense than he
intended, and Cæsar would certainly have carried his point, having brought over
to his side a great number of the senators, among whom was Cicero, the consul’s
brother, had not a speech by Marcus Cato infused new vigour into the resolutions
of the senate. He persisted, however, in obstructing the measure, until a body
of the Roman knights, who stood under arms as a guard, threatened him with
instant death, if he continued his determined opposition They even thrust at him
with their drawn swords, so that those who sat next him moved away; and a few
friends, with no small difficulty, protected him, by throwing their arms round
him, and covering him with their togas. At last, deterred by this violence, he
not only gave way, but absented himself from the senate-house during the
remainder of that year.
XV. Upon the first day of his prætorship, he summoned Quintus Catulus to render
an account to the people respecting the repairs of the Capitol; proposing a
decree for transferring the office of curator to another person. But being
unable to withstand the strong opposition made by the aristocratical party, whom
he perceived quitting, in great numbers, their attendance upon the new consuls,
and fully resolved to resist his proposal, he dropped the design.
XVI. He afterwards approved himself a most resolute supporter of Cæcilius
Metullus, tribune of the people, who, in spite of all opposition from his
colleagues, had proposed some laws of a violent tendency, until they were both
dismissed from office by a vote of the senate. He ventured, notwithstanding, to
retain his post and continue in the administration of justice; but finding that
preparations were made to obstruct him by force of arms, he dismissed the
lictors, threw off his gown, and betook himself privately to his own house, with
the resolution of being quiet, in a time so unfavourable to his interests. He
likewise pacified the mob, which two days afterwards flocked about him, and in a
riotous manner made a voluntary tender of their assistance in the vindication of
his honour. This happening contrary to expectation, the senate, who met in
haste, on account of the tumult, gave him their thanks by some of the leading
members of the house, and sending for him, after high commendation of his
conduct, cancelled their former vote, and restored him to his office.
XVII. But he soon got into fresh trouble, being named amongst the accomplices of
Catiline, both before Novius Niger the quæstor, by Lucius Vettius the informer,
and in the senate by Quintus Curius; to whom a reward had been voted, for having
first discovered the designs of the conspirators. Curius affirmed that he had
received his information from Catiline. Vettius even engaged to produce in
evidence against him his own hand-writing, given to Catiline. Cæsar, feeling
that this treatment was not to be borne, appealed to Cicero himself, whether he
had not voluntarily made a discovery to him of some particulars of the
conspiracy; and so baulked Curius of his expected reward. He, therefore, obliged
Vettius to give pledges for his behaviour, seized his goods, and after heavily
fining him, and seeing him almost torn in pieces before the rostra, threw him
into prison; to which he likewise sent Novius the quæstor, for having presumed
to take an information against a magistrate of superior authority.
XVIII. At the expiration of his prætorship he obtained by lot the Farther-Spain,
and pacified his creditors, who were for detaining him, by finding sureties for
his debts. Contrary, however, to both law and custom, he took his departure
before the usual equipage and outfit were prepared. It is uncertain whether this
precipitancy arose from the apprehension of an impeachment, with which he was
threatened on the expiration of his former office, or from his anxiety to lose
no time in relieving the allies, who implored him to come to their aid. He had
no sooner established tranquillity in the province, than, without waiting for
the arrival of his successor, he returned to Rome, with equal haste, to sue for
a triumph, and the consulship. The day of election, however, being already fixed
by proclamation, he could not legally be admitted a candidate, unless he entered
the city as a private person. On this emergency he solicited a suspension of the
laws in his favour; but such an indulgence being strongly opposed, he found
himself under the necessity of abandoning all thoughts of a triumph, lest he
should be disappointed of the consulship.
XIX. Of the two other competitors for the consulship, Lucius Luceius and Marcus
Bibulus, he joined with the former, upon condition that Luceius, being a man of
less interest but greater affluence, should promise money to the electors, in
their joint names. Upon which the party of the nobles, dreading how far he might
carry matters in that high office, with a colleague disposed to concur in and
second his measures, advised Bibulus to promise the voters as much as the other;
and most of them contributed towards the expense, Cato himself admitting that
bribery, under such circumstances, was for the public good. He was accordingly
elected consul jointly with Bibulus. Actuated still by the same motives, the
prevailing party took care to assign provinces of small importance to the new
consuls, such as the care of the woods and roads. Cæsar, incensed at this
indignity, endeavoured by the most assiduous and flattering attentions to gain
to his side Cneius Pompey, at that time dissatisfied with the senate for the
backwardness they shewed to confirm his acts, after his victories over
Mithridates. He likewise brought about a reconciliation between Pompey and
Marcus Crassus, who had been at variance from the time of their joint
consulship, in which office they were continually clashing; and he entered into
an agreement with both, that nothing should be transacted in the government,
which was displeasing to any of the three.
XX. Having entered upon his office, he introduced a new regulation, that the
daily acts both of the senate and people should be committed to writing, and
published. He also revived an old custom, that an officer should precede him,
and his lictors follow him, on the alternate months when the fasces were not
carried before him. Upon preferring a bill to the people for the division of
some public lands, he was opposed by his colleague, whom he violently drove out
of the forum. Next day the insulted consul made a complaint in the senate of
this treatment; but such was the consternation, that no one having the courage
to bring the matter forward or move a censure, which had been often done under
outrages of less importance, he was so much dispirited, that until the
expiration of his office he never stirred from home, and did nothing but issue
edicts to obstruct his colleague’s proceedings. From that time, therefore, Cæsar
had the sole management of public affairs; insomuch that some wags, when they
signed any instrument as witnesses, did not add “in the consulship of Cæsar and
Bibulus,” but, “of Julius and Cæsar;” putting the same person down twice, under
his name and surname. The following verses likewise were currently repeated on
this occasion:
Non Bibulo quidquam nuper, sed Cæsare factum est;
Nam Bibulo fieri consule nil memini.
Nothing was done in Bibulus’s year:
No; Cæsar only then was consul here
The land of Stellas, consecrated by our ancestors to the gods, with some other
lands in Campania left subject to tribate, for the support of the expenses of
the government, he divided, but not by lot, among upwards of twenty thousand
freemen, who had each of them three or more children. He eased the publicans,
upon their petition, of a third part of the sum which they had engaged to pay
into the public treasury: and openly admonished them not to bid so extravagantly
upon the next occasion. He made various profuse grants to meet the wishes of
others, no one opposing him; or if any such attempt was made, it was soon
suppressed. Marcus Cato, who interrupted him in his proceedings, he ordered to
be dragged out of the senate-house by a lictor, and carried to prison. Lucius
Lucullus, likewise, for opposing him with some warmth, he so terrified with the
apprehension of being criminated, that, to deprecate the consul’s resentment, he
fell on his knees. And upon Cicero’s lamenting in some trial the miserable
condition of the times, he the very same day, by nine o’clock, transferred his
enemy, Publius Clodius, from a patrician to a plebeian family; a change which he
had long solicited in vain. At last, effectually to intimidate all those of the
opposite party, he by great rewards prevailed upon Vettius to declare, that he
had been solicited by certain persons to assassinate Pompey; and when he was
brought before the rostra to name those who had been concerted between them,
after naming one or two to no purpose, not without great suspicion of
subornation, Cæsar, despairing of success in this rash stratagem, is supposed to
have taken off his informer by poison.
XXI. About the same time he married Calpurnia, the daughter of Lucius Piso, who
was to succeed him in the consulship, and gave his own daughter Julia to Cneius
Pompey; rejecting Servilius Cæpio, to whom she had been contracted, and by whose
means chiefly he had but a little before baffled Bibulus. After this new
alliance, he began, upon any debates in the senate, to ask Pompey’s opinion
first, whereas he used before to give that distinction to Marcus Crassus; and it
was the usual practice for the consul to observe throughout the year the method
of consulting the senate which he had adopted on the calends (the first) of
January.
XXII. Being, therefore, now supported by the interest of his father-in-law and
son-in-law, of all the provinces he made choice of Gaul, as most likely to
furnish him with matter and occasion for triumphs. At first indeed he received
only Cisalpine-Gaul, with the addition of Illyricum, by a decree proposed by
Vatinius to the people: but soon afterwards obtained from the senate Gallia-Comata
also, the senators being apprehensive, that if they should refuse it him, that
province, also, would be granted him by the people. Elated now with his success,
he could not refrain from boasting, a few days afterwards, in a full
senate-house, that he had, in spite of his enemies, and to their great
mortification, obtained all he desired, and that for the future he would make
them, to their shame, submissive to his pleasure. One of the senators observing,
sarcastically: “That will not be very easy for a woman to do,” he jocosely
replied, “Semiramis formerly reigned in Assyria, and the Amazons possessed great
part of Asia.”
XXIII. When the term of his consulship had expired, upon a motion being made in
the senate by Caius Memmius and Lucius Domitius, the prætors, respecting the
transactions of the year past, he offered to refer himself to the house; but
they declining the business, after three days spent in vain altercation, he set
out for his province. Immediately, however, his quæstor was charged with several
misdemeanors, for the purpose of implicating Cæsar himself. Indeed, an
accusation was soon after preferred against him by Lucius Antistius, tribune of
the people; but by making an appeal to the tribune’s colleagues, he succeeded in
having the prosecution suspended during his absence in the service of the state.
To secure himself, therefore, for the time to come, he was particularly careful
to secure the good-will of the magistrates at the annual elections, assisting
none of the candidates with his interest, nor suffering any persons to be
advanced to any office, who would not positively undertake to defend him in his
absence: for which purpose he made no scruple to require of some of them an
oath, and even a written obligation.
XXIV. But when Lucius Domitius became a candidate for the consulship, and openly
threatened that, upon his being elected consul, he would effect that which he
could not accomplish when he was prætor, and divest him of the command of the
armies, he sent for Crassus and Pompey to Lucca, a city in his province, and
pressed them, for the purpose of disappointing Domitius, to sue again for the
consulship, and to continue him in his command for five years longer; with both
which reqursitions they complied. Presumptuous now from his success, he added,
at his own private charge, more legions to those which he had received from the
republic; among the former of which was one levied in Transalpine Gaul, and
called by a Gallic name, Alauda, which he trained and armed in the Roman
fashion, and afterwards conferred on it the freedom of the city. From this
period he declined no occasion of war, however unjust and dangerous; attacking,
without any provocation, as well the allies of Rome as the barbarous nations
which were its enemies: insomuch, that the senate passed a decree for sending
commissioners to examine into the condition of Gaul; and some members even
proposed that he should be delivered up to the enemy. But so great had been the
success of his enterprises, that he had the honour of obtaining more days of
supplication, and those more frequently, than had ever before been decreed to
any commander.
XXV. During nine years in which he held the government of the province, his
achievements were as follows: he reduced all Gaul, bounded by the Pyrenean
forest, the Alps, mount Gebenna, and the two rivers, the Rhine and the Rhone,
and being about three thousand two hundred miles in compass, into the form of a
province, excepting only the nations in alliance with the republic, and such as
had merited his favour; imposing upon this new acquisition an annual tribute of
forty millions of sesterces. He was the first of the Romans who, crossing the
Rhine by a bridge, attacked the Germanic tribes inhabiting the country beyond
that river, whom he defeated in several engagements. He also invaded the
Britons, a people formerly unknown, and having vanquished them, exacted from
them contributions and hostages. Amidst such a series of successes, he
experienced thrice only any signal disaster; once in Britain, when his fleet was
nearly wrecked in a storm; in Gaul, at Gergovia, where one of his legions was
put to the rout; and in the territory of the Germans, his lieutenants Titurius
and Aurunculeius were cut off by an ambuscade.
XXVI. During this period he lost his mother, whose death was followed by that of
his daughter, and, not long afterwards, of his granddaughter. Meanwhile, the
republic being in consternation at the murder of Publius Clodius, and the senate
passing a vote that only one consul, namely, Cneius Pompeius, should be chosen
for the ensuing year, he prevailed with the tribunes of the people, who intended
joining him in nomination with Pompey, to propose to the people a bill, enabling
him, though absent, to become a candidate for his second consulship, when the
term of his command should be near expiring, that he might not be obliged on
that account to quit his province too soon, and before the conclusion of the
war. Having attained this object, carrying his views still higher, and animated
with the hopes of success, he omitted no opportunity of gaining universal favour,
by acts of liberality and kindness to individuals, both in public and private.
With money raised from the spoils of the war, he began to construct a new forum,
the ground-plot of which cost him above a hundred millions of sesterces. He
promised the people a public entertainment of gladiators, and a feast in memory
of his daughter, such as no one before him had ever given. The more to raise
their expectations on this occasion, although he had agreed with victuallers of
all denominations for his feast, he made yet farther preparations in private
houses. He issued an order, that the most celebrated gladiators, if at any time
during the combat they incurred the displeasure of the public, should be
immediately carried off by force, and reserved for some future occasion. Young
gladiators he trained up, not in the school, and by the masters, of defence, but
in the houses of Roman knights, and even senators, skilled in the use of arms,
earnestly requesting them, as appears from his letters, to undertake the
discipline of those novitiates, and to give them the word during their
exercises. He doubled the pay of the legions in perpetuity; allowing them
likewise corn, when it was in plenty, without any restriction; and sometimes
distributing to every soldier in his army a slave, and a portion of land.
XXVII. To maintain his alliance and good understanding with Pompey, he offered
him in marriage his sister’s granddaughter Octavia, who had been married to
Caius Marcellus; and requested for himself his daughter, lately contracted to
Faustus Sylla. Every person about him, and a great part likewise of the senate,
he secured by loans of money at low interest, or none at all; and to all others
who came to wait upon him, either by invitation or of their own accord, he made
liberal presents; not neglecting even the freed-men and slaves, who were
favourites with their masters and patrons. He offered also singular and ready
aid to all who were under prosecution, or in debt, and to prodigal youths;
excluding from his bounty those only who were so deeply plunged in guilt,
poverty, or luxury, that it was impossible effectually to relieve them. These,
he openly declared, could derive no benefit from any other means than a civil
war.
XXVIII. He endeavoured with equal assiduity to engage in his interest princes
and provinces in every part of the world; presenting some with thousands of
captives, and sending to others the assistance of troops, at whatever time and
place they desired, without any authority from either the senate or people of
Rome. He likewise embellished with magnificent public buildings the most
powerful cities not only of Italy, Gaul, and Spain, but of Greece and Asia;
until all people being now astonished, and speculating on the obvious tendency
of these proceedings, Claudius Marcellus, the consul, declaring first by
proclamation, that he intended to propose a measure of the utmost importance to
the state, made a motion in the senate that some person should be appointed to
succeed Cæsar in his province, before the term of his command was expired;
because the war being brought to a conclusion, peace was restored, and the
victorious army ought to be disbanded. He further moved, that Cæsar being
absent, his claims to be a candidate at the next election of consuls should not
be admitted, as Pompey himself had afterwards abrogated that privilege by a
decree of the people. The fact was, that Pompey, in his law relating to the
choice of chief magistrates, had forgot to except Cæsar, in the article in which
he declared all such as were not present incapable of being candidates for any
office; but soon afterwards, when the law was inscribed on brass, and deposited
in the treasury, he corrected his mistake. Marcellus, not content with depriving
Cæsar of his provinces, and the privilege intended him by Pompey, likewise moved
the senate, that the freedom of the city should be taken from those colonists
whom, by the Vatinian law, he had settled at New Como; because it had been
conferred upon them with ambitious views, and by a stretch of the laws.
XXIX. Roused by these proceedings, and thinking, as he was often heard to say,
that it would be a more difficult enterprise to reduce him, now that he was the
chief man in the state, from the first rank of citizens to the second, than from
the second to the lowest of all, Cæsar made a vigorous opposition to the
measure, partly by means of the tribunes, who interposed in his behalf, and
partly through Servius Sulpicius, the other consul. The following year likewise,
when Caius Marcellus, who succeeded his cousin Marcus in the consulship, pursued
the same course, Cæsar, by means of an immense bribe, engaged in his defense
Aemilius Paulus, the other consul, and Caius Curio, the most violent of the
tribunes. But finding the opposition obstinately bent against him, and that the
consuls-elect were also of that party, he wrote a letter to the senate,
requesting that they would not deprive him of the privilege kindly granted him
by the people; or else that the other generals should resign the command of
their armies as well as himself; fully persuaded, as it is thought, that he
could more easily collect his veteran soldiers, whenever he pleased, than Pompey
could his new-raised troops. At the same time, he made his adversaries an offer
to disband eight of his legions and give up Transalpine-Gaul, upon condition
that he might retain two legions, with the Cisalpine province, or but one legion
with Illyricum, until he should be elected consul.
XXX. But as the senate declined to interpose in the business, and his enemies
declared that they would enter into no compromise where the safety of the
republic was at stake, he advanced into Hither-Gaul, and, having gone the
circuit for the administration of justice, made a halt at Ravenna, resolved to
have recourse to arms if the senate should proceed to extremity against the
tribunes of the people who had espoused his cause. This was indeed his pretext
for the civil war; but it is supposed that there were other motives for his
conduct. Cneius Pompey used frequently to say, that he sought to throw every
thing into confusion, because he was unable, with all his private wealth, to
complete the works he had begun, and answer, at his return, the vast
expectations which he had excited in the people. Others pretend that he was
apprehensive of being ealled to account for what he had done in his first
consulship, contrary to the auspices, laws, and the protests of the tribunes;
Marcus Cato having sometimes declared, and that, too, with an oath, that he
would prefer an impeachment against him, as soon as he disbanded his army. A
report likewise prevailed, that if he returned as a private person, he would,
like Milo, have to plead his cause before the judges, surrounded by armed men.
This conjecture is rendered highly probable by Asinius Pollio, who informs us
that Cæsar, upon viewing the vanquished and slaughtered enemy in the field of
Pharsalia, expressed himself in these very words: “This was their intention: I,
Caius Cæsar, after all the great achievements I had performed, must have been
condemned, had I not summoned the army to my aid!” Some think, that having
contracted from long habit an extraordinary love of power, and having weighed
his own and his enemies’ strength, he embraced that occasion of usurping the
supreme power; which indeed he had coveted from the time of his youth. This
seems to have been the opinion entertained by Cicero, who tells us, in the third
book of his Offices, that Cæsar used to have frequently in his mouth two verses
of Euripides, which he thus translates:
Nam si violandum est jus. regnandi gratia
Violandum est: aliis rebus pietatem colas.
Be just, unless a kingdom tempts to break the laws,
For sovereign power alone can justify the cause.
XXXI. When intelligence, therefore, was received, that the interposition of the
tribunes in his favour had been utterly rejected, and that they themselves had
fled from the city, he immediately sent forward some cohorts, but privately, to
prevent any suspicion of his design; and, to keep up appearances, attended at a
public spectacle, examined the model of a fencing-school which he proposed to
build, and, as usual, sat down to table with a numerous party of his friends.
But after sun-set, mules being put to his carriage from a neighbouring mill, be
set forward on his journey with all possible privacy, and a small retinue. The
lights going out, he lost his way, and wandered about a long time, until at
length, by the help of a guide, whom he found towards day-break, he proceeded on
foot through some narrow paths, and again reached the road. Coming up with his
troops on the banks of the Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province, he
halted for a while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was
on the point of taking, he turned to those about him, and said: “We may still
retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us but to fight
it out in arms.”
XXXII. While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person
remarkable for his noble mien and graceful aspect, appeared close at hand,
sitting and playing upon a pipe. When, not only the shepherds, but a number of
soldiers also flocked from their posts to listen to him, and some trumpeters
among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it,
and sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other side. Upon
this, Cæsar exclaimed, “Let us go whither the omens of the Gods and the iniquity
of our enemies call us. The die is now cast.”
XXXIII. Accordingly, having marched his army over the river, he shewed them the
tribunes of the people, who, upon their being driven from the city, had come to
meet him; and, in the presence of that assembly, called upon the troops to
pledge him their fidelity, with tears in his eyes, and his garment rent from his
bosom. It has been supposed, that upon this occasion he promised to every
soldier a knight’s estate; but that opinion is founded on a mistake. For when,
in his harangue to them, he frequently held out a finger of his left hand, and
declared, that to recompense those who should support him in the defence of his
honour, he would willingly part even with his ring; the soldiers at a distance,
who could more easily see than hear him while he spoke, formed their conception
of what he said, by the eye, not by the ear; and accordingly gave out, that he
had promised to each of them the privilege of wearing the gold ring, and an
estate of four hundred thousand sesterces.
XXXIV. Of his subsequent proceedings I shall give a cursory detail, in the order
in which they occurred. He took possession of Picenum, Umbria, and Etruria; and
having obliged Lucius Domitius, who had been tumultuously nominated his
successor, and held Corsinium with a garrison, to surrender, and dismissed him,
he marched along the coast of the Upper Sea, to Brundusium, to which place the
consuls and Pompey were fled with the intention of crossing the sea as soon as
possible. After vain attempts, by all the obstacles he could oppose, to prevent
their leaving the harbour, he turned his steps towards Rome, where he appealed
to the senate on the present state of public affairs; and then set out for
Spain, in which province Pompey had a numerous army, under the command of three
lieutenants, Marcus Petreius, Lucius Afranius, and Marcus Varro; declaring
amongst his friends, before he set forward, “That he was going against an army
without a general, and should return thence against a general without an army.”
Though his progress was retarded both by the siege of Marseilles, which shut her
gates against him, and a very great scarcity of corn, yet in a short time he
bore down all before him.
XXXV. Thence he returned to Rome, and crossing the sea to Macedonia, blocked up
Pompey during almost four months, within a line of ramparts of prodigious
extent; and at last defeated him in the battle of Pharsalia. Pursuing him in his
flight to Alexandria, where he was informed of his murder, he presently found
himself also engaged, under all the disadvantages of time and place, in a very
dangerous war, with king Ptolemy, who, he saw, had treacherous designs upon his
life. It was winter, and he, within the walls of a well-provided and subtle
enemy, was destitute of every thing, and wholly unprepared for such a conflict.
He succeeded, however, in his enterprise, and put the kingdom of Egypt into the
hands of Cleopatra and her younger brother; being afraid to make it a province,
lest, under an aspiring prefect, it might become the centre of revolt. From
Alexandria he went into Syria, and thence to Pontus, induced by intelligence
which he had received respecting Pharnaces. This prince, who was son of the
great Mithridates, had seized the opportunity which the distraction of the times
offered for making war upon his neighbours, and his insolence and fierceness had
grown with his success. Cæsar, however, within five days after entering his
country, and four hours after coming in sight of him, overthrew him in one
decisive battle. Upon which, he frequently remarked to those about him the good
fortune of Pompey, who had obtained his military reputation, chiefly, by victory
over so feeble an enemy. He afterwards defeated Scipio and Juba, who were
rallying the remains of the party in Africa, and Pompey’s sons in Spain.
XXXVI. During the whole course of the civil war, he never once suffered any
defeat, except in the case of his lieutenants; of whom Caius Curio fell in
Africa, Caius Antonius was made prisoner in Illyricum, Publius Dolabella lost a
fleet in the same Illyricum, and Cneius Domitius Calvinus, an army in Pontus. In
every encounter with the enemy where he himself commanded, he came off with
complete success; nor was the issue ever doubtful, except on two occasions: once
at Dyrrachium, when, being obliged to give ground, and Pompey not pursuing his
advantage, he said that “Pompey knew not how to conquer;” the other instance
occurred in his last battle in Spain, when, despairing of the event, he even had
thoughts of killing himself.
XXXVII. For the victories obtained in the several wars, he triumphed five
different times; after the defeat of Scipio four times in one month, each
triumph succeeding the former by an interval of a few days; and once again after
the conquest of Pompey’s sons. His first and most glorious triumph was for the
victories he gained in Gaul; the next for that of Alexandria, the third for the
reduction of Pontus, the fourth for his African victory, and the last for that
in Spain; and they all differed from each other in their varied pomp and
pageantry. On the day of the Gallic triumph, as he was proceeding along the
street called Velabrum, after narrowly escaping a fall from his chariot by the
breaking of the axle-tree, he ascended the Capitol by torch-light, forty
elephants carrying torches on his right and left. Amongst the pageantry of the
Pontic triumph, a tablet with this inscription was carried before him: I came, I
saw, I conquered; not signifying, as other mottos on the like occasion, what was
done, so much as the dispatch with which it was done.
XXXVIII. To every foot-soldier in his veteran legions, besides the two thousand
sesterces paid him in the beginning of the civil war, he gave twenty thousand
more, in the shape of prize-money. He likewise allotted them lands, but not in
contiguity, that the former owners might not be entirely dispossessed. To the
people of Rome, besides ten modii of corn, and as many pounds of oil, he gave
three hundred sesterces a man, which he had formerly promised them, and a
hundred more to each for the delay in fulfilling his engagement. He likewise
remitted a year’s rent due to the treasury, for such houses in Rome as did not
pay above two thousand sesterces a year; and through the rest of Italy, for all
such as did not exceed in yearly rent five hundred sesterces. To all this he
added a public entertainment, and a distribution of meat, and, after his Spanish
victory, two public dinners. For, considering the first he had given as too
sparing, and unsuited to his profuse liberality, he, five days afterwards, added
another, which was most plentiful.
XXXIX. The spectacles he exhibited to the people were of various kinds; namely,
a combat of gladiators, and stage-plays, in the several wards of the city, and
in different languages; likewise Circensian games, wrestlers, and the
representation of a sea-fight. In the conflict of gladiators presented in the
Forum, Furius Leptinus, a man of prætorian family, entered the lists as a
combatant, as did also Quintus Calpenus, formerly a senator, and a pleader of
causes. The Pyrrhic dance was performed by some youths, who were sons to persons
of the first distinction in Asia and Bithynia. In the plays, Decimus Laberius,
who had been a Roman knight, acted in his own piece; and being presented on the
spot with five hundred thousand sesterces, and a gold ring, he went from the
stage, through the orchestra, and resumed his place in the seats allotted for
the equestrian order. In the Circensian games, the circus being enlarged at each
end, and a canal sunk round it, several of the young nobility drove chariots,
drawn, some by four, and others by two horses, and likewise rode races on single
horses. The Trojan game was acted by two distinct companies of boys, one
differing from the other in age and rank. The hunting of wild beasts was
presented for five days successively: and on the last day a battle was fought by
five hundred foot, twenty elephants, and thirty horse on each side. To afford
room for this engagement, the goals were removed, and in their space two camps
were pitched, directly opposite to each other. Wrestlers likewise performed for
three days successively, in a stadium provided for the purpose in the Campus
Martius. A lake having been dug in the little Codeta, ships of the Tyrian and
Egyptian fleets, containing two, three, and four banks of oars, with a number of
men on board, afforded an animated representation of a sea-fight. To these
various diversions there flocked such crowds of spectators from all parts, that
most of the strangers were obliged to lodge in tents erected in the streets, or
along the roads near the city. Several in the throng were squeezed to death,
amongst whom were two senators.
XL. Turning afterwards his attention to the regulation of the commonwealth, he
corrected the calendar, which had for some time become extremely confused,
through the unwarrantable liberty which the pontiffs had taken in the article of
intercalation. To such a height had this abuse proceeded, that neither the
festivals designed for the harvest fell in summer, nor those for the vintage in
autumn. He accommodated the year to the course of the sun, ordaining that in
future it should consist of three hundred and sixty-five days without any
intercalary month; and that every fourth year an intercalary day should be
inserted. That the year might thenceforth commence regularly with the calends,
or first of January, he inserted two months between November and December; so
that the year in which this regulation was made consisted of fifteen months,
including the month of intercalation, which, according to the division of time
then in use, happened that year.
XLI. He filled up the vacancies in the senate, by advancing several plebeians to
the rank of patricians, and also increased the number of prætors, ædiles,
quæstors, and inferior magistrates; restoring, at the same time, such as had
been degraded by the censors, or convicted of bribery at elections. The choice
of magistrates he so divided with the people, that, excepting only the
candidates for the consulship, they nominated one half of them, and he the
other. The method which he practised in those cases was, to recommend such
persons as he had pitched upon, by bills dispersed through the several tribes to
this effect: “Cæsar the dictator to such a tribe (naming it). I recommend to you
— (naming likewise the persons), that by the favour of your votes they may
attain to the honours for which they sue.” He likewise admitted to offices the
sons of those who had been proscribed. The trial of causes he restricted to two
orders of judges, the equestrian and senatorial; excluding the tribunes of the
treasury who had before made a third class. The revised census of the people he
ordered to be taken neither in the usual manner or place, but street by street,
by the principal inhabitants of the several quarters of the city: and he reduced
the number of those who received corn at the public cost, from three hundred and
twenty, to a hundred and fifty, thousand. To prevent any tumults on account of
the census, he ordered that the prætor should every year fill up by lot the
vacancies occasioned by death, from those who were not enrolled for the receipt
of corn.
XLII. Eighty thousand citizens having been distributed into foreign colonies, he
enacted, in order to stop the drain on the population, that no freeman of the
city above twenty, and under forty, years of age, who was not in the military
service, should absent himself from Italy for more than three years at a time;
that no senator’s son should go abroad, unless in the retinue of some high
officer; and as to those whose pursuit was tending flocks and herds, that no
less than a third of the number of their shepherds free-born should be youths.
He likewise made all those who practised physic in Rome, and all teachers of the
liberal arts, free of the city, in order to fix them in it, and induce others to
settle there. With respect to debts, he disappointed the expectation which was
generally entertained, that they would be totally cancelled; and ordered that
the debtors should satisfy their creditors, according to the valuation of their
estates, at the rate at which they were purchased before the commencement of the
civil war; deducting from the debt what had been paid for interest either in
money or by bonds; by virtue of which provision about a fourth part of the debt
was lost. He dissolved all the guilds, except such as were of ancient
foundation. Crimes were punished with greater severity: and the rich being more
easily induced to commit them because they were only liable to banishment,
without the forfeiture of their property, he stripped murderers, as Cicero
observes, of their whole estates, and other offenders of one half.
XLIII. He was extremely assiduous and strict in the administration of justice.
He expelled from the senate such members as were convicted of bribery; and he
dissolved the marriage of a man of prætorian rank, who had married a lady two
days after her divorce from a former husband, although there was no suspicion
that they had been guilty of any illicit connection. He imposed duties on the
importation of foreign goods. The use of litters for travelling, purple robes,
and jewels, he permitted only to persons of a certain age and station, and on
particular days. He enforced a rigid execution of the sumptuary laws; placing
officers about the markets, to seize upon all meats exposed to sale contrary to
the rules, and bring them to him; sometimes sending his lictors and soldiers to
carry away such victuals as had escaped the notice of the officers, even when
they were upon the table.
XLIV. His thoughts were now fully employed from day to day on a variety of great
projects for the embellishment and improvement of the city, as well as for
guarding and extending the bounds of the empire. In the first place, he
meditated the construction of a temple to Mars, which should exceed in grandeur
every thing of that kind in the world. For this purpose, he intended to fill up
the lake on which he had entertained the people with the spectacle of a
sea-fight. He also projected a most spacious theatre adjacent to the Tarpeian
mount; and also proposed to reduce the civil law to a reasonable compass, and
out of that immense and undigested mass of statutes to extract the best and most
necessary parts into a few books; to make as large a collection as possible of
works in the Greek and Latin languages, for the public use; the province of
providing and putting them in proper order being assigned to Marcus Varro. He
intended likewise to drain the Pomptine marshes, to cut a channel for the
discharge of the waters of the lake Fucinus, to form a road from the Upper Sea
through the ridge of the Appenine to the Tiber; to make a cut through the
isthmus of Corinth, to reduce the Dacians, who had over-run Pontus and Thrace,
within their proper limits, and then to make war upon the Parthians, through the
Lesser Armenia, but not to risk a general engagement with them, until he had
made some trial of their prowess in war. But in the midst of all his
undertakings and projects, he was carried off by death; before I speak of which,
it may not be improper to give an account of his person, dress, and manners,
together with what relates to his pursuits, both civil and military.
XLV. It is said that he was tall, of a fair complexion, round limbed, rather
full faced, with eyes black and piercing; and that he enjoyed excellent health,
except towards the close of his life, when he was subject to sudden
fainting-fits, and disturbance in his sleep. He was likewise twice seized with
the falling sickness while engaged in active service. He was so nice in the care
of his person, that he not only kept the hair of his head closely cut and had
his face smoothly shaved, but even caused the hair on other parts of the body to
be plucked out by the roots, a practice for which some persons rallied him. His
baldness gave him much uneasiness, having often found himself upon that account
exposed to the jibes of his enemies. He therefore used to bring forward the hair
from the crown of his head; and of all the honours conferred upon him by the
senate and people, there was none which he either accepted or used with greater
pleasure, than the right of wearing constantly a laurel crown. It is said that
he was particular in his dress. For he used the Latus Clavus with fringes about
the wrists, and always had it girded about him, but rather loosely. This
circumstance gave origin to the expression of Sylla, who often advised the
nobles to beware of “the ill-girt boy.”
XLVI. He first inhabited a small house in the Suburra, but after his advancement
to the pontificate, he occupied a palace belonging to the state in the Via
Sacra. Many writers say that he liked his residence to be elegant, and his
entertainments sumptuous; and that he entirely took down a villa near the grove
of Aricia, which he had built from the foundation and finished at a vast
expense, because it did not exactly suit his taste, although he had at that time
but slender means, and was in debt; and that he carried about in his expeditions
tesselated and marble slabs for the floor of his tent.
XLVII. They likewise report that he invaded Britain in hopes of finding pearls,
the size of which he would compare together, and ascertain the weight by poising
them in his hand; that he would purchase, at any cost, gems, carved works,
statues, and pictures, executed by the eminent masters of antiquity; and that he
would give for young and handy slaves a price so extravagant, that he forbad its
being entered in the diary of his expenses.
XLVIII. We are also told, that in the provinces he constantly maintained two
tables, one for the officers of the army, and the gentry of the country, and the
other for Romans of the highest rank, and provincials of the first distinction.
He was so very exact in the management of his domestic affairs, both little and
great, that he once threw a baker into prison, for serving him with a finer sort
of bread than his guests; and put to death a freed-man, who was a particular
favourite, for debauching the lady of a Roman knight, although no complaint had
been made to him of the affair.
XLIX. The only stain upon his chastity was his having cohabited with Nicomedes;
and that indeed stuck to him all the days of his life, and exposed him to much
bitter raillery. I will not dwell upon those well-known verses of Calvus
Licinius:
Whate’er Bithynia and her lord possess’d,
Her lord who Cæsar in his lust caress’d.
I pass over the speeches of Dolabella, and Curio, the father, in which the
former calls him “the queen’s rival, and the inner-side of the royal couch,” and
the latter, “the brothel of Nicomedes, and the Bithynian stew.” I would likewise
say nothing of the edicts of Bibulus, in which he proclaimed his colleague under
the name of “the queen of Bithynia;” adding, that “he had formerly been in love
with a king, but now coveted a kingdom.” At which time, as Marcus Brutus
relates, one Octavius, a man of a crazy brain, and therefore the more free in
his raillery, after he had in a crowded assembly saluted Pompey by the title of
king, addressed Cæsar by that of queen. Caius Memmius likewise upbraided him
with serving the king at table, among the rest of his catamites, in the presence
of a large company, in which were some merchants from Rome, the names of whom he
mentions. But Cicero was not content with writing in some of his letters, that
he was conducted by the royal attendants into the king’s bed-chamber, lay upon a
bed of gold with a covering of purple, and that the youthful bloom of this scion
of Venus had been tainted in Bithynia — but upon Cæsar’s pleading the cause of
Nysa, the daughter of Nicomedes before the senate, and recounting the king’s
kindnesses to him, replied, “Pray tell us no more of that; for it is well known
what he gave you, and you gave him.” To conclude, his soldiers in the Gallic
triumph, amongst other verses, such as they jocularly sung on those occasions,
following the general’s chariot, recited these, which since that time have
become extremely common:
The Gauls to Cæsar yield, Cæsar to Nicomede,
Lo! Cæsar triumphs for his glorious deed,
But Cæsar’s conqueror gains no victor’s meed.
L. It is admitted by all that he was much addicted to women, as well as very
expensive in his intrigues with them, and that he debauched many ladies of the
highest quality; among whom were Posthumia, the wife of Servius Sulpicius;
Lollia, the wife of Aulus Gabinius; Tertulla, the wife of Marcus Crassus; and
Mucia, the wife of Cneius Pompey. For it is certain that the Curios, both father
and son, and many others, made it a reproach to Pompey, “That to gratify his
ambition, he married the daughter of a man, upon whose account he had divorced
his wife, after having had three children by her; and whom he used, with a deep
sigh, to call Aegisthus.” But the mistress he most loved, was Servilia, the
mother of Marcus Brutus, for whom he purchased, in his first consulship after
the commencement of their intrigue, a pearl which cost him six millions of
sesterces; and in the civil war, besides other presents, assigned to her, for a
trifling consideration, some valuable farms when they were exposed to public
auction. Many persons expressing their surprise at the lowness of the price,
Cicero wittily remarked, “To let you know the real value of the purchase,
between ourselves, Tertia was deducted:” for Servilia was supposed to have
prostituted her daughter Tertia to Cæsar.
LI. That he had intrigues likewise with married women in the provinces, appears
from this distich, which was as much repeated in the Gallic triumph as the
former:—
Watch well your wives, ye cits, we bring a blade,
A bald-pate master of the wenching trade.
Thy gold was spent on many a Gallic w—e;
Exhausted now, thou com’st to borrow more.
LII. In the number of his mistresses were also some queens; such as Eunoë, a
Moor, the wife of Bogudes, to whom and her husband he made, as Naso reports,
many large presents. But his greatest favourite was Cleopatra, with whom he
often revelled all night until the dawn of day, and would have gone with her
through Egypt in dalliance, as far as Aethiopia, in her luxurious yacht, had not
the army refused to follow him. He afterwards invited her to Rome, whence he
sent her back loaded with honours and presents, and gave her permission to call
by his name a son, who, according to the testimony of some Greek historians,
resembled Cæsar both in person and gait. Mark Antony declared in the senate,
that Cæsar had acknowledged the child as his own; and that Caius Matias, Caius
Oppius, and the rest of Cæsar’s friends knew it to be true. On which occasion,
Oppius, as if it had been an imputation which he was called upon to refute,
published a book to shew, “that the child which Cleopatra fathered upon Cæsar,
was not his.” Helvius Cinna, tribune of the people, admitted to several persons
the fact, that he had a bill ready drawn, which Cæsar had ordered him to get
enacted in his absence, allowing him, with the hope of leaving issue, to take
any wife he chose, and as many of them as he pleased; and to leave no room for
doubt of his infamous character for unnatural lewdness and adultery, Curio, the
father, says, in one of his speeches, “He was every woman’s man, and every man’s
woman.”
LIII. It is acknowledged even by his enemies, that in regard to wine, he was
abstemious. A remark is ascribed to Marcus Cato, “that Cæsar was the only sober
man amongst all those who were engaged in the design to subvert the government.”
In the matter of diet, Caius Oppius informs us, “that he was so indifferent,
that when a person in whose house he was entertained, had served him with stale,
instead of fresh, oil, and the rest of the company would not touch it, he alone
ate very heartily of it, that he might not seem to tax the master of the house
with rusticity or want of attention.”
LIV. But his abstinence did not extend to pecuniary advantages, either in his
military commands, or civil offices; for we have the testimony of some writers,
that he took money from the proconsul, who was his predecessor in Spain, and
from the Roman allies in that quarter, for the discharge of his debts; and
plundered at the point of the sword some towns of the Lusitanians,
notwithstanding they attempted no resistance, and opened their gates to him upon
his arrival before them. In Gaul, he rifled the chapels and temples of the gods,
which were filled with rich offerings, and demolished cities oftener for the
sake of their spoil, than for any ill they had done. By this means gold became
so plentiful with him, that he exchanged it through Italy and the provinces of
the empire for three thousand sesterces the pound. In his first consulship he
purloined from the Capitol three thousand pounds’ weight of gold, and
substituted for it the same quantity of gilt brass. He bartered likewise to
foreign nations and princes, for gold, the titles of allies and kings; and
squeezed out of Ptolemy alone near six thousand talents, in the name of himself
and Pompey. He afterwards supported the expense of the civil wars, and of his
triumphs and public spectacles, by the most flagrant rapine and sacrilege.
LV. In eloquence and warlike achievements, he equalled at least, if he did not
surpass, the greatest of men. After his prosecution of Dolabella, he was
indisputably reckoned one of the most distinguished advocates. Cicero, in
recounting to Brutus the famous orators, declares, “that he does not see that
Cæsar was inferior to any one of them;” and says, “that he had an elegant,
splendid, noble, and magnificent vein of eloquence.” And in a letter to
Cornelius Nepos, he writes of him in the following terms: “What! Of all the
orators, who, during the whole course of their lives, have done nothing else,
which can you prefer to him? Which of them is more pointed or terse in his
periods, or employs more polished and elegant language?” In his youth, he seems
to have chosen Strabo Cæsar for his model; from whose oration in behalf of the
Sardinians he has transcribed some passages literally into his Divination. In
his delivery he is said to have had a shrill voice, and his action was animated,
but not ungraceful. He has left behind him some speeches, among which are ranked
a few that are not genuine, such as that on behalf of Quintus Metellus. These
Augustus supposes, with reason, to be rather the production of blundering
short-hand writers, who were not able to keep pace with him in the delivery,
than publications of his own. For I find in some copies that the title is not
“For Metellus,” but “What he wrote to Metellus;” whereas the speech is delivered
in the name of Cæsar, vindicating Metellus and himself from the aspersions cast
upon them by their common defamers. The speech addressed “To his soldiers in
Spain,” Augustus considers likewise as spurious. We meet with two under this
title; one made, as is pretended, in the first battle, and the other in the
last; at which time, Asinius Pollio says, he had not leisure to address the
soldiers, on account of the suddenness of the enemy’s attack.
LVI. He has likewise left Commentaries of his own actions both in the war in
Gaul, and in the civil war with Pompey; for the author of the Alexandrian,
African, and Spanish wars is not known with any certainty. Some think they are
the production of Oppius, and some of Hirtius; the latter of whom composed the
last book, which is imperfect, of the Gallic war. Of Cæsar’s Commentaries,
Cicero, in his Brutus, speaks thus: “He wrote his Commentaries in a manner
deserving of great approbation: they are plain, precise, and elegant, without
any affectation of rhetorical ornament. In having thus prepared materials for
others who might be inclined to write his history, he may perhaps have
encouraged some silly creatures to enter upon such a work, who will needs be
dressing up his actions in all the extravagance and bombast; but he has
discouraged wise men from ever attempting the subject.” Hirtius delivers his
opinion of these Commentaries in the following terms: “So great is the
approbation with which they are universally perused, that, instead of rousing,
he seems to have precluded, the efforts of any future historian. Yet, with
respect to this work, we have more reason to admire him than others; for they
only know how well and correctly he has written, but we know, likewise, how
easily and quickly he did it.” Pollio Asinius thinks that they were not drawn up
with much care, or with a due regard to truth; for he insinuates that Cæsar was
too hasty of belief in regard to what was performed by others under his orders;
and that, he has not given a very faithful account of his own acts, either by
design, or through defect of memory; expressing at the same time an opinion that
Cæsar intended a new and more correct edition. He has left behind him likewise
two books on Analogy, with the same number under the title of Anti-Cato, and a
poem entitled The Itinerary. Of these books, he composed the first two in his
passage over the Alps, as he was returning to the army after making his circuit
in Hither-Gaul; the second work about the time of the battle of Munda: and the
last during the four-and-twenty days he employed in his journey from Rome to
Farther-Spain. There are extant some letters of his to the senate, written in a
manner never practised by any before him; for they are distinguished into pages
in the form of a memorandum book: whereas the consuls and commanders till then,
used constantly in their letters to continue the line quite across the sheet,
without any folding or distinction of pages. There are extant likewise some
letters from him to Cicero, and others to his friends, concerning his domestic
affairs; in which, if there was occasion for secrecy, he wrote in cyphers; that
is, he used the alphabet in such a manner, that not a single word could be made
out. The way to decipher those epistles was to substitute the fourth for the
first letter, as d for a, and so for the other letters respectively. Some things
likewise pass under his name, said to have been written by him when a boy, or a
very young man; as the Encomium of Hercules, a tragedy entitled Œdipus, and a
collection of Apophthegms; all which Augustus forbad to be published, in a short
and plain letter to Pompeius Macer, who was employed by him in the arrangement
of his libraries.
LVII. He was perfect in the use of arms, an accomplished rider, and able to
endure fatigue beyond all belief. On a march, he used to go at the head of his
troops, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot, with his head bare in all
kinds of weather. He would travel post in a light carriage without baggage, at
the rate of a hundred miles a day; and if he was stopped by floods in the
rivers, he swam across, or floated on skins inflated with wind, so that he often
anticipated intelligence of his movements.
LVIII. In his expeditions, it is difficult to say whether his caution or his
daring was most conspicuous. He never marched his army by roads which were
exposed to ambuscades, without having previously examined the nature of the
ground by his scouts. Nor did he cross over to Britain, before he had carefully
examined, in person, the navigation, the harbours, and the most convenient point
of landing in the island. When intelligence was brought to him of the siege of
his camp in Germany, he made his way to his troops, through the enemy’s
stations, in a Gaulish dress. He crossed the sea from Brundisium and Dyrrachium,
in the winter, through the midst of the enemy’s fleets; and the troops, under
orders to join him, being slow in their movements, notwithstanding repeated
messages to hurry them, but to no purpose, he at last went privately, and alone,
aboard a small vessel in the night time, with his head muffled up; nor did he
make himself known, or suffer the master to put about, although the wind blew
strong against them, until they were ready to sink.
LIX. He was never deterred from any enterprise, nor retarded in the prosecution
of it, by superstition. When a victim, which he was about to offer in sacrifice,
made its escape, he did not therefore defer his expedition against Scipio and
Juba. And happening to fall, upon stepping out of the ship, he gave a lucky turn
to the omen, by exclaiming, “I hold thee fast, Africa.” To chide the prophecies
which were spread abroad, that the name of the Scipios was, by the decrees of
fate, fortunate and invincible in that province, he retained in the camp a
profligate wretch, of the family of the Cornelii, who, on account of his
scandalous life, was surnamed Salutio.
LX. He not only fought pitched battles, but made sudden attacks when an
opportunity offered; often at the end of a march, and sometimes during the most
violent storms, when nobody could imagine he would stir. Nor was he ever
backward in fighting, until towards the end of his life. He then was of opinion,
that the oftener he had been crowned with success, the less he ought to expose
himself to new hazards; and that nothing he could gain by a victory would
compensate for what he might lose by a miscarriage. He never defeated the enemy
without driving them from their camp; and giving them no time to rally their
forces. When the issue of a battle was doubtful, he sent away all the horses,
and his own first, that having no means of flight, they might be under the
greater necessity of standing their ground.
LXI. He rode a very remarkable horse, with feet almost like those of a man, the
hoofs being divided in such a manner as to have some resemblance to toes. This
horse he had bred himself, and the soothsayers having interpreted these
circumstances into an omen that its owner would be master of the world, he
brought him up with particular care, and broke him in himself, as the horse
would suffer no one else to mount him. A statue of this horse was afterwards
erected by Cæsar’s order before the temple of Venus Genitrix.
LXII. He often rallied his troops, when they were giving way, by his personal
efforts: stopping those who fled, keeping others in their ranks, and seizing
them by their throat turned them towards the enemy; although numbers were so
terrified, that an eagle-bearer, thus stopped, made a thrust at him with the
spear-head; and another, upon a similar occasion, left the standard in his hand.
LXIII. The following instances of his resolution are equally, and even more
remarkable. After the battle of Pharsalia, having sent his troops before him
into Asia, as he was passing the straits of the Hellespont in a ferry-boat, he
met with Lucius Cassius, one of the opposite party, with ten ships of war; and
so far from endeavouring to escape, he went alongside his ship, and calling upon
him to surrender, Cassius humbly gave him his submission.
LXIV. At Alexandria, in the attack of a bridge, being forced by a sudden sally
of the enemy into a boat, and several others hurrying in with him, he leaped
into the sea, and saved himself by swimming to the next ship, which lay at the
distance of two hundred paces; holding up his left hand out of the water, for
fear of wettin some papers which he held in it; and pulling his general’s cloak
after him with his teeth, lest it should fall into the hands of the enemy.
LXV He never valued a soldier for his moral conduct or his means, but for his
courage only; and treated his troops with a mixture of severity and indulgence;
for he did not always keep a strict hand over them, but only when the enemy was
near. Then indeed he was so strict a disciplinarian, that he would give no
notice of a march or a battle until the moment of action, in order that the
troops might hold themselves in readiness for any sudden movement; and he would
frequently draw them out of the camp without any necessity for it, especially in
rainy weather, and upon holy-days. Sometimes, giving them orders not to lose
sight of him, he would suddenly depart by day or by night, and lengthen the
marches in order to tire them out, as they followed him at a distance.
LXVI. When at any time his troops were dispirited by reports of the great force
of the enemy, he rallied their courage, not by denying the truth of what was
said, or by diminishing the facts, but, on the contrary, by exaggerating every
particular. Accordingly, when his troops were in great alarm at the expected
arrival of king Juba, he called them together, and said, “I have to inform you
that in a very few days the king will be here, with ten legions, thirty thousand
horse, a hundred thousand light-armed foot, and three hundred elephants. Let
none of you, therefore, presume to make further enquiry, or indulge in
conjectures, but take my word for what I tell you, which I have from undoubted
intelligence; otherwise I shall put them aboard an old crazy vessel, and leave
them exposed to the mercy of the winds, to be transported to some other
country.”
LXVII. He neither noticed all their transgressions, nor punished them according
to strict rule. But for deserters and mutineers he made the most diligent
enquiry, and their punishment was most severe: other delinquencies he would
connive at. Sometimes, after a great battle ending in victory, he would grant
them a relaxation from all kinds of duty, and leave them to revel at pleasure;
being used to boast, “that his soldiers fought nothing the worse for being well
oiled.” In his speeches, he never addressed them by the title of “Soldiers,” but
by the kinder phrase of “Fellow-soldiers;” and kept them in such splendid order,
that their arms were ornamented with silver and gold, not merely for parade, but
to render the soldiers more resolute to save them in battle, and fearful of
losing them. He loved his troops to such a degree, that when he heard of the
defeat of those under Titurius, he neither cut his hair nor shaved his beard,
until he had revenged it upon the enemy; by which means he engaged their devoted
affection, and raised their valour to the highest pitch.
LXVIII. Upon his entering on the civil war, the centurions of every legion
offered, each of them, to maintain a horseman at his own expense, and the whole
army agreed to serve gratis, without either corn or pay; those amongst them who
were rich, charging themselves with the maintenance of the poor. No one of them,
during the whole course of the war, deserted to the enemy; and many of those who
were made prisoners, though they were offered their lives, upon condition of
bearing arms against him, refused to accept the terms. They endured want, and
other hardships, not only when they were besieged themselves, but when they
besieged others, to such a degree, that Pompey, when blocked up in the
neighbourhood of Dyrrachium, upon seeing a sort of bread made of an herb, which
they lived upon, said, “I have to do with wild beasts,” and ordered it
immediately to be taken away; because, if his troops should see it, their spirit
might be broken by perceiving the endurance and determined resolution of the
enemy. With what bravery they fought, one instance affords sufficient proof;
which is, that after an unsuccessful engagement at Dyrrachium, they called for
punishment; insomuch that their general found it more necessary to comfort than
to punish them. In other battles, in different quarters, they defeated with ease
immense armies of the enemy, although they were much inferior to them in number.
In short, one cohort of the sixth legion held out a fort against four legions
belonging to Pompey, during several hours; being almost every one of them
wounded by the vast number of arrows discharged against them, and of which there
were found within the ramparts a hundred and thirty thousand. This is no way
surprising, when we consider the conduct of some individuals amongst them; such
as that of Cassius Scæva, a centurion, or Caius Acilius, a common soldier, not
to speak of others. Scæva, after having an eye struck out, being run through the
thigh and the shoulder, and having his shield pierced in an hundred and twenty
places, maintained obstinately the guard of the gate of a fort, with the command
of which he was intrusted. Acilius, in the sea-fight at Marseilles, having
seized a ship of the enemy’s with his right hand, and that being cut off, in
imitation of that memorable instance of resolution in Cynægirus amongst the
Greeks, boarded the enemy’s ship, bearing down all before him with the boss of
his shield.
LXIX. They never once mutinied during all the ten years of the Gallic war, but
were sometimes refractory in the course of the civil war. However, they always
returned quickly to their duty, and that not through the indulgence, but in
submission to the authority, of their general; for he never yielded to them when
they were insubordinate, but constantly resisted their demands. He disbanded the
whole ninth legion with ignominy at Placentia, although Pompey was still in
arms, and would not receive them again into his service, until they had not only
made repeated and humble entreaties, but until the ringleaders in the mutiny
were punished.
LXX. When the soldiers of the tenth legion at Rome demanded their discharge and
rewards for their service, with violent threats and no small danger to the city,
although the war was then raging in Africa, he did not hesitate, contrary to the
advice of his friends, to meet the legion, and disband it. But addressing them
by the title of “Quirites,” instead of “Soldiers,” he by this single word so
thoroughly brought them round and changed their determination, that they
immediately cried out, they were his “soldiers,” and followed him to Africa,
although he had refused their service. He nevertheless punished the most
mutinous among them, with the loss of a third of their share in the plunder, and
the land destined for them.
LXXI. In the service of his clients, while yet a young man, he evinced great
zeal and fidelity. He defended the cause of a noble youth, Masintha, against
king Hiempsal, so strenuously, that in a scuffle which took place upon the
occasion, he seized by the beard the son of king Juba: and upon Masintha’s being
declared tributary to Hiempsal, while the friends of the adverse party were
violently carrying him off, he immediately rescued him by force, kept him
concealed in his house a long time, and when, at the expiration of his
prætorship, he went to Spain, he took him away in his litter, in the midst of
his lictors bearing the fasces, and others who had come to attend and take leave
of him.
LXXII. He always treated his friends with such kindness and good-nature, that
when Caius Oppius, in travelling with him through a forest, was suddenly taken
ill, he resigned to him the only place there was to shelter them at night, and
lay upon the ground in the open air. When he had placed himself at the head of
affairs, he advanced some of his faithful adherents, though of mean extraction,
to the highest offices: and when he was censured for this partiality, he openly
said, “Had I been assisted by robbers and cut-throats in the defence of my
honour, I should have made them the same recompense.”
LXXIII. The resentment he entertained against any one was never so implacable
that he did not very willingly renounce it when opportunity offered. Although
Caius Memmius had published some extremely virulent speeches against him, and he
had answered him with equal acrimony, yet he afterwards assisted him with his
vote and interest, when he stood candidate for the consulship. When C. Calvus,
after publishing some scandalous epigrams upon him, endeavoured to effect a
reconciliation by the intercession of friends, he wrote to him, of his own
accord, the first letter. And when Valerius Catullus, who had, as he himself
observed, fixed such a stain upon his character in his verses upon Mamurra as
never could be obliterated, he begged his pardon, invited him to supper the same
day; and continued to take up his lodging with his father occasionally, as he
had been accustomed to do.
LXXIV. His temper was also naturally averse to severity in retaliation. After he
had captured the pirates, by whom he had been taken, having sworn that he would
crucify them, he did so indeed; but he first ordered their throats to be cut. He
could never bear the thought of doing any harm to Cornelius Phagitas, who had
dogged him in the night when he was sick and a fugitive, with the design of
carrying him to Sylla, and from whose hands he had escaped with some difficulty
by giving him a bribe. Philemon, his amanuensis, who had promised his enemies to
poison him, he put to death without torture. When he was summoned as a witness
against Publicus Clodius, his wife Pompeia’s gallant, who was prosecuted for the
profanation of religious ceremonies, he declared he knew nothing of the affair,
although his mother Aurelia, and his sister Julia, gave the court an exact and
full account of the circumstances. And being asked why then he had divorced his
wife? “Because,” he said, “my family should not only be free from guilt, but
even from the suspicion of it.”
LXXV. Both in his administration and his conduct towards the vanquished party in
the civil war, he showed a wonderful moderation and clemency. For while Pompey
declared that he would consider those as enemies who did not take arms in
defence of the republic, he desired it to be understood, that he should regard
those who remained neuter as his friends With regard to all those to whom he
had, on Pompey’s recommendation, given any command in the army, he left them at
perfect liberty to go over to him, if they pleased. When some proposals were
made at Ilerda for a surrender, which gave rise to a free communication between
the two camps, and Afranius and Petreius, upon a sudden change of resolution,
had put to the sword all Cæsar’s men who were found in the camp, he scorned to
imitate the base treachery which they had practised against himself. On the
field of Pharsalia, he called out to the soldiers “to spare their
fellow-citizens,” and afterwards gave permission to every man in his army to
save an enemy. None of them, so far as appears, lost their lives but in battle,
excepting only Afranius, Faustus, and young Lucius Cæsar: and it is thought that
even they were put to death without his consent. Afranius and Faustus had borne
arms against him, after obtaining their pardon; and Lucius Cæsar had not only in
the most cruel manner destroyed with fire and sword his freedmen and slaves, but
cut to pieces the wild beasts which he had prepared for the entertainment of the
people. And finally, a little before his death, he permitted all whom he had not
before pardoned, to return into Italy, and to bear offices both civil and
military. He even replaced the statues of Sylla and Pompey, which had been
thrown down by the populace. And after this, whatever was devised or uttered, he
chose rather to check than to punish it. Accordingly, having detected certain
conspiracies and nocturnal assemblies, he went no farther than to intimate by a
proclamation that he knew of them; and as to those who indulged themselves in
the liberty of reflecting severely upon him, he only warned them in a public
speech not to persist in their offence. He bore with great moderation a virulent
libel written against him by Aulus Cæcinna, and the abusive lampoons of
Pitholaüs, most highly reflecting on his reputation.
LXXVI. His other words and actions, however, so far outweigh all his good
qualities, that it is thought he abused his power, and was justly cut off. For
he not only obtained excessive honours, such as the consulship every year, the
dictatorship for life, and the censorship, but also the title of emperor, and
the surname of Father of his country, besides having his statue amongst the
kings, and a lofty couch in the theatre. He even suffered some honours to be
decreed to him, which were unbefitting the most exalted of mankind; such as a
gilded chair of state in the senate-house and on his tribunal, a consecrated
chariot, and banners in the Circensian procession, temples, altars, statues
among the gods, a bed of state in the temples, a priest, and a college of
priests dedicated to himself, like those of Pan; and that one of the months
should be called by his name. There were, indeed, no honours which he did not
either assume himself, or grant to others, at his will and pleasure. In his
third and fourth consulship, he used only the title of the office, being content
with the power of dictator, which was conferred upon him with the consulship;
and in both years he substituted other consuls in his room, during the three
last months; so that in the intervals he held no assemblies of the people, for
the election of magistrates, excepting only tribunes and ediles of the people;
and appointed officers, under the name of præfects, instead of the prætors, to
administer the affairs of the city during his absence. The office of consul
having become vacant, by the sudden death of one of the consuls the day before
the calends of January [the 1st Jan.], he conferred it on a person who requested
it of him, for a few hours. Assuming the same licence, and regardless of the
customs of his country, he appointed magistrates to hold their offices for terms
of years. He granted the insignia of the consular dignity to ten persons of
prætorian rank. He admitted into the senate some men who had been made free of
the city, and even natives of Gaul, who were semi-barbarians. He likewise
appointed to the management of the mint, and the public revenue of the state,
some servants of his own household; and entrusted the command of three legions,
which he left at Alexandria, to an old catamite of his, the son of his freed-man
Rufinus.
LXXVII. He was guilty of the same extravagance in the language he publicly used,
as Titus Ampius informs us; according to whom he said, “The republic is nothing
but a name, without substance or reality. Sylla was an ignorant fellow to
abdicate the dictatorship. Men ought to consider what is becoming when they talk
with me, and look upon what I say as a law.” To such a pitch of arrogance did he
proceed, that when a soothsayer announced to him the unfavourable omen, that the
entrails of a victim offered for sacrifice were without a heart, he said, “The
entrails will be more favourable when I please; and it ought not to be regarded
as a prodigy that a beast should be found wanting a heart.”
LXXVIII. But what brought upon him the greatest odium, and was thought an
unpardonable insult, was his receiving the whole body of the conscript fathers
sitting, before the temple of Venus Genitrix, when they waited upon him with a
number of decrees, conferring on him the highest dignities. Some say that, on
his attempting to rise, he was held down by Cornelius Balbus; others, that he
did not attempt to rise at all, but frowned on Caius Trebatius, who suggested to
him that he should stand up to receive the senate. This behaviour appeared the
more intolerable in him, because, when one of the tribunes of the people,
Pontius Aquila, would not rise up to him, as he passed by the tribunes’ seat
during his triumph, he was so much offended, that he cried out. “Well then, you
tribune, Aquila, oust me from the government.” And for some days afterwards, he
never promised a favour to any person, without this proviso, “if Pontus Aquila
will give me leave.”
LXXIX. To this extraordinary mark of contempt for the senate, he added another
affront still more outrageous. For when, after the sacred rites of the Latin
festival, he was returning home, amidst the immoderate and unusual acclamations
of the people, a man in the crowd put a laurel crown, encircled with a white
fillet, on one of his statues; upon which, the tribunes of the people, Epidius
Marullus, and Cæsetius Flavus, ordered the fillet to be removed from the crown,
and the man to be taken to prison. Cæsar, being much concerned either that the
idea of royalty had been suggested to so little purpose, or, as was said, that
he was thus deprived of the merit of refusing it, reprimanded the tribunes very
severely, and dismissed them from their office. From that day forward, he was
never able to wipe off the scandal of affecting the name of king, although he
replied to the populace, when they saluted him by that title, “I am Cæsar, and
no king.” And at the feast of the Lupercalia, when the consul Antony placed a
crown upon his head in the rostra several times, he as often put it away, and
sent it to the Capitol for Jupiter, the Best and the Greatest. A report was very
current, that he had a design of withdrawing to Alexandria or Ilium, whither he
proposed to transfer the imperial power, to drain Italy by new levies, and to
leave the government of the city to be administered by his friends. To this
report it was added, that in the next meeting of the senate, Lucius Cotta, one
of the fifteen, would make a motion, that as there was in the Sibylline books a
prophecy, that the Parthians would never be subdued but by a king, Cæsar should
have that title conferred upon him.
LXXX. For this reason the conspirators precipitated the execution of their
design, that they might not be obliged to give their assent to the proposal.
Instead, therefore, of caballing any longer separately, in small parties, they
now united their counsels; the people themselves being dissatisfied with the
present state of affairs, both privately and publicly condemning the tyranny
under which they lived, and calling on patriots to assert their cause against
the usurper. Upon the admission of foreigners into the senate, a hand-bill was
posted up in these words: “A good deed! let no one shew a new senator the way to
the house.” These verses were likewise currently repeated:
The Gauls he dragged in triumph through the town,
Cæsar has brought into the senate-house,
And changed their plaids for the patrician gown.
Gallos Cæsar in triumphum ducit: iidem in curiam
Galli braccas deposuerunt, latum clavum sumpserunt.
When Quintus Maximus, who had been his deputy in the consulship for the last
three months, entered the theatre, and the lictor, according to custom, bid the
people take notice who was coming, they all cried out, “He is no consul.” After
the removal of Cæsetius and Marullus from their office, they were found to have
a great many votes at the next election of consuls. Some one wrote under the
statue of Lucius Brutus, “Would you were now alive!” and under the statue of
Cæsar himself these lines:
Because he drove from Rome the royal race,
Brutus was first made consul in their place.
This man, because he put the consuls down,
Has been rewarded with a royal crown.
Brutus, quia reges ejecit, consul primus factus est:
Hic, quia consules ejecit, rex postremo factus est.
About sixty persons were engaged in the conspiracy against him, of whom Caius
Cassius, and Marcus and Decimus Brutus were the chief. It was at first debated
amongst them, whether they should attack him in the Campus Martius when he was
taking the votes of the tribes, and some of them should throw him off the
bridge, whilst others should be ready to stab him upon his fall; or else in the
Via Sacra, or at the entrance of the theatre. But after public notice had been
given by proclamation for the senate to assemble upon the ides of March [15th
March], in the senate-house built by Pompey, they approved both of the time and
place, as most fitting for their purpose.
LXXXI. Cæsar had warning given him of his fate by indubitable omens. A few
months before, when the colonists settled at Capua, by virtue of the Julian law,
were demolishing some old sepulchres, in building country-houses, and were the
more eager at the work, because they discovered certain vessels of antique
workmanship, a tablet of brass was found in a tomb, in which Capys, the founder
of Capua, was said to have been buried, with an inscription in the Greek
language to this effect: “Whenever the bones of Capys come to be discovered, a
descendant of Iulus will be slain by the hands of his kinsmen, and his death
revenged by fearful disasters throughout Italy.” Lest any person should regard
this anecdote as a fabulous or silly invention, it was circulated upon the
authority of Caius Balbus, an intimate friend of Cæsar’s. A few days likewise
before his death, he was informed that the horses, which, upon his crossing the
Rubicon, he had consecrated, and turned loose to graze without a keeper,
abstained entirely from eating, and shed floods of tears. The soothsayer
Spurinna, observing certain ominous appearances in a sacrifice which he was
offering, advised him to beware of some danger, which threatened to befall him
before the ides of March were past. The day before the ides, birds of various
kinds from a neighbouring grove, pursuing a wren which flew into Pompey’s
senate-house, with a sprig of laurel in its beak, tore it in pieces. Also, in
the night on which the day of his murder dawned, he dreamt at one time that he
was soaring above the clouds, and, at another, that he had joined hands with
Jupiter. His wife Calpurnia fancied in her sleep that the pediment of the house
was falling down, and her husband stabbed on her bosom; immediately upon which
the chamber doors flew open. On account of these omens, as well as his infirm
health, he was in some doubt whether he should not remain at home, and defer to
some other opportunity the business which he intended to propose to the senate;
but Decimus Brutus advising him not to disappoint the senators, who were
numerously assembled, and waited his coming, he was prevailed upon to go, and
accordingly set forward about the fifth hour. In his way, some person having
thrust into his hand a paper, warning him against the plot, he mixed it with
some other documents which he held in his left hand, intending to read it at
leisure. Victim after victim was slain, without any favourable appearances in
the entrails; but still, disregarding all omens, he entered the senate-house,
laughing at Spurinna as a false prophet, because the ides of March were come,
without any mischief having befallen him. To which the soothsayer replied, “They
are come, indeed, but not past.”
LXXXII. When he had taken his seat, the conspirators stood round him, under
colour of paying their compliments; and immediately Tullius Cimber, who had
engaged to commence the assault, advancing nearer than the rest, as if he had
some favour to request, Cæsar made signs that he should defer his petition to
some other time. Tullius immediately seized him by the toga, on both shoulders;
at which Cæsar crying out, “Violence is meant!” one of the Cassii wounded him a
little below the throat. Cæsar seized him by the arm, and ran it through with
his style; and endeavouring to rush forward was stopped by another wound.
Finding himself now attacked on all hands with naked poniards, he wrapped the
toga about his head, and at the same moment drew the skirt round his legs with
his left hand, that he might fall more decently with the lower part of his body
covered. He was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering a groan only, but
no cry, at the first wound: although some authors relate, that when Marcus
Brutus fell upon him, he exclaimed, “What! art thou, too, one of them? Thou, my
son!” The whole assembly instantly dispersing, he lay for some time after he
expired, until three of his slaves laid the body on a litter, and carried it
home, with one arm hanging down over the side. Among so many wounds, there was
none that was mortal, in the opinion of the surgeon Antistius, except the
second, which he received in the breast. The conspirators meant to drag his body
into the Tiber as soon as they had killed him; to confiscate his estate, and
rescind all his enactments; but they were deterred by fear of Mark Antony, and
Lepidus, Cæsar’s master of the horse, and abandoned their intentions.
LXXXIII. At the instance of Lucius Piso, his father-in-law, his will was opened
and read in Mark Antony’s house. He had made it on the ides [13th] of the
preceding September, at his Lavican villa, and committed it to the custody of
the chief of the Vestal Virgins. Quintus Tubero informs us, that in all the
wills he had signed, from the time of his first consulship to the breaking out
of the civil war, Cneius Pompey was appointed his heir, and that this had been
publicly notified to the army. But in his last will, he named three heirs, the
grandsons of his sisters; namely, Caius Octavius for three fourths of his
estate, and Lucius Pinarius and Quintus Pedius for the remaining fourth. Other
heirs [in remainder] were named at the close of the will, in which he also
adopted Caius Octavius, who was to assume his name, into his family; and
nominated most of those who were concerned in his death among the guardians of
his son, if he should have any; as well as Decimus Brutus amongst his heirs of
the second order. He bequeathed to the Roman people his gardens near the Tiber,
and three hundred sesterces each man.
LXXXIV. Notice of his funeral having been solemnly proclaimed, a pile was
erected in the Campus Martius, near the tomb of his daughter Julia; and before
the Rostra was placed a gilded tabernacle, on the model of the temple of Venus
Gonitrix; within which was an ivory bed, covered with purple and cloth of gold.
At the head was a trophy, with the [blood-stained] robe in which he was slain.
It being considered that the whole day would not suffice for carrying the
funeral oblations in solemn procession before the corpse, directions were given
for every one, without regard to order, to carry them from the city into the
Campus Martius, by what way they pleased. To raise pity and indignation for his
murder, in the plays acted at the funeral, a passage was sung from Pacuvius’s
tragedy, entitled, “The Trial for Arms:”
That ever I, unhappy man, should save
Wretches, who thus have brought me to the grave!!
And some lines also from Attilius’s tragedy of “Electra,” to the same effect.
Instead of a funeral panegyric, the consul Antony ordered a herald to proclaim
to the people the decree of the senate, in which they had bestowed upon him all
honours, divine and human; with the oath by which they had engaged themselves
for the defence of his person; and to these he added only a few words of his
own. The magistrates and others who had formerly filled the highest offices,
carried the bier from the Rostra into the Forum. While some proposed that the
body should be burnt in the sanctuary of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and
others in Pompey’s senate-house; on a sudden, two men, with swords by their
sides, and spears in their hands, set fire to the bier with lighted torches. The
throng around immediately heaped upon it dry faggots, the tribunals and benches
of the adjoining courts, and whatever else came to hand Then the musicians and
players stripped off the dresses they wore on the present occasion, taken from
the wardrobe of his triumph at spectacles, rent them, and threw them into the
flames. The legionaries, also, of his veteran bands, cast in their armour, which
they had put on in honour of his funeral. Most of the ladies did the same by
their ornaments, with the bullæ, and mantles of their children. In this public
mourning there joined a multitude of foreigners, expressing their sorrow
according to the fashion of their respective countries; but especially the Jews,
who for several nights together frequented the spot where the body was burnt.
LXXXV. The populace ran from the funeral, with torches in their hands, to the
houses of Brutus and Cassius, and were repelled with difficulty. Going in quest
of Cornelius Cinna, who had in a speech, the day before, reflected severely upon
Cæsar, and mistaking for him Helvius Cinna, who happened to fall into their
hands, they murdered the latter, and carried his head about the city on the
point of a spear. They afterwards erected in the Forum a column of Numidian
marble, formed of one stone nearly twenty feet high, and inscribed upon it these
words, To the Father of his Country. At this column they continued for a long
time to offer sacrifices, make vows, and decide controversies, in which they
swore by Cæsar.
LXXXVI. Some of Cæsar’s friends entertained a suspicion, that he neither desired
nor cared to live any longer, on account of his declining health; and for that
reason slighted all the omens of religion, and the warnings of his friends.
Others are of opinion, that thinking himself secure in the late decree of the
senate, and their oaths, he dismissed his Spanish guards who attended him with
drawn swords. Others again suppose, that he chose rather to face at once the
dangers which threatened him on all sides, than to be for ever on the watch
against them. Some tell us that he used to say, the commonwealth was more
interested in the safety of his person than himself: for that he had for some
time been satiated with power and glory; but that the commonwealth, if any thing
should befall him, would have no rest, and, involved in another civil war, would
be in a worse state than before.
LXXXVII. This, however, was generally admitted, that his death was in many
respects such as he would have chosen. For, upon reading the account delivered
by Xenophon, how Cyrus in his last illness gave instructions respecting his
funeral, Cæsar deprecated a lingering death, and wished that his own might be
sudden and speedy. And the day before he died, the conversation at supper, in
the house of Marcus Lepidus, turning upon what was the most eligible way of
dying, he gave his opinion in favour of a death that is sudden and unexpected.
LXXXVIII. He died in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was ranked amongst the
Gods, not only by a formal decree, but in the belief of the vulgar. For during
the first games which Augustus, his heir, consecrated to his memory, a comet
blazed for seven days together, rising always about eleven o’clock; and it was
supposed to be the soul of Cæsar, now received into heaven: for which reason,
likewise, he is represented on his statue with a star on his brow. The
senate-house in which he was slain, was ordered to be shut up, and a decree made
that the ides of March should be called parricidal, and the senate should never
more assemble on that day.
LXXXIX. Scarcely any of those who were accessary to his murder, survived him
more than three years, or died a natural death. They were all condemned by the
senate: some were taken off by one accident, some by another. Part of them
perished at sea, others fell in battle; and some slew themselves with the same
poniard with which they had stabbed Cæsar.
The termination of the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey forms a new epoch in
the Roman History, at which a Republic, which had subsisted with unrivalled
glory during a period of about four hundred and sixty years, relapsed into a
state of despotism, whence it never more could emerge. So sudden a transition
from prosperity to the ruin of public freedom, without the intervention of any
foreign enemy, excites a reasonable conjecture, that the constitution in which
it could take place, however vigorous in appearance, must have lost that
soundness of political health which had enabled it to endure through so many
ages. A short view of its preceding state, and of that in which it was at the
time of the revolution now mentioned, will best ascertain the foundation of such
a conjecture.
Though the Romans, upon the expulsion of Tarquin, made an essential change in
the political form of the state, they did not carry their detestation of regal
authority so far as to abolish the religious institutions of Numa Pompilius, the
second of their kings, according to which, the priesthood, with all the
influence annexed to that order, was placed in the hands of the aristocracy. By
this wise policy a restraint was put upon the fickleness and violence of the
people in matters of government, and a decided superiority given to the Senate
both in the deliberative and executive parts of administration. This advantage
was afterwards indeed diminished by the creation of Tribunes of the people; a
set of men whose ambition often embroiled the Republic in civil dissensions, and
who at last abused their authority to such a degree, that they became
instruments of aggrandizement to any leading men in the state who could purchase
their friendship. In general, however, the majority of the Tribunes being
actuated by views which comprehended the interests of the multitude, rather than
those of individuals, they did not so much endanger the liberty, as they
interrupted the tranquillity, of the public; and when the occasional commotions
subsided, there remained no permanent ground for the establishment of personal
usurpation.
In every government, an object of the last importance to the peace and welfare
of society is the morals of the people; and in proportion as a community is
enlarged by propagation, or the accession of a multitude of new members, a more
strict attention is requisite to guard against that dissolution of manners to
which a crowded and extensive capital has a natural tendency. Of this the Romans
became sensible in the growing state of the Republic. In the year of the City
312, two magistrates were first created for taking an account of the number of
the people, and the value of their estates; and soon after, they were invested
with the authority not only of inspecting the morals of individuals, but of
inflicting public censure for any licentiousness of conduct, or violation of
decency. Thus both the civil and religious institutions concurred to restrain
the people within the bounds of good order and obedience to the laws: at the
same time that the frugal life of the ancient Romans proved a strong security
against those vices which operate most effectually towards sapping the
foundations of a state.
But in the time of Julius Cæsar the barriers of public liberty were become too
weak to restrain the audacious efforts of ambitious and desperate men. The
veneration for the constitution, usually a powerful check to treasonable
designs, had been lately violated by the usurpations of Marius and Sylla. The
salutary terrors of religion no longer predominated over the consciences of men.
The shame of public censure was extinguished in general depravity. An eminent
historian, who lived at that time, informs us, that venality universally
prevailed amongst the Romans; and a writer who flourished soon after, observes,
that luxury and dissipation had encumbered almost all so much with debt, that
they beheld with a degree of complacency the prospect of civil war and
confusion.
The extreme degree of profligacy at which the Romans were now arrived is in
nothing more evident, than that this age gave birth to the most horrible
conspiracy which occurs in the annals of human kind, viz. that of Catiline. This
was not the project of a few desperate and abandoned individuals, but of a
number of men of the most illustrious rank in the state; and it appears beyond
doubt, that Julius Cæsar was accessary to the design, which was no less than to
extirpate the Senate, divide amongst themselves both the public and private
treasures, and set Rome on fire. The causes which prompted to this tremendous
project, it is generally admitted, were luxury, prodigality, irreligion, a total
corruption of manners, and above all, as the immediate cause, the pressing
necessity in which the conspirators were involved by their extreme dissipation.
The enormous debt in which Cæsar himself was early involved, countenances an
opinion that his anxiety to procure the province of Gaul proceeded chiefly from
this cause. But during nine years in which he held that province, he acquired
such riches as must have rendered him, without competition, the most opulent
person in the state. If nothing more, therefore, than a splendid establishment
had been the object of his pursuit, he had attained to the summit of his wishes.
But when we find him persevering in a plan of aggrandizement beyond this period
of his fortunes, we can ascribe his conduct to no other motive than that of
outrageous ambition. He projected the building of a new Forum at Rome, for the
ground only of which he was to pay 800,000 pounds; he raised legions in Gaul at
his own charges: he promised such entertainments to the people as had never been
known at Rome from the foundation of the city. All these circumstances evince
some latent design of procuring such a popularity as might give him an
uncontrolled influence in the management of public affairs. Pompey, we are told,
was wont to say, that Cæsar not being able, with all his riches, to fulfil the
promises which he had made, wished to throw everything into confusion. There may
have been some foundation for this remark: but the opinion of Cicero is more
probable, that Cæsar’s mind was seduced with the temptations of chimerical
glory. It is observable that neither Cicero nor Pompey intimates any suspicion
that Cæsar was apprehensive of being impeached for his conduct, had he returned
to Rome in a private station. Yet, that there was reason for such an
apprehension, the positive declaration of L. Domitius leaves little room to
doubt: especially when we consider the number of enemies that Cæsar had in the
Senate, and the coolness of his former friend Pompey ever after the death of
Julia. The proposed impeachment was founded upon a notorious charge of
prosecuting measures destructive of the interests of the commonwealth, and
tending ultimately to an object incompatible with public freedom. Indeed,
considering the extreme corruption which prevailed amongst the Romans at this
time, it is more than probable that Cæsar would have been acquitted of the
charge, but at such an expense as must have stripped him of all his riches, and
placed him again in a situation ready to attempt a disturbance of the public
tranquillity. For it is said, that he purchased the friendship of Curio, at the
commencement of the civil war, with a bribe little short of half a million
sterling.
Whatever Cæsar’s private motive may have been for taking arms against his
country, he embarked in an enterprise of a nature the most dangerous: and had
Pompey conducted himself in any degree suitable to the reputation which he had
formerly acquired, the contest would in all probability have terminated in
favour of public freedom. But by dilatory measures in the beginning, by
imprudently withdrawing his army from Italy into a distant province, and by not
pursuing the advantage he had gained by the vigorous repulse of Cæsar’s troops
in their attack upon his camp, this commander lost every opportunity of
extinguishing a war which was to determine the fate, and even he existence, of
the Republic. It was accordingly determined on the plains of Pharsalia, where
Cæsar obtained a victory which was not more decisive than unexpected. He was now
no longer amenable either to the tribunal of the Senate or the power of the
laws, but triumphed at once over his enemies and the constitution of his
country.
It is to the honour of Cæsar, that when he had obtained the supreme power, he
exercised it with a degree of moderation beyond what was generally expected by
those who had fought on the side of the Republic. Of his private life either
before or after this period, little is transmitted in history. Henceforth,
however, he seems to have lived chiefly at Rome, near which he had a small
villa, upon an eminence, commanding a beautiful prospect. His time was almost
entirely occupied with public affairs, in the management of which, though he
employed many agents, he appears to have had none in the character of actual
minister. He was in general easy of access: but Cicero, in a letter to a friend,
complains of having been treated with the indignity of waiting a considerable
time amongst a crowd in an anti-chamber, before he could have an audience. The
elevation of Cæsar placed him not above discharging reciprocally the social
duties in the intercourse of life. He returned the visits of those who waited
upon him, and would sup at their houses. At table, and in the use of wine, he
was habitually temperate. Upon the whole, he added nothing to his own happiness
by all the dangers, the fatigues, and the perpetual anxiety which he had
incurred in the pursuit of unlimited power. His health was greatly impaired: his
former cheerfulness of temper, though not his magnanimity, appears to have
forsaken him; and we behold in his fate a memorable example of illustrious
talents rendered, by inordinate ambition, destructive to himself, and
irretrievably pernicious to his country.
From beholding the ruin of the Roman Republic, after intestine divisions, and
the distractions of civil war, it will afford some relief to take a view of the
progress of literature, which flourished even during those calamities.
The commencement of literature in Rome is to be dated from the reduction of the
Grecian States, when the conquerors imported into their own country the valuable
productions of the Greek language, and the first essay of Roman genius was in
dramatic composition. Livius Andronicus, who flourished about 240 years before
the Christian æra, formed the Fescennine verses into a kind of regular drama,
upon the model of the Greeks He was followed some time after by Ennius, who,
besides dramatic and other compositions, wrote the annals of the Roman Republic
in heroic verse. His style, like that of Andronicus, was rough and unpolished,
in conformity to the language of those times; but for grandeur of sentiment and
energy of expression, he was admired by the greatest poets in the subsequent
ages. Other writers of distinguished reputation in the dramatic department were
Nævius, Pacuvius, Plautus, Afranius, Cæcilius, Terence, Accius, &c. Accius and
Pacuvius are mentioned by Quintilian as writers of extraordinary merit. Of
twenty-five comedies written by Plautus, the number transmitted to posterity is
nineteen; and of a hundred and eight which Terence is said to have translated
from Menander, there now remain only six. Excepting a few inconsiderable
fragments, the writings of all the other authors have perished. The early period
of Roman literature was distinguished for the introduction of satire by Lucilius,
an author celebrated for writing with remarkable ease, but whose compositions,
in the opinion of Horace, though Quintilian thinks otherwise, were debased with
a mixture of feculency. Whatever may have been their merit, they also have
perished, with the works of a number of orators, who adorned the advancing state
of letters in the Roman Republic. It is observable, that during this whole
period, of near two centuries and a half, there appeared not one historian of
eminence sufficient to preserve his name from oblivion.
Julius Cæsar himself is one of the most eminent writers of the age in which he
lived. His commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars are written with a purity,
precision, and perspicuity, which command approbation. They are elegant without
affectation, and beautiful without ornament. Of the two books which he composed
on Analogy, and those under the title of Anti Cato, scarcely any fragment is
preserved; but we may be assured of the justness of the observations on
language, which were made by an author so much distinguished by the excellence
of his own compositions. His poem entitled The Journey, which was probably an
entertaining narrative, is likewise totally lost.
The most illustrious prose writer of this or any other age is M. Tullius Cicero;
and as his life is copiously related in biographical works, it will be
sufficient to mention his writings. From his earliest years, he applied himself
with unremitting assiduity to the cultivation of literature, and, whilst he was
yet a boy, wrote a poem, called Glaucus Pontius, which was extant in Plutarch’s
time. Amongst his juvenile productions was a translation into Latin verse, of
Aratus on the Phænomena of the Heavens; of which many fragments are still
extant. He also published a poem of the heroic kind, in honour of his countryman
C. Marius, who was born at Arpinum, the birth-place of Cicero. This production
was greatly admired by Atticus; and old Scævola was so much pleased with it,
that in an epigram written on the subject, he declares that it would live as
long as the Roman name and learning subsisted. From a little specimen which
remains of it, describing a memorable omen given to Marius from an oak at
Arpinum, there is reason to believe that his poetical genius was scarcely
inferior to his oratorical, had it been cultivated with equal industry. He
published another poem called Limon, of which Donatus has preserved four lines
in the life of Terence, in praise of the elegance and purity of that poet’s
style. He composed in the Greek language, and in the style and manner of
Isocrates, a Commentary or Memoirs of the Transactions of his Consulship. This
he sent to Atticus, with a desire, if he approved it, to publish it in Athens
and the cities of Greece. He sent a copy of it likewise to Posidonius of Rhodes,
and requested of him to undertake the same subject in a more elegant and
masterly manner. But the latter returned for answer, that, instead of being
encouraged to write by the perusal of his tract, he was quite deterred from
attempting it.
Upon the plan of those Memoirs, he afterwards composed a Latin poem in three
books, in which he carried down the history to the end of his exile, but did not
publish it for several years, from motives of delicacy. The three books were
severally inscribed to the three Muses; but of this work there now remain only a
few fragments, scattered in different parts of his other writings. He published,
about the same time, a collection of the principal speeches which he had made in
his consulship, under the title of his Consular Orations. They consisted
originally of twelve; but four are entirely lost, and some of the rest are
imperfect. He now published also, in Latin verse, a translation of the
Prognostics of Aratus, of which work no more than two or three small fragments
now remain. A few years after, he put the last hand to his Dialogues upon the
Character and Idea of the perfect Orator. This admirable work remains entire; a
monument both of the astonishing industry and transcendent abilities of its
author. At his Cuman villa, he next began a Treatise on Politics, or on the best
State of a City, and the Duties of a Citizen. He calls it a great and a
laborious work, yet worthy of his pains, if he could succeed in it. This
likewise was written in the form of a dialogue, in which the speakers were
Scipio, Lælius, Philus, Manilius, and other great persons in the former times of
the Republic. It was comprised in six books, and survived him for several ages,
though it is now unfortunately lost. From the fragments which remain, it appears
to have been a masterly production, in which all the important questions in
politics and morality were discussed with elegance and accuracy.
Amidst all the anxiety for the interests of the Republic, which occupied the
thoughts of this celebrated personage, he yet found leisure to write several
philosophical tracts, which still subsist, to the gratification of the literary
world. He composed a treatise on the Nature of the Gods, in three books,
containing a comprehensive view of religion, faith, oaths, ceremonies, &c. In
elucidating this important subject, he not only delivers the opinions of all the
philosophers who had written anything concerning it, but weighs and compares
attentively all the arguments with each other; forming upon the whole such a
rational and perfect system of natural religion, as never before was presented
to the consideration of mankind, and approaching nearly to revelation. He now
likewise composed in two books, a discourse on Divination, in which he discusses
at large all the arguments that may be advanced for and against the actual
existence of such a species of knowledge. Like the preceding works, it is
written in the form of dialogue, and in which the chief speaker is Lælius. The
same period gave birth to his treatise on Old Age, called Cato Major; and to
that on Friendship, written also in dialogue, and in which the chief speaker is
Lælius. This book, considered merely as an essay, is one of the most
entertaining productions of ancient times; but, beheld as a picture drawn from
life, exhibiting the real characters and sentiments of men of the first
distinction for virtue and wisdom in the Roman Republic, it becomes doubly
interesting to every reader of observation and taste. Cicero now also wrote his
discourse on Fate, which was the subject of a conversation with Hirtius, in his
villa near Puteoli; and he executed about the same time a translation of Plato’s
celebrated Dialogue, called Timæus, on the nature and origin of the universe. He
was employing himself also on a history of his own times, or rather of his own
conduct; full of free and severe reflections on those who had abused their power
to the oppression of the Republic. Dion Cassius says, that he delivered this
book sealed up to his son, with strict orders not to read or publish it till
after his death; but from this time he never saw his son, and it is probable
that he left the work unfinished. Afterwards, however, some copies of it were
circulated; from which his commentator, Asconius, has quoted several
particulars.
During a voyage which he undertook to Sicily, he wrote his treatise on Topics,
or the Art of finding Arguments on any Question. This was an abstract from
Aristotle’s treatise on the same subject; and though he had neither Aristotle
nor any other book to assist him, he drew it up from his memory, and finished it
as he sailed along the coast of Calabria. The last work composed by Cicero
appears to have been his Offices, written for the use of his son, to whom it is
addressed. This treatise contains a system of moral conduct, founded upon the
noblest principles of human action, and recommended by arguments drawn from the
purest sources of philosophy.
Such are the literary productions of this extraordinary man, whose comprehensive
understanding enabled him to conduct with superior ability the most abstruse
disquisitions into moral and metaphysical science. Born in an age posterior to
Socrates and Plato, he could not anticipate the principles inculcated by those
divine philosophers, but he is justly entitled to the praise, not only of having
prosecuted with unerring judgment the steps which they trod before him, but of
carrying his researches to greater extent into the most difficult regions of
philosophy. This too he had the merit to perform, neither in the station of a
private citizen, nor in the leisure of academic retirement, but in the bustle of
public life, amidst the almost constant exertions of the bar, the employment of
the magistrate, the duty of the senator, and the incessant cares of the
statesman; through a period likewise chequered with domestic afflictions and
fatal commotions in the Republic. As a philosopher, his mind appears to have
been clear, capacious, penetrating, and insatiable of knowledge. As a writer, he
was endowed with every talent that could captivate either the judgment or taste.
His researches were continually employed on subjects of the greatest utility to
mankind, and those often such as extended beyond the narrow bounds of temporal
existence. The being of a God, the immortality of the soul, a future state of
rewards and punishments, and the eternal distinction of good and evil; these
were in general the great objects of his philosophical enquiries, and he has
placed them in a more convincing point of view than they ever were before
exhibited to the pagan world. The variety and force of the arguments which he
advances, the splendour of his diction, and the zeal with which he endeavours to
excite the love and admiration of virtue, all conspire to place his character,
as a philosophical writer, including likewise his incomparable eloquence, on the
summit of human celebrity.
The form of dialogue, so much used by Cicero, he doubtless adopted in imitation
of Plato, who probably took the hint of it from the colloquial method of
instruction practised by Socrates. In the early stage of philosophical enquiry,
this mode of composition was well adapted, if not to the discovery, at least to
the confirmation of moral truth; especially as the practice was then not
uncommon, for speculative men to converse together on important subjects, for
mutual information. In treating of any subject respecting which the different
sects of philosophers differed from each other in point of sentiment, no kind of
composition could be more happily suited than dialogue, as it gave alternately
full scope to the arguments of the various disputants. It required, however,
that the writer should exert his understanding with equal impartiality and
acuteness on the different sides of the question; as otherwise he might betray a
cause under the appearance of defending it. In all the dialogues of Cicero, he
manages the arguments of the several disputants in a manner not only the most
fair and interesting, but also such as leads to the most probable and rational
conclusion.
After enumerating the various tracts composed and published by Cicero, we have
now to mention his Letters, which, though not written for publication, deserve
to be ranked among the most interesting remains of Roman literature. The number
of such as are addressed to different correspondents is considerable, but those
to Atticus alone, his confidential friend, amount to upwards of four hundred;
among which are many of great length. They are all written in the genuine spirit
of the most approved epistolary composition; uniting familiarity with elevation,
and ease with elegance. They display in a beautiful light the author’s character
in the social relations of life; as a warm friend, a zealous patron, a tender
husband, an affectionate brother, an indulgent father, and a kind master.
Beholding them in a more extensive view, they exhibit an ardent love of liberty
and the constitution of his country: they discover a mind strongly actuated with
the principles of virtue and reason; and while they abound in sentiments the
most judicious and philosophical, they are occasionally blended with the charms
of wit, and agreeable effusions of pleasantry. What is likewise no small
addition to their merit, they contain much interesting description of private
life, with a variety of information relative to public transactions and
characters of that age. It appears from Cicero’s correspondence, that there was
at that time such a number of illustrious Romans, as never before existed in any
one period of the Republic. If ever, therefore, the authority of men the most
respectable for virtue, rank, and abilities, could have availed to overawe the
first attempts at a violation of public liberty, it must have been at this
period; for the dignity of the Roman senate was now in the zenith of its
splendour.
Cicero has been accused of excessive vanity, and of arrogating to himself an
invidious superiority, from his extraordinary talents: but whoever peruses his
letters to Atticus, must readily acknowledge, that this imputation appears to be
destitute of truth. In those excellent productions, though he adduces the
strongest arguments for and against any object of consideration, that the most
penetrating understanding can suggest, weighs them with each other, and draws
from them the most rational conclusions, he yet discovers such a diffidence in
his own opinion, that he resigns himself implicitly to the judgment and
direction of his friend; a modesty not very compatible with the disposition of
the arrogant, who are commonly tenacious of their own opinion, particularly in
what relates to any decision of the understanding.
It is difficult to say, whether Cicero appears in his letters more great or
amiable: but that he was regarded by his contemporaries in both these lights,
and that too in the highest degree, is sufficiently evident. We may thence
infer, that the great poets in the subsequent age must have done violence to
their own liberality and discernment, when, in compliment to Augustus, whose
sensibility would have been wounded by the praises of Cicero, and even by the
mention of his name, they have so industriously avoided the subject, as not to
afford the most distant intimation that this immortal orator and philosopher had
ever existed. Livy however, there is reason to think, did some justice to his
memory: but it was not until the race of the Cæsars had become extinct, that he
received the free and unanimous applause of impartial posterity. Such was the
admiration which Quintilian entertained of his writings, that he considered the
circumstance or being delighted with them, as an indubitable proof of judgment
and taste in literature. Ille se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit.
In this period is likewise to be placed M. Terentius Varro, the celebrated Roman
grammarian, and the Nestor of ancient learning. The first mention made of him
is, that he was lieutenant to Pompey in his piratical wars, and obtained in that
service a nava, crown. In the civil wars he joined the side of the Republic, and
was taken by Cæsar; by whom he was likewise proscribed, but obtained a remission
of the sentence. Of all the ancients, he has acquired the greatest fame for his
extensive erudition; and we may add, that he displayed the same industry in
communicating, as he had done in collecting it. His works originally amounted to
no less than five hundred volumes, which have all perished, except a treatise De
Lingua Latina and one De Re Rustica. Of the former of these, which is addressed
to Cicero, three books at the beginning are also lost. It appears from the
introduction of the fourth book, that they all related to etymology. The first
contained such observations as might be made against it; the second, such as
might be made in its favour; and the third, observations upon it. He next
proceeds to investigate the origin or Latin words. In the fourth book, he traces
those which relate to place, in the fifth, those connected with the idea of
time; and in the sixth, the origin of both these classes, as they appear in the
writings of the poets. The seventh book is employed on declension; in which the
author enters upon a minute and extensive enquiry, comprehending a variety of
acute and profound observations on the formation of Latin nouns, and their
respective natural declinations from the nominative case. In the eighth, he
examines the nature and limits of usage and analogy in language; and in the
ninth and last book on the subject, takes a general view of what is the reverse
of analogy, viz. anomaly. The precision and perspicuity which Varro displays in
this work merit the highest encomiums, and justify the character given him in
his own time, of being the most learned of the Latin grammarians. To the loss of
the first three books, are to be added several chasms in the others; but
fortunately they happen in such places as not to affect the coherency of the
author’s doctrine, though they interrupt the illustration of it. It is
observable that this great grammarian makes use of quom for quum, heis for his,
and generally queis for quibus. This practice having become rather obsolete at
the time in which he wrote, we must impute his continuance of it to his opinion
of its propriety, upon its established principles of grammar, and not to any
prejudice of education, or an affectation of singularity. As Varro makes no
mention of Cæsar’s treatise on Analogy, and had commenced author long before
him, it is probable that Cæsar’s production was of a much later date; and thence
we may infer, that those two writers differed from each other, at least with
respect to some particulars on that subject
This author’s treatise De Re Rustica was undertaken at the desire of a friend,
who, having purchased some lands, requested of Varro the favour of his
instructions relative to farming, and the economy of a country life, in its
various departments. Though Varro was at this time in his eightieth year, he
writes with all the vivacity, though without the levity, of youth, and sets out
with invoking, not the Muses, like Homer and Ennius, as he observes, but the
twelve deities supposed to be chiefly concerned in the operations of
agriculture. It appears from the account which he gives, that upwards of fifty
Greek authors had treated of this subject in prose, besides Hesiod and
Menecrates the Ephesian, who both wrote in verse; exclusive likewise of many
Roman writers, and of Mago the Carthaginian, who wrote in the Punic language.
Varro’s work is divided into three books, the first of which treats of
agriculture; the second, of rearing of cattle; and the third, of feeding animals
for the use of the table. In the last of these, we meet with a remarkable
instance of the prevalence of habit and fashion over human sentiment, where the
author delivers instructions relative to the best method of fattening rats.
We find from Quintilian, that Varro likewise composed satires in various kinds
of verse. It is impossible to behold the numerous fragments of this venerable
author without feeling the strongest regret for the loss of that vast collection
of information which he had compiled, and of judicious observations which he had
made on a variety of subjects, during a life of eighty-eight years, almost
entirely devoted to literature. The remark of St. Augustine is well founded,
That it is astonishing how Varro, who read such a number of books, could find
time to compose so many volumes; and how he who composed so many volumes, could
be at leisure to peruse such a variety of books, and to gain so much literary
information.
Catullus is said to have been born at Verona, of respectable parents; his father
and himself being in the habit of intimacy with Julius Cæsar. He was brought to
Rome by Mallius, to whom several of his epigrams are addressed. The gentleness
of his manners, and his application to study, we are told, recommended him to
general esteem; and he had the good fortune to obtain the patronage of Cicero.
When he came to be known as a poet, all these circumstances would naturally
contribute to increase his reputation for ingenuity; and accordingly we find his
genius applauded by several of his contemporaries. It appears that his works are
not transmitted entire to posterity; but there remain sufficient specimens by
which we may be enabled to appreciate his poetical talents.
Quintilian, and Diomed the grammarian, have ranked Catullus amongst the iambic
writers, while others have placed him amongst the lyric. He has properly a claim
to each of these stations; but his versification being chiefly iambic, the
former of the arrangements seems to be the most suitable. The principal merit of
Catullus’s Iambics consists in a simplicity of thought and expression. The
thoughts, however, are often frivolous, and, what is yet more reprehensible, the
author gives way to gross obscenity; in vindication of which, he produces the
following couplet, declaring that a good poet ought to be chaste in his own
person, but that his verses need not be so.
Nam castum esse decet pium poëtam
Ipsum: versiculos nihil necesse est.
This sentiment has been frequently cited by those who were inclined to follow
the example of Catullus; but if such a practice be in any case admissible, it is
only where the poet personates a profligate character; and the instances in
which it is adopted by Catullus are not of that description. It had perhaps been
a better apology, to have pleaded the manners of the times; for even Horace, who
wrote only a few years after, has suffered his compositions to be occasionally
debased by the same kind of blemish.
Much has been said of this poet’s invective against Cæsar, which produced no
other effect than an invitation to sup at the dictator’s house. It was indeed
scarcely entitled to the honour of the smallest resentment. If any could be
shewn, it must have been for the freedom used by the author, and not for any
novelty in his lampoon. There are two poems on this subject, viz. the
twenty-ninth and fifty-seventh, in each of which Cæsar is joined with Mamurra, a
Roman knight, who had acquired great riches in the Gallic war. For the honour of
Catullus’s gratitude, we should suppose that the latter is the one to which
historians allude: but, as poetical compositions, they are equally unworthy of
regard. The fifty seventh is nothing more than a broad repetition of the
raillery, whether well or ill founded, with which Cæsar was attacked on various
occasions, and even in the senate, after his return from Bithynia. Cæsar had
been taunted with this subject for upwards of thirty years; and after so long a
familiarity with reproach, his sensibility to the scandalous imputation must now
have been much diminished, if not entirely extinguished. The other poem is
partly in the same strain, but extended to greater length, by a mixture of
common jocular ribaldry of the Roman soldiers, expressed nearly in the same
terms which Cæsar’s legions, though strongly attached to his person, scrupled
not to sport publicly in the streets of Rome, against their general, during the
celebration of his triumph. In a word, it deserves to be regarded as an effusion
of Saturnalian licentiousness, rather than of poetry. With respect to the
Iambics of Catullus, we may observe in general, that the sarcasm is indebted for
its force, not so much to ingenuity of sentiment, as to the indelicate nature of
the subject, or coarseness of expression.
The descriptive poems of Catullus are superior to the others, and discover a
lively imagination. Amongst the best of his productions, is a translation of the
celebrated ode of Sappho:
Ille mî par esse Deo videtur,
[Editor: illegible character] &c.
This ode is executed both with spirit and elegance; it is, however, imperfect;
and the last stanza seems to be spurious. Catullus’s epigrams are entitled to
little praise, with regard either to sentiment or point; and on the whole, his
merit, as a poet, appears to have been magnified beyond its real extent. He is
said to have died about the thirtieth year of his age.
Lucretius is the author of a celebrated poem, in six books, De Rerum Natura; a
subject which had been treated many ages before by Empedocles, a philosopher and
poet of Agrigentum. Lucretius was a zealous partizan of Democritus, and the sect
of Epicurus, whose principles concerning the eternity of matter, the materiality
of the soul, and the non-existence of a future state of rewards and punishments,
he affects to maintain with a certainty equal to that of mathematical
demonstration. Strongly prepossessed with the hypothetical doctrines of his
master, and ignorant of the physical system of the universe, he endeavours to
deduce from the phenomena of the material world conclusions not only unsupported
by legitimate theory, but repugnant to the principles of the highest authority
in metaphysical disquisition. But while we condemn his speculative notions as
degrading to human nature, and subversive of the most important interests of
mankind, we must admit that he has prosecuted his visionary hypothesis with
uncommon ingenuity. Abstracting from it the rhapsodical nature of this
production, and its obscurity in some parts, it has great merit as a poem. The
style is elevated, and the versification in general harmonious. By the mixture
of obsolete words, it possesses an air of solemnity well adapted to abstruse
researches; at the same time that by the frequent resolution of diphthongs, it
instils into the Latin the sonorous and melodious powers of the Greek language.
While Lucretius was engaged in this work, he fell into a state of insanity,
occasioned, as is supposed, by a philtre, or love-potion, given him by his wife
Lucilia. The complaint, however, having lucid intervals, he employed them in the
execution of his plan, and, soon after it was finished, laid violent hands upon
himself, in the forty-third year of his age. This fatal termination of his life,
which perhaps proceeded from insanity, was ascribed by his friends and admirers
to his concern for the banishment of one Memmius, with whom he was intimately
connected, and for the distracted state of the republic. It was, however, a
catastrophe which the principles of Epicurus, equally erroneous and
irreconcilable to resignation and fortitude, authorized in particular
circumstances. Even Atticus, the celebrated correspondent of Cicero, a few years
after this period, had recourse to the same desperate expedient, by refusing all
sustenance, while he laboured under a lingering disease.
It is said that Cicero revised the poem of Lucretius after the death of the
author, and this circumstance is urged by the abettors of atheism, as a proof
that the principles contained in the work had the sanction of his authority. But
no inference in favour of Lucretius’s doctrine can justly be drawn from this
circumstance. Cicero, though already sufficiently acquainted with the principles
of the Epicurean sect, might not be averse to the perusal of a production, which
collected and enforced them in a nervous strain of poetry; especially as the
work was likely to prove interesting to his friend Atticus, and would perhaps
afford subject for some letters or conversation between them. It can have been
only with reference to composition that the poem was submitted to Cicero’s
revisal: for had he been required to exercise his judgment upon its principles,
he must undoubtedly have so much mutilated the work, as to destroy the coherency
of the system. He might be gratified with the shew of elaborate research, and
confident declamation, which it exhibited, but he must have utterly disapproved
of the conclusions which the author endeavoured to establish. According to the
best information, Lucretius died in the year from the building of Rome 701, when
Pompey was the third time consul. Cicero lived several years beyond this period,
and in the two last years of his life, he composed those valuable works which
contain sentiments diametrically repugnant to the visionary system of Epicurus.
The argument, therefore, drawn from Cicero’s revisal, so far from confirming the
principle of Lucretius, affords the strongest tacit declaration against their
validity; because a period sufficient for mature consideration had elapsed,
before Cicero published his own admirable system of philosophy. The poem of
Lucretius, nevertheless, has been regarded as the bulwark of atheism—of atheism,
which, while it impiously arrogates the support of reason, both reason and
nature disclaim.
Many more writers flourished in this period, but their works have totally
perished. Sallust was now engaged in historical productions; but as they were
not yet completed, they will be noticed in the next division of the review.
D. OCTAVIUS CAESAR AUGUSTUS.
I.That the family of the Octavii was of the first distinction in Velitræ, is
rendered evident by many circumstances. For in the most frequented part of the
town, there was, not long since, a street named the Octavian; and an altar was
to be seen, consecrated to one Octavius, who being chosen general in a war with
some neighbouring people, the enemy making a sudden attack, while he was
sacrificing to Mars, he immediately snatched the entrails of the victim from off
the fire, and offered them half raw upon the altar; after which, marching out to
battle, he returned victorious. This incident gave rise to a law, by which it
was enacted, that in all future times the entrails should be offered to Mars in
the same manner; and the rest of the victim be carried to the Octavii.
II. This family, as well as several in Rome, was admitted into the senate by
Tarquinius Priscus, and soon afterwards placed by Servius Tullius among the
patricians; but in process of time it transferred itself to the plebeian order,
and, after the lapse of a long interval, was restored by Julius Cæsar to the
rank of patricians. The first person of the family raised by the suffrages of
the people to the magistracy, was Caius Rufus. He obtained the quæstorship, and
had two sons, Cneius and Caius: from whom are descended the two branches of the
Octavian family, which have had very different fortunes. For Cneius, and his
descendants in uninterrupted succession, held all the highest offices of the
state; whilst Caius and his posterity, whether from their circumstances or their
choice, remained in the equestrian order until the father of Augustus. The
great-grandfather of Augustus served as a military tribune in the second Punic
war in Sicily, under the command of Aemilius Pappus. His grandfather contented
himself with bearing the public offices of his own municipality, and grew old in
the tranquil enjoyment of an ample patrimony. Such is the account given by
different authors. Augustus himself, however, tells us nothing more than that he
was descended of an equestrian family, both ancient and rich, of which his
father was the first who obtained the rank of senator. Mark Antony upbraidingly
tells him that his great-grandfather was a freedman of the territory of Thurium,
and a rope-maker, and his grandfather a usurer. This is all the information I
have any where met with, respecting the ancestors of Augustus by the father’s
side.
III. His father Caius Octavius was, from his earliest years, a person both of
opulence and distinction: for which reason I am surprised at those who say that
he was a money-dealer, and was employed in scattering bribes, and canvassing for
the candidates at elections, in the Campus Martius. For being bred up in all the
affluence of a great estate, he attained with ease to honourable posts, and
discharged the duties of them with much distinction. After his prætorship, he
obtained by lot the province of Macedonia; in his way to which he cut off some
banditti, the relics of the armies of Spartacus and Catiline, who had possessed
themselves of the territory of Thurium; having received from the senate an
extraordinary commission for that purpose. In his government of the province, he
conducted himself with equal justice and resolution; for he defeated the
Bessians and Thracians in a great battle, and treated the allies of the republic
in such a manner, that there are extant letters from M. Tullius Cicero, in which
he advises and exhorts his brother Quintus, who then held the proconsulship of
Asia with no great reputation, to imitate the example of his neighbour Octavius,
in gaining the affections of the allies of Rome.
IV. After quitting Macedonia, before he could declare himself a candidate for
the consulship, he died suddenly, leaving behind him a daughter, the elder
Octavia, by Ancharia; and another daughter, Octavia the younger, as well as
Augustus, by Atia, who was the daughter of Marcus Atius Balbus, and Julia,
sister to Caius Julius Cæsar. Balbus was, by the father’s side, of a family who
were natives of Aricia, and many of whom had been in the senate. By the mother’s
side he was nearly related to Pompey the Great; and after he had borne the
office of prætor, was one of the twenty commissioners appointed by the Julian
law to divide the land in Campania among the people. But Mark Antony, treating
with contempt Augustus’s descent even by the mother’s side, says that his great
grand-father was of African descent, and at one time kept a perfumer’s shop, and
at another, a bake-house, in Aricia. And Cassius of Parma, in a letter, taxes
Augustus with being the son not only of a baker, but a usurer. These are his
words: “Thou art a lump of thy mother’s meal, which a money-changer of Nerulum
taking from the newest bake-house of Aricia, kneaded into some shape, with his
hands all discoloured by the fingering of money.”
V. Augustus was born in the consulship of Marcus Tullius Cicero and Caius
Antonius, upon the ninth of the calends of October [the 23rd September], a
little before sunrise, in the quarter of the Palatine Hill, and the street
called. The Ox-Heads, where now stands a chapel dedicated to him, and built a
little after his death. For, as it is recorded in the proceedings of the senate,
when Caius Lætorius, a young man of a patrician family, in pleading before the
senators for a lighter sentence, upon his being convicted of adultery, alleged,
besides his youth and quality, that he was the possessor, and as it were the
guardian, of the ground which the Divine Augustus first touched upon his coming
into the world; and entreated that he might find favour, for the sake of that
deity, who was in a peculiar manner his; an act of the senate was passed, for
the consecration of that part of his house in which Augustus was born.
VI. His nursery is shewn to this day, in a villa belonging to the family, in the
suburbs of Velitræ; being a very small place, and much like a pantry. An opinion
prevails in the neighbourhood, that he was also born there. Into this place no
person presumes to enter, unless upon necessity, and with great devotion, from a
belief, for a long time prevalent, that such as rashly enter it are seized with
great horror and consternation, which a short while since was confirmed by a
remarkable incident. For when a new inhabitant of the house had, either by mere
chance, or to try the truth of the report, taken up his lodging in that
apartment, in the course of the night, a few hours afterwards, he was thrown out
by some sudden violence, he knew not how, and was found in a state of
stupefaction, with the coverlid of his bed, before the door of the chamber.
VII. While he was yet an infant, the surname of Thurinus was given him, in
memory of the birth-place of his family, or because, soon after he was born, his
father Octavius had been successful against the fugitive slaves, in the country
near Thurium. That he was surnamed Thurinus, I can affirm upon good foundation,
for when a boy, I had a small bronze statue of him, with that name upon it in
iron letters, nearly effaced by age, which I presented to the emperor, by whom
it is now revered amongst the other tutelary deities in his chamber. He is also
often called Thurinus contemptuously, by Mark Antony in his letters; to which he
makes only this reply: “I am surprised that my former name should be made a
subject of reproach.” He afterwards assumed the name of Caius Cæsar, and then of
Augustus; the former in compliance with the will of his great-uncle, and the
latter upon a motion of Munatius Plancus in the senate. For when some proposed
to confer upon him the name of Romulus, as being, in a manner, a second founder
of the city, it was resolved that he should rather be called Augustus, a surname
not only new, but of more dignity, because places devoted to religion, and those
in which anything is consecrated by augury, are denominated august, either from
the word auctus, signifying augmentation, or ab avium gestu, gustuve, from the
flight and feeding of birds; as appears from this verse of Ennius:
When glorious Rome by august augury was built.
VIII. He lost his father when he was only four years of age; and, in his twelfth
year, pronounced a funeral oration in praise of his grand-mother Julia. Four
years afterwards, having assumed the robe of manhood, he was honoured with
several military rewards by Cæsar in his African triumph, although he took no
part in the war, on account of his youth. Upon his uncle’s expedition to Spain
against the sons of Pompey, he was followed by his nephew, although he was
scarcely recovered from a dangerous sickness; and after being ship-wrecked at
sea, and travelling with very few attendants through roads that were infested
with the enemy, he at last came up with him. This activity gave great
satisfaction to his uncle, who soon conceived an increasing affection for him,
on account of such indications of character. After the subjugation of Spain,
while Cæsar was meditating an expedition against the Dacians and Parthians, he
was sent before him to Apollonia, where he applied himself to his studies; until
receiving intelligence that his uncle was murdered, and that he was appointed
his heir, he hesitated for some time whether he should call to his aid the
legions stationed in the neighbourhood; but he abandoned the design as rash and
premature. However, returning to Rome, he took possession of his inheritance,
although his mother was apprehensive that such a measure might be attended with
danger, and his step-father, Marcius Philippus, a man of consular rank, very
earnestly dissuaded him from it. From this time, collecting together a strong
military force, he first held the government in conjunction with Mark Antony and
Marcus Lepidus, then with Antony only, for nearly twelve years, and at last in
his own hands during a period of four and forty.
IX. Having thus given a very short summary of his life, I shall prosecute the
several parts of it, not in order of time, but arranging his acts into distinct
classes, for the sake of perspicuity. He was engaged in five civil wars, namely,
those of Modena, Philippi, Perugia, Sicily, and Actium; the first and last of
which were against Antony, and the second against Brutus and Cassius; the third
against Lucius Antonius, the triumvir’s brother, and the fourth against Sextus
Pompeius, the son of Cneius Pompeius.
X. The motive which gave rise to all these wars was the opinion he entertained
that both his honour and interest were concerned in revenging the murder of his
uncle, and maintaining the state of affairs he had established. Immediately
after his return from Apollonia, he formed the design of taking forcible and
unexpected measures against Brutus and Cassius; but they having foreseen the
danger and made their escape, he resolved to proceed against them by an appeal
to the laws in their absence, and impeach them for the murder. In the mean time,
those whose province it was to prepare the sports in honour of Cæsar’s last
victory in the civil war, not daring to do it, he undertook it himself. And that
he might carry into effect his other designs with greater authority, he declared
himself a candidate in the room of a tribune of the people who happened to die
at that time, although he was of a patrician family, and had not yet been in the
senate. But the consul, Mark Antony, from whom he had expected the greatest
assistance, opposing him in his suit, and even refusing to do him so much as
common justice, unless gratified with a large bribe, he went over to the party
of the nobles, to whom he perceived Sylla to be odious, chiefly for endeavouring
to drive Decius Brutus, whom he besieged in the town of Modena, out of the
province, which had been given him by Cæsar, and confirmed to him by the senate.
At the instigation of persons about him, he engaged some ruffians to murder his
antagonist; but the plot being discovered, and dreading a similar attempt upon
himself, he gained over Cæsar’s veteran soldiers, by distributing among them all
the money he could collect. Being now commissioned by the senate to command the
troops he had gathered, with the rank of prætor, and in conjunction with Hirtius
and Pansa, who had accepted the consulship, to carry assistance to Decius
Brutus, he put an end to the war by two battles in three months. Antony writes,
that in the former of these he ran away, and two days afterwards made his
appearance without his general’s cloak and his horse. In the last battle,
however, it is certain that he performed the part not only of a general, but a
soldier; for, in the heat of the battle, when the standard-bearer of his legion
was severely wounded, he took the eagle upon his shoulders, and carried it a
long time.
XI. In this war, Hirtius being slain in battle, and Pansa dying a short time
afterwards of a wound, a report was circulated that they both were killed
through his means, in order that, when Antony fled, the republic having lost its
consuls, he might have the victorious armies entirely at his own command. The
death of Pansa was so fully believed to have been caused by undue means, that
Glyco, his surgeon, was placed in custody, on a suspicion of having poisoned his
wound. And to this, Aquilius Niger adds, that he killed Hirtius, the other
consul, in the confusion of the battle, with his own hands.
XII. But upon intelligence that Antony, after his defeat, had been received by
Marcus Lepidus, and that the rest of the generals and armies had all declared
for the senate, he, without any hesitation, deserted from the party of the
nobles: alleging as an excuse for his conduct, the actions and sayings of
several amongst them; for some said, “he was a mere boy,” and others threw out,
“that he ought to be promoted to honours, and cut off,” to avoid the making any
suitable acknowledgment either to him or the veteran legions. And the more to
testify his regret for having before attached himself to the other faction, he
fined the Nursini in a large sum of money, which they were unable to pay, and
then expelled them from the town, for having inscribed upon a monument, erected
at the public charge to their countrymen who were slain in the battle of Modena,
“That they fell in the cause of liberty.”
XIII. Having entered into a confederacy with Antony and Lepidus, he brought the
war at Philippi to an end in two battles, although he was at that time weak, and
suffering from sickness. In the first battle he was driven from his camp, and
with some difficulty made his escape to the wing of the army commanded by
Antony. And now, intoxicated with success, he sent the head of Brutus to be cast
at the foot of Cæsar’s statue, and treated the most illustrious of the prisoners
not only with cruelty, but with abusive language: insomuch that he is said to
have answered one of them who humbly intreated that at least he might not remain
unburied, “That will be in the power of the birds.” Two others, father and son,
who begged for their lives, he ordered to cast lots which of them should live,
or settle it between themselves by the sword; and was a spectator of both their
deaths: for the father offering his life to save his son, and being accordingly
executed, the son likewise killed himself upon the spot. On this account, the
rest of the prisoners, and amongst them Marcus Favonius, Cato’s rival, being led
up in fetters, after they had saluted Antony, the general, with much respect,
reviled Octavius in the foulest language. After this victory, dividing between
them the offices of the state, Mark Antony undertook to restore order in the
east, while Cæsar conducted the veteran soldiers back to Italy, and settled them
in colonies on the lands belonging to the municipalities. But he had the
misfortune to please neither the soldiers nor the owners of the lands; one party
complaining of the injustice done them, in being violently ejected from their
possessions, and the other, that they were not rewarded according to their
merit.
XIV. At this time he obliged Lucius Antony, who, presuming upon his own
authority as consul, and his brother’s power, was raising new commotions, to fly
to Perugia, and forced him, by famine, to surrender at last, although not
without having been exposed to great hazards, both before the war and during its
continuance. For a common soldier having got into the seats of the equestrian
order in the theatre, at the public spectacles, Cæsar ordered him to be removed
by an officer; and a rumour being thence spread by his enemies, that he had put
the man to death by torture, the soldiers flocked together so much enraged, that
he narrowly escaped with his life. The only thing that saved him, was the sudden
appearance of the man, safe and sound, no violence having been offered him. And
whilst he was sacrificing under the walls of Perugia, he nearly fell into the
hands of a body of gladiators, who sallied out of the town.
XV. After the taking of Perugia, he sentenced a great number of the prisoners to
death, making only one reply to all who implored pardon, or endeavoured to
excuse themselves, “You must die.” Some authors write, that three hundred of the
two orders, selected from the rest, were slaughtered, like victims, before an
altar raised to Julius Cæsar, upon the ides of March [15th April]. Nay, there
are some who relate, that he entered upon the war with no other view, than that
his secret enemies, and those whom fear more than affection kept quiet, might be
detected, by declaring themselves, now they had an opportunity, with Lucius
Antony at their head; and that having defeated them, and confiscated their
estates, he might be enabled to fulfil his promises to the veteran soldiers.
XVI. He soon commenced the Sicilian war, but it was protracted by various delays
during a long period; at one time for the purpose of repairing his fleets, which
he lost twice by storm, even in the summer; at another, while patching up a
peace, to which he was forced by the clamours of the people, in consequence of a
famine occasioned by Pompey’s cutting off the supply of corn by sea. But at
last, having built a new fleet, and obtained twenty thousand manumitted slaves,
who were given him for the oar, he formed the Julian harbour at Baiæ, by letting
the sea into the Lucrine and Averman lakes; and having exercised his forces
there during the whole winter, he defeated Pompey betwixt Mylæ and Naulochus;
although just as the engagement commenced, he suddenly fell into such a profound
sleep, that his friends were obliged to wake him to give the signal. This, I
suppose, gave occasion for Antony’s reproach: “You were not able to take a clear
view of the fleet, when drawn up in line of battle, but lay stupidly upon your
back, gazing at the sky; nor did you get up and let your men see you, until
Marcus Agrippa had forced the enemies’ ships to sheer off.” Others imputed to
him both a saying and an action which were indefensible; for, upon the loss of
his fleets by storm, he is reported to have said: “I will conquer in spite of
Neptune;” and at the next Circensian games, he would not suffer the statue of
that God to be carried in procession as usual. Indeed he scarcely ever ran more
or greater risks in any of his wars than in this. Having transported part of his
army to Sicily, and being on his return for the rest, he was unexpectedly
attacked by Demochares and Apollophanes, Pompey’s admirals, from whom he escaped
with great difficulty, and with one ship only. Likewise, as he was travelling on
foot through the Locrian territory to Rhegium, seeing two of Pompey’s vessels
passing by that coast, and supposing them to be his own, he went down to the
shore, and was very nearly taken prisoner. On this occasion, as he was making
his escape by some bye-ways, a slave belonging to Aemilius Paulus, who
accompanied him, owing him a grudge for the proscription of Paulus, the father
of Aemilius, and thinking he had now an opportunity of revenging it, attempted
to assassinate him. After the defeat of Pompey, one of his colleagues, Marcus
Lepidus, whom he had summoned to his aid from Africa, affecting great
superiority, because he was at the head of twenty legions, and claiming for
himself the principal management of affairs in a threatening manner, he divested
him of his command, but, upon his humble submission, granted him his life, but
banished him for life to Circeii.
XVII. The alliance between him and Antony, which had always been precarious,
often interrupted, and ill cemented by repeated reconciliations, he at last
entirely dissolved. And to make it known to the world how far Antony had
degenerated from patriotic feelings, he caused a will of his, which had been
left at Rome, and in which he had nominated Cleopatra’s children, amongst
others, as his heirs, to be opened and read in an assembly of the people. Yet
upon his being declared an enemy, he sent to him all his relations and friends,
among whom were Caius Sosius and Titus Domitius, at that time consuls. He
likewise spoke favourably in public of the people of Bologna, for joining in the
association with the rest of Italy to support his cause, because they had, in
former times, been under the protection of the family of the Antonii. And not
long afterwards he defeated him in a naval engagement near Actium, which was
prolonged to so late an hour, that, after the victory, he was obliged to sleep
on board his ship. From Actium he went to the isle of Samos to winter; but being
alarmed with the accounts of a mutiny amongst the soldiers he had selected from
the main body of his army sent to Brundisium after the victory, who insisted on
their being rewarded for their service and discharged, he returned to Italy. In
his passage thither, he encountered two violent storms, the first between the
promontories of Peloponnesus and Aetolia, and the other about the Ceraunian
mountains: in both which a part of his Liburnian squadron was sunk, the spars
and rigging of his own ship carried away, and the rudder broken in pieces. He
remained only twenty-seven days at Brundisium, until the demands of the soldiers
were settled, and then went, by way of Asia and Syria, to Egypt, where laying
siege to Alexandria, whither Antony had fled with Cleopatra, he made himself
master of it in a short time. He drove Antony to kill himself, after he had used
every effort to obtain conditions of peace, and he saw his corpse. Cleopatra he
anxiously wished to save for his triumph; and when she was supposed to have been
bit to death by an asp, he sent for the Psylli to endeavour to suck out the
poison. He allowed them to be buried together in the same grave, and ordered a
mausoleum, begun by themselves, to be completed. The eldest of Antony’s two sons
by Fulvia he commanded to be taken by force from the statue of Julius Cæsar, to
which he had fled, after many fruitless supplications for his life, and put him
to death. The same fate attended Cæsario, Cleopatra’s son by Cæsar, as he
pretended, who had fled for his life, but was retaken. The children which Antony
had by Cleopatra he saved, and brought up and cherished in a manner suitable to
their rank, just as if they had been his own relations.
XVIII. At this time he had a desire to see the sarcophagus and body of Alexander
the Great, which, for that purpose, were taken out of the cell in which they
rested: and after viewing them for some time, he paid honours to the memory of
that prince, by offering a golden crown, and scattering flowers upon the body.
Being asked if he wished to see the tombs of the Ptolemies also; he replied, “I
wish to see a king, not dead men.” He reduced Egypt into the form of a province;
and to render it more fertile, and more capable of supplying Rome with corn, he
employed his army to scour the canals, into which the Nile, upon its rise,
discharges itself; but which during a long series of years had become nearly
choked up with mud. To perpetuate the glory of his victory at Actium, he built
the city of Nicopolis on that part of the coast, and established games to be
celebrated there every five years; enlarging likewise an old temple of Apollo,
he ornamented with naval crophies the spot on which he had pitched his camp, and
consecrated it to Neptune and Mars.
XIX. He afterwards quashed several tumults and insurrections, as well as several
conspiracies against his life, which were discovered, by the confession of
accomplices, before they were ripe for execution; and others subsequently. Such
were those of the younger Lepidus, of Varro Muræna, and Fannius Cæpio; then that
of Marcus Egnatius, afterwards that of Plautius Rufus, and of Lucius Paulus, his
grand-daughter’s husband; and besides these, another of Lucius Audasius, an old
feeble man, who was under prosecution for forgery; as also of Asinius Epicadus,
a Parthinian mongrel, and at last that of Telephus, a lady’s prompter; for he
was in danger of his life from the plots and conspiracies of some of the lowest
of the people against him. Audasius and Epicadus had formed the design of
carrying off to the armies his daughter Julia, and his grandson Agrippa, from
the islands in which they were confined. Telephus, wildly dreaming that the
government was destined to him by the fates, proposed to fall both upon Octavius
and the senate. Nay, once, a soldier’s servant belonging to the army in
Illyricum, having passed the porters unobserved, was found in the night-time
standing before his chamber-door, armed with a hunting-dagger. Whether the
person was really disordered in the head, or only counterfeited madness, is
uncertain; for no confession was obtained from him by torture.
XX. He conducted in person only two foreign wars; the Dalmatian, whilst he was
yet but a youth; and, after Antony’s final defeat, the Cantabrian. He was
wounded in the former of these wars; in one battle he received a contusion in
the right knee from a stone—and in another, he was much hurt in one leg and both
arms, by the fall of a bridge. His other wars he carried on by his lieutenants;
but occasionally visited the army, in some of the wars of Pannonia and Germany,
or remained at no great distance, proceeding from Rome as far as Ravenna, Milan,
or Aquileia.
XXI. He conquered, however, partly in person, and partly by his lieutenants,
Cantabria, Aquitania and Pannonia, Dalmatia, with all Illyricum and Rhætia,
besides the two Alpine nations, the Vindelici and the Salassii. He also checked
the incursions of the Dacians, by cutting off three of their generals with vast
armies, and drove the Germans beyond the river Elbe; removing two other tribes
who submitted, the Ubii and Sicambri, into Gaul, and settling them in the
country bordering on the Rhine. Other nations also, which broke into revolt, he
reduced to submission. But he never made war upon any nation without just and
necessary cause; and was so far from being ambitious either to extend the
empire, or advance his own military glory, that he obliged the chiefs of some
barbarous tribes to swear in the temple of Mars the Avenger, that they would
faithfully observe their engagements, and not violate the peace which they had
implored. Of some he demanded a new description of hostages, their women, having
found from experience that they cared little for their men when given as
hostages; but he always afforded them the means of getting back their hostages
whenever they wished it. Even those who engaged most frequently and with the
greatest perfidy in their rebellion, he never punished more severely than by
selling their captives, on the terms of their not serving in any neighbouring
country, nor being released from their slavery before the expiration of thirty
years. By the character which he thus acquired, for virtue and moderation, he
induced even the Indians and Scythians, nations before known to the Romans by
report only, to solicit his friendship, and that of the Roman people, by
ambassadors. The Parthians readily allowed his claim to Armenia; restoring at
his demand, the standards which they had taken from Marcus Crassus and Mark
Antony, and offering him hostages besides. Afterwards, when a contest arose
between several pretenders to the crown of that kingdom, they refused to
acknowledge any one who was not chosen by him.
XXII. The temple of Janus Quirinus, which had been shut twice only, from the era
of the building of the city to his own time, he closed thrice in a much shorter
period, having established universal peace both by sea and land. He twice
entered the city with the honours of an Ovation, namely, after the war of
Philippi, and again after that of Sicily. He had also three curule triumphs for
his several victories in Dalmatia, at Actium, and Alexandria; each of which
lasted three days.
XXIII. In all his wars, he never received any signal or ignominious defeat,
except twice in Germany, under his lieutenants Lollius and Varus. The former
indeed had in it more of dishonour than disaster; but that of Varus threatened
the security of the empire itself; three legions, with the commander, his
lieutenants, and all the auxiliaries, being cut off. Upon receiving intelligence
of this disaster, he gave orders for keeping a strict watch over the city, to
prevent any public disturbance, and prolonged the appointments of the prefects
in the provinces, that the allies might be kept in order by experience of
persons to whom they were used. He made a vow to celebrate the great games in
honour of Jupiter, Optimus, Maximus, “if he would be pleased to restore the
state to more prosperous circumstances.” This had formerly been resorted to in
the Cimbrian and Marsian wars. In short, we are informed that he was in such
consternation at this event, that he let the hair of his head and beard grow for
several months, and sometimes knocked his head against the door-posts, crying
out, “O, Quintilius Varus! Give me back my legions!” And over after, he observed
the anniversary of this calamity, as a day of sorrow and mourning.
XXIV. In military affairs he made many alterations, introducing some practices
entirely now, and reviving others, which had become obsolete. He maintained the
strictest discipline among the troops; and would not allow even his lieutenants
the liberty to visit their wives, except reluctantly, and in the winter season
only. A Roman knight having cut off the thumbs of his two young sons, to render
them incapable of serving in the wars, he exposed both him and his estate to
public sale. But upon observing the farmers of the revenue very greedy for the
purchase, he assigned him to a freedman of his own, that he might send him into
the country, and suffer him to retain his freedom. The tenth legion becoming
mutinous, he disbanded it with ignominy; and did the same by some others which
petulantly demanded their discharge; withholding from them the rewards usually
bestowed on those who had served their stated time in the wars. The cohorts
which yielded their ground in time of action, he decimated, and fed with barley.
Centurions, as well as common sentinels, who deserted their posts when on guard,
he punished with death. For other misdemeanors he inflicted upon them various
kinds of disgrace; such as obliging them to stand all day before the prætorium,
sometimes in their tunics only, and without their belts, sometimes to carry
poles ten feet long, or sods of turf.
XXV. After the conclusion of the civil wars, he never, in any of his military
harangues, or proclamations, addressed them by the title of “Fellow-soldiers,”
but as “Soldiers” only. Nor would he suffer them to be otherwise called by his
sons or step-sons, when they were in command: judging the former epithet to
convey the idea of a degree of condescension inconsistent with military
discipline, the maintenance of order, and his own majesty, and that of his
house. Unless at Rome, in case of incendiary fires, or under the apprehension of
public disturbances during a scarcity of provisions, he never employed in his
army slaves who had been made freedmen, except upon two occasions; on one, for
the security of the colonies bordering upon Illyricum, and on the other, to
guard the banks of the river Rhine. Although he obliged persons of fortune, both
male and female, to give up their slaves, and they received their manumission at
once, yet he kept them together under their own standard, unmixed with soldiers
who were better born, and armed likewise after different fashion. Military
rewards, such as trappings, collars, and other decorations of gold and silver,
he distributed more readily than camp or mural crowns, which were reckoned more
honourable than the former. These he bestowed sparingly, without partiality, and
frequently even on common soldiers. He presented M. Agrippa, after the naval
engagement in the Sicilian war, with a sea-green banner. Those who shared in the
honours of a triumph, although they had attended him in his expeditions, and
taken part in his victories, he judged it improper to distinguish by the usual
rewards for service, because they had a right themselves to grant such rewards
to whom they pleased. He thought nothing more derogatory to the character of an
accomplished general than precipitancy and rashness; on which account he had
frequently in his mouth those proverbs:
Σπεῦδε βραδέως,
Hasten slowly,
And
Ἀσϕαλὴς γὰρ ἐστ’ ἀμείνων, ἠ ϑράσυς στρατηλάτης.
The cautious captain’s better than the bold.
And “That is done fast enough, which is done well enough.”
He was wont to say also, that “a battle or a war ought never to be undertaken,
unless the prospect of gain overbalanced the fear of loss. For,” said he, “men
who pursue small advantages with no small hazard, resemble those who fish with a
golden hook, the loss of which, if the line should happen to break, could never
be compensated by all the fish they might take.”
XXVI. He was advanced to public offices before the age at which he was legally
qualified for them; and to some, also, of a new kind, and for life. He seized
the consulship in the twentieth year of his age, quartering his legions in a
threatening manner near the city, and sending deputies to demand it for him in
the name of the army. When the senate demurred, a centurion, named Cornelius,
who was at the head of the chief deputation, throwing back his cloak, and
shewing the hilt of his sword, had the presumption to say in the senate-house,
“This will make him consul, if ye will not.” His second consulship he filled
nine years afterwards; his third, after the interval of only one year, and held
the same office every year successively until the eleventh. From this period,
although the consulship was frequently offered him, he always declined it,
until, after a long interval, not less than seventeen years, he voluntarily
stood for the twelfth, and two years after that, for a thirteenth; that he might
successively introduce into the forum, on their entering public life, his two
sons, Caius and Lucius, while he was invested with the highest office in the
state. In his five consulships from the sixth to the eleventh, he continued in
office throughout the year; but in the rest, during only nine, six, four, or
three months, and in his second no more than a few hours. For having sat for a
short time in the morning, upon the calends of January [1st January], in his
curule chair, before the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, he abdicated the office,
and substituted another in his room. Nor did he enter upon them all at Rome, but
upon the fourth in Asia, the fifth in the Isle of Samos, and the eighth and
ninth at Tarragona.
XXVII. During ten years he acted as one of the triumvirate for settling the
commonwealth, in which office he for some time opposed his colleagues in their
design of a proscription; but after it was begun, he prosecuted it with more
determined rigour than either of them. For whilst they were often prevailed
upon, by the interest and intercession of friends, to shew mercy, he alone
strongly insisted that no one should be spared, and even proscribed Caius
Toranius, his guardian, who had been formerly the colleague of his father
Octavius in the edileship. Junius Saturnius adds this farther account of him:
that when, after the proscription was over, Marcus Lepidus made an apology in
the senate for their past proceedings, and gave them hopes of a more mild
administration for the future, because they had now sufficiently crushed their
enemies; he, on the other hand, declared that the only limit he had fixed to the
proscription was, that he should be free to act as he pleased. Afterwards,
however, repenting of his severity, he advanced T. Vinius Philopœmen to the
equestrian rank, for having concealed his patron at the time he was proscribed.
In this same office he incurred great odium upon many accounts. For as he was
one day making an harangue, observing among the soldiers Pinarius, a Roman
knight, admit some private citizens, and engaged in taking notes, he ordered him
to be stabbed before his eyes, as a busy-body and a spy upon him. He so
terrified with his menaces Tedius Afer, the consul elect, for having reflected
upon some action of his, that he threw himself from a great height, and died on
the spot. And when Quintus Gallius, the prætor, came to compliment him with a
double tablet under his cloak, suspecting that it was a sword he had concealed,
and yet not venturing to make a search, lest it should be found to be something
else, he caused him to be dragged from his tribunal by centurions and soldiers,
and tortured like a slave: and although he made no confession, ordered him to be
put to death, after he had, with his own hands, plucked out his eyes. His own
account of the matter, however, is, that Quintus Gallius sought a private
conference with him, for the purpose of assassinating him; that he therefore put
him in prison, but afterwards released him, and banished him the city; when he
perished either in a storm at sea, or by falling into the hands of robbers.
He accepted of the tribunitian power for life, but more than once chose a
colleague in that office for two lustra successively. He also had the
supervision of morality and observance of the laws, for life, but without the
title of censor; yet he thrice took a census of the people, the first and third
time with a colleague, but the second by himself.
XXVIII. He twice entertained thoughts of restoring the republic; first,
immediately after he had crushed Antony, remembering that he had often charged
him with being the obstacle to its restoration. The second time was in
consequence of a long illness, when he sent for the magistrates and the senate
to his own house, and delivered them a particular account of the state of the
empire. But reflecting at the same time that it would be both hazardous to
himself to return to the condition of a private person, and might be dangerous
to the public to have the government placed again under the control of the
people, he resolved to keep it in his own hands, whether with the better event
or intention, is hard to say. His good intentions he often affirmed in private
discourse, and also published an edict, in which it was declared in the
following terms: “May it be permitted me to have the happiness of establishing
the commonwealth on a safe and sound basis, and thus enjoy the reward of which I
am ambitious, that of being celebrated for moulding it into the form best
adapted to present circumstances; so that, on my leaving the world, I may carry
with me the hope that the foundations which I have laid for its future
government, will stand firm and stable.”
XXIX. The city, which was not built in a manner suitable to the grandeur of the
empire, and was liable to inundations of the Tiber, as well as to fires, was so
much improved under his administration, that he boasted, not without reason,
that he “found it of brick, but left it of marble.” He also rendered it secure
for the time to come against such disasters, as far as could be effected by
human foresight. A great number of public buildings were erected by him, the
most considerable of which were a forum, containing the temple of Mars the
Avenger, the temple of Apollo on the Palatine hill, and the temple of Jupiter
Tonans in the capitol. The reason of his building a new forum was the vast
increase in the population, and the number of causes to be tried in the courts,
for which, the two already existing not affording sufficient space, it was
thought necessary to have a third. It was therefore opened for public use before
the temple of Mars was completely finished; and a law was passed, that causes
should be tried, and judges chosen by lot, in that place. The temple of Mars was
built in fulfilment of a vow made during the war of Philippi, undertaken by him
to avenge his father’s murder. He ordained that the senate should always
assemble there when they met to deliberate respecting wars and triumphs; that
thence should be despatched all those who were sent into the provinces in the
command of armies; and that in it those who returned victorious from the wars,
should lodge the trophies of their triumphs. He erected the temple of Apollo in
that part of his house on the Palatine hill which had been struck with
lightning, and which, on that account, the soothsayers declared the God to have
chosen. He added porticos to it, with a library of Latin and Greek authors; and
when advanced in years, used frequently there to hold the senate, and examine
the rolls of the judges.
He dedicated the temple to Apollo Tonans, in acknowledgment of his escape from a
great danger in his Cantabrian expedition; when, as he was travelling in the
night, his litter was struck by lightning, which killed the slave who carried a
torch before him. He likewise constructed some public buildings in the name of
others; for instance, his grandsons, his wife, and sister. Thus he built the
portico and basilica of Lucius and Caius, and the porticos of Livia and Octavia,
and the theatre of Marcellus. He also often exhorted other persons of rank to
embellish the city by new buildings, or repairing and improving the old,
according to their means. In consequence of this recommendation, many were
raised; such as the temple of Hercules and the Muses, by Marcius Philippus; a
temple of Diana by Lucius Cornificius; the Court of Freedom by Asinius Pollio; a
temple of Saturn by Munatius Planeus; a theatre by Cornelius Balbus; an
amphitheatre by Statilius Taurus; and several other noble edifices by Marcus
Agrippa.
XXX. He divided the city into regions and districts, ordaining that the annual
magistrates should take by lot the charge of the former; and that the latter
should be superintended by wardens chosen out of the people of each
neighbourhood. He appointed a nightly watch to be on their guard against
accidents from fire; and, to prevent the frequent inundations, he widened and
cleansed the bed of the Tiber, which had in the course of years been almost
dammed up with rubbish, and the channel narrowed by the ruins of houses. To
render the approaches to the city more commodious, he took upon himself the
charge of repairing the Flaminian way as far as Ariminum, and distributed the
repairs of the other roads amongst several persons who had obtained the honour
of a triumph; to be defrayed out of the money arising from the spoils of war.
Temples decayed by time, or destroyed by fire, he either repaired or rebuilt;
and enriched them, as well as many others, with splendid offerings. On a single
occasion, he deposited in the cell of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, sixteen
thousand pounds of gold, with jewels and pearls to the amount of fifty millions
of sesterces.
XXXI. The office of Pontifex Maximus, of which he could not decently deprive
Lepidus as long as he lived, he assumed as soon as he was dead. He then caused
all prophetical books, both in Latin and Greek, the authors of which were either
unknown, or of no great authority, to be brought in; and the whole collection,
amounting to upwards of two thousand volumes, he committed to the flames,
preserving only the Sibylline oracles; but not even those without a strict
examination, to ascertain which were genuine. This being done, he deposited them
in two gilt coffers, under the pedestal of the statue of the Palatine Apollo. He
restored the calendar, which had been corrected by Julius Cæsar, but through
negligence was again fallen into confusion, to its former regularity; and upon
that occasion, called the month Sextilis, by his own name, August, rather than
September, in which he was born; because in it he had obtained his first
consulship, and all his most considerable victories. He increased the number,
dignity, and revenues of the priests, and especially those of the Vestal
Virgins. And when, upon the death of one of them, a new one was to be taken, and
many persons made interest that their daughters’ names might be omitted in the
lists for election, he replied with an oath, “If either of my own
grand-daughters were old enough, I would have proposed her.”
He likewise revived some old religious customs, which had become obsolete; as
the augury of public health, the office of high priest of Jupiter, the religious
solemnity of the Lupercalia, with the Secular, and Compitalian games. He
prohibited young boys from running in the Lupercalia; and in respect of the
Secular games, issued an order, that no young persons of either sex should
appear at any public diversions in the night-time, unless in the company of some
elderly relation. He ordered the household gods to be decked twice a year with
spring and summer flowers, in the Compitalian festival.
Next to the immortal gods, he paid the highest honours to the memory of those
generals who had raised the Roman state from its low origin to the highest pitch
of grandeur. He accordingly repaired or rebuilt the public edifices erected by
them; preserving the former inscriptions, and placing statues of them all, with
triumphal emblems, in both the porticos of his forum, issuing an edict on the
occasion, in which he made the following declaration: “My design in so doing is,
that the Roman people may require from me, and all succeeding princes, a
conformity to those illustrious examples.” He likewise removed the statue of
Pompey from the senate-house, in which Caius Cæsar had been killed, and placed
it under a marble arch, fronting the palace attached to Pompey’s theatre.
XXXII. He corrected many ill practices, which, to the detriment of the public,
had either survived the licentious habits of the late civil wars, or else
originated in the long peace. Bands of robbers shewed themselves openly,
completely armed, under colour of self-defence; and in different parts of the
country, travellers, freemen and slaves without distinction, were forcibly
carried off, and kept to work in the houses of correction. Several associations
were formed under the specious name of a new college, which banded together for
the perpetration of all kinds of villany. The banditti he quelled by
establishing posts of soldiers in suitable stations for the purpose; the houses
of correction were subjected to a strict superintendence; all associations,
those only excepted which were of ancient standing, and recognised by the laws,
were dissolved. He burnt all the notes of those who had been a long time in
arrear with the treasury, as being the principal source of vexatious suits and
prosecutions. Places in the city claimed by the public, where the right was
doubtful, he adjudged to the actual possessors. He struck out of the list of
criminals the names of those over whom prosecutions had been long impending,
where nothing further was intended by the informers than to gratify their own
malice, by seeing their enemies humiliated; laying it down as a rule, that if
any one chose to renew a prosecution, he should incur the risk of the punishment
which he sought to inflict. And that crimes might not escape punishment, nor
business be neglected by delay, he ordered the courts to sit during the thirty
days which were spent in celebrating honorary games. To the three classes of
judges then existing, he added a fourth, consisting of persons of inferior
order, who were called Ducenarii, and decided all litigations about trifling
sums. He chose judges from the age of thirty years and upwards; that is five
years younger than had been usual before. And a great many declining the office,
he was with much difficulty prevailed upon to allow each class of judges a
twelve-month’s vacation in turn; and the courts to be shut during the months of
November and December.
XXXIII. He was himself assiduous in his functions as a judge, and would
sometimes prolong his sittings even into the night: if he were indisposed, his
litter was placed before the tribunal, or he administered justice reclining on
his couch at home; displaying always not only the greatest attention, but
extreme lenity. To save a culprit, who evidently appeared guilty of parricide,
from the extreme penalty of being sewn up in a sack, because none were punished
in that manner but such as confessed the fact, he is said to have interrogated
him thus: “Surely you did not kill your father, did you?” And when, in a trial
of a cause about a forged will, all those who had signed it were liable to the
penalty of the Cornelian law, he ordered that his colleagues on the tribunal
should not only be furnished with the two tablets by which they decided, “guilty
or not guilty,” but with a third likewise, ignoring the offence of those who
should appear to have given their signatures through any deception or mistake.
All appeals in causes between inhabitants of Rome, he assigned every year to the
prætor of the city; and where provincials were concerned, to men of consular
rank, to one of whom the business of each province was referred.
XXXIV. Some laws he abrogated, and he made some new ones; such as the sumptuary
law, that relating to adultery and the violation of chastity, the law against
bribery in elections, and likewise that for the encouragement of marriage.
Having been more severe in his reform of this law than the rest, he found the
people utterly averse to submit to it, unless the penalties were abolished or
mitigated, besides allowing an interval of three years after a wife’s death, and
increasing the premiums on marriage. The equestrian order clamoured loudly, at a
spectacle in the theatre, for its total repeal; whereupon he sent for the
children of Germanicus, and shewed them partly sitting upon his own lap, and
partly on their father’s; intimating by his looks and gestures, that they ought
not to think it a grievance to follow the example of that young man. But finding
that the force of the law was eluded, by marrying girls under the age of
puberty, and by frequent change of wives, he limited the time for consummation
after espousals, and imposed restrictions on divorce.
XXXV. By two separate scrutinies he reduced to their former number and splendour
the senate, which had been swamped by a disorderly crowd; for they were now more
than a thousand and some of them very mean persons, who, after Cæsar’s death,
had been chosen by dint of interest and bribery, so that they had the nickname
of Orcini among the people. The first of these scrutinies was left to
themselves, each senator naming another; but the last was conducted by himself
and Agrippa. On this occasion he is believed to have taken his seat as he
presided, with a coat of mail under his tunic, and a sword by his side, and with
ten of the stoutest men of senatorial rank, who were his friends, standing round
his chair. Cordus Cremutius relates that no senator was suffered to approach
him, except singly, and after having his bosom searched [for secreted daggers].
Some he obliged to have the grace of declining the office; these he allowed to
retain the privileges of wearing the distinguishing dress, occupying the seats
at the solemn spectacles, and of feasting publicly, reserved to the senatorial
order. That those who were chosen and approved of, might perform their functions
under more solemn obligations, and with less inconvenience, he ordered that
every senator, before he took his seat in the house, should pay his devotions,
with an offering of frankincense and wine, at the altar of that God in whose
temple the senate then assembled, and that their stated meetings should be only
twice in the month, namely, on the calends and ides; and that in the months of
September and October, a certain number only, chosen by lot, such as the law
required to give validity to a decree, should be required to attend. For
himself, he resolved to choose every six months a new council, with whom he
might consult previously upon such affairs as he judged proper at any time to
lay before the full senate. He also took the votes of the senators upon any
subject of importance, not according to custom, nor in regular order, but as he
pleased; that every one might hold himself ready to give his opinion, rather
than a mere vote of assent.
XXXVI. He also made several other alterations in the management of public
affairs, among which were these following: that the acts of the senate should
not be published; that the magistrates should not be sent into the provinces
immediately after the expiration of their office; that the proconsuls should
have a certain sum assigned them out of the treasury for mules and tents, which
used before to be contracted for by the government with private persons; that
the management of the treasury should be transferred from the city-quæstors to
the prætors, or those who had already served in the latter office; and that the
decemviri should call together the court of One hundred, which had been formerly
summoned by those who had filled the office of quæstor.
XXXVII. To augment the number of persons employed in the administration of the
state, he devised several new offices; such as surveyors of the public
buildings, of the roads, the aqueducts, and the bed of the Tiber; for the
distribution of corn to the people; the præfecture of the city; a triumvirate
for the election of the senators; and another for inspecting the several troops
of the equestrian order, as often as it was necessary. He revived the office of
censor, which had been long disused, and increased the number of prætors. He
likewise required that whenever the consulship was conferred on him, he should
have two colleagues instead of one; but his proposal was rejected, all the
senators declaring by acclamation that he abated his high majesty quite enough
in not filling the office alone, and consenting to share it with another.
XXXVIII. He was unsparing in the reward of military merit, having granted to
above thirty generals the honour of the greater triumph; besides which, he took
care to have triumphal decorations voted by the senate for more than that
number. That the sons of senators might become early acquainted with the
administration of affairs, he permitted them, at the age when they took the garb
of manhood, to assume also the distinction of the senatorian robe, with its
broad border, and to be present at the debates in the senate-house. When they
entered the military service, he not only gave them the rank of military
tribunes in the legions, but likewise the command of the auxiliary horse. And
that all might have an opportunity of acquiring military experience, he commonly
joined two sons of senators in command of each troop of horse. He frequently
reviewed the troops of the equestrian order, reviving the ancient custom of a
cavalcade, which had been long laid aside. But he did not suffer any one to be
obliged by an accuser to dismount while he passed in review, as had formerly
been the practice. As for such as were infirm with age, or any way deformed, he
allowed them to send their horses before them, coming on foot to answer to their
names, when the muster roll was called over soon afterwards. He permitted those
who had attained the age of thirty-five years, and desired not to keep their
horse any longer, to have the privilege of giving it up.
XXXIX. With the assistance of ten senators, he obliged each of the Roman knights
to give an account of his life: in regard to those who fell under his
displeasure, some were punished; others had a mark of infamy set against their
names. The most part he only reprimanded, but not in the same terms. The mildest
mode of reproof was by delivering them tablets, the contents of which, confined
to themselves, they were to read on the spot. Some he disgraced for borrowing
money at low interest, and letting it out again upon usurious profit.
XL. In the election of tribunes of the people, if there was not a sufficient
number of senatorian candidates, he nominated others from the equestrian order;
granting them the liberty, after the expiration of their office, to continue in
whichsoever of the two orders they pleased. As most of the knights had been much
reduced in their estates by the civil wars, and therefore durst not sit to see
the public games in the theatre in the seats allotted to their order, for fear
of the penalty provided by the law in that case, he enacted, that none were
liable to it, who had themselves, or whose parents had ever, possessed a
knight’s estate. He took the census of the Roman people street by street: and
that the people might not be too often taken from their business to receive the
distribution of corn, it was his intention to deliver tickets three times a year
for four months respectively; but at their request, he continued the former
regulation, that they should receive their share monthly. He revived the former
law of elections, endeavouring, by various penalties, to suppress the practice
of bribery. Upon the day of election, he distributed to the freemen of the
Fabian and Scaptian tribes, in which he himself was enrolled, a thousand
sesterces each, that they might look for nothing from any of the candidates.
Considering it of extreme importance to preserve the Roman people pure, and
untainted with a mixture of foreign or servile blood, he not only bestowed the
freedom of the city with a sparing hand, but laid some restriction upon the
practice of manumitting slaves. When Tiberius interceded with him for the
freedom of Rome in behalf of a Greek client of his, he wrote to him for answer,
“I shall not grant it, unless he comes himself, and satisfies me that he has
just grounds for the application.” And when Livia begged the freedom of the city
for a tributary Gaul, he refused it, but offered to release him from payment of
taxes, saying, “I shall sooner suffer some loss in my exchequer, than that the
citizenship of Rome be rendered too common.” Not content with interposing many
obstacles to either the partial or complete emancipation of slaves, by quibbles
respecting the number, condition and difference of those who were to be
manumitted; he likewise enacted that none who had been put in chains or
tortured, should ever obtain the freedom of the city in any degree. He
endeavoured also to restore the old habit and dress of the Romans; and upon
seeing once, in an assembly of the people, a crowd in grey cloaks, he exclaimed
with indignation, “See there,
Romanos rerum dominos, gentemque togatem.”
Rome’s conquering sons, lords of the wide-spread globe
Stalk proudly in the toga’s graceful robe.
And he gave orders to the ediles not to permit, in future, any Roman to be
present in the forum or circus unless they took off their short coats, and wore
the toga.
XLI. He displayed his munificence to all ranks of the people on various
occasions. Moreover, upon his bringing the treasure belonging to the kings of
Egypt into the city, in his Alexandrian triumph, he made money so plentiful,
that interest fell, and the price of land rose considerably. And afterwards, as
often as large sums of money came into his possession by means of confiscations,
he would lend it free of interest, for a fixed term, to such as could give
security for the double of what was borrowed. The estate necessary to qualify a
senator, instead of eight hundred thousand sesterces, the former standard, he
ordered, for the future, to be twelve hundred thousand; and to those who had not
so much, he made good the deficiency. He often made donations to the people, but
generally of different sums; sometimes four hundred, sometimes three hundred, or
two hundred and fifty sesterces: upon which occasions, he extended his bounty
even to young boys, who before were not used to receive anything, until they
arrived at eleven years of age. In a scarcity of corn, he would frequently let
them have it at a very low price, or none at all; and doubled the number of the
money tickets.
XLII. But to show that he was a prince who regarded more the good of his people
than their applause, he reprimanded them very severely, upon their complaining
of the scarcity and dearness of wine. “My son-in law, Agrippa,” he said, “has
sufficiently provided for quenching your thirst, by the great plenty of water
with which he has supplied the town.” Upon their demanding a gift which he had
promised them, he said. “I am a man of my word.” But upon their importuning him
for one which he had not promised, he issued a proclamation ubpraiding them for
their scandalous impudence; at the same time telling them, “I shall now give you
nothing, whatever I may have intended to do.” With the same strict firmness,
when, upon a promise he had made of a donative, he found many slaves had been
emancipated and enrolled amongst the citizens, he declared that no one should
receive anything who was not included in the promise, and he gave the rest less
than he had promised them, in order that the amount he had set apart might hold
out. On one occasion, in a season of great scarcity, which it was difficult to
remedy, he ordered out of the city the troops of slaves brought for sale, the
gladiators belonging to the masters of defence, and all foreigners, excepting
physicians and the teachers of the liberal sciences. Part of the domestic slaves
were likewise ordered to be dismissed. When, at last, plenty was restored, he
writes thus: “I was much inclined to abolish for ever the practice of allowing
the people corn at the public expense, because they trust so much to it, that
they are too lazy to till their lands; but I did not persevere in my design, as
I felt sure that the practice would some time or other be revived by some one
ambitious of popular favour.” However, he so managed the affair ever afterwards,
that as much account was taken of husbandmen and traders, as of the idle
populace.
XLIII. In the number, variety, and magnificence of his public spectacles, he
surpassed all former example. Four-and-twenty times, he says, he treated the
people with games upon his own account, and three-and-twenty times for such
magistrates as were either absent, or not able to afford the expense. The
performances took place sometimes in the different streets of the city, and upon
several stages, by players in all languages. The same he did not only in the
forum and amphitheatre, but in the circus likewise, and in the septa: and
sometimes he exhibited only the hunting of wild beasts. He entertained the
people with wrestlers in the Campus Martius, where wooden seats were erected for
the purpose; and also with a naval fight, for which he excavated the ground near
the Tiber, where there is now the grove of the Cæsars. During these two
entertainments he stationed guards in the city, lest, by robbers taking
advantage of the small number of people left at home, it might be exposed to
depredations. In the circus he exhibited chariot and foot races, and combats
with wild beasts, in which the performers were often youths of the highest rank.
His favourite spectacle was the Trojan game, acted by a select number of boys,
in parties differing in age and station; thinking that it was a practice both
excellent in itself, and sanctioned by ancient usage, that the spirit of the
young nobles should be displayed in such exercises. Caius Nonius Asprenas, who
was lamed by a fall in this diversion, he presented with a gold collar, and
allowed him and his posterity to bear the surname of Torquati But soon
afterwards he gave up the exhibition of this game, in consequence of a severe
and bitter speech made in the senate by Asinius Pollio, the orator, in which he
complained bitterly of the misfortune of Aeserninus, his grandson, who likewise
broke his leg in the same diversion.
Sometimes he engaged Roman knights to act upon the stage, or to fight as
gladiators: but only before the practice was prohibited by a decree of the
senate. Thenceforth, the only exhibition he made of that kind, was that of a
young man named Lucius, of a good family, who was not quite two feet in height,
and weighed only seventeen pounds, but had a stentorian voice. In one of his
public spectacles, he brought the hostages of the Parthians, the first ever sent
to Rome from that nation, through the middle of the amphitheatre, and placed
them in the second tier of seats above him. He used likewise, at times when
there were no public entertainments, if any thing was brought to Rome which was
uncommon, and might gratify curiosity, to expose it to public view, in any place
whatever; as he did a rhinoceros in the Septa, a tiger upon a stage, and a snake
fifty cubits long in the Comitium. It happened in the Circensian games, which he
performed in consequence of a vow, that he was taken ill, and obliged to attend
the Thensæ, reclining on a litter. Another time, in the games celebrated for the
opening of the theatre of Marcellus, the joints of his curule chair happening to
give way, he fell on his back. And in the games exhibited by his grandsons, when
the people were in such consternation, by an alarm raised that the theatre was
falling, that all his efforts to re-assure them and keep them quiet, failed, he
moved from his place, and seated himself in that part of the theatre which was
thought to be exposed to most danger.
XLIV. He corrected the confusion and disorder with which the spectators took
their seats at the public games, after an affront which was offered to a senator
at Puteoli, for whom, in a crowded theatre, no one would make room. He therefore
procured a decree of the senate, that in all public spectacles of any sort, and
in any place whatever, the first tier of benches should be left empty for the
accommodation of senators. He would not even permit the ambassadors of free
nations, nor of those which were allies of Rome, to sit in the orchestra; having
found that some manumitted slaves had been sent under that character. He
separated the soldiery from the rest of the people, and assigned to married
plebeians their particular rows of seats. To the boys he assigned their own
benches, and to their tutors the seats which were nearest it; ordering that none
clothed in black should sit in the centre of the circle. Nor would he allow any
women to witness the combats of gladiators, except from the upper part of the
theatre, although they formerly used to take their places promiscuously with the
rest of the spectators. To the vestal virgins he granted seats in the theatre,
reserved for them only, opposite the prætor’s bench. He excluded, however, the
whole female sex from seeing the wrestlers: so that in the games which he
exhibited upon his accession to the office of high-priest, he deferred producing
a pair of combatants which the people called for, until the next morning; and
intimated by proclamation, “his pleasure that no woman should appear in the
theatre before five o’clock.”
XLV. He generally viewed the Circensian games himself, from the upper rooms of
the houses of his friends or freedmen; sometimes from the place appointed for
the statues of the gods, and sitting in company with his wife and children. He
occasionally absented himself from the spectacles for several hours, and
sometimes for whole days; but not without first making an apology, and
appointing substitutes to preside in his stead. When present, he never attended
to anything else either to avoid the reflections which he used to say were
commonly made upon his father, Cæsar, for perusing letters and memorials, and
making rescripts during the spectacles; or from the real pleasure he took in
attending those exhibitions; of which he made no secret, he often candidly
owning it. This he manifested frequently by presenting honorary crowns and
handsome rewards to the best performers, in the games exhibited by others; and
he never was present at any performance of the Greeks, without rewarding the
most deserving, according to their merit. He took particular pleasure in
witnessing pugilistic contests, especially those of the Latins, not only between
combatants who had been trained scientifically, whom he used often to match with
the Greek champions; but even between mobs of the lower classes fighting in
streets, and tilting at random, without any knowledge of the art. In short, he
honoured with his patronage all sorts of people who contributed in any way to
the success of the public entertainments. He not only maintained, but enlarged,
the privileges of the wrestlers. He prohibited combats of gladiators where no
quarter was given. He deprived the magistrates of the power of correcting the
stage-players, which by an ancient law was allowed them at all times, and in all
places; restricting their jurisdiction entirely to the time of performance and
misdemeanours in the theatres. He would, however, admit, of no abatement, and
exacted with the utmost rigour the greatest exertions of the wrestlers and
gladiators in their several encounters. He went so far in restraining the
licentiousness of stage-players, that upon discovering that Stephanio, a
performer of the highest class, had a married woman with her hair cropped, and
dressed in boy’s clothes, to wait upon him at table, he ordered him to be
whipped through all the three theatres, and then banished him. Hylas, an actor
of pantomimes, upon a complaint against him by the prætor, he commanded to be
scourged in the court of his own house, which, however, was open to the public.
And Pylades he not only banished from the city, but from Italy also, for
pointing with his finger at a spectator by whom he was hissed, and turning the
eyes of the audience upon him.
XLVI. Having thus regulated the city and its concerns, he augmented the
population of Italy by planting in it no less than twenty-eight colonies, and
greatly improved it by public works, and a beneficial application of the
revenues. In rights and privileges, he rendered it in a measure equal to the
city itself, by inventing a new kind of suffrage, which the principal officers
and magistrates of the colonies might take at home, and forward under seal to
the city, against the time of the elections. To increase the number of persons
of condition, and of children among the lower ranks, he granted the petitions of
all those who requested the honour of doing military service on horseback as
knights, provided their demands were seconded by the recommendation of the town
in which they lived; and when he visited the several districts of Italy, he
distributed a thousand sesterces a head to such of the lower class as presented
him with sons or daughters.
XLVII. The more important provinces, which could not with ease or safety be
entrusted to the government of annual magistrates, he reserved for his own
administration: the rest he distributed by lot amongst the proconsuls; but
sometimes he made exchanges, and frequently visited most of both kinds in
person. Some cities in alliance with Rome, but which by their great
licentiousness were hastening to ruin, he deprived of their independence.
Others, which were much in debt, he relieved, and rebuilt such as had been
destroyed by earthquakes. To those that could produce any instance of their
having deserved well of the Roman people, he presented the freedom of Latium, or
even that of the City. There is not, I believe, a province, except Africa and
Sardinia, which he did not visit. After forcing Sextus Pompeius to take refuge
in those provinces, he was indeed preparing to cross over from Sicily to them,
but was prevented by continual and violent storms, and afterwards there was no
occasion or call for such a voyage.
XLVIII. Kingdoms, of which he had made himself master by the right of conquest,
a few only excepted, he either restored to their former possessors, or conferred
upon aliens. Between kings in alliance with Rome, he encouraged most intimate
union; being always ready to promote or favour any proposal of marriage or
friendship amonst them; and, indeed, treated them all with the same
consideration, as if they were members and parts of the empire. To such of them
as were minors or lunatics he appointed guardians, until they arrived at age, or
recovered their senses; and the sons of many of them he brought up and educated
with his own.
XLIX. With respect to the army, he distributed the legions and auxiliary troops
throughout the several provinces. He stationed a fleet at Misenum, and another
at Ravenna, for the protection of the Upper and Lower Seas. A certain number of
the forces were selected, to occupy the posts in the city, and partly for his
own body-guard; but he dismissed the Spanish guard, which he retained about him
till the fall of Antony; and also the Germans, whom he had amongst his guards,
until the defeat of Varus. Yet he never permitted a greater force than three
cohorts in the city, and had no (prætorian) camps. The rest he quartered in the
neighbourhood of the nearest towns, in winter and summer camps. All the troops
throughout the empire he reduced to one fixed model with regard to their pay and
their pensions; determining these according to their rank in the army, the time
they had served, and their private means; so that after their discharge, they
might not be tempted by age or necessities to join the agitators for a
revolution. For the purpose of providing a fund always ready to meet their pay
and pensions, he instituted a military exchequer, and appropriated new taxes to
that object. In order to obtain the earliest intelligence of what was passing in
the provinces, he established posts, consisting at first of young men stationed
at moderate distances along the military roads, and afterwards of regular
couriers with fast vehicles; which appeared to him the most commodious, because
the persons who were the bearers of dispatches, written on the spot, might then
be questioned about the business, as occasion occurred.
L. In sealing letters-patent, rescripts, or epistles, he at first used the
figure of a sphinx, afterwards the head of Alexander the Great, and at last his
own, engraved by the hand of Dioscorides; which practice was retained by the
succeeding emperors. He was extremely precise in dating his letters, putting
down exactly the time of the day or night at which they were dispatched.
LI. Of his clemency and moderation there are abundant and signal instances. For,
not to enumerate how many and what persons of the adverse party he pardoned,
received into favour, and suffered to rise to the highest eminence in the state;
he thought it sufficient to punish Junius Novatus and Cassius Patavinus, who
were both plebeians, one of them with a fine, and the other with an easy
banishment; although the former had published, in the name of young Agrippa, a
very scurrilous letter against him, and the other declared openly, at an
entertainment where there was a great deal of company, “that he neither wanted
inclination nor courage to stab him.” In the trial of Aemilius Aelianus, of
Cordova, when, among other charges exhibited against him, it was particularly
insisted upon, that he used to calumniate Cæsar, he turned round to the accuser,
and said, with an air and tone of passion, “I wish you could make that appear; I
shall let Aelianus know that I have a tongue too, and shall speak sharper of him
than he ever did of me.” Nor did he, either then or afterwards, make any farther
inquiry into the affair. And when Tiberius, in a letter, complained of the
affront with great earnestness, he returned him an answer in the following
terms: “Do not, my dear Tiberius, give way to the ardour of youth in this
affair; nor be so indignant that any person should speak ill of me. It is
enough, for us, if we can prevent any one from really doing us mischief.”
LII. Although he knew that it had been customary to decree temples in honour of
the proconsuls, yet he would not permit them to be erected in any of the
provinces, unless in the joint names of himself and Rome. Within the limits of
the city, he positively refused any honour of that kind. He melted down all the
silver statues which had been erected to him, and converted the whole into
tripods, which he consecrated to the Palatine Apollo. And when the people
importuned him to accept the dictatorship, he bent down on one knee, with his
toga thrown over his shoulders, and his breast exposed to view, begging to be
excused.
LIII. He always abhorred the title of Lord, as ill-omened and offensive. And
when, in a play, performed at the theatre, at which he was present, these words
were introduced, “O just and gracious lord,” and the whole company, with joyful
acclamations, testified their approbation of them, as applied to him, he
instantly put a stop to their indecent flattery, by waving his hand, and
frowning sternly, and next day publicly declared his displeasure, in a
proclamation. He never afterwards would suffer himself to be addressed in that
manner, even by his own children or grand-children, either in jest or earnest
and forbad them the use of all such complimentary expressions to one another. He
rarely entered any city or town, or departed from it, except in the evening or
the night, to avoid giving any person the trouble of complimenting him. During
his consulships, he commonly walked the streets on foot; but at other times,
rode in a close carriage. He admitted to court even plebeians, in common with
people of the higher ranks; receiving the petitions of those who approached him
with so much affability, that he once jocosely rebuked a man, by telling him,
“You present your memorial with as much hesitation as if you were offering money
to an elephant.” On senate days, he used to pay his respects to the Conscript
Fathers only in the house, addressing them each by name as they sat, without any
prompter; and on his departure, he bade each of them farewell, while they
retained their seats. In the same manner, he maintained with many of them a
constant intercourse of mutual civilities, giving them his company upon
occasions of any particular festivity in their families; until he became
advanced in years, and was incommoded by the crowd at a wedding. Being informed
that Gallus Terrinius, a senator, with whom he had only a slight acquaintance,
had suddenly lost his sight, and under that privation had resolved to starve
himself to death, he paid him a visit, and by his consolatory admonitions
diverted him from his purpose.
LIV. On his speaking in the senate, he has been told by one of the members, “I
did not understand you,” and by another, “I would contradict you, could I do it
with safety.” And sometimes, upon his being so much offended at the heat with
which the debates were conducted in the senate, as to quit the house in anger,
some of the members have repeatedly exclaimed: “Surely, the senators ought to
have liberty of speech on matters of government.” Antistius Labeo, in the
election of a new senate, when each, as he was named, chose another, nominated
Marcus Lepidus, who had formerly been Augustus’s enemy, and was then in
banishment; and being asked by the latter, “Is there no other person more
deserving?” he replied, “Every man has his own opinion.” Nor was any one ever
molested for his freedom of speech, although it was carried to the extent of
insolence.
LV. Even when some infamous libels against him were dispersed in the
senate-house, he was neither disturbed, nor did he give himself much trouble to
refute them. He would not so much as order an enquiry to be made after the
authors; but only proposed, that, for the future, those who published libels or
lampoons, in a borrowed name, against any person, should be called to account.
LVI. Being provoked by some petulant jests, which were designed to render him
odious, he answered them by a proclamation; and yet he prevented the senate from
passing an act, to restrain the liberties which were taken with others in
people’s wills. Whenever he attended at the election of magistrates, he went
round the tribes, with the candidates of his nomination, and begged the votes of
the people in the usual manner. He likewise gave his own vote in his tribe, as
one of the people. He suffered himself to be summoned as a witness upon trials,
and not only to be questioned, but to be cross-examined, with the utmost
patience. In building his Forum, he restricted himself in the site, not
presuming to compel the owners of the neighbouring houses to give up their
property. He never recommended his sons to the people, without adding these
words, “If they deserve it.” And upon the audience rising on their entering the
theatre, while they were yet minors, and giving them applause in a standing
position, he made it a matter of serious complaint.
He was desirous that his friends should be great and powerful in the state, but
have no exclusive privileges, or be exempt from the laws which governed others.
When Asprenas Nonius, an intimate friend of his, was tried upon a charge of
administering poison at the instance of Cassius Severus, he consulted the senate
for their opinion what was his duty under the circumstances: “For,” said he, “I
am afraid, lest, if I should stand by him in the cause, I may be supposed to
screen a guilty man; and if I do not, to desert and prejudge a friend.” With the
unanimous concurrence, therefore, of the senate, he took his seat amongst his
advocates for several hours, but without giving him the benefit of speaking to
character, as was usual. He likewise appeared for his clients; as on behalf of
Scutarius, an old soldier of his, who brought an action for slander. He never
relieved any one from prosecution but in a single instance, in the case of a man
who had given information of the conspiracy of Muræna; and that he did only by
prevailing upon the accuser, in open court, to drop his prosecution.
LVII. How much he was beloved for his worthy conduct in all these respects, it
is easy to imagine. I say nothing of the decrees of the senate in his honour,
which may seem to have resulted from compulsion or deference. The Roman knights
voluntarily, and with one accord, always celebrated his birth for two days
together; and all ranks of the people, yearly, in performance of a vow they had
made, threw a piece of money into the Curtian lake, as an offering for his
welfare. They likewise, on the calends [first] of January, presented for his
acceptance new-year’s gifts in the capitol, though he was not present: with
which donations he purchased some costly images of the Gods, which he erected in
several streets of the city; as that of Apollo Sandaliarius, Jupiter Tragœdus,
and others. When his house on the Palatine hill was accidentally destroyed by
fire, the veteran soldiers, the judges, the tribes, and even the people,
individually, contributed, according to the ability of each, for rebuilding it;
but he would accept only of some small portion out of the several sums
collected, and refused to take from any one person more than a single denarius.
Upon his return home from any of the provinces, they attended him not only with
joyful acclamations, but with songs. It is also remarked, that as often as he
entered the city, the infliction of punishment was suspended for the time.
LVIII. The whole body of the people, upon a sudden impulse, and with unanimous
consent, offered him the title of Father of his Country. It was announced to him
first at Antium, by a deputation from the people, and upon his declining the
honour, they repeated their offer on his return to Rome, in a full theatre, when
they were crowned with laurel. The senate soon afterwards adopted the proposal,
not in the way of acclamation or decree, but by commissioning M. Messala, in an
unanimous vote, to compliment him with it in the following terms: “With hearty
wishes for the happiness and prosperity of yourself and your family, Cæsar
Augustus, (for we think we thus most effectually pray for the lasting welfare of
the state), the senate, in agreement with the Roman people, salute you by the
title of Father of your Country.” To this compliment Augustus replied, with
tears in his eyes, in these words (for I give them exactly as I have done those
of Messala): “Having now arrived at the summit of my wishes, O Conscript
Fathers, what else have I to beg of the Immortal Gods, but the continuance of
this your affection for me to the last moments of my life?”
LIX. To the physician Antonius Musa, who had cured him of a dangerous illness,
they erected a statue near that of Aesculapius, by a general subscription. Some
heads of families ordered in their wills, that their heirs should lead victims
to the capitol, with a tablet carried before them, and pay their vows, “Because
Augustus still survived.” Some Italian cities appointed the day upon which he
first visited them, to be thenceforth the beginning of their year. And most of
the provinces, besides erecting temples and altars, instituted games, to be
celebrated to his honour, in most towns, every five years.
LX. The kings, his friends and allies, built cities in their respective
kingdoms, to which they gave the name of Cæsarea; and all with one consent
resolved to finish, at their common expense, the temple of Jupiter Olympius, at
Athens, which had been begun long before, and consecrate it to his Genius. They
frequently also left their kingdoms, laid aside the badges of royalty, and
assuming the toga, attended and paid their respects to him daily, in the manner
of clients to their patrons; not only at Rome, but when he was travelling
through the provinces.
LXI. Having thus given an account of the manner in which he filled his public
offices both civil and military, and his conduct in the government of the
empire, both in peace and war; I shall now describe his private and domestic
life, his habits at home and among his friends and dependents, and the fortune
attending him in those scenes of retirement, from his youth to the day of his
death. He lost his mother in his first consulship, and his sister Octavia, when
he was in the fifty-fourth year of his age. He behaved towards them both with
the utmost kindness whilst living, and after their decease paid the highest
honours to their memory.
LXII. He was contracted when very young to the daughter of Publius Servilius
Isauricus; but upon his reconciliation with Antony after their first rupture,
the armies on both sides insisting on a family alliance between them, he married
Antony’s step-daughter Claudia, the daughter of Fulvia by Publius Claudius,
although at that time she was scarcely marriageable; and upon a difference
arising with his mother-in-law Fulvia, he divorced her untouched, and a pure
virgin. Soon afterwards he took to wife Scribonia, who had before been twice
married to men of consular rank, and was a mother by one of them. With her
likewise he parted, being quite tired out, as he himself writes, with the
perverseness of her temper; and immediately took Livia Drusilla, though then
pregnant, from her husband Tiberius Nero; and she had never any rival in his
love and esteem.
LXIII. By Scribonia he had a daughter named Julia, but no children by Livia,
although extremely desirous of issue. She, indeed, conceived once, but
miscarried. He gave his daughter Julia in the first instance to Marcellus, his
sister’s son, who had just completed his minority; and, after his death, to
Marcus Agrippa, having prevailed with his sister to yield her son-in-law to his
wishes; for at that time Agrippa was married to one of the Marcellas, and had
children by her. Agrippa dying also, he for a long time thought of several
matches for Julia in even the equestrian order, and at last resolved upon
selecting Tiberius for his step-son; and he obliged him to part with his wife at
that time pregnant, and who had already brought him a child. Mark Antony writes,
“That he first contracted Julia to his son, and afterwards to Cotiso, king of
the Getæ, demanding at the same time the king’s daughter in marriage for
himself.”
LXIV. He had three grandsons by Agrippa and Julia, namely, Caius, Lucius, and
Agrippa; and two grand-daughters, Julia and Agrippina. Julia he married to
Lucius Paulus, the censor’s son, and Agrippina to Germanicus, his sister’s
grandson. Caius and Lucius he adopted at home, by the ceremony of purchase from
their father, advanced them, while yet very young, to offices in the state, and
when they were consuls-elect, sent them to visit the provinces and armies. In
bringing up his daughter and grand-daughters, he accustomed them to domestic
employments, and even spinning, and obliged them to speak and act every thing
openly before the family, that it might be put down in the diary. He so strictly
prohibited them from all converse with strangers, that he once wrote a letter to
Lucius Vinicius, a handsome young man of a good family, in which he told him,
“You have not behaved very modestly, in making a visit to my daughter at Baiæ.”
He usually instructed his grandsons himself in reading, swimming, and other
rudiments of knowledge; and he laboured nothing more than to perfect them in the
imitation of his hand-writing. He never supped but he had them sitting at the
foot of his couch; nor ever travelled but with them in a chariot before him, or
riding beside him.
LXV. But in the midst of all his joy and hopes in his numerous and
well-regulated family, his fortune failed him. The two Julias, his daughter and
grand-daughter, abandoned themselves to such courses of lewdness and debauchery,
that he banished them both. Caius and Lucius he lost within the space of
eighteen months; the former dying in Lycia, and the latter at Marscilles. His
third grandson Agrippa, with his step-son Tiberius, he adopted in the forum, by
a law passed for the purpose by the sections; but he soon afterwards discarded
Agrippa for his coarse and unruly temper, and confined him at Surrentum. He bore
the death of his relations with more patience than he did their disgrace; for he
was not overwhelmed by the loss of Caius and Lucius; but in the case of his
daughter, he stated the facts to the senate in a message read to them by the
quæstor, not having the heart to be present himself; indeed, he was so much
ashamed of her infamous conduct, that for some time he avoided all company, and
had thoughts of putting her to death. It is certain that when one Phœbe, a
freed-woman and confidant of hers, hanged herself about the same time, he said,
“I had rather be the father of Phœbe than of Julia.” In her banishment he would
not allow her the use of wine, nor any luxury in dress; nor would he suffer her
to be waited upon by any male servant, either freeman or slave, without his
permission, and having received an exact account of his age, stature,
complexion, and what marks or scars he had about him. At the end of five years
he removed her from the island [where she was confined] to the continent, and
treated her with less severity, but could never be prevailed upon to recall her.
When the Roman people interposed on her behalf several times with much
importunity, all the reply he gave was: “I wish you had all such daughters and
wives as she is.” He likewise forbad a child, of which his grand-daughter Julia
was delivered after sentence had passed against her, to be either owned as a
relation, or brought up. Agrippa, who was equally intractable, and whose folly
increased every day, he transported to an island, and placed a guard of soldiers
about him; procuring at the same time an act of the senate for his confinement
there during life. Upon any mention of him and the two Julias, he would say,
with a heavy sigh,
“Αιϑ’ ὄϕελον ἄγαμός τ’ἔμεναι, ἄγονος τ’ ἀπολεϑαι.
Would I were wifeless, or had childless died!
nor did he usually call them by any other name than that of his “three
imposthumes or cancers.”
LXVI. He was cautious in forming friendships, but clung to them with great
constancy; not only rewarding the virtues and merits of his friends according to
their deserts, but bearing likewise with their faults and vices, provided that
they were of a venial kind. For amongst all his friends, we scarcely find any
who fell into disgrace with him, except Salvidienus Rufus, whom he raised to the
consulship, and Cornelius Gallus, whom he made prefect of Egypt; both of them
men of the lowest extraction. One of these, being engaged in plotting a
rebellion, he delivered over to the senate, for condemnation; and the other, on
account of his ungrateful and malicious temper, he forbad his house, and his
living in any of the provinces When, however, Gallus, being denounced by his
accusers, and sentenced by the senate, was driven to the desperate extremity of
laying violent hands upon himself, he commended, indeed, the attachment to his
person of those who manifested so much indignation, but he shed tears, and
lamented his unhappy condition, “That I alone,” said he, “cannot be allowed to
resent the misconduct of my friends in such a way only as I would wish.” The
rest of his friends of all orders flourished during their whole lives, both in
power and wealth, in the highest ranks of their several orders, notwithstanding
some occasional lapses. For, to say nothing of others, he sometimes complained
that Agrippa was hasty, and Mecænas a tattler; the former having thrown up all
his employments and retired to Mitylene, on suspicion of some slight coolness,
and from jealousy that Marcellus received greater marks of favour; and the
latter having confidentially imparsed to his wife Terentia the discovery of
Muræna’s conspiracy.
He likewise expected from his friends, at their deaths as well as during their
lives, some proofs of their reciprocal attachment. For though he was far from
coveting their property, and indeed would never accept of any legacy left him by
a stranger, yet he pondered in a melancholy mood over their last words; not
being able to conceal his chagrin, if in their wills they made but a slight, or
no very honourable mention of him, nor his joy, on the other hand, if they
expressed a grateful sense of his favours, and a hearty affection for him. And
whatever legacies or shares of their property were left him by such as were
parents, he used to restore to their children, either immediately, or if they
were under age, upon the day of their assuming the manly dress, or of their
marriage; with interest.
LXVII. As a patron and master, his behaviour in general was mild and
conciliating; but when occasion required it, he could be severe. He advanced
many of his freedmen to posts of honour and great importance, as Licinus,
Enceladus, and others; and when his slave, Cosmus, had reflected bitterly upon
him, he resented the injury no further than by putting him in fetters. When his
steward, Diomedes, left him to the mercy of a wild boar, which suddenly attacked
them while they were walking together, he considered it rather a cowardice than
a breach of duty; and turned an occurrence of no small hazard into a jest,
because there was no knavery in his steward’s conduct. He put to death Proculus,
one of his most favourite freedmen, for maintaining a criminal commerce with
other men’s wives. He broke the legs of his secretary, Thallus, for taking a
bribe of five hundred denarii to discover the contents of one of his letters.
And the tutor and other attendants of his son Caius, having taken advantage of
his sickness and death, to give loose to their insolence and rapacity in the
province he governed, he caused heavy weights to be tied about their necks, and
had them thrown into a river.
LXVIII. In his early youth various aspersions of an infamous character were
heaped upon him. Sextus Pompey reproached him with being an effeminate fellow;
and M. Antony, with earning his adoption from his uncle by prostitution. Lucius
Antony, likewise Mark’s brother, charges him with pollution by Cæsar; and that,
for a gratification of three hundred thousand sesterces, he had submitted to
Aulus Hirtius in the same way, in Spain; adding, that he used to singe his legs
with burnt nutshells, to make the hair become softer. Nay, the whole concourse
of the people, at some public diversions in the theatre, when the following
sentence was recited, alluding to the Gallic priest of the mother of the gods,
beating a drum,
Videsne ut cinædus orbem digito temperet?
See with his orb the wanton’s finger play!
applied the passage to him, with great applause.
LXIX. That he was guilty of various acts of adultery, is not denied even by his
friends; but they allege in excuse for it, that he engaged in those intrigues
not from lewdness, but from policy, in order to discover more easily the designs
of his enemies, through their wives. Mark Antony, besides the precipitate
marriage of Livia, charges him with taking the wife of a man of consular rank
from table, in the presence of her husband, into a bed-chamber, and bringing her
again to the entertainment, with her ears very red, and her hair in great
disorder: that he had divorced Scribonia, for resenting too freely the excessive
influence which one of his mistresses had gained over him: that his friends were
employed to pimp for him, and accordingly obliged both matrons and ripe virgins
to strip, for a complete examination of their persons, in the same manner as if
Thoranius, the dealer in slaves, had them under sale. And before they came to an
open rupture, he writes to him in a familiar manner, thus: “Why are you changed
towards me? Because I lie with a queen? She is my wife. Is this a new thing with
me, or have I not done so for these nine years? And do you take freedoms with
Drusilla only? May health and happiness so attend you, as when you read this
letter, you are not in dalliance with Tertulla, Terentilla, Rufilla, or Salvia
Titiscenia, or all of them. What matters it to you where, or upon whom, you
spend your manly vigour?”
LXX. A private entertainment which he gave, commonly called the Supper of the
Twelve Gods, and at which the guests were dressed in the habit of gods and
goddesses, while he personated Apollo himself, afforded subject of much
conversation, and was imputed to him not only by Antony in his letters, who
likewise names all the parties concerned, but in the following well-known
anonymous verses:—
Cum primum istorum conduxit mensa choragum,
Sexque deos vidit Mallia, sexque deas:
Impia dum Phœbi Cæsar mendacia ludit,
Dum nova divorum cœnat adulteria:
Omnia se a terris tunc numina declinârunt:
Fugit et auratos Jupiter ipse thronos.
When Mallia late beheld, in mingled train,
Twelve mortals ape twelve deities in vain;
Cæsar assumed what was Apollo’s due,
And wine and lust inflamed the motley crew.
At the foul sight the gods avert their eyes,
And from his throne great Jove indignant flies.
What rendered this supper more obnoxious to public censure, was, that it
happened at a time when there was a great scarcity, and almost a famine, in the
city. The day after, there was a cry current among the people, “that the gods
had eaten up all the corn; and that Cæsar was indeed Apollo, but Apollo the
Tormentor;” under which title that god was worshipped in some quarter of the
city. He was likewise charged with being excessively fond of fine furniture, and
Corinthian vessels, as well as with being addicted to gaming. For, during the
time of the proscription, the following line was written upon his statue:—
Pater argentarius, ego Corinthiarius;
My father was a silversmith, my dealings are in brass;
because it was believed, that he had put some persons upon the list of the
proscribed, only to obtain the Corinthian vessels in their possession. And
afterwards, in the Sicilian war, the following epigram was published:—
Postquam bis classe victus naves perdidit,
Aliquando ut vincat, ludit assidue aleam.
Twice having lost a fleet in luckless fight,
To win at last, he games both day and night.
LXXI. With respect to the charge or imputation of loathsome impurity
before-mentioned, he very easily refuted it by the chastity of his life, at the
very time when it was made, as well as ever afterwards. His conduct likewise
gave the lie to that of luxurious extravagance in his furniture, when, upon the
taking of Alexandria, he reserved for himself nothing of the royal treasures but
a porcelain cup, and soon afterwards melted down all the vessels of gold, even
such as were intended for common use. But his amorous propensities never left
him, and, as he grew older, as is reported, he was in the habit of debauching
young girls, who were procured for him, from all quarters, even by his own wife.
To the observations on his gaming, he paid not the smallest regard; but played
in public, but purely for his diversion, even when he was advanced in years; and
not only in the month of December, but at other times, and upon all days,
whether festivals or not. This evidently appears from a letter under his own
hand, in which he says, “I supped, my dear Tiberius, with the same company. We
had, besides, Vinicius, and Silvius the father. We gamed at supper like old
fellows, both yesterday and today. And as any one threw upon the tali aces or
sixes, he put down for every talus a denarius; all which was gained by him who
threw a Venus” In another letter, he says: “We had, my dear Tiberius, a pleasant
time of it during the festival of Minerva: for we played every day, and kept the
gaming-board warm. Your brother uttered many exclamations at a desperate run of
ill-fortune; but recovering by degrees, and unexpectedly, he in the end lost not
much. I lost twenty thousand sesterces for my part; but then I was profusely
generous in my play, as I commonly am; for had I insisted upon the stakes which
I declined, or kept what I gave away, I should have won about fifty thousand.
But this I like better: for it will raise my character for generosity to the
skies.” In a letter to his daughter, he writes thus: “I have sent you two
hundred and fifty denarii, which I gave to every one of my guests; in case they
were inclined at supper to divert themselves with the Tali, or at the game of
Even-or-Odd.”
LXXII. In other matters, it appears that he was moderate in his habits, and free
from suspicion of any kind of vice. He lived at first near the Roman Forum,
above the Ring-maker’s Stairs, in a house which had once been occupied by Calvus
the orator. He afterwards moved to the Palatine Hill, where he resided in a
small house belonging to Hortensius, no way remarkable either for size or
ornament; the piazzas being but small, the pillars of Alban stone, and the rooms
without any thing of marble, or fine paving. He continued to use the same
bed-chamber, both winter and summer, during forty years: for though he was
sensible that the city did not agree with his health in the winter, he
nevertheless resided constantly in it during that season. If at any time he
wished to be perfectly retired, and secure from interruption, he shut himself up
in an apartment at the top of his house, which he called his Syracuse or
Τεχνόφυον, or he went to some villa belonging to his freedmen near the city. But
when he was indisposed, he commonly took up his residence in the house of
Mecænas. Of all the places of retirement from the city, he chiefly frequented
those upon the sea-coast, and the islands of Campania, or the towns nearest the
city, such as Lanuvium, Præneste, and Tibur, where he often used to sit for the
administration of justice, in the porticos of the temple of Hercules. He had a
particular aversion to large and sumptuous palaces; and some which had been
raised at a vast expense by his grand-daughter, Julia, he levelled to the
ground. Those of his own, which were far from being spacious, he adorned, not so
much with statues and pictures, as with walks and groves, and things which were
curious either for their antiquity or rarity; such as, at Capri, the huge limbs
of sea-monsters and wild beasts, which some affect to call the bones of giants;
and also the arms of ancient heroes.
LXXIII. His frugality in the furniture of his house appears even at this day,
from some beds and tables still remaining, most of which are scarcely elegant
enough for a private family. It is reported that he never lay upon a bed, but
such as was low, and meanly furnished. He seldom wore any garment but what was
made by the hands of his wife, sister, daughter, and grand-daughters. His togas
were neither scanty nor full; and the clavus was neither remarkably broad or
narrow. His shoes were a little higher than common, to make him appear taller
than he was. He had always clothes and shoes, fit to appear in public, ready in
his bed-chamber for any sudden occasion.
LXXIV. At his table, which was always plentiful and elegant, he constantly
entertained company; but was very scrupulous in the choice of them, both as to
rank and character. Valerius Messala informs us, that he never admitted any
freedman to his table, except Menas, when rewarded with the privilege of
citizenship, for betraying Pompey’s fleet. He writes, himself, that he invited
to his table a person in whose villa he lodged, and who had formerly been
employed by him as a spy. He often came late to table, and withdrew early; so
that the company began supper before his arrival, and continued at table after
his departure. His entertainments consisted of three entries, or at most of only
six. But if his fare was moderate, his courtesy was extreme. For those who were
silent, or talked in whispers, he encouraged to join in the general
conversation; and introduced buffoons and stage players, or even low performers
from the circus, and very often itinerant humourists, to enliven the company.
LXXV. Festivals and holidays he usually celebrated very expensively, but
sometimes only with merriment. In the Saturnalia, or at any other time when the
fancy took him, he distributed to his company clothes, gold, and silver;
sometimes coins of all sorts, even of the ancient kings of Rome and of foreign
nations; sometimes nothing but towels, sponges, rakes, and tweezers, and other
things of that kind, with tickets on them, which were enigmatical, and had a
double meaning. He used likewise to sell by lot among his guests articles of
very unequal value, and pictures with their fronts reversed; and so, by the
unknown quality of the lot, disappoint or gratify the expectation of the
purchasers. This sort of traffic went round the whole company, every one being
obliged to buy something, and to run the chance of loss or gain with the rest.
LXXVI. He ate sparingly (for I must not omit even this), and commonly used a
plain diet. He was particularly fond of coarse bread, small fishes, new cheese
made of cow’s milk, and green figs of the sort which bear fruit twice a year. He
did not wait for supper, but took food at any time, and in any place, when he
had an appetite. The following passages relative to this subject, I have
transcribed from his letters. “I ate a little bread and some small dates, in my
carriage.” Again. “In returning home from the palace in my litter, I ate an
ounce of bread, and a few raisins.” Again. “No Jew, my dear Tiberius, ever keeps
such strict fast upon the Sabbath, as I have to-day; for while in the bath, and
after the first hour of the night, I only ate two biscuits, before I began to be
rubbed with oil.” From this great indifference about his diet, he sometimes
supped by himself, before his company began, or after they had finished, and
would not touch a morsel at table with his guests.
LXXVII. He was by nature extremely sparing in the use of wine. Cornelius Nepos
says, that he used to drink only three times at supper in the camp at Modena;
and when he indulged himself the most, he never exceeded a pint; or if he did,
his stomach rejected it. Of all wines, he gave the preference to the Rhætian,
but scarcely even drank any in the day-time. Instead of drinking, he used to
take a piece of bread dipped in cold water, or a slice of cucumber, or some
leaves of lettuce, or a green, sharp, juicy apple.
LXXVIII. After a slight repast at noon, he used to seek repose, dressed as he
was, and with his shoes on, his feet covered, and his hand held before his eyes.
After supper he commonly withdrew to his study, a small closet, where he sat
late, until he had put down in his diary all or most of the remaining
transactions of the day, which he had not before registered. He would then go to
bed, but never slept above seven hours at most, and that not without
interruption; for he would wake three or four times during that time. If he
could not again fall asleep, as sometimes happened, he called for some one to
read or tell stories to him, until he became drowsy, and then his sleep was
usually protracted till after day-break. He never liked to lie awake in the
dark, without somebody to sit by him. Very early rising was apt to disagree with
him. On which account, if he was obliged to rise betimes, for any civil or
religious functions, in order to guard as much as possible against the
inconvenience resulting from it, he used to lodge in some apartment near the
spot, belonging to any of his attendants. If at any time a fit of drowsiness
seized him in passing along the streets, his litter was set down while he
snatched a few moments’ sleep.
LXXIX. In person he was handsome and graceful, through every period of his life.
But he was negligent in his dress; and so careless about dressing his hair, that
he usually had it done in great haste, by several barbers at a time. His beard
he sometimes clipped, and sometimes shaved; and either read or wrote during the
operation. His countenance, either when discoursing or silent, was so calm and
serene, that a Gaul of the first rank declared amongst his friends, that he was
so softened by it, as to be restrained from throwing him down a precipice, in
his passage over the Alps, when he had been admitted to approach him, under
pretence of conferring with him. His eyes were bright and piercing; and he was
willing it should be thought that there was something of a divine vigour in
them. He was likewise not a little pleased to see people, upon his looking
stedfastly at them, lower their countenances, as if the sun shone in their eyes.
But in his old age, he saw very imperfectly with his left eye. His teeth were
thin set, small and scaly, his hair a little curled, and inclining to a yellow
colour. His eye-brows met; his ears were small, and he had an aquiline nose. His
complexion was betwixt brown and fair; his stature but low; though Julius
Marathus, his freedman, says he was five feet and nine inches in height. This,
however, was so much concealed by the just proportion of his limbs, that it was
only perceivable upon comparison with some taller person standing by him.
LXXX. He is said to have been born with many spots upon his breast and belly,
answering to the figure, order, and number of the stars in the constellation of
the Bear. He had besides several callosities resembling scars, occasioned by an
itching in his body, and the constant and violent use of the strigil in being
rubbed. He had a weakness in his left hip, thigh, and leg, insomuch that he
often halted on that side; but he received much benefit from the use of sand and
reeds. He likewise sometimes found the fore-finger of his right hand so weak,
that when it was benumbed and contracted with cold, to use it in writing, he was
obliged to have recourse to a circular piece of horn. He had occasionally a
complaint in the bladder; but upon voiding some stones in his urine, he was
relieved from that pain.
LXXXI. During the whole course of his life, he suffered, at times, dangerous
fits of sickness, especially after the conquest of Cantabria; when his liver
being injured by a defluxion upon it, he was reduced to such a condition, that
he was obliged to undergo a desperate and doubtful method of cure: for warm
applications having no effect, Antonius Musa directed the use of those which
were cold. He was likewise subject to fits of sickness at stated times every
year; for about his birth-day he was commonly a little indisposed. In the
beginning of spring, he was attacked with an inflation of the midriff: and when
the wind was southerly, with a cold in his head. By all these complaints, his
constitution was so shattered, that he could not easily bear either heat or
cold.
LXXXII. In winter, he was protected against the inclemency of the weather by a
thick toga, four tunics, a shirt, a flannel stomacher, and swathings upon his
legs and thighs. In summer, he lay with the doors of his bedchamber open, and
frequently in a piazza, refreshed by a bubbling fountain, and a person standing
by to fan him. He could not bear even the winter’s sun; and at home, never
walked in the open air without a broad-brimmed hat on his head. He usually
travelled in a litter, and by night; and so slow, that he was two days in going
to Præneste or Tibur. And if he could go to any place by sea, he preferred that
mode of travelling. He carefully nourished his health against his many
infirmities, avoiding chiefly the free use of the bath; but he was often rubbed
with oil, and sweated in a stove; after which he was washed with tepid water,
warmed either by a fire, or by being exposed to the heat of the sun. When, upon
account of his nerves, he was obliged to have recourse to sea-water, or the
waters of Albula, he was contented with sitting over a wooden tub, which he
called by a Spanish name Dureta, and plunging his hands and feet in the water by
turns
LXXXIII. As soon as the civil wars were ended, he gave up riding and other
military exercises in the Campus Martius, and took to playing at ball, or
foot-ball; but soon afterwards used no other exercise than that of going abroad
in his litter, or walking. Towards the end of his walk, he would run leaping,
wrapped up in a short cloak or cape. For amusement he would sometimes angle, or
play with dice, pebbles, or nuts, with little boys, collected from various
countries, and particularly Moors and Syrians, for their beauty or amusing talk.
But dwarfs, and such as were in any way deformed, he held in abhorrence, as
lusus naturæ (nature’s abortions), and of evil omen.
LXXXIV. From early youth he devoted himself with great diligence and application
to the study of eloquence, and the other liberal arts. In the war of Modena,
notwithstanding the weighty affairs in which he was engaged, he is said to have
read, written, and declaimed every day. He never addressed the senate, the
people, or the army, but in a premeditated speech, though he did not want the
talent of speaking extempore on the spur of the occasion. And lest his memory
should fail him, as well as to prevent the loss of time in getting up his
speeches, it was his general practice to recite them. In his intercourse with
individuals, and even with his wife Livia, upon subjects of importance he wrote
on his tablets all he wished to express, lest, if he spoke extempore, he should
say more or less than was proper. He delivered himself in a sweet and peculiar
tone, in which he was diligently instructed by a master of elocution. But when
he had a cold, he sometimes employed a herald to deliver his speeches to the
people.
LXXXV. He composed many tracts in prose on various subjects, some of which he
read occasionally in the circle of his friends, as to an auditory. Among these
was his “Rescript to Brutus respecting Cato” Most of the pages he read himself,
although he was advanced in years, but becoming fatigued, he gave the rest to
Tiberius to finish. He likewise read over to his friends his “Exhortations to
Philosophy,” and the “History of his own Life,” which he continued in thirteen
books, as far as the Cantabrian war, but no farther. He likewise made some
attempts at poetry. There is extant one book written by him in hexameter verse,
of which both the subject and title is “Sicily.” There is also a book of
Epigrams, no larger than the last, which he composed almost entirely while he
was in the bath. These are all his poetical compositions: for though he begun a
tragedy with great zest, becoming dissatisfied with the style, he obliterated
the whole; and his friends saying to him, “What is your Ajax doing?” he an
swered, “My Ajax has met with a sponge. ”
LXXXVI. He cultivated a style which was neat and chaste, avoiding frivolous or
harsh language, as well as obsolete words, which he calls disgusting. His chief
object was to deliver his thoughts with all possible perspicuity. To attain this
end, and that he might nowhere perplex, or retard the reader or hearer, he made
no scruple to add prepositions to his verbs, or to repeat the same conjunction
several times; which, when omitted, occasion some little obscurity, but give a
grace to the style. Those who used affected language, or adopted obsolete words,
he despised, as equally faulty, though in different ways. He sometimes indulged
himself in jesting, particularly with his friend Mecænas, whom he rallied upon
all occasions for his fine phrases, and bantered by imitating his way of
talking. Nor did he spare Tiberius, who was fond of obsolete and far-fetched
expressions. He charges Mark Antony with insanity, writing rather to make men
stare, than to be understood; and by way of sarcasm upon his depraved and fickle
taste in the choice of words, he writes to him thus: “And are you yet in doubt,
whether Cimber Annius or Veranius Flaccus be more proper for your imitation?
Whether you will adopt words which Sallustius Crispus has borrowed from the ‘Origines’
of Cato? Or do you think that the verbose empty bombast of Asiatic orators is
fit to be transfused into our language?” And in a letter where he commends the
talent of his grand-daughter, Agrippina, he says, “But you must be particularly
careful, both in writing and speaking, to avoid affectation.”
LXXXVII. In ordinary conversation, he made use of several peculiar expressions,
as appears from letters in his own hand writing; in which, now and then, when he
means to intimate that some persons would never pay their debts, he says, “They
will pay at the Greek Calends.” And when he advised patience in the present
posture of affairs, he would say, “Let us be content with our Cato.” To describe
anything in haste, he said, “It was sooner done than asparagus is cooked.” He
constantly puts baceolus for stultus, pullejaceus for pullus, vacerrosus for
cerritus, vapide se habere for male, and betizare for languere, which is
commonly called lachanizare. Likewise simus for sumus, domos for domus in the
genitive singular. With respect to the last two peculiarities, lest any person
should imagine that they were only slips of his pen, and not customary with him,
he never varies. I have likewise remarked this singularity in his hand-writing;
he never divides his words, so as to carry the letters which cannot be inserted
at the end of a line to the next, but puts them below the other, enclosed by a
bracket.
LXXXVIII. He did not adhere strictly to orthography as laid down by the
grammarians, but seems to have been of the opinion of those who think, that we
ought to write as we speak; for as to his changing and omitting not only letters
but whole syllables, it is a vulgar mistake. Nor should I have taken notice of
it, but that it appears strange to me, that any person should have told us, that
he sent a successor to a consular lieutenant of a province, as an ignorant,
illiterate fellow, upon his observing that he had written ixi for ipsi. When he
had occasion to write in cypher, he put b for a, c for b, and so forth; and
instead of z, aa.
LXXXIX. He was no less fond of the Greek literature, in which he made
considerable proficiency; having had Apollodorus of Pergamus, for his master in
rhetoric; whom, though much advanced in years, he took with him from The City,
when he was himself very young, to Apollonia. Afterwards, being instructed in
philology by Sephærus, he received into his family Areus the philosopher, and
his sons Dionysius and Nicanor; but he never could speak the Greek tongue
readily, nor ever ventured to compose in it. For if there was occasion for him
to deliver his sentiments in that language, he always expressed what he had to
say in Latin, and gave it another to translate. He was evidently not
unacquainted with the poetry of the Greeks, and had a great taste for the
ancient comedy, which he often brought upon the stage, in his public spectacles.
In reading the Greek and Latin authors, he paid particular attention to precepts
and examples which might be useful in public or private life. Those he used to
extract verbatim, and gave to his domestics, or send to the commanders of the
armies, the governors of the provinces, or the magistrates of the city, when any
of them seemed to stand in need of admonition. He likewise read whole books to
the senate, and frequently made them known to the people by his edicts; such as
the orations of Quintus Metellus “for the Encouragement of Marriage,” and those
of Rutilius “On the Style of Building;” to shew the people that he was not the
first who had promoted those objects, but that the ancients likewise had thought
them worthy their attention. He patronised the men of genius of that age in
every possible way. He would hear them read their works with a great deal of
patience and good nature; and not only poetry and history, but orations and
dialogues. He was displeased, however, that anything should be written upon
himself, except in a grave manner, and by men of the most eminent abilities: and
he enjoined the prætors not to suffer his name to be made too common in the
contests amongst orators and poets in the theatres.
XC. We have the following account of him respecting his belief in omens and such
like. He had so great a dread of thunder and lightning that he always carried
about him a seal’s skin, by way of preservation. And upon any apprehension of a
violent storm, he would retire to some place of concealment in a vault under
ground; having formerly been terrified by a flash of lightning, while travelling
in the night, as we have already mentioned.
XCI. He neither slighted his own dreams nor those of other people relating to
himself. At the battle of Philippi, although he had resolved not to stir out of
his tent, on account of his being indisposed, yet, being warned by a dream of
one of his friends, he changed his mind; and well it was that he did so, for in
the enemy’s attack, his couch was pierced and cut to pieces, on the supposition
of his being in it. He had many frivolous and frightful dreams during the
spring; but in the other parts of the year, they were less frequent and more
significative. Upon his frequently visiting a temple near the Capitol, which he
had dedicated to Jupiter Tonans, he dreamt that Jupiter Capitolinus complained
that his worshippers were taken from him, and that upon this he replied, he had
only given him The Thunderer for his porter. He therefore immediately suspended
little bells round the summit of the temple; because such commonly hung at the
gates of great houses. In consequence of a dream, too, he always, on a certain
day of the year, begged alms of the people, reaching out his hand to receive the
dole which they offered him.
XCII. Some signs and omens he regarded as infallible. If in the morning his shoe
was put on wrong, the left instead of the right, that boded some disaster. If
when he commenced a long journey, by sea or land, there happened to fall a
mizzling rain, he held it to be a good sign of a speedy and happy return. He was
much affected likewise with any thing out of the common course of nature. A
palm-tree which chanced to grow up between some stones in the court of his
house, he transplanted into a court where the images of the Household Gods were
placed, and took all possible care to make it thrive. In the island of Capri,
some decayed branches of an old ilex, which hung drooping to the ground,
recovered themselves upon his arrival; at which he was so delighted, that he
made an exchange with the Republic of Naples, of the island of Œnaria [Ischia],
for that of Capri. He likewise observed certain days; as never to go from home
the day after the Nundinæ, nor to begin any serious business upon the nones;
avoiding nothing else in it, as he writes to Tiberius, than its unlucky name.
XCIII. With regard to the religious ceremonies of foreign nations, he was a
strict observer of those which had been established by ancient custom; but
others he held in no esteem. For, having been initiated at Athens, and coming
afterwards to hear a cause at Rome, relative to the privileges of the priests of
the Attic Ceres, when some of the mysteries of their sacred rites were to be
introduced in the pleadings, he dismissed those who sat upon the bench as judges
with him, as well as the by-standers, and heard the argument upon those points
himself. But, on the other hand, he not only declined, in his progress through
Egypt, to go out of his way to pay a visit to Apis, but he likewise commended
his grandson Caius for not paying his devotions at Jerusalem in his passage
through Judea.
XCIV. Since we are upon this subject, it may not be improper to give an account
of the omens, before and at his birth, as well as afterwards, which gave hopes
of his future greatness, and the good fortune that constantly attended him. A
part of the wall of Velletri having in former times been struck with thunder,
the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that town would some time
or other arrive at supreme power; relying on which prediction, the Velletrians
both then, and several times afterwards, made war upon the Roman people, to
their own ruin. At last it appeared by the event, that the omen had portended
the elevation of Augustus.
Julius Marathus informs us, that a few months before his birth, there happened
at Rome a prodigy, by which was signified that Nature was in travail with a king
for the Roman people; and that the senate, in alarm, came to the resolution that
no child born that year should be brought up; but that those amongst them, whose
wives were pregnant, to secure to themselves a chance of that dignity, took care
that the decree of the senate should not be registered in the treasury.
I find in the theological books of Asclepiades the Mendesian, that Atia, upon
attending at midnight a religious solemnity in honour of Apollo, when the rest
of the matrons retired home, fell asleep on her couch in the temple, and that a
serpent immediately crept to her, and soon after withdrew. She awaking upon it,
purified herself, as usual after the embraces of her husband; and instantly
there appeared upon her body a mark in the form of a serpent, which she never
after could efface, and which obliged her, during the subsequent part of her
life, to decline the use of the public baths. Augustus, it was added, was born
in the tenth month after, and for that reason was thought to be the son of
Apollo. The same Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched to
the stars, and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and earth. His
father Octavius, likewise, dreamt that a sun-beam issued from his wife’s womb.
Upon the day he was born, the senate being engaged in a debate on Catiline’s
conspiracy, and Octavius, in consequence of his wife’s being in childbirth,
coming late into the house, it is a well-known fact, that Publius Nigidius, upon
hearing the occasion of his coming so late, and the hour of his wife’s delivery,
declared that the world had got a master. Afterwards, when Octavius, upon
marching with his army through the deserts of Thrace, consulted the oracle in
the grove of father Bacchus, with barbarous rites, concerning his son, he
received from the priests an answer to the same purpose; because, when they
poured wine upon the altar, there burst out so prodigious a flame, that it
ascended above the roof of the temple, and reached up to the heavens; a
circumstance which had never happened to any one but Alexander the Great, upon
his sacrificing at the same altars. And next night he dreamt that he saw his son
under a more than human appearance, with thunder and a sceptre, and the other
insignia of Jupiter, Optimus, Maximus, having on his head a radiant crown,
mounted upon a chariot decked with laurel, and drawn by six pair of milk-white
horses.
Whilst he was yet an infant, as Caius Drusus relates, being laid in his cradle
by his nurse, and in a low place, the next day he was not to be found, and after
he had been sought for a long time, he was at last discovered upon a lofty
tower, lying with his face towards the rising sun. When he first began to speak,
he ordered the frogs that happened to make a troublesome noise, upon an estate
belonging to the family near the town, to be silent; and there goes a report
that frogs never croaked there since that time. As he was dining in a grove at
the fourth mile-stone on the Campanian road, an eagle suddenly snatched a piece
of bread out of his hand, and, soaring to a prodigious height, after hovering,
came down most unexpectedly, and returned it to him.
Quintus Catulus had a dream, for two nights successively after his dedication of
the Capitol. The first night he dreamt that Jupiter, out of several boys of the
order of the nobility who were playing about his altar, selected one, into whose
bosom he put the public seal of the commonwealth, which he held in his hand; but
in his vision the next night, he saw in the bosom of Jupiter Capitolinus, the
same boy; whom he ordered to be removed, but it was forbidden by the God, who
declared that it must be brought up to become the guardian of the state. The
next day, meeting Augustus, with whom till that hour he had not the least
acquaintance, and looking at him with admiration, he said he was extremely like
the boy he had seen in his dream. Some give a different account of Catulus’s
first dream, namely, that Jupiter, upon several noble lads requesting of him
that they might have a guardian, had pointed to one amongst them, to whom they
were to prefer their requests; and putting his fingers to the boy’s mouth to
kiss, he afterwards applied them to his own.
Marcus Cicero, as he was attending Caius Cæsar to the Capitol, happened to be
telling some of his friends a dream which he had the preceding night, in which
he saw a comely youth, let down from heaven by a golden chain, who stood at the
door of the Capitol, and had a whip put into his hands by Jupiter. And
immediately upon sight of Augustus, who had been sent for by his uncle Cæsar to
the sacrifice, and was as yet perfectly unknown to most of the company, he
affirmed that it was the very boy he had seen in his dream. When he assumed the
manly toga, his senatorian tunic becoming loose in the seam on each side, fell
at his feet. Some would have this to forbode, that the order, of which that was
the badge of distinction, would some time or other be subject to him.
Julius Cæsar, in cutting down a wood to make room for his camp near Munda,
happened to light upon a palm-tree, and ordered it to be preserved as an omen of
victory. From the root of this tree there put out immediately a sucker, which,
in a few days, grew to such a height as not only to equal, but overshadow it,
and afford room for many nests of wild pigeons which built in it, though that
species of bird particularly avoids a hard and rough leaf. It is likewise
reported, that Cæsar was chiefly influenced by this prodigy, to prefer his
sister’s grandson before all others for his successor.
In his retirement at Apollonia, he went with his friend Agrippa to visit
Theogenes, the astrologer, in his gallery on the roof. Agrippa, who first
consulted the fates, having great and almost incredible fortunes predicted of
him, Augustus did not choose to make known his nativity, and persisted for some
time in the refusal, from a mixture of shame and fear, lest his fortunes should
be predicted as inferior to those of Agrippa. Being persuaded, however, after
much importunity, to declare it, Theogenes started up from his seat, and paid
him adoration. Not long afterwards, Augustus was so confident of the greatness
of his destiny, that he published his horoscope, and struck a silver coin,
bearing upon it the sign of Capricorn, under the influence of which he was born.
XCV. After the death of Cæsar, upon his return from Apollonia, as he was
entering the city, on a sudden, in a clear and bright sky, a circle resembling
the rainbow surrounded the body of the sun; and, immediately afterwards, the
tomb of Julia, Cæsar’s daughter, was struck by lightning. In his first
consulship, whilst he was observing the auguries, twelve vultures presented
themselves, as they had done to Romulus. And when he offered sacrifice, the
livers of all the victims were folded inward in the lower part; a circumstance
which was regarded by those present, who had skill in things of that nature, as
an indubitable prognostic of great and wonderful fortune.
XCVI. He certainly had a presentiment of the issue of all his wars. When the
troops of the Triumviri were collected about Bolognia, an eagle, which sat upon
his tent, and was attacked by two crows, beat them both, and struck them to the
ground, in the view of the whole army; who thence inferred that discord would
arise between the three colleagues, which would be attended with the like event:
and it accordingly happened. At Philippi, he was assured of success by a
Thessalian, upon the authority, as he pretended, of the Divine Cæsar himself,
who had appeared to him while he was travelling in a bye-road. At Perugia, the
sacrifice not presenting any favourable intimations, but the contrary, he
ordered fresh victims; the enemy, however, carrying off the sacred things in a
sudden sally, it was agreed amongst the augurs, that all the dangers and
misfortunes which had threatened the sacriticer, would fall upon the heads of
those who had got possession of the entrails. And, accordingly, so it happened.
The day before the sea-fight near Sicily, as he was walking upon the shore, a
fish leaped out of the sea, and laid itself at his feet. At Actium, while he was
going down to his fleet to engage the enemy, he was met by an ass with a fellow
driving it. The name of the man was Eutychus, and that of the animal, Nichon.
After the victory, he erected a brazen statue to each, in a temple built upon
the spot where he had encamped.
XCVII. His death, of which I shall now speak, and his subsequent deification,
were intimated by divers manifest prodigies. As he was finishing the census
amidst a great crowd of people in the Campus Martius, an eagle hovered round him
several times, and then directed its course to a neighbouring temple, where it
settled upon the name of Agrippa, and at the first letter. Upon observing this,
he ordered his colleague Tiberius to put up the vows, which it is usual to make
on such occasions, for the succeeding Lustrum. For he declared he would not
meddle with what it was probable he should never accomplish, though the tables
were ready drawn for it. About the same time, the first letter of his name, in
an inscription upon one of his statues, was struck out by lightning; which was
interpreted as a presage that he would live only a hundred days longer, the
letter C denoting that number; and that he would be placed amongst the Gods, as
Aesar, which is the remaining part of the word Cæsar, signifies, in the Tuscan
language, a God. Being, therefore, about dispatching Tiberius to Illyricum, and
designing to go with him as far as Beneventum, but being detained by several
persons who applied to him respecting causes they had depending, he cried out,
(and it was afterwards regarded as an omen of his death), “Not all the business
in the world, shall detain me at Rome one moment longer;” and setting out upon
his journey, he went as far as Astura; whence, contrary to his custom, he put to
sea in the night-time, as there was a favourable wind.
XCVIII. His malady proceeded from diarrhœa; notwithstanding which, he went round
the coast of Campania, and the adjacent islands, and spent four days in that of
Capri; where he gave himself up entirely to repose and relaxation. Happening to
sail by the bay of Puteoli, the passengers and mariners aboard a ship of
Alexandria, just then arrived, clad all in white, with chaplets upon their
heads, and offering incense, loaded him with praises and joyful acclamations,
crying out, “By you we live, by you we sail securely, by you enjoy our liberty
and our fortunes.” At which being greatly pleased, he distributed to each of
those who attended him, forty gold pieces, requiring from them an assurance on
oath, not to employ the sum given them in any other way, than the purchase of
Alexandrian merchandize. And during several days afterwards, he distributed Togæ
and Pallia, among other gifts, on condition that the Romans should use the
Greek, and the Greeks the Roman dress and language. He likewise constantly
attended to see the boys perform their exercises, according to an ancient custom
still continued at Capri. He gave them likewise an entertainment in his
presence, and not only permitted, but required from them the utmost freedom in
jesting, and scrambling for fruit, victuals, and other things which he threw
amongst them. In a word, he indulged himself in all the ways of amusement he
could contrive.
He called an island near Capri, Ἀπϱαγόπολις, “The City of the Do-littles,” from
the indolent life which several of his party led there. A favourite of his, one
Masgabas, he used to call Κτ.[Editor: illegible character][Editor: illegible
character]ὴς as if he had been the planter of the island. And observing from his
room a great company of people with torches, assembled at the tomb of this
Masgabas, who died the year before, he uttered very distinctly this verse, which
he made extempore.
Κτιστου δὲ τύμϐο[Editor: illegible character] εισορῶ πυρόυμενον.
Blazing with lights I see the founder’s tomb.
Then turning to Thrasyllus, a companion of Tiberiue, who reclined on the other
side of the table, he asked him, who knew nothing about the matter, what poet he
thought was the author of that verse; and on his hesitating to reply, he added
another:
Ὀρᾷς φάεσσι Μασγάϐαν τιμώμενον.
Honor’d with torches Masgabas you see;
and put the same question to him concerning that likewise. The latter replying,
that, whoever might be the author, they were excellent verses, he set up a great
laugh, and fell into an extraordinary vein of jesting upon it. Soon afterwards,
passing over to Naples, although at that time greatly disordered in his bowels
by the frequent returns of his disease, he sat out the exhibition of the
gymnastic games which were performed in his honour every five years, and
proceeded with Tiberius to the place intended. But on his return, his disorder
increasing, he stopped at Nola, sent for Tiberius back again, and had a long
discourse with him in private; after which, he gave no further attention to
business of any importance.
XCIX. Upon the day of his death, he now and then enquired, if there was any
disturbance in the town on his account; and calling for a mirror, he ordered his
hair to be combed, and his shrunk cheeks to be adjusted. Then asking his friends
who were admitted into the room, “Do ye think that I have acted my part on the
stage of life well?” he immediately subjoined,
Ἐι δὲ πᾶν ἔχει ϰαλῶς, τῳ παιγνίῳ
Δότε ϰϱότον, ϰαὶ παντες ὑμεῖς μετὰ χαϱᾶς ϰτυπήσατε.
If all be right, with joy your voices raise,
In loud applauses to the actor’s praise.
After which, having dismissed them all, whilst he was inquiring of some persons
who were just arrived from Rome, concerning Drusus’s daughter, who was in a bad
state of health, he expired suddenly, amidst the kisses of Livia, and with these
words: “Livia! live mindful of our union; and now, farewell!” dying a very easy
death, and such as he himself had always wished for. For as often as he heard
that any person had died quickly and without pain, he wished for himself and his
friends the like ἐυθανασίαν (an easy death), for that was the word he made use
of. He betrayed but one symptom, before he breathed his last, of being
delirious, which was this: he was all on a sudden much frightened, and
complained that he was carried away by forty men. But this was rather a presage,
than any delirium: for precisely that number of soldiers belonging to the
prætorian cohort, carried out his corpse.
C. He expired in the same room in which his father Octavius had died, when the
two Sextus’s, Pompey and Apuleius, were consuls, upon the fourteenth of the
calends of September [the 19th August], at the ninth hour of the day, being
seventy-six years of age, wanting only thirty-five days. His remains were
carried by the magistrates of the municipal towns and colonies, from Nola to
Bovillæ, and in the night-time, because of the season of the year. During the
intervals, the body lay in some basilica, or great temple, of each town. At
Bovillæ it was met by the Equestrian Order, who carried it to the city, and
deposited it in the vestibule of his own house. The senate proceeded with so
much zeal in the arrangement of his funeral, and paying honour to his memory,
that, amongst several other proposals, some were for having the funeral
procession made through the triumphal gate, preceded by the image of Victory
which is in the senate-house, and the children of highest rank and of both sexes
singing the funeral dirge Others proposed, that on the day of the funeral, they
should lay aside their gold rings, and wear rings of iron; and others, that his
bones should be collected by the priests of the principal colleges. One likewise
proposed to transfer the name of August to September, because he was born in the
latter, but died in the former. Another moved, that the whole period of time,
from his birth to his death, should be called the Augustan age, and be inserted
in the calendar under that title. But at last it was judged proper to be
moderate in the honours paid to his memory. Two funeral orations were pronounced
in his praise, one before the temple of Julius, by Tiberius; and the other
before the rostra, under the old shops, by Drusus, Tiberius’s son. The body was
then carried upon the shoulders of senators into the Campus Martius, and there
burnt. A man of prætorian rank affirmed upon oath, that he saw his spirit ascend
from the funeral pile to heaven. The most distinguished persons of the
equestrian order, bare-footed, and with their tunics loose, gathered up his
relics, and deposited them in the mausoleum, which had been built in his sixth
consulship between the Flaminian Way and the bank of the Tiber; at which time
likewise he gave the groves and walks about it for the use of the people.
CI. He had made a will a year and four months before his death, upon the third
of the nones of April [the 11th of April], in the consulship of Lucius Plancus,
and Caius Silius. It consisted of two skins of parchment, written partly in his
own hand, and partly by his freedmen Polybius and Hilarian; and had been
committed to the custody of the Vestal Virgins, by whom it was now produced,
with three codicils under seal, as well as the will: all these were opened and
read in the senate. He appointed as his direct heirs, Tiberius for two-thirds of
his estate, and Livia for the other third, both of whom he desired to assume his
name. The heirs in remainder were Drusus, Tiberius’s son, for one third, and
Germanicus with his three sons for the residue. In the third place, failing
them, were his relations, and several of his friends. He left in legacies to the
Roman people forty millions of sesterces; to the tribes three millions five
hundred thousand; to the prætorian troops a thousand each man; to the city
cohorts five hundred; and to the legions and soldiers three hundred each; which
several sums he ordered to be paid immediately after his death, having taken due
care that the money should be ready in his exchequer. For the rest he ordered
different times of payment. In some of his bequests he went as far as twenty
thousand sesterces, for the payment of which he allowed a twelvemonth; alleging
for this procrastination the scantiness of his estate; and declaring that not
more than a hundred and fifty millions of sesterces would come to his heirs:
notwithstanding that during the twenty preceding years, he had received, in
legacies from his friends, the sum of fourteen hundred millions; almost the
whole of which, with his two paternal estates, and others which had been left
him, he had spent in the service of the state. He left orders that the two
Julias, his daughter and grand-daughter, if any thing happened to them, should
not be buried in his tomb. With regard to the three codicils before-mentioned,
in one of them he gave orders about his funeral; another contained a summary of
his acts, which he intended should be inscribed on brazen plates, and placed in
front of his mausoleum; in the third he had drawn up a concise account of the
state of the empire; the number of troops enrolled, what money there was in the
treasury, the revenue, and arrears of taxes; to which were added the names of
the freedmen and slaves from whom the several accounts might be taken.
Octavius Cæsar, afterwards Augustus, had now attained to the same position in
the state which had formerly been occupied by Julius Cæsar; and though he
entered upon it by violence, he continued to enjoy it through life with almost
uninterrupted tranquillity. By the long duration of the late civil war, with its
concomitant train of public calamities, the minds of men were become less averse
to the prospect of an absolute government; at the same time that the new
emperor, naturally prudent and politic, had learned from the fate of Julius the
art of preserving supreme power, without arrogating to himself any invidious
mark of distinction. He affected to decline public honours, disclaimed every
idea of personal superiority, and in all his behaviour displayed a degree of
moderation which prognosticated the most happy effects, in restoring peace and
prosperity to the harassed empire. The tenor of his future conduct was suitable
to this auspicious commencement. While he endeavoured to conciliate the
affections of the people by lending money to those who stood in need of it, at
low interest, or without any at all, and by the exhibition of public shows, of
which the Romans were remarkably fond; he was attentive to the preservation of a
becoming dignity in the government, and to the correction of morals. The senate,
which, in the time of Sylla, had increased to upwards of four hundred, and,
during the civil war, to a thousand, members, by the admission of improper
persons, he reduced to six hundred; and being invested with the ancient office
of censor, which had for some time been disused, he exercised an arbitrary but
legal authority over the conduct of every rank in the state; by which he could
degrade senators and knights, and inflict upon all citizens an ignominious
sentence for any immoral or indecent behaviour. But nothing contributed more to
render the new form of government acceptable to the people, than the frequent
distribution of corn, and sometimes largesses, amongst the commonalty: for an
occasional scarcity of provisions had always been the chief cause of discontents
and tumults in the capital. To the interests of the army he likewise paid
particular attention. It was by the assistance of the legions that he had risen
to power; and they were the men who, in the last resort, if such an emergency
should ever occur, could alone enable him to preserve it.
History relates, that after the overthrow of Antony, Augustus held a
consultation with Agrippa and Mecænas about restoring the republican form of
government; when Agrippa gave his opinion in favour of that measure, and Mecænas
opposed it. The object of this consultation, in respect to its future
consequences on society, is perhaps the most important ever agitated in any
cabinet, and required, for the mature discussion of it, the whole collective
wisdom of the ablest men in the empire. But this was a resource which could
scarcely be adopted, either with security to the public quiet, or with unbiassed
judgment in the determination of the question. The bare agitation of such a
point would have excited immediate and strong anxiety for its final result;
while the friends of a republican government, who were still far more numerous
than those of the other party, would have strained every nerve to procure a
determination in their own favour; and the prætorian guards, the surest
protection of Augustus, finding their situation rendered precarious by such an
unexpected occurrence, would have readily listened to the secret propositions
and intrigues of the republicans for securing their acquiescence to the decision
on the popular side. If, when the subject came into debate, Augustus should be
sincere in the declaration to abide by the resolution of the council, it is
beyond all doubt, that the restoration of a republican government would have
been voted by a great majority of the assembly. If, on the contrary, he should
not be sincere, which is the more probable supposition, and should incur the
suspicion of practising secretly with members for a decision according to his
wish, he would have rendered himself obnoxious to the public odium, and given
rise to discontents which might have endangered his future security.
But to submit this important question to the free and unbiassed decision of a
numerous assembly, it is probable, neither suited the inclination of Augustus,
nor perhaps, in his opinion, consisted with his personal safety. With a view to
the attainment of unconstitutional power, he had formerly deserted the cause of
the republic when its affairs were in a prosperous situation; and now, when his
end was accomplished, there could be little ground to expect, that he should
voluntarily relinquish the prize for which he had spilt the best blood of Rome,
and contended for so many years. Ever since the final defeat of Antony in the
battle of Actium, he had governed the Roman state with uncontrolled authority;
and though there is in the nature of unlimited power an intoxicating quality,
injurious both to public and private virtue, yet all history contradicts the
supposition of its being endued with any which is unpalatable to the general
taste of mankind.
There were two chief motives by which Augustus would naturally be influenced in
a deliberation on this important subject; namely, the love of power, and the
personal danger which he might incur from relinquishing it. Either of these
motives might have been a sufficient inducement for retaining his authority; but
when they both concurred, as they seem to have done upon this occasion, their
united force was irresistible. The argument, so far as relates to the love of
power, rests upon a ground, concerning the solidity of which, little doubt can
be entertained: but it may be proper to inquire, in a few words, into the
foundation of that personal danger which he dreaded to incur, on returning to
the station of a private citizen.
Augustus, as has been already observed, had formerly sided with the party which
had attempted to restore public liberty after the death of Julius Cæsar: but he
afterwards abandoned the popular cause, and joined in the ambitious plans of
Antony and Lepidus to usurp amongst themselves the entire dominion of the state.
By this change of conduct, he turned his arms against the supporters of a form
of government which he had virtually recognized as the legal constitution of
Rome; and it involved a direct implication of treason against the sacred
representatives of that government, the consuls, formally and duly elected. Upon
such a charge he might be amenable to the capital laws of his country. This,
however, was a danger which might be fully obviated, by procuring from the
senate and people an act of oblivion, previously to his abdication of the
supreme power; and this was a preliminary which doubtless they would have
admitted and ratified with unanimous approbation. It therefore appears that he
could be exposed to no inevitable danger on this account: but there was another
quarter where his person was vulnerable, and where even the laws might not be
sufficient to protect him against the efforts of private resentment. The bloody
proscription of the Triumvirate no act of amnesty could ever erase from the
minds of those who had been deprived by it of their nearest and dearest
relations; and amidst the numerous connections of the illustrious men sacrificed
on that horrible occasion, there might arise some desperate avenger, whose
indelible resentment nothing less would satisfy than the blood of the surviving
delinquent. Though Augustus, therefore, might not, like his great predecessor,
be stabbed in the senate-house, he might perish by the sword or the poniard in a
less conspicuous situation. After all, there seems to have been little danger
from this quarter likewise: for Sylla, who in the preceding age had been guilty
of equal enormities, was permitted, on relinquishing the place of perpetual
dictator, to end his days in quiet retirement; and the undisturbed security
which Augustus ever afterwards enjoyed, affords sufficient proof, that all
apprehension of danger to his person was merely chimerical.
We have hitherto considered this grand consultation as it might be influenced by
the passions or prejudices of the emperor: we shall now take a short view of the
subject in the light in which it is connected with considerations of a political
nature and with public utility. The arguments handed down by history respecting
this consultation are few, and imperfectly delivered; but they may be extended
upon the general principles maintained on each side of the question.
For the restoration of the republican government, it might be contended, that
from the expulsion of the kings to the dictatorship of Julius Cæsar, through a
period of upwards of four hundred and sixty years, the Roman state, with the
exception only of a short interval, had flourished and increased with a degree
of prosperity unexampled in the annals of human kind: that the republican form
of government was not only best adapted to the improvement of national grandeur,
but to the security of general freedom, the great object of all political
association: that public virtue, by which alone nations could subsist in vigour,
was cherished and protected by no mode of administration so much as by that
which connected, in the strongest bonds of union, the private interests of
individuals with those of the community: that the habits and prejudices of the
Roman people were unalterably attached to the form of government established by
so long a prescription, and they would never submit, for any length of time, to
the rule of one person, without making every possible effort to recover their
liberty: that though despotism, under a mild and wise prince, might in some
respects be regarded as preferable to a constitution which was occasionally
exposed to the inconvenience of faction and popular tumults, yet it was a
dangerous experiment to abandon the government of the nation to the contingency
of such a variety of characters as usually occurs in the succession of princes;
and, upon the whole, that the interests of the people were more safely entrusted
in the hands of annual magistrates elected by themselves, than in those of any
individual whose power was permanent, and subject to no legal control.
In favour of despotic government it might be urged, that though Rome had
subsisted long and gloriously under a republican form of government, yet she had
often experienced such violent shocks from popular tumults or the factions of
the great, as had threatened her with imminent destruction: that a republican
government was only accommodated to a people amongst whom the division of
property gave to no class of citizens such a degree of preeminence as might
prove dangerous to public freedom: that there was required in that form of
political constitution, a simplicity of life and strictness of manners which are
never observed to accompany a high degree of public prosperity: that in respect
of all these considerations, such a form of government was utterly incompatible
with the present circumstances of the Romans: that by the conquest of so many
foreign nations, by the lucrative governments of provinces, the spoils of the
enemy in war, and the rapine too often practised in time of peace, so great had
been the aggrandizement of particular families in the preceding age, that though
the form of the ancient constitution should still remain inviolate, the people
would no longer live under a free republic, but an aristocratical usurpation,
which was always productive of tyranny: that nothing could preserve the
commonwealth from becoming a prey to some daring confederacy, but the firm and
vigorous administration of one person, invested with the whole executive power
of the state, unlimited and uncontrolled: in fine, that as Rome had been nursed
to maturity by the government of six princes successively, so it was only by a
similar form of political constitution that she could now be saved from
aristocratical tyranny on one hand, or, on the other, from absolute anarchy.
On whichever side of the question the force of argument may be thought to
preponderate, there is reason to believe that Augustus was guided in his
resolution more by inclination and prejudice than by reason. It is related,
however, that hesitating between the opposite opinions of his two counsellors,
he had recourse to that of Virgil, who joined with Mecænas in advising him to
retain the imperial power, as being the form of government most suitable to the
circumstances of the times.
It is proper in this place to give some account of the two ministers
above-mentioned, Agrippa and Mecænas, who composed the cabinet of Augustus at
the settlement of his government, and seem to be the only persons employed by
him in a ministerial capacity during his whole reign.
M. Vipsanius Agrippa was of obscure extraction, but rendered himself conspicuous
by his military talents. He obtained a victory over Sextus Pompey; and in the
battles of Philippi and Actium, where he displayed great valour, he contributed
not a little to establish the subsequent power of Augustus. In his expeditions
afterwards into Gaul and Germany, he performed many signal achievements, for
which he refused the honours of a triumph. The expenses which others would have
lavished on that frivolous spectacle, he applied to the more laudable purpose of
embellishing Rome with magnificent buildings, one of which, the Pantheon, still
remains. In consequence of a dispute with Marcellus, the nephew of Augustus, he
retired to Mitylene, whence, after an absence of two years, he was recalled by
the emperor. He first married Pomponia, the daughter of the celebrated Atticus,
and afterwards one of the Marcellas, the nieces of Augustus. While this lady, by
whom he had children, was still living, the emperor prevailed upon his sister
Octavia to resign to him her son-in-law, and gave him in marriage his own
daughter Julia; so strong was the desire of Augustus to be united with him in
the closest alliance. The high degree of favour in which he stood with the
emperor was soon after evinced by a farther mark of esteem: for during a visit
to the Roman provinces of Greece and Asia, in which Augustus was absent two
years, he left the government of the empire to the care of Agrippa. While this
minister enjoyed, and indeed seems to have merited, all the partiality of
Augustus, he was likewise a favourite with the people. He died at Rome, in the
sixty-first year of his age, universally lamented; and his remains were
deposited in the tomb which Augustus had prepared for himself. Agrippa left by
Julia three sons, Caius, Lucius, and Posthumus Agrippa, with two daughters,
Agrippina and Julia.
C. Cilnius Mecænas was of Tuscan extraction, and derived his descent from the
ancient kings of that country. Though in the highest degree of favour with
Augustus, he never aspired beyond the rank of the equestrian order; and though
he might have held the government of extensive provinces by deputies, he was
content with enjoying the præfecture of the city and Italy; a situation,
however, which must have been attended with extensive patronage. He was of a gay
and social disposition. In principle he is said to have been of the Epicurean
sect, and in his dress and manners to have bordered on effeminacy. With respect
to his political talents, we can only speak from conjecture; but from his being
the confidential minister of a prince of so much discernment as Augustus, during
the infancy of a new form of government in an extensive empire, we may presume
that he was endowed with no common abilities for that important station. The
liberal patronage which he displayed towards men of genius and talents, will
render his name for ever celebrated in the annals of learning. It is to be
regretted that history has transmitted no particulars of this extraordinary
personage, of whom all we know is derived chiefly from the writings of Virgil
and Horace; but from the manner in which they address him, amidst the
familiarity of their intercourse, there is the strongest reason to suppose, that
he was not less amiable and respectable in private life, than illustrious in
public situation. “O my glory!” is the emphatic expression employed by them
both.
O decus, O famæ merito pars maxima nostræ Vir. Georg. ii.
Light of my life, my glory, and my guide!
O et præsidium et dulce decus meum. Hor. Ode I.
My glory and my patron thou!
One would be inclined to think, that there was a nicety in the sense and
application of the word decus, amongst the Romans, with which we are
unacquainted, and that, in the passages now adduced, it was understood to refer
to the honour of the emperor’s patronage, obtained through the means of Mecænas;
otherwise, such language to the minister might have excited the jealousy of
Augustus. But whatever foundation there may be for this conjecture, the
compliment was compensated by the superior adulation which the poets
appropriated to the emperor, whose deification is more than insinuated, in
sublime intimations, by Virgil.
Tuque adeo quem mox quæ sint habitura deorum
Concilia, incertum est; urbisne invisere, Cæsar,
Terrarumque velis curam; et te maximus orbis
Auctorem frugum, tempestatumque potentem
Accipiat, cingens materna tempora myrto:
An Deus immensi venias maris, ac tua nautæ
Numina sola colant: tibi serviat ultima Thule;
Teque sibi generum Tethys emat omnibus undis.
Geor. i. l. 25. vi.
Thou Cæsar, chief where’er thy voice ordain
To fix midst gods thy yet unchosen reign—
Wilt thou o’er cities fix thy guardian sway,
While earth and all her realms thy nod obey?
The world’s vast orb shall own thy genial power,
Giver of fruits, fair sun, and favouring shower;
Before thy altar grateful nations bow,
And with maternal myrtle wreathe thy brow;
O’er boundless ocean shall thy power prevail,
Thee her sole lord the world of waters hail,
Rule where the sea remotest Thule laves,
While Tethys dowers thy bride with all her waves.
Carm. IV. 5.
To thee he chants the sacred song,
To thee the rich libation pours;
Thee placed his household gods among,
With solemn daily prayer adores:
So Castor and great Hercules of old,
Were with her gods by grateful Greece enrolled.
The panegyric bestowed upon Augustus by the great poets of that time, appears to
have had a farther object than the mere gratification of vanity. It was the
ambition of this emperor to reign in the hearts as well as over the persons of
his subjects; and with this view he was desirous of endearing himself to their
imagination. Both he and Mecænas had a delicate sensibility to the beauties of
poetical composition; and judging from their own feelings, they attached a high
degree of influence to the charms of poetry. Impressed with these sentiments, it
became an object of importance, in their opinion, to engage the Muses in the
service of the imperial authority; on which account, we find Mecænas tampering
with Propertius, and we may presume, likewise with every other rising genius in
poetry, to undertake an heroic poem, of which Augustus should be the hero. As
the application to Propertius cannot have taken place until after Augustus had
been amply celebrated by the superior abilities of Virgil and Horace, there
seems to be some reason for ascribing Mecænas’s request to a political motive.
Caius and Lucius, the emperor’s grandsons by his daughter Julia, were still
living, and both young. As one of them, doubtless, was intended to succeed to
the government of the empire, prudence justified the adoption of every expedient
that might tend to secure a quiet succession to the heir, upon the demise of
Augustus. As a subsidiary resource, therefore, the expedient above mentioned was
judged highly plausible; and the Roman cabinet indulged the idea of endeavouring
to confirm imperial authority by the support of poetical renown. Lampoons
against the government were not uncommon even in the time of Augustus; and
elegant panegyric on the emperor served to counteract their influence upon the
minds of the people. The idea was, perhaps, novel in the time of Augustus; but
the history of later ages affords examples of its having been adopted, under
different forms of government, with success.
The Roman empire, in the time of Augustus, had attained to a prodigious
magnitude; and, in his testament, he recommended to his successors never to
exceed the limits which he had prescribed to its extent. On the East it
stretched to the Euphrates; on the South to the cataracts of the Nile, the
deserts of Africa, and Mount Atlas; on the West to the Atlantic Ocean; and on
the North to the Danube and the Rhine; including the best part of the then known
world. The Romans, therefore, were not improperly called rerum domini, and Rome,
pulcherrima rerum,maxima rerum. Even the historians, Livy and Tacitus, actuated
likewise with admiration, bestow magnificent epithets on the capital of their
country. The succeeding emperors, in conformity to the advice of Augustus, made
few additions to the empire. Trajan, however, subdued Mesopotamia and Armenia,
east of the Euphrates, with Dacia, north of the Danube; and after this period
the Roman dominion was extended over Britain, as far as the Frith of Forth and
the Clyde.
It would be an object of curiosity to ascertain the amount of the Roman revenue
in the reign of Augustus; but such a problem, even with respect to contemporary
nations, cannot be elucidated without access to the public registers of their
governments; and in regard to an ancient monarchy, the investigation is
impracticable. We can only be assured that the revenue must have been immense,
which arose from the accumulated contribution of such a number of nations, that
had supported their own civil establishments with great splendour, and many of
which were celebrated for their extraordinary riches and commerce. The tribute
paid by the Romans themselves, towards the support of the government, was very
considerable during the latter ages of the republic, and it received an increase
after the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa. The establishments, both civil and
military, in the different provinces, were supported at their own expense; the
emperor required but a small naval force, an arm which adds much to the public
expenditure of maritime nations in modern times; and the state was burdened with
no diplomatic charges. The vast treasure accruing from the various taxes
centered in Rome, and the whole was at the disposal of the emperor, without any
control. We may therefore justly conclude that, in the amount of taxes, customs,
and every kind of financial resources, Augustus exceeded all sovereigns who had
hitherto ever swayed the sceptre of imperial dominion; a noble acquisition, had
it been judiciously employed by his successors, in promoting public happiness,
with half the profusion in which it was lavished in disgracing human nature, and
violating the rights of mankind.
The reign of Augustus is distinguished by the most extraordinary event recorded
in history, either sacred or profane, the nativity of the Saviour of mankind;
which has since introduced a new epoch into the chronology of all Christian
nations. The commencement of the new æra being the most flourishing period of
the Roman empire, a general view of the state of knowledge and taste at this
period, may here not be improper.
Civilization was at this time extended farther over the world than it had ever
been in any preceding period; but polytheism rather increased than diminished
with the advancement of commercial intercourse between the nations of Europe,
Asia, and Africa; and, though philosophy had been cultivated during several
ages, at Athens, Cyrene, Rome, and other seats of learning, yet the morals of
mankind were little improved by the diffusion of speculative knowledge. Socrates
had laid an admirable foundation for the improvement of human nature, by the
exertion of reason through the whole economy of life; but succeeding inquirers,
forsaking the true path of ethic investigation, deviated into specious
discussions, rather ingenious than useful; and some of them, by gratuitously
adopting principles, which, so far from being supported by reason, were
repugnant to its dictates, endeavoured to erect upon the basis of their
respective doctrines a system peculiar to themselves. The doctrines of the
Stoics and Epicureans were, in fact, pernicious to society; and those of the
different academies, though more intimately connected with reason than the two
former, were of a nature too abstract to have any immediate or useful influence
on life and manners. General discussions of truth and probability, with
magnificent declamations on the το καλον, and the summum bonum, constituted the
chief objects of attention amongst those who cultivated moral science in the
shades of academical retirement. Cicero endeavoured to bring back philosophy
from speculation to practice, and clearly evinced the social duties to be
founded in the unalterable dictates of virtue; but it was easier to demonstrate
the truth of the principles which he maintained, than to enforce their
observance, while the morals of mankind were little actuated by the exercise of
reason alone.
The science chiefly cultivated at this period was rhetoric, which appears to
have differed considerably from what now passes under the same name. The object
of it was not so much justness of sentiment and propriety of expression, as the
art of declaiming, or speaking copiously upon any subject. It is mentioned by
Varro as the reverse of logic; and they are distinguished from each other by a
simile, that the former resembles the palm of the hand expanded, and the latter,
contracted into the fist. It is observable that logic, though a part of
education in modern times, seems not to have been cultivated amongst the Romans.
Perhaps they were apprehensive, lest a science which concentered the force of
argument, might obstruct the cultivation of that which was meant to dilate it.
Astronomy was long before known in the eastern nations; but there is reason to
believe, from a passage in Virgil, that it was little cultivated by the Romans;
and it is certain, that in the reformation of the calendar, Julius Cæsar was
chiefly indebted to the scientific knowledge of Sosigenes, a mathematician of
Alexandria. The laws of the solar system were still but imperfectly known; the
popular belief, that the sun moved round the earth, was universally maintained,
and continued until the sixteenth century, when the contrary was proved by
Copernicus. There existed many celebrated tracts on mathematics; and several of
the mechanical powers, particularly that of the lever, were cultivated with
success. The more necessary and useful rules of arithmetic were generally known.
The use of the load-stone not being as yet discovered, navigation was conducted
in the day-time by the sun, and in the night, by the observation of certain
stars. Geography was cultivated during the present period by Strabo and Mela. In
natural philosophy little progress was made; but a strong desire of its
improvement was entertained, particularly by Virgil. Human anatomy being not yet
introduced, physiology was imperfect. Chemistry, as a science, was utterly
unknown. In medicine, the writings of Hippocrates, and other Greek physicians,
were in general the standard of practice; but the Materia Medica contained few
remedies of approved quality, and abounded with useless substances, as well as
with many which stood upon no other foundation than the whimsical notions of
those who first introduced them. Architecture flourished, through the elegant
taste of Vitruvius, and the patronage of the emperor. Painting, statuary, and
music, were cultivated, but not with that degree of perfection which they had
obtained in the Grecian states. The musical instruments of this period were the
flute and the lyre, to which may be added the sistrum, lately imported from
Egypt. But the chief glory of the period is its literature, of which we proceed
to give some account.
At the head of the writers of this age, stands the emperor himself, with his
minister Mecænas; but the works of both have almost totally perished. It appears
from the historian now translated, that Augustus was the author of several
productions in prose, besides some in verse. He wrote Answers to Brutus in
relation to Cato, Exhortations to Philosophy, and the History of his own Life,
which he continued, in thirteen books, down to the war of Cantabria. A book of
his, written in hexameter verse, under the title of Sicily, was extant in the
time of Suetonius, as was likewise a book of Epigrams. He began a tragedy on the
subject of Ajax, but, being dissatisfied with the composition, destroyed it.
Whatever the merits of Augustus may have been as an author, of which no judgment
can be formed, his attachment to learning and eminent writers affords a strong
presumption that he was not destitute of taste. Mecænas is said to have written
two tragedies, Octavia and Prometheus; a History of Animals; a Treatise on
Precious Stones; a Journal of the Life of Augustus; and other productions.
Curiosity is strongly interested to discover the literary talents of a man so
much distinguished for the esteem and patronage of them in others; but while we
regret the impossibility of such a development, we scarcely can suppose the
proficiency to have been small, where the love and admiration were so great.
History was cultivated amongst the Romans during the present period, with
uncommon success. This species of composition is calculated both for information
and entertainment; but the chief design of it is to record all transactions
relative to the public, for the purpose of enabling mankind to draw from past
events a probable conjecture concerning the future; and, by knowing the steps
which have led either to prosperity or misfortune, to ascertain the best means
of promoting the former, and avoiding the latter of those objects. This useful
kind of narrative was introduced about five hundred years before by Herodotus,
who has thence received the appellation of the Father of History. His style, in
conformity to the habits of thinking, and the simplicity of language, in an
uncultivated age, is plain and unadorned; yet, by the happy modulation of the
Ionic dialect, it gratified the ear, and afforded to the states of Greece a
pleasing mixture of entertainment, enriched not only with various information,
often indeed fabulous or unauthentic, but with the rudiments, indirectly
interspersed, of political wisdom. This writer, after a long interval, was
succeeded by Thucydides and Xenophon, the former of whom carried historical
narrative to the highest degree of improvement it ever attained among the States
of Greece. The plan of Thucydides seems to have continued to be the model of
historical narrative to the writers of Rome; but the circumstances of the times,
aided perhaps by the splendid exertion of genius in other departments of
literature, suggested a new resource, which promised not only to animate, but
embellish the future productions of the historic Muse. This innovation consisted
in an attempt to penetrate the human heart, and explore in its innermost
recesses the sentiments and secret motives which actuate the conduct of men. By
connecting moral effects with their probable internal and external causes, it
tended to establish a systematic consistency in the concatenation of
transactions apparently anomalous, accidental, or totally independent of each
other.
The author of this improvement in history was Sallust, who likewise introduced
the method of enlivening narrative with the occasional aid of rhetorical
declamation, particularly in his account of the Catilinian conspiracy. The
notorious characters and motives of the principal persons concerned in that
horrible plot, afforded the most favourable opportunity for exemplifying the
former; while the latter, there is reason to infer from the facts which must
have been at that time publicly known, were founded upon documents of
unquestionable authority. Nay, it is probable that Sallust was present in the
senate during the debate respecting the punishment of the Catilinian
conspirators; his detail of which is agreeable to the characters of the several
speakers: but in detracting, by invidious silence, or too faint representation,
from the merits of Cicero on that important occasion, he exhibits a glaring
instance of the partiality which too often debases the narratives of those who
record the transactions of their own time. He had married Terentia, the divorced
wife of Cicero; and there subsisted between the two husbands a kind of rivalship
from that cause, to which was probably added some degree of animosity, on
account of their difference in politics, during the late dictatorship of Julius
Cæsar, by whom Sallust was restored to the senate, whence he had been expelled
for licentiousness, and was appointed governor of Numidia. Excepting the
injustice with which Sallust treats Cicero, he is entitled to high commendation.
In both his remaining works, the Conspiracy of Catiline, and the War of Jugurtha,
there is a peculiar air of philosophical sentiment, which, joined to the elegant
conciseness of style, and animated description of characters, gives to his
writings a degree of interest, superior to that which is excited in any
preceding work of the historical kind. In the occasional use of obsolete words,
and in laboured exordiums to both his histories, he is liable to the charge of
affectation; but it is an affectation of language which supports solemnity
without exciting disgust; and of sentiment which not only exalts human nature,
but animates to virtuous exertions. It seems to be the desire of Sallust to
atone for the dissipation of his youth by a total change of conduct; and whoever
peruses his exordiums with the attention which they deserve, must feel a strong
persuasion of the justness of his remarks, if not the incentives of a resolution
to be governed by his example. It seems to be certain, that from the first
moment of his reformation, he incessantly practised the industry which he so
warmly recommends. He composed a History of Rome, of which nothing remains but a
few fragments. Sallust, during his administration of Numidia, is said to have
exercised great oppression. On his return to Rome he built a magnificent house,
and bought delightful gardens, the name of which, with his own, is to this day
perpetuated on the spot which they formerly occupied. Sallust was born at
Amiternum, in the country of the Sabines, and received his education at Rome. He
incurred great scandal by an amour with Fausta, the daughter of Sylla, and wife
of Milo; who detecting the criminal intercourse, is said to have beat him with
stripes, and extorted from him a large sum of money. He died, according to
tradition, in the fifty-first year of his age.—
Cornelius Nepos was born at Hostilia, near the banks of the Po. Of his parentage
we meet with no account; but from his respectable connections early in life, it
is probable that he was of good extraction. Among his most intimate friends were
Cicero and Atticus. Some authors relate that he composed three books of
Chronicles, with a biographical account of all the most celebrated sovereigns,
generals, and writers of antiquity.
The language of Cornelius Nepos is pure, his style perspicuous, and he holds a
middle and agreeable course between diffuseness and brevity. He has not observed
the same rule with respect to the treatment of every subject; for the account of
some of the lives is so short, that we might suspect them to be mutilated, did
they not contain evident marks of their being completed in miniature. The great
extent of his plan induced him, as he informs us, to adopt this expedient. “Sed
plura persequi, tum magnitudo voluminis prohibet, tum festinatio, ut ea explicem,
quæ exorsus sum.”
Of his numerous biographical works, twenty-two lives only remain, which are all
of Greeks, except two Carthaginians, Hamilcar and Hannibal; and two Romans, M.
Porcius Cato and T. Pomponius Atticus. Of his own life,—of him who had written
the lives of so many, no account is transmitted; but from the multiplicity of
his productions, we may conclude that it was devoted to literature.—
Titus Livius may be ranked among the most celebrated historians the world has
ever produced. He composed a history of Rome from the foundation of the city, to
the conclusion of the German war conducted by Drusus in the time of the emperor
Augustus. This great work consisted, originally, of one hundred and forty books;
of which there now remain only thirty-five, viz., the first decade, and the
whole from book twenty-one to book forty-five, both inclusive. Of the other
hundred and five books, nothing more has survived the ravages of time and
barbarians than their general contents. In a perspicuous arrangement of his
subject, in a full and circumstantial account of transactions, in the
delineation of characters and other objects of description, in justness and
aptitude of sentiment, and in an air of majesty pervading the whole composition,
this author may be regarded as one of the best models extant of historical
narrative. His style is splendid without meretricious ornament, and copious
without being redundant; a fluency to which Quintilian gives the expressive
appellation of “lactea ubertas.” Amongst the beauties which we admire in his
writings, besides the animated speeches frequently interspersed, are those
concise and peculiarly applicable eulogiums, with which he characterises every
eminent person mentioned, at the close of their life. Of his industry in
collating, and his judgment in deciding upon the preference due to, dissentient
authorities, in matters of testimony, the work affords numberless proofs Of the
freedom and impartiality with which he treated even of the recent periods of
history, there cannot be more convincing evidence, than that he was rallied by
Augustus as a favourer of Pompey; and that, under the same emperor, he not only
bestowed upon Cicero the tribute of warm approbation, but dared to ascribe, in
an age when their names were obnoxious, even to Brutus and Cassius the virtues
of consistency and patriotism. If in any thing the conduct of Livy violates our
sentiments of historical dignity, it is the apparent complacency and reverence
with which he every where mentions the popular belief in omens and prodigies;
but this was the general superstition of the times; and totally to renounce the
prejudices of superstitious education, is the last heroic sacrifice to
philosophical scepticism. In general, however, the credulity of Livy appears to
be rather affected than real; and his account of the exit of Romulus, in the
following passage, may be adduced as an instance in confirmation of this remark.
“His immortalibus editis operibus, quum ad exercitum recensendum concionem in
campo ad Capræ paludem haberet, subita coorta tempestate cum magno fragore
tonitribusque tam denso regem operuit nimbo, ut conspectum ejus concioni
abstulerit; nec deinde in terris Romulus fuit. Romana pubes, sedato tandem
pavore, postquam ex tam turbido die serena, et tranquilla lux rediit, ubi vacuam
sedem regiam vidit; etsi satis credebat Patribus, qui proximi steterant,
sublimem raptum procella; tamen veluti orbitatis metu icta, mæstum aliquamdiu
silentium obtinuit. Deinde a paucis initio facto, Deum, Deo natum, regem
parentemque urbis Romanæ, salvere universi Romulum jubent; pacem precibus
exposcunt, uti volens propitius suam semper sospitet progeniem. Fuisse credo tum
quoque aliquos, qui discerptum regem Patrum manibus taciti arguerent; manavit
enim hæc quoque, et perobscura, fama. Illam alteram admiratio viri, et pavor
præsens nobilitavit. Consilio etiam unius hominis addita rei dicitur fides;
namque Proculus Julius sollicita civitate desidario regis, et infensa Patribus,
gravis, ut traditur, quamvis magnæ rei auctor, in concionem prodit. ‘Romulus,
inquit, Quirites, parens urbis hujus, prima hodierna luce cœlo repente delapsus,
se mihi obvium dedit; quam profusus horrore venerabundusque astitissem, petens
precibus, ut contra intueri fas esset; Abi, nuncia, inquit, Romanis, Cælestes
ita velle, ut mea Roma caput orbis terrarum sit; proinde rem militarem colant;
sciantque, et ita posteris tradant, nullas opes humanas armis Romanis resistere
posse.’ Hæc, inquit, locutus, sublimis abiit. Mirum, quantum illi viro nuncianti
hæc fidei fuerit; quamque desiderium Romuli apud plebem exercitumque, facta fide
immortalitatis, lenitum sit.
Scarcely any incident in ancient history savours more of the marvellous than the
account above delivered respecting the first Roman king; and amidst all the
solemnity with which it is related, we may perceive that the historian was not
the dupe of credulity. There is more implied than the author thought proper to
avow, in the sentence, Fuisse credo, &c. In whatever light this anecdote be
viewed, it is involved in perplexity. That Romulus affected a despotic power, is
not only highly probable, from his aspiring disposition, but seems to be
confirmed by his recent appointment of the Celeres, as a guard to his person. He
might, therefore, naturally incur the odium of the patricians, whose importance
was diminished, and their institution rendered abortive, by the increase of his
power. But that they should choose the opportunity of a military review, for the
purpose of removing the tyrant by a violent death, seems not very consistent
with the dictates even of common prudence; and it is the more incredible, as the
circumstance which favoured the execution of the plot is represented to have
been entirely a fortuitous occurrence. The tempest which is said to have
happened, is not easily reconcilable with our knowledge of that phenomenon. Such
a cloud, or mist, as could have enveloped Romulus from the eyes of the assembly,
is not a natural concomitant of a thunder-storm. There is some reason to suspect
that both the noise and cloud, if they actually existed, were artificial; the
former intended to divert the attention of the spectators, and the latter to
conceal the transaction. The word fragor, a noise or crash, appears to be an
unnecessary addition where thunder is expressed, though sometimes so used by the
poets, and may therefore, perhaps, imply such a noise from some other cause. If
Romulus was killed by any pointed or sharp-edged weapon, his blood might have
been discovered on the spot; or, if by other means, still the body was equally
an object for public observation. If the people suspected the patricians to be
guilty of murder, why did they not endeavour to trace the fact by this evidence?
And if the patricians were really innocent, why did they not urge the
examination? But the body, without doubt, was secreted, to favour the imposture.
The whole narrative is strongly marked with circumstances calculated to affect
credulity with ideas of national importance; and, to countenance the design,
there is evidently a chasm in the Roman history immediately preceding this
transaction and intimately connected with it.
Livy was born at Patavium, and has been charged by Asinius Pollio and others
with the provincial dialect of his country. The objections to his Pativinity, as
it is called, relate chiefly to the spelling of some words; in which, however,
there seems to be nothing so peculiar, as either to occasion any obscurity or
merit reprehension.
Livy and Sallust being the only two existing rivals in Roman history, it may not
be improper to draw a short comparison between them, in respect of their
principal qualities, as writers. With regard to language, there is less apparent
affectation in Livy than in Sallust. The narrative of both is distinguished by
an elevation of style: the elevation of Sallust seems to be often supported by
the dignity of assumed virtue; that of Livy by a majestic air of historical, and
sometimes national, importance. In delineating characters, Sallust infuses more
expression, and Livy more fulness, into the features. In the speeches ascribed
to particular persons, these writers are equally elegant and animated.
So great was the fame of Livy in his own life-time, that people came from the
extremity of Spain and Gaul, for the purpose only of beholding so celebrated a
historian, who was regarded, for his abilities, as a prodigy. This affords a
strong proof, not only of the literary taste which then prevailed over the most
extensive of the Roman provinces, but of the extraordinary pains with which so
great a work must have been propagated, when the art of printing was unknown. In
the fifteenth century, on the revival of learning in Europe, the name of this
great writer recovered its ancient veneration; and Alphonso of Arragon, with a
superstition characteristic of that age, requested of the people of Padua, where
Livy was born, and is said to have been buried, to be favoured by them with the
hand which had written so admirable a work.—
The celebrity of Virgil has proved the means of ascertaining his birth with more
exactness than is common in the biographical memoirs of ancient writers. He was
born at Andes, a village in the neighbourhood of Mantua, on the 15th of October,
seventy years before the Christian æra. His parents were of moderate condition;
but by their industry acquired some territorial possessions, which descended to
their son. The first seven years of his life was spent at Cremona, whence he
went to Mediolanum, now Milan, at that time the seat of the liberal arts,
denominated, as we learn from Pliny the younger, Novæ Athenæ. From this place he
afterwards moved to Naples, where he applied himself with great assiduity to
Greek and Roman literature, particularly to the physical and mathematical
sciences; for which he expressed a strong predilection in the second book of his
Georgics.
Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musæ,
Quarum sacra fero ingenti perculsus amore,
Accipiant; cælique vias et sidera monstrent;
Defectus Solis varios. Lunæque labores:
Unde tremor terris: qua vi maria alta tumescant
Obicibus ruptis, rursusque in seipsa residant:
Quid tantum Oceano properent se tingere soles
Hiberni: vel quæ tardis mora noctibus obstet.
Geor. ii. l. 591, &c.
But most beloved, ye Muses, at whose fane,
Led by pure zeal, I consecrate my strain,
Me first accept! And to my search unfold,
Heaven and her host in beauteous order rolled,
The eclipse that dims the golden orb of day,
And changeful labour of the lunar ray;
Whence rocks the earth, by what vast force the main
Now bursts its barriers, now subsides again;
Why wintry suns in ocean swiftly fade,
Or what delays night’s slow-descending shade.
Sotheby.
When, by a proscription of the Triumvirate, the lands of Cremona and Mantua were
distributed amongst the veteran soldiers, Virgil had the good fortune to recover
his possessions, through the favour of Asinius Pollio, the deputy of Augustus in
those parts; to whom, as well as to the emperor, he has testified his gratitude
in beautiful eclogues.
The first production of Virgil was his Bucolics, consisting of ten eclogues,
written in imitation of the Idyllia or pastoral poems of Theocritus. It may be
questioned whether any language which has its provincial dialects, but is
brought to perfection, can ever be well adapted, in that state, to the use of
pastoral poetry. There is such an apparent incongruity between the simple ideas
of the rural swain and the polished language of the courtier, that it seems
impossible to reconcile them together by the utmost art of composition. The
Doric dialect of Theocritus, therefore, abstractedly from all consideration of
simplicity of sentiment, must ever give to the Sicilian bard a pre-eminence in
this species of poetry. The greater part of the Bucolics of Virgil may be
regarded as poems of a peculiar nature, into which the author has happily
transfused, in elegant versification, the native manners and ideas, without any
mixture of the rusticity of pastoral life. With respect to the fourth eclogue,
addressed to Pollio, it is avowedly of a nature superior to that of pastoral
subjects:
Sicelides Musæ, paullo majora canamus.
Sicilian Muse, be ours a loftier strain.
Virgil engaged in bucolic poetry at the request of Asinius Pollio, whom he
highly esteemed, and for one of whose sons in particular, with Cornelius Gallus,
a poet likewise, he entertained the warmest affection. He has celebrated them
all in these poems, which were begun, we are told, in the twenty-ninth year of
his age, and completed in three years. They were held in so great esteem amongst
the Romans, immediately after their publication, that it is said they were
frequently recited upon the stage for the entertainment of the audience. Cicero,
upon hearing some lines of them, perceived that they were written in no common
strain of poetry, and desired that the whole eclogue might be recited: which
being done, he exclaimed, “Magnæ spes altera Romæ.” Another hope of mighty Rome!
Virgil’s next work was the Georgics, the idea of which is taken from the Εργα
και Ἡμεραι, the Works and Days of Hesiod, the poet of Ascra. But between the
productions of the two poets, there is no other similarity than that of their
common subject. The precepts of Hesiod, in respect of agriculture, are delivered
with all the simplicity of an unlettered cultivator of the fields, intermixed
with plain moral reflections, natural and apposite; while those of Virgil,
equally precise and important, are embellished with all the dignity of sublime
versification. The work is addressed to Mecænas, at whose request it appears to
have been undertaken. It is divided into four books. The first treats of
ploughing; the second, of planting; the third, of cattle, horses, sheep, goats,
dogs, and of things which are hurtful to cattle: the fourth is employed on bees,
their proper habitations, food, polity, the diseases to which they are liable,
and the remedies of them, with the method of making honey, and a variety of
other considerations connected with the subject. The Georgics were written at
Naples, and employed the author during a period of seven years. It is said that
Virgil had concluded the Georgics with a laboured eulogium on his poetical
friend Gallus; but the latter incurring about this time the displeasure of
Augustus, he was induced to cancel it, and substitute the charming episode of
Astæus and Eurydice.
These beautiful poems, considered merely as didactic, have the justest claim to
utility. In what relates to agriculture in particular, the precepts were
judiciously adapted to the climate of Italy, and must have conveyed much
valuable information to those who were desirous of cultivating that important
art, which was held in great honour amongst the Romans. The same remark may be
made, with greater latitude of application, in respect of the other subjects.
But when we examine the Georgics as poetical compositions, when we attend to the
elevated style in which they are written, the beauty of the similes, the
emphatic sentiments interspersed, the elegance of diction, the animated strain
of the whole, and the harmony of the versification, our admiration is excited,
at beholding subjects, so common in their nature, embellished with the most
magnificent decorations of poetry.
During four days which Augustus passed at Atella, to refresh himself from
fatigue, in his return to Rome, after the battle of Actium, the Georgics, just
then finished, were read to him by the author, who was occasionally relieved in
the task by his friend Mecænas. We may easily conceive the satisfaction enjoyed
by the emperor, at finding that while he himself had been gathering laurels in
the achievements of war, another glorious wreath was prepared by the Muses to
adorn his temples; and that an intimation was given of his being afterwards
celebrated in a work more congenial to the subject of heroic renown.
It is generally supposed that the Aeneid was written at the particular desire of
Augustus, who was ambitious of having the Julian family represented as lineal
descendants of the Trojan Aeneas. In this celebrated poem, Virgil has happily
united the characteristics of the Iliad and Odyssey, and blended them so
judiciously together, that they mutually contribute to the general effect of the
whole. By the esteem and sympathy excited for the filial piety and misfortunes
of Aeneas at the catastrophe of Troy, the reader is strongly interested in his
subsequent adventures; and every obstacle to the establishment of the Trojans in
the promised land of Hesperia produces fresh sensations of increased admiration
and attachment. The episodes, characters, and incidents, all concur to give
beauty or grandeur to the poem. The picture of Troy in flames can never be
sufficiently admired The incomparable portrait of Priam, in Homer, is admirably
accommodated to a different situation, in the character of Anchises, in the
Aeneid. The prophetic rage of the Cumæan Sibyl displays in the strongest colours
the enthusiasm of the poet. For sentiment, passion, and interesting description,
the episode of Dido is a master-piece in poetry. But Virgil is not more
conspicuous for strength of description than propriety of sentiment; and
wherever he takes a hint from the Grecian bard, he prosecutes the idea with a
judgment peculiar to himself. It may be sufficient to mention one instance. In
the sixth book of the Iliad, while the Greeks are making great slaughter amongst
the Trojans, Hector, by the advice of Helenus, retires into the city, to desire
that his mother would offer up prayers to the goddess Pallas, and vow to her a
noble sacrifice, if she would drive Diomede from the walls of Troy. Immediately
before his return to the field of battle, he has his last interview with
Andromache, whom he meets with his infant son Astyanax, carried by a nurse.
There occurs, upon this occasion, one of the most beautiful scenes in the Iliad,
where Hector dandles the boy in his arms, and pours forth a prayer, that he may
one day be superior in fame to his father. In the same manner, Aeneas, having
armed himself for the decisive combat with Turnus, addresses his son Ascanius in
a beautiful speech, which, while expressive of the strongest paternal affection,
contains, instead of a prayer, a noble and emphatic admonition, suitable to a
youth who had nearly attained the period of adult age. It is as follows:
Disce, puer, virtutem ex me, verumque laborem;
Fortunam ex aliis; nunc te mea dextera bello
Defensum dabit, et magna inter præmia ducet.
Tu facito, mox cum matura adoleverit ætas,
Sis memor: et te animo repetentem exempla tuorum,
Et pater Aeneas, et avunculus excitet Hector.
— Aeneid, xii.
My son! from my example learn the war
In camps to suffer, and in feuds to dare,
But happier chance than mine attend thy care!
This day my hand thy tender age shall shield,
And crown with honours of the conquered field:
Thou when thy riper years shall send thee forth
To toils of war, be mindful of my worth;
Assert thy birthright, and in arms be known,
For Hector’s nephew and Aeneas’ son.
Virgil, though born to shine by his own intrinsic powers, certainly owed much of
his excellence to the wonderful merits of Homer. His susceptible imagination,
vivid and correct, was impregnated by the Odyssey, and warmed with the fire of
the Iliad. Rivalling, or rather on some occasions surpassing his glorious
predecessor in the characters of heroes and of gods, he sustains their dignity
with so uniform a lustre, that they seem indeed more than mortal.
Whether the Iliad or the Aeneid be the more perfect composition, is a question
which has often been agitated, but perhaps will never be determined to general
satisfaction. In comparing the genius of the two poets, however, allowance ought
to be made for the difference of circumstances under which they composed their
respective works. Homer wrote in an age when mankind had not as yet made any
great progress in the exertion of either intellect or imagination, and he was
therefore indebted for his resources to the vast capacity of his own mind. To
this we must add, that he composed both his poems in a situation of life
extremely unfavourable to the cultivation of poetry. Virgil, on the contrary,
lived at a period when literature had attained to a high state of improvement.
He had likewise not only the advantage of finding a model in the works of Homer,
but of perusing the laws of epic poetry, which had been digested by Aristotle,
and the various observations made on the writings of the Greek bard by critics
of acuteness and taste; amongst the chief of whom was his friend Horace, who
remarks that
— quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus.
—De Arte Poet.
E’en sometimes the good Homer naps.
Virgil, besides, composed his poem in a state remote from indigence, where he
was roused to exertion by the example of several contemporary poets; and what
must have animated him beyond every other consideration, he wrote both at the
desire, and under the patronage of the emperor and his minister Mecænas. In what
time Homer composed either of his poems, we know not; but the Aeneid, we are
informed, was the employment of Virgil during eleven years. For some years, the
repeated entreaties of Augustus could not extort from him the smallest specimen
of the work; but at length, when considerably advanced in it, he condescended to
recite three books—the second, the fourth, and the sixth—in the presence of the
emperor and his sister Octavia, to gratify the latter of whom, in particular,
the recital of the last book now mentioned, was intended When the poet came to
the words, Tu Marcellus eris, alluding to Octavia’s son, a youth of great hopes,
who had lately died, the mother fainted. After she had recovered from this fit,
by the care of her attendants, she ordered ten sesterces to be given to Virgil
for every line relating to that subject; a gratuity which amounted to about two
thousand pounds sterling.
In the composition of the Aeneid, Virgil scrupled not to introduce whole lines
of Homer, and of the Latin poet Ennius; many of whose sentences he admired. In a
few instances he has borrowed from Lucretius. He is said to have been at
extraordinary pains in polishing his numbers; and when he was doubtful of any
passage, he would read it to some of his friends, that he might have their
opinion. On such occasions, it was usual with him to consult in particular his
freedman and librarian Erotes, an old domestic, who, it is related, supplied
extempore a deficiency in two lines, and was desired by his master to write them
in the manuscript.
When this immortal work was completed, Virgil resolved on retiring into Greece
and Asia for three years, that he might devote himself entirely to polishing it,
and have leisure afterwards to pass the remainder of his life in the cultivation
of philosophy. But meeting at Athens with Augustus, who was on his return from
the East, he determined on accompanying the emperor back to Rome. Upon a visit
to Megara, a town in the neighbourhood of Athens, he was seized with a languor,
which increased during the ensuing voyage; and he expired a few days after
landing at Brundisium, on the 22nd of September, in the fifty-second year of his
age. He desired that his body might be carried to Naples, where he had passed
many happy years; and that the following distich, written in his last sickness,
should be inscribed upon his tomb:
Mantua me genuit: Calabri rapuere: tenet nunc
Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces.
He was accordingly interred, by the order of Augustus, with great funeral pomp,
within two miles of Naples near the road to Puteoli, where his tomb still
exists. Of his estate, which was very considerable by the liberality of his
friends, he left the greater part to Valerius Proculus and his brother, a fourth
to Augustus, a twelfth to Mecænas, besides legacies to L. Varius and Plotius
Tucca, who, in consequence of his own request, and the command of Augustus,
revised and corrected the Aeneid after his death. Their instructions from the
emperor were, to expunge whatever they thought improper, but upon no account to
make any addition. This restriction is supposed to be the cause that many lines
in the Aeneid are imperfect.
Virgil was of large stature, had a dark complexion, and his features are said to
have been such as expressed no uncommon abilities. He was subject to complaints
of the stomaca and throat, as well as to head-ache, and had frequent discharges
of blood upwards: but from what part, we are not informed. He was very temperate
both in food and wine. His modesty was so great, that at Naples they commonly
gave him the name of Parthenias, “the modest man.” On the subject of his
modesty, the following anecdote is related.
Having written a distich, in which he compared Augustus to Jupiter, he placed it
in the night-time over the gate of the emperor’s palace. It was in these words:
Nocte pluit totâ, redeunt spectacula mane:
Divisum imperium cum Jove Cæsar habet.
All night it rained, with morn the sports appear,
Cæsar and Jove between them rule the year.
By order of Augustus, an inquiry was made after the author; and Virgil not
declaring himself, the verses were claimed by Bathyllus, a contemptible poet,
but who was liberally rewarded on the occasion. Virgil, provoked at the
falsehood of the impostor, again wrote the verses on some conspicuous part of
the palace, and under them the following line:
Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores;
I wrote the verse, another filched the praise;
with the beginning of another line in these words:
Sic vos, non nobis,
Not for yourselves, you—
repeated four times. Augustus expressing a desire that the lines should be
finished, and Bathyllus proving unequal to the task, Virgil at last filled up
the blanks in this manner:
Sic vos, non vobis, nidificatis, aves;
Sic vos, non vobis, vellera fertis, oves;
Sic vos, non vobis, mellificatis apes;
Sic vos, non vobis, fertis aratra, boves.
Not for yourselves, ye birds, your nests ye build,
Not for yourselves, ye sheep, your fleece ye yield;
Not for yourselves, ye bees, your cells ye fill;
Not for yourselves, ye beeves, ye plough and till.
The expedient immediately evinced him to be the author of the distich, and
Bathyllus became the theme of public ridicule.
When at any time Virgil came to Rome, if the people, as was commonly the case,
crowded to gaze upon him, or pointed at him with the finger in admiration, he
blushed, and stole away from them; frequently taking refuge in some shop. When
he went to the theatre, the audience universally rose up at his entrance, as
they did to Augustus, and received him with the loudest plaudits; a compliment
which, however highly honourable, he would gladly have declined. When such was
the just respect which they paid to the author of the Bucolics and Georgics, how
would they have expressed their esteem, had they beheld him in the effulgence of
epic renown! In the beautiful episode of the Elysian fields, in the Aeneid,
where he dexterously introduced a glorious display of their country, he had
touched the most elastic springs of Roman enthusiasm. The passion would have
rebounded upon himself, and they would, in the heat of admiration, have idolized
him.—
Horace was born at Venusia, on the tenth of December, in the consulship of L.
Cotta and L. Torquatus. According to his own acknowledgment, his father was a
freedman; by some it is said that he was a collector of the revenue, and by
others, a fishmonger, or a dealer in salted meat. Whatever he was, he paid
particular attention to the education of his son, for, after receiving
instruction from the best masters in Rome, he sent him to Athens to study
philosophy. From this place, Horace followed Brutus, in the quality of a
military tribune, to the battle of Philippi, where, by his own confession, being
seized with timidity, he abandoned the profession of a soldier, and returning to
Rome, applied himself to the cultivation of poetry. In a short time he acquired
the friendship of Virgil and Valerius, whom he mentions in his Satires, in terms
of the most tender affection.
Postera lux oritur multo gratissima namque
Plotius et Varius Sinuessæ, Virgiliusque,
Occurrunt; ammæ, quales neque candidiores
Terra tulit, neque queis me sit devinctior alter.
O qui complexus, et gaudia quanta fuerunt!
Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico.
—Sat. I. 5.
Next rising morn with double joy we greet,
For Plotius, Varius, Virgil, here we meet:
Pure spirits these; the world no purer knows,
For none my heart with more affection glows
How oft did we embrace, our joys how great!
For sure no blessing in the power of fate
Can be compared, in sanity of mind,
To friends of such companionable kind.
—Francis.
By the two friends above mentioned, he was recommended to the patronage not only
of Mecænas, but of Augustus, with whom he, as well as Virgil, lived on a footing
of the greatest intimacy. Satisfied with the luxury which he enjoyed at the
first tables in Rome, he was so unambitious of any public employment, that when
the emperor offered him the place of his secretary, he declined it. But as he
lived in an elegant manner, having, besides his house in town, a cottage on his
Sabine farm, and a villa at Tibur, near the falls of the Anio, he enjoyed,
beyond all doubt a handsome establishment, from the liberality of Augustus. He
indulged himself in indolence and social pleasure, but was at the same much
devoted to reading; and enjoyed a tolerable good state of health, although often
incommoded with a fluxion of rheum upon the eyes.
Horace, in the ardour of youth, and when his bosom beat high with the raptures
of fancy, had, in the pursuit of Grecian literature, drunk largely, at the
source, of the delicious springs of Castalia; and it seems to have been ever
after his chief ambition, to transplant into the plains of Latium the palm of
lyric poetry. Nor did he fail of success:
Exegi monumentum ære perennius.
—Carm. iii. 30.
More durable than brass a monument I’ve raised.
In Greece, and other countries, the Ode appears to have been the most ancient,
as well as the most popular species of literary production. Warm in expression,
and short in extent, it concentrates in narrow bounds the fire of poetical
transport: on which account, it has been generally employed to celebrate the
fervours of piety, the raptures of love, the enthusiasm of praise; and to
animate warriors to glorious exertions of valour:
Musa dedit fidibus Divos, puerosque Deorum,
Et pugilem victorem, et equum certamine primum,
Et juvenum curas, et libera vina referre.
—Hor. De Arte Poet
The Muse to nobler subjects tunes her lyre;
Gods, and the sons of Gods, her song inspire;
Wrestler and steed, who gained the Olympic prize,
Love’s pleasing cares, and wine’s unbounded joys.—Francis.
Misenum Aeoliden, quo non præstantior alter
Aere ciere viros, Martemque accendere cnatu.
Virgil, Aeneid, vi.
* * * * * *
Sed tum forte cavâ dum personat æquora conchâ
Demens, et cantu vocat in certamina Divos.
—Ibid.
Misenus, son of Œolus, renowned
The warrior trumpet in the field to sound;
With breathing brass to kindle fierce alarms,
And rouse to dare their fate in honourable arms
* * * * * *
Swollen with applause, and aiming still at more,
He now provokes the sea-gods from the shore
—Dryden
There arose in this department, among the Greeks, nine eminent poets, viz.
Alcæus, Alcman, Anacreon, Bacchylides, Ibicus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Simonides,
and Pindar. The greater number of this distinguished class are now known only by
name. They seem all to have differed from one another, no less in the kind of
measure which they chiefly or solely employed, than in the strength or softness,
the beauty or grandeur, the animated rapidity or the graceful ease of their
various compositions. Of the amorous effusions of the lyre, we yet have examples
in the odes of Anacreon, and the incomparable ode of Sappho: the lyric strains
which animated to battle, have sunk into oblivion; but the victors in the public
games of Greece have their fame perpetuated in the admirable productions of
Pindar.
Horace, by adopting, in the multiplicity of his subjects, almost all the various
measures of the different Greek poets, and frequently combining different
measures in the same composition, has compensated for the dialects of that
tongue, so happily suited to poetry, and given to a language less distinguished
for soft inflexions, all the tender and delicate modulations of the Eastern
song. While he moves in the measures of the Greeks with an case and gracefulness
which rivals their own acknowledged excellence, he has enriched the fund of
lyric harmony with a stanza peculiar to himself. In the artificial construction
of the Ode, he may justly be regarded as the first of lyric poets. In beautiful
imagery, he is inferior to none: in variety of sentiment and felicity of
expression, superior to every existing competitor in Greek or Roman poetry. He
is elegant without affectation; and what is more remarkable, in the midst of
gaiety he is moral. We seldom meet in his Odes with the abrupt apostrophes of
passionate excursion; but his transitions are conducted with ease, and every
subject introduced with propriety.
The Carmen Seculare was written at the express desire of Augustus, for the
celebration of the Secular Games, performed once in a hundred years, and which
continued during three days and three nights, whilst all Rome resounded with the
mingled effusions of choral addresses to gods and goddesses, and of festive joy.
An occasion which so much interested the ambition of the poet, called into
exertion the most vigorous efforts of his genius. More concise in mythological
attributes than the hymns ascribed to Homer, this beautiful production, in
variety and grandeur of invocation, and in pomp of numbers, surpasses all that
Greece, melodious but simple in the service of the altar, ever poured forth from
her vocal groves in solemn adoration. By the force of native genius, the
ancients elevated their heroes to a pitch of sublimity that excites admiration,
but to soar beyond which they could derive no aid from mythology; and it was
reserved for a bard, inspired with nobler sentiments than the Muses could
supply, to sing the praises of that Being whose ineffable perfections transcend
all human imagination. Of the praises of gods and heroes, there is not now
extant a more beautiful composition, than the 12th Ode of the first book of
Horace:
Quem virum aut heroa lyrâ vel acri
Tibià sumes celebrare, Clio?
Quem Deum? cujus recinet jocosa
Nomen imago.
Aut in umbrosis Heliconis oris, &c.
What man, what hero, on the tuneful lyre,
Or sharp-toned flute, will Clio choose to raise,
Deathless, to fame? What God? whose hallowed name:
The sportive image of the voice
Shall in the shades of Helicon repeat, &c.
The Satires of Horace are far from being remarkable for poet ical harmony, as he
himself acknowledges. Indeed, according to the plan upon which several of them
are written, it could scarcely be otherwise. They are frequently colloquial,
sometimes interrogatory, the transitions quick, and the apostrophes abrupt. It
was not his object in those compositions, to soothe the ear with the melody of
polished numbers, but to rally the frailties of the heart, to convince the
understanding by argument, and thence to put to shame both the vices and follies
of mankind. Satire is a species of composition, of which the Greeks furnished no
model; and the preceding Roman writers of this class, though they had much
improved it from its original rudeness and licentiousness, had still not brought
it to that degree of perfection which might answer the purpose of moral reform
in a polished state of society. It received the most essential improvement from
Horace, who has dexterously combined wit and argument, raillery and sarcasm, on
the side of morality and virtue, of happiness and truth.
The Epistles of this author may be reckoned amongst the most valuable
productions of antiquity. Except those of the second book, and one or two in the
first, they are in general of the familiar kind; abounding in moral sentiments,
and judicious observations on life and manners.
The poem De Arte Poëticâ comprises a system of criticism, in justness of
principle and extent of application, correspondent to the various exertions of
genius on subjects of invention and taste That in composing this excellent
production, he availed himself of the most approved works of Grecian original,
we may conclude from the advice which he there recommends:
— Vos exemplaria Græca
Nocturnâ versate manû, versate díurnâ.
Make the Greek authors your supreme delight;
Read them by day, and study them by night.
Francis.
In the writings of Horace there appears a fund of good sense, enlivened with
pleasantry, and refined by philosophical reflection. He had cultivated his
judgment with great application, and his taste was guided by intuitive
perception of moral beauty, aptitude, and propriety. The few instances of
indelicacy which occur in his compositions, we may ascribe rather to the manners
of the times, than to any blameable propensity in the author. Horace died in the
fifty-seventh year of his age, surviving his beloved Mecænas only three weeks; a
circumstance which, added to the declaration in an ode to that personage,
supposed to have been written in Mecænas’s last illness, has given rise to a
conjecture, that Horace ended his days by a violent death, to accompany his
friend. But it is more natural to conclude that he died of excessive grief, as,
had he literally adhered to the affirmation contained in the ode, he would have
followed his patron more closely. This seems to be confirmed by a fact
immediately preceding his death; for though he declared Augustus heir to his
whole estate, he was not able, on account of weakness, to put his signature to
the will; a failure which it is probable that he would have taken care to
obviate, had his death been premeditated. He was interred, at his own desire,
near the tomb of Mecænas.—
Ovid was born of an equestrian family, at Sulmo, a town of the Peligni, on the
21st of March, in the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa. His father intended him
for the bar; and after passing him through the usual course of instruction at
Rome, he was sent to Athens, the emporium of learning, to complete his
education. On his return to Rome, in obedience to the desire of his father, he
entered upon the offices of public life in the forum, and declaimed with great
applause. But this was the effect of paternal authority, not of choice: for,
from his earliest years, he discovered an extreme attachment to poetry; and no
sooner was his father dead, than, renouncing the bar, he devoted himself
entirely to the cultivation of that fascinating art, his propensity to which was
invincible. His productions, all written either in heroic or pentameter verse,
are numerous, and on various subjects. It will be sufficient to mention them
briefly.
The Heroides consist of twenty-one Epistles, all which, except three, are
feigned to be written from celebrated women of antiquity, to their husbands or
lovers: such as Penelope to Ulysses, Dido to Aeneas, Sappho to Phaon, &c. These
compositions are nervous, animated and elegant: they discover a high degree of
poetic enthusiasm, but blended with that lascivious turn of thought, which
pervades all the amorous productions of this celebrated author.
The elegies on subjects of love, particularly the Ars Amandi, or Ars Amatoria,
though not all uniform in versification, possess the same general character, of
warmth of passion, and luscious description, as the epistles.
The Fasti were divided into twelve books, of which only the first six now
remain. The design of them was to deliver an account of the Roman festivals in
every month of the year, with a description of the rites and ceremonies, as well
as the sacrifices on those occasions. It is to be regretted, that, on a subject
so interesting, this valuable work should not have been transmitted entire: but
in the part which remains, we are furnished with a beautiful description of the
ceremonial transactions in the Roman calendar, from the first of January to the
end of June. The versification, as in all the compositions of this author, is
easy and harmonious.
The most popular production of this poet is his Metamorphoses, not less
extraordinary for the nature of the subject, than for the admirable art with
which the whole is conducted. The work is founded upon the traditions and
theogony of the ancients, which consisted of various detached fables. Those Ovid
has not only so happily arranged, that they form a coherent series of
narratives, one rising out of another; but he describes the different changes
with such an imposing plausibility, as to give a natural appearance to the most
incredible fictions. This ingenious production, however perfect it may appear,
we are told by himself, had not received his last corrections when he was
ordered into banishment.
In the Ibis, the author imitates a poem of the same name, written by
Callimachus. It is an invective against some person who publicly traduced his
character at Rome, after his banishment. A strong sensibility, indignation, and
implacable resentment, are conspicuous through the whole.
The Tristia were composed in his exile, in which, though his vivacity forsook
him, he still retained a genius prolific in versification. In these poems, as
well as in many epistles to different persons, he bewails his unhappy situation,
and deprecates in the strongest terms the inexorable displeasure of Augustus.
Several other productions written by Ovid are now lost, and amongst them a
tragedy called Medea, of which Quintilian expresses a high opinion. Ovidii Medea
videtur mihi ostenders quantum vir ille præstare potuerit, si ingenio suo
temperare quam indulgere maluisset. Lib. x. c. 1.
It is a peculiarity in the productions of this author, that, on whatever he
employs his pen, he exhausts the subject; not with any prolixity that fatigues
the attention, but by a quick succession of new ideas, equally brilliant and
apposite, often expressed in antitheses. Void of obscenity in expression, but
lascivious in sentiment, he may be said rather to stimulate immorally the
natural passions, than to corrupt the imagination. No poet is more guided in
versification by the nature of his subject than Ovid. In common narrative, his
ideas are expressed with almost colloquial simplicity; but when his fancy glows
with sentiment, or is animated by objects of grandeur, his style is
proportionably elevated, and he rises to a pitch of sublimity.
No point in ancient history has excited more variety of conjectures than the
banishment of Ovid; but after all the efforts of different writers to elucidate
the subject, the cause of this extraordinary transaction remains involved in
obscurity. It may therefore not be improper, in this place, to examine the
foundation of the several conjectures which have been formed, and if they appear
to be utterly imadmissible, to attempt a solution of the question upon
principles more conformable to probability, and countenanced by historical
evidence.
The ostensible reason assigned by Augustus for banishing Ovid, was his
corrupting the Roman youth by lascivious publications; but it is evident, from
various passages in the poet’s productions after this period, that there was,
besides, some secret reason, which would not admit of being divulged. He says in
his Tristia, Lib. ii. 1—
Perdiderent cum me duo crimina, carmen et error.2
It appears from another passage in the same work, that this inviolable arcanum
was something which Ovid had seen, and, as he insinuates, through his own
ignorance and mistake.
Cur aliquid vidi? cur conscia lumina feci?
Cur imprudenti cognita culpa mihi est?
—Ibid.
* * * * * *
Inscia quod crimen viderunt lumina, plector:
Peccatumque ocuios est habuisse meum.
De Trist. iii. 5.
It seems, therefore, to be a fact sufficiently established, that Ovid had seen
something of a very indecent nature, in which Augustus was concerned. What this
was, is the question. Some authors, conceiving it to have been of a kind
extremely atrocious, have gone so far as to suppose, that it must have been an
act of criminality between Augustus and his own daughter Julia, who,
notwithstanding the strict attention paid to her education by her father, became
a woman of the most infamous character; suspected of incontinence during her
marriage with Agrippa, and openly profligate after her union with her next
husband, Tiberius. This supposition, however, rests entirely upon conjecture,
and is not only discredited by its own improbability, but by a yet more forcible
argument. It is certain that Julia was at this time in banishment for her
scandalous life. She was about the same age with Tiberius, who was now
fortyseven, and they had not cohabited for many years. We know not exactly the
year in which Augustus sent her into exile, but we may conclude with confidence,
that it happened soon after her separation from Tiberius; whose own interest
with the emperor, as well as that of his mother Livia, could not fail of being
exerted, if any such application was necessary, towards removing from the
capital a woman, who, by the notoriety of her prostitution, reflected disgrace
upon all with whom she was connected, either by blood or alliance. But no
application from Tiberius or his mother could be necessary, when we are assured
that Augustus even presented to the senate a narrative respecting the infamous
behaviour of his daughter, which was read by the quæstor. He was so much ashamed
of her profligacy, that he for a long time declined all company, and had
thoughts of putting her to death. She was banished to an island on the coast of
Campania for five years; at the expiration of which period, she was removed to
the continent, and the severity of her treatment a little mitigated; but though
frequent applications were made in her behalf by the people, Augustus never
could be prevailed upon to permit her return.
Other writers have conjectured, that, instead of Julia, the daughter of
Augustus, the person seen with him by Ovid may have been Julia his
grand-daughter, who inherited the vicious disposition of her mother, and was on
that account likewise banished by Augustus. The epoch of this lady’s banishment
it is impossible to ascertain; and therefore no argument can be drawn from that
source to invalidate the present conjecture. But Augustus had shown the same
solicitude for her being trained up in virtuous habits, as he had done in
respect of her mother, though in both cases unsuccessfully; and this
consideration, joined to the enormity of the supposed crime, and the great
sensibility which Augustus had discovered with regard to the infamy of his
daughter, seems sufficient to exonerate his memory from so odious a charge.
Besides, is it possible that he could have sent her into banishment for the
infamy of her prostitution, while (upon the supposition of incest) she was
mistress of so important a secret, as that he himself had been more criminal
with her than any other man in the empire?
Some writers, giving a wider scope to conjecture, have supposed the transaction
to be of a nature still more detestable, and have even dragged Mecænas, the
minister, into a participation of the crime. Fortunately, however, for the
reputation of the illustrious patron of polite learning, as well as for that of
the emperor, this crude conjecture may be refuted upon the evidence of
chronology. The commencement of Ovid’s exile happened in the ninth year of the
Christian æra, and the death of Mecænas, eight years before that period. Between
this and other calculations, we find a difference of three or four years; but
allowing the utmost latitude of variation, there intervened, from the death of
Mecænas to the banishment of Ovid, a period of eleven years; an observation
which fully invalidates the conjecture above-mentioned.
Having now refuted, as it is presumed, the opinions of the different
commentators on this subject, we shall proceed to offer a new conjecture, which
seems to have a greater claim to probability than any that has hitherto been
suggested.
Suetonius informs us, that Augustus, in the latter part of his life, contracted
a vicious inclination for the enjoyment of young virgins, who were procured for
him from all parts, not only with the connivance, but by the clandestine
management of his consort Livia. It was therefore probably with one of those
victims that he was discovered by Ovid. Augustus had for many years affected a
decency of behaviour, and he would, therefore, naturally be not a little
disconcerted at the unseasonable intrusion of the poet. That Ovid knew not of
Augustus’s being in the place, is beyond all doubt: and Augustus’s consciousness
of this circumstance, together with the character of Ovid, would suggest an
unfavourable suspicion of the motive which had brought the latter thither.
Abstracted from the immorality of the emperor’s own conduct, the incident might
be regarded as ludicrous, and certainly was more fit to excite the shame than
the indignation of Augustus. But the purpose of Ovid’s visit appears, from his
own acknowledgment, to have been not entirely free from blame, though of what
nature we know not:
Non equidem totam possum defendere culpam:
Sed partem nostri criminis error habet.
De Trist. Lib. iii. Eleg. 5.
I know I cannot wholly be defended,
Yet plead ’twas chance, no ill was then intended.
—Catlin.
Ovid was at this time turned of fifty, and though by a much younger man he would
not have been regarded as any object of jealousy in love, yet by Augustus, now
in his sixty-ninth year, he might be deemed a formidable rival. This passion,
therefore, concurring with that which arose from the interruption or
disappointment of gratification, inflamed the emperor’s resentment, and he
resolved on banishing to a distant country a man whom he considered as his
rival, and whose presence, from what had happened, he never more could endure.
Augustus having determined on the banishment of Ovid, could find little
difficulty in accommodating the ostensible to the secret and real cause of this
resolution.
No argument to establish the date of publication, can be drawn from the order in
which the various productions of Ovid are placed in the collection of his works:
but reasoning from probability, we should suppose that the Ars Amandi was
written during the period of his youth; and this seems to be confirmed by the
following passage in the second book of the Fasti:
Certe ego vos habui faciles in amore ministros;
Cum lusit numeris prima juventa suis.
That many years must have elapsed since its original publication is evident from
the subsequent lines in the second book of the Tristia:
Nos quoque jam pridem scripto pecavimus uno.
Supplicium patitur non nova culpa novum.
Carminaque edideram, cum te delicta notantem
Præterii toties jure quietus eques.
Ergo, quæ juveni mihi non nocitura putavi
Scripta parum prudens, nunc nocuere seni?
With what show, then, of justice, it may be asked, could Augustus now punish a
fault, which, in his solemn capacity of censor, he had so long and repeatedly
overlooked? The answer is obvious: in a production so popular as we may be
assured the Ars Amandi was amongst the Roman youth, it must have passed through
several editions in the course of some years: and one of those coinciding with
the fatal discovery, afforded the emperor a specious pretext for the execution
of his purpose. The severity exercised on this occasion, however, when the poet
was suddenly driven into exile, unaccompanied even by the partner of his bed,
who had been his companion for many years, was an act so inconsistent with the
usual moderation of Augustus, that we cannot justly ascribe it to any other
motive than personal resentment; especially as this arbitrary punishment of the
author could answer no end of public utility, while the obnoxious production
remained to affect, if it really ever did essentially affect, the morals of
society. If the sensibility of Augustus could not thenceforth admit of any
personal intercourse with Ovid, or even of his living within the limits of
Italy, there would have been little danger from the example, in sending into
honourable exile, with every indulgence which could alleviate so distressful a
necessity, a man of respectable rank in the state, who was charged with no
actual offence against the laws, and whose genius, with all its indiscretion,
did immortal honour to his country. It may perhaps be urged, that, considering
the predicament in which Augustus stood, he discovered a forbearance greater
than might have been expected from an absolute prince, in sparing the life of
Ovid. It will readily be granted, that Ovid, in the same circumstances, under
any one of the four subsequent emperors, would have expiated the incident with
his blood. Augustus, upon a late occasion, had shown himself equally sanguinary,
for he put to death, by the hand of Varus, a poet of Parma, named Cassius, on
account of his having written some satirical verses against him. By that recent
example, therefore, and the power of pardoning which the emperor still retained,
there was sufficient hold of the poet’s secresy respecting the fatal
transaction, which, if divulged to the world, Augustus would reprobate as a
false and infamous libel, and punish the author accordingly. Ovid, on his part,
was sensible, that, should he dare to violate the important but tacit
injunction, the imperial vengeance would reach him even on the shores of the
Euxine. It appears, however, from a passage in the Ibis, which can apply to no
other than Augustus, that Ovid was not sent into banishment destitute of
pecuniary provision:
Di melius! quorum longe mihi maximus ille,
Qui nostras inopes noluit esse vias.
Huic igitur meritas grates, ubicumque licebit,
Pro tam mansueto pectore semper agam.
The gods defend! of whom he’s far the chief,
Who lets me not, though banished, want relief.
For this his favour therefore whilst I live,
Where’er I am, deserved thanks I’ll give.
What sum the emperor bestowed, for the support of a banishment which he was
resolved should be perpetual, it is impossible to ascertain; but he had formerly
been liberal to Ovid, as well as to other poets.
If we might hazard a conjecture respecting the scene of the intrigue which
occasioned the banishment of Ovid, we should place it in some recess in the
emperor’s gardens. His house, though called Palatium, the palace, as being built
on the Palatine hill, and inhabited by the sovereign, was only a small mansion,
which had formerly belonged to Hortensius, the orator. Adjoining to this place
Augustus had built the temple of Apollo, which he endowed with a public library,
and allotted for the use of poets, to recite their compositions to each other.
Ovid was particularly intimate with Hyginus, one of Augustus’s freedmen, who was
librarian of the temple. He might therefore have been in the library, and spying
from the window a young female secreting herself in the gardens, he had the
curiosity to follow her.
The place of Ovid’s banishment was Tomi, now said to be Baba, a town of
Bulgaria, towards the mouth of the Ister, where is a lake still called by the
natives Ouvidouve Jesero, the lake of Ovid. In this retirement, and the Euxine
Pontus, he passed the remainder of his life, a melancholy period of seven years.
Notwithstanding the lascivious writings of Ovid, it does not appear that he was
in his conduct a libertine. He was three times married: his first wife, who was
of mean extraction, and whom he had married when he was very young, he divorced;
the second he dismissed on account of her immodest behaviour; and the third
appears to have survived him. He had a number of respectable friends, and seems
to have been much beloved by them.—
Tibullus was descended of an equestrian family, and is said, but erroneously, as
will afterwards appear, to have been born on the same day with Ovid. His amiable
accomplishments procured him the friendship of Messala Corvinus, whom he
accompanied in a military expedition to the island of Corcyra. But an
indisposition with which he was seized, and a natural aversion to the toils of
war, induced him to return to Rome, where he seems to have resigned himself to a
life of indolence and pleasure, amidst which he devoted a part of his time to
the composition of elegies. Elegiac poetry had been cultivated by several Greek
writers, particularly Callimachus, Mimnermus, and Philetas; but, so far as we
can find, had, until the present age, been unknown to the Romans in their own
tongue. It consisted of a heroic and pentameter line alternately, and was not,
like the elegy of the moderns, usually appropriated to the lamentation of the
deceased, but employed chiefly in compositions relative to love or friendship,
and might, indeed, be used upon almost any subject; though, from the limp in the
pentameter line, it is not suitable to sublime subjects, which require a fulness
of expression, and an expansion of sound. To this species of poetry Tibullus
restricted his application, by which he cultivated that simplicity and
tenderness, and agreeable ease of sentiment, which constitute the characteristic
perfections of the elegiac muse.
In the description of rural scenes, the peaceful occupations of the field, the
charms of domestic happiness, and the joys of reciprocal love, scarcely any poet
surpasses Tibullus. His luxuriant imagination collects the most beautiful
flowers of nature, and he displays them with all the delicate attraction of soft
and harmonious numbers. With a dexterity peculiar to himself, in whatever
subject he engages, he leads his readers imperceptibly through devious paths of
pleasure, of which, at the outset of the poem, they could form no conception. He
seems to have often written without any previous meditation or design. Several
of his elegies may be said to have neither middle nor end: yet the transitions
are so natural, and the gradations so easy, that though we wander through
Elysian scenes of fancy, the most heterogeneous in their nature, we are sensible
of no defect in the concatenation which has joined them together. It is,
however, to be regretted that, in some instances, Tibullus betrays that
licentiousness of manners which formed too general a characteristic even of this
refined age. His elegies addressed to Messala contain a beautiful amplification
of sentiments founded in friendship and esteem, in which it is difficult to say,
whether the virtues of the patron or the genius of the poet be more conspicuous.
Valerius Messala Corvinus, whom he celebrates, was descended of a very ancient
family. In the civil wars which followed the death of Julius Cæsar he joined the
republican party, and made himself master of the camp of Octavius at Philippi;
but he was afterwards reconciled to his opponent, and lived to an advanced age
in favour and esteem with Augustus. He was distinguished not only by his
military talents, but by his eloquence, integrity, and patriotism.
From the following passage in the writings of Tibullus, commentators have
conjectured that he was deprived of his lands by the same proscription in which
those of Virgil had been involved:
Cui fuerant flavi ditantes ordine sulci
Horrea, fæcundas ad deficientia messes,
Cuique pecus denso pascebant agmine colles,
Et domino satis, et nimium furique lupoque.
Nunc desiderium superest: nam cura novatur,
Cum memor anteactos semper dolor admovet annos.
Lib. iv. El. 1.
But this seems not very probable, when we consider that Horace, several years
after that period, represents him as opulent.
Dî tibi divitias dederant, artemque fruendi.
Epist. Lib. i. 4.
To thee the gods a fair estate
In bounty gave, with heart to know
How to enjoy what they bestow.
—Francis.
We know not the age of Tibullus at the time of his death; but in an elegy
written by Ovid upon that occasion, he is spoken of as a young man. Were it
true, as is said by biographers, that he was born the same day with Ovid, we
must indeed assign the event to an early period: for Ovid cannot have written
the elegy after the forty-third year of his own life, and how long before is
uncertain. In the tenth elegy of the fourth book, De Tristibus, he observes,
that the fates had allowed little time for the cultivation of his friendship
with Tibullus.
Virgilium vidi tantum; nec avara Tibullo
Tempus amicitiæ fata dedere meæ.
Successor fuit hic tibi, Galle; Propertius illi:
Quartus ab his serie temporis ipse fui.
Utque ego majores, sic me coluere minores.
Virgil I only saw, and envious fate
Did soon my friend Tibullus hence translate.
He followed Gallus, and Propertius him,
And I myself was fourth in course of time.
—Catlin.
As both Ovid and Tibullus lived at Rome, were both of the equestrian order, and
of congenial dispositions, it is natural to suppose that their acquaintance
commenced at an early period; and if, after all, it was of short duration, there
would be no improbability in concluding, that Tibullus died at the age of some
years under thirty. It is evident, however, that biographers have committed a
mistake with regard to the birth of this poet; for in the passage above cited of
the Tristia, Ovid mentions Tibullus as a writer, who, though his contemporary,
was much older than himself. From this passage we should be justified in placing
the death of Tibullus between the fortieth and fiftieth year of his age, and
rather nearer to the latter period; for, otherwise, Horace would scarcely have
mentioned him in the manner he does in one of his epistles.
Albi, nostrorum sermonum candide judex,
Quid nunc te dicam facere in regione Pedanâ?
Scribere quod Cassî Parmensis opuscula vincat;
An tacitum silvas inter reptare salubres,
Curantem quicquid dignum sapiente bonoque est?
—Epist. i. 4
Albius, in whom my satires find
A critic, candid, just, and kind,
Do you, while at your country seat,
Some rhyming labours meditate,
That shall in volumed bulk arise,
And e’en from Cassius bear the prize;
Or saunter through the silent wood,
Musing on what befits the good.
—Francis.
This supposition is in no degree inconsistent with the authority of Ovid, where
he mentions him as a young man; for the Romans extended the period of youth to
the fiftieth year.—
Propertius was born at Mevania, a town of Umbria, seated at the confluence of
the Tina and Clitumnus. This place was famous for its herds of white cattle,
brought up there for sacrifice, and supposed to be impregnated with that colour
by the waters of the river last mentioned.
Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges, et maxima taurus
Victima, sæpe tuo perfusi flumine sacro,
Romanos ad templa Deum duxere triumphos
— Georg ii.
And where thy sacred streams, Clitumnus! flow,
White herds, and stateliest bulls that oft have led
Triumphant Rome, and on her altars bled
— Sotheby.
His father is said by some to have been a Roman knight, and they add, that he
was one of those who, when L. Antony was starved out of Perusia, were, by the
order of Octavius, led to the altar of Julius Cæsar, and there slain. Nothing
more is known with certainty, than that Propertius lost his father at an early
age, and being deprived of a great part of his patrimony, betook himself to
Rome, where his genius soon recommended him to public notice, and he obtained
the patronage of Mecænas. From his frequent introduction of historical and
mythological subjects into his poems, he received the appellation of “the
learned.”
Of all the Latin elegiac poets, Propertius has the justest claim to purity of
thought and expression. He often draws his imagery from reading, more than from
the imagination, and abounds less in description than sentiment. For warmth of
passion he is not conspicuous, and his tenderness is seldom marked with a great
degree of sensibility; but, without rapture, he is animated, and, like Horace,
in the midst of gaiety, he is moral. The stores with which learning supplies him
diversify as well as illustrate his subject, while delicacy every where
discovers a taste refined by the habit of reflection. His versification, in
general, is elegant, but not uniformly harmonious.
Tibullus and Propertius have each written four books of Elegies; and it has been
disputed which of them is superior in this department of poetry. Quintilian has
given his suffrage in favour of Tibullus, who, so far as poetical merit alone is
the object of consideration, seems entitled to the preference.—
Gallus was a Roman knight, distinguished not only for poetical, but military
talents. Of his poetry we have only six elegies, written, in the person of an
old man, on the subject of old age, but which, there is reason to think, were
composed at an earlier part of the author’s life. Except the fifth elegy, which
is tainted with immodesty, the others, particularly the first, are highly
beautiful, and may be placed in competition with any other productions of the
elegiac kind. Gallus was, for some time, in great favour with Augustus, who
appointed him governor of Egypt. It is said, however, that he not only oppressed
the province by extortion, but entered into a conspiracy against his benefactor,
for which he was banished. Unable to sustain such a reverse of fortune, he fell
into despair, and laid violent hands on himself. This is the Gallus in honour of
whom Virgil composed his tenth eclogue.
Such are the celebrated productions of the Augustan age, which have been happily
preserved, for the delight and admiration of mankind, and will survive to the
latest posterity. Many more once existed, of various merit, and of different
authors, which have left few or no memorials behind them, but have perished
promiscuously amidst the indiscriminate ravages of time, of accidents, and of
barbarians. Amongst the principal authors whose works are lost, are Varius and
Valgius; the former of whom, besides a panegyric upon Augustus, composed some
tragedies. According to Quintilian, his Thyestes was equal to any composition of
the Greek tragic poets.
The great number of eminent writers, poets in particular, who adorned this age,
has excited general admiration, and the phenomenon is usually ascribed to a
fortuitous occurrence, which baffles all inquiry: but we shall endeavour to
develope the various causes which seem to have produced this effect; and should
the explanation appear satisfactory, it may favour an opinion, that under
similar circumstances, if ever they should again be combined, a period of equal
glory might arise in other ages and nations.
The Romans, whether from the influence of climate, or their mode of living,
which in general was temperate, were endowed with a lively imagination, and, as
we before observed, a spirit of enterprise. Upon the final termination of the
Punic war, and the conquest of Greece, their ardour, which had hitherto been
exercised in military achievements, was diverted into the channel of literature;
and the civil commotions which followed, having now ceased, a fresh impulse was
given to activity in the ambitious pursuit of the laurel, which was now only to
be obtained by glorious exertions of intellect. The beautiful productions of
Greece, operating strongly upon their minds, excited them to imitation;
imitation, when roused amongst a number, produced emulation; and emulation
cherished an extraordinary thirst of fame, which, in every exertion of the human
mind, is the parent of excellence. This liberal contention was not a little
promoted by the fashion introduced at Rome, for poets to recite their
compositions in public; a practice which seems to have been carried even to a
ridiculous excess.—Such was now the rage for poetical composition in the Roman
capital, that Horace describes it in the following terms:
Mutavit mentem populus levis, et calet uno
Scribendi studio: pueri patresque severi
Fronde comas vincti cœnant, et carmina dictant.
—Epist. ii. 1.
* * * * * *
Now the light people bend to other aims;
A lust of scribbling every breast inflames;
Our youth, our senators, with bays are crowned,
And rhymes eternal as our feasts go round.
Scribimus indocti doctique poëmata passim.
—Hor. Epist ii. 1.
But every desperate blockhead dares to write,
Verse is the trade of every living wight.
—Francis.
The thirst of fame above mentioned, was a powerful incentive, and is avowed both
by Virgil and Horace. The former, in the third book of his Georgics, announces a
resolution of rendering himself celebrated, if possible.
— tentanda via est quâ me quoque possim
Tollere humo, victorque virûm volitare per ora.
I, too, will strive o’er earth my flight to raise,
And wing’d by victory, catch the gale of praise.
—Sotheby.
And Horace, in the conclusion of his first Ode, expresses himself in terms which
indicate a similar purpose.
Quod si me lyricis vatibis inseres,
Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.
But if you rank me with the choir,
Who tuned with art the Grecian lyre;
Swift to the noblest heights of fame,
Shall rise thy poet’s deathless name.
—Francis.
Even Sallust, a historian, in his introduction to Catiline’s Conspiracy,
scruples not to insinuate the same kind of ambition. Quo mihi rectius videtur
ingenii quam virium opibus gloriam quærere; et quoniam vita ipsa, quâ fruimur,
brevis est, memoriam nostri quam maxume longam efficere.
Another circumstance of great importance, towards the production of such poetry
as might live through every age, was the extreme attention which the great poets
of this period displayed, both in the composition, and the polishing of their
works. Virgil, when employed upon the Georgics, usually wrote in the morning,
and applied much of the subsequent part of the day to correction and
improvement. He compared himself to a bear, that licks her cub into form. If
this was his regular practice in the Georgics, we may justly suppose that it was
the same in the Aeneid. Yet, after all this labour, he intended to devote three
years entirely to its farther amendment. Horace has gone so far in recommending
careful correction, that he figuratively mentions nine years as an adequate
period for that purpose. But whatever may be the time, there is no precept which
he urges either oftener or more forcibly, than a due attention to this important
subject.
Sæpe stylum vertas, iterum quæ digna legi sint
Scripturus.
* * * Sat. i. x.
Would you a reader’s just esteem engage?
Correct with frequent care the blotted page.
—Francis.
—————————————— Vos, O
Pompilius sanguis, carmen reprehendite, quod non
Multa dies et multa litura coërcuit, atque
Perfectum decies non castigavit ad unguem.
—Francis.
To the several causes above enumerated, as concurring to form the great
superiority of the Augustan age, as respects the productions of literature, one
more is to be subjoined, of a nature the most essential: the liberal and
unparalleled encouragement given to distinguished talents by the emperor and his
minister. This was a principle of the most powerful energy: it fanned the flame
of genius, invigorated every exertion; and the poets who basked in the rays of
imperial favour, and the animating patronage of Mecænas, experienced a poetic
enthusiasm which approached to real inspiration.
Having now finished the proposed explanation, relative to the celebrity of the
Augustan age, we shall conclude with recapitulating in a few words the causes of
this extraordinary occurrence.
The models, then, which the Romans derived from Grecian poetry, were the finest
productions of human genius; their incentives to emulation were the strongest
that could actuate the heart. With ardour, therefore, and industry in composing,
and with unwearied patience in polishing their compositions, they attained to
that glorious distinction in literature, which no succeeding age has ever
rivalled.
TIBERIUS NERO CAESAR.
I.The patrician family of the Claudii (for there was a plebeian family of the
same name, no way inferior to the other either in power or dignity) came
originally from Regilli, a town of the Sabines. They removed thence to Rome soon
after the building of the city, with a great body of their dependants, under
Titus Tatius, who reigned jointly with Romulus in the kingdom; or, perhaps, what
is related upon better authority, under Atta Claudius, the head of the family,
who was admitted by the senate into the patrician order six years after the
expulsion of the Tarquins. They likewise received from the state, lands beyond
the Anio for their followers, and a burying-place for themselves near the
capitol. After this period, in process of time, the family had the honour of
twenty-eight consulships, five dictatorships, seven censorships, seven triumphs,
and two ovations. Their descendants were distinguished by various prænomina and
cognomina, but rejected by common consent the prænomen of Lucius, when, of the
two races who bore it, one individual had been convicted of robbery, and another
of murder. Amongst other cognomina, they assumed that of Nero, which in the
Sabine language signifies strong and valiant.
II. It appears from record, that many of the Claudii have performed signal
services to the state, as well as committed acts of delinquency. To mention the
most remarkable only, Appius Cæcus dissuaded the senate from agreeing to an
alliance with Pyrrhus, as prejudicial to the republic. Claudius Candex first
passed the straits of Sicily with a fleet, and drove the Carthaginians out of
the island. Claudius Nero cut off Asdrubal with a vast army upon his arrival in
Italy from Spain, before he could form a junction with his brother Annibal. On
the other hand, Claudius Appius Regillanus, one of the Decemvirs, made a violent
attempt to have a free virgin, of whom he was enamoured, adjudged a slave; which
caused the people to secede a second time from the senate. Claudius Drusus
erected a statue of himself wearing a crown at Appii Forum, and endeavoured, by
means of his dependants, to make himself master of Italy. Claudius Pulcher,
when, off the coast of Sicily, the pullets used for taking augury would not eat,
in contempt of the omen threw them overboard, as if they should drink at least,
if they would not eat; and then engaging the enemy, was routed. After his
defeat, when he was ordered by the senate to name a dictator, making a sort of
jest of the public disaster, he named Glycias, his apparitor.
The women of this family, likewise, exhibited characters equally opposed to each
other. For both the Claudias belonged to it; she, who, when the ship freighted
with things sacred to the Idæan Mother of the Gods, stuck fast in the shallows
of the Tiber, got it off, by praying to the Goddess with a loud voice, “Follow
me, if I am chaste;” and she also, who, contrary to the usual practice in the
case of women, was brought to trial by the people for treason; because, when her
litter was stopped by a great crowd in the streets, she openly exclaimed, “I
wish my brother Pulcher was alive now, to lose another fleet, that Rome might be
less thronged.” Besides, it is well known, that all the Claudii, except Publius
Claudius, who, to effect the banishment of Cicero, procured himself to be
adopted by a plebeian, and one younger than himself, were always of the
patrician party, as well as great sticklers for the honour and power of that
order; and so violent and obstinate in their opposition to the plebeians, that
not one of them, even in the case of a trial for life by the people, would ever
condescend to put on mourning, according to custom, or make any supplication to
them for favour; and some of them in their contests, have even proceeded to lay
hands on the tribunes of the people. A Vestal Virgin likewise of the family,
when her brother was resolved to have the honour of a triumph contrary to the
will of the people, mounted the chariot with him, and attended him into the
capitol, that it might not be lawful for any of the tribunes to interfere and
forbid it.
III. From this family Tiberius Cæsar is descended; indeed both by the father and
mother’s side; by the former from Tiberius Nero, and by the latter from Appius
Pulcher, who were both sons of Appius Cæcus. He likewise belonged to the family
of the Livii, by the adoption of his mother’s grandfather into it; which family,
although plebeian, made a distinguished figure, having had the honour of eight
consulships, two censorships, three triumphs, one dictatorship, and the office
of master of the horse; and was famous for eminent men, particularly, Salinator
and the Drusi. Salinator, in his censorship, branded all the tribes, for their
inconstancy in having made him consul a second time, as well as censor, although
they had condemned him to a heavy fine after his first consulship. Drusus
procured for himself and his posterity a new surname, by killing in single
combat Drausus, the enemy’s chief. He is likewise said to have recovered, when
pro-prætor in the province of Gaul, the gold which was formerly given to the
Senones, at the siege of the capitol, and had not, as is reported, been forced
from them by Camillus. His great-great-grandson, who, for his extraordinary
services against the Gracchi, was styled the “Patron of the Senate,” left a son,
who, while plotting in a sedition of the same description, was treacherously
murdered by the opposite party.
IV. But the father of Tiberius Cæsar, being quæstor to Caius Cæsar, and
commander of his fleet in the war of Alexandria, contributed greatly to its
success. He was therefore made one of the high-priests in the room of Publius
Scipio; and was sent to settle some colonies in Gaul, and amongst the rest,
those of Narbonne and Arles. After the assassination of Cæsar, however, when the
rest of the senators, for fear of public disturbances, were for having the
affair buried in oblivion, he proposed a resolution for rewarding those who had
killed the tyrant. Having filled the office of prætor, and at the end of the
year a disturbance breaking out amongst the triumviri, he kept the badges of his
office beyond the legal time; and following Lucius Antonius the consul, brother
of the triumvir, to Perusia, though the rest submitted, yet he himself continued
firm to the party, and escaped first to Præneste, and then to Naples; whence,
having in vain invited the slaves to liberty, he fled over to Sicily. But
resenting his not being immediately admitted into the presence of Sextus Pompey,
and being also prohibited the use of the fasces, he went over into Achaia to
Mark Antony; with whom, upon a reconciliation soon after brought about amongst
the several contending parties, he returned to Rome; and, at the request of
Augustus, gave up to him his wife Livia Drusilla, although she was then big with
child, and had before borne him a son. He died not long after; leaving behind
him two sons, Tiberius and Drusus Nero.
V. Some have imagined that Tiberius was born at Fundi, but there is only this
trifling foundation for the conjecture, that his mother’s grandmother was of
Fundi, and that the image of Good Fortune was, by a decree of the senate,
erected in a public place in that town. But according to the greatest number of
writers, and those too of the best authority, he was born at Rome, in the
Palatine quarter, upon the sixteenth of the calends of December [16th Nov.],
when Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was second time consul, with Lucius Munatius
Plancus, after the battle of Philippi; for so it is registered in the calendar,
and the public acts. According to some, however, he was born the preceding year,
in the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa; and others say, in the year following,
during the consulship of Servilius Isauricus and Antony.
VI. His infancy and childhood were spent in the midst of danger and trouble; for
he accompanied his parents everywhere in their flight, and twice at Naples
nearly betrayed them by his crying, when they were privately hastening to a
ship, as the enemy rushed into the town; once, when he was snatched from his
nurse’s breast, and again, from his mother’s bosom, by some of the company, who
on the sudden emergency wished to relieve the women of their burden. Being
carried through Sicily and Achaia, and entrusted for some time to the care of
the Lacedæmonians, who were under the protection of the Claudian family, upon
his departure thence when travelling by night, he ran the hazard of his life, by
a fire which, suddenly bursting out of a wood on all sides, surrounded the whole
party so closely, that part of Livia’s dress and hair was burnt. The presents
which were made him by Pompeia, sister to Sextus Pompey, in Sicily, namely, a
cloak, with a clasp, and bullæ of gold, are still in existence, and shewn at
Baiæ to this day. After his return to the city, being adopted by Marcus Gallius,
a senator, in his will, he took possession of the estate; but soon afterwards
declined the use of his name, because Gallius had been of the party opposed to
Augustus. When only nine years of age, he pronounced a funeral oration in praise
of his father upon the rostra; and afterwards, when he had nearly attained the
age of manhood, he attended the chariot of Augustus, in his triumph for the
victory at Actium, riding on the left-hand horse, whilst Marcellus, Octavia’s
son, rode that on the right. He likewise presided at the games celebrated on
account of that victory; and in the Trojan games intermixed with the Circensian,
he commanded a troop of the biggest boys.
VII. After assuming the manly habit, he spent his youth, and the rest of his
life until he succeeded to the government, in the following manner: he gave the
people an entertainment of gladiators, in memory of his father, and another for
his grandfather Drusus, at different times and in different places: the first in
the forum, the second in the amphitheatre; some gladiators who had been
honourably discharged, being induced to engage again, by a reward of a hundred
thousand sesterces. He likewise exhibited public sports, at which he was not
present himself. All these he performed with great magnificence, at the expense
of his mother and father-in-law. He married Agrippina, the daughter of Marcus
Agrippa, and grand-daughter of Cæcilius Atticus, a Roman knight, the same person
to whom Cicero has addressed so many epistles. After having by her his son
Drusus, he was obliged to part with her, though she retained his affection, and
was again pregnant, to make way for marrying Augustus’s daughter Julia. But this
he did with extreme reluctance; for, besides having the warmest attachment to
Agrippina, he was disgusted with the conduct of Julia, who had made indecent
advances to him during the lifetime of her former husband; and that she was a
woman of loose character, was the general opinion. At divorcing Agrippina he
felt the deepest regret; and upon meeting her afterwards, he looked after her
with eyes so passionately expressive of affection, that care was taken she
should never again come in his sight. At first, however, he lived quietly and
happily with Julia; but a rupture soon ensued, which became so violent, that
after the loss of their son, the pledge of their union, who was born at Aquileia
and died in infancy, he never would sleep with her more. He lost his brother
Drusus in Germany, and brought his body to Rome, travelling all the way on foot
before it.
VIII. When he first applied himself to civil affairs, he defended the several
causes of king Archelaus, the Trallians, and the Thessalians, before Augustus,
who sat as judge at the trials. He addressed the senate on behalf of the
Laodiceans, the Thyatireans, and Chians, who had suffered greatly by an
earthquake, and implored relief from Rome. He prosecuted Fannius Cæpio, who had
been engaged in a conspiracy with Varro Muræna against Augustus, and procured
sentence of condemnation against him. Amidst all this, he had besides to
superintend two departments of the administration, that of supplying the city
with corn, which was then very scarce, and that of clearing the houses of
correction throughout Italy, the masters of which had fallen under the odious
suspicion of seizing and keeping confined, not only travellers, but those whom
the fear of being obliged to serve in the army had driven to seek refuge in such
places.
IX. He made his first campaign, as a military tribune, in the Cantabrian war.
Afterwards he led an army into the East, where he restored the kingdom of
Armenia to Tigranes; and seated on a tribunal, put a crown upon his head. He
likewise recovered from the Parthians the standards which they had taken from
Crassus. He next governed, for nearly a year, the province of Gallia Comata,
which was then in great disorder, on account of the incursions of the
barbarians, and the feuds of the chiefs. He afterwards commanded in the several
wars against the Rhætians, Vindelicians, Pannonians, and Germans. In the Rhætian
and Vindelician wars, he subdued the nations in the Alps; and in the Pannonian
wars the Bruci, and the Dalmatians In the German war, he transplanted into Gaul
forty thousand of the enemy who had submitted, and assigned them lands near the
banks of the Rhine. For these actions, he entered the city with an ovation, but
riding in a chariot, and is said by some to have been the first that ever was
honoured with this distinction. He filled early the principal offices of state;
and passed through the quæstorship, prætorship, and consulate almost
successively. After some interval, he was chosen consul a second time, and held
the tribunitian authority during five years.
X. Surrounded by all this prosperity, in the prime of life and in excellent
health, he suddenly formed the resolution of withdrawing to a greater distance
from Rome. It is uncertain whether this was the result of disgust for his wife,
whom he neither durst accuse nor divorce, and the connection with whom became
every day more intolerable; or to prevent that indifference towards him, which
his constant residence in the city might produce; or in the hope of supporting
and improving by absence his authority in the state, if the public should have
occasion for his service. Some are of opinion, that as Augustus’s sons were now
grown up to years of maturity, he voluntarily relinquished the possession he had
long enjoyed of the second place in the government, as Agrippa had done before
him; who, when M. Marcellus was advanced to public offices, retired to Mitylene,
that he might not seem to stand in the way of his promotion, or in any respect
lessen him by his presence. The same reason likewise Tiberius gave afterwards
for his retirement; but his pretext at this time was, that he was satiated with
honours, and desirous of being relieved from the fatigue of business; requesting
therefore that he might have leave to withdraw. And neither the earnest
entreaties of his mother, nor the complaint of his father-in-law made even in
the senate, that he was deserted by him, could prevail upon him to alter his
resolution. Upon their persisting in the design of detaining him, he refused to
take any sustenance for four days together. At last, having obtained permission,
leaving his wife and son at Rome, he proceeded to Ostia, without exchanging a
word with those who attended him, and having embraced but very few persons at
parting.
XI. From Ostia, journeying along the coast of Campania, he halted awhile on
receiving intelligence of Augustus’s being taken ill, but this giving rise to a
rumour that he stayed with a view to something extraordinary, he sailed with the
wind almost full against him, and arrived at Rhodes, having been struck with the
pleasantness and healthiness of the island at the time of his landing there in
his return from Armenia. Here contenting himself with a small house, and a villa
not much larger, near the town, he led entirely a private life, taking his walks
sometimes about the Gymnasia, without any lictor or other attendant, and
returning the civilities of the Greeks with almost as much complaisance as if he
had been upon a level with them. One morning, in settling the course of his
daily excursion, he happened to say, that he should visit all the sick people in
the town. This being not rightly understood by those about him, the sick were
brought into a public portico, and ranged in order, according to their several
distempers. Being extremely embarrassed by this unexpected occurrence, he was
for some time irresolute how he should act; but at last he determined to go
round them all, and make an apology for the mistake even to the meanest amongst
them, and such as were entirely unknown to him. One instance only is mentioned,
in which he appeared to exercise his tribunitian authority. Being a constant
attendant upon the schools and lecture-rooms of the professors of the liberal
arts, on occasion of a quarrel amongst the wrangling sophists, in which he
interposed to reconcile them, some person took the liberty to abuse him as an
intruder, and partial in the affair. Upon this, withdrawing privately home, he
suddenly returned attended by his officers, and summoning his accuser before his
tribunal, by a public crier, ordered him to be taken to prison. Afterwards he
received tidings that his wife Julia had been condemned for her lewdness and
adultery, and that a bill of divorce had been sent to her in his name, by the
authority of Augustus. Though he secretly rejoiced at this intelligence, he
thought it incumbent upon him, in point of decency, to interpose in her behalf
by frequent letters to Augustus, and to allow her to retain the presents which
he had made her, notwithstanding the little regard she merited from him. When
the period of his tribunitian authority expired, declaring at last that he had
no other object in his retirement than to avoid all suspicion of rivalship with
Caius and Lucius, he petitioned that, since he was now secure in that respect,
as they were come to the age of manhood, and would easily maintain themselves in
possession of the second place in the state, he might be permitted to visit his
friends, whom he was very desirous of seeing. But his request was denied; and he
was advised to lay aside all concern for his friends, whom he had been so eager
to greet.
XII. He therefore continued at Rhodes much against his will, obtaining, with
difficulty, through his mother, the title of Augustus’s lieutenant, to cover his
disgrace. He thence-forth lived, however, not only as a private person, but as
one suspected and under apprehension, retiring into the interior of the country,
and avoiding the visits of those who sailed that way, which were very frequent;
for no one passed to take command of an army, or the government of a province,
without touching at Rhodes. But there were fresh reasons for increased anxiety.
For crossing over to Samos, on a visit to his step-son Caius, who had been
appointed governor of the East, he found him prepossessed against him, by the
insinuations of Marcus Lollius, his companion and director. He likewise fell
under suspicion of sending by some centurions who had been promoted by himself,
upon their return to the camp after a furlough, mysterious messages to several
persons there, intended, apparently, to tamper with them for a revolt. This
jealousy respecting his designs being intimated to him by Augustus, he begged
repeatedly that some person of any of the three Orders might be placed as a spy
upon him in every thing he either said or did.
XIII. He laid aside likewise his usual exercises of riding and arms; and
quitting the Roman habit, made use of the Pallium and Crepida. In this condition
he continued almost two years, becoming daily an object of increasing contempt
and odium; insomuch that the people of Nismes pulled down all the images and
statues of him in their town; and upon mention being made of him at table one of
the company said to Caius, “I will sail over to Rhodes immediately, if you
desire me, and bring you the head of the exile;” for that was the appellation
now given him. Thus alarmed not only by apprehensions, but real danger, he
renewed his solicitations for leave to return; and, seconded by the most urgent
supplications of his mother, he at last obtained his request; to which an
accident somewhat contributed. Augustus had resolved to determine nothing in the
affair, but with the consent of his eldest son. The latter was at that time out
of humour with Marcus Lollius, and therefore easily disposed to be favourable to
his father-in-law. Caius thus acquiescing, he was recalled, but upon condition
that he should take no concern whatever in the administration of affairs.
XIV. He returned to Rome after an absence of nearly eight years, with great and
confident hopes of his future elevation, which he had entertained from his
youth, in consequence of various prodigies and predictions. For Livia, when
pregnant with him, being anxious to discover, by different modes of divination,
whether her offspring would be a son, amongst others, took an egg from a hen
that was sitting, and kept it warm with her own hands, and those of her maids,
by turns, until a fine cock-chicken, with a large comb, was hatched. Scribonius,
the astrologer, predicted great things of him when he was a mere child. “He will
come in time,” said the prophet, “to be even a king, but without the usual badge
of royal dignity;” the rule of the Cæsars being as yet unknown. When he was
making his first expedition, and leading his army through Macedonia into Syria,
the altars which had been formerly consecrated at Philippi by the victorious
legions, blazed suddenly with spontaneous fires. Soon after, as he was marching
to Illyricum, he stopped to consult the oracle of Geryon, near Padua; and having
drawn a lot by which he was desired to throw golden tali into the fountain of
Aponus, for an answer to his inquiries, he did so, and the highest numbers came
up. And those very tali are still to be seen at the bottom of the fountain. A
few days before his leaving Rhodes, an eagle, a bird never before seen in that
island, perched on the top of his house. And the day before he received
intelligence of the permission granted him to return, as he was changing his
dress, his tunic appeared to be all on fire. He then likewise had a remarkable
proof of the skill of Thrasyllus, the astrologer, whom, for his proficiency in
philosophical researches, he had taken into his family. For, upon sight of the
ship which brought the intelligence, he said, good news was coming: whereas
every thing going wrong before, and quite contrary to his predictions, Tiberius
had intended that very moment, when they were walking together, to throw him
into the sea, as an impostor, and one to whom he had too hastily entrusted his
secrets.
XV. Upon his return to Rome, having introduced his son Drusus into the forum, he
immediately removed from Pompey’s house, in the Carinæ, to the gardens of
Mecænas, on the Esquiline, and resigned himself entirely to his ease, performing
only the common offices of civility in private life, without any preferment in
the government. But Caius and Lucius being both carried off in the space of
three years, he was adopted by Augustus, along with their brother Agrippa; being
obliged in the first place to adopt Germanicus, his brother’s son. After his
adoption, he never more acted as master of a family, nor exercised, in the
smallest degree, the rights which he had lost by it. For he neither disposed of
anything in the way of gift, nor manumitted a slave; nor so much as received any
estate left him by will, nor any legacy, without reckoning it as a part of his
peculium or property held under his father. From that day forward, nothing was
omitted that might contribute to the advancement of his grandeur, and much more
when, upon Agrippa being discarded and banished, it was evident that the hope of
succession rested upon him alone.
XVI. The tribunitian authority was again conferred upon him for five years, and
a commission given him to settle the affairs of Germany. The ambassadors of the
Parthians, after having had an audience of Augustus, were ordered to apply to
him likewise in his province. But on receiving intelligence of an insurrection
in Illyricum, he went over to superintend the management of that new war, which
proved the most serious of all the foreign wars since the Carthaginian. This he
conducted during three years, with fifteen legions and an equal number of
auxiliary forces, under great difficulties, and an extreme scarcity of corn. And
though he was several times recalled, he nevertheless persisted; fearing lest an
enemy so powerful, and so near, should-fall upon the army in their retreat. This
resolution was attended with good success; for he at last reduced to complete
subjection all Illyricum, lying between Italy and the kingdom of Noricum,
Thrace, Macedonia, the river Danube, and the Adriatie gulf.
XVII. The glory he acquired by these successes received an increase from the
conjuncture in which they happened. For almost about that very time Quintilius
Varus was cut off with three legions in Germany; and it was generally believed
that the victorious Germans would have joined the Pannonians, had not the war of
Illyricum been previously concluded. A triumph, therefore, besides many other
great honours, was decreed him. Some proposed that the surname of “Pannonicus,”
others that of “Invincible,” and others, of “Pius,” should be conferred on him;
but Augustus interposed, engaging for him that he would be satisfied with that
to which he would succeed at his death. He postponed his triumph, because the
state was at that time under great affliction for the disaster of Varus and his
army. Nevertheless, he entered the city in a triumphal robe, crowned with
laurel, and mounting a tribunal in the Septa, sat with Augustus between the two
consuls, whilst the senate gave their attendance standing; whence, after he had
saluted the people, he was attended by them in procession to the several
temples.
XVIII. Next year he went again to Germany, where finding that the defeat of
Varus was occasioned by the rashness and negligence of the commander, he thought
proper to be guided in everything by the advice of a council of war; whereas, at
other times, he used to follow the dictates of his own judgment, and considered
himself alone as sufficiently qualified for the direction of affairs. He
likewise used more cautions than usual. Having to pass the Rhine, he restricted
the whole convoy within certain limits, and stationing himself on the bank of
the river, would not suffer the waggons to cross the river, until he had
searched them at the water-side, to see that they carried nothing but what was
allowed or necessary. Beyond the Rhine, such was his way of living, that he took
his meals sitting on the bare ground, and often passed the night without a tent;
and his regular orders for the day, as well as those upon sudden emergencies, he
gave in writing, with this injunction, that in case of any doubt as to the
meaning of them, they should apply to him for satisfaction, even at any hour of
the night.
XIX. He maintained the strictest discipline amongst the troops; reviving many
old customs relative to punishing and degrading offenders; setting a mark of
disgrace even upon the commander of a legion, for sending a few soldiers with
one of his freedmen across the river for the purpose of hunting. Though it was
his desire to leave as little as possible in the power of fortune or accident,
yet he always engaged the enemy with more confidence when, in his night-watches,
the lamp failed and went out of itself; trusting, as he said, in an omen which
had never failed him and his ancestors in all their commands. But, in the midst
of victory, he was very near being assassinated by some Bructerian, who mixing
with those about him, and being discovered by his trepidation, was put to the
torture, and confessed his intended crime.
XX. After two years, he returned from Germany to the city, and celebrated the
triumph which he had deferred, attended by his lieutenants, for whom he had
procured the honour of triumphal ornaments. Before he turned to ascend the
capitol, he alighted from his chariot, and knelt before his father, who sat by,
to superintend the solemnity. Bato, the Pannonian chief, he sent to Ravenna,
loaded with rich presents, in gratitude for his having suffered him and his army
to retire from a position in which he had so enclosed them, that they were
entirely at his mercy. He afterwards gave the people a dinner at a thousand
tables, besides thirty sesterces to each man. He likewise dedicated the temple
of Concord, and that of Castor and Pollux, which had been erected out of the
spoils of the war, in his own and his brother’s name.
XXI. A law having been not long after carried by the consuls for his being
appointed a colleague with Augustus in the administration of the provinces, and
in taking the census, when that was finished he went into Illyricum. But being
hastily recalled during his journey, he found Augustus alive indeed, but past
all hopes of recovery, and was with him in private a whole day. I know, it is
generally believed, that upon Tiberius’s quitting the room, after their private
conference, those who were in waiting overheard Augustus say, “Ah! unhappy Roman
people, to be ground by the jaws of such a slow devourer!” Nor am I ignorant of
its being reported by some, that Augustus so openly and undisguisedly condemned
the sourness of his temper, that sometimes, upon his coming in, he would break
off any jocular conversation in which he was engaged; and that he was only
prevailed upon by the importunity of his wife to adopt him; or actuated by the
ambitious view of recommending his own memory from a comparison with such a
successor. Yet I must hold to this opinion, that a prince so extremely
circumspect and prudent as he was, did nothing rashly, especially in an affair
of so great importance; but that, upon weighing the vices and virtues of
Tiberius with each other, he judged the latter to preponderate; and this the
rather since he swore publicly, in an assembly of the people, that “he adopted
him for the public good.” Besides, in several of his letters, he extols him as a
consummate general, and the only security of the Roman people. Of such
declarations I subjoin the following instances: “Farewell, my dear Tiberius, and
may success attend you, whilst you are warring for me and the Muses. Farewell,
my my most dear, and (as I hope to prosper) most gallant man, and accomplished
general.” Again. “The disposition of your summer quarters? In truth, my dear
Tiberius, I do not think, that amidst so many difficulties, and with an army so
little disposed for action, any one could have behaved more prudently than you
have done. All those likewise who were with you, acknowledge that this verse is
applicable to you:”
Unus homo nobis vigilando restituit rem.
One man by vigilance restored the state.
“Whenever,” he says, “any thing happens that requires more than ordinary
consideration, or I am out of humour upon any occasion, I still, by Hercules!
long for my dear Tiberius; and those lines of Homer frequently occur to my
thoughts:”
Τούτου δ’ ἑσπομένοιο ϰαὶ ἐϰ πυρος αἰθομένοιο
Αμφω νοσϛήσαιμεν, ἐπὲι πέρι οἶδε νοῇσαι.
Bold from his prudence, I could ev’n aspire
To dare with him the burning rage of fire.
“When I hear and read that you are much impaired by the continued fatigues you
undergo, may the gods confound me if my whole frame does not tremble! So I beg
you to spare yourself, lest, if we should hear of your being ill, the news prove
fatal both to me and your mother, and the Roman people should be in peril for
the safety of the empire. It matters nothing whether I be well or no, if you be
not well. I pray heaven preserve you for us, and bless you with health both now
and ever, if the gods have any regard for the Roman people.”
XXII. He did not make the death of Augustus public, until he had taken off young
Agrippa. He was slain by a tribune who commanded his guard, upon reading a
written order for that purpose: respecting which order, it was then a doubt,
whether Augustus left it in his last moments, to prevent any occasion of public
disturbance after his decease, or Livia issued it, in the name of Augustus; and
whether with the knowledge of Tiberius or not. When the tribune came to inform
him that he had executed his command, he replied, “I commanded you no such
thing, and you must answer for it to the senate;” avoiding, as it seems, the
odium of the act for that time. And the affair was soon buried in silence.
XXIII. Having summoned the senate to meet by virtue of his tribunitian
authority, and begun a mournful speech, he drew a deep sigh, as if unable to
support himself under his affliction; and wishing that not his voice only, but
his very breath of life, might fail him, gave his speech to his son Drusus to
read. Augustus’s will was then brought in, and read by a freedman; none of the
witnesses to it being admitted, but such as were of the senatorian order, the
rest owning their hand-writing without doors. The will began thus: “Since my
ill-fortune has deprived me of my two sons, Caius and Lucius, let Tiberius Cæsar
be heir to two-thirds of my estate.” These words countenanced the suspicion of
those who were of opinion, that Tiberius was appointed successor more out of
necessity than choice, since Augustus could not refrain from prefacing his will
in that manner.
XXIV. Though he made no scruple to assume and exercise immediately the imperial
authority, by giving orders that he should be attended by the guards, who were
the security and badge of the supreme power; yet he affected, by a most impudent
piece of acting, to refuse it for a long time; one while sharply reprehending
his friends who entreated him to accept it, as little knowing what a monster the
government was; another while keeping in suspense the senate, when they implored
him and threw themselves at his feet, by ambiguous answers, and a crafty kind of
dissimulation; insomuch that some were out of patience, and one cried out,
during the confusion, “Either let him accept it, or decline it at once;” and a
second told him to his face, “Others are slow to perform what they promise, but
you are slow to promise what you actually perform.” At last, as if forced to it,
and complaining of the miserable and burdensome service imposed upon him, he
accepted the government; not, however, without giving hopes of his resigning it
some time or other. The exact words he used were these: “Until the time shall
come, when ye may think it reasonable to give some rest to my old age.”
XXV. The cause of his long demur was fear of the dangers which threatened him on
all hands; insomuch that he said, “I have got a wolf by the ears.” For a slave
of Agrippa’s, Clemens by name, had drawn together a considerable force to
revenge his master’s death; Lucius Scribonius Libo, a senator of the first
distinction, was secretly fomenting a rebellion; and the troops both in
Illyricum and Germany were mutinous. Both armies insisted upon high demands,
particularly that their pay should be made equal to that of the pretorian
guards. The army in Germany absolutely refused to acknowledge a prince who was
not their own choice; and urged, with all possible importunity, Germanicus, who
commanded them, to take the government on himself, though he obstinately refused
it. It was Tiberius’s apprehension from this quarter, which made him request the
senate to assign him some part only in the administration, such as they should
judge proper, since no man could be sufficient for the whole, without one or
more to assist him. He pretended likewise to be in a bad state of health, that
Germanicus might the more patiently wait in hopes of speedily succeeding him, or
at least of being admitted to be a colleague in the government. When the
mutinies in the armies were suppressed, he got Clemens into his hands by
stratagem. That he might not begin his reign by an act of severity, he did not
call Libo to an account before the senate until his second year, being content,
in the mean time, with taking proper precautions for his own security. For upon
Libo’s attending a sacrifice amongst the high-priests, instead of the usual
knife, he ordered one of lead to be given him; and when he desired a private
conference with him, he would not grant his request, but on condition that his
son Drusus should be present; and as they walked together, he held him fast by
the right hand, under the pretence of leaning upon him, until the conversation
was over.
XXVI. When he was delivered from his apprehensions, his behaviour at first was
unassuming, and he did not carry himself much above the level of a private
person; and of the many and great honours offered him, he accepted but few, and
such as were very moderate. His birth-day, which happened to fall at the time of
the Plebeian Circensian games, he with difficulty suffered to be honoured with
the addition of only a single chariot, drawn by two horses. He forbad temples,
flamens, or priests to be appointed for him, as likewise the erection of any
statues or effigies for him, without his permission; and this he granted only on
condition that they should not be placed amongst the images of the gods, but
only amongst the ornaments of houses. He also interposed to prevent the senate
from swearing to maintain his acts; and the month of September from being called
Tiberius, and October being named after Livia. The prænomen likewise of Emperor,
with the cognomen of Father of his country, and a civic crown in the vestibule
of his house, he would not accept. He never used the name of Augustus, although
he inherited it, in any of his letters, excepting those addressed to kings and
princes. Nor had he more than three consulships; one for a few days, another for
three months, and a third, during his absence from the city, until the ides
[fifteenth] of May.
XXVII. He had such an aversion to flattery, that he would never suffer any
senator to approach his litter, as he passed the streets in it, either to pay
him a civility, or upon business. And when a man of consular rank, in begging
his pardon for some offence he had given him, attempted to fall at his feet, he
started from him in such haste, that he stumbled and fell. If any compliment was
paid him, either in conversation or a set speech, he would not scruple to
interrupt and reprimand the party, and alter what he had said. Being once called
“lord,” by some person, he desired that he might no more be affronted in that
manner. When another, to excite veneration, called his occupations “sacred,” and
a third had expressed himself thus: “By your authority I have waited upon the
senate,” he obliged them to change their phrases; in one of them adopting
persuasion, instead of “authority,” and in the other, laborious, instead of
“sacred.”
XXVIII. He remained unmoved at all the aspersions, scandalous reports, and
lampoons, which were spread against him or his relations; declaring, “In a free
state, both the tongue and the mind ought to be free.” Upon the senate’s
desiring that some notice might be taken of those offences, and the persons
charged with them, he replied, “We have not so much time upon our hands, that we
ought to involve ourselves in more business. If you once make an opening for
such proceedings, you will soon have nothing else to do. All private quarrels
will be brought before you under that pretence.” There is also on record another
sentence used by him in the senate, which is far from assuming: “If he speaks
otherwise of me, I shall take care to behave in such a manner, as to be able to
give a good account both of my words and actions; and if he persists, I shall
hate him in my turn.”
XXIX. These things were so much the more remarkable in him, because, in the
respect he paid to individuals, or the whole body of the senate, he went beyond
all bounds. Upon his differing with Quintus Haterius in the senate-house,
“Pardon me, sir,” he said, “I beseech you, if I shall, as a senator, speak my
mind very freely in opposition to you.” Afterwards, addressing the senate in
general, he said: “Conscript Fathers, I have often said it both now and at other
times, that a good and useful prince, whom you have invested with so great and
absolute power, ought to be a slave to the senate, to the whole body of the
people, and often to individuals likewise: nor am I sorry that I have said it. I
have always found you good, kind, and indulgent masters, and still find you so.”
XXX. He likewise introduced a certain show of liberty, by preserving to the
senate and magistrates their former majesty and power. All affairs, whether of
great or small importance, public or private, were laid before the senate. Taxes
and monopolies, the erecting or repairing edifices, levying and disbanding
soldiers, the disposal of the legions and auxiliary forces in the provinces, the
appointment of generals for the management of extraordinary wars, and the
answers to letters from foreign princes, were all submitted to the senate. He
compelled the commander of a troop of horse, who was accused of robbery attended
with violence, to plead his cause before the senate. He never entered the
senate-house but unattended; and being once brought thither in a litter, because
he was indisposed, he dismissed his attendants at the door.
XXXI. When some decrees were made contrary to his opinion, he did not even make
any complaint. And though he thought that no magistrates after their nomination
should be allowed to absent themselves from the city, but reside in it
constantly, to receive their honours in person, a prætor-elect obtained liberty
to depart under the honorary title of a legate at large. Again, when he proposed
to the senate, that the Trebians might have leave granted them to divert some
money which had been left them by will for the purpose of building a new
theatre, to that of making a road, he could not prevail to have the will of the
testator set aside. And when, upon a division of the house, he went over to the
minority, nobody followed him. All other things of a public nature were likewise
transacted by the magistrates, and in the usual forms; the authority of the
consuls remaining so great, that some ambassadors from Africa applied to them,
and complained, that they could not have their business dispatched by Cæsar, to
whom they had been sent. And no wonder; since it was observed that he used to
rise up as the consuls approached, and give them the way.
XXXII. He reprimanded some persons of consular rank in command of armies, for
not writing to the senate an account of their proceedings, and for consulting
him about the distribution of military rewards; as if they themselves had not a
right to bestow them as they judged proper. He commended a prætor, who, on
entering office, revived an old custom of celebrating the memory of his
ancestors, in a speech to the people. He attended the corpses of some persons of
distinction to the funeral pile. He displayed the same moderation with regard to
persons and things of inferior consideration. The magistrates of Rhodes, having
dispatched to him a letter on public business, which was not subscribed, he sent
for them, and without giving them so much as one harsh word, desired them to
subscribe it, and so dismissed them. Diogenes, the grammarian, who used to hold
public disquisitions at Rhodes every sabbath-day, once refused him admittance
upon his coming to hear him out of course, and sent him a message by a servant,
postponing his admission until the nexth seventh day. Diogenes afterwards coming
to Rome, and waiting at his door to be allowed to pay his respects to him, he
sent him word to come again at the end of seven years. To some governors, who
advised him to load the provinces with taxes, he answered, “It is the part of a
good shepherd to shear, not flay, his sheep.”
XXXIII. He assumed the sovereignty by slow degrees, and exercised it for a long
time with great variety of conduct, though generally with a due regard to the
public good. At first he only interposed to prevent ill management. Accordingly,
he rescinded some decrees of the senate; and when the magistrates sat for the
administration of justice, he frequently offered his service as assessor, either
taking his place promiscuously amongst them, or seating himself in a corner of
the tribunal. If a rumour prevailed, that any person under prosecution was
likely to be acquitted by his interest, he would suddenly make his appearance,
and from the floor of the court, of the prætor’s bench, remind the judges of the
laws, and of their oaths, and the nature of the charge brought before them. He
likewise took upon himself the correction of public morals, where they tended to
decay, either through neglect, or evil custom.
XXXIV. He reduced the expense of the plays and public spectacles, by diminishing
the allowances to actors, and curtailing the number of gladiators. He made
grievous complaints to the senate, that the price of Corinthian vessels was
become enormous, and that three mullets had been sold for thirty thousand
sesterces: upon which he proposed that a new sumptuary law should be enacted;
that the butchers and other dealers in viands should be subject to an assize,
fixed by the senate yearly; and the ædiles commissioned to restrain
eating-houses and taverns, so far as not even to permit the sale of any kind of
pastry. And to encourage frugality in the public by his own example, he would
often, at his solemn feasts, have at his tables victuals which had been served
up the day before, and were partly eaten, and half a boar, affirming, “It has
all the same good bits that the whole had.” He published an edict against the
practice of people’s kissing each other when they met; and would not allow
new-year’s gifts to be presented after the calends [the first] of January was
passed. He had been in the habit of returning these offerings four-fold, and
making them with his own hand; but being annoyed by the continual interruption
to which he was exposed during the whole month, by those who had not the
opportunity of attending him on the festival, he returned none after that day.
XXXV. Married women guilty of adultery, though not prosecuted publicly, he
authorised the nearest relations to punish by agreement among themselves,
according to ancient custom. He discharged a Roman knight from the obligation of
an oath he had taken, never to turn away his wife; and allowed him to divorce
her, upon her being caught in criminal intercourse with her son-in-law. Women of
ill-fame, divesting themselves of the rights and dignity of matrons, had now
begun a practice of professing themselves prostitutes, to avoid the punishment
of the laws; and the most profligate young men of the senatorian and equestrian
orders, to secure themselves against a decree of the senate, which prohibited
their performing on the stage, or in the amphitheatre, voluntarily subjected
themselves to an infamous sentence, by which they were degraded. All those he
banished, that none for the future might evade by such artifices the intention
and efficacy of the law. He stripped a senator of the broad stripes on his robe,
upon information of his having removed to his gardens before the calends [the
first] of July, in order that he might afterwards hire a house cheaper in the
city. He likewise dismissed another from the office of quæstor, for repudiating,
the day after he had been lucky in drawing his lot, a wife whom he had married
only the day before.
XXXVI. He suppressed all foreign religions, and the Egyptian and Jewish rites,
obliging those who practised that kind of superstition, to burn their vestments,
and all their sacred utensils. He distributed the Jewish youths, under the
pretence of military service, among the provinces noted for an unhealthy
climate; and dismissed from the city all the rest of that nation as well as
those who were proselytes to that religion, under pain of slavery for life,
unless they complied. He also expelled the astrologers; but upon their suing for
pardon, and promising to renounce their profession, he revoked his decree.
XXXVII. But, above all things, he was careful to keep the public peace against
robbers, burglars, and those who were disaffected to the government. He
therefore increased the number of military stations throughout Italy; and formed
a camp at Rome for the prætorian cohorts, which, till then, had been quartered
in the city. He suppressed with great severity all tumults of the people on
their first breaking out; and took every precaution to prevent them. Some
persons having been killed in a quarrel which happened in the theatre, he
banished the leaders of the parties, and the players about whom the disturbance
had arisen; nor could all the entreaties of the people afterwards prevail upon
him to recall them. The people of Pollentia having refused to permit the removal
of the corpse of a centurion of the first rank from the forum, until they had
extorted from his heirs a sum of money for a public exhibition of gladiators, he
detached a cohort from the city, and another from the kingdom of Cottius; who
concealing the cause of their march, entered the town by different gates, with
their arms suddenly displayed, and trumpets sounding; and having seized the
greatest part of the people, and the magistrates, they were imprisoned for life.
He abolished every where the privileges of all places of refuge. The Cyzicenians
having committed an outrage upon some Romans, he deprived them of the liberty
they had obtained for their good services in the Mithridatic war. Disturbances
from foreign enemies he quelled by his lieutenants, without ever going against
them in person; nor would he even employ his lieutenants, but with much
reluctance, and when it was absolutely necessary. Princes who were ill-affected
towards him, he kept in subjection, more by menaces and remonstrances, than by
force of arms. Some whom he induced to come to him by fair words and promises,
he never would permit to return home; as Maraboduus the German, Thrascypolis the
Thracian, and Archelaus the Cappadocian, whose kingdom he even reduced into the
form of a province.
XXXVIII. He never set foot outside the gates of Rome, for two years together,
from the time he assumed the supreme power; and after that period, went no
farther from the city than to some of the neighbouring towns; his farthest
excursion being to Antium, and that but very seldom, and for a few days; though
he often gave out that he would visit the provinces and armies, and made
preparations for it almost every year, by taking up carriages, and ordering
provisions for his retinue in the municipia and colonies. At last he suffered
vows to be put up for his good journey and safe return, insomuch that he was
called jocosely by the name of Callipides, who is famous in a Greek proverb, for
being in a great hurry to go forward, but without ever advancing a cubit.
XXXIX. But after the loss of his two sons, of whom Germanicus died in Syria, and
Drusus at Rome, he withdrew into Campania; at which time opinion and
conversation were almost general, that he never would return, and would die
soon. And both nearly turned out to be true. For indeed he never more came to
Rome; and a few days after leaving it, when he was at a villa of his called the
Cave, near Terracina, during supper a great many huge stones fell from above,
which killed several of the guests and attendants; but he almost hopelessly
escaped.
XL. After he had gone round Campania, and dedicated the capitol at Capua, and a
temple to Augustus at Nola, which he made the pretext of his journey, he retired
to Capri; being greatly delighted with the island, because it was accessible
only by a narrow beach, being on all sides surrounded with rugged cliffs, of a
stupendous height, and by a deep sea. But immediately, the people of Rome being
extremely clamorous for his return, on account of a disaster at Fidenæ, where
upwards of twenty thousand persons had been killed by the fall of the
amphitheatre, during a public spectacle of gladiators, he crossed over again to
the continent, and gave all people free access to him; so much the more,
because, at his departure from the city, he had caused it to be proclaimed that
no one should address him, and had declined admitting any persons to his
presence, on the journey.
XLI. Returning to the island, he so far abandoned all care of the government,
that he never filled up the decuriæ of the knights, never changed any military
tribunes or prefects, or governors of provinces, and kept Spain and Syria for
several years without any consular lieutenants. He likewise suffered Armenia to
be seized by the Parthians, Mœsia by the Dacians and Sarmatians, and Gaul to be
ravaged by the Germans; to the great disgrace, and no less danger, of the
empire.
XLII. But having now the advantage of privacy, and being remote from the
observation of the people of Rome, he abandoned himself to all the vicious
propensities which he had long but imperfectly concealed, and of which I shall
here give a particular account from the beginning. While a young soldier in the
camp, he was so remarkable for his excessive inclination to wine, that, for
Tiberius, they called him Biberius; for Claudius, Caldius; and for Nero, Mero.
And after he succeeded to the empire, and was invested with the office of
reforming the morality of the people, he spent a whole night and two days
together in feasting and drinking with Pomponius Flaccus and Lucius Piso; to one
of whom he immediately gave the province of Syria, and to the other the
prefecture of the city; declaring them, in his letters-patent, to be “very
pleasant companions, and friends fit for all occasions.” He made an appointment
to sup with Sestius Gallus, a lewd and prodigal old fellow, who had been
disgraced by Augustus, and reprimanded manded by himself but a few days before
in the senate-house; upon condition that he should not recede in the least from
his usual method of entertainment, and that they should be attended at table by
naked girls. He preferred a very obscure candidate for the quæstorship, before
the most noble competitors, only for taking off, in pledging him at table, an
amphora of wine at a draught. He presented Asellius Sabinus with two hundred
thousand sesterces, for writing a dialogue, in the way of dispute, betwixt the
truffle and the fig-pecker, the oyster and the thrush. He likewise instituted a
new office to administer to his voluptuousness, to which he appointed Titus
Cæsonius Priscus, a Roman knight.
XLIII. In his retreat at Capri, he also contrived an apartment containing
couches, and adapted to the secret practice of abominable lewdness, where he
entertained companies of girls and catamites, and assembled from all quarters
inventors of unnatural copulations, whom he called Spintriæ, who defiled one
another in his presence, to inflame by the exhibition the languid appetite. He
had several chambers set round with pictures and statues in the most lascivious
attitudes, and furnished with the books of Elephantis, that none might want a
pattern for the execution of any lewd project that was prescribed him. He
likewise contrived recesses in woods and groves for the gratification of lust,
where young persons of both sexes prostituted themselves in caves and hollow
rocks, in the disguise of little Pans and Nymphs. So that he was publicly and
commonly called, by an abuse of the name of the island, Caprineus.
XLIV. But he was still more infamous, if possible, for an abomination not fit to
be mentioned or heard, much less credited.missing text * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * When a picture, painted by Parrhasius, in which the artist had
represented Atalanta in the act of submitting to Meleager’s lust in a most
unnatural way, was bequeathed to him, with this proviso, that if the subject was
offensive to him, he might receive in lieu of it a million of sesterces, he not
only chose the picture, but hung it up in his bed-chamber. It is also reported
that, during a sacrifice, he was so captivated with the form of a youth who held
a censer, that, before the religious rites were well over, he took him aside and
abused him; as also a brother of his who had been playing the flute; and soon
afterwards broke the legs of both of them, for upbraiding one another with their
shame.
XLV. How much he was guilty of a most foul intercourse with women even of the
first quality, appeared very plainly by the death of one Mallonia, who, being
brought to his bed, but resolutely refusing to comply with his lust, he gave her
up to the common informers. Even when she was upon her trial, he frequently
called out to her, and asked her, “Do you repent?” until she, quitting the
court, went home, and stabbed herself; openly upbraiding the vile old lecher for
his gross obscenity. Hence there was an allusion to him in a farce, which was
acted at the next public sports, and was received with great applause, and
became a common topic of ridicule: that the old goatmissing text * * * * *
XLVI. He was so niggardly and covetous, that he never allowed to his attendants,
in his travels and expeditions, any salary, but their diet only. Once, indeed,
he treated them liberally, at the instigation of his step-father, when, dividing
them into three classes, according to their rank, he gave the first six, the
second four, and the third two, hundred thousand sesterces, which last class he
called not friends, but Greeks.
XLVII. During the whole time of his government, he never erected any noble
edifice; for the only things he did undertake, namely, building the temple of
Augustus, and restoring Pompey’s Theatre, he left at last, after many years,
unfinished. Nor did he ever entertain the people with public spectacles; and he
was seldom present at those which were given by others, lest any thing of that
kind should be requested of him; especially after he was obliged to give freedom
to the comedian Actius. Having relieved the poverty of a few senators, to avoid
further demands, he declared that he should for the future assist none, but
those who gave the senate full satisfaction as to the cause of their necessity.
Upon this, most of the needy senators, from modesty and shame, declined
troubling him. Amongst these was Hortalus, grandson to the celebrated orator
Quintus Hortensius, who [marrying], by the persuasion of Augustus, had brought
up four children upon a very small estate.
XLVIII. He displayed only two instances of public munificence. One was an offer
to lend gratis, for three years, a hundred millions of sesterces to those who
wanted to borrow; and the other, when, some large houses being burnt down upon
Mount Cœlius, he indemnified the owners. To the former of these he was compelled
by the clamours of the people, in a great scarcity of money, when he had
ratified a decree of the senate obliging all money-lenders to advance two-thirds
of their capital on land, and the debtors to pay off at once the same proportion
of their debts, and it was found insufficient to remedy the grievance. The other
he did to alleviate in some degree the pressure of the times. But his
benefaction to the sufferers by fire, he estimated at so high a rate, that he
ordered the Cœlian Hill to be called, in future, the Augustan. To the soldiery,
after doubling the legacy left them by Augustus, he never gave any thing, except
a thousand denarii a man to the pretorian guards, for not joining the party of
Sejanus; and some presents to the legions in Syria, because they alone had not
paid reverence to the effigies of Sejanus among their standards. He seldom gave
discharges to the veteran soldiers, calculating on their deaths from advanced
age, and on what would be saved by thus getting rid of them, in the way of
rewards or pensions. Nor did he ever relieve the provinces by any act of
generosity, excepting Asia, where some cities had been destroyed by an
earthquake.
XLIX. In the course of a very short time, he turned his mind to sheer robbery.
It is certain that Cneius Lentulus, the augur, a man of vast estate, was so
terrified and worried by his threats and importunities, that he was obliged to
make him his heir; and that Lepida, a lady of a very noble family, was condemned
by him, in order to gratify Quirinus, a man of consular rank, extremely rich,
and childless, who had divorced her twenty years before, and now charged her
with an old design to poison him. Several persons, likewise, of the first
distinction in Gaul, Spain, Syria, and Greece, had their estates confiscated
upon such despicably trifling and shameless pretences, that against some of them
no other charge was preferred, than that they held large sums of ready money as
part of their property. Old immunities, the rights of mining, and of levying
tolls, were taken from several cities and private persons. And Vonones, king of
the Parthians, who had been driven out of his dominions by his own subjects, and
fled to Antioch with a vast treasure, claiming the protection of the Roman
people, his allies, was treacherously robbed of all his money, and afterwards
murdered.
L. He first manifested hatred towards his own relations in the case of his
brother Drusus, betraying him by the production of a letter to himself, in which
Drusus proposed that Augustus should be forced to restore the public liberty. In
course of time, he shewed the same disposition with regard to the rest of his
family. So far was he from performing any office of kindness or humanity to his
wife, when she was banished, and, by her father’s order, confined to one town,
that he forbad her to stir out of the house, or converse with any men. He even
wronged her of the dowry given her by her father, and of her yearly allowance,
by a quibble of law, because Augustus had made no provision for them on her
behalf in his will. Being harassed by his mother, Livia, who claimed an equal
share in the government with him, he frequently avoided seeing her, and all long
and private conferences with her, lest it should be thought that he was governed
by her counsels, which, notwithstanding, he sometimes sought, and was in the
habit of adopting. He was much offended at the senate, when they proposed to add
to his other titles that of the Son of Livia, as well as Augustus. He,
therefore, would not suffer her to be called “the Mother of her Country,” nor to
receive any extraordinary public distinction. Nay, he frequently admonished her
“not to meddle with weighty affairs, and such as did not suit her sex;”
especially when he found her present at a fire which broke out near the Temple
of Vesta, and encouraging the people and soldiers to use their utmost exertions,
as she had been used to do in the time of her husband.
LI. He afterwards proceeded to an open rupture with her, and, as is said, upon
this occasion. She having frequently urged him to place among the judges a
person who had been made free of the city, he refused her request, unless she
would allow it to be inscribed on the roll, “That the appointment had been
extorted from him by his mother.” Enraged at this, Livia brought forth from her
chapel some letters from Augustus to her, complaining of the sourness and
insolence of Tiberius’s temper, and these she read. So much was he offended at
these letters having been kept so long, and now produced with so much bitterness
against him, that some considered this incident as one of the causes of his
going into seclusion, if not the principal reason for his so doing. In the whole
years she lived during his retirement, he saw her but once, and that for a few
hours only. When she fell sick shortly afterwards, he was quite unconcerned
about visiting her in her illness; and when she died, after promising to attend
her funeral, he deferred his coming for several days, so that the corpse was in
a state of decay and putrefaction before the interment; and he then forbad
divine honours being paid to her, pretending that he acted according to her own
directions. He likewise annulled her will, and in a short time ruined all her
friends and acquaintance; not even sparing those to whom, on her death-bed, she
had recommended the care of her funeral, but condemning one of them, a man of
equestrian rank, to the treadmill.
LII. He entertained no paternal affection either for his own son Drusus, or his
adopted son Germanicus. Offended at the vices of the former, who was of a loose
disposition and led a dissolute life, he was not much affected at his death;
but, almost immediately after the funeral, resumed his attention to business,
and prevented the courts from being longer closed. The ambassadors from the
people of Ilium coming rather late to offer their condolence, he said to them by
way of banter, as if the affair had already faded from his memory, “And I
heartily condole with you on the loss of your renowned countryman, Hector.” He
so much affected to depreciate Germanicus, that he spoke of his achievements as
utterly insignificant, and railed at his most glorious victories as ruinous to
the state; complaining of him also to the senate for going to Alexandria without
his knowledge, upon occasion of a great and sudden famine at Rome. It was
believed that he took care to have him dispatched by Cneius Piso, his lieutenant
in Syria. This person was afterwards tried for the murder, and would, as was
supposed, have produced his orders, had they not been contained in a private and
confidential dispatch. The following words therefore were posted up in many
places, and frequently shouted in the night: “Give us back our Germanicus.” This
suspicion was afterwards confirmed by the barbarous treatment of his wife and
children.
LIII. His daughter-in-law Agrippina, after the death of her husband, complaining
upon some occasion with more than ordinary freedom, he took her by the hand, and
addressed her in a Greek verse to this effect: “My dear child, do you think
yourself injured, because you are not empress?” Nor did he ever vouchsafe to
speak to her again. Upon her refusing once at supper to taste some fruit which
he presented to her, he declined inviting her to his table, pretending that she
in effect charged him with a design to poison her; whereas the whole was a
contrivance of his own. He was to offer the fruit, and she to be privately
cautioned against eating what would infallibly cause her death. At last, having
her accused of intending to flee for refuge to the statue of Augustus, or to the
army, he banished her to the island of Pandataria. Upon her reviling him for it,
he caused a centurion to beat out one of her eyes: and when she resolved to
starve herself to death, he ordered her mouth to be forced open, and meat to be
crammed down her throat. But she persisting in her resolution, and dying soon
afterwards, he persecuted her memory with the basest aspersions, and persuaded
the senate to put her birth-day amongst the number of unlucky days in the
calendar. He likewise took credit for not having caused her to be strangled and
her body cast upon the Gemonian Steps, and suffered a decree of the senate to
pass, thanking him for his clemency, and an offering of gold to be made to
Jupiter Capitolinus on the occasion.
LIV. He had by Germanicus three grandsons, Nero, Drusus, and Caius; and by his
son Drusus one, named Tiberius. Of these, after the loss of his sons, he
commended Nero and Drusus, the two eldest sons of Germanicus, to the senate; and
at their being solemnly introduced into the forum, distributed money among the
people. But when he found that on entering upon the new year they were included
in the public vows for his own welfare, he told the senate, “that such honours
ought not to be conferred but upon those who had been proved, and were of more
advanced years.” By thus betraying his private feelings towards them, he exposed
them to all sorts of accusations; and after practising many artifices to provoke
them to rail at and abuse him, that he might be furnished with a pretence to
destroy them, he charged them with it in a letter to the senate; at the same
time accusing them, in the bitterest terms, of the most scandalous vices. Upon
their being declared enemies by the senate, he starved them to death; Nero in
the island of Ponza, and Drusus in the vaults of the Palatium. It is thought by
some, that Nero was driven to a voluntary death by the executioner’s shewing him
some halters and hooks, as if he had been sent to him by order of the senate.
Drusus, it is said, was so rabid with hunger, that he attempted to eat the chaff
with which his mattress was stuffed. The relics of both were so scattered, that
it was with difficulty they were collected.
LV. Besides his old friends and intimate acquaintance, he required the
assistance of twenty of the most eminent persons in the city, as counsellors in
the administration of public affairs. Out of all this number, scarcely two or
three escaped the fury of his savage disposition. All the rest he destroyed upon
one pretence or another; and among them Aelius Sejanus, whose fall was attended
with the ruin of many others. He had advanced this minister to the highest pitch
of grandeur, not so much from any real regard for him, as that by his base and
sinister contrivances he might ruin the children of Germanicus, and thereby
secure the succession to his own grandson by Drusus.
LVI. He treated with no greater leniency the Greeks in his family, even those
with whom he was most pleased. Having asked one Zeno, upon his using some
far-fetched phrases, “What uncouth dialect is that?” he replied, “The Doric.”
For this answer he banished him to Cinara, suspecting that he taunted him with
his former residence at Rhodes, where the Doric dialect is spoken. It being his
custom to start questions at supper, arising out of what he had been reading in
the day, and finding that Seleucus, the grammarian, used to inquire of his
attendants what authors he was then studying, and so came prepared for his
enquiries—he first turned him out of his family, and then drove him to the
extremity of laying violent hands upon himself.
LVII. His cruel and sullen temper appeared when he was still a boy; which
Theodorus of Gadara, his master in rhetoric, first discovered, and expressed by
a very apposite simile, calling him sometimes, when he chid him, “Mud mixed with
blood.” But his disposition shewed itself still more clearly on his attaining
the imperial power, and even in the beginning of his administration, when he was
endeavouring to gain the popular favour, by affecting moderation. Upon a funeral
passing by, a wag called out to the dead man, “Tell Augustus, that the legacies
he bequeathed to the people are not yet paid.” The man being brought before him,
he ordered that he should receive what was due to him, and then be led to
execution, that he might deliver the message to his father himself. Not long
afterwards, when one Pompey, a Roman knight, persisted in his opposition to
something he proposed in the senate, he threatened to put him in prison, and
told him, “Of a Pompey I shall make a Pompeian of you;” by a bitter kind of pun
playing upon the man’s name, and the ill-fortune of his party.
LVIII. About the same time, when the prætor consulted him, whether it was his
pleasure that the tribunals should take cognizance of accusations of treason, he
replied, “The laws ought to be put in execution;” and he did put them in
execution most severely. Some person had taken off the head of Augustus from one
of his statues, and replaced it by another. The matter was brought before the
senate, and because the case was not clear, the witnesses were put to the
torture. The party accused being found guilty, and condemned, this kind of
proceeding was carried so far, that it became capital for a man to beat his
slave, or change his clothes, near the statue of Augustus; to carry his head
stamped upon the coin, or cut in the stone of a ring, into a necessary house, or
the stews; or to reflect upon anything that had been either said or done by him.
In fine, a person was condemned to death, for suffering some honours to be
decreed to him in the colony where he lived, upon the same day on which they had
formerly been decreed to Augustus.
LIX. He was besides guilty of many barbarous actions, under the pretence of
strictness and reformation of manners, but more to gratify his own savage
disposition. Some verses were published, which displayed the present calamities
of his reign, and anticipated the future.
Asper et immitis, breviter vis omnia dicam?
Dispeream si te mater amare potest.
Non es eques, quare? non sunt tibi millia centum?
Omnia si quæras, et Rhodos exsilium est.
Aurea mutâsti Saturni sæcula, Cæsar:
Incolumi nam te, ferrea semper erunt.
Fastidit vinum, quia jam sitit iste cruorem:
Tam bibit hunc avide, quam bibit ante merum.
Adspice felicem sibi, non tibi, Romule, Sullam:
Et Marium, si vis, adspice, sed reducem.
Nec non Antonî civilia bella moventis
Nec semel infectas adspice cæda manus.
Et dic, Roma perit: regnabit sanguine multo,
Ad regnum quisquis venit ab exsilio.
Obdurate wretch! too fierce, too fell to move
The least kind yearnings of a mother’s love!
No knight thou art, as having no estate;
Long suffered’st thou in Rhodes an exile’s fate,
No more the happy Golden Age we see;
The Iron’s come, and sure to last with thee.
Instead of wine he thirsted for before,
He wallows now in floods of human gore.
Reflect, ye Romans, on the dreadful times.
Made such by Marius, and by Sylla’s crimes.
Reflect how Antony’s ambitious rage
Twice scar’d with horror a distracted age.
And say, Alas! Rome’s blood in streams will flow,
When banish’d miscreants rule this world below.
At first he would have it understood, that these satirical verser were drawn
forth by the resentment of those who were impatient under the discipline of
reformation, rather than that they spoke their real sentiments; and he would
frequently say, “Let them hate me, so long as they do but approve my conduct.”
At length, however, his behaviour showed that he was sensible they were too well
founded.
LX. A few days after his arrival at Capri, a fisherman coming up to him
unexpectedly, when he was desirous of privacy, and presenting him with a large
mullet, he ordered the man’s face to be scrubbed with the fish; being terrified
at the thought of his having been able to creep upon him from the back of the
island, over such rugged and steep rocks. The man, while undergoing the
punishment, expressing his joy that he had not likewise offered him a large crab
which he had also taken, he ordered his face to be farther lacerated with its
claws. He put to death one of the pretorian guards, for having stolen a peacock
out of his orchard. In one of his journeys, his litter being obstructed by some
bushes, he ordered the officer whose duty it was to ride on and examine the
road, a centurion of the first cohorts, to be laid on his face upon the ground,
and scourged almost to death.
LXI. Soon afterwards, he abandoned himself to every species of cruelty, never
wanting occasions of one kind or another, to serve as a pretext. He first fell
upon the friends and acquaintance of his mother, then those of his grandsons,
and his daughter-in-law, and lastly those of Sejanus; after whose death he
became cruel in the extreme. From this it appeared, that he had not been so much
instigated by Sejanus, as supplied with occasions of gratifying his savage
temper, when he wanted them. Though in a short memoir which he composed of his
own life, he had the effrontery to write, “I have punished Sejanus, because I
found him bent upon the destruction of the children of my son Germanicus,” one
of these he put to death, when he began to suspect Sejanus; and another, after
he was taken off. It would be tedious to relate all the numerous instances of
his cruelty: suffice it to give a few examples, in their different kinds. Not a
day passed without the punishment of some person or other, not excepting
holidays, or those appropriated to the worship of the gods. Some were tried even
on New-Year’s-Day. Of many who were condemned, their wives and children shared
the same fate; and for those who were sentenced to death, the relations were
forbid to put on mourning. Considerable rewards were voted for the prosecutors,
and sometimes for the witnesses also. The information of any person, without
exception, was taken; and all offences were capital, even speaking a few words,
though without any ill intention. A poet was charged with abusing Agamemnon; and
a historian, for calling Brutus and Cassius “the last of the Romans.” The two
authors were immediately called to account, and their writings suppressed;
though they had been well received some years before, and read in the hearing of
Augustus. Some, who were thrown into prison, were not only denied the solace of
study, but debarred from all company and conversation. Many persons, when
summoned to trial, stabbed themselves at home, to avoid the distress and
ignominy of a public condemnation, which they were certain would ensue. Others
took poison in the senate house. The wounds were bound up, and all who had not
expired, were carried, half-dead, and panting for life, to prison. Those who
were put to death, were thrown down the Gemonian stairs, and then dragged into
the Tiber. In one day, twenty were treated in this manner; and amongst them
women and boys. Because, according, to an ancient custom, it was not lawful to
strangle virgins, the young girls were first deflowered by the executioner, and
afterwards strangled. Those who were desirous to die, were forced to live. For
he thought death so slight a punishment, that upon hearing that Carnulius, one
of the accused, who was under prosecution, had killed himself, he exclaimed, “Carnulius
has escaped me.” In calling over his prisoners, when one of them requested the
favour of a speedy death, he replied, “You are not yet restored to favour.” A
man of consular rank writes in his annals, that at table, where he himself was
present with a large company, he was suddenly asked aloud by a dwarf who stood
by amongst the buffoons, why Pacomus, who was under a prosecution for treason,
lived so long. Tiberius immediately reprimanded him for his pertness; but wrote
to the senate a few days after, to proceed without delay to the punishment of
Paconius.
LXII. Exasperated by information he received respecting the death of his son
Drusus, he carried his cruelty still farther. He imagined that he had died of a
disease occasioned by his intemperance; but finding that he had been poisoned by
the contrivance of his wife Livilla and Sejanus, he spared no one from torture
and death. He was so entirely occupied with the examination of this affair, for
whole days together, that, upon being informed that the person in whose house he
had lodged at Rhodes, and whom he had by a friendly letter invited to Rome, was
arrived, he ordered him immediately to be put to the torture, as a party
concerned in the enquiry. Upon finding his mistake, he commanded him to be put
to death, that he might not publish the injury done him. The place of execution
is still shown at Capri, where he ordered those who were condemned to die, after
long and exquisite tortures, to be thrown, before his eyes, from a precipice
into the sea. There a party of soldiers belonging to the fleet waited for them,
and broke their bones with poles and oars, lest they should have any life left
in them. Among various kinds of torture invented by him, one was, to induce
people to drink a large quantity of wine, and then to tie up their members with
harp-strings, thus tormenting them at once by the tightness of the ligature, and
the stoppage of their urine. Had not death prevented him, and Thrasyllus,
designedly, as some say, prevailed with him to defer some of his cruelties, in
hopes of longer life, it is believed that he would have destroyed many more; and
not have spared even the rest of his grand-children: for he was jealous of
Caius, and hated Tiberius as having been conceived in adultery. This conjecture
is indeed highly probable; for he used often to say, “Happy Priam, who survived
all his children!”
LXIII. Amidst these enormities, in how much fear and apprehension, as well as
odium and detestation, he lived, is evident from many indications. He forbade
the soothsayers to be consulted in private, and without some witnesses being
present. He attempted to suppress the oracles in the neighbourhood of the city;
but being terrified by the divine authority of the Prænestine Lots, he abandoned
the design. For though they were sealed up in a box, and carried to Rome, yet
they were not to be found in it, until it was returned to the temple. More than
one person of consular rank, appointed governors of provinces, he never ventured
to dismiss to their respective destinations, but kept them until several years
after, when he nominated their successors, while they still remained present
with him. In the meantime, they bore the title of their office; and he
frequently gave them orders, which they took care to have executed by their
deputies and assistants.
LXIV. He never removed his daughter-in-law, or grandsons, after their
condemnation, to any place, but in fetters and in a covered litter, with a guard
to hinder all who met them on the road, and travellers, from stopping to gaze at
them.
LXV. After Sejanus had plotted against him, though he saw that his birth-day was
solemnly kept by the public, and divine honours paid to golden images of him in
every quarter, yet it was with difficulty at last, and more by artifice than his
imperial power, that he accomplished his death. In the first place, to remove
him from about his person, under the pretext of doing him honour, he made him
his colleague in his fifth consulship; which, although then absent from the
city, he took upon him for that purpose, long after his preceding consulship.
Then, having flattered him with the hope of an alliance by marriage with one of
his own kindred, and the prospect of the tribunitian authority, he suddenly,
while Sejanus little expected it, charged him with treason, in an abject and
pitiful address to the senate; in which, among other things, he begged them “to
send one of the consuls, to conduct himself, a poor solitary old man, with a
guard of soldiers, into their presence.” Still distrustful, however, and
apprehensive of an insurrection, he ordered his grandson, Drusus, whom he still
kept in confinement at Rome, to be set at liberty, and if occasion required, to
head the troops. He had likewise ships in readiness to transport him to any of
the legions to which he might consider it expedient to make his escape.
Meanwhile, he was upon the watch, from the summit of a lofty cliff, for the
signals which he had ordered to be made if any thing occurred, lest the
messengers should be tardy. Even when he had quite foiled the conspiracy of
Sejanus, he was still haunted as much as ever with fears and apprehensions,
insomuch that he never once stirred out of the Villa Jovis for nine months
after.
LXVI. To the extreme anxiety of mind which he now experienced, he had the
mortification to find superadded the most poignant reproaches from all quarters.
Those who were condemned to die, heaped upon him the most opprobrious language
in his presence, or by hand-bills scattered in the senators’ seats in the
theatre. These produced different effects: sometimes he wished, out of shame, to
have all smothered and concealed; at other times he would disregard what was
said, and publish it himself. To this accumulation of scandal and open sarcasm,
there is to be subjoined a letter from Artabanus, king of the Parthians, in
which he upbraids him with his parricides, murders, cowardice, and lewdness, and
advises him to satisfy the furious rage of his own people, which he had so
justly excited, by putting an end to his life without delay.
LXVII. At last, being quite weary of himself, he acknowledged his extreme
misery, in a letter to the senate, which begun thus: “What to write to you,
Conscript Fathers, or how to write, or what not to write at this time, may all
the gods and goddesses pour upon my head a more terrible vengeance than that
under which I feel myself daily sinking, if I can tell.” Some are of opinion
that he had a foreknowledge of those things, from his skill in the science of
divination, and perceived long before what misery and infamy would at last come
upon him; and that for this reason, at the beginning of his reign, he had
absolutely refused the title of the “Father of his Country,” and the proposal of
the senate to swear to his acts; lest he should afterwards, to his greater
shame, be found unequal to such extraordinary honours. This, indeed, may be
justly inferred from the speeches which he made upon both those occasions; as
when he says, “I shall ever be the same, and shall never change my conduct, so
long as I retain my senses; but to avoid giving a bad precedent to posterity,
the senate ought to beware of binding themselves to the acts of any person
whatever, who might by some accident or other be induced to alter them.” And
again: “If ye should at any time entertain a jealousy of my conduct, and my
entire affection for you, which heaven prevent by putting a period to my days,
rather than I should live to see such an alteration in your opinion of me, the
title of Father will add no honour to me, but be a reproach to you, for your
rashness in conferring it upon me, or inconstancy in altering your opinion of
me.”
LXVIII. In person he was large and robust; of a stature somewhat above the
common size; broad in the shoulders and chest, and proportionable in the rest of
his frame. He used his left hand more readily and with more force than his
right; and his joints were so strong, that he could bore a fresh, sound apple
through with his finger, and wound the head of a boy, or even a young man, with
a fillip. He was of a fair complexion, and wore his hair so long behind, that it
covered his neck, which was observed to be a mark of distinction affected by the
family. He had a handsome face, but it was often full of pimples. His eyes,
which were large, had a wonderful faculty of seeing in the night-time, and in
the dark, for a short time only, and immediately after awaking from sleep; but
they soon grew dim again. He walked with his neck stiff and upright: generally
with a frowning countenance, being for the most part silent: when he spoke to
those about him, it was very slowly, and usually accompanied with a slight
gesticulation of his fingers. All which, being repulsive habits and signs of
arrogance, were remarked by Augustus, who often endeavoured to excuse them to
the senate and people, declaring that “they were natural defects, which
proceeded from no viciousness of mind.” He enjoyed a good state of health,
without interruption, almost during the whole period of his rule; though, from
the thirtieth year of his age, he treated it himself according to his own
discretion, without any medical assistance.
LXIX. In regard to the gods, and matters of religion, he discovered much
indifference; being greatly addicted to astrology, and fully persuaded that all
things were governed by fate. Yet he was extremely afraid of lightning, and when
the sky was in a disturbed state, always wore a laurel crown on his head:
because it is supposed that the leaf of that tree is never touched by the
lightning.
LXX. He applied himself with great diligence to the liberal arts, both Greek and
Latin. In his Latin style, he affected to imitate Messala Corvinus, a venerable
man, to whom he had paid much respect in his own early years. But he rendered
his style obscure by excessive affectation and abstruseness, so that he was
thought to speak better extempore, than in a premeditated discourse. He composed
likewise a lyric ode, under the title of “A Lamentation upon the death of Lucius
Cæsar;” and also some Greek poems, in imitation of Euphorion, Rhianus, and
Parthenius. These poets he greatly admired, and placed their works and statues
in the public libraries, amongst the eminent authors of antiquity. On this
account, most of the learned men of the time vied with each other in publishing
observations upon them, which they addressed to him. His principal study,
however, was the history of the fabulous ages, inquiring even into its trifling
details in a ridiculous manner; for he used to try the grammarians, a class of
men which, as I have already observed, he much affected, with such questions as
these: “Who was Hecuba’s mother? What name did Achilles assume among the
virgins? What was it that the Sirens used to sing?” And the first day that he
entered the senate-house, after the death of Augustus, as if he intended to pay
respect at once to his father’s memory and to the gods, he made an offering of
frankincense and wine, but without any music, in imitation of Minos, upon the
death of his son.
LXXI. Though he was ready and conversant with the Greek tongue, yet he did not
use it everywhere; but chietly he avoided it in the senate-house, insomuch that
having occasion to employ the word monopolium (monopoly), he first begged pardon
for being obliged to adopt a foreign word. And when, in a decree of the senate,
the word ἔμβλημα (emblem) was read, he proposed to have it changed, and that a
Latin word should be substituted in its room; or, if no proper one could be
found, to express the thing by circumlocution. A soldier who was examined as a
witness upon a trial, in Greek, he would not allow to reply, except in Latin.
LXXII. During the whole time of his seclusion at Capri, twice only he made an
effort to visit Rome. Once he came in a galley as far as the gardens near the
Naumachia, but placed guards along the banks of the Tiber, to keep off all who
should offer to come to meet him. The second time he travelled on the Appian
way, as far as the seventh mile-stone from the city, but he immediately
returned, without entering it, having only taken a view of the walls at a
distance. For what reason he did not disembark in his first excursion, is
uncertain; but in the last, he was deterred from entering the city by a prodigy.
He was in the habit of diverting himself with a snake, and upon going to feed it
with his own hand, according to custom, he found it devoured by ants: from which
he was advised to beware of the fury of the mob. On this account, returning in
all haste to Campania, he fell ill at Astura; but recovering a little, went on
to Circeii. And to obviate any suspicion of his being in a bad state of health,
he was not only present at the sports in the camp, but encountered, with
javelins, a wild boar, which was let loose in the arena. Being immediately
seized with a pain in the side, and catching cold upon his over-heating himself
in the exercise, he relapsed into a worse condition than he was before. He held
out, however, for some time; and sailing as far as Misenum, omitted nothing in
his usual mode of life, not even in his entertainments, and other
gratifications, partly from an ungovernable appetite, and partly to conceal his
condition. For Charicles, a physician, having obtained leave of absence, on his
rising from table, took his hand to kiss it; upon which Tiberius, supposing he
did it to feel his pulse, desired him to stay and resume his place, and
continued the entertainment longer than usual. Nor did he omit his usual custom
of taking his station in the centre of the apartment, a lictor standing by him,
while he took leave of each of the party by name.
LXXIII. Meanwhile, finding, upon looking over the acts of the senate, “that some
person under prosecution had been discharged, without being brought to a
hearing,” for he had only written cursorily that they had been denounced by an
informer; he complained in a great rage that he was treated with contempt, and
resolved at all hazards to return to Capri; not daring to attempt any thing
until he found himself in a place of security. But being detained by storms, and
the increasing violence of his disorder, he died shortly afterwards, at a villa
formerly belonging to Lucullus, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, and the
twenty-third of his reign, upon the seventeenth of the calends of April [16th
March], in the consulship of Cneius Acerronius Proculus and Caius Pontius Niger.
Some think that a slow-consuming poison was given him by Caius. Others say that
during the interval of the intermittent fever with which he happened to be
seized, upon asking for food, it was denied him. Others report, that he was
stifled by a pillow thrown upon him, when, on his recovering from a swoon, he
called for his ring, which had been taken from him in the fit. Seneca writes,
“That finding himself dying, he took his signet ring off his finger, and held it
a while, as if he would deliver it to somebody; but put it again upon his
finger, and lay for some time, with his left hand clenched, and without
stirring; when suddenly summoning his attendants, and no one answering the call,
he rose; but his strength failing him, he fell down at a short distance from his
bed.
LXXIV. Upon his last birth-day, he had brought a full-sized statue of the
Timenian Apollo from Syracuse, a work of exquisite art, intending to place it in
the library of the new temple; but he dreamt that the god appeared to him in the
night, and assured him “that his statue could not be erected by him.” A few days
before he died, the Pharos at Capri was thrown down by an earthquake. And at
Misenum, some embers and live coals, which were brought in to warm his
apartment, went out, and after being quite cold, burst out into a flame again
towards evening, and continued burning very brightly for several hours.
LXXV. The people were so much elated at his death, that when they first heard
the news, they ran up and down the city, some crying out, “Away with Tiberius to
the Tiber;” others exclaiming, “May the earth, the common mother of mankind, and
the infernal gods, allow him no abode in death, but amongst the wicked.” Others
threatened his body with the hook and the Gemonian stairs, their indignation at
his former cruelty being increased by a recent atrocity. It had been provided by
an act of the senate, that the execution of condemned criminals should always be
deferred until the tenth day after the sentence. Now this fell on the very day
when the news of Tiberius’s death arrived, and in consequence of which the
unhappy men implored a reprieve, for mercy’s sake; but, as Caius had not yet
arrived, and there was no one else to whom application could be made on their
behalf, their guards, apprehensive of violating the law, strangled them, and
threw them down the Gemonian stairs. This roused the people to a still greater
abhorrence of the tyrant’s memory, since his cruelty continued in use even after
he was dead. As soon as his corpse was begun to be meved from Misenum, many
cried out for its being carried to Atella, and being half burnt there in the
amphitheatre. It was, however, brought to Rome, and burnt with the usual
ceremony.
LXXVI. He had made about two years before, duplicates of his will, one written
by his own hand, and the other by that of one of his freedmen; and both were
witnessed by some persons of very mean rank. He appointed his two grandsons,
Caius by Germanicus, and Tiberius by Drusus, joint heirs to his estate; and upon
the death of one of them, the other was to inherit the whole. He gave likewise
many legacies; amongst which were bequests to the Vestal Virgins, to all the
soldiers, and each one of the people of Rome, and to the magistrates of the
several quarters of the city.
At the death of Augustus, there had elapsed so long a period from the overthrow
of the republic by Julius Cæsar, that few were now living who had been born
under the ancient constitution of the Romans; and the mild and prosperous
administration of Augustus, during forty-four years, had by this time reconciled
the minds of the people to a despotic government. Tiberius, the adopted son of
the former sovereign, was of mature age; and though he had hitherto lived, for
the most part, abstracted from any concern with public affairs, yet, having been
brought up in the family of Augustus, he was acquainted with his method of
government, which, there was reason to expect, he would render the model of his
own. Livia, too, his mother, and the relict of the late emperor, was still
living, a woman venerable by years, who had long been familiar with the councils
of Augustus, and from her high rank, as well as uncommon affability, possessed
an extensive influence amongst all classes of the people.
Such were the circumstances in favour of Tiberius’s succession at the demise of
Augustus; but there were others of a tendency disadvantageous to his views. His
temper was haughty and reserved: Augustus had often apologised for the
ungraciousness of his manners. He was disobedient to his mother; and though he
had not openly discovered any propensity to vice, he enjoyed none of those
qualities which usually conciliate popularity. To these considerations it is to
be added, that Postumus Agrippa, the grandson of Augustus by Julia, was living;
and if consanguinity was to be the rule of succession, his right was
indisputably preferable to that of an adopted son. Augustus had sent this youth
into exile a few years before; but, towards the close of his life, had expressed
a design of recalling him, with the view, as was supposed, of appointing him his
successor. The father of young Agrippa had been greatly beloved by the Romans;
and the fate of his mother, Julia, though she was notorious for her profligacy,
had ever been regarded by them with peculiar sympathy and tenderness. Many,
therefore, attached to the son the partiality entertained for his parents; which
was increased not only by a strong suspicion, but a general surmise, that his
elder brothers, Caius and Lucius, had been violently taken off, to make way for
the succession of Tiberius. That an obstruction was apprehended to Tiberius’s
succession from this quarter, is put beyond all doubt, when we find that the
death of Augustus was industriously kept secret, until young Agrippa should be
removed; who, it is generally agreed, was dispatched by an order from Livia and
Tiberius conjointly, or at least from the former. Though, by this act, there
remained no rival to Tiberius, yet the consciousness of his own want of
pretensions to the Roman throne, seems to have still rendered him distrustful of
the succession; and that he should have quietly obtained it, without the voice
of the people, the real inclination of the senate, or the support of the army,
can be imputed only to the influence of his mother, and his own dissimulation.
Ardently solicitous to attain the object, yet affecting a total indifference;
artfully prompting the senate to give him the charge of the government, at the
time that he intimated an invincible reluctance to accept it; his absolutely
declining it in perpetuity, but fixing no time for an abdication; his deceitful
insinuation of bodily infirmities, with hints likewise of approaching old age,
that he might allay in the senate all apprehensions of any great duration of his
power, and repress in his adopted son, Germanicus, the emotions of ambition to
displace him; form altogether a scene of the most insidious policy,
inconsistency, and dissimulation.
In this period died, in the eighty-sixth year of her age, Livia Drusilla, mother
of the emperor, and the relict of Augustus, whom she survived fifteen years. She
was the daughter of L. Drusus Calidianus and married Tiberius Claudius Nero, by
whom she had two sons, Tiberius and Drusus. The conduct of this lady seems to
justify the remark of Caligula, that “she was an Ulysses in a woman’s dress.”
Octavius first saw her as she fled from the danger which threatened her husband,
who had espoused the cause of Antony; and though she was then pregnant, he
resolved to marry her; whether with her own inclination or not, is left by
Tacitus undetermined. To pave the way for this union, he divorced his wife
Scribonia, and with the approbation of the Augurs, which he could have no
difficulty in obtaining, celebrated his nuptials with Livia. There ensued from
this marriage no issue, though much desired by both parties; but Livia retained,
without interruption, an unbounded ascendancy over the emperor, whose confidence
she abused, while the uxorious husband little suspected that he was cherishing
in his bosom a viper who was to prove the destruction of his house. She appears
to have entertained a predominant ambition of giving an heir to the Roman
empire; and since it could not be done by any fruit of her marriage with
Augustus, she resolved on accomplishing that end in the person of Tiberius, the
eldest son by her former husband. The plan which she devised for this purpose,
was to exterminate all the male offspring of Augustus by his daughter Julia, who
was married to Agrippa; a stratagem which, when executed, would procure for
Tiberius, through the means of adoption, the eventual succession to the empire.
The cool yet sanguinary policy, and the patient perseverance of resolution, with
which she prosecuted her design, have seldom been equalled. While the sons of
Julia were yet young, and while there was still a possibility that she herself
might have issue by Augustus, she suspended her project, in the hope, perhaps,
that accident or disease might operate in its favour; but when the natural term
of her constitution had put a period to her hopes of progeny, and when the
grandsons of the emperor were risen to the years of manhood, and had been
adopted by him, she began to carry into execution what she long had meditated.
The first object devoted to destruction was C. Cæsar Agrippa, the eldest of
Augustus’s grandsons. This promising youth was sent to Armenia, upon an
expedition against the Persians; and Lollius, who had been his governor, either
accompanied him thither from Rome, or met him in the East, where he had obtained
some appointment. From the hand of this traitor, perhaps under the pretext of
exercising the authority of a preceptor, but in reality instigated by Livia, the
young prince received a fatal blow, of which he died some time after.
The manner of Caius’s death seems to have been carefully kept from the knowledge
of Augustus, who promoted Lollius to the consulship, and made him governor of a
province; but, by his rapacity in this station, he afterwards incurred the
emperor’s displeasure. The true character of this person had escaped the keen
discernment of Horace, as well as the sagacity of the emperor; for in two
epistles addressed to Lollius, he mentions him as great and accomplished in the
superlative degree; maxime Lolli, liberrime Lolli; so imposing had been the
manners and address of this deceitful courtier.
Lucius, the second son of Julia, was banished into Campania, for using, as it is
said, solitious language against his grandfather. In the seventh year of his
exile Augustus proposed to recall him; but Livia and Tiberius, dreading the
consequences of his being restored to the emperor’s favour, put in practice the
expedient of having him immediately assassinated. Postumus Agrippa, the third
son, incurred the displeasure of his grandfather in the same way as Lucius, and
was confined at Surrentum, where he remained a prisoner until he was put to
death by the order either of Livia alone, or in conjunction with Tiberius, as
was before observed.
Such was the catastrophe, through the means of Livia, of all the grandsons of
Augustus; and reason justifies the inference, that she who scrupled not to lay
violent hands upon those young men, had formerly practised every artifice that
could operate towards rendering them obnoxious to the emperor. We may even
ascribe to her dark intrigues the dissolute conduct of Julia: for the woman who
could secretly act as procuress to her own husband, would feel little restraint
upon her mind against corrupting his daughter, when such an effect might
contribute to answer the purpose which she had in view. But in the ingratitude
of Tiberius, however undutiful and reprehensible in a son towards a parent, she
at last experienced a just retribution for the crimes in which she had trained
him to procure the succession to the empire. To the disgrace of her sex, she
introduced amongst the Romans the horrible practice of domestic murder, little
known before the times when the thirst or intoxication of unlimited power had
vitiated the social affections; and she transmitted to succeeding ages a
pernicious example, by which immoderate ambition might be gratified, at the
expense of every moral obligation, as well as of humanity.
One of the first victims in the sanguinary reign of the present emperor, was
Germanicus, the son of Drusus, Tiberius’s own brother, and who had been adopted
by his uncle himself. Under any sovereign, of a temper different from that of
Tiberius, this amiable and meritorious prince would have been held in the
highest esteem. At the death of his grandfather Augustus, he was employed in a
war in Germany, where he greatly distinguished himself by his military
achievements; and as soon as intelligence of that event arrived, the soldiers,
by whom he was extremely beloved, unanimously saluted him emperor. Refusing,
however, to accept this mark of their partiality, he persevered in allegiance to
the government of his uncle, and prosecuted the war with success. Upon the
conclusion of this expedition, he was sent, with the title of emperor in the
East, to repress the seditions of the Armenians, in which he was equally
successful. But the fame which he acquired, served only to render him an object
of jealousy to Tiberius, by whose order he was secretly poisoned at Daphne, near
Antioch, in the thirty-fourth year of his age. The news of Germanicus’s death
was received at Rome with universal lamentation; and all ranks of the people
entertained an opinion, that, had he survived Tiberius, he would have restored
the freedom of the republic. The love and gratitude of the Romans decreed many
honours to his memory. It was ordered, that his name should be sung in a solemn
procession of the Salii; that crowns of oak, in allusion to his victories,
should be placed upon curule chairs in the hall pertaining to the priests of
Augustus; and that an effigy of him in ivory should be drawn upon a chariot,
preceding the ceremonies of the Circensian games. Triumphal arches were erected,
one at Rome, another on the banks of the Rhine, and a third upon Mount Amanus in
Syria, with inscriptions of his achievements, and that he died for his services
to the republic.
His obsequies were celebrated, not with the display of images and funeral pomp,
but with the recital of his praises and the virtues which rendered him
illustrious. From a resemblance in his personal accomplishments, his age, the
manner of his death, and the vicinity of Daphne to Babylon, many compared his
fate to that of Alexander the Great. He was celebrated for humanity and
benevolence, as well as military talents, and amidst the toils of war, found
leisure to cultivate the arts of literary genius. He composed two comedies in
Greek, some epigrams, and a translation of Aratus into Latin verse. He married
Agrippina, the daughter of M. Agrippa, by whom he had nine children. This lady,
who had accompanied her husband into the east, carried his ashes to Italy, and
accused his murderer, Piso; who, unable to bear up against the public odium
incurred by that transaction, laid violent hands upon himself. Agrippina was now
nearly in the same predicament with regard to Tiberius, that Ovid had formerly
been in respect of Augustus. He was sensible, that when she accused Piso, she
was not ignorant of the person by whom the perpetrator of the murder had been
instigated; and her presence, therefore, seeming continually to reproach him
with his guilt, he resolved to rid himself of a person become so obnoxious to
his sight, and banished her to the island of Pandataria, where she died some
time afterwards of famine.
But it was not sufficient to gratify this sanguinary tyrant, that he had,
without any cause, cut off both Germanicus and his wife Agrippina: the
distinguished merits and popularity of that prince were yet to be revenged upon
his children; and accordingly he set himself to invent a pretext for their
destruction. After endeavouring in vain, by various artifices, to provoke the
resentment of Nero and Drusus against him, he had recourse to false accusation,
and not only charged them with seditious designs, to which their tender years
were ill adapted, but with vices of a nature the most scandalous. By a sentence
of the senate, which manifested the extreme servility of that assembly, he
procured them both to be declared open enemies to their country. Nero he
banished to the island of Pontia, where, like his unfortunate mother, he
miserably perished by famine; and Drusus was doomed to the same fate, in the
lower part of the Palatium, after suffering for nine days the violence of
hunger, and having, as is related, devoured part of his bed. The remaining son,
Caius, on account of his vicious disposition, he resolved to appoint his
successor on the throne, that, after his own death, a comparison might be made
in favour of his memory, when the Romans should be governed by a sovereign yet
more vicious and more tyrannical, if possible, than himself.
Sejanus, the minister in the present reign, imitated with success, for some
time, the hypocrisy of his master; and, had his ambitious temper, impatient of
attaining its object, allowed him to wear the mask for a longer period, he might
have gained the imperial diadem; in the pursuit of which he was overtaken by
that fate which he merited still more by his cruelties than his perfidy to
Tiberius. This man was a native of Volsinium in Tuscany, and the son of a Roman
knight. He had first insinuated himself into the favour of Caius Cæsar, the
grandson of Augustus, after whose death he courted the friendship of Tiberius,
and obtained in a short time his entire confidence, which he improved to the
best advantage. The object which he next pursued, was to gain the attachment of
the senate, and the officers of the army; besides whom, with a new kind of
policy, he endeavoured to secure in his interest every lady of distinguished
connections, by giving secretly to each of them a promise of marriage, as soon
as he should arrive at the sovereignty. The chief obstacles in his way were the
sons and grandsons of Tiberius; and these he soon sacrificed to his ambition,
under various pretences. Drusus, the eldest of this progeny, having in a fit of
passion struck the favourite, was destined by him to destruction. For this
purpose, he had the presumption to seduce Livia, the wife of Drusus, to whom she
had borne several children; and she consented to marry her adulterer upon the
death of her husband, who was soon after poisoned, through the means of an
eunuch named Lygdus, by order of her and Sejanus.
Drusus was the son of Tiberius by Vipsania, one of Agrippa’s daughters. He
displayed great intrepidity during the war in the provinces of Illyricum and
Pannonia, but appears to have been dissolute in his morals. Horace is said to
have written the Ode in praise of Drusus at the desire of Augustus; and while
the poet celebrates the military courage of the prince, he insinuates indirectly
a salutary admonition to the cultivation of the civil virtues:
Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam,
Rectique cultus pectora roborant:
Utcunque defecere mores,
Dedecorant bene nata culpæ.1
—Ode iv. 4.
Yet sage instructions to refine the soul
And raise the genius, wondrous aid impart,
Conveying inward, as they purely roll,
Strength to the mind and vigour to the heart:
When morals fail, the stains of vice disgrace
The fairest honours of the noblest race.
—Francis.
Upon the death of Drusus, Sejanus openly avowed a desire of marrying the widowed
princess; but Tiberius opposing this measure, and at the same time recommendng
Germanicus to the senate as his successor in the empire, the mind of Sejanus was
more than ever inflamed by the united, and now furious, passions of love and
ambition. He therefore urged his demand with increased importunity; but the
emperor still refusing his consent, and things being not yet ripe for an
immediate revolt, Sejanus thought nothing so favourable for the prosecution of
his designs as the absence of Tiberius from the capital. With this view, under
the pretence of relieving his master from the cares of government, he persuaded
him to retire to a distance from Rome. The emperor, indolent and luxurious,
approved of the proposal, and retired into Campania, leaving to his ambitious
minister the whole direction of the empire. Had Sejanus now been governed by
common prudence and moderation, he might have attained to the accomplishment of
all his wishes; but a natural impetuosity of temper, and the intoxication of
power, precipitated him into measures which soon effected his destruction. As if
entirely emancipated from the control of a master, he publicly declared himself
sovereign of the Roman empire, and that Tiberius, who had by this time retired
to Capri, was only the dependent prince of that tributary island. He even went
so far in degrading the emperor, as to have him introduced in a ridiculous light
upon the stage. Advice of Sejanus’s proceedings was soon carried to the emperor
at Capri; his indignation was immediately excited; and with a confidence founded
upon an authority exercised for several years, he sent orders for accusing
Sejanus before the senate. This mandate no sooner arrived, than the audacious
minister was deserted by his adherents; he was in a short time after seized
without resistance, and strangled in prison the same day.
Human nature recoils with horror at the cruelties of this execrable tyrant, who,
having first imbrued his hands in the blood of his own relations, proceeded to
exercise them upon the public with indiscriminate fury. Neither age nor sex
afforded any exemption from his insatiable thirst for blood. Innocent children
were condemned to death, and butchered in the presence of their parents;
virgins, without any imputed guilt, were sacrificed to a similar destiny; but
there being an ancient custom of not strangling females in that situation, they
were first deflowered by the executioner, and afterwards strangled, as if an
atrocious addition to cruelty could sanction the exercise of it. Fathers were
constrained by violence to witness the death of their own children; and even the
tears of a mother, at the execution of her child, were punished as a capital
offence. Some extraordinary calamities, occasioned by accident, added to the
horrors of the reign. A great number of houses on Mount Cœlius were destroyed by
fire; and by the fall of a temporary building at Fidenæ, erected for the purpose
of exhibiting public shows, about twenty thousand persons were either greatly
hurt, or crushed to death in the ruins.
By another fire which afterwards broke out, a part of the Circus was destroyed,
with the numerous buildings on Mount Aventine. The only act of munificence
displayed by Tiberius during his reign, was upon the occasion of those fires,
when, to qualify the severity of his government, he indemnified the most
considerable sufferers for the loss they had sustained.
Through the whole of his life, Tiberius seems to have conducted himself with a
uniform repugnance to nature. Affable on a few occasions, but in general averse
to society, he indulged, from his earliest years, a moroseness of disposition,
which counterfeited the appearance of austere virtue; and in the decline of
life, when it is common to reform from juvenile indiscretions, he launched forth
into excesses, of a kind the most unnatural and most detestable. Considering the
vicious passions which had ever brooded in his heart, it may seem surprising
that he restrained himself within the bounds of decency during so many years
after his accession; but though utterly destitute of reverence or affection for
his mother, he still felt, during her life, a filial awe upon his mind: and
after her death, he was actuated by a slavish fear of Sejanus, until at last
political necessity absolved him likewise from this restraint. These checks
being both removed, he rioted without any control, either from sentiment or
authority.
Pliny relates, that the art of making glass malleable was actually discovered
under the reign of Tiberius, and that the shop and tools of the artist were
destroyed, lest, by the establishment of this invention, gold and silver should
lose their value. Dion adds, that the author of the discovery was put to death.
The gloom which darkened the Roman capital during this melancholy period, shed a
baleful influence on the progress of science throughout the empire, and
literature languished during the present reign, in the same proportion as it had
flourished in the preceding. It is doubtful whether such a change might not have
happened in some degree, even had the government of Tiberius been equally mild
with that of his predecessor. The prodigious fame of the writers of the Augustan
age, by repressing emulation, tended to a general diminution of the efforts of
genius for some time; while the banishment of Ovid, it is probable, and the
capital punishment of a subsequent poet, for censuring the character of
Agamemnon, operated towards the farther discouragement of poetical exertions.
There now existed no circumstance to counterbalance these disadvantages. Genius
no longer found a patron either in the emperor or his minister; and the gates of
the palace were shut against all who cultivated the elegant pursuits of the
Muses. Panders, catamites, assassins, wretches stained with every crime, were
the constant attendants, as the only fit companions, of the tyrant who now
occupied the throne. We are informed, however, that even this emperor had a
taste for the liberal arts, and that he composed a lyric poem upon the death of
Lucius Cæsar, with some Greek poems in imitation of Euphorion, Rhianus, and
Parthenius. But none of these has been transmitted to posterity: and if we
should form an opinion of them upon the principle of Catullus, that to be a good
poet one ought to be a good man, there is little reason to regret that they have
perished.
We meet with no poetical production in this reign; and of prose writers the
number is inconsiderable, as will appear from the following account of them.—
Velleius Paterculus was born of an equestrian family in Campania, and served as
a military tribune under Tiberius, in his expeditions in Gaul and Germany. He
composed an Epitome of the History of Greece and Rome, with that of other
nations of remote antiquity: but of this work there only remain fragments of the
history of Greece and Rome, from the conquest of Perseus to the seventeenth year
of the reign of Tiberius. It is written in two books, addressed to Marcus
Vinicius, who held the office of consul. Rapid in the narrative, and concise as
well as elegant in style, this production exhibits a pleasing epitome of ancient
transactions, enlivened occasionally with anecdotes, and an expressive
description of characters. In treating of the family of Augustus, Paterculus is
justly liable to the imputation of partiality, which he incurs still more in the
latter period of his history, by the praise which is lavished on Tiberius and
his minister Sejanus. He intimates a design of giving a more full account of the
civil war which followed the death of Julius Cæsar; but this, if he ever
accomplished it, has not been transmitted to posterity. Candid, but decided in
his judgment of motives and actions, if we except his invectives against Pompey,
he shows little propensity to censure; but in awarding praise, he is not equally
parsimonious, and, on some occasions, risks the imputation of hyperbole. The
grace, however, and the apparent sincerity with which it is bestowed, reconcile
us to the compliment. This author concludes his history with a prayer for the
prosperity of the Roman empire.—
Valerius Maximus was descended of a Patrician family; but we learn nothing more
concerning him, than that for some time he followed a military life under Sextus
Pompey. He afterwards betook himself to writing, and has left an account, in
nine books, of the memorable apophthegms and actions of eminent persons; first
of the Romans, and afterwards of foreign nations. The subjects are of various
kinds, political, moral, and natural, ranged into distinct classes. His
transitions from one subject to another are often performed with gracefulness;
and where he offers any remarks, they generally show the author to be a man of
judgment and observation. Valerius Maximus is chargeable with no affectation of
style, but is sometimes deficient in that purity of language which might be
expected in the age of Tiberius, to whom the work is addressed. What inducement
the author had to this dedication, we know not; but as it is evident from a
passage in the ninth book, that the compliment was paid after the death of
Sejanus, and consequently in the most shameful period of Tiberius’s reign, we
cannot entertain any high opinion of the independent spirit of Valerius Maximus,
who could submit to flatter a tyrant, in the zenith of infamy and detestation.
But we cannot ascribe the cause to any delicate artifice, of conveying to
Tiberius, indirectly, an admonition to reform his conduct. Such an expedient
would have only provoked the severest resentment from his jealousy.—
Phædrus was a native of Thrace, and was brought to Rome as a slave. He had the
good fortune to come into the service of Augustus, where, improving his talents
by reading, he obtained the favour of the emperor, and was made one of his
freedmen. In the reign of Tiberius, he translated into lambic verse the Fables
of Aesop. They are divided into five oooks, and are not less conspicuous for
precision and simplicity of thought, than for purity and elegance of style;
conveying moral sentiments with unaffected ease and impressive energy. Phædrus
underwent, for some time, a persecution from Sejanus, who, conscious of his own
delinquency, suspected that he was obliquely satirised in the commendations
bestowed on virtue by the poet. The work of Phædrus is one of the latest which
have been brought to light since the revival of learning. It remained in
obscurity until two hundred years ago, when it was discovered in a library at
Rheims.—
Hyginus is said to have been a native of Alexandria, or, according to others, a
Spaniard. He was, like Phædrus, a freedman of Augustus; but, though industrious,
he seems not to have improved himself so much as his companion, in the art of
composition. He wrote, however, a mythological history, under the title of
Fables, a work called Poëticon Astronomicon, with a treatise on agriculture,
commentaries on Virgil, the lives of eminent men, and some other productions now
lost. His remaining works are much mutilated, and, if genuine, afford an
unfavourable specimen of his elegance and correctness as a writer.—
Celsus was a physician in the time of Tiberius, and has written eight books, De
Medicina, in which he has collected and digested into order all that is valuable
on the subject, in the Greek and Roman authors. The professors of Medicine were
at that time divided into three sects, viz., the Dogmatists, Empirics, and
Methodists; the first of whom deviated less than the others from the plan of
Hippocrates; but they were in general irreconcilable to each other, in respect
both of their opinions and practice. Celsus, with great judgment, has
occasionally adopted particular doctrines from each of them; and whatever he
admits into his system, he not only establishes by the most rational
observations, but confirms by its practical utility. In justness of remark, in
force of argument, in precision and perspicuity, as well as in elegance of
expression, he deservedly occupies the most distinguished rank amongst the
medical writers of antiquity. It appears that Celsus likewise wrote on
agriculture, rhetoric, and military affairs; but of those several treatises no
fragments now remain.
To the writers of this reign we must add Apicius Cœlius, who has left a book De
Re Coquinaria [of Cookery]. There were three Romans of the name of Apicius, all
remarkable for their gluttony. The first lived in the time of the Republic, the
last in that of Trajan, and the intermediate Apicius under the emperors Augustus
and Tiberius. This man, as Seneca informs us, wasted on luxurious living,
sexcenties sestertium, a sum equal to £484,375 sterling. Upon examining the
state of his affairs, he found that there remained no more of his estate than
centies sestertium, £80,729 3s. 4d., which seeming to him too small to live
upon, he ended his days by poison.
CAIUS CAESAR CALIGULA.
I.Germanicus, the father of Caius Cæsar, and son of Drusus and the younger
Antonia, was, after his adoption by Tiberius, his uncle, preferred to the
quæstorship five years before he had attained the legal age, and immediately
upon the expiration of that office, to the consulship. Having been sent to the
army in Germany, he restored order among the legions, who, upon the news of
Augustus’s death, obstinately refused to acknowledge Tiberius as emperor, and
offered to place him at the head of the state. In which affair it is difficult
to say, whether his regard to filial duty, or the firmness of his resolution,
was most conspicuous. Soon afterwards he defeated the enemy, and obtained the
honours of a triumph. Being then made consul for the second time, before he
could enter upon his office he was obliged to set out suddenly for the east,
where, after he had conquered the king of Armenia, and reduced Cappadocia into
the form of a province, he died at Antioch, of a lingering distemper, in the
thirty-fourth year of his age, not without the suspicion of being poisoned. For
besides the livid spots which appeared all over his body, and a foaming at the
mouth; when his corpse was burnt, the heart was found entire among the bones;
its nature being such, as it is supposed, that when tainted by poison, it is
indestructible by fire.
II. It was a prevailing opinion, that he was taken off by the contrivance of
Tiberius, and through the means of Cneius Piso. This person, who was about the
same time prefect of Syria, and made no secret of his position being such, that
he must either offend the father or the son, loaded Germanicus, even during his
sickness, with the most unbounded and scurrilous abuse, both by word and deed;
for which, upon his return to Rome, he narrowly escaped being torn to pieces by
the people, and was condemned to death by the senate.
III. It is generally agreed, that Germanicus possessed all the noblest
endowments of body and mind in a higher degree than had ever before fallen to
the lot of any man; a handsome person, extraordinary courage, great proficiency
in eloquence and other branches of learning, both Greek and Roman; besides a
singular humanity, and a behaviour so engaging, as to captivate the affections
of all about him. The slenderness of his legs did not correspond with the
symmetry and beauty of his person in other respects; but this defect was at
length corrected by his habit of riding after meals. In battle, he often engaged
and slew an enemy in single combat. He pleaded causes, even after he had the
honour of a triumph. Among other fruits of his studies, he left behind him some
Greek comedies. Both at home and abroad he always conducted himself in a manner
the most unassuming. On entering any free and confederate town, he never would
be attended by his lictors. Whenever he heard, in his travels, of the tombs of
illustrious men, he made offerings over them to the infernal deities. He gave a
common grave, under a mound of earth, to the scattered relics of the legionaries
slain under Varus, and was the first to put his hand to the work of collecting
and bringing them to the place of burial. He was so extremely mild and gentle to
his enemies, whoever they were, or on what account soever they bore him enmity,
that, although Piso rescinded his decrees, and for a long time severely harassed
his dependents, he never showed the smallest resentment, until he found himself
attacked by magical charms and imprecations; and even then the only steps he
took was to renounce all friendship with him, according to ancient custom, and
to exhort his servants to avenge his death, if any thing untoward should befal
him.
IV. He reaped the fruit of his noble qualities in abundance, being so much
esteemed and beloved by his friends, that Augustus (to say nothing of his other
relations) being a long time in doubt, whether he should not appoint him his
successor, at last ordered Tiberius to adopt him. He was so extremely popular,
that many authors tell us, the crowds of those who went to meet him upon his
coming to any place, or to attend him at his departure, were so prodigious, that
he was sometimes in danger of his life; and that upon his return from Germany,
after he had quelled the mutiny in the army there, all the cohorts of the
pretorian guards marched out to meet him, notwithstanding the order that only
two should go; and that all the people of Rome, both men and women, of every
age, sex, and rank, flocked as far as the twentieth milestone to attend his
entrance.
V. At the time of his death, however, and afterwards, they displayed still
greater and stronger proofs of their extraordinary attachment to him. The day on
which he died, stones were thrown at the temples, the altars of the gods
demolished, the household gods, in some cases, thrown into the streets, and
new-born infants exposed. It is even said that barbarous nations, both those
engaged in intestine wars, and those in hostilities against us, all agreed to a
cessation of arms, as if they had been mourning for some very near and common
friend: that some petty kings shaved their beards and their wives’ heads, in
token of their extreme sorrow: and that the king of kings forbore his exercise
of hunting and feasting with his nobles, which, amongst the Parthians, is
equivalent to a cessation of all business in a time of public mourning with us.
VI. At Rome, upon the first news of his sickness, the city was thrown into great
consternation and grief, waiting impatiently for farther intelligence: when
suddenly, in the evening, a report, without any certain author, was spread, that
he was recovered; upon which the people flocked with torches and victims to the
Capitol, and were in such haste to pay the vows they had made for his recovery,
that they almost broke open the doors. Tiberius was roused from out of his sleep
with the noise of the people congratulating one another, and singing about the
streets,
Salva Roma, salva patria, salvus est Germanicus,
Rome is safe, our country safe, for our Germanicus is safe.
But when certain intelligence of his death arrived, the mourning of the people
could neither be assuaged by consolation, nor restrained by edicts, and it
continued during the holidays in the month of December. The atrocities of the
subsequent times contributed much to the glory of Germanicus, and the endearment
of his memory; all people supposing, and with reason, that the fear and awe of
him had laid a restraint upon the cruelty of Tiberius, which broke out soon
afterwards.
VII. Germanicus married Agrippina, the daughter of Marcus Agrippa and Julia, by
whom he had nine children, two of whom died in their infancy, and another a few
years after; a sprightly boy, whose effigy, in the character of a Cupid, Livia
set up in the temple of Venus in the Capitol. Augustus also placed another
statue of him in his bed-chamber, and used to kiss it as often as he entered the
apartment. The rest survived their father; three daughters, Agrippina, Drusilla,
and Livilla, who were born in three successive years; and as many sons, Nero,
Drusus, and Caius Cæsar. Nero and Drusus, at the accusation of Tiberius, were
declared public enemies.
VIII. Caius Cæsar was born on the day before the calends [31st August] of
September, at the time his father and Caius Fonteius Capito were consuls. But
where he was born, is rendered uncertain from the number of places which are
said to have given him birth. Cneius Lentulus Gætulicus says that he was born at
Tibur; Pliny the younger, in the country of the Treviri, at a village called
Ambiatinus, above Confluentes; and he alleges, as a proof of it, that altars are
there shown with this inscription: “For Agrippina’s childbirth.” Some verses
which were published in his reign, intimate that he was born in the winter
quarters of the legions,
In castris natus, patriis nutritius in armis,
Jam designati principis omen erat.
Born in the camp, and train’d in every toil
Which taught his sire the haughtiest foes to foil;
Destin’d he seem’d by fate to raise his name,
And rule the empire with Augustan fame.
I find in the public registers that he was born at Antium. Pliny charges
Gætulicus as guilty of an arrant forgery, merely to soothe the vanity of a
conceited young prince, by giving him the lustre of being born in a city sacred
to Hercules; and says that he advanced this false assertion with the more
assurance, because, the year before the birth of Caius, Germanicus had a son of
the same name born at Tibur; concerning whose amiable childhood and premature
death I have already spoken. Dates clearly prove that Pliny is mistaken; for the
writers of Augustus’s history all agree, that Germanicus, at the expiration of
his consulship, was sent into Gaul, after the birth of Caius. Nor will the
inscription upon the altar serve to establish Pliny’s opinion; because Agrippina
was delivered of two daughters in that country, and any child-birth, without
regard to sex, is called puerperium, as the ancients were used to call girls
pueræ, and boys puelli. There is also extant a letter written by Augustus, a few
months before his death, to his granddaughter Agrippina, about the same Caius
(for there was then no other child of hers living under that name). He writes as
follows: “I gave orders yesterday for Talarius and Asellius to set out on their
journey towards you, if the gods permit, with your child Caius, upon the
fifteenth of the calends of June [18th May]. I also send with him a physician of
mine, and I wrote to Germanicus that he may retain him if he pleases. Farewell,
my dear Agrippina, and take what care you can to come safe and well to your
Germanicus.” I imagine it is sufficiently evident that Caius could not be born
at a place to which he was carried from The City when almost two years old. The
same considerations must likewise invalidate the evidence of the verses, and the
rather, because the author is unknown. The only authority, therefore, upon which
we can depend in this matter, is that of the acts, and the public register;
especially as he always preferred Antium to every other place of retirement, and
entertained for it all that fondness which is commonly attached to one’s native
soil. It is said, too, that, upon his growing weary of the city, he designed to
have transferred thither the seat of empire.
IX. It was to the jokes of the soldiers in the camp that he owed the name of
Caligula, he having been brought up among them in the dress of a common soldier.
How much his education amongst them recommended him to their favour and
affection, was sufficiently apparent in the mutiny upon the death of Augustus,
when the mere sight of him appeased their fury, though it had risen to a great
height. For they persisted in it, until they observed that he was sent away to a
neighbouring city, to secure him against all danger. Then, at last, they began
to relent, and, stopping the chariot in which he was conveyed, earnestly
deprecated the odium to which such a proceeding would expose them.
X. He likewise attended his father in his expedition to Syria. After his return,
he lived first with his mother, and, when she was banished, with his
great-grandmother, Livia Augusta, in praise of whom, after her decease, though
then only a boy, he pronounced a funeral oration in the Rostra. He was then
transferred to the family of his grandmother, Antonia, and afterwards, in the
twentieth year of his age, being called by Tiberius to Capri, he in one and the
same day assumed the manly habit, and shaved his beard, but without receiving
any of the honours which had been paid to his brothers on a similar occasion.
While he remained in that island, many insidious artifices were practised, to
extort from him complaints against Tiberius, but by his circumspection he
avoided falling into the snare. He affected to take no more notice of the
ill-treatment of his relations, than if nothing had befallen them. With regard
to his own sufferings, he seemed utterly insensible of them, and behaved with
such obsequiousness to his grandfather and all about him, that it was justly
said of him, “There never was a better servant, nor a worse master.”
XI. But he could not even then conceal his natural disposition to cruelty and
lewdness. He delighted in witnessing the infliction of punishments, and
frequented taverns and bawdy-houses in the night-time, disguised in a periwig
and a long coat; and was passionately addicted to the theatrical arts of singing
and dancing. All these levities Tiberius readily connived at, in hopes that they
might perhaps correct the roughness of his temper, which the sagacious old man
so well understood, that he often said, “That Caius was destined to be the ruin
of himself and all mankind; and that he was rearing a hydra for the people of
Rome, and a Phaeton for all the world.”
XII. Not long afterwards, he married Junia Claudilla, the daughter of Marcus
Silanus, a man of the highest rank. Being then chosen augur in the room of his
brother Drusus, before he could be inaugurated he was advanced to the
pontificate, with no small commendation of his dutiful behaviour, and great
capacity. The situation of the court likewise was at this time favourable to his
fortunes, as it was now left destitute of support, Sejanus being suspected, and
soon afterwards taken off; and he was by degrees flattered with the hope of
succeeding Tiberius in the empire. In order more effectually to secure this
object, upon Junia’s dying in child-bed, he engaged in a criminal commerce with
Ennia Nævia, the wife of Macro, at that time prefect of the pretorian cohorts;
promising to marry her if he became emperor, to which he bound himself, not only
by an oath, but by a written obligation under his hand. Having by her means
insinuated himself into Macro’s favour, some are of opinion that he attempted to
poison Tiberius, and ordered his ring to be taken from him, before the breath
was out of his body; and that, because he seemed to hold it fast, he caused a
pillow to be thrown upon him, squeezing him by the throat, at the same time,
with his own hand. One of his freedmen crying out at this horrid barbarity, he
was immediately crucified. These circumstances are far from being improbable, as
some authors relate that, afterwards, though he did not acknowledge his having a
hand in the death of Tiberius, yet he frankly declared that he had formerly
entertained such a design; and as a proof of his affection for his relations, he
would frequently boast, “That, to revenge the death of his mother and brothers,
he had entered the chamber of Tiberius, when he was asleep, with a poniard, but
being seized with a fit of compassion, threw it away, and retired: and that
Tiberius, though aware of his intention, durst not make any inquiries, or
attempt revenge.”
XIII. Having thus 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. Upon his moving from Misenum,
therefore, although he was in mourning, and following the corpse of Tiberius, he
had to walk amidst altars, victims, and lighted torches, with prodigious crowds
of people everywhere attending him, in transports of joy, and calling him,
besides other auspicious names, by those of “their star,” “their chick,” “their
pretty puppet,” and “bantling.”
XIV. 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 a hundred and sixty thousand victims are said to have been offered
in sacrifice. Upon his going, a few days afterwards, to the nearest islands on
the coast of Campania, vows were made for his safe return; every person
emulously testifying their care and concern for his safety. And when he fell
ill, the people hung about the Palatium all night long; some vowed, in public
handbills, to risk their lives in the combats of the amphitheatre, and others to
lay them down, for his recovery. To this extraordinary love entertained for him
by his countrymen, was added an uncommon regard by foreign nations. Even
Artabanus, king of the Parthians, who had always manifested hatred and contempt
for Tiberius, solicited his friendship; came to hold a conference with his
consular lieutenant, and passing the Euphrates, paid the highest honours to the
eagles, the Roman standards, and the images of the Cæsars.
XV. Caligula himself inflamed this devotion, by practising all the arts of
popularity. After he had delivered, with floods of tears, a speech in praise of
Tiberius, and buried him with the utmost pomp, he immediately hastened over to
Pandataria and the Pontian islands, to bring thence the ashes of his mother and
brother; and, to testify the great regard he had for their memory, he performed
the voyage in a very tempestuous season. He approached their remains with
profound veneration, and deposited them in the urns with his own hands. Having
brought them in grand solemnity to Ostia, with an ensign flying in the stern of
the galley, and thence up the Tiber to Rome, they were borne by persons of the
first distinction in the equestrian order, on two biers, into the mausoleum, at
noon-day. He appointed yearly offerings to be solemnly and publicly celebrated
to their memory, besides Circensian games to that of his mother, and a chariot
with her image to be included in the procession. The month of September he
called Germanicus, in honour of his father. By a single decree of the senate, he
heaped upon his grandmother, Antonia, all the honours which had been ever
conferred on the empress Livia. His uncle, Claudius, who till then continued in
the equestrian order, he took for his colleague in the consulship. He adopted
his brother, Tiberius, on the day he took upon him the manly habit, and
conferred upon him the title of “Prince of the Youths.” As for his sisters, he
ordered these words to be added to the oaths of allegiance to himself: “Nor will
I hold myself or my own children more dear than I do Caius and his sisters:” and
commanded all resolutions proposed by the consuls in the senate to be prefaced
thus: “May what we are going to do, prove fortunate and happy to Caius Cæsar and
his sisters.” With the like popularity he restored all those who had been
condemned and banished, and granted an act of indemnity against all impeachments
and past offences. To relieve the informers and witnesses against his mother and
brothers from all apprehension, he brought the records of their trials into the
forum, and there burnt them, calling loudly on the gods to witness that he had
not read or handled them. A memorial which was offered him relative to his own
security, he would not receive, declaring, “that he had done nothing to make any
one his enemy:” and said, at the same time, “he had no ears for informers.”
XVI. The Spintriæ, those panderers to unnatural lusts, he banished from the
city, being prevailed upon not to throw them into the sea, as he had intended.
The writings of Titus Labienus, Cordus Cremutius and Cassius Severus, which had
been suppressed by an act of the senate, he permitted to be drawn from
obscurity, and universally read; observing, “that it would be for his own
advantage to have the transactions of former times delivered to posterity.” 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; but passing over the names of those
knights who were only guilty of venial faults, in calling over the list of the
order. To lighten the labours of the judges, he added a fifth class to the
former four. He attempted likewise to restore to the people their ancient right
of voting in the choice of magistrates. He paid very honourably, and without any
dispute, the legacies left by Tiberius in his will, though it had been set
aside; as likewise those left by the will of Livia Augusta, which Tiberius had
annulled. He remitted the hundredth penny, due to the government in all auctions
throughout Italy. He made up to many their losses sustained by fire; and when he
restored their kingdoms to any princes, he likewise allowed them all the arrears
of the taxes and revenues which had accrued in the interval; as in the case of
Antiochus of Comagene, where the confiscation would have amounted to a hundred
millions of sesterces. To prove to the world that he was ready to encourage good
examples of every kind, he gave to a freed-woman eighty thousand sesterces, for
not discovering a crime committed by her patron, though she had been put to
exquisite torture for that purpose. For all these acts of beneficence, amongst
other honours, a golden shield was decreed to him, which the colleges of priests
were to carry annually, upon a fixed day, into the Capitol, with the senate
attending, and the youth of the nobility, of both sexes, celebrating the praise
of his virtues in songs. It was likewise ordained, that the day on which he
succeeded to the empire should be called Palilia, in token of the city’s being
at that time, as it were, new founded.
XVII. He held the consulship four times; the first, from the calends [the first]
of July for two months: the second, from the calends of January for thirty days;
the third, until the ides [the 13th] of January; and the fourth, until the
seventh of the same ides [7th January]. Of these, the two last he held
successively. The third he assumed by his sole authority at Lyons; not, as some
are of opinion, from arrogance or neglect of rules; but because, at that
distance, it was impossible for him to know that his colleague had died a little
before the beginning of the new year. He twice distributed to the people a
bounty of three hundred sesterces a man, and as often gave a splendid feast to
the senate and the equestrian order, with their wives and children. In the
latter, he presented to the men forensic garments, and to the women and children
purple scarfs. To make a perpetual addition to the public joy for ever, he added
to the Saturnalia one day, which he called Juvenalis [the juvenile feast].
XVIII. He exhibited some combats of gladiators, either in the amphitheatre of
Taurus, or in the Septa, with which he intermingled troops of the best pugilists
from Campania and Africa. He did not always preside in person upon those
occasions, but sometimes gave a commission to magistrates or friends to supply
his place. 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 gave various things to be scrambled
for among the people, and distributed to every man a basket of bread with other
victuals. Upon this occasion, he sent his own share to a Roman knight, who was
seated opposite to him, and was enjoying himself by eating heartily. To a
senator, who was doing the same, he sent an appointment of prætor-extraordinary.
He likewise exhibited a great number of Circensian games from morning until
night; intermixed with the hunting of wild beasts from Africa, or the Trojan
exhibition. Some of these games were celebrated with peculiar circumstances; the
Circus being overspread with vermilion and chrysolite: and none drove in the
chariot races who were not of the senatorian order. For some of these he
suddenly gave the signal, when, upon his viewing from the Gelotiana the
preparations in the Circus, he was asked to do so by a few persons in the
neighbouring galleries.
XIX. He invented besides a new kind of spectacle, such as had never been heard
of before. For he made a bridge, of about three miles and a half in length, from
Baiæ to the mole of Puteoli, collecting trading vessels from all quarters,
mooring them in two rows by their anchors, and spreading earth upon them to form
a viaduct, after the fashion of the Appian way. This bridge he crossed and
recrossed for two days together; the first day mounted on a horse richly
caparisoned, wearing on his head a crown of oak leaves, armed with a battle-axe,
a Spanish buckler and a sword, and in a cloak made of cloth of gold; the day
following, in the habit of a charioteer, standing in a chariot, drawn by two
high-bred horses, having with him a young boy, Darius by name, one of the
Parthian hostages, with a cohort of the pretorian guards attending him, and a
party of his friends in cars of Gaulish make. Most people, I know, are of
opinion, that this bridge was designed by Caius, in imitation of Xerxes, who, to
the astonishment of the world, laid a bridge over the Hellespont, which is
somewhat narrower than the distance betwixt Baiæ and Puteoli. Others, however,
thought that he did it to strike terror in Germany and Britain, which he was
upon the point of invading, by the fame of some prodigious work. But for myself,
when I was a boy, I heard my grandfather say, that the reason assigned by some
courtlers who were in habits of the greatest intimacy with him, was this; when
Tiberius was in some anxiety about the nomination of a successor, and rather
inclined to pitch upon his grandson, Thrasyllus the astrologer had assured him,
“That Caius would no more be emperor, than he would ride on horseback across the
gulf of Baiæ.”
XX. He likewise exhibited public diversions in Sicily, Grecian games at
Syracuse, and Attic plays at Lyons in Gaul: besides a contest for preeminence in
the Grecian and Roman eloquence; in which we are told that such as were baffled
bestowed rewards upon the best performers, and were obliged to compose speeches
in their praise: but that those who performed the worst, were forced to blot out
what they had written with a sponge or their tongue, unless they preferred to be
beaten with a rod, or plunged over head and cars into the nearest river.
XXI. He completed the works which were left unfinished by Tiberius, namely, the
temple of Augustus, and the theatre of Pompey. He began, likewise, the aqueduct
from the neighbourhood of Tibur, and an amphitheatre near the Septa; of which
works, one was completed by his successor Claudius, and the other remained as he
left it. The walls of Syracuse, which had fallen to decay by length of time, he
repaired, as he likewise did the temples of the gods. He formed plans for
rebuilding the palace of Polycrates at Samos, finishing the temple of the
Didymæan Apollo at Miletus, and building a town on a ridge of the Alps; but,
above all, for cutting through the isthmus in Achaia; and even sent a centurion
of the first rank to measure out the work.
XXII. 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 assumed a variety of titles,
such as “Dutiful,” “The Pious,” “The Child of the Camp, the Father of the
Armies,” and “The Greatest and Best Cæsar.” Upon hearing some kings, who came to
the city to pay him court, conversing together at supper, about their
illustrious descent, he exclaimed,
Εἷ ς ϰοίρανος ἔτω, εἳς βασιλεύς·
Let there be but one prince, one king.
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. In his temple stood a statue of gold, the exact
image of himself, which was daily dressed in garments corresponding with those
he wore himself. 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. The victims were flamingos, peacocks, bustards, guinea-fowls,
turkey and pheasant hens, each sacrificed on their respective days. On nights
when the moon was full, he was in the constant habit of inviting her to his
embraces and his bed. In the day-time he talked in private to Jupiter
Capitolinus: one while whispering to him, and another turning his ear to him:
sometimes he spoke aloud, and in railing language. For he was overheard to
threaten the god thus:
Ἤ ἐμ’ ἀνάειρ’, ἤ ἐγώ σς;
Raise thou me up, or I’ll—
until being at last prevailed upon by the entreaties of the god, as he said, to
take up his abode with him, he built a bridge over the temple of the Deified
Augustus, by which he joined the Palatium to the Capitol. Afterwards, that he
might be still nearer, he laid the foundations of a new palace in the very court
of the Capitol.
XXIII. He was unwilling to be thought or called the grandson of Agrippa, because
of the obscurity of his birth; and he was offended if any one, either in prose
or verse, ranked him amongst the Cæsars. He said that his mother was the fruit
of an incestuous commerce, maintained by Augustus with his daughter Julia. And
not content with this vile reflection upon the memory of Augustus, he forbad his
victories at Actium, and on the coast of Sicily, to be celebrated, as usual;
affirming that they had been most pernicious and fatal to the Roman people. He
called his grandmother Livia Augusta “Ulysses in a woman’s dress,” and had the
indecency to reflect upon her in a letter to the senate, as of mean birth, and
descended, by the mother’s side, from a grandfather who was only one of the
municipal magistrates of Fondi; whereas it is certain, from the public records,
that Aufidius Lurco held high offices at Rome. His grandmother Antonia desiring
a private conference with him, he refused to grant it, unless Macro, the prefect
of the pretorian guards, were present. Indignities of this kind, and ill usage,
were the cause of her death; but some think he also gave her poison. Nor did he
pay the smallest respect to her memory after her death, but witnessed the
burning from his private apartment. His brother Tiberius, who had no expectation
of any violence, was suddenly dispatched by a military tribune sent by his order
for that purpose. He forced Silanus, his father-in-law, to kill himself, by
cutting his throat with a razor. The pretext he alleged for these murders was,
that the latter had not followed him upon his putting to sea in stormy weather,
but stayed behind with the view of seizing the city, if he should perish. The
other, he said, smelt of an antidote, which he had taken to prevent his being
poisoned by him; whereas Silanus was only afraid of being sea-sick, and the
disagreeableness of a voyage; and Tiberius had merely taken a medicine for an
habitual cough, which was continually growing worse. As for his successor
Claudius, he only saved him for a laughing-stock.
XXIV. He lived in the habit of incest with all his sisters; and at table, when
much company was present, he placed each of them in turns below him, whilst his
wife reclined above him. It is believed, that he deflowered one of them,
Drusilla, before he had assumed the robe of manhood; and was even caught in her
embraces by his grandmother Antonia, with whom they were educated together. When
she was afterwards married to Cassius Longinus, a man of consular rank, he took
her from him, and kept her constantly as if she were his lawful wife. In a fit
of sickness, he by his will appointed her heiress both of his estate and the
empire. After her death, he ordered a public mourning for her; during which it
was capital for any person to laugh, use the bath, or sup with his parents,
wife, or children. Being inconsolable under his affliction, he went hastily, and
in the night-time, from the City; going through Campania to Syracuse, and then
suddenly returned without shaving his beard, or trimming his hair. Nor did he
ever afterwards, in matters of the greatest importance, not even in the
assemblies of the people or before the soldiers, swear any otherwise, than “By
the divinity of Drusilla.” The rest of his sisters he did not treat with so much
fondness or regard; but frequently prostituted them to his catamites. He
therefore the more readily condemned them in the case of Aemilius Lepidus, as
guilty of adultery, and privy to that conspiracy against him. Nor did he only
divulge their own hand-writing relative to the affair, which he procured by base
and lewd means, but likewise consecrated to Mars the Avenger three swords which
had been prepared to stab him, with an inscription, setting forth the occasion
of their consecration.
XXV. Whether in the marriage of his wives, in repudiating them, or retaining
them, he acted with greater infamy, it is difficult to say. Being at the wedding
of Caius Piso with Livia Orestilla, he ordered the bride to be carried to his
own house, but within a few days divorced her, and two years after banished her;
because it was thought, that upon her divorce she returned to the embraces of
her former husband. Some say, that being invited to the wedding-supper, he sent
a messenger to Piso, who sat opposite to him, in these words: “Do not be too
fond with my wife,” and that he immediately carried her off. Next day he
published a proclamation, importing, “That he had got a wife as Romulus and
Augustus had done.” Lollia Paulina, who was married to a man of consular rank in
command of an army, he suddenly called from the province where she was with her
husband, upon mention being made that her grandmother was formerly very
beautiful, and married her; but he soon afterwards parted with her, interdicting
her from having ever afterwards any commerce with man. He loved with a most
passionate and constant affection Cæsonia, who was neither handsome nor young,
and was besides the mother of three daughters by another man; but a wanton of
unbounded lasciviousness. Her he would frequently exhibit to the soldiers,
dressed in a military cloak, with shield and helmet, and riding by his side. To
his friends he even showed her naked. After she had a child, he honoured her
with the title of wife; in one and the same day, declaring himself her husband,
and father of the child of which she was delivered. He named it Julia Drusilla,
and carrying it round the temples of all the goddesses, laid it on the lap of
Minerva; to whom he recommended the care of bringing up and instructing her. He
considered her as his own child for no better reason than her savage temper,
which was such even in her infancy, that she would attack with her nails the
face and eyes of the children at play with her.
XXVI. It would be of little importance, as well as disgusting, to add to all
this an account of the manner in which he treated his relations and friends; as
Ptolemy, king Juba’s son, his cousin (for he was the grandson of Mark Antony by
his daughter Selene), and especially Macro himself, and Ennia likewise, by whose
assistance he had obtained the empire; all of whom, for their alliance and
eminent services, he rewarded with violent deaths. Nor was he more mild or
respectful in his behaviour towards the senate. Some 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. The consuls having forgotten to give public notice of his
birth-day, he displaced them; and the republic was three days without any one in
that high office. A quæstor who was said to be concerned in a conspiracy against
him, he scourged severely, having first stripped off his clothes, and spread
them under the feet of the soldiers employed in the work, that they might stand
the more firm. The other orders likewise he treated with the same insolence and
violence. Being disturbed by the noise of people taking their places at midnight
in the circus, as they were to have free admission, he drove them all away with
clubs. In this tumult, above twenty Roman knights were squeezed to death, with
as many matrons, with a great crowd besides. When stage-plays were acted, to
occasion disputes between the people and the knights, he distributed the
money-tickets sooner than usual, that the seats assigned to the knights might be
all occupied by the mob. In the spectacles of gladiators, sometimes, when the
sun was violently hot, he would order the curtains, which covered the
amphitheatre, to be drawn aside, and forbad any person to be let out;
withdrawing at the same time the usual apparatus for the entertainment, and
presenting wild beasts almost pined to death, the most sorry gladiators,
decrepit with age, and fit only to work the machinery, and decent house-keepers,
who were remarkable for some bodily infirmity. Sometimes shutting up the public
granaries, he would oblige the people to starve for a while.
XXVII. He evinced the savage barbarity of his temper chiefly by the following
indications. 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 levoured; 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.” Of one person
who had made a vow for his recovery to combat with a gladiator, he exacted its
performance; nor would he allow him to desist until he came off conqueror, and
after many entreaties. Another, who had vowed to give his life for the same
cause, having shrunk from the sacrifice, he delivered, adorned as a victim, with
garlands and fillets, to boys, who were to drive him through the streets,
calling on him to fulfil his vow, until he was thrown headlong from the
ramparts. 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. Nor were these severities merely inflicted for
crimes of great enormity, but for making remarks on his public games, or for not
having sworn by the Genius of the emperor. He compelled parents to be present at
the execution of their sons; and to one who excused himself on account of
indisposition, he sent his own litter. Another he invited to his table
immediately after he had witnessed the spectacle, and coolly challenged him to
jest and be merry. He ordered the overseer of the spectacles and wild beasts to
be scourged in fetters, during several days successively, in his own presence,
and did not put him to death until he was disgusted with the stench of his
putrefied brain. He burned alive, in the centre of the arena of the
amphitheatre, the writer of a farce, for some witty verse, which had a double
meaning. A Roman knight, who had been exposed to the wild beasts, crying out
that he was innocent, he called him back, and having had his tongue cut out,
remanded him to the arena.
XXVIII. Asking a certain person, whom he recalled after a long exile, how he
used to spend his time, he replied, with flattery, “I was always praying the
gods for what has happened, that Tiberius might die, and you be emperor.”
Concluding, therefore, that those he had himself banished also prayed for his
death, he sent orders round the islands to have them all put to death. Being
very desirous to have a senator torn to pieces, he employed some persons to call
him a public enemy, fall upon him as he entered the senate-house, stab him with
their styles, and deliver him to the rest to tear asunder. Nor was he satisfied,
until he saw the limbs and bowels of the man, after they had been dragged
through the streets, piled up in a heap before him.
XXIX. He aggravated his barbarous actions by language equally outrageous. “There
is nothing in my nature,” said he, “that I commend or approve so much, as my
ἀδιατρεψία (inflexible rigour).” Upon his grandmother Antonia’s giving him some
advice, as if it was a small matter to pay no regard to it, he said to her,
“Remember that all things are lawful for me.” When about to murder his brother,
whom he suspected of taking antidotes against poison, he said, “See then an
antidote against Cæsar!” And when he banished his sisters, he told them in a
menacing tone, that he had not only islands at command, but likewise swords. One
of pretorian rank having sent several times from Anticyra, whither he had gone
for his health, to have his leave of absence prolonged, he ordered him to be put
to death; adding these words: “Bleeding is necessary for one that has taken
hellebore so long, and found no benefit.” It was his custom every tenth day to
sign the lists of prisoners appointed for execution; and this he called
“clearing his accounts.” And having condemned several Gauls and Greeks at one
time, he exclaimed in triumph, “I have conquered Gallogræcia.”
XXX. 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.” Having punished
one person for another, by mistaking his name, he said, “he deserved it quite as
much.” He had frequently in his mouth these words of the tragedian,
Oderint dum metuant
I scorn their hatred, if they do but fear me.
He would often inveigh against all the senators without exception, as clients of
Sejanus, and informers against his mother and brothers, producing the memorials
which he had pretended to burn, and excusing the cruelty of Tiberius as
necessary, since it was impossible to question the veracity of such a number of
accusers. He continually reproached the whole equestrian order, as devoting
themselves to nothing but acting on the stage, and fighting as gladiators. 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.”
When Tetrinius, the highwayman, was denounced, he said his persecutors too were
all Tetrinius’s. Five Retiarii, in tunics, fighting in a company, yielded
without a struggle to the same number of opponents; and being ordered to be
slain, one of them taking up his lance again, killed all the conquerors. This he
lamented in a proclamation as a most cruel butchery, and cursed all those who
had borne the sight of it.
XXXI. He used also to complain aloud of the state of the times, because it was
not rendered remarkable by any public calamities; for, while the reign of
Augustus had been made memorable to posterity by the disaster of Varus, and that
of Tiberius by the fall of the theatre at Fidenæ, his was likely to pass into
oblivion, from an uninterrupted series of prosperity. And, at times, he wished
for some terrible slaughter of his troops, a famine, a pestilence,
conflagrations, or an earthquake.
XXXII. 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.
At Puteoli, at the dedication of the bridge which he planned, as already
mentioned, he invited a number of people to come to him from the shore, and then
suddenly threw them headlong into the sea; thrusting down with poles and oars
those who, to save themselves, had got hold of the rudders of the ships. At
Rome, in a public feast, a slave having stolen some thin plates of silver with
which the couches were inlaid, he delivered him immediately to an executioner,
with orders to cut off his hands, and lead him round the guests, with them
hanging from his neck before his breast, and a label, signifying the cause of
his punishment. A gladiator who was practising with him, and voluntarily threw
himself at his feet, he stabbed with a poniard, and then ran about with a palm
branch in his hand, after the manner of those who are victorious in the games.
When a victim was to be offered upon an altar, he, clad in the habit of the Popæ,
and holding the axe aloft for a while, at last, instead of the animal,
slaughtered an officer who attended to cut up the sacrifice. And at a sumptuous
entertainment, he fell suddenly into a violent fit of laughter, and upon the
consuls, who reclined next to him, respectfully asking him the occasion,
“Nothing,” replied he, “but that, upon a single nod of mine, you might both have
your throats cut.”
XXXIII. Among many other jests, this was one: As he stood by the statue of
Jupiter, he asked Apelles, the tragedian, which of them he thought was biggest?
Upon his demurring about it, he lashed him most severely, now and then
commending his voice, whilst he entreated for mercy, as being well modulated
even when he was venting his grief. As often as he kissed the neck of his wife
or mistress, he would say, “So beautiful a throat must be cut whenever I
please,” and now and then he would threaten to put his dear Cæsonia to the
torture, that he might discover why he loved her so passionately.
XXXIV. In his behaviour towards men of almost all ages, he discovered a degree
of jealousy and malignity equal to that of his cruelty and pride. He so
demolished and dispersed the statues of several illustrious persons, which had
been removed by Augustus, for want of room, from the court of the Capitol into
the Campus Martius, that it was impossible to set them up again with their
inscriptions entire. And, for the future, he forbad any statue whatever to be
erected without his knowledge and leave. He had thoughts too of suppressing
Homer’s poems: “For why,” said he, “may not I do what Plato has done before me,
who excluded him from his commonwealth?” He was likewise very near banishing the
writings and the busts of Virgil and Livy from all libraries; censuring one of
them as “a man of no genius and very little learning;” and the other as “a
verbose and careless historian.” He often talked of the lawyers as if he
intended to abolish their profession. “By Hercules!” he would say, “I shall put
it out of their power to answer any questions in law, otherwise than by
referring to me!”
XXXV. He took from the noblest persons in the city the ancient marks of
distinction used by their families: as the collar from Torquatus; from
Cincinnatus the curl of hair; and from Cneius Pompey, the surname of Great,
belonging to that ancient family. Ptolemy, mentioned before, whom he invited
from his kingdom, and received with great honours, he suddenly put to death, for
no other reason, but because he observed that upon entering the theatre, at a
public exhibition, he attracted the eyes of all the spectators, by the splendour
of his purple robe. As often as he met with handsome men, who had fine heads of
hair, he would order the back of their heads to be shaved, to make them appear
ridiculous. There was one Esius Proculus, the son of a centurion of the first
rank, who, for his great stature and fine proportions, was called the Colossal.
Him he ordered to be dragged from his seat in the arena, and matched with a
gladiator in light armour, and afterwards with another completely armed; and
upon his worsting them both, commanded him forthwith to be bound, to be led
clothed in rags up and down the streets of the city, and, after being exhibited
in that plight to the women, to be then butchered. There was no man of so abject
or mean condition, whose excellency in any kind he did not envy. The Rex
Nemorensis having many years enjoyed the honour of the priesthood, he procured a
still stronger antagonist to oppose him. One Porius, who fought in a chariot,
having been victorious in an exhibition, and in his joy given feedom to a slave,
was applauded so vehemently, that Caligula rose in such haste from his seat,
that, treading upon the hem of his toga, he tumbled down the steps, full of
indignation, and crying out, “A people who are masters of the world, pay greater
respect to a gladiator for a trifle, than to princes admitted amongst the gods,
or to my own majesty here present amongst them.”
XXXVI. He never had the least regard either to the chastity of his own person,
or that of others. He is said to have been inflamed with an unnatural passion
for Marcus Lepidus Mnester, an actor in pantomimes, and for certain hostages;
and to have engaged with them in the practice of mutual pollution. Valerius
Catullus, a young man of a consular family, bawled aloud in public that he had
been exhausted by him in that abominable act. Besides his incest with his
sisters, and his notorious passion for Pyrallis, the prostitute, there was
hardly any lady of distinction with whom he did not make free. He used commonly
to invite them with their husbands to supper, and as they passed by the couch on
which he reclined at table, examine them very closely, like those who traffic in
slaves; and if any one from modesty held down her face, he raised it up with his
hand. Afterwards, as often as he was in the humour, he would quit the room, send
for her he liked best, and in a short time return with marks of recent disorder
about them. He would then commend or disparage her in the presence of the
company, recounting the charms or defects of her person and behaviour in
private. To some he sent a divorce in the name of their absent husbands, and
ordered it to be registered in the public acts.
XXXVII. In the devices of his profuse expenditure, he surpassed all the
prodigals that ever lived; inventing a new kind of bath, with strange dishes and
suppers, washing in precious unguents, both warm and cold, drinking pearls of
immense value dissolved in vinegar, and serving up for his guests loaves and
other victuals modelled in gold; often saying, “that a man ought either to be a
good economist or an emperor.” Besides, he scattered money to a prodigious
amount among the people, from the top of the Julian Basilica, during several
days successively. He built two ships with ten banks of oars, after the
Liburnian fashion, the poops of which blazed with jewels, and the sails were of
various parti-colours. They were fitted up with ample baths, galleries, and
saloons, and supplied with a great variety of vines and other fruit-trees. In
these he would sail in the day-time along the coast of Campania, feasting amidst
dancing and concerts of music. In building his palaces and villas, there was
nothing he desired to effect so much, in defiance of all reason, as what was
considered impossible. Accordingly, moles were formed in the deep and adverse
sea, rocks of the hardest stone cut away, plains raised to the height of
mountains with a vast mass of earth, and the tops of mountains levelled by
digging; and all these were to be executed with incredible speed, for the least
remissness was a capital offence. Not to mention particulars, he spent enormous
sums, and the whole treasures which had been amassed by Tiberius Cæsar,
amounting to two thousand seven hundred millions of sesterces, within less than
a year.
XXXVIII. Having therefore quite exhausted these funds, and being in want of
money, he had recourse to plundering the people, by every mode of false
accusation, confiscation, and taxation, that could be invented. He declared that
no one had any right to the freedom of Rome, although their ancestors had
acquired it for themselves and their posterity, unless they were sons; for that
none beyond that degree ought to be considered as posterity. When the grants of
the Divine Julius and Augustus were produced to him, he only said, that he was
very sorry they were obsolete and out of date. He also charged all those with
making false returns, who, after the taking of the census, had by any means
whatever increased their property. He annulled the wills of all who had been
centurions of the first rank, as testimonies of their base ingratitude, if from
the beginning of Tiberius’s reign they had not left either that prince or
himself their heir. He also set aside the wills of all others, if any person
only pretended to say, that they designed at their death to leave Cæsar their
heir. The public becoming terrified at this proceeding, he was now appointed
joint-heir with their friends, and in the case of parents with their children,
by persons unknown to him. Those who lived any considerable time after making
such a will, he said, were only making game of him; and accordingly he sent many
of them poisoned cakes. He used to try such causes himself; fixing previously
the sum he proposed to raise during the sitting, and, after he had secured it,
quitting the tribunal. Impatient of the least delay, he condemned by a single
sentence forty persons, against whom there were different charges; boasting to
Cæsonia when she awoke, “how much business he had dispatched while she was
taking her mid-day sleep.” He exposed to sale by auction, the remains of the
apparatus used in the public spectacles; and exacted such biddings, and raised
the prices so high, that some of the purchasers were ruined, and bled themselves
to death. There is a well-known story told of Aponius Saturninus, who happening
to fall asleep as he sat on a bench at the sale, Caius called out to the
auctioneer, not to overlook the prætorian personage who nodded to him so often:
and accordingly the salesman went on, pretending to take the nods for tokens of
assent, until thirteen gladiators were knocked down to him at the sum of nine
millions of sesterces, he being in total ignorance of what was doing.
XXXIX. Having also sold in Gaul all the clothes, furniture, slaves, and even
freedmen belonging to his sisters, at prodigious prices, after their
condemnation, he was so much delighted with his gains, that he sent to Rome for
all the furniture of the old palace; pressing for its conveyance all the
carriages let to hire in the city, with the horses and mules belonging to the
bakers, so that they often wanted bread at Rome; and many who had suits at law
in progress, lost their causes, because they could not make their appearance in
due time according to their recognizances. In the sale of this furniture, every
artifice of fraud and imposition was employed. Sometimes he would rail at the
bidders for being niggardly, and ask them “if they were not ashamed to be richer
than he was?” at another, he would affect to be sorry that the property of
princes should be passing into the hands of private persons. He had found out
that a rich provincial had given two hundred thousand sesterces to his
chamberlains for an underhand invitation to his table, and he was much pleased
to find that honour valued at so high a rate. The day following, as the same
person was sitting at the sale, he sent him some bauble, for which he told him
he must pay two hundred thousand sesterces, and “that he should sup with Cæsar
upon his own invitation.”
XL. He levied new taxes, and such as were never before known, at first by the
publicans, but afterwards, because their profit was enormous, by centurions and
tribunes of the pretorian guards; no description of property or persons being
exempted from some kind of tax or other. For all eatables brought into the city,
a certain excise was exacted: for all law-suits or trials in whatever court, the
fortieth part of the sum in dispute; and such as were convicted of compromising
litigations, were made liable to a penalty. Out of the daily wages of the
porters, he received an eighth, and from the gains of common prostitutes, what
they received for one favour granted. There was a clause in the law, that all
bawds who kept women for prostitution or sale, should be liable to pay, and that
marriage itself should not be exempted.
XLI. These taxes being imposed, but the act by which they were levied never
submitted to public inspection, great grievances were experienced from the want
of sufficient knowledge of the law. At length, on the urgent demands of the
Roman people, he published the law, but it was written in a very small hand, and
posted up in a corner, so that no one could make a copy of it. To leave no sort
of gain untried, he opened brothels in the Palatium, with a number of cells,
furnished suitably to the dignity of the place; in which married women and
free-born youths were ready for the reception of visitors. He sent likewise his
nomenclators about the forums and courts, to invite people of all ages, the old
as well as the young, to his brothel, to come and satisfy their lusts; and he
was ready to lend his customers money upon interest; clerks attending to take
down their names in public, as persons who contributed to the emperor’s revenue.
Another method of raising money, which he thought not below his notice, was
gaming; which, by the help of lying and perjury, he turned to considerable
account. Leaving once the management of his play to his partner in the game, he
stepped into the court, and observing two rich Roman knights passing by, he
ordered them immediately to be seized, and their estates confiscated. Then
returning, in great glee, he boasted that he had never made a better throw in
his life.
XLII. After the birth of his daughter, complaining of his poverty, and the
burdens to which he was subjected, not only as an emperor, but a father, he made
a general collection for her maintenance and fortune. He likewise gave public
notice, that he would receive new-year’s gifts on the calends of January
following; and accordingly stood in the vestibule of his house, to clutch the
presents which people of all ranks threw down before him by handfuls and
lapfuls. At last, being seized with an invincible desire of feeling money,
taking off his slippers, he repeatedly walked over great heaps of gold coin
spread upon the spacious floor, and then laying himself down, rolled his whole
body in gold over and over again.
XLIII. Only once in his life did he take an active part in military affairs, and
then not from any set purpose, but during his journey to Mevania, to see the
grove and river of Clitumnus. Being recommended to recruit a body of Batavians,
who attended him, he resolved upon an expedition into Germany. Immediately he
drew together several legions, and auxiliary forces from all quarters, and made
every where new levies with the utmost rigour. Collecting supplies of all kinds,
such as never had been assembled upon the like occasion, he set forward on his
march, and pursued it sometimes with so much haste and precipitation, that the
pretorian cohorts were obliged, contrary to custom, to pack their standards on
horses or mules, and so follow him. At other times, he would march so slow and
luxuriously, that he was carried in a litter by eight men; ordering the roads to
be swept by the people of the neighbouring towns, and sprinkled with water to
lay the dust.
XLIV. On arriving at the camp, in order to show himself an active general, and
severe disciplinarian, he cashiered the lieutenants who came up late with the
auxiliary forces from different quarters. In reviewing the army, he deprived of
their companies most of the centurions of the first rank, who had now served
their legal time in the wars, and some whose time would have expired in a few
days; alleging against them their age and infirmity; and railing at the covetous
disposition of the rest of them, he reduced the bounty due to those who had
served out their time to the sum of six thousand sesterces. Though he only
received the submission of Adminius, the son of Cunobeline, a British king, who
being driven from his native country by his father, came over to him with a
small body of troops, yet, as if the whole island had been surrendered to him,
he dispatched magnificent letters to Rome, ordering the bearers to proceed in
their carriages directly up to the forum and the senate-house, and not to
deliver the letters but to the consuls in the temple of Mars, and in the
presence of a full assembly of the senators.
XLV. Soon after this, 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; but he presented the companions and sharers of his victory with
crowns of a new form, and under a new name, having the sun, moon, and stars
represented on them, and which he called Exploratoriæ. Again, some hostages were
by his order taken from the school, and privately sent off; upon notice of which
he immediately rose from table, pursued them with the cavalry, as if they had
run away, and coming up with them, brought them back in fetters; proceeding to
an extravagant pitch of ostentation likewise in this military comedy. Upon his
again sitting down to table, it being reported to him that the troops were all
reassembled, he ordered them to sit down as they were, in their armour,
animating them in the words of that wellknown verse of Virgil:
Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis.—Aen. 1.
Bear up, and save yourselves for better days.
In the mean time, he reprimanded the senate and people of Rome in a very severe
proclamation, “For revelling and frequenting the diversions of the circus and
theatre, and enjoying themselves at their villas, whilst their emperor was
fighting, and exposing himself to the greatest dangers.”
XLVI. 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, upon which, as at Pharos,
he ordered lights to be burnt in the night-time, for the direction of ships at
sea; and then promising the soldiers a donative of a hundred denarii a man, as
if he had surpassed the most eminent examples of generosity, “Go your ways,”
said he, “and be merry: go, ye are rich.”
XLVII. In making preparations for his triumph, besides the prisoners and
deserters from the barbarian armies, he picked out the men of greatest stature
in all Gaul, such as he said were fittest to grace a triumph, with some of the
chiefs, and reserved them to appear in the procession; obliging them not only to
dye their hair yellow, and let it grow long, but to learn the German language,
and assume the names commonly used in that country. He ordered likewise the
gallies in which he had entered the ocean, to be conveyed to Rome a great part
of the way by land, and wrote to his comptrollers in the city, “to make proper
preparations for a triumph against his arrival, at as small expense as possible;
but on a scels such as had never been seen before, since they had full power
over the property of every one.”
XLVIII. Before he left the province, he formed a design of the most horrid
cruelty—to massacre the legions which had mutinied upon the death of Augustus,
for seizing and detaining by force his father, Germanicus, their commander, and
himself, then an infant, in the camp. Though he was with great difficulty
dissuaded from this rash attempt, yet neither the most urgent entreaties nor
representations could prevent him from persisting in the design of decimating
these legions. Accordingly, he ordered them to assemble unarmed, without so much
as their swords; and then surrounded them with armed horse. But finding that
many of them, suspecting that violence was intended, were making off, to arm in
their own defence, he quitted the assembly as fast as he could, and immediately
marched for Rome; bending now all his fury against the senate, whom he publicly
threatened, to divert the general attention from the clamour excited by his
disgraceful conduct. Amongst other pretexts of offence, he complained that he
was defrauded of a triumph, which was justly his due, though he had just before
forbidden, upon pain of death, any honour to be decreed him.
XLIX. In his march he was waited upon by deputies from the senatorian order,
entreating him to hasten his return. He replied to them, “I will come, I will
come, and this with me,” striking at the same time the hilt of his sword. He
issued likewise this proclamation: “I am coming, but for those only who wish for
me, the equestrian order and the people; for I shall no longer treat the senate
as their fellow-citizen or prince.” He forbad any of the senators to come to
meet him; and either abandoning or deferring his triumph, he entered the city in
ovation on his birth-day. Within four months from this period he was slain,
after he had perpetrated enormous crimes, and while he was meditating the
execution, if possible, of still greater. He had entertained a design of
removing to Antium, and afterwards to Alexandria; having first cut off the
flower of the equestrian and senatorian orders. This is placed beyond all
question, by two books which were found in his cabinet under different titles;
one being called the sword, and the other, the dagger. They both contained
private marks, and the names of those who were devoted to death. There was also
found a large chest, filled with a variety of poisons which being afterwards
thrown into the sea by order of Claudius, are said to have so infected the
waters, that the fish were poisoned, and cast dead by the tide upon the
neighbouring shores.
L. He was tall, of a pale complexion, ill-shaped, his neck and legs very
slender, his eyes and temples hollow, his brows broad and knit, his hair thin,
and the crown of the head bald. The other parts of his body were much covered
with hair. On this account, it was reckoned a capital crime for any person to
look down from above, as he was passing by, or so much as to name a goat. His
countenance, which was naturally hideous and frightful, he purposely rendered
more so, forming it before a mirror into the most horrible contortions. He was
crazy both in body and mind, being subject, when a boy, to the falling sickness.
When he arrived at the age of manhood, he endured fatigue tolerably well; but
still, occasionally, he was liable to a faintness, during which he remained
incapable of any effort. He was not insensible of the disorder of his mind, and
sometimes had thoughts of retiring to clear his brain. It is believed that his
wife Cæsonia administered to him a love potion which threw him into a frenzy.
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, but
disturbed by strange dreams; fancying, among other things, that a form
representing the ocean spoke to him. Being therefore often weary with lying
awake so long, sometimes he sat up in his bed, at others, walked in the longest
porticos about the house, and from time to time invoked and looked out for the
approach of day.
LI. To this crazy constitution of his mind may, I think, very justly be ascribed
two faults which he had, of a nature directly repugnant one to the other,
namely, an excessive confidence and the most abject timidity. For he, who
affected so much to despise the gods, was ready to shut his eyes, and wrap up
his head in his cloak at the slightest storm of thunder and lightning; and if it
was violent, he got up and hid himself under his bed. In his visit to Sicily,
after ridiculing many strange objects which that country affords, he ran away
suddenly in the night from Messini, terrified by the smoke and rumbling at the
summit of Mount Aetna. And though in words he was very valiant against the
barbarians, yet upon passing a narrow defile in Germany in his light car,
surrounded by a strong body of his troops, some one happening to say, “There
would be no small consternation amongst us, if an enemy were to appear,” he
immediately mounted his horse, and rode towards the bridges in great haste; but
finding them blocked up with camp-followers and baggage-waggons, he was in such
a hurry, that he caused himself to be carried in men’s hands over the heads of
the crowd. Soon afterwards, upon hearing that the Germans were again in
rebellion, he prepared to quit rome, and equipped a fleet; comforting himself
with this consideration, that if the enemy should prove victorious, and possess
themselves of the heights of the Alps, as the Cimbri had done, or of the city,
as the Senones formerly did, he should still have in reserve the transmarine
provinces. Hence it was, I suppose, that it occurred to his assassins, to invent
the story intended to pacify the troops who mutinied at his death, that he had
laid violent hands upon himself, in a fit of terror occasioned by the news
brought him of the defeat of his army.
LII. In the fashion of his clothes, shoes, and all the rest of his dress, he did
not wear what was either national, or properly civic, or peculiar to the male
sex, or appropriate to mere mortals. He often appeared abroad in a short coat of
stout cloth, richly embroidered and blazing with jewels, in a tunic with
sleeves, and with bracelets upon his arms; sometimes all in silks and habited
like a woman; at other times in the crepidæ or buskins; sometimes in the sort of
shoes used by the light-armed soldiers, or in the sock used by women, and
commonly with a golden beard fixed to his chin, holding in his hand a
thunderbolt, a trident, or a caduceus, marks of distinction belonging to the
gods only. Sometimes, too, he appeared in the habit of Venus. He wore very
commonly the triumphal ornaments, even before his expedition, and sometimes the
breast-plate of Alexander the Great, taken out of his coffin.
LIII. With regard to the liberal sciences, he was little conversant in
philology, but applied himself with assiduity to the study of eloquence, being
indeed in point of enunciation tolerably elegant and ready; and in his
perorations, when he was moved to anger, there was an abundant flow of words and
periods. In speaking, his action was vehement, and his voice so strong, that he
was heard at a great distance. When winding up an harangue, he threatened to
draw “the sword of his lucubration,” holding a loose and smooth style in such
contempt, that he said Seneca, who was then much admired, “wrote only detached
essays,” and that “his language was nothing but sand without lime.” He often
wrote answers to the speeches of successful orators; and employed himself in
composing accusations or vindications of eminent persons, who were impeached
before the senate; and gave his vote for or against the party accused, according
to his success in speaking, inviting the equestrian order, by proclamation, to
hear him.
LIV. He also zealously applied himself to the practice of several other arts of
different kinds, such as fencing, charioteering, singing, and dancing. In the
first of these, he practised with the weapons used in war; and drove the chariot
in circuses built in several places. He was so extremely fond of singing and
dancing, that he could not refrain in the theatre from singing with the
tragedians, and imitating the gestures of the actors, either by way of applause
or correction. A night exhibition which he had ordered the day he was slain, was
thought to be intended for no other reason, than to take the opportunity
afforded by the licentiousness of the season, to make his first appearance upon
the stage. Sometimes, also, he danced in the night. Summoning once to the
palatium, in the second watch of the night, three men of consular rank, who
feared the words from the message, he placed them on the proscenium of the
stage, and then suddenly came bursting out, with a loud noise of flutes and
castanets, dressed in a mantle and tunic reaching down to his heels. Having
danced out a song, he retired. Yet he who had acquired such dexterity in other
exercises, never learnt to swim.
LV. Those for whom he once conceived a regard, he favoured even to madness. He
used to kiss Mnester, the pantomimic actor, publicly in the theatre; and if any
person made the least noise while he was dancing, he would order him to be
dragged from his seat, and scourged him with his own hand. A Roman knight once
making some bustle, he sent him, by a centurion, an order to depart forthwith
for Ostia, and carry a letter from him to king Ptolemy in Mauritania. The letter
was comprised in these words: “Do neither good nor harm to the bearer.” He made
some gladiators captains of his German guards. He deprived the gladiators called
Mirmillones of some of their arms. One Columbus coming off with victory in a
combat, but being slightly wounded, he ordered some poison to be infused in the
wound, which he thence called Columbinum. For thus it was certainly named with
his own hand in a list of other poisons. He was so extravagantly fond of the
party of charioteers whose colours were green, that he supped and lodged for
some time constantly in the stable where their horses were kept. At a certain
revel, he made a present of two millions of sesterces to one Cythicus, a driver
of a chariot. The day before the Circensian games, he used to send his soldiers
to enjoin silence in the neighbourhood, that the repose of his horse Incitatus
might not be disturbed. For this favourite animal, besides a marble stable, an
ivory manger, purple housings, and a jewelled frontlet, he appointed a house,
with a retinue of slaves, and fine furniture, for the reception of such as were
invited in the horse’s name to sup with him. It is even said that he intended to
make him consul.
LVI. In this frantic and savage career, numbers had formed designs for cutting
him off; but one or two conspiracies being discovered, and others postponed for
want of opportunity, at last two men concerted a plan together, and accomplished
their purpose; not without the privity of some of the greatest favourites
amongst his freedmen, and the prefects of the pretorian guards; because, having
been named, though falsely, as concerned in one conspiracy against him, they
perceived that they were suspected and become objects of his hatred. For he had
immediately endeavoured to render them obnoxious to the soldiery, drawing his
sword, and declaring, “That he would kill himself if they thought him worthy of
death;” and ever after he was continually accusing them to one another, and
setting them all mutually at variance. The conspirators having resolved to fall
upon him as he returned at noon from the Palatine games, Cassius Chærea, tribune
of the pretorian guards, claimed the part of making the onset. This Chærea was
now an elderly man, and had been often reproached by Caius for effeminacy. When
he came for the watchword, the latter would give “Priapus,” or “Venus;” and if
on any occasion he returned thanks, would offer him his hand to kiss, making
with his fingers an obscene gesture.
LVII. His approaching fate was indicated by many prodigies. The statue of
Jupiter at Olympia, which he had ordered to be taken down and brought to Rome,
suddenly burst out into such a violent fit of laughter, that, the machines
employed in the work giving way, the workmen took to their heels. When this
accident happened, there came up a man named Cassius, who said that he was
commanded in a dream to sacrifice a bull to Jupiter. The Capitol at Capua was
struck with lightning upon the ides of March [15th March]; as was also, at Rome,
the apartment of the chief porter of the Palatium. Some construed the latter
into a presage that the master of the place was in danger from his own guards;
and the other they regarded as a sign, that an illustrious person would be cut
off, as had happened before on that day. Sylla, the astrologer, being consulted
by him respecting his nativity, assured him, “That death would unavoidably and
speedily befall him.” The oracle of Fortune at Antium likewise forewarned him of
Cassius: on which account he had given orders for putting to death Cassius
Longinus, at that time proconsul of Asia, not considering that Chærea bore also
that name. The day preceding his death he dreamt that he was standing in heaven
near the throne of Jupiter, who giving him a push with the great toe of his
right foot, he fell headlong upon the earth. Some things which happened the very
day of his death, and only a little before it, were likewise considered as
ominous presages of that event. Whilst he was at sacrifice, he was bespattered
with the blood of a flamingo. And Mnester, the pantomimic actor, performed in a
play, which the tragedian Neoptolemus had formerly acted at the games in which
Philip, the king of Macedon, was slain. And in the piece called Laureolus, in
which the principal actor, running out in a hurry, and falling, vomited blood,
several of the inferior actors vying with each other to give the best specimen
of their art, made the whole stage flow with blood. A spectacle had been
purposed to be performed that night, in which the fables of the infernal regions
were to be represented by Egyptians and Ethiopians.
LVIII. On the ninth of the calends of February [24th January], and about the
seventh hour of the day, after hesitating whether he should rise to dinner, as
his stomach was disordered by what he had eaten the day before, at last, by the
advice of his friends, he came forth. In the vaulted passage through which he
had to pass, were some boys of noble extraction, who had been brought from Asia
to act upon the stage, waiting for him in a private corridor, and he stopped to
see and speak to them; and had not the leader of the party said that he was
suffering from cold, he would have gone back and made them act immediately.
Respecting what followed two different accounts are given. Some say, that,
whilst he was speaking to the boys, Chærea came behind him, and gave him a heavy
blow on the neck with his sword, first crying out, “Take this:” that then a
tribune, by name Cornelius Sabinus, another of the conspirators, ran him through
the breast. Others say, that the crowd being kept at a distance by some
centurions who were in the plot, Sabinus came, according to custom, for the
word, and that Caius gave him “Jupiter,” upon which Chærea cried out, “Be it
so!” and then, on his looking round, clove one of his jaws with a blow. As he
lay on the ground, crying out that he was still alive, the rest dispatched him
with thirty wounds. For the word agreed upon among them all was, “Strike again.”
Some likewise ran their swords through his privy parts. Upon the first bustle,
the litter bearers came running in with their poles to his assistance, and,
immediately afterwards, his German body guards, who killed some of the
assassins, and also some senators who had no concern in the affair.
LIX. He lived twenty-nine years, and reigned three years, ten months, and eight
days. His body was carried privately into the Lamian Gardens, where it was half
burnt upon a pile hastily raised, and then had some earth carelessly thrown over
it. It was afterwards disinterred by his sisters, on their return from
banishment, burnt to ashes, and buried. Before this was done, it is well known
that the keepers of the gardens were greatly disturbed by apparitions; and that
not a night passed without some terrible alarm or other in the house where he
was slain, until it was destroyed by fire. His wife Cæsonia was killed with him,
being stabbed by a centurion; and his daughter had her brains knocked out
against a wall.
LX. Of the miserable condition of those times, any person may easily form an
estimate from the following circumstances. When his death was made public, it
was not immediately credited. People entertained a suspicion that a report of
his being killed had been contrived and spread by himself, with the view of
discovering how they stood affected towards him. Nor had the conspirators fixed
upon any one to succeed him. The senators were so unanimous in their resolution
to assert the liberty of their country, that the consuls assembled them at first
not in the usual place of meeting, because it was named after Julius Cæsar, but
in the Capitol. Some proposed to abolish the memory of the Cæsars, and level
their temples with the ground. It was particularly remarked on this occasion,
that all the Cæsars, who had the prænomen of Caius, died by the sword, from the
Caius Cæsar who was slain in the times of Cinna.
Unfortunately, a great chasm in the Annals of Tacitus, at this period, precludes
all information from that historian respecting the reign of Caligula; but from
what he mentions towards the close of the preceding chapter, it is evident that
Caligula was forward to seize the reins of government, upon the death of
Tiberius, whom, though he rivalled him in his vices, he was far from imitating
in his dissimulation. Amongst the people, the remembrance of Germanicus’ virtues
cherished for his family an attachment which was probably increased by its
misfortunes; and they were anxious to see revived in the son the popularity of
the father. Considering, however, that Caligula’s vicious disposition was
already known, and that it had even been an inducement with Tiberius to procure
his succession, in order that it might prove a foil to his own memory; it is
surprising that no effort was made at this juncture to shake off the despotism
which had been so intolerable in the last reign, and restore the ancient liberty
of the republic. Since the commencement of the imperial dominion, there never
had been any period so favourable for a counter-revolution as the present
crisis. There existed now no Livia, to influence the minds of the senate and
people in respect of the government; nor was there any other person allied to
the family of Germanicus, whose countenance or intrigues could promote the views
of Caligula. He himself was now only in the twenty-fifth year of his age, was
totally inexperienced in the administration of public affairs, had never
performed even the smallest service to his country, and was generally known to
be of a character which disgraced his illustrious descent. Yet, in spite of all
these circumstances, such was the destiny of Rome, that his accession afforded
joy to the soldiers, who had known him in his childhood, and to the populace in
the capital, as well as the people in the provinces, who were flattered with the
delusive expectation of receiving a prince who should adorn the throne with the
amiable virtues of Germanicus.
It is difficult to say, whether weakness of understanding, or corruption of
morals, were more conspicuous in the character of Caligula. He seems to have
discovered from his earliest years an innate depravity of mind, which was
undoubtedly much increased by defect of education. He had lost both his parents
at an early period of life; and from Tiberius’ own character, as well as his
views in training the person who should succeed him on the throne, there is
reason to think, that if any attention whatever was paid to the education of
Caligula, it was directed to vitiate all his faculties and passions, rather than
to correct and improve them. If such was really the object, it was indeed
prosecuted with success.
The commencement, however, of his reign was such as by no means prognosticated
its subsequent transition. The sudden change of his conduct, the astonishing
mixture of imbecility and presumption, of moral turpitude and frantic
extravagance, which he afterwards evinced; such as rolling himself over heaps of
gold, his treatment of his horse Incitatus, and his design of making him consul,
seem to justify a suspicion that his brain had actually been affected, either by
the potion, said to have been given him by his wife Cæsonia, or otherwise.
Philtres, or love-potions, as they were called, were frequent in those times;
and the people believed that they operated upon the mind by a mysterious and
sympathetic power. It is, however, beyond a doubt, that their effects were
produced entirely by the action of their physical qualities upon the organs of
the body. They were usually made of the satyrion, which, according to Pliny, was
a provocative. They were generally given by women to their husbands at bed-time;
and it was necessary towards their successful operation, that the parties should
sleep together. This circumstance explains the whole mystery. The philtres were
nothing more than medicines of a stimulating quality, which, after exciting
violent, but temporary effects, enfeebled the constitution, and occasioned
nervous disorders, by which the mental faculties, as well as the corporeal,
might be injured. That this was really the case with Caligula, seems probable,
not only from the falling sickness, to which he was subject, but from the
habitual wakefulness of which he complained.
The profusion of this emperor, during his short reign of three years and ten
months, is unexampled in history. In the midst of profound peace, without any
extraordinary charges either civil or military, he expended, in less than one
year, besides the current revenue of the empire, the sum of £21,796,875
sterling, which had been left by Tiberius at his death. To supply the
extravagance of future years, new and exorbitant taxes were imposed upon the
people, and those too on the necessaries of life. There existed now amongst the
Romans every motive that could excite a general indignation against the
government; yet such was still the dread of imperial power, though vested in the
hands of so weak and despicable a sovereign, that no insurrection was attempted,
nor any extensive conspiracy formed; but the obnoxious emperor fell at last a
sacrifice to a few centurions of his own guard.
This reign was of too short duration to afford any new productions in
literature; but, had it been extended to a much longer period, the effects would
probably have been the same. Polite learning never could flourish under an
emperor who entertained a design of destroying the writings of Virgil and Livy.
It is fortunate that these, and other valuable productions of antiquity, were
too widely diffused over the world, and too carefully preserved, to be in danger
of perishing through the frenzy of this capricious barbarian.
TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS DRUSUS CAESAR.
I.Livia, having married Augustus when she was pregnant, was within three months
afterwards delivered of Drusus, the father of Claudius Cæsar, who had at first
the prænomen of Decimus, but afterwards that of Nero; and it was suspected that
he was begotten in adultery by his father-in-law. The following verse, however,
was immediately in every one’s mouth:—
Τοῖς ἐυτυχοῦσι ϰὰι ϛρίμηνα παιδία.
Nine months for common births the fates decree;
But, for the great, reduce the term to three.
This Drusus, during the time of his being quæstor and prætor, commanded in the
Rhætian and German wars, and was the first of all the Roman generals who
navigated the Northern Ocean. He made likewise some prodigious trenches beyond
the Rhine, which to this day are called by his name. He overthrew the enemy in
several battles, and drove them far back into the depths of the desert. Nor did
he desist from pursuing them, until an apparition, in the form of a barbarian
woman, of more than human size, appeared to him, and, in the Latin tongue,
forbad him to proceed any farther. For these achievements he had the honour of
an ovation, and the triumphal ornaments. After his prætorship, he immediately
entered on the office of consul, and returning again to Germany, died of
disease, in the summer encampment, which thence obtained the name of “The
Unlucky Camp.” His corpse was carried to Rome by the principal persons of the
several municipalities and colonies upon the road, being met and received by the
recorders of each place, and buried in the Campus Martius. In honour of his
memory, the army erected a monument, round which the soldiers used, annually,
upon a certain day, to march in solemn procession, and persons deputed from the
several cities of Gaul performed religious rites. The senate likewise, among
various other honours, decreed for him a triumphal arch of marble, with
trophies, in the Appian Way, and gave the cognomen of Germanicus to him and his
posterity. In him the civil and military virtues were equally displayed; for,
besides his victories, he gained from the enemy the Spolia Opima, and frequently
marked out the German chiefs in the midst of their army, and encountered them in
single combat, at the utmost hazard of his life. He likewise often declared that
he would, some time or other, if possible, restore the ancient government. On
this account, I suppose, some have ventured to affirm that Augustus was jealous
of him, and recalled him; and because he made no haste to comply with the order,
took him off by poison. This I mention, that I may not be guilty of any
omission, more than because I think it either true or probable; since Augustus
loved him so much when living, that he always, in his wills, made him joint-heir
with his sons, as he once declared in the senate; and upon his decease, extolled
him in a speech to the people, to that degree, that he prayed the gods “to make
his Cæsars like him, and to grant himself as honourable an exit out of this
world as they had given him.” And not satisfied with inscribing upon his tomb an
epitaph in verse composed by himself, he wrote likewise the history of his life
in prose. He had by the younger Antonia several children, but left behind him
only three, namely, Germanicus, Livilla, and Claudius.
II. Claudius was born at Lyons, in the consulship of Julius Antonius, and Fabius
Africanus, upon the first of August, the very lay upon which an altar was first
dedicated there to Augustus. He was named Tiberius Claudius Drusus, but soon
afterwards, upon the adoption of his elder brother into the Julian family, he
assumed the cognomen of Germanicus. He was left an infant by his father, and
during almost the whole of his minority, and for some time after he attained the
age of manhood, was afflicted with a variety of obstinate disorders, insomuch
that his mind and body being greatly impaired, he was, even after his arrival at
years of maturity, never thought sufficiently qualified for any public or
private employment. He was, therefore, during a long time, and even after the
expiration of his minority, under the direction of a pedagogue, who, he
complains in a certain memoir, “was a barbarous wretch, and formerly
superintendent of the mule-drivers, who was selected for his governor, on
purpose to correct him severely on every trifling occasion.” On account of this
crazy constitution of body and mind, at the spectacle of gladiators, which he
gave the people, jointly with his brother, in honour of his father’s memory, he
presided, muffled up in a pallium—a new fashion. When he assumed the manly
habit, he was carried in a litter, at midnight, to the Capitol, without the
usual ceremony.
III. He applied himself, however, from an early age, with great assiduity to the
study of the liberal sciences, and frequently published specimens of his skill
in each of them. But never, with all his endeavours, could he attain to any
public post in the government, or afford any hope of arriving at distinction
thereafter. His mother, Antonia, frequently called him “an abortion of a man,
that had been only begun, but never finished, by nature.” And when she would
upbraid any one with dulness, she said, “He was a greater fool than her son,
Claudius.” His grandmother, Augusta, always treated him with the utmost
contempt, very rarely spoke to him, and when she did admonish him upon any
occasion, it was in writing, very briefly and severely, or by messengers. His
sister, Livilla, upon hearing that he was about to be created emperor, openly
and loudly expressed her indignation that the Roman people should experience a
fate so severe and so much below their grandeur. To exhibit the opinion, both
favourable and otherwise, entertained concerning him by Augustus, his
great-uncle, I have here subjoined some extracts from the letters of that
emperor.
IV. “I have had some conversation with Tiberius, according to your desire, my
dear Livia, as to what must be done with your grandson, Tiberius, at the games
of Mars. We are both agreed in this, that, once for all, we ought to determine
what course to take with him. For if he be really sound and, so to speak, quite
right in his intellects, why should we hesitate to promote him by the same steps
and degrees we did his brother? But if we find him below par, and deficient both
in body and mind, we must beware of giving occasion for him and ourselves to be
laughed at by the world, which is ready enough to make such things the subject
of mirth and derision. For we never shall be easy, if we are always to be
debating upon every occasion of this kind, without settling, in the first
instance, whether he be really capable of public offices or not. With regard to
what you consult me about at the present moment, I am not against his
superintending the feast of the priests, in the games of Mars, if he will suffer
himself to be governed by his kinsman, Silanus’s son, that he may do nothing to
make the people stare and laugh at him. But I do not approve of his witnessing
the Circensian games from the Pulvinar. He will be there exposed to view in the
very front of the theatre. Nor do I like that he should go to the Alban Mount,
or be at Rome during the Latin festival. For if he be capable of attending his
brother to the mount, why is he not made prefect of the city? Thus, my dear
Livia, you have my thoughts upon the matter. In my opinion, we ought to settle
this affair once for all, that we may not be always in suspense between hope and
fear. You may, if you think proper, give your kinsman Antonia this part of my
letter to read.” In another letter, he writes as follows: “I shall invite the
youth, Tiberius, every day during your absence, to supper, that he may not sup
alone with his friends Sulpicius and Athenodorus. I wish the poor creature was
more cautious and attentive in the choice of some one, whose manners, air, and
gait might be proper for his imitation:
Ἀτυχεῖ πάνυ ἑν τοῖς σπουδαίοις λίαν.
In things of consequence he sadly fails.
Where his mind does not run astray, he discovers a noble disposition.” In a
third letter, he says, “Let me die, my dear Livia, if I am not astonished, that
the declamation of your grandson, Tiberius, should please me; for how he who
talks so ill, should be able to declaim so clearly and properly, I cannot
imagine.” There is no doubt but Augustus, after this, came to a resolution upon
the subject, and, accordingly, left him invested with no other honour than that
of the Augural priesthood; naming him amongst the heirs of the third degree, who
were but distantly allied to his family, for a sixth part of his estate only,
with a legacy of no more than eight hundred thousand sesterces.
V. Upon his requesting some office in the state, Tiberius granted him the
honorary appendages of the consulship, and when he pressed for a legitimate
appointment, the emperor wrote word back, that “he sent him forty gold pieces
for his expenses, during the festivals of the Saturnalia and Sigillaria.” Upon
this, laying aside all hope of advancement, he resigned himself entirely to an
indolent life; living in great privacy, one while in his gardens, or a villa
which he had near the city; another while in Campania, where he passed his time
in the lowest society; by which means, besides his former character of a dull,
heavy fellow, he acquired that of a drunkard and gamester.
VI. Notwithstanding this sort of life, much respect was shown him both in public
and private. The equestrian order twice made choice of him to intercede on their
behalf; once to obtain from the consuls the favour of bearing on their shoulders
the corpse of Augustus to Rome, and a second time to congratulate him upon the
death of Sejanus. When he entered the theatre, they used to rise, and put off
their cloaks. The senate likewise decreed, that he should be added to the number
of the Augustal college of priests, who were chosen by lot; and soon afterwards,
when his house was burnt down, that it should be rebuilt at the public charge;
and that he should have the privilege of giving his vote amongst the men of
consular rank. This decree was, however, repealed; Tiberius insisting to have
him excused on account of his imbecility, and promising to make good his loss at
his own expense. But at his death, he named him in his will, amongst his third
heirs, for a third part of his estate; leaving him besides a legacy of two
millions of sesterces, and expressly recommending him to the armies, the senate
and people of Rome, amongst his other relations.
VII. At last, Caius, his brother’s son, upon his advancement to the empire,
endeavouring to gain the affections of the public by all the arts of popularity,
Claudius also was admitted to public offices, and held the consulship jointly
with his nephew for two months. As he was entering the Forum for the first time
with the fasces, an eagle which was flying that way, alighted upon his right
shoulder. A second consulship was also allotted him, to commence at the
expiration of the fourth year. He sometimes presided at the public spectacles,
as the representative of Caius; being always, on those occasions, complimented
with the acclamations of the people, wishing him all happiness, sometimes under
the title of the emperor’s uncle, and sometimes under that of Germanicus’s
brother.
VIII. Still he was subjected to many slights. If at any time he came in late to
supper, he was obliged to walk round the room some time before he could get a
place at table. When he indulged himself with sleep after eating, which was a
common practice with him, the company used to throw olive-stones and dates at
him. And the buffoons who attended would wake him, as if it were only in jest,
with a cane or a whip. Sometimes they would put slippers upon his hands, as he
lay snoring, that he might, upon awaking, rub his face with them.
IX. He was not only exposed to contempt, but sometimes likewise to considerable
danger: first, in his consulship; for, having been too remiss in providing and
erecting the statues of Caius’s brothers, Nero and Drusus, he was very near
being deprived of his office; and afterwards he was continually harassed with
informations against him by one or other, sometimes even by his own domestics.
When the conspiracy of Lepidus and Gætulicus was discovered, being sent with
some other deputies into Germany, to congratulate the emperor upon the occasion,
he was in danger of his life; Caius being greatly enraged, and loudly
complaining, that his uncle was sent to him, as if he was a boy who wanted a
governor. Some even say, that he was thrown into a river, in his travelling
dress. From this period, he voted in the senate always the last of the members
of consular rank; being called upon after the rest, on purpose to disgrace him.
A charge for the forgery of a will was also allowed to be prosecuted, though he
had only signed it as a witness. At last, being obliged to pay eight millions of
sesterces on entering upon a new office of priesthood, he was reduced to such
straits in his private affairs, that in order to discharge his bond to the
treasury, he was under the necessity of exposing to sale his whole estate, by an
order of the prefects.
X. Having spent the greater part of his life under these and the like
circumstances, he came at last to the empire in the fiftieth year of his age, by
a very surprising turn of fortune. Being, as well as the rest, prevented from
approaching Caius by the conspirators, who dispersed the crowd, under the
pretext of his desiring to be private, he retired into an apartment called the
Hermæum; and soon afterwards, terrified by the report of Caius being slain, he
crept into an adjoining balcony, where he hid himself behind the hangings of the
door. A common soldier, who happened to pass that way, spying his feet, and
desirous to discover who he was, pulled him out; when immediately recognizing
him, he threw himself in a great fright at his feet, and saluted him by the
title of emperor. He then conducted him to his fellow-soldiers, who were all in
a great rage, and irresolute what they should do. They put him into a litter,
and as the slaves of the palace had all fled, took their turns in carrying him
on their shoulders, and brought him into the camp, sad and trembling; the people
who met him lamenting his situation, as if the poor innocent was being carried
to execution. Being received within the ramparts, he continued all night with
the sentries on guard, recovered somewhat from his fright, but in no great hopes
of the succession. For the consuls, with the senate and civic troops, had
possessed themselves of the Forum and Capitol, with the determination to assert
the public liberty; and he being sent for likewise, by a tribune of the people,
to the senate-house, to give his advice upon the present juncture of affairs,
returned answer, “I am under constraint, and cannot possibly come.” The day
afterwards, the senate being dilatory in their proceedings, and worn out by
divisions amongst themselves, while the people who surrounded the senate-house
shouted that they would have one master, naming Claudius, he suffered the
soldiers assembled under arms to swear allegiance to him, promising them fifteen
thousand sesterces a man: he being the first of the Cæsars who purchased the
submission of the soldiers with money.
XI. Having thus established himself in power, his first object was to abolish
all remembrance of the two preceding days, in which a revolution in the state
had been canvassed. Accordingly, he passed an act of perpetual oblivion and
pardon for every thing said or done during that time; and this he faithfully
observed, with the exception only of putting to death a few tribunes and
centurions concerned in the conspiracy against Caius, both as an example, and
because he understood that they had also planned his own death. He now turned
his thoughts towards paying respect to the memory of his relations. His most
solemn and usual oath was, “By Augustus.” He prevailed upon the senate to decree
divine honours to his grandmother Livia, with a chariot in the Circensian
procession drawn by elephants, as had been appointed for Augustus; and public
offerings to the shades of his parents. Besides which, he instituted Circensian
games for his father, to be celebrated every year, upon his birth-day, and, for
his mother, a chariot to be drawn through the circus; with the title of Augusta,
which had been refused by his grandmother. To the memory of his brother, to
which, upon all occasions, he showed a great regard, he gave a Greek comedy, to
be exhibited in the public diversions at Naples, and awarded the crown for it,
according to the sentence of the judges in that solemnity. Nor did he omit to
make honourable and grateful mention of Mark Antony; declaring by a
proclamation, “That he the more earnestly insisted upon the observation of his
father Drusus’s birth-day, because it was likewise that of his grandfather
Antony.” He completed the marble arch near Pompey’s theatre, which had formerly
been decreed by the senate in honour of Tiberius, but which had been neglected.
And though he cancelled all the acts of Caius, yet he forbad the day of his
assassination, notwithstanding it was that of his own accession to the empire,
to be reckoned amongst the festivals.
XII. But with regard to his own aggrandisement, he was sparing and modest,
declining the title of emperor, and refusing all excessive honours. He
celebrated the marriage of his daughter and the birth-day of a grandson with
great privacy, at home. He recalled none of those who had been banished, without
a decree of the senate: and requested of them permission for the prefect of the
military tribunes and pretorian guards to attend him in the senate-house; and
also that they would be pleased to bestow upon his procurators judicial
authority in the provinces. He asked of the consuls likewise the privilege of
holding fairs upon his private estate. He frequently assisted the magistrates in
the trial of causes, as one of their assessors. And when they gave public
spectacles, he would rise up with the rest of the spectators, and salute them
both by words and gestures. When the tribunes of the people came to him while he
was on the tribunal, he excused himself, because, on account of the crowd, he
could not hear them unless they stood. In a short time, by this conduct, he
wrought himself so much into the favour and affection of the public, that when,
upon his going to Ostia, a report was spread in the city that he had been
way-laid and slain, the people never ceased cursing the soldiers for traitors,
and the senate as parricides, until one or two persons, and presently after
several others, were brought by the magistrates upon the rostra, who assured
them that he was alive, and not far from the city, on his way home.
XIII. Conspiracies, however, were formed against him, not only by individuals
separately, but by a faction; and at last his government was disturbed with a
civil war. A low fellow was found with a poniard about him, near his chamber, at
midnight. Two men of the equestrian order were discovered waiting for him in the
streets, armed with a tuck and a huntsman’s dagger; one of them intending to
attack him as he came out of the theatre, and the other as he was sacrificing in
the temple of Mars. Gallus Asinius and Statilius Corvinus, grandsons of the two
orators, Pollio and Messala, formed a conspiracy against him, in which they
engaged many of his freedmen and slaves. Furius Camillus Scribonianus, his
lieutenant in Dalmatia, broke into rebellion, but was reduced in the space of
five days; the legions which he had seduced from their oath of fidelity
relinquishing their purpose, upon an alarm occasioned by ill omens. For when
orders were given them to march, to meet their new emperor, the eagles could not
be decorated, nor the standards pulled out of the ground, whether it was by
accident, or a divine interposition.
XIV. Besides his former consulship, he held the office afterwards four times;
the first two successively, but the following, after an interval of four years
each; the last for six months, the others for two; and the third, upon his being
chosen in the room of a consul who died; which had never been done by any of the
emperors before him. Whether he was consul or out of office, he constantly
attended the courts for the administration of justice, even upon such days as
were solemnly observed as days of rejoicing in his family, or by his friends;
and sometimes upon the public festivals of ancient institution. Nor did he
always adhere strictly to the letter of the laws, but overruled the rigour or
lenity of many of their enactments, according to his sentiments of justice and
equity. For where persons lost their suits by insisting upon more than appeared
to be their due, before the judges of private causes, he granted them the
indulgence of a second trial. And with regard to such as were convicted of any
great delinquency, he even exceeded the punishment appointed by law, and
condemned them to be exposed to wild beasts.
XV. But in hearing and determining causes, he exhibited a strange inconsistency
of temper, being at one time circumspect and sagacious, at another inconsiderate
and rash, and sometimes frivolous, and like one out of his mind. In correcting
the roll of judges, he struck off the name of one who, concealing the privilege
his children gave him to be excused from serving, had answered to his name, as
too eager for the office. Another who was summoned before him in a cause of his
own, but alleged that the affair did not properly come under the emperor’s
cognizance, but that of the ordinary judges, he ordered to plead the cause
himself immediately before him, and show in a case of his own, how equitable a
judge he would prove in that of other persons. A woman refusing to acknowledge
her own son, and there being no clear proof on either side, he obliged her to
confess the truth, by ordering her to marry the young man. He was much inclined
to determine causes in favour of the parties who appeared, against those who did
not, without inquiring whether their absence was occasioned by their own fault,
or by real necessity. On proclamation of a man’s being convicted of forgery, and
that he ought to have his hand cut off, he insisted that an executioner should
be immediately sent for, with a Spanish sword and a block. A person being
prosecuted for falsely assuming the freedom of Rome, and a frivolous dispute
arising between the advocates in the cause, whether he ought to make his
appearance in the Roman or Grecian dress, to show his impartiality, he commanded
him to change his clothes several times according to the character he assumed in
the accusation or defence. An anecdote is related of him, and believed to be
true, that, in a particular cause, he delivered his sentence in writing thus: “I
am in favour of those who have spoken the truth.” By this he so much forfeited
the good opinion of the world, that he was everywhere and openly despised. A
person making an excuse for the non-appearance of a witness whom he had sent for
from the provinces, declared it was impossible for him to appear, concealing the
reason for some time: at last, after several interrogatories were put to him on
the subject, he answered, “The man is dead;” to which Claudius replied, “I think
that is a sufficient excuse.” Another thanking him for suffering a person who
was prosecuted to make his defence by counsel, added, “And yet it is no more
than what is usual.” I have likewise heard some old men say, that the advocates
used to abuse his patience so grossly, that they would not only call him back,
as he was quitting the tribunal, but would seize him by the lap of his coat, and
sometimes catch him by the heels, to make him stay. That such behaviour, however
strange, is not incredible, will appear from this anecdote. Some obscure Greek,
who was a litigant, had an altercation with him, in which he called out, “You
are an old fool.” It is certain that a Roman knight, who was prosecuted by an
impotent device of his enemies on a false charge of abominable obscenity with
women, observing that common strumpets were summoned against him and allowed to
give evidence, upbraided Claudius in very harsh and severe terms with his folly
and cruelty, and threw his style, and some books which he had in his hands, in
his face, with such violence as to wound him severely in the cheek.
XVI. He likewise assumed the censorship, which had been discontinued since the
time that Paulus and Plancus had jointly held it. But this also he administered
very unequally, and with a strange variety of humour and conduct. In his review
of the knights, he passed over, without any mark of disgrace, a profligate young
man, only because his father spoke of him in the highest terms; “for,” said he,
“his father is his proper censor.” Another, who was infamous for debauching
youths and for adultery, he only admonished “to indulge his youthful
inclinations more sparingly, or at least more cautiously:” adding, “why must I
know what mistress you keep?” When, at the request of his friends, he had taken
off a mark of infamy which he had set upon one knight’s name, he said, “Let the
blot, however, remain.” He not only struck out of the list of judges, but
likewise deprived of the freedom of Rome, an illustrious man of the highest
provincial rank in Greece, only because he was ignorant of the Latin language.
Nor in this review did he suffer any one to give an account of his conduct by an
advocate, but obliged each man to speak for himself in the best way he could. He
disgraced many, and some that little expected it, and for a reason entirely new,
namely, for going out of Italy without his license; and one likewise, for having
in his province been the familiar companion of a king; observing, that, in
former times, Rabirius Posthumus had been prosecuted for treason, although he
only went after Ptolemy to Alexandria for the purpose of securing payment of a
debt. Having tried to brand with disgrace several others, he, to his own greater
shame, found them generally innocent, through the negligence of the persons
employed to inquire into their characters; those whom he charged with living in
celibacy, with want of children, or estate, proving themselves to be husbands,
parents, and in affluent circumstances. One of the knights who was charged with
stabbing himself, laid his bosom bare, to show that there was not the least mark
of violence upon his body. The following incidents were remarkable in his
censorship. He ordered a car, plated with silver, and of very sumptuous
workmanship, which was exposed for sale in the Sigillaria, to be purchased, and
broken in pieces before his eyes. He published twenty proclamations in one day,
in one of which he advised the people, “Since the vintage was very plentiful, to
have their casks well secured at the bung with pitch:” and in another, he told
them, “that nothing would sooner cure the bite of a viper, than the sap of the
yew-tree.”
XVII. He undertook only one expedition, and that was of short duration. The
triumphal ornaments decreed him by the senate, he considered as beneath the
imperial dignity, and was therefore resolved to have the honour of a real
triumph. For this purpose, he selected Britain, which had never been attempted
by any one since Julius Cæsar, and was then chafing with rage, because the
Romans would not give up some deserters. Accordingly, he set sail from Ostia,
but was twice very near being wrecked by the boisterous wind called Circius,
upon the coast of Liguria, and near the islands called Stœchades. Having marched
by land from Marseilles to Gessoriacum, he thence passed over to Britain, and
part of the island submitting to him, within a few days after his arrival,
without battle or bloodshed, he returned to Rome in less than six months from
the time of his departure, and triumphed in the most solemn manner; to witness
which, he not only gave leave to governors of provinces to come to Rome, but
even to some of the exiles. Among the spoils taken from the enemy, he fixed upon
the pediment of his house in the Palatium, a naval crown, in token of his having
passed, and, as it were, conquered the Ocean, and had it suspended near the
civic crown which was there before. Messalina, his wife, followed his chariot in
a covered litter. Those who had attained the honour of triumphal ornaments in
the same war, rode behind; the rest followed on foot, wearing the robe with the
broad stripes. Crassus Frugi was mounted upon a horse richly caparisoned, in a
robe embroidered with palm leaves, because this was the second time of his
obtaining that honour.
XVIII. He paid particular attention to the care of the city, and to have it well
supplied with provisions. A dreadful fire happening in the Aemiliana, which
lasted some time, he passed two nights in the Diribitorium, and the soldiers and
gladiators not being in sufficient numbers to extinguish it, he caused the
magistrates to summon the people out of all the streets in the city, to their
assistance. Placing bags of money before him, he encouraged them to do their
utmost, declaring, that he would reward every one on the spot, according to
their exertions.
XIX. During a scarcity of provisions, occasioned by bad crops for several
successive years, he was stopped in the middle of the forum by the mob, who so
abused him, at the same time pelting him with fragments of bread, that he had
some difficulty in escaping into the palace by a back door. He therefore used
all possible means to bring provisions to the city, even in the winter. He
proposed to the merchants a sure profit, by indemnifying them against any loss
that might befall them by storms at sea; and granted great privileges to those
who built ships for that traffic. To a citizen of Rome he gave an exemption from
the penalty of the Papia-Poppæan law; to one who had only the privilege of
Latium, the freedom of the city; and to women the rights which by law belonged
to those who had four children: which enactments are in force to this day.
XX. He completed some important public works, which, though not numerous, were
very useful. The principal were an aqueduct, which had been begun by Caius; an
emissary for the discharge of the waters of the Fucine lake, and the harbour of
Ostia; although he knew that Augustus had refused to comply with the repeated
application of the Marsians for one of these: and that the other had been
several times intended by Julius Cæsar, but as often abandoned on account of the
difficulty of its execution. He brought to the city the cool and plentiful
springs of the Claudian water, one of which is called Cæruleus, and the other
Curtius and Albudinus, as likewise the river of the New Anio, in a stone canal;
and distributed them into many magnificent reservoirs. The canal from the Fucine
lake was undertaken as much for the sake of profit, as for the honour of the
enterprise; for there were parties who offered to drain it at their own expense,
on condition of their having a grant of the land laid dry. With great difficulty
he completed a canal three miles in length, partly by cutting through, and
partly by tunnelling, a mountain; thirty thousand men being constantly employed
in the work for eleven years. He formed the harbour at Ostia, by carrying out
circular piers on the right and on the left, with a mole protecting, in deep
water, the entrance of the port. To secure the foundation of this mole, he sunk
the vessel in which the great obelisk had been brought from Egypt; and built
upon piles a very lofty tower, in imitation of the Pharos at Alexandria, on
which lights were burnt to direct mariners in the night.
XXI. He often distributed largesses of corn and money among the people, and
entertained them with a great variety of public magnificent spectacles, not only
such as were usual, and in the accustomed places, but some of new invention, and
others revived from ancient models, and exhibited in places where nothing of the
kind had been ever before attempted. In the games which he presented at the
dedication of Pompey’s theatre, which had been burnt down, and was rebuilt by
him, he presided upon a tribunal erected for him in the orchestra; having first
paid his devotions, in the temple above, and then coming down through the centre
of the circle, while all the people kept their seats in profound silence. He
likewise exhibited the secular games, giving out that Augustus had anticipated
the regular period; though he himself says in his history, “That they had been
omitted before the age of Augustus, who had calculated the years with great
exactness, and again brought them to their regular period.” The crier was
therefore ridiculed, when he invited people in the usual form, “to games which
no person had ever before seen, nor ever would again;” when many were still
living who had already seen them; and some of the performers who had formerly
acted in them, were now again brought upon the stage. He likewise frequently
celebrated the Circensian games in the Vatican, sometimes exhibiting a hunt of
wild beasts, after every five courses. He embellished the Circus Maximus with
marble barriers, and gilded goals, which before were of common stone and wood,
and assigned proper places for the senators, who were used to sit promiscuously
with the other spectators. Besides the chariot-races, he exhibited there the
Trojan game, and wild beasts from Africa, which were encountered by a troop of
pretorian knights, with their tribunes, and even the prefect at the head of
them; besides Thessalian horse, who drive fierce bulls round the circus, leap
upon their backs when they have exhausted their fury, and drag them by the horns
to the ground. He gave exhibitions of gladiators in several places, and of
various kinds; one yearly on the anniversary of his accession in the pretorian
camp, but without any hunting, or the usual apparatus; another in the Septa as
usual; and in the same place, another out of the common way, and of a few days’
continuance only, which he called Sportula; because when he was going to present
it, he informed the people by proclamation, “that he invited them to a late
supper, got up in haste, and without ceremony.” Nor did he lend himself to any
kind of public diversion with more freedom and hilarity; insomuch that he would
hold out his left hand, and joined by the common people, count upon his fingers
aloud the gold pieces presented to those who came off conquerors. He would
earnestly invite the company to be merry; sometimes calling them his “masters,”
with a mixture of insipid, far-fetched jests. Thus, when the people called for
Palumbus, he said, “He would give them one when he could catch it.” The
following was well-intended, and well-timed: having, amidst great applause,
spared a gladiator, on the intercession of his four sons, he sent a billet
immediately round the theatre, to remind the people, “how much it behoved them
to get children, since they had before them an example how useful they had been
in procuring favour and security for a gladiator.” He likewise represented in
the Campus Martius, the assault and sacking of a town, and the surrender of the
British kings, presiding in his general’s cloak. Immediately before he drew off
the waters from the Fucine lake, he exhibited upon it a naval fight. But the
combatants on board the fleets crying out, “Health attend you, noble emperor!
We, who are about to peril our lives, salute you;” and he replying, “Health
attend you too,” they all refused to fight, as if by that response he had meant
to excuse them. Upon this, he hesitated for a time, whether he should not
destroy them all with fire and sword. At last, leaping from his seat, and
running along the shore of the lake with tottering steps, the result of his foul
excesses, he, partly by fair words, and partly by threats, persuaded them to
engage. This spectacle represented an engagement between the fleets of Sicily
and Rhodes; consisting each of twelve ships of war, of three banks of oars. The
signal for the encounter was given by a silver Triton, raised by machinery from
the middle of the lake.
XXII. With regard to religious ceremonies, the administration of affairs both
civil and military, and the condition of all orders of the people at home and
abroad, some practices he corrected, others which had been laid aside he
revived; and some regulations he introduced which were entirely new. In
appointing new priests for the several colleges, he made no appointments without
being sworn. When an earthquake happened in the city, he never failed to summon
the people together by the prætor, and appoint holidays for sacred rites. And
upon the sight of any ominous bird in the City or Capitol, he issued an order
for a supplication, the words of which, by virtue of his office of high priest,
after an exhortation from the rostra, he recited in the presence of the people,
who repeated them after him; all workmen and slaves being first ordered to
withdraw.
XXIII. The courts of judicature, whose sittings had been formerly divided
between the summer and winter months, he ordered, for the dispatch of business,
to sit the whole year round. The jurisdiction in matters of trust, which used to
be granted annually by special commission to certain magistrates, and in the
city only, he made permanent, and extended to the provincial judges likewise. He
altered a clause added by Tiberius to the Papia-Poppæan law, which inferred that
men of sixty years of age were incapable of begetting children. He ordered that,
out of the ordinary course of proceeding, orphans might have guardians appointed
them by the consuls; and that those who were banished from any province by the
chief magistrate, should be debarred from coming into the City, or any part of
Italy. He inflicted on certain persons a new sort of banishment, by forbidding
them to depart further than three miles from Rome. When any affair of importance
came before the senate, he used to sit between the two consuls upon the seats of
the tribunes. He reserved to himself the power of granting license to travel out
of Italy, which before had belonged to the senate.
XXIV. He likewise granted the consular ornaments to his Ducenarian procurators.
From those who declined the senatorian dignity, he took away the equestrian.
Although he had in the beginning of his reign declared, that he would admit no
man into the senate who was not the great-grandson of a Roman citizen, yet he
gave the “broad hem” to the son of a freedman, on condition that he should be
adopted by a Roman knight. Being afraid, however, of incurring censure by such
an act, he informed the public, that his ancestor Appius Cæcus, the censor, had
elected the sons of freedmen into the senate; for he was ignorant, it seems,
that in the times of Appius, and a long while afterwards, persons manumitted
were not called freedmen, but only their sons who were free-born. Instead of the
expense which the college of quæstors was obliged to incur in paving the
high-ways, he ordered them to give the people an exhibition of gladiators; and
relieving them of the provinces of Ostia and [Cisalpine] Gaul, he reinstated
them in the charge of the treasury, which, since it was taken from them, had
been managed by the prætors, or those who had formerly filled that office. He
gave the triumphal ornaments to Silanus, who was betrothed to his daughter,
though he was under age; and in other cases, he bestowed them on so many, and
with so little reserve, that there is extant a letter unanimously addressed to
him by all the legions, begging him “to grant his consular lieutenants the
triumphal ornaments at the time of their appointment to commands, in order to
prevent their seeking occasion to engage in unnecessary wars.” He decreed to
Aulus Plautius the honour of an ovation, going to meet him at his entering the
city, and walking with him in the procession to the Capitol, and back, in which
he took the left side, giving him the post of honour. He allowed Gabinius
Secundus, upon his conquest of the Chauci, a German tribe, to assume the
cognomen of Chaucius.
XXV. His military organization of the equestrian order was this. After having
the command of a cohort, they were promoted to a wing of auxiliary horse, and
subsequently received the commission of tribune of a legion. He raised a body of
militia, who were called Supernumeraries, who, though they were a sort of
soldiers, and kept in reserve, yet received pay. He procured an act of the
senate to prohibit all soldiers from attending senators at their houses, in the
way of respect and compliment. He confiscated the estates of all freedmen who
presumed to take upon themselves the equestrian rank. Such of them as were
ungrateful to their patrons, and were complained of by them, he reduced to their
former condition of slavery; and declared to their advocates, that he would
always give judgment against the freedmen, in any suit at law which the masters
might happen to have with them. Some persons having exposed their sick slaves,
in a languishing condition, on the island of Aesculapius, because of the
tediousness of their cure; he declared all who were so exposed perfectly free,
never more to return, if they should recover, to their former servitude; and
that if any one chose to kill at once, rather than expose, a slave, he should be
liable for murder. He published a proclamation, forbidding all travellers to
pass through the towns of Italy any otherwise than on foot, or in a litter or
chair. He quartered a cohort of soldiers at Puteoli, and another at Ostia, to be
in readiness against any accidents from fire. He prohibited foreigners from
adopting Roman names, especially those which belonged to families. Those who
falsely pretended to the freedom of Rome, he beheaded on the Esquiline. He gave
up to the senate the provinces of Achaia and Macedonia, which Tiberius had
transferred to his own administration. He deprived the Lycians of their
liberties, as a punishment for their fatal dissensions; but restored to the
Rhodians their freedom, upon their repenting of their former misdemeanors. He
exonerated for ever the people of Ilium from the payment of taxes, as being the
founders of the Roman race; reciting upon the occasion a letter in Greek, from
the senate and people of Rome to king Seleucus, on which they promised him their
friendship and alliance, provided that he would grant their kinsmen the
Iliensians immunity from all burdens.
He banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at
the instigation of one Chrestus. He allowed the ambassadors of the Germans to
sit at the public spectacles in the seats assigned to the senators, being
induced to grant them favours by their frank and honourable conduct. For, having
been seated in the rows of benches which were common to the people, on observing
the Parthian and Armenian ambassadors sitting among the senators, they took upon
themselves to cross over into the same seats, as being, they said, no way
inferior to the others, in point either of merit or rank. The religious rites of
the Druids, solemnized with such horrid cruelties, which had only been forbidden
the citizens of Rome during the reign of Augustus, he utterly abolished among
the Gauls. On the other hand, he attempted to transfer the Eleusinian mysteries
from Attica to Rome. He likewise ordered the temple of Venus Erycina in Sicily,
which was old and in a ruinous condition, to be repaired at the expense of the
Roman people. He concluded treaties with foreign princes in the forum, with the
sacrifice of a sow, and the form of words used by the heralds in former times.
But in these and other things, and indeed the greater part of his
administration, he was directed not so much by his own judgment, as by the
influence of his wives and freedmen; for the most part acting in conformity to
what their interests or fancies dictated.
XXVI. He was twice married at a very early age, first to Aemilia Lepida, the
grand-daughter of Augustus, and afterwards to Livia Medullina, who had the
cognomen of Camilla, and was descended from the old dictator Camillus. The
former he divorced while still a virgin, because her parents had incurred the
displeasure of Augustus; and he lost the latter by sickness on the day fixed for
their nuptials. He next married Plautia Urgulanilla, whose father had enjoyed
the honour of a triumph; and soon afterwards, Aelia Pætina, the daughter of a
man of consular rank. But he divorced them both: Pætina, upon some trifling
causes of disgust; and Urgulanilla, for scandalous lewdness, and the suspicion
of murder. After them he took in marriage Valeria Messalina, the daughter of
Barbatus Messala, his cousin. But finding that, besides her other shameful
debaucheries, she had even gone so far as to marry in his own absence Caius
Silius, the settlement of her dower being formally signed, in the presence of
the augurs, he put her to death. When summoning his pretorians to his presence,
he made to them this declaration: “As I have been so unhappy in my unions, I am
resolved to continue in future unmarried; and if I should not, I give you leave
to stab me.” He was, however, unable to persist in this resolution; for he began
immediately to think of another wife; and even of taking back Pætina, whom he
had formerly divorced: he thought also of Lollia Paulina, who had been married
to Caius Cæsar. But being ensnared by the arts of Agrippina, the daughter of his
brother Germanicus, who took advantage of the kisses and endearments which their
near relationship admitted, to inflame his desires, he got some one to propose
at the next meeting of the senate, that they should oblige the emperor to marry
Agrippina, as a measure highly conducive to the public interest; and that in
future liberty should be given for such marriages, which until that time had
been considered incestuous. In less than twenty-four hours after this, he
married her. No person was found, however, to follow the example, excepting one
freedman, and a centurion of the first rank, at the solemnization of whose
nuptials both he and Agrippina attended.
XXVII. He had children by three of his wives: by Urgulanilla, Drusus and
Claudia; by Pætina, Antonia; and by Messalina, Octavia, and also a son, whom at
first he called Germanicus, but afterwards Britannicus. He lost Drusus at
Pompeii, when he was very young; he being choked with a pear, which in his play
he tossed into the air, and caught in his mouth. Only a few days before, he had
betrothed him to one of Sejanus’s daughters; and I am therefore surprised that
some authors should say he lost his life by the treachery of Sejanus. Claudia,
who was, in truth, the daughter of Boter his freedman, though she was born five
months before his divorce, he ordered to be thrown naked at her mother’s door.
He married Antonia to Cneius Pompey the Great, and afterwards to Faustus Sylla,
both youths of very noble parentage; Octavia to his step-son Nero, after she had
been contracted to Silanus. Britannicus was born upon the twentieth day of his
reign, and in his second consulship. He often earnestly commended him to the
soldiers, holding him in his arms before their ranks; and would likewise show
him to the people in the theatre, setting him upon his lap, or holding him out
whilst he was still very young; and was sure to receive their acclamations, and
good wishes on his behalf. Of his sons-in-law, he adopted Nero. He not only
dismissed from his favour both Pompey and Silanus, but put them to death.
XXVIII. Amongst his freedmen, the greatest favourite was the eunuch Posides,
whom, in his British triumph, he presented with the pointless spear, classing
him among the military men. Next to him, if not equal, in favour was Felix, whom
he not only preferred to commands both of cohorts and troops, but to the
government of the province of Judea; and he became, in consequence of his
elevation, the husband of three queens. Another favourite was Harpocras, to whom
he granted the privilege of being carried in a litter within the city, and of
holding public spectacles for the entertainment of the people. In this class was
likewise Polybius, who assisted him in his studies, and had often the honour of
walking between the two consuls. But above all others, Narcissus, his secretary,
and Pallas, the comptroller of his accounts, were in high favour with him. He
not only allowed them to receive, by decree of the senate, immense presents, but
also to be decorated with the quæstorian and prætorian ensigns of honour. So
much did he indulge them in amassing wealth, and plundering the public, that,
upon his complaining, once, of the lowness of his exchequer, some one said, with
great reason, that “It would be full enough, if those two freedmen of his would
but take him into partnership with them.”
XXIX. Being entirely governed by these freedmen, and, as I have already said, by
his wives, he was a tool to others, rather than a prince. He distributed
offices, or the command of armies, pardoned or punished, according as it suited
their interests, their passions, or their caprice; and for the most part,
without knowing, or being sensible of what he did. Not to enter into minute
details relative to the revocation of grants, the reversal of judicial
decisions, obtaining his signature to fictitious appointments, or the bare-faced
alteration of them after signing; he put to death Appius Silanus, the father of
his son-in-law, and the two Julias, the daughters of Drusus and Germanicus,
without any positive proof of the crimes with which they were charged, or so
much as permitting them to make any defence. He also cut off Cneius Pompey, the
husband of his eldest daughter; and Lucius Silanus, who was betrothed to the
younger Pompey, was stabbed in the act of unnatural lewdness with a favourite
paramour. Silanus was obliged to quit the office of prætor upon the fourth of
the calends of January [29th Dec.], and to kill himself on new year’s day
following, the very same on which Claudius and Agrippina were married. He
condemned to death five and thirty senators, and above three hundred Roman
knights, with so little attention to what he did, that when a centurion brought
him word of the execution of a man of consular rank, who was one of the number,
and told him that he had executed his order, he declared, “he had ordered no
such thing, but that he approved of it;” because his freedmen, it seems, had
said, that the soldiers did nothing more than their duty, in dispatching the
emperor’s enemies without waiting for a warrant. But it is beyond all belief,
that he himself, at the marriage of Messalina with the adulterous Silius, should
actually sign the writings relative to her dowry; induced, as it is pretended,
by the design of diverting from himself and transferring upon another the danger
which some omens seemed to threaten him.
XXX. Either standing or sitting, but especially when he lay asleep, he had a
majestic and graceful appearance; for he was tall, but not slender. His grey
locks became him well, and he had a full neck. But his knees were feeble, and
failed him in walking, so that his gait was ungainly, both when he assumed
state, and when he was taking diversion. He was outrageous in his laughter, and
still more so in his wrath, for then he foamed at the mouth, and discharged from
his nostrils. He also stammered in his speech, and had a tremulous motion of the
head at all times, but particularly when he was engaged in any business, however
trifling.
XXXI. Though his health was very infirm during the former part of his life, yet,
after he became emperor, he enjoyed a good state of health, except only that he
was subject to a pain of the stomach. In a fit of this complaint, he said he had
thoughts of killing himself.
XXXII. He gave entertainments as frequent as they were splendid, and generally
when there was such ample room, that very often six hundred guests sat down
together. At a feast he gave on the banks of the canal for draining the Fucine
Lake, he narrowly escaped being drowned, the water at its discharge rushing out
with such violence, that it overflowed the conduit. At supper he had always his
own children, with those of several of the nobility, who, according to an
ancient custom, sat at the feet of the couches. One of his guests having been
suspected of purloining a golden cup, he invited him again the next day, but
served him with a porcelain jug. It is said, too, that he intended to publish an
edict, “allowing to all people the liberty of giving vent at table to any
distension occasioned by flatulence,” upon hearing of a person whose modesty,
when under restraint, had nearly cost him his life.
XXXIII. He was always ready to eat and drink at any time or in any place. One
day, as he was hearing causes in the forum of Augustus, he smelt the dinner
which was preparing for the Salii, in the temple of Mars adjoining, whereupon he
quitted the tribunal, and went to partake of the feast with the priests. He
scarcely ever left the table until he had thoroughly crammed himself and drank
to intoxication; and then he would immediately fall asleep, lying upon his back
with his mouth open. While in this condition, a feather was put down his throat,
to make him throw up the contents of his stomach. Upon composing himself to
rest, his sleep was short, and he usually awoke before midnight; but he would
sometimes sleep in the daytime, and that, even, when he was upon the tribunal;
so that the advocates often found it difficult to wake him, though they raised
their voices for that purpose. He set no bounds to his libidinous intercourse
with women, but never betrayed any unnatural desires for the other sex. He was
fond of gaming, and published a book upon the subject. He even used to play as
he rode in his chariot, having the tables so fitted, that the game was not
disturbed by the motion of the carriage.
XXXIV. His cruel and sanguinary disposition was exhibited upon great as well as
trifling occasions. When any person was to be put to the torture, or criminal
punished for parricide, he was impatient for the execution, and would have it
performed in his own presence. When he was at Tibur, being desirous of seeing an
example of the old way of putting malefactors to death, some were immediately
bound to a stake for the purpose; but there being no executioner to be had at
the place, he sent for one from Rome, and waited for his coming until night. In
any exhibition of gladiators, presented either by himself or others, if any of
the combatants chanced to fall, he ordered them to be butchered, especially the
Retiarii, that he might see their faces in the agonies of death. Two gladiators
happening to kill each other, he immediately ordered some little knives to be
made of their swords for his own use. He took great pleasure in seeing men
engage with wild beasts, and the combatants who appeared on the stage at noon.
He would therefore come to the theatre by break of day, and at noon, dismissing
the people to dinner, continued sitting himself; and besides those who were
devoted to that sanguinary fate, he would match others with the beasts, upon
slight or sudden occasions; as, for instance, the carpenters and their
assistants, and people of that sort, if a machine, or any piece of work in which
they had been employed about the theatre did not answer the purpose for which it
had been intended. To this desperate kind of encounter he forced one of his
nomenclators, even encumbered as he was by wearing the toga.
XXXV. But the characteristics most predominant in him were fear and distrust. In
the beginning of his reign, though he much affected a modest and humble
appearance, as has been already observed, yet he durst not venture himself at an
entertainment without being attended by a guard of spearmen, and made soldiers
wait upon him at table instead of servants. He never visited a sick person,
until the chamber had been first searched, and the bed and bedding thoroughly
examined. At other times, all persons who came to pay their court to him were
strictly searched by officers appointed for that purpose; nor was it until after
a long time, and with much difficulty, that he was prevailed upon to excuse
women, boys, and girls from such rude handling, or suffer their attendants or
writing-masters to retain their cases for pens and styles. When Camillus formed
his plot against him, not doubting but his timidity might be worked upon without
a war, he wrote to him a scurrilous, petulant, and threatening letter, desiring
him to resign the government, and betake himself to a life of privacy. Upon
receiving this requisition, he had some thoughts of complying with it, and
summoned together the principal men of the city, to consult with them on the
subject.
XXXVI. Having heard some loose reports of conspiracies formed against him, he
was so much alarmed, that he thought of immediately abdicating the government.
And when, as I have before related, a man armed with a dagger was discovered
near him while he was sacrificing, he instantly ordered the heralds to convoke
the senate, and with tears and dismal exclamations, lamented that such was his
condition, that he was safe no where; and for a long time afterwards he
abstained from appearing in public. He smothered his ardent love for Messalina,
not so much on account of her infamous conduct, as from apprehension of danger;
believing that she aspired to share with Silius, her partner in adultery, the
imperial dignity. Upon this occasion he ran in a great fright, and a very
shameful manner, to the camp, asking all the way he went, “if the empire were
indeed safely his?”
XXXVII. No suspicion was too trifling, no person on whom it rested too
contemptible, to throw him into a panic, and induce him to take precautions for
his safety, and meditate revenge. A man engaged in a litigation before his
tribunal, having saluted him, drew him aside, and told him he had dreamt that he
saw him murdered; and shortly afterwards, when his adversary came to deliver his
plea to the emperor, the plaintiff, pretending to have discovered the murderer,
pointed to him as the man he had seen in his dream; whereupon, as it he had been
taken in the act, he was hurried away to execution. We are informed, that Appius
Silanus was got rid of in the same manner, by a contrivance betwixt Messalina
and Narcissus, in which they had their several parts assigned them. Narcissus
therefore burst into his lord’s chamber before day-light, apparently in great
fright, and told him that he had dreamt that Appius Silanus had murdered him.
The empress, upon this, affecting great surprise, declared she had the like
dream for several nights successively. Presently afterwards, word was brought,
as it had been agreed on, that Appius was come, he having, indeed, received
orders the preceding day to be there at that time; and, as if the truth of the
dream was sufficiently confirmed by his appearance at that juncture, he was
immediately ordered to be prosecuted and put to death. The day following,
Claudius related the whole affair to the senate, and acknowledged his great
obligation to his freedmen for watching over him even in his sleep.
XXXVIII. Sensible of his being subject to passion and resentment, he excused
himself in both instances by a proclamation, assuring the public that “the
former should be short and harmless, and the latter never without good cause.”
After severely reprimanding the people of Ostia for not sending some boats to
meet him upon his entering the mouth of the Tiber, in terms which might expose
them to the public resentment, he wrote to Rome that he had been treated as a
private person; yet immediately afterwards he pardoned them, and that in a way
which had the appearance of making them satisfaction, or begging pardon for some
injury he had done them. Some people who addressed him unseasonably in public,
he pushed away with his own hand. He likewise banished a person who had been
secretary to a quæstor, and even a senator who had filled the office of prætor,
without a hearing, and although they were innocent; the former only because he
had treated him with rudeness while he was in a private station, and the other,
because in his ædileship he had fined some tenants of his, for selling cooked
victuals contrary to law, and ordered his steward, who interfered, to be
whipped. On this account, likewise, he took from the ædiles the jurisdiction
they had over cooks’-shops. He did not scruple to speak of his own absurdities,
and declared in some short speeches which he published, that he had only feigned
imbecility in the reign of Caius, because otherwise it would have been
impossible for him to have escaped and arrived at the station he had then
attained. He could not, however, gain credit for this assertion; for a short
time afterwards, a book was published under the title of Μωρῶν ἀναστάσις, “The
Resurrection of Fools,” the design of which was to show “that nobody ever
counterfeited folly.”
XXXIX. Amongst other things, people admired in him his indifference and
unconcern; or, to express it in Greek, his μετεωϱία and ἀβλεψία. Placing himself
at table a little after Messalina’s death, he enquired, “Why the empress did not
come?” Many of those whom he had condemned to death, he ordered the day after to
be invited to his table, and to game with him, and sent to reprimand them as
sluggish fellows for not making greater haste. When he was meditating his
incestuous marriage with Agrippina, he was perpetually calling her, “My
daughter, my nursling, born and brought up upon my lap.” And when he was going
to adopt Nero, as if there was little cause for censure in his adopting a
son-in-law, when he had a son of his own arrived at years of maturity; he
continually gave out in public, “that no one had ever been admitted by adoption
into the Claudian family.”
XL. He frequently appeared so careless in what he said, and so inattentive to
circumstances, that it was believed he never reflected who he himself was, or
amongst whom, or at what time, or in what place, he spoke. In a debate in the
senate relative to the butchers and vintners, he cried out, “I ask you, who can
live without a bit of meat?” And mentioned the great plenty of old taverns, from
which he himself used formerly to have his wine. Among other reasons for his
supporting a certain person who was candidate for the quæstorship, he gave this:
“His father,” said he, “once gave me, very seasonably, a draught of cold water
when I was sick.” Upon his bringing a woman as a witness in some cause before
the senate, he said, “This woman was my mother’s freedwoman and dresser, but she
always considered me as her master; and this I say, because there are some still
in my family that do not look upon me as such.” The people of Ostia addressing
him in open court with a petition, he flew into a rage at them, and said, “There
is no reason why I should oblige you: if any one else is free to act as he
pleases, surely I am.” The following expressions he had in his mouth every day,
and at all hours and seasons: “What! do you take me for a Theogonius?” And in
Greek λάλει ϰαὶ μὴ θίγγανε, “Speak, but do not touch me;” besides many other
familiar sentences, below the dignity of a private person, much more of an
emperer, who was not deficient either in eloquence or learning, as having
applied himself very closely to the liberal sciences.
XLI. By the encouragement of Titus Livius, and with the assistance of Sulpicius
Flavus, he attempted at an early age the composition of a history; and having
called together a numerous auditory, to hear and give their judgment upon it, he
read it over with much difficulty, and frequently interrupting himself. For
after he had begun, a great laugh was raised amongst the company, by the
breaking of several benches from the weight of a very fat man; and even when
order was restored, he could not forbear bursting out into violent fits of
laughter, at the remembrance of the accident. After he became emperor, likewise,
he wrote several things which he was careful to have recited to his friends by a
reader. He commenced his history from the death of the dictator Cæsar; but
afterwards he took a later period, and began at the conclusion of the civil
wars; because he found he could not speak with freedom, and a due regard to
truth, concerning the former period, having been often taken to task both by his
mother and grandmother. Of the earlier history he left only two books, but of
the latter, one and forty. He compiled likewise the “History of his Own Life,”
in eight books, full of absurdities, but in no bad style; also, “A Defence of
Cicero against the Books of Asinius Gallus,” which exhibited a considerable
degree of learning. He besides invented three new letters, and added them to the
former alphabet, as highly necessary. He published a book to recommend them
while he was yet only a private person; but on his elevation to imperial power
he had little difficulty in introducing them into common use; and these letters
are still extant in a variety of books, registers, and inscriptions upon
buildings.
XLII. He applied himself with no less attention to the study of Grecian
literature, asserting upon all occasions his love of that language, and its
surpassing excellency. A stranger once holding a discourse both in Greek and
Latin, he addressed him thus; “Since you are skilled in both our tongues.” And
recommending Achaia to the favour of the senate, he said, “I have a particular
attachment to that province, on account of our common studies.” In the senate he
often made long replies to ambassadors in that language. On the tribunal he
frequently quoted the verses of Homer. When at any time he had taken vengeance
on an enemy or a conspirator, he scarcely ever gave to the tribune on guard,
who, according to custom, came for the word, any other than this:—
Ἄνδρ’ ἐπαμύνασθαι ὅτε τις πϱότεϱος χαλεπηνῃ.
’Tis time to strike when wrong demands the blow.
To conclude, he wrote some histories likewise in Greek, namely, twenty books on
Tuscan affairs, and eight on the Carthaginian; in consequence of which, another
museum was founded at Alexandria, in addition to the old one, and called after
his name; and it was ordered, that, upon certain days in every year, his Tuscan
history should be read over in one of these, and his Carthaginian in the other,
as in a school; each history being read through by persons who took it in turn.
XLIII. Towards the close of his life, he gave some manifest indications that he
repented of his marriage with Agrippina, and his adoption of Nero. For some of
his freedmen noticing with approbation his having condemned, the day before, a
woman accused of adultery, he remarked, “It has been my misfortune to have wives
who have been unfaithful to my bed; but they did not escape punishment.” Often,
when he happened to meet Britannicus, he would embrace him tenderly, and express
a desire “that he might grow apace, and receive from him an account of all his
actions:” using the Greek phrase, ὁ τρώσας ϰαὶ ῖάσεται, “He who has wounded will
also heal.” And intending to give him the manly habit, while he was yet under
age and a tender youth, because his stature would allow of it, he added, “I do
so, that the Roman people may at last have a real Cæsar.”
XLIV. Soon afterwards he made his will, and had it signed by all the magistrates
as witnesses. But he was prevented from proceeding further by Agrippina, accused
by her own guilty conscience, as well as by informers, of a variety of crimes.
It is agreed that he was taken off by poison; but where, and by whom
administered, remains in uncertainty. Some authors say that it was given him as
he was feasting with the priests in the Capitol, by the eunuch Halotus, his
taster. Others say by Agrippina, at his own table, in mushrooms, a dish of which
he was very fond. The accounts of what followed likewise differ. Some relate
that he instantly became speechless, was racked with pain through the night, and
died about day-break; others, that at first he fell into a sound sleep,—and
afterwards, his food rising, he threw up the whole: but had another dose given
him; whether in water-gruel, under pretence of refreshment after his exhaustion,
or in a clyster, as if designed to relieve his bowels, is likewise uncertain.
XLV. His death was kept secret until everything was settled relative to his
successor. Accordingly, vows were made for his recovery, and comedians were
called to amuse him, as it was pretended, by his own desire. He died upon the
third of the ides of October [13th October], in the consulship of Asinius
Marcellus and Acilius Aviola, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and the
fourteenth of his reign. His funeral was celebrated with the customary imperial
pomp, and he was ranked amongst the gods. This honour was taken from him by
Nero, but restored by Vespasian.
XLVI. The chief presages of his death were, the appearance of a comet, his
father Drusus’s monument being struck by lightning, and the death of most of the
magistrates of all ranks that year. It appears from several circumstances, that
he was sensible of his approaching dissolution, and made no secret of it. For
when he nominated the consuls, he appointed no one to fill the office beyond the
month in which he died. At the last assembly of the senate in which he made his
appearance, he earnestly exhorted his two sons to unity with each other, and
with earnest entreaties commended to the fathers the care of their tender years.
And in the last cause he heard from the tribunal, he repeatedly declared in open
court, “That he was now arrived at the last stage of mortal existence;” whilst
all who heard it shrunk at hearing these ominous words.
The violent death of Caligula afforded the Romans a fresh opportunity to have
asserted the liberty of their country; but the conspirators had concerted no
plan, by which they should proceed upon the assassination of that tyrant; and
the indecision of the senate, in a debate of two days, on so sudden an
emergency, gave time to the caprice of the soldiers to interpose in the
settlement of the government. By an accident the most fortuitous, a man devoid
of all pretensions to personal merit, so weak in understanding as to be the
common sport of the emperor’s household, and an object of contempt even to his
own kindred; this man, in the hour of military insolence, was nominated by the
soldiers as successor to the Roman throne. Not yet in possession of the public
treasury, which perhaps was exhausted, he could not immediately reward the
services of his electors with a pecuniary gratification; but he promised them a
largess of fifteen thousand sesterces a man, upwards of a hundred and forty
pounds sterling; and as we meet with no account of any subsequent discontents in
the army, we may justly conclude that the promise was soon after fulfilled. This
transaction laid the foundation of that military despotism, which, through many
succeeding ages, convulsed the Roman empire.
Besides the interposition of the soldiers upon this occasion, it appears that
the populace of Rome were extremely clamorous for the government of a single
person, and for that of Claudius in particular. This partiality for a
monarchical government proceeded from two causes. The commonalty, from their
obscure situation, were always the least exposed to oppression, under a
tyrannical prince. They had likewise ever been remarkably fond of stage-plays
and public shows, with which, as well as with scrambles, and donations of bread
and other victuals, the preceding emperor had frequently gratified them. They
had therefore less to fear, and more to hope, from the government of a single
person than any other class of Roman citizens. With regard to the partiality for
Claudius, it may be accounted for partly from the low habits of life to which he
had been addicted, in consequence of which many of them were familiarly
acquainted with him; and this circumstance likewise increased their hope of
deriving some advantage from his accession. Exclusive of all these
considerations, it is highly probable that the populace were instigated in
favour of Claudius by the artifices of his freedmen, persons of mean extraction,
by whom he was afterwards entirely governed, and who, upon such an occasion,
would exert their utmost efforts to procure his appointment to the throne. From
the debate in the senate having continued during two days, it was evident that
there was still a strong party for restoring the ancient form of government.
That they were in the end overawed by the clamour of the multitude, is not
surprising, when we consider that the senate was totally unprovided with
resources of every kind for asserting the independence of the nation by arms;
and the commonalty, who interrupted their deliberations, were the only people by
whose assistance they ever could effect the restitution of public freedom. To
this may be added, that the senate, by the total reduction of their political
importance, ever since the overthrow of the republic, had lost both the
influence and authority which they formerly enjoyed. The extreme cruelty,
likewise, which had been exercised during the last two reigns, afforded a
further motive for relinquishing all attempts in favour of liberty, as they
might be severely revenged upon themselves by the subsequent emperor: and it was
a degree of moderation in Claudius, which palliates the injustice of his cause,
that he began his government with an act of amnesty respecting the public
transactions which ensued upon the death of Caligula.
Claudius, at the time of his accession, was fifty years of age; and though he
had hitherto lived apparently unambitious of public honours, accompanied with
great ostentation, yet he was now seized with a desire to enjoy a triumph. As
there existed no war, in which he might perform some military achievement, his
vanity could only be gratified by invading a foreign country, where, contrary to
the advice contained in the testament of Augustus, he might attempt to extend
still further the limits of the empire. Either Britain, therefore, or some
nation on the continent, at a great distance from the capital, became the object
of such an enterprize; and the former was chosen, not only as more convenient,
from its vicinity to the maritime province of Gaul, but on account of a
remonstrance lately presented by the Britons to the court of Rome, respecting
the protection afforded to some persons of that nation, who had fled thither to
elude the laws of their country. Considering the state of Britain at that time,
divided as it was into a number of principalities, amongst which there was no
general confederacy for mutual defence, and where the alarm excited by the
invasion of Julius Cæsar, upwards of eighty years before, had long since been
forgotten; a sudden attempt upon the island could not fail to be attended with
success. Accordingly, an army was sent over, under the command of Aulus Plautius,
an able general, who defeated the natives in several engagements, and penetrated
a considerable way into the country. Preparations for the emperor’s voyage now
being made, Claudius set sail from Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber; but meeting
with a violent storm in the Mediterranean, he landed at Marseilles, and
proceeding thence to Boulogne in Picardy, passed over into Britain. In what part
he debarked, is uncertain, but it seems to have been at some place on the
south-east coast of the island. He immediately received the submission of
several British states, the Cantii, Atrebates, Regni, and Trinobantes, who
inhabited those parts; and returning to Rome, after an absence of six months,
celebrated with great pomp the triumph, for which he had undertaken the
expedition.
In the interior parts of Britain, the natives, under the command of Caractacus,
maintained an obstinate resistance, and little progress was made by the Roman
arms, until Ostorius Scapula was sent over to prosecute the war. He penetrated
into the country of the Silures, a warlike tribe, who inhabited the banks of the
Severn; and having defeated Caractacus in a great battle, made him prisoner, and
sent him to Rome. The fame of the British prince had by this time spread over
the provinces of Gaul and Italy; and upon his arrival in the Roman capital, the
people flocked from all quarters to behold him. The ceremonial of his entrance
was conducted with great solemnity. On a plain adjoining the Roman camp, the
pretorian troops were drawn up in martial array: the emperor and his court took
their station in front of the lines, and behind them was ranged the whole body
of the people. The procession commenced with the different trophies which had
been taken from the Britons during the progress of the war. Next followed the
brothers of the vanquished prince, with his wife and daughter, in chains,
expressing by their supplicating looks and gestures the fears with which they
were actuated. But not so Caractacus himself. With a manly gait and an undaunted
countenance, he marched up to the tribunal, where the emperor was seated, and
addressed him in the following terms:—
“If to my high birth and distinguished rank, I had added the virtues of
moderation, Rome had beheld me rather as a friend than a captive; and you would
not have rejected an alliance with a prince, descended from illustrious
ancestors, and governing many nations. The reverse of my fortune to you is
glorious, and to me humiliating. I had arms, and men, and horses; I possessed
extraordinary riches; and can it be any wonder that I was unwilling to lose
them? Because Rome aspires to universal dominion, must men therefore implicitly
resign themselves to subjection? I opposed for a long time the progress of your
arms, and had I acted otherwise, would either you have had the glory of
conquest, or I of a brave resistance? I am now in your power: if you are
determined to take revenge, my fate will soon be forgotten, and you will derive
no honour from the transaction. Preserve my life, and I shall remain to the
latest ages a monument of your clemency.”
Immediately upon this speech, Claudius granted him his liberty, as he did
likewise to the other royal captives. They all returned their thanks in a manner
the most grateful to the emperor; and as soon as their chains were taken off,
walking towards Agrippina, who sat upon a bench at a little distance, they
repeated to her the same fervent declarations of gratitude and esteem.
History has preserved no account of Caractacus after this period; but it is
probable, that he returned in a short time to his own country, where his former
valour, and the magnanimity which he had displayed at Rome, would continue to
render him illustrious through life, even amidst the irretrievable ruin of his
fortunes.
The most extraordinary character in the present reign was hat of Valeria
Messalina, the daughter of Valerius Messala Barbatus. She was married to
Claudius, and had by him a son and a daughter. To cruelty in the prosecution of
her purposes, she added the most abandoned incontinence. Not confining her
licentiousness within the limits of the palace, where she committed the most
shameful excesses, she prostituted her person in the common stews, and even in
the public streets of the capital. As if her conduct was already not
sufficiently scandalous, she obliged C. Silius, a man of consular rank, to
divorce his wife, that she might procure his company entirely to herself. Not
contented with this indulgence to her criminal passion, she next persuaded him
to marry her; and during an excursion which the emperor made to Ostia, the
ceremony of marriage was actually performed between them. The occasion was
celebrated with a magnificent supper, to which she invited a large company; and
lest the whole should be regarded as a frolic, not meant to be consummated, the
adulterous parties ascended the nuptial couch in the presence of the astonished
spectators. Great as was the facility of Claudius’s temper in respect of her
former behaviour, he could not overlook so flagrant a violation both of public
decency and the laws of the country. Silius was condemned to death for the
adultery which he had perpetrated with reluctance; and Messalina was ordered
into the emperor’s presence, to answer for her conduct. Terror now operating
upon her mind in conjunction with remorse, she could not summon the resolution
to support such an interview, but retired into the gardens of Lucullus, there to
indulge at last the compunction which she felt for her crimes, and to meditate
the entreaties by which she should endeavour to soothe the resentment of her
husband. In the extremity of her distress, she attempted to lay violent hands
upon herself, but her courage was not equal to the emergency. Her mother, Lepida,
who had not spoken with her for some years before, was present upon the
occasion, and urged her to the act which alone could put a period to her infamy
and wretchedness. Again she made an effort, but again her resolution abandoned
her; when a tribune burst into the gardens, and plunging his sword into her
body, she instantly expired. Thus perished a woman, the scandal of whose
lewdness resounded throughout the empire, and of whom a great satirist, then
living, has said, perhaps without a hyperbole,
Et lassata viris, necdum satiata, recessit.
—Juvenal, Sat. VI.
It has been already observed, that Claudius was entirely governed by his
freedmen; a class of retainers which enjoyed a great share of favour and
confidence with their patrons in those times. They had before been the slaves of
their masters, and had obtained their freedom as a reward for their faithful and
attentive services. Of the esteem in which they were often held, we meet with an
instance in Tiro, the freedman of Cicero, to whom that illustrious Roman
addresses several epistles, written in the most familiar and affectionate strain
of friendship. As it was common for them to be taught the more useful parts of
education in the families of their masters, they were usually well qualified for
the management of domestic concerns, and might even be competent to the superior
departments of the state, especially in those times when negotiations and
treaties with foreign princes seldom or never occurred; and in arbitrary
governments, where public affairs were directed more by the will of the
sovereign or his ministers, than by refined suggestions of policy.
From the character generally given of Claudius before his elevation to the
throne, we should not readily imagine that he was endowed with any taste for
literary composition; yet he seems to have exclusively enjoyed this distinction
during his own reign, in which learning was at a low ebb. Besides history,
Suetonius informs us that he wrote a Defence of Cicero against the Charges of
Asinius Gallus. This appears to be the only tribute of esteem or approbation
paid to the character of Cicero, from the time of Livy the historian, to the
extinction of the race of the Cæsars. Asinius Gallus was the son of Asinius
Pollio, the orator. Marrying Vipsania after she had been divorced by Tiberius,
he incurred the displeasure of that emperor, and died of famine, either
voluntarily, or by order of the tyrant. He wrote a comparison between his father
and Cicero, in which, with more filial partiality than justice, he gave the
preference to the former.
NERO CLAUDIUS CAESAR.
I. Two celebrated families, the Calvini and Aenobarbi, sprung from the race of
the Domitii. The Aenobarbi derive both their extraction and their cognomen from
one Lucius Domitius, of whom we have this tradition:—As he was returning out of
the country to Rome, he was met by two young men of a most august appearance,
who desired him to announce to the senate and people a victory, of which no
certain intelligence had yet reached the city. To prove that they were more than
mortals, they stroked his cheeks, and thus changed his hair, which was black, to
a bright colour, resembling that of brass; which mark of distinction descended
to his posterity, for they had generally red beards. This family had the honour
of seven consulships, one triumph, and two censorships; and being admitted into
the patrician order, they continued the use of the same cognomen, with no other
prænomina than those of Cneius and Lucius. These, however, they assumed with
singular irregularity; three persons in succession sometimes adhering to one of
them, and then they were changed alternately. For the first, second, and third
of the Aenobarbi had the prænomen of Lucius, and again the three following,
successively, that of Cneius, while those who came after were called, by turns,
one, Lucius, and the other, Cneius. It appears to me proper to give a short
account of several of the family, to show that Nero so far degenerated from the
noble qualities of his ancestors, that he retained only their vices; as if those
alone had been transmitted to him by his descent.
II. To begin, therefore, at a remote period, his great-grandfather’s
grandfather, Cneius Domitius, when he was tribune of the people, being offended
with the high priests for electing another than himself in the room of his
father, obtained the transfer of the right of election from the colleges of the
priests to the people. In his consulship, having conquered the Allobroges and
the Arverni, he made a progress through the province, mounted upon an elephant,
with a body of soldiers attending him, in a sort of triumphal pomp. Of this
person the orator Licinius Crassus said, “It was no wonder he had a brazen
beard, who had a face of iron, and a heart of lead.” His son, during his
prætorship, proposed that Cneius Cæsar, upon the expiration of his consulship,
should be called to account before the senate for his administration of that
office, which was supposed to be contrary both to the omens and the laws.
Afterwards, when he was consul himself, he tried to deprive Cneius of the
command of the army, and having been, by intrigue and cabal, appointed his
sucessor, he was made prisoner at Corsinium, in the beginning of the civil war.
Being set at liberty, he went to Marseilles, which was then besieged; where
having, by his presence, animated the people to hold out, he suddenly deserted
them, and at last was slain in the battle of Pharsalia. He was a man of little
constancy, and of a sullen temper. In despair of his fortunes, he had recourse
to poison, but was so terrified at the thoughts of death, that, immediately
repenting, he took a vomit to throw it up again, and gave freedom to his
physician for having, with great prudence and wisdom, given him only a gentle
dose of the poison. When Cneius Pompey was consulting with his friends in what
manner he should conduct himself towards those who were neuter and took no part
in the contest, he was the only one who proposed that they should be treated as
enemies.
III. He left a son, who was, without doubt, the best of the family. By the
Pedian law, he was condemned, although innocent, amongst others who were
concerned in the death of Cæsar. Upon this, he went over to Brutus and Cassius,
his near relations; and, after their death, not only kept together the fleet,
the command of which had been given him some time before, but even increased it.
At last, when the party had everywhere been defeated, he voluntarily surrendered
it to Mark Antony; considering it as a piece of service for which the latter
owed him no small obligations. Of all those who were condemned by the law
above-mentioned, he was the only man who was restored to his country, and filled
the highest offices. When the civil war again broke out, he was appointed
lieutenant under the same Antony, and offered the chief command by those who
were ashamed of Cleopatra; but not daring, on account of a sudden indisposition
with which he was seized, either to accept or refuse it, he went over to
Augustus, and died a few days after, not without an aspersion cast upon his
memory. For Antony gave out, that he was induced to change sides by his
impatience to be with his mistress, Servilia Nais.
IV. This Cneius had a son, named Domitius, who was afterwards well known as the
nominal purchaser of the family property left by Augustus’s will; and no less
famous in his youth for his dexterity in chariot-driving, than he was afterwards
for the triumphal ornaments which he obtained in the German war. But he was a
man of great arrogance, prodigality, and cruelty. When he was ædile, he obliged
Lucius Plancus, the censor, to give him the way; and in his prætorship, and
consulship, he made Roman knights and married women act on the stage. He gave
hunts of wild beasts, both in the Circus and in all the wards of the city; as
also a show of gladiators; but with such barbarity, that Augustus, after
privately reprimanding him, to no purpose, was obliged to restrain him by a
public edict.
V. By the elder Antonia he had Nero’s father, a man of execrable character in
every part of his life. During his attendance upon Caius Cæsar in the East, he
killed a freedman of his own, for refusing to drink as much as he ordered him.
Being dismissed for this from Cæsar’s society, he did not mend his habits; for,
in a village upon the Appian road, he suddenly whipped his horses, and drove his
chariot, on purpose, over a poor boy, crushing him to pieces. At Rome, he struck
out the eye of a Roman knight in the Forum, only for some free language in a
dispute between them. He was likewise so fraudulent, that he not only cheated
some silversmiths of the price of goods he had bought of them, but, during his
prætorship, defrauded the owners of chariots in the Circensian games of the
prizes due to them for their victory. His sister, jeering him for the complaints
made by the leaders of the several parties, he agreed to sanction a law, “That,
for the future, the prizes should be immediately paid.” A little before the
death of Tiberius, he was prosecuted for treason, adulteries, and incest with
his sister Lepida, but escaped in the timely change of affairs, and died of a
dropsy, at Pyrgi; leaving behind him his son, Nero, whom he had by Agrippina,
the daughter of Germanicus.
VI. Nero was born at Antium, nine months after the death of Tiberius, upon the
eighteenth of the calends of January [15th December], just as the sun rose, so
that its beams touched him before they could well reach the earth. While many
fearful conjectures, in respect to his future fortune, were formed by different
persons, from the circumstances of his nativity, a saying of his father,
Domitius, was regarded as an ill presage, who told his friends who were
congratulating him upon the occasion, “That nothing but what was detestable, and
pernicious to the public, could ever be produced of him and Agrippina.” Another
manifest prognostic of his future infelicity occurred upon his lustration day.
For Caius Cæsar being requested by his sister to give the child what name he
thought proper—looking at his uncle, Claudius, who afterwards, when emperor,
adopted Nero, he gave his: and this not seriously, but only in jest; Agrippina
treating it with contempt, because Claudius at that time was a mere
laughing-stock at the palace. He lost his father when he was three years old,
being left heir to a third part of his estate; of which he never got possession,
the whole being seized by his co-heir, Caius. His mother being soon after
banished, he lived with his aunt Lepida, in a very necessitous condition, under
the care of two tutors, a dancing-master and a barper. After Claudius came to
the empire, he not only recovered his father’s estate, but was enriched with the
additional inheritance of that of his step-father, Crispus Passienus. Upon his
mother’s recall from banishment, he was advanced to such favour, through Nero’s
powerful interest with the emperor, that it was reported, assassins were
employed by Messalina, Claudius’s wife, to strangle him, as Britannicus’s rival,
whilst he was taking his noon-day repose. In addition to the story, it was said
that they were frightened by a serpent, which crept from under his cushion, and
ran away. The tale was occasioned by finding on his couch, near the pillow, the
skin of a snake, which, by his mother’s order, he wore for some time upon his
right arm, inclosed in a bracelet of gold. This amulet, at last, he laid aside,
from aversion to her memory; but he sought for it again, in vain, in the time of
his extremity.
VII. When he was yet a mere boy, before he arrived at the age of puberty, during
the celebration of the Circensian games, he performed his part in the Trojan
play with a degree of firmness which gained him great applause. In the eleventh
year of his age, he was adopted by Claudius, and placed under the tuition of
Annæus Seneca, who had been made a senator. It is said, that Seneca dreamt the
night after, that he was giving a lesson to Caius Cæsar. Nero soon verified his
dream, betraying the cruelty of his disposition in every way he could. For he
attempted to persuade his father that his brother, Britannicus, was nothing but
a changeling, because the latter had saluted him, notwithstanding his adoption,
by the name of Aenobarbus, as usual. When his aunt, Lepida, was brought to
trial, he appeared in court as a witness against her, to gratify his mother, who
persecuted the accused. On his introduction into the Forum, at the age of
manhood, he gave a largess to the people and a donative to the soldiers: for the
pretorian cohorts, he appointed a solemn procession under arms, and marched at
the head of them with a shield in his hand; after which he went to return thanks
to his father in the senate. Before Claudius, likewise, at the time he was
consul, he made a speech for the Bolognese, in Latin, and for the Rhodians and
people of Ilium, in Greek. He had the jurisdiction of præfect of the city, for
the first time, during the Latin festival; during which the most celebrated
advocates brought before him, not short and trifling causes, as is usual in that
case, but trials of importance, notwithstanding they had instructions from
Claudius himself to the contrary. Soon afterwards, he married Octavia, and
exhibited the Circensian games, and hunting of wild beasts, in honour of
Claudius.
VIII. He was seventeen years of age at the death of that prince, and as soon as
that event was made public, he went out to the cohort on guard between the hours
of six and seven; for the omens were so disastrous, that no earlier time of the
day was judged proper. On the steps before the palace gate, he was unanimously
saluted by the soldiers as their emperor, and then carried in a litter to the
camp; thence, after making a short speech to the troops, into the senate-house,
where he continued until the evening; of all the immense honours which were
heaped upon him, refusing none but the title of Father of his Country, on
account of his youth.
IX. He began his reign with an ostentation of dutiful regard to the memory of
Claudius, whom he buried with the utmost pomp and magnificence, pronouncing the
funeral oration himself, and then had him enrolled amongst the gods. He paid
likewise the highest honours to the memory of his father Domitius. He left the
management of affairs, both public and private, to his mother. The word which he
gave the first day of his reign to the tribune on guard, was, “The Best of
Mothers,” and afterwards he frequently appeared with her in the streets of Rome
in her litter. He settled a colony at Antium, in which he placed the veteran
soldiers belonging to the guards; and obliged several of the richest centurions
of the first rank to transfer their residence to that place: where he likewise
made a noble harbour at a prodigious expense.
X. To establish still further his character, he declared, “that he designed to
govern according to the model of Augustus;” and omitted no opportunity of
showing his generosity, clemency, and complaisance. The more burthensome taxes
he either entirely took off, or diminished. The rewards appointed for informers
by the Papian law, he reduced to a fourth part, and distributed to the people
four hundred sesterces a man. To the noblest of the senators who were much
reduced in their circumstances, he granted annual allowances, in some cases as
much as five hundred thousand sesterces; and to the pretorian cohorts a monthly
allowance of corn gratis. When called upon to subscribe the sentence, according
to custom, of a criminal condemned to die, “I wish,” said he, “I had never
learnt to read and write.” He continually saluted people of the several orders
by name, without a prompter. When the senate returned him their thanks for his
good government, he replied to them, “It will be time enough to do so when I
shall have deserved it.” He admitted the common people to see him perform his
exercises in the Campus Martius. He frequently declaimed in public, and recited
verses of his own composing, not only at home, but in the theatre; so much to
the joy of all the people, that public prayers were appointed to be put up to
the gods upon that account; and the verses which had been publicly read, were,
after being written in gold letters, consecrated to Jupiter Capitolinus.
XI. He presented the people with a great number and variety of spectacles, as
the Juvenal and Circensian games, stage-plays, and an exhibition of gladiators.
In the Juvenal, he even admitted senators and aged matrons to perform parts. In
the Circensian games, he assigned the equestrian order seats apart from the rest
of the people, and had races performed by chariots drawn each by four camels. In
the games which he instituted for the eternal duration of the empire, and
therefore ordered to be called Maximi, many of the senatorian and equestrian
order, of both sexes, performed. A distinguished Roman knight descended on the
stage by a rope, mounted on an elephant. A Roman play, likewise, composed by
Afranius, was brought upon the stage. It was entitled, “The Fire;” and in it the
performers were allowed to carry off, and to keep to themselves, the furniture
of the house, which, as the plot of the play required, was burnt down in the
theatre. Every day during the solemnity, many thousand articles of all
descriptions were thrown amongst the people to scramble for; such as fowls of
different kinds, tickets for corn, clothes, gold, silver, gems, pearls,
pictures, slaves, beasts of burden, wild beasts that had been tamed; at last,
ships, lots of houses, and lands, were offered as prizes in a lottery.
XII. These games he beheld from the front of the proscenium. In the show of
gladiators, which he exhibited in a wooden amphitheatre, built within a year in
the district of the Campus Martius, he ordered that none should be slain, not
even the condemned criminals employed in the combats. He secured four hundred
senators, and six hundred Roman knights, amongst whom were some of unbroken
fortunes and unblemished reputation, to act as gladiators. From the same orders,
he engaged persons to encounter wild beasts, and for various other services in
the theatre. He presented the public with the representation of a naval fight,
upon sea-water, with huge fishes swimming in it; as also with the Pyrrhic dance,
performed by certain youths, to each of whom, after the performance was over, he
granted the freedom of Rome. During this diversion, a bull covered Pasiphaë,
concealed within a wooden statue of a cow, as many of the spectators believed.
Icarus, upon his first attempt to fly, fell on the stage close to the emperor’s
pavilion, and bespattered him with blood. For he very seldom presided in the
games, but used to view them reclining on a couch, at first through some narrow
apertures, but afterwards with the Podium quite open. He was the first who
instituted, in imitation of the Greeks, a trial of skill in the three several
exercises of music, wrestling, and horse-racing, to be performed at Rome every
five years, and which he called Neronia. Upon the dedication of his bath and
gymnasium, he furnished the senate and the equestrian order with oil. He
appointed as judges of the trial men of consular rank, chosen by lot, who sat
with the prætors. At this time he went down into the orchestra amongst the
senators, and received the crown for the best performance in Latin prose and
verse, for which several persons of the greatest merit contended, but they
unanimously yielded to him. The crown for the best performer on the harp, being
likewise awarded to him by the judges, he devoutly saluted it, and ordered it to
be carried to the statue of Augustus. In the gymnastic exercises, which he
presented in the Septa, while they were preparing the great sacrifice of an ox,
he shaved his beard for the first time, and putting it up in a casket of gold
studded with pearls of great price, consecrated it to Jupiter Capitolinus. He
invited the Vestal Virgins to see the wrestlers perform, because, at Olympia,
the priestesses of Ceres are allowed the privilege of witnessing that
exhibition.
XIII. Amongst the spectacles presented by him, the solemn entrance of Tiridates
into the city deserves to be mentioned. This personage, who was king of Armenia,
he invited to Rome by very liberal promises. But being prevented by unfavourable
weather from showing him to the people upon the day fixed by proclamation, he
took the first opportunity which occurred; several cohorts being drawn up under
arms, about the temples in the forum, while he was seated on a curule chair on
the rostra, in a triumphal dress, amidst the military standards and ensigns.
Upon Tiridates advancing towards him, on a stage made shelving for the purpose,
he permitted him to throw himself at his feet, but quickly raised him with his
right hand, and kissed him. The emperor then, at the king’s request, took the
turban from his head, and replaced it by a crown, whilst a person of pretorian
rank proclaimed in Latin the words in which the prince addressed the emperor as
a suppliant. After this ceremony, the king was conducted to the theatre, where,
after renewing his obeisance, Nero seated him on his right hand. Being then
greeted by universal acclamation with the title of Emperor, and sending his
laurel crown to the Capitol, Nero shut the temple of the two-faced Janus, as
though there now existed no war throughout the Roman empire.
XIV. He filled the consulship four times: the first for two months, the second
and last for six, and the third for four; the two intermediate ones he held
successively, but the others after an interval of some years between them.
XV. In the administration of justice, he scarcely ever gave his decision on the
pleadings before the next day, and then in writing. His manner of hearing causes
was not to allow any adjournment, but to dispatch them in order as they stood.
When he withdrew to consult his assessors, he did not debate the matter openly
with them; but silently and privately reading over their opinions, which they
gave separately in writing, he pronounced sentence from the tribunal according
to his own view of the case, as if it was the opinion of the majority. For a
long time he would not admit the sons of freedmen into the senate; and those who
had been admitted by former princes, he excluded from all public offices. To
supernumerary candidates he gave command in the legions, to comfort them under
the delay of their hopes. The consulship he commonly conferred for six months;
and one of the two consuls dying a little before the first of January, he
substituted no one in his place; disliking what had been formerly done for
Caninius Rebilus on such an occasion, who was consul for one day only. He
allowed the triumphal honours only to those who were of quæstorian rank, and to
some of the equestrian order; and bestowed them without regard to military
service. And instead of the quæstors, whose office it properly was, he
frequently ordered that the addresses, which he sent to the senate on certain
occasions, should be read by the consuls.
XVI. He devised a new style of building in the city, ordering piazzas to be
erected before all houses, both in the streets and detached, to give facilities
from their terraces, in case of fire, for preventing it from spreading; and
these he built at his own expense. He likewise designed to extend the city walls
as far as Ostia, and bring the sea from thence by a canal into the old city.
Many severe regulations and new orders were made in his time. A sumptuary law
was enacted. Public suppers were limited to the Sportulæ; and victualling-houses
restrained from selling any dressed victuals, except pulse and herbs, whereas
before they sold all kinds of meat. He likewise inflicted punishments on the
Christians, a sort of people who held a new and impious superstition. He forbad
the revels of the charioteers, who had long assumed a licence to stroll about,
and established for themselves a kind of prescriptive right to cheat and thieve,
making a jest of it. The partisans of the rival theatrical performers were
banished, as well as the actors themselves.
XVII. To prevent forgery, a method was then first invented, of having writings
bored, run through three times with a thread, and then sealed. It was likewise
provided that in wills, the two first pages, with only the testator’s name upon
them, should be presented blank to those who were to sign them as witnesses; and
that no one who wrote a will for another, should insert any legacy for himself.
It was likewise ordained that clients should pay their advocates a certain
reasonable fee, but nothing for the court, which was to be gratuitous, the
charges for it being paid out of the public treasury; that causes, the
cognizance of which before belonged to the judges of the exchequer, should be
transferred to the forum, and the ordinary tribunals; and that all appeals from
the judges should be made to the senate.
XVIII. He never entertained the least ambition or hope of augmenting and
extending the frontiers of the empire. On the contrary, he had thoughts of
withdrawing the troops from Britain, and was only restrained from so doing by
the fear of appearing to detract from the glory of his father. All that he did
was to reduce the kingdom of Pontus, which was ceded to him by Polemon, and also
the Alps, upon the death of Cottius, into the form of a province.
XIX. Twice only he undertook any foreign expeditions, one to Alexandria, and the
other to Achaia; but he abandoned the prosecution of the former on the very day
fixed for his departure, by being deterred both by ill omens, and the hazard of
the voyage. For while he was making the circuit of the temples, having seated
himself in that of Vesta, when he attempted to rise, the skirt of his robe stuck
fast; and he was instantly seized with such a dimness in his eyes, that he could
not see a yard before him. In Achaia, he attempted to make a cut through the
Isthmus; and, having made a speech encouraging his pretorians to set about the
work, on a signal given by sound of trumpet, he first broke ground with a spade,
and carried off a basket full of earth upon his shoulders. He made preparations
for an expedition to the Pass of the Caspian mountains; forming a new legion out
of his late levies in Italy, of men all six feet high, which he called the
phalanx of Alexander the Great. These transactions, in part unexceptionable, and
in part highly commendable, I have brought into one view, in order to separate
them from the scandalous and criminal part of his conduct, of which I shall now
give an account.
XX. Among the other liberal arts which he was taught in his youth, he was
instructed in music; and immediately after his advancement to the empire, he
sent for Terpnus, a performer upon the harp, who flourished at that time with
the highest reputation. Sitting with him for several days following, as he sang
and played after supper, until late at night, he began by degrees to practise
upon the instrument himself. Nor did he omit any of those expedients which
artists in music adopt, for the preservation and improvement of their voices. He
would lie upon his back with a sheet of lead upon his breast, clear his stomach
and bowels by vomits and clysters, and forbear the eating of fruits, or food
prejudicial to the voice. Encouraged by his proficiency, though his voice was
naturally neither loud nor clear, he was desirous of appearing upon the stage,
frequently repeating amongst his friends a Greek proverb to this effect: “that
no one had any regard for music which they never heard.” Accordingly, he made
his first public appearance at Naples; and although the theatre quivered with
the sudden shock of an earthquake, he did not desist, until he had finished the
piece of music he had begun. He played and sung in the same place several times,
and for several days together; taking only now and then a little respite to
refresh his voice. Impatient of retirement, it was his custom to go from the
bath to the theatre; and after dining in the orchestra, amidst a crowded
assembly of the people, he promised them in Greek, “that after he had drank a
little, he would give them a tune which would make their ears tingle.” Being
highly pleased with the songs that were sung in his praise by some Alexandrians
belonging to the fleet just arrived at Naples, he sent for more of the like
singers from Alexandria. At the same time, he chose young men of the equestrian
order, and above five thousand robust young fellows from the common people, on
purpose to learn various kinds of applause, called bombi, imbrices, and testæ,
which they were to practise in his favour, whenever he performed. They were
divided into several parties, and were remarkable for their fine heads of hair,
and were extremely well dressed, with rings upon their left hands. The leaders
of these bands had salaries of forty thousand sesterces allowed them.
XXI. At Rome also, being extremely proud of his singing, he ordered the games
called Neronia to be celebrated before the time fixed for their return. All now
becoming importunate to hear “his heavenly voice,” he informed them, “that he
would gratify those who desired it at the gardens.” But the soldiers then on
guard seconding the voice of the people, he promised to comply with their
request immediately, and with all his heart. He instantly ordered his name to be
entered upon the list of musicians who proposed to contend, and having thrown
his lot into the urn among the rest, took his turn, and entered, attended by the
prefects of the pretorian cohorts bearing his harp, and followed by the military
tribunes, and several of his intimate friends. After he had taken his station,
and made the usual prelude, he commanded Cluvius Rufus, a man of consular rank,
to proclaim in the theatre, that he intended to sing the story of Niobe. This he
accordingly did, and continued it until nearly ten o’clock, but deferred the
disposal of the crown, and the remaining part of the solemnity, until the next
year; that he might have more frequent opportunities of performing. But that
being too long, he could not refrain from often appearing as a public performer
during the interval. He made no scruple of exhibiting on the stage, even in the
spectacles presented to the people by private persons, and was offered by one of
the prætors, no less than a million of sesterces for his services. He likewise
sang tragedies in a mask; the visors of the heroes and gods, as also of the
heroines and goddesses, being formed into a resemblance of his own face, and
that of any woman he was in love with. Amongst the rest, he sung “Canace in
Labour,” “Orestes the Murderer of his Mother,” “Œdipus Blinded,” and “Hercules
Mad.” In the last tragedy, it is said that a young sentinel, posted at the
entrance of the stage, seeing him in a prison dress and bound with fetters, as
the fable of the play required, ran to his assistance.
XXII. He had from his childhood an extravagant passion for horses; and his
constant talk was of the Circensian races, notwithstanding it was prohibited
him. Lamenting once among his fellow-pupils, the case of a charioteer of the
green party, who was dragged round the circus at the tail of his chariot, and
being reprimanded by his tutor for it, he pretended that he was talking of
Hector. In the beginning of his reign, he used to amuse himself daily with
chariots drawn by four horses, made of ivory, upon a table. He attended at all
the lesser exhibitions in the circus, at first privately, but at last openly; so
that nobody ever doubted of his presence on any particular day. Nor did he
conceal his desire to have the number of the prizes doubled; so that the races
being increased accordingly, the diversion continued until a late hour; the
leaders of parties refusing now to bring out their companies for any time less
than the whole day. Upon this, he took a fancy for driving the chariot himself,
and that even publicly. Having made his first experiment in the gardens, amidst
crowds of slaves and other rabble, he at length performed in the view of all the
people, in the Circus Maximus, whilst one of his freedmen dropped the napkin in
the place where the magistrates used to give the signal. Not satisfied with
exhibiting various specimens of his skill in those arts at Rome, he went over to
Achaia, as has been already said, principally for this purpose. The several
cities, in which solemn trials of musical skill used to be publicly held, had
resolved to send him the crowns belonging to those who bore away the prize.
These he accepted so graciously, that he not only gave the deputies who brought
them an immediate audience, but even invited them to his table. Being requested
by some of them to sing at supper, and prodigiously applauded, he said, “the
Greeks were the only people who had an ear for music, and were the only good
judges of him and his attainments.” Without delay he commenced his journey, and
on his arrival at Cassiope, exhibited his first musical performance before the
altar of Jupiter Cassius.
XXIII. He afterwards appeared at the celebration of all public games in Greece:
for such as fell in different years, he brought within the compass of one, and
some he ordered to be celebrated a second time in the same year. At Olympia,
likewise, contrary to custom, he appointed a public performance in music: and
that he might meet with no interruption in this employment, when he was informed
by his freedman Helius, that affairs at Rome required his presence, he wrote to
him in these words: “Though now all your hopes and wishes are for my speedy
return, yet you ought rather to advise and hope that I may come back with a
character worthy of Nero.” During the time of his musical performance, nobody
was allowed to stir out of the theatre upon any account, however necessary;
insomuch, that it is said some women with child were delivered there. Many of
the spectators being quite wearied with hearing and applauding him, because the
town gates were shut, slipped privately over the walls; or counterfeiting
themselves dead, were carried out for their funeral. With what extreme anxiety
he engaged in these contests, with what keen desire to bear away the prize, and
with how much awe of the judges, is scarcely to be believed. As if his
adversaries had been on a level with himself, he would watch them narrowly,
defame them privately, and sometimes, upon meeting them, rail at them in very
scurrilous language; or bribe them, if they were better performers than himself.
He always addressed the judges with the most profound reverence before he began,
telling them, “he had done all things that were necessary, by way of
preparation, but that the issue of the approaching trial was in the hand of
fortune; and that they, as wise and skilful men, ought to exclude from their
judgment things merely accidental.” Upon their encouraging him to have a good
heart, he went off with more assurance, but not entirely free from anxiety;
interpreting the silence and modesty of some of them into sourness and
ill-nature, and saying that he was suspicious of them.
XXIV. In these contests, he adhered so strictly to the rules, that he never
durst spit, nor wipe the sweat from his forehead in any other way than with his
sleeve. Having, in the performance of a tragedy, dropped his sceptre, and not
quickly recovering it, he was in a great fright, lest he should be set aside for
the miscarriage, and could not regain his assurance, until an actor who stood by
swore he was certain it had not been observed in the midst of the acclamations
and exultations of the people. When the prize was adjudged to him, he always
proclaimed it himself; and even entered the lists with the heralds. That no
memory or the least monument might remain of any other victor in the sacred
Grecian games, he ordered all their statues and pictures to be pulled down,
dragged away with hooks, and thrown into the common sewers. He drove the chariot
with various numbers of horses, and at the Olympic games with no fewer than ten;
though, in a poem of his, he had reflected upon Mithridates for that innovation.
Being thrown out of his chariot, he was again replaced, but could not retain his
seat, and was obliged to give up, before he reached the goal, but was crowned
notwithstanding. On his departure, he declared the whole province a free
country, and conferred upon the judges in the several games the freedom of Rome,
with large sums of money. All these favours he proclaimed himself with his own
voice, from the middle of the Stadium, during the solemnity of the Isthmian
games.
XXV. On his return from Greece, arriving at Naples, because he had commenced his
career as a public performer in that city, he made his entrance in a chariot
drawn by white horses through a breach in the city-wall, according to the
practice of those who were victorious in the sacred Grecian games. In the same
manner he entered Antium, Alba, and Rome. He made his entry into the city riding
in the same chariot in which Augustus had triumphed, in a purple tunic, and a
cloak embroidered with golden stars, having on his head the crown won at
Olympia, and in his right hand that which was given him at the Parthian games:
the rest being carried in a procession before him, with inscriptions denoting
the places where they had been won, from whom, and in what plays or musical
performances; whilst a train followed him with loud acclamations, crying out,
that “they were the emperor’s attendants, and the soldiers of his triumph.”
Having then caused an arch of the Circus Maximus to be taken down, he passed
through the breach, as also through the Velabrum and the forum, to the Palatine
hill and the temple of Apollo. Every where as he marched along, victims were
slain, whilst the streets were strewed with saffron, and birds, chaplets, and
sweetmeats scattered abroad. He suspended the sacred crowns in his chamber,
about his beds, and caused statues of himself to be erected in the attire of a
harper, and had his likeness stamped upon the coin in the same dress. After this
period, he was so far from abating any thing of his application to music, that,
for the preservation of his voice, he never addressed the soldiers but by
messages, or with some person to deliver his speeches for him, when he thought
fit to make his appearance amongst them. Nor did he ever do any thing either in
jest or earnest, without a voice-master standing by him to caution him against
overstraining his vocal organs, and to apply a handkerchief to his mouth when he
did. He offered his friendship, or avowed open enmity to many, according as they
were lavish or sparing in giving him their applause.
XXVI. Petulancy, lewdness, luxury, avarice, and cruelty, he practised at first
with reserve and in private, as if prompted to them only by the folly of youth;
but, even then, the world was of opinion that they were the faults of his
nature, and not of his age. After it was dark, he used to enter the taverns
disguised in a cap or a wig, and ramble about the streets in sport, which was
not void of mischief. He used to beat those he met coming home from supper; and,
if they made any resistance, would wound them, and throw them into the
commonsewer. He broke open and robbed shops; establishing an auction at home for
selling his booty. In the scuffles which took place on those occasions, he often
ran the hazard of losing his eyes, and even his life; being beaten almost to
death by a senator, for handling his wife indecently. After this adventure, he
never again ventured abroad at that time of night, without some tribunes
following him at a little distance. In the day-time he would be carried to the
theatre incognito in a litter, placing himself upon the upper part of the
proscenium, where he not only witnessed the quarrels which arose on account of
the performances, but also encouraged them. When they came to blows, and stones
and pieces of broken benches began to fly about, he threw them plentifully
amongst the people, and once even broke a prætor’s head.
XXVII. His vices gaining strength by degrees, he laid aside his jocular
amusements, and all disguise; breaking out into enormous crimes, without the
least attempt to conceal them. His revels were prolonged from mid-day to
midnight, while he was frequently refreshed by warm baths, and, in the summer
time, by such as were cooled with snow. He often supped in public, in the
Naumachia, with the sluices shut, or in the Campus Martius, or the Circus
Maximus, being waited upon at table by common prostitutes of the town, and
Syrian strumpets and glee-girls. As often as he went down the Tiber to Ostia, or
coasted through the gulf of Baiæ, booths furnished as brothels and
eating-houses, were erected along the shore and river banks; before which stood
matrons, who, like bawds and hostesses, allured him to land. It was also his
custom to invite himself to supper with his friends; at one of which was
expended no less than four millions of sesterces in chaplets, and at another
something more in roses.
XXVIII. Besides the abuse of free-born lads, and the debauch of married women,
he committed a rape upon Rubria, a Vestal Virgin. He was upon the point of
marrying Acte, his freedwoman, having suborned some men of consular rank to
swear that she was of royal descent. He gelded the boy Sporus, and endeavoured
to transform him into a woman. He even went so far as to marry him, with all the
usual formalities of a marriage settlement, the rose-coloured nuptial veil, and
a numerous company at the wedding. When the ceremony was over, he had him
conducted like a bride to his own house, and treated him as his wife. It was
jocularly observed by some person, “that it would have been well for mankind,
had such a wife fallen to the lot of his father Domitius.” This Sporus he
carried about with him in a litter round the solemn assemblies and fairs of
Greece, and afterwards at Rome through the Sigillaria, dressed in the rich
attire of an empress; kissing him from time to time as they rode together. That
he entertained an incestuous passion for his mother, but was deterred by her
enemies, for fear that this haughty and overbearing woman should, by her
compliance, get him entirely into her power, and govern in every thing, was
universally believed: especially after he had introduced amongst his concubines
a strumpet, who was reported to have a strong resemblance to Agrippina.missing
text * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
XXIX. He prostituted his own chastity to such a degree, that after he had
defiled every part of his person with some unnatural pollution, he at last
invented an extraordinary kind of diversion; which was, to be let out of a den
in the arena, covered with the skin of a wild beast, and then assail with
violence the private parts both of men and women, while they were bound to
stakes. After he had vented his furious passion upon them, he finished the play
in the embraces of his freedman Doryphorus, to whom he was married in the same
way that Sporus had been married to himself; imitating the cries and shrieks of
young virgins, when they are ravished. I have been informed from numerous
sources, that he firmly believed, no man in the world to be chaste, or any part
of his person undefiled; but that most men concealed that vice, and were cunning
enough to keep it secret. To those, therefore, who frankly owned their unnatural
lewdness, he forgave all other crimes.
XXX. He thought there was no other use of riches and money than to squander them
away profusely; regarding all those as sordid wretches who kept their expenses
within due bounds; and extolling those as truly noble and generous souls, who
lavished away and wasted all they possessed. He praised and admired his uncle
Caius, upon no account more, than for squandering in a short time the vast
treasure left him by Tiberius. Accordingly, he was himself extravagant and
profuse, beyond all bounds. He spent upon Tiridates eight hundred thousand
sesterces a day, a sum almost incredible; and at his departure, presented him
with upwards of a million. He likewise bestowed upon Menecrates the harper, and
Spicillus a gladiator, the estates and houses of men who had received the honour
of a triumph. He enriched the usurer Cercopithecus Panerotes with estates both
in town and country; and gave him a funeral, in pomp and magnificence little
inferior to that of princes. He never wore the same garment twice. He has been
known to stake four hundred thousand sesterces on a throw of the dice. It was
his custom to fish with a golden net, drawn by silken cords of purple and
scarlet. It is said, that he never travelled with less than a thousand
baggage-carts; the mules being all shod with silver, and the drivers dressed in
scarlet jackets of the finest Canusian cloth, with a numerous train of footmen,
and troops of Mazacans, with bracelets on their arms, and mounted upon horses in
splendid trappings.
XXXI. In nothing was he more prodigal than in his buildings. He completed his
palace by continuing it from the Palatine to the Esquiline hill, calling the
building at first only “The Passage,” but, after it was burnt down and rebuilt,
“The Golden House.” Of its dimensions and furniture, it may be sufficient to say
thus much: the porch was so high that there stood in it a colossal statue of
himself a hundred and twenty feet in height; and the space included in it was so
ample, that it had triple porticos a mile in length, and a lake like a sea,
surrounded with buildings which had the appearance of a city. Within its area
were corn fields, vineyards, pastures, and woods, containing a vast number of
animals of various kinds, both wild and tame. In other parts it was entirely
over-laid with gold, and adorned with jewels and mother of pearl. The supper
rooms were vaulted, and compartments of the ceilings, inlaid with ivory, were
made to revolve, and scatter flowers; while they contained pipes which shed
unguents upon the guests. The chief banqueting room was circular, and revolved
perpetually, night and day, in imitation of the motion of the celestial bodies.
The baths were supplied with water from the sea and the Albula. Upon the
dedication of this magnificent house after it was finished, all he said in
approval of it was, “that he had now a dwelling fit for a man.” He commenced
making a pond for the reception of all the hot streams from Baiæ, which he
designed to have continued from Misenum to the Avernian lake, in a conduit,
enclosed in galleries; and also a canal from Avernum to Ostia, that ships might
pass from one to the other, without a sea voyage. The length of the proposed
canal was one hundred and sixty miles; and it was intended to be of breadth
sufficient to permit ships with five banks of oars to pass each other. For the
execution of these designs, he ordered all prisoners, in every part of the
empire, to be brought to Italy; and that even those who were convicted of the
most heinous crimes, in lieu of any other sentence, should be condemned to work
at them. He was encouraged to all this wild and enormous profusion, not only by
the great revenue of the empire, but by the sudden hopes given him of an immense
hidden treasure, which queen Dido, upon her flight from Tyre, had brought with
her to Africa. This, a Roman knight pretended to assure him, upon good grounds,
was still hid there in some deep caverns, and might with a little labour be
recovered.
XXXII. But being disappointed in his expectations of this resource, and reduced
to such difficulties, for want of money, that he was obliged to defer paying his
troops, and the rewards due to the veterans; he resolved upon supplying his
necessities by means of false accusations and plunder. In the first place, he
ordered, that if any freedman, without sufficient reason, bore the name of the
family to which he belonged; the half, instead of three fourths, of his estate
should be brought into the exchequer at his decease: also that the estates of
all such persons as had not in their wills been mindful of their prince, should
be confiscated; and that the lawyers who had drawn or dictated such wills,
should be liable to a fine. He ordained likewise, that all words and actions,
upon which any informer could ground a prosecution, should be deemed treason. He
demanded an equivalent for the crowns which the cities of Greece had at any time
offered him in the solemn games. Having forbad any one to use the colours of
amethyst and Tyrian purple, he privately sent a person to sell a few ounces of
them upon the day of the Nundinæ, and then shut up all the merchants shops, on
the pretext that his edict had been violated. It is said, that, as he was
playing and singing in the theatre, observing a married lady dressed in the
purple which he had prohibited, he pointed her out to his procurators; upon
which she was immediately dragged out of her seat, and not only stripped of her
clothes, but her property. He never nominated a person to any office without
saying to him, “You know what I want; and let us take care that nobody has any
thing he can call his own.” At last he rifled many temples of the rich offerings
with which they were stored, and melted down all the gold and silver statues,
and amongst them those of the penates, which Galba afterwards restored.
XXXIII. He began the practice of parricide and murder with Claudius himself; for
although he was not the contriver of his death, he was privy to the plot. Nor
did he make any secret of it; but used afterwards to commend, in a Greek
proverb, mushrooms as food fit for the gods, because Claudius had been poisoned
with them. He traduced his memory both by word and deed in the grossest manner;
one while charging him with folly, another while with cruelty. For he used to
say by way of jest, that he had ceased morari amongst men, pronouncing the first
syllable long; and treated as null many of his decrees and ordinances, as made
by a doting old blockhead. He enclosed the place where his body was burnt with
only a low wall of rough masonry. He attempted to poison Britannicus, as much
out of envy because he had a sweeter voice, as from apprehension of what might
ensue from the respect which the people entertained for his father’s memory. He
employed for this purpose a woman named Locusta, who had been a witness against
some persons guilty of like practices. But the poison she gave him, working more
slowly than he expected, and only causing a purge, he sent for the woman, and
beat her with his own hand, charging her with administering an antidote instead
of poison; and upon her alleging in excuse, that she had given Britannicus but a
gentle mixture in order to prevent suspicion, “Think you,” said he, “that I am
afraid of the Julian law;” and obliged her to prepare, in his own chamber and
before his eyes, as quick and strong a does as possible. This he tried upon a
kid: but the animal lingering for five hours before it expired, he ordered her
to go to work again; and when she had done, he gave the poison to a pig, which
dying immediately, he commanded the potion to be brought into the eating-room
and given to Britannicus, while he was at supper with him. The prince had no
sooner tasted it than he sunk on the floor, Nero meanwhile, pretending to the
guests, that it was only a fit of the falling sickness, to which, he said, he
was subject. He buried him the following day, in a mean and hurried way, during
violent storms of rain. He gave Locusta a pardon, and rewarded her with a great
estate in land, placing some disciples with her, to be instructed in her trade.
XXXIV. His mother being used to make strict inquiry into what he said or did,
and to reprimand him with the freedom of a parent, he was so much offended, that
he endeavoured to expose her to public resentment, by frequently pretending a
resolution to quit the government, and retire to Rhodes. Soon afterwards, he
deprived her of all honour and power, took from her the guard of Roman and
German soldiers, banished her from the palace and from his society, and
persecuted her in every way he could contrive; employing persons to harass her
when at Rome with law-suits, and to disturb her in her retirement from town with
the most scurrilous and abusive language, following her about by land and sea.
But being terrified with her menaces and violent spirit, he resolved upon her
destruction, and thrice attempted it by poison. Finding, however, that she had
previously secured herself by antidotes, he contrived machinery, by which the
floor over her bed-chamber might be made to fall upon her while she was asleep
in the night. This design miscarrying likewise, through the little caution used
by those who were in the secret, his next stratagem was to construct a ship
which could be easily shivered, in hopes of destroying her either by drowing, or
by the deck above her cabin crushing her in its fall. Accordingly, under colour
of a pretended reconciliation, he wrote her an extremely affectionate letter,
inviting her to Baiæ, to celebrate with him the festival of Minerva. He had
given private orders to the captains of the galleys which were to attend her, to
shatter to pieces the ship in which she had come, by falling foul of it, but in
such manner that it might appear to be done accidentally. He prolonged the
entertainment, for the more convenient opportunity of executing the plot in the
night; and at her return for Bauli, instead of the old ship which had conveyed
her to Baiæ, he offered that which he had contrived for her destruction. He
attended her to the vessel in a very cheerful mood, and, at parting with her,
kissed her breasts; after which he sat up very late in the night, waiting with
great anxiety to learn the issue of his project. But receiving information that
every thing had fallen out contrary to his wish, and that she had saved herself
by swimming,—not knowing what course to take, upon her freedman, Lucius Agerinus
bringing word, with great joy, that she was safe and well, he privately dropped
a poniard by him. He then commanded the freedman to be seized and put in chains,
under pretence of his having been employed by his mother to assassinate him; at
the same time ordering her to be put to death, and giving out, that, to avoid
punishment for her intended crime, she had laid violent hands upon herself.
Other circumstances, still more horrible, are related on good authority; as that
he went to view her corpse, and handling her limbs, pointed out some blemishes,
and commended other points; and that, growing thirsty during the survey, he
called for drink. Yet he was never afterwards able to bear the stings of his own
conscience for this atrocious act, although encouraged by the congratulatory
addresses of the army, the senate, and people. He frequently affirmed that he
was haunted by his mother’s ghost, and persecuted with the whips and burning
torches of the Furies. Nay, he attempted by magical rites to bring up her ghost
from below, and soften her rage against him. When he was in Greece, he durst not
attend the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, at the initiation of which,
impious and wicked persons are warned by the voice of the herald from
approaching the rites. Besides the murder of his mother, he had been guilty of
that of his aunt; for, being obliged to keep her bed in consequence of a
complaint in her bowels, he paid her a visit, and she, being then advanced in
years, stroking his downy chin, in the tenderness of affection, said to him:
“May I but live to see the day when this is shaved for the first time, and I
shall then die contented.” He turned, however, to those about him, made a jest
of it, saying, that he would have his beard immediately taken off, and ordered
the physicians to give her more violent purgatives. He seized upon her estate
before she had expired; suppressing her will, that he might enjoy the whole
himself.
XXXV. He had, besides Octavia, two other wives: Poppæa Sabina, whose father had
borne the office of quæstor, and who had been married before to a Roman knight:
and, after her, Statilia Messalina, great-grand-daughter of Taurus, who was
twice consul, and received the honour of a triumph. To obtain possession of her,
he put to death her husband, Atticus Vestinus, who was then consul. He soon
became disgusted with Octavia, and ceased from having any intercourse with her;
and being censured by his friends for it, he replied, “She ought to be satisfied
with having the rank and appendages of his wife.” Soon afterwards, he made
several attempts, but in vain, to strangle her, and then diverced her for
barrenness. But the people, disapproving of the divorce, and making severe
comments upon it, he also banished her. At last he put her to death, upon a
charge of adultery, so impudent and false, that, when all those who were put to
the torture positively denied their knowledge of it, he suborned his pedagogue,
Anicetus, to affirm, that he had secretly intrigued with and debauched her. He
married Poppæa twelve days after the divorce of Octavia, and entertained a great
affection for her; but, nevertheless, killed her with a kick which he gave her
when she was big with child, and in bad health, only because she found fault
with him for returning late from driving his chariot. He had by her a daughter,
Claudia Augusta, who died an infant. There was no person at all connected with
him who escaped his deadly and unjust cruelty. Under pretence of her being
engaged in a plot against him, he put to death Antonia, Claudius’s daughter, who
refused to marry him after the death of Poppæa. In the same way, he destroyed
all who were allied to him either by blood or marriage; amongst whom was young
Aulus Plautinus. He first compelled him to submit to his unnatural lust, and
then ordered him to be executed, crying out, “Let my mother bestow her kisses on
my successor thus defiled;” pretending that he had been his mother’s paramour,
and by her encouraged to aspire to the empire. His step-son, Rufinus Crispinus,
Poppæa’s son, though a minor, he ordered to be drowned in the sea, while he was
fishing, by his own slaves, because he was reported to act frequently amongst
his play-fellows the part of a general or an emperor. He banished Tuscus, his
nurse’s son, for presuming, when he was procurator of Egypt, to wash in the
baths which had been constructed in expectation of his own coming. Seneca, his
preceptor, he forced to kill himself, though, upon his desiring leave to retire,
and offering to surrender his estate, he solemnly swore, “that there was no
foundation for his suspicions, and that he would perish himself sooner than hurt
him.” Having promised Burrhus, the pretorian prefect, a remedy for a swelling in
his throat, he sent him poison. Some old rich freedmen of Claudius, who had
formerly not only promoted his adoption, but were also instrumental to his
advancement to the empire, and had been his governors, he took off by poison
given them in their meat or drink.
XXXVI. Nor did he proceed with less cruelty against those who were not of his
family. A blazing star, which is vulgarly supposed to portend destruction to
kings and princes, appeared above the horizon several nights successively. He
felt great anxiety on account of this phenomenon, and being informed by one
Babilus, an astrologer, that princes were used to expiate such omens by the
sacrifice of illustrious persons, and so avert the danger foreboded to their own
persons, by bringing it on the heads of their chief men, he resolved on the
destruction of the principal nobility in Rome. He was the more encouraged to
this, because he had some plausible pretence for carrying it into execution,
from the discovery of two conspiracies against him; the former and more
dangerous of which was that formed by Piso, and discovered at Rome; the other
was that of Vinicius, at Beneventum. The conspirators were brought to their
trials loaded with triple fetters. Some ingenuously confessed the charge; others
avowed that they thought the design against his life an act of favour for which
he was obliged to them, as it was impossible in any other way than by death to
relieve a person rendered infamous by crimes of the greatest enormity. The
children of those who had been condemned, were banished the city, and afterwards
either poisoned or starved to death. It is asserted that some of them, with
their tutors, and the slaves who carried their satchels, were all poisoned
together at one dinner; and others not suffered to seek their daily bread.
XXXVII. From this period he butchered, without distinction or quarter, all whom
his caprice suggested as objects for his cruelty; and upon the most frivolous
pretences. To mention only a few: Salvidienus Orfitus was accused of letting out
three taverns attached to his house in the forum to some cities for the use of
their deputies at Rome. The charge against Cassius Longinus, a lawyer who had
lost his sight, was, that he kept amongst the busts of his ancestors that of
Caius Cassius, who was concerned in the death of Julius Cæsar. The only charge
objected against Pætus Thrasea was, that he had a melancholy cast of features,
and looked like a schoolmaster. He allowed but one hour to those whom he obliged
to kill themselves; and, to prevent delay, he sent them physicians “to cure them
immediately, if they lingered beyond that time;” for so he called bleeding them
to death. There was at that time an Egyptian of a most voracious appetite, who
would digest raw flesh, or any thing else that was given him. It was credibly
reported, that the emperor was extremely desirous of furnishing him with living
men to tear and devour. Being elated with his great success in the perpetration
of crimes, he declared, “that no prince before himself ever knew the extent of
his power.” He threw out strong intimations that he would not even spare the
senators who survived, but would entirely extirpate that order, and put the
provinces and armies into the hands of the Roman knights and his own freedmen.
It is certain that he never gave or vouchsafed to allow any one the customary
kiss, either on entering or departing, or even returned a salute. And at the
inauguration of a work, the cut through the Isthmus, he, with a loud voice,
amidst the assembled multitude, uttered a prayer, that “the undertaking might
prove fortunate for himself and the Roman people,” without taking the smallest
notice of the senate.
XXXVIII. He spared, moreover, neither the people of Rome, nor the capital of his
country. Somebody in conversation saying—
Ἐμοῦ ϑανόντος γαῖα μιχϑήτω πυϱί·
When I am dead let fire devour the world—
“Nay,” said he, “let it be while I am living” [ἐμοῦ ξῶντος]. And he acted
accordingly: for, pretending to be disgusted with the old buildings, and the
narrow and winding streets, he set the city on fire so openly, that many of
consular rank caught his own household servants on their property with tow, and
torches in their hands, but durst not meddle with them. There being near his
Golden House some granaries, the site of which he exceedingly coveted, they were
battered as if with machines of war, and set on fire, the walls being built of
stone. During six days and seven nights this terrible devastation continued, the
people being obliged to fly to the tombs and monuments for lodging and shelter.
Meanwhile, a vast number of stately buildings, the houses of generals celebrated
in former times, and even then still decorated with the spoils of war, were laid
in ashes; as well as the temples of the gods, which had been vowed and dedicated
by the kings of Rome, and afterwards in the Punic and Gallic wars: in short,
every thing that was remarkable and worthy to be seen which time had spared.
This fire he beheld from a tower in the house of Mecænas, and “being greatly
delighted,” as he said, “with the beautiful effects of the conflagration,” he
sung a poem on the ruin of Troy, in the tragic dress he used on the stage. To
turn this calamity to his own advantage by plunder and rapine, he promised to
remove the bodies of those who had perished in the fire, and clear the rubbish
at his own expense; suffering no one to meddle with the remains of their
property. But he not only received, but exacted contributions on account of the
loss, until he had exhausted the means both of the provinces and private
persons.
XXXIX. To these terrible and shameful calamities brought upon the people by
their prince, were added some proceeding from misfortune. Such were a
pestilence, by which, within the space of one autumn, there died no less than
thirty thousand persons, as appeared from the registers in the temple of
Libitina; a great disaster in Britain, where two of the principal towns
belonging to the Romans were plundered; and a dreadful havoc made both amongst
our troops and allies; a shameful discomfiture of the army of the East; where,
in Armenia, the legions were obliged to pass under the yoke, and it was with
great difficulty that Syria was retained. Amidst all these disasters, it was
strange, and, indeed, particularly remarkable, that he bore nothing more
patiently than the scurrilous language and railing abuse which was in every
one’s mouth; treating no class of persons with more gentleness, than those who
assailed him with invective and lampoons. Many things of that kind were posted
up about the city, or otherwise published, both in Greek and Latin: such as
these,
Νέϱων, Οϱέστης, Ἀλϰμαίων, μητϱοϰτόνοι.
Νεόνυμφον Νέρων, ἰδίαν μήτερ’ ἀπέϰτεινεν.
Orestes and Alcmæon—Nero too,
The lustful Nero, worst of all the crew,
Fresh from his bridal—their own mothers slew.
Quis neget Aeneæ magna de stirpe Neronem?
Sustulit hic matrem: sustulit ille patrem.
Sprung from Aeneas, pious, wise and great,
Who says that Nero is degenerate?
Safe through the flames, one bore his sire; the other,
To save himself, took off his loving mother.
Dum tendit citharam noster, dum cornua Parthus,
Noster erit Pæan, ille ἑκατηβέλετης.
His lyre to harmony our Nero strings;
His arrows o’er the plain the Parthian wings:
Ours call the tuneful Pæan,—famed in war,
The other Phœbus name, the god who shoots afar.
Roma domus fiet: Vejos migrate, Quirites,
Si non et Vejos occupat ista domus.
All Rome will be one house: to Veii fly,
Should it not stretch to Veii, by and by.
But he neither made any inquiry after the authors, nor when information was laid
before the senate against some of them, would he allow a severe sentence to be
passed. Isidorus, the Cynic philosopher, said to him aloud, as he was passing
along the streets, “You sing the misfortunes of Nauplius well, but behave badly
yourself.” And Datus, a comic actor, when repeating these words in the piece,
“Farewell, father! Farewell mother!” mimicked the gestures of persons drinking
and swimming, significantly alluding to the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina:
and on uttering the last clause,
Orcus vobis ducit pedes;
You stand this moment on the brink of Orcus;
he plainly intimated his application of it to the precarious position of the
senate. Yet Nero only banished the player and philosopher from the city and
Italy; either because he was insensible to shame, or from apprehension that if
he discovered his vexation, still keener things might be said of him.
XL. The world, after tolerating such an emperor for little less than fourteen
years, at length forsook him; the Gauls. headed by Julius Vindex, who at that
time governed the province as pro-prætor, being the first to revolt. Nero had
been formerly told by astrologers, that it would be his fortune to be at last
deserted by all the world; and this occasioned that celebrated saying of his,
“An artist can live in any country;” by which he meant to offer as an excuse for
his practice of music, that it was not only his amusement as a prince, but might
be his support when reduced to a private station. Yet some of the astrologers
promised him, in his forlorn state, the rule of the East, and some in express
words the kingdom of Jerusalem. But the greater part of them flattered him with
assurances of his being restored to his former fortune. And being most inclined
to believe the latter prediction, upon losing Britain and Armenia, he imagined
he had run through all the misfortunes which the fates had decreed him. But
when, upon consulting the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, he was advised to beware
of the seventy-third year, as if he were not to die till then, never thinking of
Galba’s age, he conceived such hopes, not only of living to advanced years, but
of constant and singular good fortune, that having lost some things of great
value by shipwreck, he scrupled not to say amongst his friends, that “the fishes
would bring them back to him.” At Naples he heard of the insurrection in Gaul,
on the anniversary of the day on which he killed his mother, and bore it with so
much unconcern, as to excite a suspicion that he was really glad of it, since he
had now a fair opportunity of plundering those wealthy provinces by the right of
war. Immediately going to the gymnasium, he witnessed the exercise of the
wrestlers with the greatest delight. Being interrupted at supper with letters
which brought yet worse news, he expressed no greater resentment, than only to
threaten the rebels. For eight days together, he never attempted to answer any
letters, nor give any orders, but buried the whole affair in profound silence.
XLI. Being roused at last by numerous proclamations of Vindex, treating him with
reproaches and contempt, he in a letter to the senate exhorted them to avenge
his wrongs and those of the republic; desiring them to excuse his not appearing
in the senate house, because he had got cold. But nothing so much galled him, as
to find himself railed at as a pitiful harper, and, instead of Nero, styled
Aenobarbus: which being his family name, since he was upbraided with it, he
declared that he would resume it, and lay aside the name he had taken by
adoption. Passing by the other accusations as wholly groundless, he earnestly
refuted that of his want of skill in an art upon which he had bestowed so much
pains, and in which he had arrived at such perfection; asking frequently those
about him, “if they knew any one who was a more accomplished musician?” But
being alarmed by messengers after messengers of ill news from Gaul, he returned
in great consternation to Rome. On the road, his mind was somewhat relieved, by
observing the frivolous omen of a Gaulish soldier defeated and dragged by the
hair by a Roman knight, which was sculptured on a monument; so that he leaped
for joy, and adored the heavens. Even then he made no appeal either to the
senate or people, but calling together some of the leading men at his own house,
he held a hasty consultation upon the present state of affairs, and then, during
the remainder of the day, carried them about with him to view some musical
instruments, of a new invention, which were played by water; exhibitin all the
parts, and discoursing upon the principles and difficulties of the contrivance;
which, he told them, he intended to produce in the theatre, if Vindex would give
him leave.
XLII. Soon afterwards, he received intelligence that Galba and the Spaniards had
declared against him; upon which, he fainted, and losing his reason, lay a long
time speechless, and apparently dead. As soon as he recovered from this state of
stupefaction, he tore his clothes, and beat his head, crying out, “It is all
over with me!” His nurse endeavouring to comfort him, and telling him that the
like things had happened to other princes before him, he replied, “I am beyond
all example wretched, for I have lost an empire whilst I am still living.” He,
nevertheless, abated nothing of his usual luxury and inattention to business.
Nay, on the arrival of good news from the provinces, he, at a sumptuous
entertainment, sung with an air of merriment some jovial verses upon the leaders
of the revolt, which were made public; and accompanied them with suitable
gestures. Being carried privately to the theatre, he sent word to an actor who
was applauded by the spectators, “that he had it all his own way, now that he
himself did not appear on the stage.”
XLIII. At the first breaking out of these troubles, it is believed that he had
formed many designs of a monstrous nature, although conformable enough to his
natural disposition. These were to send new governors and commanders to the
provinces and the armies, and employ assassins to butcher all the former
governors and commanders, as men unanimously engaged in a conspiracy against
him; to massacre the exiles in every quarter, and all the Gaulish population in
Rome; the former lest they should join the insurrection; the latter as privy to
the designs of their countrymen, and ready to support them; to abandon Gaul
itself, to be wasted and plundered by his armies; to poison the whole senate at
a feast; to fire the city, and then let loose the wild beasts upon the people,
in order to impede their stopping the progress of the flames. But being deterred
from the execution of these designs, not so much by remorse of conscience, as by
despair of being able to effect them; and judging an expedition into Gaul
necessary, he removed the consuls from their office, before the time of its
expiration was arrived; and in their room assumed the consulship himself without
a colleague, as if the fates had decreed that Gaul should not be conquered, but
by a consul Upon assuming the fasces, after an entertainment at the palace, as
he walked out of the room leaning on the arms of some of his friends, he
declared, that as soon as he arrived in the province, he would make his
appearance amongst the troops, unarmed, and do nothing but weep: and that, after
he had brought the mutineers to repentance, he would, the next day, in the
public rejoicings, sing songs of triumph, which he must now, without loss of
time, apply himself to compose.
XLIV. In preparing for this expedition, his first care was to provide carriages
for his musical instruments and machinery to be used upon the stage; to have the
hair of the concubines he carried with him dressed in the fashion of men; and to
supply them with battle-axes, and Amazonian bucklers. He summoned the
city-tribes to enlist; but no qualified persons appearing, he ordered all
masters to send a certain number of slaves, the best they had, not excepting
their stewards and secretaries. He commanded the several orders of the people to
bring in a fixed proportion of their estates, as they stood in the censor’s
books; all tenants of houses and mansions to pay one year’s rent forth with into
the exchequer; and, with unheard-of strictness, would receive only new coin of
the purest silver and the finest gold; insomuch that most people refused to pay,
crying out unanimously that he ought to squeeze the informers, and oblige them
to surrender their gains.
XLV. The general odium in which he was held received an increase by the great
scarcity of corn, and an occurrence connected with it. For, as it happened just
at that time, there arrived from Alexandria a ship, which was said to be
freighted with dust for the wrestlers belonging to the emperor. This so much
inflamed the public rage, that he was treated with the utmost abuse and
scurrility. Upon the top of one of his statues was placed the figure of a
chariot with a Greek inscription, that “Now indeed he had a race to run; let him
be gone.” A little bag was tied about another, with a ticket containing these
words; “What could I do?”—“Truly thou hast merited the sack.” Some person
likewise wrote on the pillars in the forum, “that he had even woke the cocks
with his singing.” And many, in the night-time, pretending to find fault with
their servants, frequently called for a Vindex.
XLVI. He was also terrified with manifest warnings, both old and new, arising
from dreams, auspices, and omens. He had never been used to dream before the
murder of his mother. After that event, he fancied in his sleep that he was
steering a ship, and that the rudder was forced from him: that he was dragged by
his wife Octavia into a prodigiously dark place; and was at one time covered
over with a vast swarm of winged ants, and at another, surrounded by the
national images which were set up near Pompey’s theatre, and hindered from
advancing farther; that a Spanish jennet he was fond of, had his hinder parts so
changed, as to resemble those of an ape; and having his head only left
unaltered, neighed very harmoniously. The doors of the mausoleum of Augustus
flying open of themselves, there issued from it a voice, calling on him by name.
The Lares being adorned with fresh garlands on the calends (the first) of
January, fell down during the preparations for sacrificing to them. While he was
taking the omens, Sporus presented him with a ring, the stone of which had
carved upon it the Rape of Proserpine. When a great multitude of the several
orders was assembled, to attend at the solemnity of making vows to the gods, it
was a long time before the keys of the Capitol could be found. And when, in a
speech of his to the senate against Vindex, these words were read, “that the
miscreants should be punished and soon make the end they merited,” they all
cried out, “You will do it, Augustus.” It was likewise remarked, that the last
tragic piece which he sung, was Œdipus in Exile, and that he fell as he was
repeating this verse:
Θανεῖν μ’ ἄνῳγε σύγγαμος, μήτηρ, πατήρ·
Wife, mother, father, force me to my end.
XLVII. Meanwhile, on the arrival of the news, that the rest of the armies had
declared against him, he tore to pieces the letters which were delivered to him
at dinner, overthrew the table, and dashed with violence against the ground two
favourite cups, which he called Homer’s, because some of that poet’s verses were
cut upon them. Then taking from Locusta a dose of poison, which he put up in a
golden box, he went into the Servilian gardens, and thence dispatching a trusty
freedman to Ostia, with orders to make ready a fleet, he endeavoured to prevail
with some tribunes and centurions of the pretorian guards to attend him in his
flight; but part of them showing no great inclination to comply, others
absolutely refusing, and one of them crying out aloud,
Usque adeone mori miserum est?
Say, is it then so sad a thing to die?
he was in great perplexity whether he should submit himself to Galba, or apply
to the Parthians for protection, or else appear before the people dressed in
mourning, and, upon the rostra, in the most piteous manner, beg pardon for his
past misdemeanors, and, if he could not prevail, request of them to grant him at
least the government of Egypt. A speech to this purpose was afterwards found in
his writing-case. But it is conjectured that he durst not venture upon this
project, for fear of being torn to pieces, before he could get to the forum.
Deferring, therefore, his resolution until the next day, he awoke about
midnight, and finding the guards withdrawn, he leaped out of bed, and sent round
for his friends. But none of them vouchsafing any message in reply, he went with
a few attendants to their houses. The doors being every where shut, and no one
giving him any answer, he returned to his bed-chamber; whence those who had the
charge of it had all now eloped; some having gone one way, and some another,
carrying off with them his bedding and box of poison. He then endeavoured to
find Spicillus, the gladiator, or some one to kill him; but not being able to
procure any one, “What!” said he, “have I then neither friend nor foe?” and
immediately ran out, as if he would throw himself into the Tiber.
XLVIII. But this furious impulse subsiding, he wished for some place of privacy,
where he might collect his thoughts; and his freedman Phaon offering him his
country-house, between the Salarian and Nomentan roads, about four miles from
the city, he mounted a horse, barefoot as he was, and in his tunic, only
slipping over it an old soiled cloak; with his head muffled up, and an
handkerchief before his face, and four persons only to attend him, of whom
Sporus was one. He was suddenly struck with horror by an earthquake, and by a
flash of lightning which darted full in his face, and heard from the
neighbouring camp the shouts of the soldiers, wishing his destruction, and
prosperity to Galba. He also heard a traveller they met on the road, say, “They
are in pursuit of Nero:” and another ask, “Is there any news in the city about
Nero?” Uncovering his face when his horse was started by the scent of a carcase
which lay in the road, he was recognized and saluted by an old soldier who had
been discharged from the guards. When they came to the lane which turned up to
the house, they quitted their horses, and with much difficulty he wound among
bushes and briars, and along a track through a bed of rushes, over which they
spread their cloaks for him to walk on. Having reached a wall at the back of the
villa, Phaon advised him to hide himself awhile in a sand-pit; when he replied,
“I will not go under-ground alive.” Staying there some little time, while
preparations were made for bringing him privately into the villa, he took up
some water out of a neighbouring tank in his hand, to drink, saying, “This is
Nero’s distilled water.” Then his cloak having been torn by the brambles, he
pulled out the thorns which stuck in it. At last, being admitted, creeping upon
his hands and knees, through a hole made for him in the wall, he lay down in the
first closet he came to, upon a miserable pallet, with an old coverlet thrown
over it; and being both hungry and thirsty, though he refused some coarse bread
that was brought him, he drank a little warm water.
XLIX. All who surrounded him now pressing him to save himself from the
indignities which were ready to befall him, he ordered a pit to be sunk before
his eyes, of the size of his body, and the bottom to be covered with pieces of
marble put together, if any could be found about the house; and water and wood,
to be got ready for immediate use about his corpse; weeping at every thing that
was done, and frequently saying, “What an artist is now about to perish!”
Meanwhile, letters being brought in by a servant belonging to Phaon, he snatched
them out of his hand, and there read, “That he had been declared an enemy by the
senate, and that search was making for him, that he might be punished according
to the ancient custom of the Romans.” He then inquired what kind of punishment
that was; and being told, that the practice was to strip the criminal naked, and
scourge him to death, while his neck was fastened within a forked stake, he was
so terrified that he took up two daggers which he had brought with him, and
after feeling the points of both, put them up again, saying, “The fatal hour is
not yet come.” One while, he begged of Sporus to begin to wail and lament;
another while, he entreated that one of them would set him an example by killing
himself; and then again, he condemned his own want of resolution in these words:
“I yet live to my shame and disgrace: this is not becoming for Nero: it is not
becoming. Thou oughtest in such circumstances to have a good heart: Come, then:
courage, man!” The horsemen who had received orders to bring him away alive,
were now approaching the house. As soon as he heard them coming, he uttered with
a trembling voice the following verse,
Ἵππων μ’ ὠϰυπόδων ἀμφὶ ϰτύπος οὐατα βάλλει·
The noise of swift-heel’d steeds assails my ears;
he drove a dagger into his throat, being assisted in the act by Epaphroditus,
his secretary. A centurion bursting in just as he was half-dead, and applying
his cloak to the wound, pretending that he was come to his assistance, he made
no other reply but this, “ ’Tis too late;” and “Is this your loyalty?”
Immediately after pronouncing these words, he expired, with his eyes fixed and
starting out of his head, to the terror of all who beheld him. He had requested
of his attendants, as the most essential favour, that they would let no one have
his head, but that by all means his body might be burnt entire. And this, Icelus,
Galba’s freedman, granted. He had but a little before been discharged from the
prison into which he had been thrown, when the disturbances first broke out.
L. The expenses of his funeral amounted to two hundred thousand sesterces; the
bed upon which his body was carried to the pile and burnt, being covered with
the white robes, interwoven with gold, which he had worn upon the calends of
January preceding. His nurses, Ecloge and Alexandra, with his concubine Acte,
deposited his remains in the tomb belonging to the family of the Domitii, which
stands upon the top of the Hill of the Gardens, and is to be seen from the
Campus Martius. In that monument, a coffin of porphyry, with an altar of marble
of Luna over it, is enclosed by a wall built of stone brought from Thasos.
LI. In stature he was a little below the common height; his skin was foul and
spotted; his hair inclined to yellow: his features were agreeable, rather than
handsome; his eyes grey and dull, his neck was thick, his belly prominent, his
legs very slender, his constitution sound. For, though excessively luxurious in
his mode of living, he had, in the course of fourteen years, only three fits of
sickness; which were so slight, that he neither forbore the use of wine, nor
made any alteration in his usual diet. In his dress, and the care of his person,
he was so careless, that he had his hair cut in rings, one above another; and
when in Achaia, he let it grow long behind; and he generally appeared in public
in the loose dress which he used at table, with a handkerchief about his neck,
and without either a girdle or shoes.
LII. He was instructed, when a boy, in the rudiments of almost all the liberal
sciences; but his mother diverted him from the study of philosophy, as unsuited
to one destined to be an emperor; and his preceptor, Seneca, discouraged him
from reading the ancient orators, that he might longer secure his devotion to
himself. Therefore, having a turn for poetry, he composed verses both with
pleasure and case; nor did he, as some think, publish those of other writers as
his own. Several little pocket-books and loose sheets have come into my
possession, which contain some well-known verses in his own hand, and written in
such a manner, that it was very evident, from the blotting and interlining, that
they had not been transcribed from a copy, nor dictated by another, but were
written by the composer of them.
LIII. He had likewise great taste for drawing and painting, as well as for
moulding statues in plaster. But, above all things, he most eagerly coveted
popularity, being the rival of every man who obtained the applause of the people
for any thing he did. It was the general belief, that, after the crowns he won
by his performances on the stage, he would the next lustrum have taken his place
among the wrestlers at the Olympic games. For he was continually practising that
art; nor did he witness the gymnastic games in any part of Greece otherwise than
sitting upon the ground in the stadium, as the umpires do. And if a pair of
wrestlers happened to break the bounds, he would with his own hands drag them
back into the centre of the circle. Because he was thought to equal Apollo in
music, and the sun in chariot-driving, he resolved also to imitate the
achievements of Hercules. And they say that a lion was got ready for him to
kill, either with a club, or with a close hug, in view of the people in the
amphitheatre; which he was to perform naked.
LIV. Towards the end of his life, he publicly vowed, that if his power in the
state was securely re-established, he would, in the spectacles which he intended
to exhibit in honour of his success, include a performance upon organs, as well
as upon flutes and bagpipes, and, on the last day of the games, would act in the
play, and take the part of Turnus, as we find it in Virgil. And there are some
who say, that he put to death the player Paris as a dangerous rival.
LV. He had an insatiable desire to immortalize his name, and acquire a
reputation which should last through all succeeding ages; but it was
capriciously directed. He therefore took from several things and places their
former appellations, and gave them new names derived from his own. He called the
month of April, Neroneus, and designed changing the name of Rome into that of
Neropolis.
LVI. He held all religious rites in contempt, except those of the Syrian
Goddess; but at last he paid her so little reverence, that he made water upon
her; being now engaged in another superstition, in which only he obstinately
persisted. For having received from some obscure plebeian a little image of a
girl, as a preservative against plots, and discovering a conspiracy immediately
after, he constantly worshipped his imaginary protectress as the greatest
amongst the gods, offering to her three sacrifices daily. He was also desirous
to have it supposed that he had, by revelations from this deity, a knowledge of
future events. A few months before he died, he attended a sacrifice, according
to the Etruscan rites, but the omens were not favourable.
LVII. He died in the thirty-second year of his age, upon the same day on which
he had formerly put Octavia to death; and the public joy was so great upon the
occasion, that the common people ran about the city with caps upon their heads.
Some, however, were not wanting, who for a long time decked his tomb with spring
and summer flowers. Sometimes they placed his image upon the rostra, dressed in
robes of state; at another, they published proclamations in his name, as if he
were still alive, and would shortly return to Rome, and take vengeance on all
his enemies. Vologesus, king of the Parthians, when he sent ambassadors to the
senate to renew his alliance with the Roman people, earnestly requested that due
honour should be paid to the memory of Nero; and, to conclude, when, twenty
years afterwards, at which time I was a young man, some person of obscure birth
gave himself out for Nero, that name secured him so favourable a reception from
the Parthians, that he was very zealously supported, and it was with much
difficulty that they were prevailed upon to give him up.
Though no law had ever passed for regulating the transmission of the imperial
power, yet the design of conveying it by lineal descent was implied in the
practice of adoption. By the rule of hereditary succession, Britannicus, the son
of Claudius, was the natural heir to the throne; but he was supplanted by the
artifices of his stepmother, who had the address to procure it for her own son,
Nero. From the time of Augustus it had been the custom of each of the new
sovereigns to commence his reign in such a manner as tended to acquire
popularity, however much they all afterwards degenerated from those specious
beginnings. Whether this proceeded entirely from policy, or that nature was not
yet vitiated by the intoxication of uncontrolled power, is uncertain; but such
were the excesses into which they afterwards plunged, that we can scarcely
exempt any of them except, perhaps, Claudius, from the imputation of great
original depravity. The vicious temper of Tiberius was known to his own mother,
Livia; that of Caligula had been obvious to those about him from his infancy;
Claudius seems to have had naturally a stronger tendency to weakness than to
vice; but the inherent wickedness of Nero was discovered at an early period by
his preceptor, Seneca. Yet even this emperor commenced his reign in a manner
which procured him approbation. Of all the Roman emperors who had hitherto
reigned, he seems to have been most corrupted by profligate favourites, who
flattered his follies and vices, to promote their own aggrandisement. In the
number of these was Tigellinus, who met at last with the fate which he had so
amply merited.
The several reigns from the death of Augustus present us with uncommon scenes of
cruelty and horror; but it was reserved for that of Nero to exhibit to the world
the atrocious act of an emperor deliberately procuring the death of his mother.
Julia Agrippina was the daughter of Germanicus, and married Domitius Aenobarbus,
by whom she had Nero. At the death of Messalina she was a widow; and Claudius,
her uncle, entertaining a design of entering again into the married state, she
aspired to an incestuous alliance with him, in competition with Lollia Paulina,
a woman of beauty and intrigue, who had been married to C. Cæsar. The two rivals
were strongly supported by their respective parties; but Agrippina, by her
superior interest with the emperor’s favourites, and the familiarity to which
her near relation gave her a claim, obtained the preference; and the portentous
nuptials of the emperor and his niece were publicly solemnized in the palace.
Whether she was prompted to this flagrant indecency by personal ambition alone,
or by the desire of procuring the succession to the empire for her son, is
uncertain; but there remains no doubt of her having removed Claudius by poison,
with a view to the object now mentioned. Besides Claudius, she projected the
death of L. Silanus, and she accomplished that of his brother, Junius Silanus,
by means likewise of poison. She appears to have been richly endowed with the
gifts of nature, but in her disposition intriguing, violent, imperious, and
ready to sacrifice every principle of virtue, in the pursuit of supreme power or
sensual gratification. As she resembled Livia in the ambition of a mother, and
the means by which she indulged it, so she more than equalled her in the
ingratitude of an unnatural son and a parricide. She is said to have left behind
her some memoirs, of which Tacitus availed himself in the composition of his
Annals.
In this reign, the conquest of the Britons still continued to be the principal
object of military enterprise, and Suetonius Paulinus was invested with the
command of the Roman army employed in the reduction of that people. The island
of Mona, now Anglesey, being the chief seat of the Druids, he resolved to
commence his operations with attacking a place which was the centre of
superstition, and to which the vanquished Britons retreated as the last asylum
of liberty. The inhabitants endeavoured, both by force of arms and the terrors
of religion, to obstruct his landing on this sacred island. The women and Druids
assembled promiscuously with the soldiers upon the shore, where running about in
wild disorder, with flaming torches in their hands, and pouring forth the most
hideous exclamations, they struck the Romans with consternation. But Suetonius
animating his troops, they boldly attacked the inhabitants, routed them in the
field, and burned the Druids in the same fires which had been prepared by those
priests for the catastrophe of the invaders, destroying at the same time all the
consecrated groves and altars in the island. Suetonius having thus triumphed
over the religion of the Britons, flattered himself with the hopes of soon
effecting the reduction of the people. But they, encouraged by his absence, had
taken arms, and under the conduct of Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, who had been
treated in the most ignominious manner by the Roman tribunes, had already driven
the haughty invaders from their several settlements. Suetonius hastened to the
protection of London, which was by this time a flourishing Roman colony; but he
found upon his arrival, that any attempt to preserve it would be attended with
the utmost danger to the army. London therefore was reduced to ashes; and the
Romans, and all strangers, to the number of seventy thousand, were put to the
sword without distinction, the Britons seeming determined to convince the enemy
that they would acquiesce in no other terms than a total evacuation of the
island. This massacre, however, was revenged by Suetonius in a decisive
engagement, where eighty thousand of the Britons are said to have been killed;
after which, Boadicea, to avoid falling into the hands of the insolent
conquerors, put a period to her own life by means of poison. It being judged
unadvisable that Suetonius should any longer conduct the war against a people
whom he had exasperated by his severity, he was recalled, and Petronius
Turpilianus appointed in his room. The command was afterwards given successively
to Trebellius Maximus and Vettius Bolanus; but the plan pursued by these
generals was only to retain, by a conciliatory administration, the parts of the
island which had already submitted to the Roman arms.
During these transactions in Britain, Nero himself was exhibiting, in Rome or
some of the provinces, such scenes of extravagance as almost exceed credibility.
In one place, entering the lists amongst the competitors in a chariot race; in
another, contending for victory with the common musicians on the stage;
revelling in open day in the company of the most abandoned prostitutes and the
vilest of men; in the night, committing depredations on the peaceful inhabitants
of the capital; polluting with detestable lust, or drenching with human blood,
the streets, the palace, and the habitations of private families; and, to crown
his enormities, setting fire to Rome, while he sung with delight in beholding
the dreadful conflagration. In vain would history be ransacked for a parallel to
this emperor, who united the most shameful vices to the most extravagant vanity,
the most abject meanness to the strongest but most preposterous ambition; and
the whole of whose life was one continued scene of lewdness, sensuality, rapine,
cruelty, and folly. It is emphatically observed by Tacitus, “that Nero, after
the murder of many illustrious personages, manifested a desire of extirpating
virtue itself.”
Among the excesses of Nero’s reign, are to be mentioned the horrible cruelties
exercised against the Christians in various parts of the empire, in which
inhuman transactions the natural barbarity of the emperor was inflamed by the
prejudices and interested policy of the pagan priesthood.
The tyrant scrupled not to charge them with the act of burning Rome; and he
satiated his fury against them by such outrages as are unexampled in history.
They were covered with the skins of wild beasts, and torn by dogs; were
crucified, and set on fire, that they might serve for lights in the night-time.
Nero offered his gardens for this spectacle, and exhibited the games of the
Circus by this dreadful illumination. Sometimes they were covered with wax and
other combustible materials, after which a sharp stake was put under their chin,
to make them stand upright, and they were burnt alive, to give light to the
spectators.
In the person of Nero, it is observed by Suetonius, the race of the Cæsars
became extinct; a race rendered illustrious by the first and second emperors,
but which their successors no less disgraced. The despotism of Julius Cæsar,
though haughty and imperious, was liberal and humane: that of Augustus, if we
exclude a few instances of vindictive severity towards individuals, was mild and
conciliating; but the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero (for we except
Claudius from part of the censurer, while discriminated from each other by some
peculiar circumstances, exhibited the most flagrant acts of licentiousness and
perverted authority. The most abominable lust, the most extravagant luxury, the
most shameful rapaciousness, and the most inhuman cruelty, constitute the
general characteristics of those capricious and detestable tyrants. Repeated
experience now clearly refuted the opinion of Augustus, that he had introduced
amongst the Romans the best form of government: but while we make this
observation, it is proper to remark, that, had he even restored the republic,
there is reason to believe that the nation would again have been soon distracted
with internal divisions, and a perpetual succession of civil wars. The manners
of the people were become too dissolute to be restrained by the authority of
elective and temporary magistrates; and the Romans were hastening to that fatal
period when general and great corruption, with its attendant debility, would
render them an easy prey to any foreign invaders.
But the odious government of the emperors was not the only grievance under which
the people laboured in those disastrous times: patrician avarice concurred with
imperial rapacity to increase the sufferings of the nation. The senators, even
during the commonwealth, had become openly corrupt in the dispensation of public
justice; and under the government of the emperors, this pernicious abuse was
practised to a yet greater extent. That class being now, equally with other
Roman citizens, dependent on the sovereign power, their sentiments of duty and
honour were degraded by the loss of their former dignity; and being likewise
deprived of the lucrative governments of provinces, to which they had annually
succeeded by an elective rotation in the times of the republic, they endeavoured
to compensate the reduction of their emoluments by an unbounded venality in the
judicial decisions of the forum. Every source of national happiness and
prosperity was by this means destroyed. The possession of property became
precarious; industry, in all its branches, was effectually discouraged, and the
amor patriæ, which had formerly been the animating principle of the nation, was
almost universally extinguished.
It is a circumstance corresponding to the general singularity of the present
reign, that, of the few writers who flourished in it, and whose works have been
transmitted to posterity, two ended their days by the order of the emperor, and
the third, from indignation at his conduct. These unfortunate victims were
Seneca, Petronius Arbiter, and Lucan.
Seneca was born about six years before the Christian æra, and gave early
indication of uncommon talents. His father, who had come from Corduba to Rome,
was a man of letters, particularly fond of declamation, in which he instructed
his son, and placed him, for the acquisition of philosophy, under the most
celebrated stoics of that age. Young Seneca, imbibing the precepts of the
Pythagorean doctrine, religiously abstained from eating the flesh of animals,
until Tiberius having threatened to punish some Jews and Egyptians, who
abstained from certain meats, he was persuaded by his father to renounce the
Pythagorean practice. Seneca displayed the talents of an eloquent speaker; but
dreading the jealousy of Caligula, who aspired to the same excellence, he
thought proper to abandon that pursuit, and apply himself towards suing for the
honours and offices of the state. He accordingly obtained the place of quæstor,
in which office incurring the imputation of a scandalous amour with Julia Livia,
he removed from Rome, and was banished by the emperor Claudius to Corsica.
Upon the marriage of Claudius with Agrippina, Seneca was recalled from his
exile, in which he had remained near eight years, and was appointed to
superintend the education of Nero, now destined to become the successor to the
throne. In the character of preceptor he appears to have acquitted himself with
ability and credit; though he has been charged by his enemies with having
initiated his pupil in those detestable vices which disgraced the reign of Nero.
Could he have indeed been guilty of such immoral conduct, it is probable that he
would not so easily have forfeited the favour of that emperor; and it is more
reasonable to suppose, that his disapprobation of Nero’s conduct was the real
cause of that odium which soon after proved fatal to him. By the enemies whom
distinguished merit and virtue never fail to excite at a profligate court,
Seneca was accused of having maintained a criminal correspondence with Agrippina
in the life-time of Claudius; but the chief author of this calumny was Suilius,
who had been banished from Rome at the instance of Seneca. He was likewise
charged with having amassed exorbitant riches, with having built magnificent
houses, and formed beautiful gardens, during the four years in which he had
acted as preceptor to Nero. This charge he considered as a prelude to his
destruction; which to avoid, if possible, he requested of the emperor to accept
of the riches and possessions which he had acquired in his situation at court,
and to permit him to withdraw himself into a life of studious retirement. Nero,
dissembling his secret intentions, refused this request; and Seneca, that he
might obviate all cause of suspicion or offence, kept himself at home for some
time, under the pretext of indisposition.
Upon the breaking out of the conspiracy of Piso, in which some of the principal
senators were concerned, Natalis, the discoverer of the plot, mentioned Seneca’s
name, as an accessory. There is, however, no satisfactory evidence that Seneca
had any knowledge of the plot. Piso, according to the declaration of Natalis,
had complained that he never saw Seneca; and the latter had observed, in answer,
that it was not conducive to their common interest to see each other often.
Seneca likewise pleaded indisposition, and said that his own life depended upon
the safety of Piso’s person. Nero, however, glad of such an occasion of
sacrificing the philosopher to his secret jealousy, sent him an order to destroy
himself. When the messenger arrived with this mandate, Seneca was sitting at
table, with his wife Paulina and two of his friends. He heard the message not
only with philosophical firmness, but even with symptoms of joy, and observed,
that such an honour might long have been expected from a man who had
assassinated all his friends, and even murdered his own mother. The only request
which he made, was, that he might be permitted to dispose of his possessions as
he pleased; but this was refused him. Immediately turning himself to his
friends, who were weeping at his melancholy fate, he said to them, that, since
he could not leave them what he considered as his own property, he should leave
at least his own life for an example; an innocence of conduct which they might
imitate, and by which they might acquire immortal fame. He remonstrated with
composure against their unavailing tears and lamentations, and asked them,
whether they had not learnt better to sustain the shocks of fortune, and the
violence of tyranny?
The emotions of his wife he endeavoured to allay with philosophical consolation;
and when she expressed a resolution to die with him, he said, that he was glad
to find his example imitated with so much fortitude. The veins of both were
opened at the same time; but Nero’s command extending only to Seneca, the life
of Paulina was preserved; and, according to some authors, she was not displeased
at being prevented from carrying her precipitate resolution into effect.
Seneca’s veins bleeding but slowly, an opportunity was offered him of displaying
in his last moments a philosophical magnanimity similar to that of Socrates; and
it appears that his conversation during this solemn period was maintained with
dignified composure. To accelerate his lingering fate, he drank a dose of
poison; but this producing no effect, he ordered his attendants to carry him
into a warm bath, for the purpose of rendering the hæmorrhage from his veins
more copious. This expedient proving likewise ineffectual, and the soldiers who
witnessed the execution of the emperor’s order being clamorous for its
accomplishment, he was removed into a stove, and suffocated by the steam. He
underwent his fate on the 12th of April, in the sixty-fifth year of the
Christian æra, and the fifty-third year of his age. His body was burnt, and his
ashes deposited in a private manner, according to his will, which had been made
during the period when he was in the highest degree of favour with Nero.
The writings of Seneca are numerous, and on various subjects. His first
composition, addressed to Novacus, is on Anger, and continued through three
books. After giving a lively description of this passion, the author discusses a
variety of questions concerning it: he argues strongly against its utility, in
contradiction to the peripatetics, and recommends its restraint, by many just
and excellent considerations. This treatise may be regarded, in its general
outlines, as a philosophical amplification of the passage in Horace:—
Ira furor brevis est: animum rege; qui, nisi paret,
Imperat: hunc frænis, hunc tu compesce catenâ.
Epist. I. ii.
Anger’s a fitful madness: rein thy mind,
Subdue the tyrant, and in fetters bind,
Or be thyself the slave.
The next treatise is on Consolation, addressed to his mother, Helvia, and was
written during his exile. He there informs his mother that he bears his
banishment with fortitude, and advises her to do the same. He observes, that, in
respect to himself, change of place, poverty, ignominy, and contempt, are not
real evils; that there may be two reasons for her anxiety on his account; first,
that, by his absence, she is deprived of his protection; and in the next place,
of the satisfaction arising from his company; on both which heads he suggests a
variety of pertinent observations. Prefixed to this treatise, are some epigrams
written on the banishment of Seneca, but whether or not by himself, is
uncertain.
Immediately subsequent to the preceding, is another treatise on Consolation,
addressed to one of Claudius’s freedmen, named Polybius, perhaps after the
learned historian. In this tract, which is in several parts mutilated, the
author endeavours to console Polybius for the loss of a brother who had lately
died. The sentiments and admonitions are well suggested for the purpose; but
they are intermixed with such fulsome encomiums on the imperial domestic, as
degrade the dignity of the author, and can be ascribed to no other motive than
that of endeavouring to procure a recall from his exile, through the interest of
Polybius.
A fourth treatise on Consolation is addressed to Marcia, a respectable and
opulent lady, the daughter of Cremutius Cordus, by whose death she was deeply
affected. The author, besides many consolatory arguments, proposes for her
imitation a number of examples, by attending to which she may be enabled to
overcome a passion that is founded only in too great sensibility of mind. The
subject is ingeniously prosecuted, not without the occasional mixture of some
delicate flattery, suitable to the character of the correspondent.
These consolatory addresses are followed by a treatise on Providence, which
evinces the author to have entertained the most just and philosophical
sentiments on that subject. He infers the necessary existence of a Providence
from the regularity and constancy observed in the government of the universe:
but his chief object is to show, why, upon the principle that a Providence
exists, good men should be liable to evils. The enquiry is conducted with a
variety of just observations, and great force of argument; by which the author
vindicates the goodness and wisdom of the Almighty, in a strain of sentiment
corresponding to the most approved suggestions of natural religion.
The next treatise, which is on Tranquillity of Mind, appears to have been
written soon after his return from exile. There is a confusion in the
arrangement of this tract, but it contains a variety of just observations, and
may be regarded as a valuable production.
Then follows a discourse on the Constancy of a Wise Man. This has by some been
considered as a part of the preceding treatise; but they are evidently distinct.
It is one of the author’s best productions, in regard both of sentiment and
composition, and contains a fund of moral observations, suited to fortify the
mind under the oppression of accidental calamities.
We next meet with a tract on Clemency, in two books, addressed to Nero. This
appears to have been written in the beginning of the reign of Nero, on whom the
author bestows some high encomiums, which, at that time, seem not to have been
destitute of foundation. The discourse abounds with just observation, applicable
to all ranks of men; and, if properly attended to by that infatuated emperor,
might have prevented the perpetration of those acts of cruelty, which, with his
other extravagancies, have rendered his name odious to posterity.
The discourse which succeeds is on the Shortness of Life, addressed to Paulinus.
In this excellent treatise the author endeavours to show, that the complaint of
the shortness of life is not founded in truth: that it is men who make life
short, either by passing it in indolence, or otherwise improperly. He inveighs
against indolence, luxury, and every unprofitable avocation; observing, that the
best use of time is to apply it to the study of wisdom, by which life may be
rendered sufficiently long.
Next follows a discourse on a Happy Life, addressed to Gallio. Seneca seems to
have intended this as a vindication of himself, against those who calumniated
him on account of his riches and manner of living. He maintained that a life can
only be rendered happy by its conformity to the dictates of virtue, but that
such a life is perfectly compatible with the possession of riches, where they
happen to accrue. The author pleads his own cause with great ability, as well as
justness of argument. His vindication is in many parts highly beautiful, and
accompanied with admirable sentiments respecting the moral obligations to a
virtuous life. The conclusion of this discourse bears no similarity, in point of
composition, to the preceding parts, and is evidently spurious.
The preceding discourse is followed by one upon the Retirement of a Wise Man.
The beginning of this tract is wanting; but in the sequel the author discusses a
question which was much agitated amongst the Stoics and Epicureans, viz.,
whether a wise man ought to concern himself with the affairs of the public. Both
these sects of philosophers maintained that a life of retirement was most
suitable to a wise man, but they differed with respect to the circumstances in
which it might be proper to deviate from this conduct, one party considering the
deviation as prudent, when there existed a just motive for such conduct, and the
other, when there was no forcible reason against it. Seneca regards both these
opinions as founded upon principles inadequate to the advancement both of public
and private happiness, which ought ever to be the ultimate object of moral
speculation.
The last of the author’s discourses, addressed to Aebucius, is on Benefits, and
continued through seven books. He begins with lamenting the frequency of
ingratitude amongst mankind, a vice which he severely censures. After some
preliminary considerations respecting the nature of benefits, he proceeds to
show in what manner, and on whom, they ought to be conferred. The greater part
of these books is employed on the solution of abstract questions relative to
benefits, in the manner of Chrysippus; where the author states explicitly the
arguments on both sides, and from the full consideration of them, deduces
rational conclusions.
The Epistles of Seneca consist of one hundred and twenty-four, all on moral
subjects. His Natural Questions extend through seven books, in which he has
collected the hypotheses of Aristotle and other ancient writers. These are
followed by a whimsical effusion on the death of Caligula. The remainder of his
works comprises seven Persuasive Discourses, five books of Controversies, and
ten books containing Extracts of Declamations.
From the multiplicity of Seneca’s productions, it is evident, that,
notwithstanding the luxurious life he is said to have led, he was greatly
devoted to literature, a propensity which, it is probable, was confirmed by his
banishment during almost eight years in the island of Corsica, where he was in a
great degree secluded from every other resource of amusement to a cultivated
mind. But with whatever splendour Seneca’s domestic economy may have been
supported, it seems highly improbable that he indulged himself in luxurious
enjoyment to any vicious excess. His situation at the Roman court, being
honourable and important, could not fail of being likewise advantageous, not
only from the imperial profusion common at that time, but from many contingent
emoluments which his extensive interest and patronage would naturally afford
him. He was born of a respectable rank, lived in habits of familiar intercourse
with persons of the first distinction, and if, in the course of his attendance
upon Nero, he had acquired a large fortune, no blame could justly attach to his
conduct in maintaining an elegant hospitality. The imputation of luxury was
thrown upon him from two quarters, viz. by the dissolute companions of Nero, to
whom the mention of such an example served as an apology for their own extreme
dissipation; and by those who envied him for the affluence and dignity which he
had acquired. The charge, however, is supported only by vague assertion, and is
discredited by every consideration which ought to have weight in determining the
reality of human characters. It seems totally inconsistent with his habits of
literary industry, with the virtuous sentiments which he every where strenuously
maintains, and the esteem with which he was regarded by a numerous acquaintance,
as a philosopher and a moralist.
The writings of Seneca have been traduced almost equally with his manner of
living, though in both he has a claim to indulgence, from the fashion of the
times. He is more studious of minute embellishments in style than the writers of
the Augustan age; and the didactic strain, in which he mostly prosecutes his
subjects, has a tendency to render him sententious; but the expression of his
thoughts is neither enfeebled by decoration, nor involved in obscurity by
conciseness. He is not more rich in artificial ornament than in moral
admonition. Seneca has been charged with depreciating former writers, to render
himself more conspicuous; a charge which, so far as appears from his writings,
is founded rather in negative than positive testimony. He has not endeavoured to
establish his fame by any affectation of singularity in doctrine; and while he
passes over in silence the names of illustrious authors, he avails himself with
judgment of the most valuable stores with which they had enriched philosophy. On
the whole, he is an author whose principles may be adopted not only with safety,
but great advantage; and his writings merit a degree of consideration, superior
to what they have hitherto ever enjoyed in the literary world.
Seneca, besides his prose works, was the author of some tragedies. The Medea,
the Troas, and the Hippolytus, are ascribed to him. His father is said to have
written the Hercules Furens, Thyestes, Agamemnon, and Hercules Œtæus. The three
remaining tragedies, the Thebaïs, Œdipus, and Octavia, usually published in the
same collection with the seven preceding, are supposed to be the productions of
other authors, but of whom, is uncertain. These several pieces are written in a
neat style; the plots and characters are conducted with an attention to
probability and nature: but none of them is so forcible, in point of tragical
distress, as to excite in the reader any great degree of emotion.—
Petronius was a Roman knight, and apparently of considerable fortune. In his
youth he seems to have given great application to polite literature, in which he
acquired a justness of taste, as well as an elegance of composition. Early
initiated in the gaieties of fashionable life, he contracted a habit of
voluptuousness which rendered him an accommodating companion to the dissipated
and the luxurious. The court of Claudius, entirely governed for some time by
Messalina, was then the residence of pleasure; and here Petronius failed not of
making a conspicuous appearance. More delicate, however, than sensual, he rather
joined in the dissipation, than indulged in the vices of the palace. To
interrupt a course of life too uniform to afford him perpetual satisfaction, he
accepted of the proconsulship of Bithynia, and went to that province, where he
discharged the duties of his office with great credit. Upon his return to Rome,
Nero, who had succeeded Claudius, made him consul, in recompense of his
services. This new dignity, by giving him frequent and easy access to the
emperor, created an intimacy between them, which was increased to friendship and
esteem on the side of Nero, by the elegant entertainments often given him by
Petronius. In a short time, this gay voluptuary became so much a favourite at
court, that nothing was agreeable but what was approved by Petronius: and the
authority which he acquired, by being umpire in whatever related to the economy
of gay dissipation, procured him the title of Arbiter elegantiarum. Things
continued in this state whilst the emperor kept within the bounds of moderation;
and Petronius acted as intendant of his pleasures, ordering him shows, games,
comedies, music, feats, and all that could contribute to make the hours of
relaxation pass agreeably; seasoning, at the same time, the innocent delights
which he procured for the emperor with every possible charm, to prevent him from
seeking after such as might prove pernicious both to morals and the republic.
Nero, however, giving way to his own disposition, which was naturally vicious,
at length changed his conduct, not only in regard to the government of the
empire, but of himself: and listening to other counsels than those of Petronius,
gave the entire reins to his passions, which afterwards plunged him in ruin. The
emperor’s new favourite was Tigellinus, a man of the most profligate morals, who
omitted nothing that could gratify the inordinate appetites of his prince, at
the expense of all decency and virtue. During this period, Petronius gave vent
to his indignation, in the satire transmitted under his name by the title of
Satyricon. But his total retirement from court did not secure him from the
artifices of Tigellinus, who laboured with all his power to destroy the man whom
he had industriously supplanted in the emperor’s favour. With this view he
insinuated to Nero, that Petronius was too intimately connected with Scevinus
not to be engaged in Piso’s conspiracy; and, to support his calumny, caused the
emperor to be present at the examination of one of Petronius’s slaves, whom he
had secretly suborned to swear against his master. After this transaction, to
deprive Petronius of all means of justifying himself, they threw into prison the
greatest part of his domestics. Nero embraced with joy the opportunity of
removing a man, to whom he knew the present manners of the court were utterly
obnoxious, and he soon after issued orders for arresting Petronius. As it
required, however, some time to deliberate whether they should put a person of
his consideration to death, without more evident proofs of the charges preferred
against him, such was his disgust at living in the power of so detestable and
capricious a tyrant, that he resolved to die. For this purpose, making choice of
the same expedient which had been adopted by Seneca, he caused his veins to be
opened, but he closed them again, for a little time, that he might enjoy the
conversation of his friends, who came to see him in his last moments. He desired
them, it is said, to entertain him, not with discourses on the immortality of
the soul, or the consolation of philosophy, but with agreeable tales and poetic
gallantries. Disdaining to imitate the servility of those who, dying by the
orders of Nero, yet made him their heir, and filled their wills with encomiums
on the tyrant and his favourites, he broke to pieces a goblet of precious
stones, out of which he had commonly drank, that Nero, who he knew would seize
upon it after his death, might not have the pleasure of using it. As the only
present suitable to such a prince, he sent him, under a sealed cover, his
Satyricon, written purposely against him; and then broke his signet, that it
might not, after his death, become the means of accusation against the person in
whose custody it should be found.
The Satyricon of Petronius is one of the most curious productions in the Latin
language. Novel in its nature, and without any parallel in the works of
antiquity, some have imagined it to be a spurious composition, fabricated about
the time of the revival of learning in Europe. This conjecture, however, is not
more destitute of support, than repugnant to the most circumstantial evidence in
favour of its authenticity. Others, admitting the work to be a production of the
age of Nero, have questioned the design with which it was written, and have
consequently imputed to the author a most immoral intention. Some of the scenes,
incidents, and characters, are of so extraordinary a nature, that the
description of them, without a particular application, must have been regarded
as extremely whimsical, and the work, notwithstanding its ingenuity, has been
doomed to perpetual oblivion: but history justifies the belief, that in the
court of Nero, the extravagancies mentioned by Petronius were realized to a
degree which authenticates the representation given of them. The inimitable
character of Trimalchio, which exhibits a person sunk in the most debauched
effeminacy, was drawn for Nero; and we are assured, that there were formerly
medals of that emperor, with these words, C. Nero August. Imp., and on the
reverse, Trimalchio. The various characters are well discriminated, and
supported with admirable propriety. Never was such licentiousness of description
united to such delicacy of colouring. The force of the satire consists not in
poignancy of sentiment, but in the ridicule which arises from the whimsical, but
characteristic and faithful exhibition of the objects introduced. That Nero was
struck with the justness of the representation, is evident from the displeasure
which he showed, at finding Petronius so well acquainted with his infamous
excesses. After levelling his suspicion on all who could possibly have betrayed
him, he at last fixed on a senator’s wife, named Silia, who bore a part in his
revels, and was an intimate friend of Petronius: upon which she was immediately
sent into banishment. Amongst the miscellaneous materials in this work, are some
pieces of poetry, written in an elegant taste. A poem on the civil war between
Cæsar and Pompey, is beautiful and animated.
Though the Muses appear to have been mostly in a quiescent state from the time
of Augustus, we find from Petronius Arbiter, who exhibits the manners of the
capital during the reign of Nero, that poetry still continued to be a favourite
pursuit amongst the Romans, and one to which, indeed, they seem to have had a
national propensity.
— Ecce inter pocula quærunt
Romulidæ saturi, quid dia poëmata narrent.
—Persius. Sat. i. 30.
— Nay, more! Our nobles, gorged, and swilled with wine,
Call o’er the banquet for a lay divine!
—Gifford.
It was cultivated as a kind of fashionable exercise, in short and desultory
attempts, in which the chief ambition was to produce verses extempore. They were
publicly recited by their authors with great ostentation; and a favourable
verdict from an audience, however partial, and frequently obtained either by
intrigue or bribery, was construed by those frivolous pretenders into a real
adjudication of poetical fame.
The custom of publicly reciting poetical compositions, with the view of
obtaining the opinion of the hearers concerning them, and for which purpose
Augustus had built the Temple of Apollo, was well calculated for the improvement
of taste and judgment, as well as the excitement of emulation; but, conducted as
it now was, it led to a general degradation of poetry. Barbarism in language,
and a corruption of taste, were the natural consequences of this practice, while
the judgment of the multitude was either blind or venal, and while public
approbation sanctioned the crudities of hasty composition. There arose, however,
in this period, some candidates for the bays, who carried their efforts beyond
the narrow limits which custom and inadequate genius prescribed to the poetical
exertions of their contemporaries. Amongst these were Lucan and Persius.—
Lucan was the son of Annæus Mela, the brother of Seneca, the philosopher. He was
born at Corduba, the original residence of the family, but came early to Rome,
where his promising talents, and the patronage of his uncle, recommended him to
the favour of Nero; by whom he was raised to the dignity of an augur and quæstor
before he had attained the usual age. Prompted by the desire of displaying his
political abilities, he had the imprudence to engage in a competition with his
imperial patron. The subject chosen by Nero was the tragical fate of Niobe; and
that of Lucan was Orpheus. The ease with which the latter obtained the victory
in the contest, excited the jealousy of the emperor, who resolved upon
depressing his rising genius. With this view, he exposed him daily to the
mortification of fresh insults, until at last the poet’s resentment was so much
provoked, that he entered into the conspiracy of Piso for cutting off the
tyrant. The plot being discovered, there remained for the unfortunate Lucan no
hope of pardon: and choosing the same mode of death which was employed by his
uncle, he had his veins opened, while he sat in a warm bath, and expired in
pronouncing with great emphasis the following lines in his Pharsalia:—
Scinditur avulsus: nec sicut vulnere sanguis
Emicuit lentus: ruptis cadit undique venis;
Discursusque animæ diversa in membra meantis
Interceptus aquis, nullius, vita perempti
Est tantâ dimissa viâ.—Lib. iii. 638.
— Asunder flies the man.
No single wound the gaping rupture seems,
Where trickling crimson flows in tender streams;
But from an opening horrible and wide
A thousand vessels pour the bursting tide;
At once the winding channel’s course was broke,
Where wandering life her mazy journey took.
—Rowe.
Some authors have said that he betrayed pusillanimity at the hour of death; and
that, to save himself from punishment, he accused his mother of being involved
in the conspiracy. This circumstance, however, is not mentioned by other
writers, who relate, on the contrary, that he died with philosophical fortitude.
He was then only in the twenty-sixth year of his age.
Lucan had scarcely reached the age of puberty when he wroto a poem on the
contest between Hector and Achilles. He also composed in his youth a poem on the
burning of Rome: but his only surviving work is the Pharsalia, written on the
civil war between Cæsar and Pompey. This poem, consisting of ten books, is
unfinished, and its character has been more depreciated than that of any other
production of antiquity. In the plan of the poem, the author prosecutes the
different events in the civil war, beginning his narrative at the passage of the
Rubicon by Cæsar. He invokes not the muses, nor engages any gods in the dispute;
but endeavours to support an epic dignity by vigour of sentiment, and splendour
of description. The horrors of civil war, and the importance of a contest which
was to determine the fate of Rome and the empire of the world, are displayed
with variety of colouring, and great energy of expression. In the description of
scenes, and the recital of heroic actions, the author discovers a strong and
lively imagination; while, in those parts of the work which are addressed either
to the understanding or the passions, he is bold, figurative, and animated.
Indulging too much in amplification, he is apt to tire with prolixity; but in
all his excursions he is ardent, elevated, impressive, and often brilliant. His
versification has not the smoothness which we admire in the compositions of
Virgil, and his language is often involved in the intricacies of technical
construction: but with all his defects, his beauties are numerous; and he
discovers a greater degree of merit than is commonly found in the productions of
a poet of twenty-six years of age, at which time he died.—
Persius was born at Volaterræ, of an equestrian family, about the beginning of
the Christian æra. His father dying when he was six years old, he was left to
the care of his mother, for whom and for his sisters he expresses the warmest
affection. At the age of twelve he came to Rome, where, after attending a course
of grammar and rhetoric under the respective masters of those branches of
education, he placed himself under the tuition of Annæus Cornutus, a celebrated
stoic philosopher of that time. There subsisted between him and this preceptor
so great a friendship, that at his death, which happened in the twenty-ninth
year of his age, he bequeathed to Cornutus a handsome sum of money, and his
library. The latter, however, accepting only the books, left the money to
Persius’s sisters.
Priscian, Quintilian, and other ancient writers, speak of Persius’s satires as
consisting of a book without any division. They have since, however, been
generally divided into six different satires, but by some only into five. The
subjects of these compositions are, the vanity of the poets in his time; the
backwardness of youth to the cultivation of moral science; ignorance and
temerity in political administration, chiefly in allusion to the government of
Nero: the fifth satire is employed in evincing that the wise man also is free;
in discussing which point, the author adopts the observations used by Horace on
the same subject. The last satire of Persius is directed against avarice. In the
fifth, we meet with a beautiful address to Cornutus, whom the author celebrates
for his amiable virtues, and peculiar talents for teaching. The following lines,
at the same time that they show how diligently the preceptor and his pupil were
employed through the whole day in the cultivation of moral science, afford a
more agreeable picture of domestic comfort and philosophical conviviality, than
might be expected in the family of a rigid stoic:
Tecum etenim longos memini consumere soles,
Et tecum primas epul’s decerpere noctes.
Unum opus, et requiem pariter disponimus ambo:
Atque verecundâ laxamus feria mensâ.
—Sat. v.
Can I forget how many a summer’s day,
Spent in your converse, stole, unmarked, away?
Or how, while listening with increased delight,
I snatched from feasts the earlier hours of night?
—Gifford.
The satires of Persius are written in a free, expostulatory, and argumentative
manner; possessing the same justness of sentiment as those of Horace, but
exerted in the way of derision, and not with the admirable raillery of that
facetious author. They are regarded by many as obscure; but this imputation
arises more from unacquaintance with the characters and manners to which the
author alludes, than from any peculiarity either in his language or composition.
His versification is harmonious; and we have only to remark, in addition to
similar examples in other Latin writers, that, though Persius is acknowledged to
have been both virtuous and modest, there are in the fourth satire a few
passages which cannot decently admit of being translated. Such was the freedom
of the Romans, in the use of some expressions, which just refinement has now
exploded.—
Another poet, in this period, was Fabricius Veiento, who wrote a severe satire
against the priests of his time; as also one against the senators, for
corruption in their judicial capacity. Nothing remains of either of those
productions; but, for the latter, the author was banished by Nero.
There now likewise flourished a lyric poet, Cæsius Bassus, to whom Persius has
addressed his sixth satire. He is said to have been, next to Horace, the best
lyric poet among the Romans: but of his various compositions, only a few
inconsiderable fragments are preserved.
To the two poets now mentioned must be added Pomponius Secundus, a man of
distinguished rank in the army, and who obtained the honour of a triumph for a
victory over a tribe of barbarians in Germany. He wrote several tragedies, which
in the judgment of Quintilian, were beautiful compositions.
SERGIUS SULPICIUS GALBA.
I.The race of the Cæsars became extinct in Nero; an event prognosticated by
various signs, two of which were particularly significant. Formerly, when Livia,
after her marriage with Augustus, was making a visit to her villa at Veii, an
eagle flying by, let drop upon her lap a hen, with a sprig of laurel in her
mouth, just as she had seized it. Livia gave orders to have the hen taken care
of, and the sprig of laurel set; and the hen reared such a numerous brood of
chickens, that the villa, to this day, is called the Villa of the Hens. The
laurel grove flourished so much, that the Cæsars procured thence the boughs and
crowns they bore at their triumphs. It was also their constant custom to plant
others on the same spot, immediately after a triumph; and it was observed that,
a little before the death of each prince, the tree which had been set by him
died away. But in the last year of Nero, the whole plantation of laurels
perished to the very roots, and the hens all died. About the same time, the
temple of the Cæsars being struck with lightning, the heads of all the statues
in it fell off at once; and Augustus’s sceptre was dashed from his hands.
II. Nero was succeeded by Galba, who was not in the remotest degree allied to
the family of the Cæsars, but, without doubt, of very noble extraction, being
descended from a great and ancient family; for he always used to put amongst his
other titles, upon the bases of his statues, his being great-grandson to Q.
Catulus Capitolinus. And when he came to be emperor, he set up the images of his
ancestors in the hall of the palace; according to the inscriptions on which, he
carried up his pedigree on the father’s side to Jupiter; and by the mother’s to
Pasiphaë, the wife of Minos.
III. To give even a short account of the whole family, would be tedious. I
shall, therefore, only slightly notice that branch of it from which he was
descended. Why, or whence, the first of the Sulpicii who had the cognomen of
Galba, was so called, is uncertain. Some are of opinion, that it was because he
set fire to a city in Spain, after he had a long time attacked it to no purpose,
with torches dipped in the gum called Galbanum: others said he was so named,
because, in a lingering disease, he made use of it as a remedy, wrapped up in
wool: others, on account of his being prodigiously corpulent, such a one being
called, in the language of the Gauls, Galba; or, on the contrary, because he was
of a slender habit of body, like those insects which breed in a sort of oak, and
are called Galbæ. Sergius Galba, a person of consular rank, and the most
eloquent man of his time, gave a lustre to the family. History relates, that,
when he was pro-prætor of Spain, he perfidiously put to the sword thirty
thousand Lusitanians, and by that means gave occasion to the war of Viriatus.
His grandson being incensed against Julius Cæsar, whose lieutenant he had been
in Gaul, because he was through him disappointed of the consulship, joined with
Cassius and Brutus in the conspiracy against him, for which he was condemned by
the Pedian law. From him were descended the grandfather and father of the
emperor Galba. The grandfather was more celebrated for his application to study,
than for any figure he made in the government. For he rose no higher than the
prætorship, but published a large and not uninteresting history. His father
attained to the consulship: he was a short man and hump-backed, but a tolerable
orator, and an industrious pleader. He was twice married: the first of his wives
was Mummia Achaica, daughter of Catulus, and great-grand-daughter of Lucius
Mummius, who sacked Corinth; and the other, Livia Ocellina, a very rich and
beautiful woman, by whom it is supposed he was courted for the nobleness of his
descent. They say, that she was farther encouraged to persevere in her advances,
by an incident which evinced the great ingenuousness of his disposition. Upon
her pressing her suit, he took an opportunity, when they were alone, of
stripping off his toga, and showing her the deformity of his person, that he
might not be thought to impose upon her. He had by Achaica two sons, Caius and
Sergius. The elder of these, Caius, having very much reduced his estate, retired
from town, and being prohibited by Tiberius from standing for a pro-consulship
in his year, put an end to his own life.
IV. The emperor Sergius Galba was born in the consulship of M. Valerius Messala,
and Cn. Lentulus, upon the ninth of the calends of January [24th December], in a
villa standing upon a hill, near Terracina, on the left-hand side of the road to
Fundi. Being adopted by his step-mother, he assumed the name of Livius, with the
cognemen of Ocella, and changed his prænomen; for he afterwards used that of
Lucius, instead of Sergius, until he arrived at the imperial dignity. It is well
known, that when he came once, amongst other boys of his own age, to pay his
respects to Augustus, the latter, pinching his cheek, said to him, “And thou,
child, too, wilt taste our imperial dignity.” Tiberius, likewise, being told
that he would come to be emperor, but at an advanced age, exclaimed, “Let him
live, then, since that does not concern me!” When his grandfather was offering
sacrifice to avert some ill omen from lightning, the entrails of the victim were
snatched out of his hand by an eagle, and carried off into an oak-tree loaded
with acorns. Upon this, the soothsayers said, that the family would come to be
masters of the empire, but not until many years had elapsed: at which he,
smiling, said, “Ay, when a mule comes to bear a foal.” When Galba first declared
against Nero, nothing gave him so much confidence of success, as a mule’s
happening at that time to have a foal. And whilst all others were shocked at the
occurrence, as a most inauspicious prodigy, he alone regarded it as a most
fortunate omen, calling to mind the sacrifice and saying of his grandfather.
When he took upon him the manly habit, he dreamt that the goddess Fortune said
to him, “I stand before your door weary; and unless I am speedily admitted, I
shall fall into the hands of the first who comes to seize me.” On his awaking,
when the door of the house was opened, he found a brazen statue of the goddess,
above a cubit long, close to the threshold, which he carried with him to
Tusculum, where he used to pass the summer season; and having consecrated it in
an apartment of his house, he ever after worshipped it with a monthly sacrifice,
and an anniversary vigil. Though but a very young man, he kept up an ancient but
obsolete custom, and now nowhere observed, except in his own family, which was,
to have his freedmen and slaves appear in a body before him twice a day, morning
and evening, to offer him their salutations.
V. Amongst other liberal studies, he applied himself to the law. He married
Lepida, by whom he had two sons; but the mother and children all dying, he
continued a widower; nor could he be prevailed upon to marry again, not even
Agrippina herself, at that time left a widow by the death of Domitius, who had
employed all her blandishments to allure him to her embraces, while he was a
married man; insomuch that Lepida’s mother, when in company with several married
women, rebuked her for it, and even went so far as to cuff her. Most of all, he
courted the empress Livia, by whose favour, while she was living, he made a
considerable figure, and narrowly missed being enriched by the will which she
left at her death; in which she distinguished him from the rest of the legatees,
by a legacy of fifty millions of sesterces. But because the sum was expressed in
figures, and not in words at length, it was reduced by her heir, Tiberius, to
five hundred thousand: and even this he never received.
VI. Filling the great offices before the age required for it by law, during his
prætorship, at the celebration of games in honour of the goddess Flora, he
presented the new spectacle of elephants walking upon ropes. He was then
governor of the province of Aquitania for near a year, and soon afterwards took
the consulship in the usual course, and held it for six months. It so happened
that he succeeded L. Domitius, the father of Nero, and was succeeded by Salvius
Otho, father to the emperor of that name; so that his holding it between the
sons of these two men, looked like a presage of his future advancement to the
empire. Being appointed by Caius Cæsar to supersede Gætulicus in his command,
the day after his joining the legions, he put a stop to their plaudits in a
public spectacle, by issuing an order, “That they should keep their hands under
their cloaks.” Immediately upon which, the following verse became very common in
the camp:
Disce, miles, militare: Galba est, non Gætulicus.
Learn, soldier, now in arms to use your hands,
’Tis Galba, not Gætulicus, commands.
With equal strictness, he would allow of no petitions for leave of absence from
the camp. He hardened the soldiers, both old and young, by constant exercise;
and having quickly reduced within their own limits the barbarians who had made
inroads into Gaul, upon Caius’s coming into Germany, he so far recommended
himself and his army to that emperor’s approbation, that, amongst the
innumerable troops drawn from all the provinces of the empire, none met with
higher commendation, or greater rewards from him. He likewise distinguished
himself by heading an escort, with a shield in his hand, and running at the side
of the emperor’s chariot twenty miles together.
VII. Upon the news of Caius’s death, though many earnestly pressed him to lay
hold of that opportunity of seizing the empire, he chose rather to be quiet. On
this account, he was in great favour with Claudius, and being received into the
number of his friends, stood so high in his good opinion, that the expedition to
Britain was for some time suspended, because he was suddenly seized with a
slight indisposition. He governed Africa, as pro-consul, for two years; being
chosen out of the regular course to restore order in the province, which was in
great disorder from civil dissensions, and the alarms of the barbarians. His
administration was distinguished by great strictness and equity, even in matters
of small importance. A soldier upon some expedition being charged with selling,
in a great scarcity of corn, a bushel of wheat, which was all he had left, for a
hundred denarii, he forbad him to be relieved by any body, when he came to be in
want himself; and accordingly he died of famine. When sitting in judgment, a
cause being brought before him about some beast of burden, the ownership of
which was claimed by two persons; the evidence being slight on both sides, and
it being difficult to come at the truth, he ordered the beast to be led to a
pond at which he had used to be watered, with his head muffled up, and the
covering being there removed, that he should be the property of the person whom
he followed of his own accord, after drinking.
VIII. For his achievements, both at this time in Africa, and formerly in
Germany, he received the triumphal ornaments, and three sacerdotal appointments,
one among The Fifteen, another in the college of Titius, and a third amongst the
Augustals; and from that time to the middle of Nero’s reign, he lived for the
most part in retirement. He never went abroad so much as to take the air,
without a carriage attending him, in which there was a million of sesterces in
gold, ready at hand; until at last, at the time he was living in the town of
Fundi, the province of Hispania Tarraconensis was offered him. After his arrival
in the province, whilst he was sacrificing in a temple, a boy who attended with
a censer, became all on a sudden grey-headed. This incident was regarded by some
as a token of an approaching revolution in the government, and that an old man
would succeed a young one: that is, that he would succeed Nero. And not long
after, a thunderbolt falling into a lake in Cantabria, twelve axes were found in
it; a manifest sign of the supreme power.
IX. He governed the province during eight years, his administration being of an
uncertain and capricious character. At first he was active, vigorous, and indeed
excessively severe, in the punishment of offenders. For, a money-dealer having
committed some fraud in the way of his business, he cut off his hands, and
nailed them to his counter. Another, who had poisoned an orphan, to whom he was
guardian, and next heir to the estate, he crucified. On this delinquent
imploring the protection of the law, and crying out that he was a Roman citizen,
he affected to afford him some alleviation, and to mitigate his punishment, by a
mark of honour, ordered a cross, higher than usual, and painted white, to be
erected for him. But by degrees he gave himself up to a life of indolence and
inactivity, from the fear of giving Nero any occasion of jealousy, and because,
as he used to say, “Nobody was obliged to render an account of their leisure
hours.” He was holding a court of justice on the circuit at New Carthage, when
he received intelligence of the insurrection in Gaul; and while the lieutenant
of Aquitania was soliciting his assistance, letters were brought from Vindex,
requesting him “to assert the rights of mankind, and put himself at their head
to relieve them from the tyranny of Nero.” Without any long demur, he accepted
the invitation, from a mixture of fear and hope. For he had discovered that
private orders had been sent by Nero to his procurators in the province to get
him dispatched; and he was encouraged to the enterprise, as well by several
auspices and omens, as by the prophecy of a young woman of good family. The more
so, because the priest of Jupiter at Clunia, admonished by a dream, had
discovered in the recesses of the temple some verses similar to those in which
she had delivered her prophecy. These had also been uttered by a girl under
divine inspiration, about two hundred years before. The import of the verses
was, “That in time, Spain should give the world a lord and master.”
X. Taking his seat on the tribunal, therefore, as if there was no other business
than the manumitting of slaves, he had the effigies of a number of persons who
had been condemned and put to death by Nero, set up before him, whilst a noble
youth stood by, who had been banished, and whom he had purposely sent for from
one of the neighbouring Balearic isles; and lamenting the condition of the
times, and being thereupon unanimously saluted by the title of Emperor, he
publicly declared himself “only the lieutenant of the senate and people of
Rome.” Then shutting the courts, he levied legions and auxiliary troops among
the provincials, besides his veteran army consisting of one legion, two wings of
horse, and three cohorts. Out of the military leaders most distinguished for age
and prudence, he formed a kind of senate, with whom to advise upon all matters
of importance, as often as occasion should require. He likewise chose several
young men of the equestrian order, who were to be allowed the privilege of
wearing the gold ring, and, being called “The Reserve,” should mount guard
before his bed-chamber, instead of the legionary soldiers. He likewise issued
proclamations throughout the provinces of the empire, exhorting all to rise in
arms unanimously, and aid the common cause, by all the ways and means in their
power About the same time, in fortifying a town, which he had pitched upon for a
military post, a ring was found, of antique workmanship, in the stone of which
was engraved the goddess Victory with a trophy. Presently after, a ship of
Alexandria arrived at Dertosa, loaded with arms, without any person to steer it,
or so much as a single sailor or passenger on board. From this incident, nobody
entertained the least doubt but the war upon which they were entering was just
and honourable, and favoured likewise by the gods: when all on a sudden the
whole design was exposed to failure. One of the two wings of horse, repenting of
the violation of their oath to Nero, attempted to desert him upon his approach
to the camp, and were with some difficulty kept in their duty. And some slaves
who had been presented to him by a freedman of Nero’s, on purpose to murder him,
had like to have killed him as he went through a narrow passage to the bath.
Being overheard to encourage one another not to lose the opportunity, they were
called to an account concerning it; and recourse being had to the torture, a
confession was extorted from them.
XI. These dangers were followed by the death of Vindex, at which being extremely
discouraged, as if fortune had quite forsaken him, he had thoughts of putting an
end to his own life; but receiving advice by his messengers from Rome that Nero
was slain, and that all had taken an oath to him as emperor, he laid aside the
title of lieutenant, and took upon him that of Cæsar. Putting himself upon his
march in his general’s cloak, and a dagger hanging from his neck before his
breast, he did not resume the use of the toga, until Nymphidius Sabinus, prefect
of the pretorian guards at Rome, with the two lieutenants, Fonteius Capito in
Germany, and Claudius Macer in Africa, who opposed his advancement, were all put
down.
XII. Rumours of his cruelty and avarice had reached the city before his arrival;
such as that he had punished some cities of Spain and Gaul, for not joining him
readily, by the imposition of heavy taxes, and some by levelling their walls;
and had put to death the governors and procurators with their wives and
children: likewise that a golden crown, of fifteen pounds weight, taken out of
the temple of Jupiter, with which he was presented by the people of Tarracona,
he had melted down, and had exacted from them three ounces which were wanting in
the weight. This report of him was confirmed and increased, as soon as he
entered the town. For some seamen who had been taken from the fleet, and
enlisted among the troops by Nero, he obliged to return to their former
condition; but they refusing to comply, and obstinately clinging to the more
honourable service under their eagles and standards, he not only dispersed them
by a body of horse, but likewise decimated them. He also disbanded a cohort of
Germans, which had been formed by the preceding emperors, for their body-guard,
and upon many occasions found very faithful; and sent them back into their own
country, without giving them any gratuity, pretending that they were more
inclined to favour the advancement of Cneius Dolabella, near whose gardens they
encamped, than his own. The following ridiculous stories were also related of
him; but whether with or without foundation. I know not; such as, that when a
more sumptuous entertainment than usual was served up, he fetched a deep groan:
that when one of the stewards presented him with an account of his expenses, he
reached him a dish of legumes from his table as a reward for his care and
diligence; and when Canus, the piper, had played much to his satisfaction, he
presented him, with his own hand, five denarii taken out of his pocket.
XIII. His arrival, therefore, in town was not very agreeable to the people; and
this appeared at the next public spectacle For when the actors in a farce began
a well-known song,
Venit, io, Simus a villa:
Lo! Clodpate from his village comes;
all the spectators, with one voice, went on with the rest, repeating and acting
the first verse several times over.
XIV. He possessed himself of the imperial power with more favour and authority
than he administered it, although he gave many proofs of his being an excellent
prince: but these were not so grateful to the people, as his misconduct was
offensive. He was governed by three favourites, who, because they lived in the
palace, and were constantly about him, obtained the name of his pedagogues.
These were Titus Vinius, who had been his lieutenant in Spain, a man of
insatiable avarice; Cornelius Laco, who, from an assessor to the prince, was
advanced to be prefect of the pretorian guards, a person of intolerable
arrogance, as well as indolence; and his freedman Icelus, dignified a little
before with the privilege of wearing the gold ring, and the use of the cognomen
Martianus, who became a candidate for the highest honour within the reach of any
person of the equestrian order. He resigned himself so implicitly into the power
of those three favourites, who governed in every thing according to the
capricious impulse of their vices and tempers, and his authority was so much
abused by them, that the tenor of his conduct was not very consistent with
itself. At one time, he was more rigorous and frugal, at another, more lavish
and negligent, than became a prince who had been chosen by the people, and was
so far advanced in years. He condemned some men of the first rank in the
senatorian and equestrian orders, upon a very slight suspicion, and without
trial. He rarely granted the freedom of the city to any one; and the privilege
belonging to such as had three children, only to one or two; and that with great
difficulty, and only for a limited time. When the judges petitioned to have a
sixth decury added to their number, he not only denied them, but abolished the
vacation which had been granted them by Claudius for the winter, and the
beginning of the year.
XV. It was thought that he likewise intended to reduce the offices held by
senators and men of the equestrian order, to a term of two years’ continuance;
and to bestow them only on those who were unwilling to accept them, and had
refused them. All the grants of Nero he recalled, saving only the tenth part of
them. For this purpose he gave a commission to fifty Roman knights; with orders,
that if players or wrestlers had sold what had been formerly given them, it
should be exacted from the purchasers, since the others, having, no doubt, spent
the money, were not in a condition to pay. But on the other hand, he suffered
his attendants and freedmen to sell or give away the revenue of the state, or
immunities from taxes, and to punish the innocent, or pardon criminals, at
pleasure. Nay, when the Roman people were very clamorous for the punishment of
Halotus and Tigellinus, two of the most mischievous amongst all the emissaries
of Nero, he protected them, and even bestowed on Halotus one of the best
procurations in his disposal. And as to Tigellinus, he even reprimanded the
people for their cruelty by a proclamation.
XVI. By this conduct, he incurred the hatred of all orders of the people, but
especially of the soldiery. For their commanders having promised them in his
name a donative larger than usual, upon their taking the oath to him before his
arrival at Rome; he refused to make it good, frequently bragging, “that it was
his custom to choose his soldiers, not buy them.” Thus the troops became
exasperated against him in all quarters. The pretorian guards he alarmed with
apprehensions of danger and unworthy treatment; disbanding many of them
occasionally as disaffected to his government, and favourers of Nymphidius. But
most of all, the army in Upper Germany was incensed against him, as being
defrauded of the rewards due to them for the service they had rendered in the
insurrection of the Gauls under Vindex. They were, therefore, the first who
ventured to break into open mutiny, refusing upon the calends [the 1st] of
January, to take any oath of allegiance, except to the senate; and they
immediately dispatched deputies to the pretorian troops, to let them know, “they
did not like the emperor who had been set up in Spain,” and to desire that “they
would make choice of another, who might meet with the approbation of all the
armies.”
XVII. Upon receiving intelligence of this, imagining that he was slighted not so
much on account of his age, as for having no children, he immediately singled
out of a company of young persons of rank, who came to pay their compliments to
him, Piso Frugi Licinianus, a youth of noble descent and great talents, for whom
he had before contracted such a regard, that he had appointed him in his will
the heir both of his estate and name. Him he now styled his son, and taking him
to the camp, adopted him in the presence of the assembled troops, but without
making any mention of a donative. This circumstance afforded the better
opportunity to Marcus Salvius Otho of accomplishing his object, six days after
the adoption.
XVIII. Many remarkable prodigies had happened from the very beginning of his
reign, which forewarned him of his approaching fate. In every town through which
he passed in his way from Spain to Rome, victims were slain on the right and
left of the roads; and one of these, which was a bull, being maddened with the
stroke of the axe, broke the rope with which it was tied, and running straight
against his chariot, with his fore-feet elevated, bespattered him with blood.
Likewise, as he was alighting, one of the guard, being pushed forward by the
crowd, had very nearly wounded him with his lance. And upon his entering the
city and, afterterwards, the palace, he was welcomed with an earthquake, and a
noise like the bellowing of cattle. These signs of illfortune were followed by
some that were still more apparently such. Out of all his treasures he had
selected a necklace of pearls and jewels, to adorn his statue of Fortune at
Tusculum. But it suddenly occurring to him that it deserved a more august place,
he consecrated it to the Capitoline Venus; and next night, he dreamt that
Fortune appeared to him, complaining that she had been defrauded of the present
intended her, and threatening to resume what she had given him. Terrified at
this denuneiation, at break of day he sent forward some persons to Tusculum, to
make preparations for a sacrifice which might avert the displeasure of the
goddess; and when he himself arrived at the place, he found nothing but some hot
embers upon the altar, and an old man in black standing by, holding a little
incense in a glass, and some wine in an earthern pot. It was remarked, too, that
whilst he was sacrificing upon the calends of January, the chaplet fell from his
head, and upon his consulting the pullets for omens, they flew away. Farther,
upon the day of his adopting Piso, when he was to harangue the soldiers, the
seat which he used upon those occasions, through the neglect of his attendants,
was not placed, according to custom, upon his tribunal; and in the senate-house,
his curule chair was set with the back forward.
XIX. The day before he was slain, as he was sacrificing in the morning, the
augur warned him from time to time to be upon his guard, for that he was in
danger from assassins, and that they were near at hand. Soon after, he was
informed, that Otho was in possession of the pretorian camp. And though most of
his friends advised him to repair thither immediately, in hopes that he might
quell the tumult by his authority and presence, he resolved to do nothing more
than keep close within the palace, and secure himself by guards of the legionary
soldiers, who were quartered in different parts about the city. He put on a
linen coat of mail, however; remarking at the same time, that it would avail him
little against the points of so many swords. But being tempted out by false
reports, which the conspirators had purposely spread to induce him to venture
abroad—some few of those about him too hastily assuring him that the tumult had
ceased, the mutineers were apprehended, and the rest coming to congratulate him,
resolved to continue firm in their obedience—he went forward to meet them with
so much confidence, that upon a soldier’s boasting that he had killed Otho, he
asked him, “By what authority?” and proceeded as far as the forum. There the
knights, appointed to dispatch him, making their way through the crowd of
citizens, upon seeing him at a distance, halted a while; after which, galloping
up to him, now abandoned by all his attendants, they put him to death.
XX. Some authors relate, that upon their first approach he cried out, “What do
you mean, fellow-soldiers? I am yours, and you are mine,” and promised them a
donative: but the generality of writers relate, that he offered his throat to
them, saying, “Do your work, and strike, since you are resolved upon it.” It is
remarkable, that not one of those who were at hand, ever made any attempt to
assist the emperor; and all who were sent for, disregarded the summons, except a
troop of Germans. They, in consideration of his late kindness in showing them
particular attention during a sickness which prevailed in the camp, flew to his
aid, but came too late; for, being not well acquainted with the town, they had
taken a circuitous route. He was slain near the Curtian Lake, and there left,
until a common soldier returning from the receipt of his allowance of corn,
throwing down the load which he carried, cut off his head. There being upon it
no hair, by which he might hold it, he hid it in the bosom of his dress; but
afterwards thrusting his thumb into the mouth, he carried it in that manner to
Otho, who gave it to the drudges and slaves who attended the soldiers; and they,
fixing it upon the point of a spear, carried it in derision round the camp,
crying out as they went along, “You take your fill of joy in your old age.” They
were irritated to this pitch of rude banter, by a report spread a few days
before, that, upon some one’s commending his person as still florid and
vigorous, he replied,
ᾬτι μοι μένος ἔμπεδοι ἔστιν.
My strength, as yet, has suffered no decay.
A freedman of Patrobius’s, who himself had belonged to Nero’s family, purchased
the head from them at the price of a hundred gold pieces, and threw it into the
place where, by Galba’s order, his patron had been put to death. At last, after
some time, his steward Argius buried it, with the rest of his body, in his own
gardens near the Aurelian Way.
XXI. In person he was of a good size, bald before, with blue eyes, and an
aquiline nose; and his hands and feet were so distorted with the gout, that he
could neither wear a shoe, nor turn over the leaves of a book, or so much as
hold it. He had likewise an excrescence in his right side, which hung down to
that degree, that it was with difficulty kept up by a bandage.
XXII. He is reported to have been a great eater, and usually took his breakfast
in the winter-time before day. At supper, he fed very heartily, giving the
fragments which were left, by handfuls, to be distributed amongst the
attendants. In his lust, he was more inclined to the male sex, and such of them
too as were old. It is said of him, that in Spain, when Icelus, an old catamite
of his, brought him the news of Nero’s death, he not only kissed him lovingly
before company, but begged of him to remove all impediments, and then took him
aside into a private apartment.
XXIII. He perished in the seventy-third year of his age, and the seventh month
of his reign. The senate, as soon as they could with safety, ordered a statue to
be erected for him upon the naval column, in that part of the forum where he was
slain. But Vespasian cancelled the decree, upon a suspicion that he had sent
assassins from Spain into Judea to murder him.
Galba was, for a private man, the most wealthy of any who had ever aspired to
the imperial dignity. He valued himself upon his being descended from the family
of the Servii, but still more upon his relation to Quintus Catulus Capitolinus,
celebrated for integrity and virtue. He was likewise distantly related to Livia,
the wife of Augustus; by whose interest he was preferred from the station which
he held in the palace, to the dignity of consul; and who left him a great legacy
at her death. His parsimonious way of living, and his aversion to all
superfluity or excess, were construed into avarice as soon as he became emperor;
whence Plutarch observes, that the pride which he took in his temperance and
economy was unseasonable. While he endeavoured to reform the profusion in the
public expenditure, which prevailed in the reign of Nero, he ran into the
opposite extreme; and it is objected to him by some historians, that he
maintained not the imperial dignity in a degree consistent even with decency. He
was not sufficiently attentive either to his own security or the tranquillity of
the state, when he refused to pay the soldiers the donative which he had
promised them. This breach of faith seems to be the only act in his life that
affects his integrity; and it contributed more to his ruin than even the odium
which he incurred by the open venality and rapaciousness of his favourites,
particularly Vinius.
M. SALVIUS OTHO.
I.The ancestors of Otho were originally of the town of Ferentum, of an ancient
and honourable family, and, indeed, one of the most considerable in Etruria. His
grandfather, M. Salvius Otho (whose father was a Roman knight, but his mother of
mean extraction, for it is not certain whether she was free-born), by the favour
of Livia Augusta, in whose house he had his education, was made a senator, but
never rose higher than the prætorship. His father, Lucius Otho, was by the
mother’s side nobly descended, allied to several great families, and so dearly
beloved by Tiberius, and so much resembled him in his features, that most people
believed Tiberius was his father. He behaved with great strictness and severity,
not only in the city offices, but in the pro-consulship of Africa, and some
extraordinary commands in the army. He had the courage to punish with death some
soldiers in Illyricum, who, in the disturbance attempted by Camillus, upon
changing their minds, had put their generals to the sword, as promoters of that
insurrection against Claudius. He ordered the execution to take place in the
front of the camp, and under his own eyes; though he knew they had been advanced
to higher ranks in the army by Claudius, on that very account. By this action he
acquired fame, but lessened his favour at court; which, however, he soon
recovered, by discovering to Claudius a design upon his life, carried on by a
Roman knight, and which he had learnt from some of his slaves. For the senate
ordered a statue of him to be erected in the palace; an honour which had been
conferred but upon very few before him. And Claudius advanced him to the dignity
of a patrician, commending him, at the same time, in the highest terms, and
concluding with these words: “A man, than whom I don’t so much as wish to have
children that should be better.” He had two sons by a very noble woman, Albia
Terentia, namely Lucius Titianus, and a younger called Marcus, who had the same
cognomen as himself. He had also a daughter, whom he contracted to Drusus,
Germanicus’s son, before she was of marriageable age.
II. The emperor Otho was born upon the fourth of the calends of May [28th
April], in the consulship of Camillus Aruntius and Domitius Aenobarbus. He was
from his earliest youth so riotous and wild, that he was often severely scourged
by his father. He was said to run about in the night-time, and seize upon any
one he met, who was either drunk or too feeble to make resistance, and toss him
in a blanket. After his father’s death, to make his court the more effectually
to a freedwoman about the palace, who was in great favour, he pretended to be in
love with her, though she was old, and almost decrepit. Having by her means got
into Nero’s good graces, he soon became one of the principal favourites, by the
congeniality of his disposition to that of the emperor; or, as some say, by the
reciprocal practice of mutual pollution. He had so great a sway at court, that
when a man of consular rank was condemned for bribery, having tampered with him
for a large sum of money, to procure his pardon; before he had quite effected
it, he scrupled not to introduce him into the senate, to return his thanks.
III. Having, by means of this woman, insinuated himself into all the emperor’s
secrets, he, upon the day designed for the murder of his mother, entertained
them both at a very splendid feast, to prevent suspicion. Poppæa Sabina, for
whom Nero entertained such a violent passion that he had taken her from her
husband and entrusted her to him, he received, and went through the form of
marrying her. And not satisfied with obtaining her favours, he loved her so
extravagantly, that he could not with patience bear Nero for his rival. It is
certainly believed that he not only refused admittance to those who were sent by
Nero to fetch her, but that, on one occasion, he shut him out, and kept him
standing before the door, mixing prayers and menaces in vain, and demanding back
again what was entrusted to his keeping. His pretended marriage, therefore,
being dissolved, he was sent lieutenant into Lusitania. This treatment of him
was thought sufficiently severe, because harsher proceedings might have brought
the whole farce to light, which, notwithstanding, at last came out, and was
published to the world in the following distich:—
Cur Otho mentitus sit, quæritis, exul honore?
Uxoris mœchus cæperat esse suæ.
You ask why Otho’s banish’d? Know, the cause
Comes not within the verge of vulgar laws.
Against all rules of fashionable life,
The rogue had dared to sleep with his own wife.
He governed the province in quality of quæstor for ten years, with singular
moderation and justice.
IV. As soon as an opportunity of revenge offered, he readily joined in Galba’s
enterprises, and at the same time conceived hopes of obtaining the imperial
dignity for himself. To this he was much encouraged by the state of the times,
but still more by the assurances given him by Seleucus, the astrologer, who,
having formerly told him that he would certainly out-live Nero, came to him at
that juncture unexpectedly, promising him again that he should succeed to the
empire, and that in a very short time. He, therefore, let slip no opportunity of
making his court to every one about him by all manner of civilities. As often as
he entertained Galba at supper, he distributed to every man of the cohort which
attended the emperor on guard, a gold piece; endeavouring likewise to oblige the
rest of the soldiers in one way or another. Being chosen an arbitrator by one
who had a dispute with his neighbour about a piece of land, he bought it, and
gave it him; so that now almost every body thought and said, that he was the
only man worthy of succeeding to the empire.
V. He entertained hopes of being adopted by Galba, and expected it every day.
But finding himself disappointed, by Piso’s being preferred before him, he
turned his thoughts to obtaining his purpose by the use of violence; and to this
he was instigated, as well by the greatness of his debts, as by resentment at
Galba’s conduct towards him. For he did not conceal his conviction, “that he
could not stand his ground unless he became emperor, and that it signified
nothing whether he fell by the hands of his enemies in the field, or of his
creditors in the forum.” He had a few days before squeezed out of one of the
emperor’s slaves a million of sesterces for procuring him a stewardship; and
this was the whole fund he had for carrying on so great an enterprise. At first
the design was entrusted to only five of the guard, but afterwards to ten
others, each of the five naming two. They had every one ten thousand sesterces
paid down, and were promised fifty thousand more. By these, others were drawn
in, but not many; from a confident assurance, that when the matter came to the
crisis, they should have enough to join them.
VI. His first intention was, immediately after the departure of Piso, to seize
the camp, and fall upon Galba, whilst he was at supper in the palace; but he was
restrained by a regard for the cohort at that time on duty, lest he should bring
too great an odium upon it; because it happened that the same cohort was on
guard before, both when Caius was slain, and Nero deserted. For some time
afterwards, he was restrained also by scruples about the omens, and by the
advice of Seleucus. Upon the day fixed at last for the enterprise, having given
his accomplices notice to wait for him in the forum near the temple of Saturn,
at the gilded mile-stone, he went in the morning to pay his respects to Galba;
and being received with a kiss as usual, he attended him at sacrifice, and heard
the predictions of the augur. A freedman of his, then bringing him word that the
architects were come, which was the signal agreed upon, he withdrew, as if it
were with a design to view a house upon sale, and went out by a back-door of the
palace to the place appointed. Some say he pretended to be seized with an ague
fit, and ordered those about him to make that excuse for him, if he was inquired
after. Being then quickly concealed in a woman’s litter, he made the best of his
way for the camp. But the bearers growing tired, he got out, and began to run.
His shoe becoming loose, he stopped again, but being immediately raised by his
attendants upon their shoulders, and unanimously saluted by the title of
Emperor, he came amidst auspicious acclamations and drawn swords into the
Principia in the camp; all who met him joining in the cavalcade, as if they had
been privy to the design. Upon this, sending some soldiers to dispatch Galba and
Piso, he said nothing else in his address to the soldiery, to secure their
affections, than these few words: “I shall be content with whatever ye think fit
to leave me.”
VII. Towards the close of the day, he entered the senate, and after he had made
a short speech to them, pretending that he had been seized in the streets, and
compelled by violence to assume the imperial authority, which he designed to
exercise in conjunction with them, he retired to the palace. Besides other
compliments which he received from those who flocked about him to congratulate
and flatter him, he was called Nero by the mob, and manifested no intention of
declining that cognomen. Nay, some authors relate, that he used it in his
official acts, and the first letters he sent to the governors of provinces. He
suffered all his images and statues to be replaced, and restored his procurators
and freedmen to their former posts. And the first writing which he signed as
emperor, was a promise of fifty millions of sesterces to finish the
Golden-house. He is said to have been greatly frightened that night in his
sleep, and to have groaned heavily; and being found, by those who came running
in to see what the matter was, lying upon the floor before his bed, he
endeavoured by every kind of atonement to appease the ghost of Galba, by which
he had found himself violently tumbled out of bed. The next day, as he was
taking the omens, a great storm arising, and sustaining a grievous fall, he
muttered to himself from time to time:
Τί γάϱ μοι ϰαι μαϰϱοῖς αὐλοῖς;
What business have I the loud trumpets to sound!
VIII. About the same time, the armies in Germany took an oath to Vitellius as
emperor. Upon receiving this intelligence, he advised the senate to send thither
deputies, to inform them, that a prince had been already chosen; and to persuade
them to peace and a good understanding. By letters and messages, however, he
offered Vitellius to make him his colleague in the empire, and his son-in-law.
But a war being now unavoidable, and the generals and troops sent forward by
Vitellius, advancing, he had a proof of the attachment and fidelity of the
pretorian guards, which had nearly proved fatal to the senatorian order. It had
been judged proper that some arms should be given out of the stores, and
conveyed to the fleet by the marine troops. While they were employed in fetching
these from the camp in the night, some of the guards suspecting treachery,
excited a tumult; and suddenly the whole body, without any of their officers at
their head, ran to the palace, demanding that the entire senate should be put to
the sword; and having repulsed some of the tribunes who endeavoured to stop
them, and slain others, they broke, all bloody as they were, into the
banquetting room, inquiring for the emperor; nor would they quit the place until
they had seen him. He now entered upon his expedition against Vitellius with
great alacrity, but too much precipitation, and without any regard to the
ominous circumstances which attended it. For the Ancilia had been taken out of
the temple of Mars, for the usual procession, but were not yet replaced; during
which interval it had of old been looked upon as very unfortunate to engage in
any enterprise. He likewise set forward upon the day when the worshippers of the
Mother of the gods begin their lamentations and wailing. Besides these, other
unlucky omens attended him. For, in a victim offered to Father Dis, he found the
signs such as upon all other occasions are regarded as favourable; whereas, in
that sacrifice, the contrary intimations are judged the most propitious. At his
first setting forward, he was stopped by inundations of the Tiber; and at twenty
miles’ distance from the city, found the road blocked up by the fall of houses.
IX. Though it was the general opinion that it would be proper to protract the
war, as the enemy were distressed by famine and the straitness of their
quarters, yet he resolved with equal rashness to force them to an engagement as
soon as possible; whether from impatience of prolonged anxiety, and in the hope
of bringing matters to an issue before the arrival of Vitellius, or because he
could not resist the ardour of the troops, who were all clamorous for battle. He
was not, however, present at any of those which ensued, but stayed behind at
Brixellum. He had the advantage in three slight engagements, near the Alps,
about Placentia, and a place called Castor’s; but was, by a fraudulent stratagem
of the enemy, defeated in the last and greatest battle, at Bedriacum. For, some
hopes of a conference being given, and the soldiers being drawn up to hear the
conditions of peace declared, very unexpectedly, and amidst their mutual
salutations, they were obliged to stand to their arms. Immediately upon this he
determined to put an end to his life, more, as many think, and not without
reason, out of shame, at persisting in a struggle for the empire to the hazard
of the public interest and so many lives, than from despair, or distrust of his
troops. For he had still in reserve, and in full force, those whom he had kept
about him for a second trial of his fortune, and others were coming up from
Dalmatia, Pannonia, and Mœsia; nor were the troops lately defeated so far
discouraged as not to be ready, even of themselves, to run all risks in order to
wipe off their recent disgrace.
X. My father, Suetonius Lenis, was in this battle, being at that time an
angusticlavian tribune in the thirteenth legion. He used frequently to say, that
Otho, before his advancement to the empire, had such an abhorrence of civil war,
that once, upon hearing an account given at table of the death of Cassius and
Brutus, he fell into a trembling, and that he never would have interfered with
Galba, but that he was confident of succeeding in his enterprise without a war.
Moreover, that he was then encouraged to despise life by the example of a common
soldier, who bringing news of the defeat of the army, and finding that he met
with no credit, but was railed at for a liar and a coward, as if he had run away
from the field of battle, fell upon his sword at the emperor’s feet; upon the
sight of which, my father said that Otho cried out, “that he would expose to no
farther danger such brave men, who had deserved so well at his hands.” Advising
therefore his brother, his brother’s son, and the rest of his friends, to
provide for their security in the best manner they could, after he had embraced
and kissed them, he sent them away; and then withdrawing into a private room by
himself, he wrote a letter of consolation to his sister, containing two sheets.
He likewise sent another to Messalina, Nero’s widow, whom he had intended to
marry, committing to her the care of his relics and memory. He then burnt all
the letters which he had by him, to prevent the danger and mischief that might
otherwise befall the writers from the conqueror. What ready money he had, he
distributed among his domestics.
XI. And now being prepared, and just upon the point of dispatching himself, he
was induced to suspend the execution of his purpose by a great tumult which had
broken cut in the camp. Finding that some of the soldiers who were making off
had been seized and detained as deserters, “Let us add,” said he, “this night to
our life.” These were his very words. He then gave orders that no violence
should be offered to any one; and keeping his chamber-door open until late at
night, he allowed all who pleased the liberty to come and see him. At last,
after quenching his thirst with a draught of cold water, he took up two
poniards, and having examined the points of both, put one of them under his
pillow, and shutting his chamber-door, slept very soundly, until, awaking about
break of day, he stabbed himself under the left pap. Some persons bursting into
the room upon his first groan, he at one time covered, and at another exposed
his wound to the view of the bystanders, and thus life soon ebbed away. His
funeral was hastily performed, according to his own order, in the thirty-eighth
year of his age, and ninety-fifth day of his reign.
XII. The person and appearance of Otho no way corresponded to the great spirit
he displayed on this occasion; for he is said to have been of low stature,
splay-footed, and bandy-legged. He was, however, effeminately nice in the care
of his person: the hair on his body he plucked out by the roots; and because he
was somewhat bald, he wore a kind of peruke, so exactly fitted to his head, that
nobody could have known it for such. He used to shave every day, and rub his
face with soaked bread; the use of which he began when the down first appeared
upon his chin, to prevent his having any beard. It is said likewise that he
celebrated publicly the sacred rites of Isis, clad in a linen garment, such as
is used by the worshippers of that goddess. These circumstances, I imagine,
caused the world to wonder the more that his death was so little in character
with his life. Many of the soldiers who were present, kissing and bedewing with
their tears his hands and feet as he lay dead, and celebrating him as “a most
gallant man, and an incomparable emperor,” immediately put an end to their own
lives upon the spot, not far from his funeral pile. Many of those likewise who
were at a distance, upon hearing the news of his death, in the anguish of their
hearts, began fighting amongst themselves, until they dispatched one another. To
conclude: the generality of mankind, though they hated him whilst living, yet
highly extolled him after his death; insomuch that it was the common talk and
opinion, “that Galba had been driven to destruction by his rival, not so much
for the sake of reigning himself, as of restoring Rome to its ancient liberty.”
It is remarkable, in the fortune of this emperor, that he owed both his
elevation and catastrophe to the inextricable embarrassments in which he was
involved; first, in respect of pecuniary circumstances, and next, of political.
He was not, so far as we can learn, a follower of any of the sects of
philosophers which justified, and even recommended suicide, in particular cases:
yet he perpetrated that act with extraordinary coolness and resolution; and,
what is no less remarkable, from the motive, as he avowed, of public expediency
only. It was observed of him, for many years after his death, that “none ever
died like Otho.”
AULUS VITELLIUS.
I.Very different accounts are given of the origin of the Vitellian family. Some
describe it as ancient and noble, others as recent and obscure, nay, extremely
mean. I am inclined to think, that these several representations have been made
by the flatterers and detractors of Vitellius, after he became emperor, unless
the fortunes of the family varied before. There is extant a memoir addressed by
Quintus Eulogius to Quintus Vitellius, quæstor to the Divine Augustus, in which
it is said, that the Vitellii were descended from Faunus, king of the
aborigines, and Vitellia, who was worshipped in many places as a goddess, and
that they reigned formerly over the whole of Latium: that all who were left of
the family removed out of the country of the Sabines to Rome, and were enrolled
among the patricians: that some monuments of the family continued a long time;
as the Vitellian Way, reaching from the Janiculum to the sea, and likewise a
colony of that name, which, at a very remote period of time, they desired leave
from the government to defend against the Aequicolæ, with a force raised by
their own family only: also that, in the time of the war with the Samnites, some
of the Vitellii who went with the troops levied for the security of Apulia,
settled at Nuceria, and their descendants, a long time afterwards, returned
again to Rome, and were admitted into the patrician order. On the other hand,
the generality of writers say that the founder of the family was a freedman.
Cassius Severus and some others relate that he was likewise a cobbler, whose son
having made a considerable fortune by agencies and dealings in confiscated
property, begot, by a common strumpet, daughter of one Antiochus, a baker, a
child, who afterwards became a Roman knight. Of these different accounts the
reader is left to take his choice.
II. It is certain, however, that Publius Vitellius, of Nuceria, whether of an
ancient family, or of low extraction, was a Roman knight, and a procurator to
Augustus. He left behind him four sons, all men of very high station, who had
the same cognomen, but the different prænomina of Aulus, Quintus, Publius, and
Lucius. Aulus died in the enjoyment of the consulship, which office he bore
jointly with Domitius, the father of Nero Cæsar. He was elegant to excess in his
manner of living, and notorious for the vast expense of his entertainments.
Quintus was deprived of his rank of senator, when, upon a motion made by
Tiberius, a resolution passed to purge the senate of those who were in any
respect not duly qualified for that honour. Publius, an intimate friend and
companion of Germanicus, prosecuted his enemy and murderer, Cneius Piso, and
procured sentence against him. After he had been made prætor, being arrested
among the accomplices of Sejanus, and delivered into the hands of his brother to
be confined in his house, he opened a vein with a penknife, intending to bleed
himself to death. He suffered, however, the wound to be bound up and cured, not
so much from repenting the resolution he had formed, as to comply with the
importunity of his relations. He died afterwards a natural death during his
confinement. Lucius, after his consulship, was made governor of Syria, and by
his politic management not only brought Artabanus, king of the Parthians, to
give him an interview, but to worship the standards of the Roman legions. He
afterwards filled two ordinary consulships, and also the censorship jointly with
the emperor Claudius. Whilst that prince was absent upon his expedition into
Britain, he care of the empire was committed to him, being a man of great
integrity and industry. But he lessened his character not a little, by his
passionate fondness for an abandoned freedwoman, with whose spittle, mixed with
honey, he used to anoint his throat and jaws, by way of remedy for some
complaint, not privately nor seldom, but daily and publicly. Being extravagantly
prone to flattery, it was he who gave rise to the worship of Caius Cæsar as a
god, when, upon his return from Syria, he would not presume to accost him any
otherwise than with his head covered, turning himself round, and then
prostrating himself upon the earth. And to leave no artifice untried to secure
the favour of Claudius, who was entirely governed by his wives and freedmen, he
requested as the greatest favour from Messalina, that she would be pleased to
let him take off her shoes; which, when he had done, he took her right shoe, and
wore it constantly betwixt his toga and his tunic, and from time to time covered
it with kisses. He likewise worshipped golden images of Narcissus and Pallas
among his household gods. It was he, too, who, when Claudius exhibited the
secular games, in his compliments to him upon that occasion, used this
expression, “May you often do the same.”
III. He died of palsy, the day after his seizure with it, leaving behind him two
sons, whom he had by a most excellent and respectable wife, Sextilia. He had
lived to see them both consuls, the same year and during the whole year also;
the younger succeeding the elder for the last six months. The senate honoured
him after his decease with a funeral at the public expense, and with a statue in
the Rostra, which had this inscription upon the base: “One who was stedfast in
his loyalty to his prince.” The emperor Aulus Vitellius, the son of this Lucius,
was born upon the eighth of the calends of October [24th September], or, as some
say, upon the seventh of the ides of September [7th September], in the
consulship of Drusus Cæsar and Norbanus Flaccus. His parents were so terrified
with the predictions of astrologers upon the calculation of his nativity, that
his father used his utmost endeavours to prevent his being sent governor into
any of the provinces, whilst he was alive. His mother, upon his being sent to
the legions, and also upon his being proclaimed emperor, immediately lamented
him as utterly ruined. He spent his youth amongst the catamites of Tiberius at
Capri, was himself constantly stigmatized with the name of Spintria, and was
supposed to have been the occasion of his father’s advancement, by consenting to
gratify the emperor’s unnatural lust.
IV. In the subsequent part of his life, being still most scandalously vicious,
he rose to great favour at court; being upon a very intimate footing with Caius
[Caligula], because of his fondness for chariot-driving, and with Claudius for
his love of gaming. But he was in a still higher degree acceptable to Nero, as
well on the same accounts, as for a particular service which he rendered him.
When Nero presided in the games instituted by himself, though he was extremely
desirous to perform amongst the harpers, yet his modesty would not permit him,
notwithstanding the people entreated much for it. Upon his quitting the theatre,
Vitellius fetched him back again, pretending to represent the determined wishes
of the people, and so afforded him the opportunity of yielding to their
intreaties.
V. By the favour of these three princes, he was not only advanced to the great
offices of state, but to the highest dignities of the sacred order; after which
he held the proconsulship of Africa, and had the superintendence of the public
works, in which appointment his conduct, and, consequently, his reputation, were
very different. For he governed the province with singular integrity during two
years, in the latter of which he acted as deputy to his brother, who succeeded
him. But in his office in the city, he was said to pillage the temples of their
gifts and ornaments, and to have exchanged brass and tin for gold and silver.
VI. He took to wife Petronia, the daughter of a man of consular rank, and had by
her a son named Petronius, who was blind of an eye. The mother being willing to
appoint this youth her heir, upon condition that he should be released from his
father’s authority, the latter discharged him accordingly; but shortly after, as
was believed, murdered him, charging him with a design upon his life, and
pretending that he had, from consciousness of his guilt, drank the poison he had
prepared for his father. Soon afterwards, he married Galeria Fundana, the
daughter of a man of pretorian rank, and had by her both sons and daughters.
Among the former was one who had such a stammering in his speech, that he was
little better than if he had been dumb.
VII. He was sent by Galba into Lower Germany, contrary to his expectation. It is
supposed that he was assisted in procuring this appointment by the interest of
Titus Junius, a man of great influence at that time; whose friendship he had
long before gained by favouring the same set of charioteers with him in the
Circensian games. But Galba openly declared that none were less to be feared
than those who only cared for their bellies, and that even his enormous appetite
must be satisfied with the plenty of that province; so that it is evident he was
selected for that government more out of contempt than kindness. It is certain,
that when he was to set out, he had not money for the expenses of his journey;
he being at that time so much straitened in his circumstances, that he was
obliged to put his wife and children, whom he left at Rome, into a poor lodging
which he hired for them, in order that he might let his own house for the
remainder of the year; and he pawned a pearl taken from his mother’s earring, to
defray his expenses on the road. A crowd of creditors who were waiting to stop
him, and amongst them the people of Sineussa and Formia, whose taxes he had
converted to his own use, he eluded, by alarming them with the apprehension of
false accusation. He had, however, sued a certain freedman, who was clamorous in
demanding a debt of him, under pretence that he had kicked him; which action he
would not withdraw, until he had wrung from the freedman fifty thousand
sesterces. Upon his arrival in the province, the army, which was disaffected to
Galba, and ripe for insurrection, received him with open arms, as if he had been
sent them from heaven. It was no small recommendation to their favour, that he
was the son of a man who had been thrice consul, was in the prime of life, and
of an easy, prodigal disposition. This opinion, which had been long entertained
of him, Vitellius confirmed by some late practices; having kissed all the common
soldiers whom he met with upon the road, and been excessively complaisant in the
inns and stables to the muleteers and travellers; asking them in a morning, if
they had got their breakfasts, and letting them see, by belching, that he had
eaten his.
VIII. After he had reached the camp, he denied no man any thing he asked for,
and pardoned all who lay under sentence for disgraceful conduct or disorderly
habits. Before a month, therefore, had passed, without regard to the day or
season, he was hurried by the soldiers out of his bed-chamber, although it was
evening, and he in an undress, and unanimously saluted by the title of Emperor.
He was then carried round the most considerable towns in the neighbourhood, with
the sword of the Divine Julius in his hand; which had been taken by some person
out of the temple of Mars, and presented to him when he was first saluted. Nor
did he return to the pretorium, until his dining-room was in flames from the
chimney’s taking fire. Upon this accident, all being in consternation, and
considering it as an unlucky omen, he cried out, “Courage, boys! it shines
brightly upon us.” And this was all he said to the soldiers. The army of the
Upper Province likewise, which had before declared against Galba for the senate,
joining in the proceedings, he very eagerly accepted the cognomen of Germanicus,
offered him by the unanimous consent of both armies, but deferred assuming that
of Augustus, and refused for ever that of Cæsar.
IX. Intelligence of Galba’s death arriving soon after, when he had settled his
affairs in Germany he divided his troops into two bodies, intending to send one
of them before him against Otho, and to follow with the other himself. The army
he sent forward had a lucky omen; for, suddenly, an eagle came flying up to them
on the right, and having hovered round the standards, flew gently before them on
their road. But, on the other hand, when he began his own march, all the
equestrian statues, which were erected for him in several places, fell suddenly
down with their legs broken; and the laurel crown, which he had put on as
emblematical of auspicious fortune, fell off his head into a river. Soon
afterwards, at Vienne, as he was upon the tribunal administering justice, a cock
perched upon his shoulder, and afterwards upon his head. The issue corresponded
to these omens; for he was not able to keep the empire which had been secured
for him by his lieutenants.
X. He heard of the victory at Bedriacum, and the death of Otho, whilst he was
yet in Gaul, and without the least hesitation, by a single proclamation,
disbanded all the pretorian cohorts, as having, by their repeated treasons, set
a dangerous example to the rest of the army; commanding them to deliver up their
arms to his tribunes. A hundred and twenty of them, under whose hands he had
found petitions presented to Otho, for rewards of their service in the murder of
Galba, he besides ordered to be sought out and punished. So far his conduct
deserved approbation, and was such as to afford hope of his becoming an
excellent prince, had he not managed his other affairs in a way more
corresponding with his own disposition, and his former manner of life, than to
the imperial dignity. For, having begun his march, he rode through every city in
his route in a triumphal procession; and sailed down the rivers in ships, fitted
out with the greatest elegance, and decorated with various kinds of crowns,
amidst the most extravagant entertainments. Such was the want of discipline, and
the licentiousness both in his family and army, that, not satisfied with the
provision every where made for them at the public expense, they committed every
kind of robbery and insult upon the inhabitants, setting slaves at liberty as
they pleased; and if any dared to make resistance, they dealt blows and abuse,
frequently wounds, and sometimes slaughter amongst them. When he reached the
plains on which the battles were fought, some of those around him being offended
at the smell of the carcases which lay rotting upon the ground, he had the
audacity to encourage them by a most detestable remark, “That a dead enemy smelt
not amiss, especially if he were a fellow-citizen.” To qualify, however, the
offensiveness of the stench, he quaffed in public a goblet of wine, and with
equal vanity and insolence distributed a large quantity of it among his troops.
On his observing a stone with an inscription upon it to the memory of Otho, he
said, “It was a mausoleum good enough for such a prince.” He also sent the
poniard, with which Otho killed himself, to the colony of Agrippina, to be
dedicated to Mars. Upon the Appenine hills he celebrated a Bacchanalian feast.
XI. At last he entered the City with trumpets sounding, in his general’s cloak,
and girded with his sword, amidst a display of standards and banners: his
attendants being all in the military habit, and the arms of the soldiers
unsheathed. Acting more and more in open violation of all laws, both divine and
human, he assumed the office of Pontifex Maximus, upon the day of the defeat at
the Allia; ordered the magistrates to be elected for ten years of office; and
made himself consul for life. To put it out of all doubt what model he intended
to follow in his government of the empire, he made his offerings to the shade of
Nero in the midst of the Campus Martius, and with a full assembly of the public
priests attending him. And at a solemn entertainment, he desired a harper who
pleased the company much, to sing something in praise of Domitius; and upon his
beginning some songs of Nero’s, he started up in presence of the whole assembly,
and could not refrain from applauding him, by clapping his hands.
XII. After such a commencement of his career, he conducted his affairs, during
the greater part of his reign, entirely by the advice and direction of the
vilest amongst the players and charioteers, and especially his freedman
Asiaticus. This fellow had, when young, been engaged with him in a course of
mutual and unnatural pollution, but, being at last quite tired of the
occupation, ran away. His master, some time after, caught him at Puteoli,
selling a liquor called Posca, and put him in chains, but soon released him, and
retained him in his former capacity. Growing weary, however, of his rough and
stubborn temper, he sold him to a strolling fencing-master; after which, when
the fellow was to have been brought up to play his part at the conclusion of an
entertainment of gladiators, he suddenly carried him off, and at length, upon
his being advanced to the government of a province, gave him his freedom. The
first day of his reign, he presented him with the gold rings at supper, though
in the morning, when all about him requested that favour in his behalf, he
expressed the utmost abhorrence of putting so great a stain upon the equestrian
order.
XIII. He was chiefly addicted to the vices of luxury and cruelty. He always made
three meals a day, sometimes four; breakfast, dinner, and supper, and a drunken
revel after all. This load of victuals he could well enough bear, from a custom
to which he had enured himself, of frequently vomiting. For these several meals
he would make different appointments at the houses of his friends on the same
day. None ever entertained him at less expense than four hundred thousand
sesterces. The most famous was a set entertainment given him by his brother, at
which, it is said, there were served up no less than two thousand choice fishes,
and seven thousand birds. Yet even this supper he himself outdid, at a feast
which he gave upon the first use of a dish which had been made for him, and
which, for its extraordinary size, he called “The Shield of Minerva.” In this
dish there were tossed up together the livers of char-fish, the brains of
pheasants and peacocks, with the tongues of flamingos, and the entrails of
lampreys, which had been brought in ships of war as far as from the Carpathian
Sea, and the Spanish Straits. He was not only a man of an insatiable appetite,
but would gratify it likewise at unseasonable times, and with any garbage that
came in his way; so that, at a sacrifice, he would snatch from the fire flesh
and cakes, and eat them upon the spot. When he travelled, he did the same at the
inns upon the road, whether the meat was fresh dressed and hot, or what had been
left the day before, and was half-eaten.
XIV. He delighted in the infliction of punishments, and even those which were
capital, without any distinction of persons or occasions. Several noblemen, his
school-fellows and companions, invited by him to court, he treated with such
flattering caresses, as seemed to indicate an affection short only of admitting
them to share the honours of the imperial dignity; yet he put them all to death
by some base means or other. To one he gave poison with his own hand, in a cup
of cold water which he called for in a fever. He scarcely spared one of all the
usurers, notaries, and publicans, who had ever demanded a debt of him at Rome,
or any toll or custom upon the road. One of these, while in the very act of
saluting him, he ordered for execution, but immediately sent for him back; upon
which all about him applauding his clemency, he commanded him to be slain in his
own presence, saying, “I have a mind to feed my eyes.” Two sons who interceded
for their father, he ordered to be executed with him. A Roman knight, upon his
being dragged away for execution, and crying out to him, “You are my heir,” he
desired to produce his will: and finding that he had made his freedman joint
heir with him, he commanded that both he and the freedman should have their
throats cut. He put to death some of the common people for cursing aloud the
blue party in the Circensian games; supposing it to be done in contempt of
himself, and the expectation of a revolution in the government. There were no
persons he was more severe against than jugglers and astrologers; and as soon as
any one of them was informed against, he put him to death without the formality
of a trial. He was enraged against them, because, after his proclamation by
which he commanded all astrologers to quit Rome, and Italy also, before the
calends [the first] of October, a bill was immediately posted about the city,
with the following words:—“Takenotice: The Chaldæans also decree that Vitellius
Germanicus shall be no more, by the day of the said calends.” He was even
suspected of being accessary to his mother’s death, by forbidding sustenance to
be given her when she was unwell; a German witch, whom he held to be oracular,
having told him, “That he would long reign in security if he survived his
mother.” But others say, that being quite weary of the state of affairs, and
apprehensive of the future, she obtained without difficulty a dose of poison
from her son.
XV. In the eighth month of his reign, the troops both in Mœsia and Pannonia
revolted from him; as did likewise, of the armies beyond sea, those in Judæa and
Syria, some of which swore allegiance to Vespasian as emperor in his own
presence, and others in his absence. In order, therefore, to secure the favour
and affection of the people, Vitellius lavished on all around whatever he had it
in his power to bestow, both publicly and privately, in the most extravagant
manner. He also levied soldiers in the city, and promised all who enlisted as
volunteers, not only their discharge after the victory was gained, but all the
rewards due to veterans who had served their full time in the wars. The enemy
now pressing forward both by sea and land, on one hand he opposed against them
his brother with a fleet, the new levies, and a body of gladiators, and in
another quarter the troops and generals who were engaged at Bedriacum. But being
beaten or betrayed in every direction, he agreed with Flavius Sabinus,
Vespasian’s brother, to abdicate, on condition of having his life spared, and a
hundred millions of sesterces granted him; and he immediately, upon the
palace-steps, publicly declared to a large body of soldiers there assembled,
“that he resigned the government, which he had accepted reluctantly;” but they
all remonstrating against it, he deferred the conclusion of the treaty. Next
day, early in the morning, he came down to the forum in a very mean habit, and
with many tears repeated the declaration from a writing which he held in his
hand; but the soldiers and people again interposing, and encouraging him not to
give way, but to rely on their zealous support, he recovered his courage, and
forced Sabinus, with the rest of the Flavian party, who now thought themselves
secure, to retreat into the Capitol, where he destroyed them all by setting fire
to the temple of Jupiter, whilst he beheld the contest and the fire from
Tiberius’s house, where he was feasting. Not long after, repenting of what he
had done, and throwing the blame of it upon others, he called a meeting, and
swore “that nothing was dearer to him than the public peace;” which oath he also
obliged the rest to take. Then drawing a dagger from his side, he presented it
first to the consul, and, upon his refusing it, to the magistrates, and then to
every one of the senators; but none of them being willing to accept it, he went
away, as if he meant to lay it up in the temple of Concord; but some crying out
to him, “You are Concord,” he came back again, and said that he would not only
keep his weapon, but for the future use the cognomen of Concord.
XVI. He advised the senate to send deputies, accompanied by the Vestal Virgins,
to desire peace, or, at least, time for consultation. The day after, while he
was waiting for an answer, he received intelligence by a scout, that the enemy
was advancing. Immediately, therefore, throwing himself into a small litter,
borne by hand, with only two attendants, a baker and a cook, he privately
withdrew to his father’s house, on the Aventine hill, intending to escape thence
into Campania. But a groundless report being circulated, that the enemy was
willing to come to terms, he suffered himself to be carried back to the palace.
Finding, however, nobody there, and those who were with him stealing away, he
girded round his waist a belt full of gold pieces, and then ran into the
porter’s lodge, tying the dog before the door, and piling up against it the bed
and bedding.
XVII. By this time the forerunners of the enemy’s army had broken into the
palace, and meeting with nobody, searched, as was natural, every corner. Being
dragged by them out of his cell, and asked “who he was?” (for they did not
recognize him), “and if he knew where Vitellius was?” he deceived them by a
falsehood. But at last being discovered, he begged hard to be detained in
custody, even were it in a prison; pretending to have something to say which
concerned Vespasian’s security. Nevertheless, he was dragged half-naked into the
forum, with his hands tied behind him, a rope about his neck, and his clothes
torn, amidst the most contemptuous abuse, both by word and deed, along the Via
Sacra; his head being held back by the hair, in the manner of condemned
criminals, and the point of a sword put under his chin, that he might hold up
his face to public view; some of the mob, meanwhile, pelting him with dung and
mud, whilst others called him “an incendiary and glutton.” They also upbraided
him with the defects of his person, for he was monstrously tall, and had a face
usually very red with hard-drinking, a large belly, and one thigh weak,
occasioned by a chariot running against him, as he was attending upon Caius,
while he was driving. At length, upon the Scalæ Gemoniæ, he was tormented and
put to death in lingering tortures, and then dragged by a hook into the Tiber.
XVIII. He perished with his brother and son, in the fifty-seventh year of his
age, and verified the prediction of those who, from the omen which happened to
him at Vienne, as before related, foretold that he would be made prisoner by
some man of Gaul. For he was seized by Antoninus Primus, a general of the
adverse party, who was born at Toulouse, and, when a boy, had the cognomon of
Becco, which signifies a cock’s beak.
After the extinction of the race of the Cæsars, the possession of the imperial
power became extremely precarious; and great influence in the army was the means
which now invariably led to the throne. The soldiers having arrogated to
themselves the right of nomination, they either unanimously elected one and the
same person, or different parties supporting the interests of their respective
favourites, there arose between them a contention, which was usually determined
by an appeal to arms, and followed by the assassination of the unsuccessful
competitor. Vitellius, by being a parasite of all the emperors from Tiberius to
Nero inclusively, had risen to a high military rank, by which, with a spirit of
enterprise, and large promises to the soldiery, it was not difficult to snatch
the reins of government, while they were yet fluctuating in the hands of Otho.
His ambition prompted to the attempt, and his boldness was crowned with success.
In the service of the four preceding emperors, Vitellius had imbibed the
principal vices of them all: but what chiefly distinguished him was extreme
voraciousness, which, though he usually pampered it with enormous luxury, could
yet be gratified by the vilest and most offensive garbage. The pusillanimity
discovered by this emperor at his death, forms a striking contrast to the heroic
behaviour of Otho.
T. FLAVIUS VESPASIANUS AUGUSTUS.
IThe empire, which had been long thrown into a disturbed and unsetted state, by
the rebellion and violent death of its three last rulers, was at length restored
to peace and security by the Flavian family, whose descent was indeed obscure,
and which boasted no ancestral honours; but the public had no cause to regret
its elevation; though it is acknowledged that Domitian met with the just reward
of his avarice and cruelty. Titus Flavius Petro, a townsman of Reate, whether a
centurion or an evocatus of Pompey’s party in the civil war, is uncertain, fled
out of the battle of Pharsalia and went home: where, having at last obtained his
pardon and discharge, he became a collector of the money raised by public sales
in the way of auction. His son, surnamed Sabinus, was never engaged in the
military service, though some say he was a centurion of the first order, and
others, that whilst he held that rank, he was discharged on account of his bad
state of health: this Sabinus, I say, was a publican, and received the tax of
the fortieth penny in Asia. And there were remaining, at the time of the
advancement of the family, several statues, which had been erected to him by the
cities of that province, with this inscription: “To the honest Tax-farmer.” He
afterwards turned usurer amongst the Helvetii, and there died, leaving behind
him his wife, Vespasia Polla, and two sons by her; the elder of whom, Sabinus,
came to be prefect of the city, and the younger, Vespasian, to be emperor. Polla,
descended of a good family, at Nursia, had for her father Vespasius Pollio,
thrice appointed military tribune, and at last prefect of the camp; and her
brother was a senator of prætorian dignity. There is to this day, about six
miles from Nursia, on the road to Spoletum, a place on the summit of a hill,
called Vespasiæ, where are several monuments of the Vespasii, a sufficient proof
of the splendour and antiquity of the family. I will not deny that some have
pretended to say, that Petro’s father was a native of Gallia Transpadana, whose
employment was to hire work-people who used to emigrate every year from the
country of the Umbria into that of the Sabines, to assist them in their
husbandry; but who settled at last in the town of Reate, and there married. But
of this I have not been able to discover the least proof, upon the strictest
inquiry.
II. Vespasian was born in the country of the Sabines, beyond Reate, in a little
country-seat called Phalacrine, upon the fifth of the calends of December [27th
November], in the evening, in the consulship of Quintus Sulpicius Camerinus and
Caius Poppæus Sabinus, five years before the death of Augustus; and was educated
under the care of Tertulla, his grandmother by the father’s side, upon an estate
belonging to the family, at Cosa. After his advancement to the empire, he used
frequently to visit the place where he had spent his infancy; and the villa was
continued in the same condition, that he might see every thing about him just as
he had been used to do. And he had so great a regard for the memory of his
grandmother, that, upon solemn occasions and festival days, he constantly drank
out of a silver cup which she had been accustomed to use. After assuming the
manly habit, he had a long time a distaste for the senatorian toga, though his
brother had obtained it; nor could he be persuaded by any one but his mother to
sue for that badge of honour. She at length drove him to it, more by taunts and
reproaches, than by her entreaties and authority, calling him now and then, by
way of reproach, his brother’s footman. He served as military tribune in Thrace.
When made quæstor, the province of Crete and Cyrene fell to him by lot. He was
candidate for the ædileship, and soon after for the prætorship, but met with a
repulse in the former case; though at last, with much difficulty, he came in
sixth on the poll-books. But the office of prætor he carried upon his first
canvass, standing amongst the highest at the poll. Being incensed against the
senate, and desirous to gain, by all possible means, the good graces of Caius,
he obtained leave to exhibit extraordinary games for the emperor’s victory in
Germany, and advised them to increase the punishment of the conspirators against
his life, by exposing their corpses unburied. He likewise gave him thanks in
that august assembly for the honour of being admitted to his table.
III. Meanwhile, he married Flavia Domitilla, who had formerly been the mistress
of Statilius Capella, a Roman knight of Sabrata in Africa, who [Domitilla]
enjoyed Latin rights; and was soon after declared fully and freely a citizen of
Rome, on a trial before the court of Recovery, brought by her father Flavius
Liberalis, a native of Ferentum, but no more than secretary to a quæstor. By her
he had the following children: Titus, Domitian, and Domitilla. He outlived his
wife and daughter, and lost them both before he became emperor. After the death
of his wife, he renewed his union with his former concubine Cænis, the
freedwoman of Antonia, and also her amanuensis, and treated her, even after he
was emperor, almost as if she had been his lawful wife.
IV. In the reign of Claudius, by the interest of Narcissus, he was sent to
Germany, in command of a legion; whence being removed into Britain, he engaged
the enemy in thirty several battles. He reduced under subjection to the Romans
two very powerful tribes, and above twenty great towns, with the Isle of Wight,
which lies close to the coast of Britain; partly under the command of Aulus
Plautius, the consular lieutenant, and partly under Claudius himself. For this
success he received the triumphal ornaments, and in a short time after two
priesthoods, besides the consulship, which he held during the two last months of
the year. The interval between that and his proconsulship he spent in leisure
and retirement, for fear of Agrippina, who still held great sway over her son,
and hated all the friends of Narcissus, who was then dead. Afterwards he got by
lot the province of Africa, which he governed with great reputation, excepting
that once, in an insurrection at Adrumentum, he was pelted with turnips. It is
certain that he returned thence nothing richer; for his credit was so low, that
he was obliged to mortgage his whole property to his brother, and was reduced to
the necessity of dealing in mules, for the support of his rank; for which reason
he was commonly called “the Muleteer.” He is said likewise to have been
convicted of extorting from a young man of fashion two hundred thousand
sesterces for procuring him the broadstripe, contrary to the wishes of his
father, and was severely reprimanded for it. While in attendance upon Nero in
Achaia, he frequently withdrew from the theatre while Nero was singing, and went
to sleep if he remained, which gave so much offence, that he was not only
excluded from his society, but debarred the liberty of saluting him in public.
Upon this, he retired to a small out-of-the-way town, where he lay skulking in
constant fear of his life, until a province, with an army, was offered him.
A firm persuasion had long prevailed through all the East, that it was fated for
the empire of the world, at that time, to devolve on some who should go forth
from Judæa. This prediction referred to a Roman emperor, as the event shewed;
but the Jews, applying it to themselves, broke out into rebellion, and having
defeated and slain their governor, routed the lieutenant of Syria, a man of
consular rank, who was advancing to his assistance, and took an eagle, the
standard of one of his legions. As the suppression of this revolt appeared to
require a stronger force and an active general, who might be safely trusted in
an affair of so much importance, Vespasian was chosen in preference to all
others, both for his known activity, and on account of the obscurity of his
origin and name, being a person of whom there could be not the least jealousy.
Two legions, therefore, eight squadrons of horse, and ten cohorts, being added
to the former troops in Judæa, and, taking with him his eldest son as
lieutenant, as soon as he arrived in his province, he turned the eyes of the
neighbouring provinces upon him, by reforming immediately the discipline of the
camp, and engaging the enemy once or twice with such resolution, that, in the
attack of a castle, he had his knee hurt by the stroke of a stone, and received
several arrows in his shield.
V. After the deaths of Nero and Galba, whilst Otho and Vitellius were contending
for the sovereignty, he entertained hopes of obtaining the empire, with the
prospect of which he had long before flattered himself, from the following
omens. Upon an estate belonging to the Flavian family, in the neighbourhood of
Rome, there was an old oak, sacred to Mars, which, at the three several
deliveries of Vespasia, put out each time a new branch; evident intimations of
the future fortune of each child. The first was but a slender one, which quickly
withered away; and accordingly, the girl that was born did not live long. The
second became vigorous, which portended great good fortune; but the third grew
like a tree. His father, Sabinus, encouraged by these omens, which were
confirmed by the augurs, told his mother, “that her grandson would be emperor of
Rome;” at which she laughed heartily, wondering, she said, “that her son should
be in his dotage whilst she continued still in full possession of her
faculties.”
Afterwards in his ædileship, when Caius Cæsar, being enraged at his not taking
care to have the streets kept clean, ordered the soldiers to fill the bosom of
his gown with dirt, some persons at that time construed it into a sign that the
government, being trampled under foot and deserted in some civil commotion,
would fall under his protection, and as it were into his lap. Once, while he was
at dinner, a strange dog, that wandered about the streets, brought a man’s hand,
and laid it under the table. And another time, while he was at supper, a
plough-ox throwing the yoke off his neck, broke into the room, and after he had
frightened away all the attendants, on a sudden, as if he was tired, fell down
at his feet, as he lay still upon his couch, and hung down his neck. A
cypress-tree likewise, in a field belonging to the family, was torn up by the
roots, and laid flat upon the ground, when there was no violent wind; but next
day it rose again fresher and stronger than before.
He dreamt in Achaia that the good fortune of himself and his family would begin
when Nero had a tooth drawn; and it happened that the day after, a surgeon
coming into the hall, showed him a tooth which he had just extracted from Nero.
In Judæa, upon his consulting the oracle of the divinity at Carmel, the answer
was so encouraging as to assure him of success in anything he projected, however
great or important it might be. And when Josephus, one of the noble prisoners,
was put in chains, he confidently affirmed that he should be released in a very
short time by the same Vespasian, but he would be emperor first. Some omens were
likewise mentioned in the news from Rome, and among others, that Nero, towards
the close of his days, was commanded in a dream to carry Jupiter’s sacred
chariot out of the sanctuary where it stood, to Vespasian’s house, and conduct
it thence into the circus. Also not long afterwards, as Galba was going to the
election in which he was created consul for the second time, a statue of the
Divine Julius turned towards the east. And in the field of Bedriacum, before the
battle began, two eagles engaged in the sight of the army; and one of them being
beaten, a third came from the east, and drove away the conqueror.
VI. He made, however, no attempt upon the sovereignty, though his friends were
very ready to support him, and even pressed him to the enterprise, until he was
encouraged to it by the fortuitous aid of persons unknown to him and at a
distance. Two thousand men, drawn out of three legions in the Mœsian army, had
been sent to the assistance of Otho. While they were upon their march, news came
that he had been defeated, and had put an end to his life; notwithstanding which
they continued their march as far as Aquileia, pretending that they gave no
credit to the report. There, tempted by the opportunity which the disorder of
the times afforded them, they ravaged and plundered the country at discretion;
until at length, fearing to be called to an account on their return, and
punished for it, they resolved upon choosing and creating an emperor. “For they
were no ways inferior,” they said, “to the army which made Galba emperor, nor to
the prætorian troops which had set up Otho, nor the army in Germany, to whom
Vitellius owed his elevation.” The names of all the consular lieutenants,
therefore, being taken into consideration, and one objecting to one, and another
to another, for various reasons; at last some of the third legion, which a
little before Nero’s death had been removed out of Syria into Mœsia, extolled
Vespasian in high terms; and all the rest assenting, his name was immediately
inscribed on their standards. The design was nevertheless quashed for a time,
the troops being brought to submit to Vitellius a little longer.
However, the fact becoming known, Tiberius Alexander, governor of Egypt, first
obliged the legions under his command to swear obedience to Vespasian as their
emperor, on the calends [the 1st] of July, which was observed ever after as the
day of his accession to the empire; and upon the fifth of the ides of the same
month [the 28th July], the army in Judæa, where he then was, also swore
allegiance to him. What contributed greatly to forward the affair, was a copy of
a letter, whether real or counterfeit, which was circulated, and said to have
been written by Otho before his decease to Vespasian, recommending to him in the
most urgent terms to avenge his death, and entreating him to come to the aid of
the commonwealth; as well as a report which was circulated, that Vitellius,
after his success against Otho, proposed to change the winter-quarters of the
legions, and remove those in Germany to a less hazardous station and a warmer
climate Moreover, amongst the governors of provinces, Licinius Mucianus dropping
the grudge arising from a jealousy of which he had hitherto made no secret,
promised to join him with the Syrian army, and, among the allied kings,
Volugesus, king of the Parthians, offered him a reinforcement of forty thousand
archers.
VII. Having, therefore, entered on a civil war, and sent forward his generals
and forces into Italy, he himself, in the meantime, passed over to Alexandria,
to obtain possession of the key of Egypt. Here having entered alone, without
attendants, the temple of Serapis, to take the auspices respecting the
establishment of his power, and having done his utmost to propitiate the deity,
upon turning round, [his freedman] Basilides appeared before him, and seemed to
offer him the sacred leaves, chaplets, and cakes, according to the usage of the
place, although no one had admitted him, and he had long laboured under a
muscular debility, which would hardly have allowed him to walk into the temple;
besides which, it was certain that at the very time he was far away. Immediately
after this, arrived letters with intelligence that Vitellius’s troops had been
defeated at Cremona, and he himself slain at Rome. Vespasian, the new emperor,
having been raised unexpectedly from a low estate, wanted something which might
clothe him with divine majesty and authority. This, likewise, was now added. A
poor man who was blind, and another who was lame, came both together before him,
when he was seated on the tribunal, imploring him to heal them, and saying that
they were admonished in a dream by the god Serapis to seek his aid, who assured
them that he would restore sight to the one by anointing his eyes with his
spittle, and give strength to the leg of the other, if he vouchsafed but to
touch it with his heel. At first he could scarcely believe that the thing would
any how succeed, and therefore hesitated to venture on making the experiment. At
length, however, by the advice of his friends, he made the attempt publicly, in
the presence of the assembled multitudes, and it was crowned with success in
both cases. About the same time, at Tegea in Arcadia, by the direction of some
soothsayers, several vessels of ancient workmanship were dug out of a
consecrated place, on which there was an effigy resembling Vespasian.
VIII. Returning now to Rome, under these auspices, and with a great reputation,
after enjoying a triumph for victories over the Jews, he added eight consulships
to his former one. He likewise assumed the censorship, and made it his principal
concern, during the whole of his government, first to restore order in the
state, which had been almost ruined, and was in a tottering condition, and then
to improve it. The soldiers, one part of them emboldened by victory, and the
other smarting with the disgrace of their defeat, had abandoned themselves to
every species of licentiousness and insolence. Nay, the provinces, too, and free
cities, and some kingdoms in alliance with Rome, were all in a disturbed state.
He, therefore, disbanded many of Vitellius’s soldiers, and punished others; and
so far was he from granting any extraordinary favours to the sharers of his
success, that it was late before he paid the gratuities due to them by law. That
he might let slip no opportunity of reforming the discipline of the army, upon a
young man’s coming much perfumed to return him thanks for having appointed him
to command a squadron of horse, he turned away his head in disgust, and, giving
him this sharp reprimand, “I had rather you had smelt of garlic,” revoked his
commission. When the men belonging to the fleet, who travelled by turns from
Ostia and Puteoli to Rome, petitioned for an addition to their pay, under the
name of shoe-money, thinking that it would answer little purpose to send them
away without a reply, he ordered them for the future to run barefooted; and so
they have done ever since. He deprived of their liberties, Achaia, Lycia,
Rhodes, Byzantium, and Samos, and reduced them into the form of provinces;
Thrace, also, and Cilicia, as well as Comagene, which until that time had been
under the government of kings. He stationed some legions in Cappadocia on
account of the frequent inroads of the barbarians, and, instead of a Roman
knight, appointed as governor of it a man of consular rank. The ruins of houses
which had been burnt down long before, being a great desight to the city, he
gave leave to any one who would, to take possession of the void ground and build
upon it, if the proprietors should hesitate to perform the work themselves. He
resolved upon rebuilding the Capitol, and was the foremost to put his hand to
clearing the ground of the rubbish, and removed some of it upon his own
shoulder. And he undertook, likewise, to restore the three thousand tables of
brass which had been destroyed in the fire which consumed the Capitol; searching
in all quarters for copies of those curious and ancient records, in which were
contained the decrees of the senate, almost from the building of the city, as
well as the acts of the people, relative to alliances, treaties, and privileges
granted to any person.
IX. He likewise erected several new public buildings, namely, the temple of
Peace near the forum, that of Claudius on the Cœlian mount, which had been begun
by Agrippina, but almost entirely demolished by Nero; and an amphitheatre in the
middle of the city, upon finding that Augustus had projected such a work. He
purified the senatorian and equestrian orders, which had been much reduced by
the havoc made amongst them at several times, and was fallen into disrepute by
neglect. Having expelled the most unworthy, he chose in their room the most
honourable persons in Italy and the provinces. And to let it be known that those
two orders differed not so much in privileges as in dignity, he declared
publicly, when some altercation passed between a senator and a Roman knight,
“that senators ought not to be treated with scurrilous language, unless they
were the aggressors, and then it was fair and lawful to return it.”
X. The business of the courts had prodigiously accumulated, partly from old
law-suits which, on account of the interruption that had been given to the
course of justice, still remained undecided, and partly from the accession of
new suits arising out of the disorder of the times. He, therefore, chose
commissioners by lot to provide for the restitution of what had been seized by
violence during the war, and others with extraordinary jurisdiction to decide
causes belonging to the centumviri, and reduce them to as small a number as
possible, for the dispatch of which, otherwise, the lives of the litigants could
scarcely allow sufficient time.
XI. Lust and luxury, from the licence which had long prevailed, had also grown
to an enormous height. He, therefore, obtained a decree of the senate, that a
woman who formed an union with the slave of another person, should be considered
a bondwoman herself; and that usurers should not be allowed to take proceedings
at law for the recovery of money lent to young men whilst they lived in their
father’s family, not even after their fathers were dead.
XII. In other affairs, from the beginning to the end of his government, he
conducted himself with great moderation and clemency. He was so far from
dissembling the obscurity of his extraction, that he frequently made mention of
it himself. When some affected to trace his pedigree to the founders of Reate,
and a companion of Hercules, whose monument is still to be seen on the Salarian
road, he laughed at them for it. And he was so little fond of external and
adventitious ornaments, that, on the day of his triumph, being quite tired of
the length and tediousness of the procession, he could not forbear saying, “he
was rightly served, for having in his old age been so silly as to desire a
triumph; as if it was either due to his ancestors, or had ever been expected by
himself.” Nor would he for a long time accept of the tribunitian authority, or
the title of Father of his Country. And in regard to the custom of searching
those who came to salute him, he dropped it even in the time of the civil war.
XIII. He bore with great mildness the freedom used by his friends, the satirical
allusions of advocates, and the petulance of philosophers. Licinius Mucianus,
who had been guilty of notorious acts of lewdness, but, presuming upon his great
services, treated him very rudely, he reproved only in private; and when
complaining of his conduct to a common friend of theirs, he concluded with these
words, “However, I am a man.” Salvius Liberalis, in pleading the cause of a rich
man under prosecution, presuming to say, “What is it to Cæsar, if Hipparchus
possesses a hundred millions of sesterces?” he commended him for it. Demetrius,
the Cynic philosopher, who had been sentenced to banishment, meeting him on the
road, and refusing to rise up or salute him, nay, snarling at him in scurrilous
language, he only called him a cur.
XIV. He was little disposed to keep up the memory of affronts or quarrels, nor
did he harbour any resentment on account of them. He made a very splendid
marriage for the daughter of his enemy Vitellius, and gave her, besides, a
suitable fortune and equipage. Being in a great consternation after he was
forbidden the court in the time of Nero, and asking those about him, what he
should do? or, whither he should go? one of those whose office it was to
introduce people to the emperor, thrusting him out, bid him go to Morbonia. But
when this same person came afterwards to beg his pardon, he only vented his
resentment in nearly the same words. He was so far from being influenced by
suspicion or fear to seek the destruction of any one, that, when his friends
advised him to beware of Metius Pomposianus, because it was commonly believed,
on his nativity being cast, that he was destined by fate to the empire, he made
him consul, promising for him, that he would not forget the benefit conferred.
XV. It will scarcely be found, that so much as one innocent person suffered in
his reign, unless in his absence, and without his knowledge, or, at least,
contrary to his inclination, and when he was imposed upon. Although Helvidius
Priscus was the only man who presumed to salute him on his return from Syria by
his private name of Vespasian, and, when he came to be prætor, omitted any mark
of honour to him, or even any mention of him in his edicts, yet he was not
angry, until Helvidius proceeded to inveigh against him with the most scurrilous
language. Though he did indeed banish him, and afterwards ordered him to be put
to death, yet he would gladly have saved him notwithstanding, and accordingly
dispatched messengers to fetch back the executioners; and he would have saved
him, had he not been deceived by a false account brought, that he had already
perished. He never rejoiced at the death of any man; nay he would shed tears,
and sigh, at the just punishment of the guilty.
XVI. The only thing deservedly blameable in his character was his love of money.
For not satisfied with reviving the imposts which had been repealed in the time
of Galba, he imposed new and onerous taxes, augmented the tribute of the
provinces, and doubled that of some of them. He likewise openly engaged in a
traffic, which is discreditable even to a private individual, buying great
quantities of goods, for the purpose of retailing them again to advantage. Nay,
he made no scruple of selling the great offices of the state to candidates, and
pardons to persons under prosecution, whether they were innocent or guilty. It
is believed, that he advanced all the most rapacious amongst the procurators to
higher offices, with the view of squeezing them after they had acquired great
wealth. He was commonly said, “to have used them as sponges,” because it was his
practice, as we may say, to wet them when dry, and squeeze them when wet. It is
said that he was naturally extremely covetous, and was upbraided with it by an
old herdsman of his, who, upon the emperor’s refusing to enfranchise him gratis,
which on his advancement he humbly petitioned for, cried out, “That the fox
changed his hair, but not his nature.” On the other hand, some are of opinion,
that he was urged to his rapacious proceedings by necessity, and the extreme
poverty of the treasury and exchequer, of which he took public notice in the
beginning of his reign; declaring that “no less than four hundred thousand
millions of sesterces were wanting to carry on the government.” This is the more
likely to be true, because he applied to the best purposes what he procured by
bad means.
XVII. His liberality, however, to all ranks of people, was excessive. He made up
to several senators the estate required by law to qualify them for that dignity;
relieving likewise such men of consular rank as were poor, with a yearly
allowance of five hundred thousand sesterces; and rebuilt, in a better manner
than before, several cities in different parts of the empire, which had been
damaged by earthquakes or fires.
XVIII. He was a great encourager of learning and the liberal arts. He first
granted to the Latin and Greek professors of rhetoric the yearly stipend of a
hundred thousand sesterces each out of the exchequer. He also bought the freedom
of superior poets and artists, and gave a noble gratuity to the restorer of the
Coan of Venus, and to another artist who repaired the Colossus. Some one
offering to convey some immense columns into the Capitol at a small expense by a
mechanical contrivance, he rewarded him very handsomely for his invention, but
would not accept his service, saying, “Suffer me to find maintenance for the
poor people.”
XIX. In the games celebrated when the stage-scenery of the theatre of Marcellus
was repaired, he restored the old musical entertainments. He gave Apollinaris,
the tragedian, four hundred thousand sesterces, and to Terpinus and Diodorus,
the harpers, two hundred thousand; to some a hundred thousand; and the least he
gave to any of the performers was forty thousand, besides many golden crowns. He
entertained company constantly at his table, and often in great state and very
sumptuously, in order to promote trade. As in the Saturnalia he made presents to
the men which they were to carry away with them, so did he to the women upon the
calends of March; notwithstanding which, he could not wipe off the disrepute of
his former stinginess. The Alexandrians called him constantly Cybiosactes; a
name which had been given to one of their kings who was sordidly avaricious.
Nay, at his funeral, Favo, the principal mimic, personating him, and imitating,
as actors do, both his manner of speaking and his gestures, asked aloud of the
procurators, “how much his funeral and the procession would cost?” And being
answered “ten millions of sesterces,” he cried out, “give him but a hundred
thousand sesterces, and they might throw his body into the Tiber, if they
would.”
XX. He was broad-set, strong-limbed, and his features gave the idea of a man in
the act of straining himself. In consequence, one of the city wits, upon the
emperor’s desiring him “to say something droll respecting himself,” facetiously
answered, “I will, when you have done relieving your bowels.” He enjoyed a good
state of health, though he used no other means to preserve it, than repeated
friction, as much as he could bear, on his neck and other parts of his body, in
the tennis-court attached to the baths, besides fasting one day in every month.
XXI. His method of life was commonly this. After he became emperor, he used to
rise very early, often before day-break. Having read over his letters, and the
briefs of all the departments of the government offices, he admitted his
friends; and while they were paying him their compliments, he would put on his
own shoes, and dress himself with his own hands. Then, after the dispatch of
such business as was brought before him, he rode out, and afterwards retired to
repose, lying on his couch with one of his mistresses, of whom he kept several
after the death of Cænis. Coming out of his private apartments, he passed to the
bath, and then entered the supper-room. They say that he was never more good-humoured
and indulgent than at that time: and therefore his attendants always seized that
opportunity, when they had any favour to ask.
XXII. At supper, and, indeed, at other times, he was extremely free and jocose.
For he had humour, but of a low kind, and he would sometimes use indecent
language, such as is addressed to young girls about to be married. Yet there are
some things related of him not void of ingenious pleasantry; amongst which are
the following. Being once reminded by Mestrius Florus, that plaustra was a more
proper expression than plostra, he the next day saluted him by the name of
Flaurus. A certain lady pretending to be desperately enamoured of him, he was
prevailed upon to admit her to his bed; and after he had gratified her desires,
he gave her four hundred thousand sesterces. When his steward desired to know
how he would have the sum entered in his accounts, he replied, “For Vespasian’s
being seduced.”
XXIII. He used Greek verses very wittily; speaking of a tall man, who had
enormous parts:
Μαϰϱ[Editor: illegible character] ϐιϐὰς ϰϱαδάων δολιχόσϰιον ἔγχος;
Still shaking, as he strode, his vast long spear.
And of Cerylus, a freedman, who being very rich, had begun to pass himself off
as free-born, to elude the exchequer at his decease, and assumed the name of
Laches, he said:
—Ὧ Λάχης, Λάχης,
Ἐπαν ἀποθάνῃς, αὐθις ἐξ ἀϱχῆς ἔση Κήρυλος·
Ah, Laches, Laches! when thou art no more,
Thou’lt Cerylus be called, just as before.
He chiefly affected wit upon his own shameful means of raising money, in order
to wipe off the odium by some joke, and turn it into ridicule. One of his
ministers, who was much in his favour, requesting of him a stewardship for some
person, under pretence of his being his brother, he deferred granting him his
petition, and in the meantime sent for the candidate, and having squeezed out of
him as much money as he had agreed to give to his friend at court, he appointed
him immediately to the office. The minister soon after renewing his application,
“You must,” said he, “find another brother; for the one you adopted is in truth
mine.”
Suspecting once, during a journey, that his mule-driver had alighted to shoe his
mules, only in order to have an opportunity for allowing a person they met, who
was engaged in a law-suit, to speak to him, he asked him, “how much he got for
shoeing his mules?” and insisted on having a share of the profit. When his son
Titus blamed him for even laying a tax upon urine, he applied to his nose a
piece of the money he received in the first instalment, and asked him, “if it
stunk?” And he replying no, “And yet,” said he, “it is derived from urine.”
Some deputies having come to acquaint him that a large statue, which would cost
a vast sum, was ordered to be erected for him at the public expense, he told
them to pay it down immediately, holding out the hollow of his hand, and saying,
“there was a base ready for the statue.” Not even when he was under the
immediate apprehension and peril of death, could he forbear jesting. For when,
among other prodigies, the mausoleum of the Cæsars suddenly flew open, and a
blazing star appeared in the heavens; one of the prodigies, he said, concerned
Julia Calvina, who was of the family of Augustus; and the other, the king of the
Parthians, who wore his hair long. And when his distemper first seized him, “I
suppose,” said he, “I shall soon be a god.”
XXIV. In his ninth consulship, being seized, while in Campania, with a slight
indisposition, and immediately returning to the city, he soon afterwards went
thence to Cutiliæ, and his estates in the country about Reate, where he used
constantly to spend the summer. Here, though his disorder much increased, and he
injured his bowels by too free use of the cold waters, he nevertheless attended
to the dispatch of business, and even gave audience to ambassadors in bed. At
last, being taken ill of a diarrhœa, to such a degree that he was ready to
faint, he cried out, “An emperor ought to die standing upright.” In endeavouring
to rise, he died in the hands of those who were helping him up, upon the eighth
of the calends of July [24th June], being sixty-nine years, one month, and seven
days old.
XXV. All are agreed that he had such confidence in the calculations on his own
nativity and that of his sons, that, after several conspiracies against him, he
told the senate, that either his sons would succeed him, or nobody. It is said
likewise, that he once saw in a dream a balance in the middle of the porch of
the Palatine house exactly poised; in one scale of which stood Claudius and
Nero, in the other, himself and his sons. The event corresponded to the symbol;
for the reigns of the two parties were precisely of the same duration.
Neither consanguinity nor adoption, as formerly, but great influence in the army
having now become the road to the imperial throne, no person could claim a
better title to that elevation than Titus Flavius Vespasian. He had not only
served with great reputation in the wars both in Britain and Judæa, but seemed
as yet untainted with any vice which could pervert his conduct in the civil
administration of the empire. It appears, however, that he was prompted more by
the persuasion of friends, than by his own ambition, to prosecute the attainment
of the imperial dignity. To render this enterprise more successful, recourse was
had to a new and peculiar artifice, which, while well accommodated to the
superstitious credulity of the Romans, impressed them with an idea, that
Vespasian’s destiny to the throne was confirmed by supernatural indications.
But, after his elevation, we hear no more of his miraculous achievements.
The prosecution of the war in Britain, which had been suspended for some years,
was resumed by Vespasian; and he sent thither Petilius Cerealis, who by his
bravery extended the limits of the Roman province. Under Julius Frontinus,
successor to that general, the invaders continued to make farther progress in
the reduction of the island: but the commander who finally established the
dominion of the Romans in Britain, was Julius Agricola, not less distinguished
for his military achievements, than for his prudent regard to the civil
administration of the country. He began his operations with the conquest of
North Wales, whence passing over into the island of Anglesey, which had revolted
since the time of Suetonius Paulinus, he again reduced it to subjection. Then
proceeding northwards with his victorious army, he defeated the Britons in every
engagement, took possession of all the territories in the southern parts of the
island, and driving before him all who refused to submit to the Roman arms,
penetrated even into the forests and mountains of Caledonia. He defeated the
natives under Galgacus, their leader, in a decisive battle; and fixing a line of
garrisons between the friths of Clyde and Forth, he secured the Roman province
from the incursions of the people who occupied the parts of the island beyond
that boundary. Wherever he established the Roman power, he introduced laws and
civilization amongst the inhabitants, and employed every means of conciliating
their affection, as well as of securing their obedience.
The war in Judæa, which had been commenced under the former reign, was continued
in that of Vespasian; but he left the siege of Jerusalem to be conducted by his
son Titus, who displayed great valour and military talents in the prosecution of
the enterprise. After an obstinate defence by the Jews, that city, so much
celebrated in the sacred writings, was finally demolished, and the glorious
temple itself, the admiration of the world, reduced to ashes; contrary, however,
to the will of Titus, who exerted his utmost efforts to extinguish the flames.
The manners of the Romaus had now attained to an enormous pitch of depravity,
through the unbounded licentiousness of the times; and, to the honour of
Vespasian, he discovered great zeal in his endeavours to effect a national
reformation. Vigilant, active, and persevering, he was indefatigable in the
management of public affairs, and rose in the winter before day-break, to give
audience to his officers of state. But if we give credit to the whimsical
imposition of a tax upon urine, we cannot entertain any high opinion, either of
his talents as a financier, or of the resources of the Roman empire. By his
encouragement of science, he displayed a liberality, of which there occurs no
example under all the preceding emperors, since the time of Augustus. Pliny the
elder was now in the height of reputation, as well as in great favour with
Vespasian; and it was probably owing not a little to the advice of that
minister, that the emperor showed himself so much the patron of literary men. A
writer mentioned frequently by Pliny, and who lived in this reign, was Licinius
Mucianus, a Roman knight: he treated of the history and geography of the eastern
countries. Juvenal, who had begun his Satires several years before, continued to
inveigh against the flagrant vices of the times; but the only author whose
writings we have to notice in the present reign, is a poet of a different class.
C. Valerius Flaccus wrote a poem in eight books, on the Expedition of the
Argonauts; a subject which, next to the wars of Thebes and Troy, was in ancient
times the most celebrated. Of the life of this author, biographers have
transmitted no particulars; but we may place his birth in the reign of Tiberius,
before all the writers who flourished in the Augustan age were extinct. He
enjoyed the rays of the setting sun which had illumined that glorious period,
and he discovers the efforts of an ambition to recall its meridian splendour. As
the poem was left incomplete by the death of the author, we can only judge
imperfectly of the conduct and general consistency of the fable: but the most
difficult part having been executed, without any room for the censure of candid
criticism, we may presume that the sequel would have been finished with an equal
claim to indulgence, if not to applause. The traditional anecdotes relative to
the Argonautic expedition are introduced with propriety, and embellished with
the graces of poetical fiction. In describing scenes of tenderness, this author
is happily pathetic, and in the heat of combat, proportionably animated. His
similes present the imagination with beautiful imagery, and not only illustrate,
but give additional force to the subject. We find in Flaccus a few expressions
not countenanced by the authority of the most celebrated Latin writers. His
language, however, in general, is pure; but his words are perhaps not always the
best that might have been chosen. The versification is elevated, though not
uniformly harmonious; and there pervades the whole poem an epic dignity, which
renders it superior to the production ascribed to Orpheus, or to that of
Apollonius, on the same subject.
TITUS FLAVIUS VESPASIANUS AUGUSTUS.
I.Titus, who had the same cognomen with his father, was the darling and delight
of mankind; so much did the natural genius, address, or good fortune he
possessed tend to conciliate the favour of all. This was, indeed, extremely
difficult, after he became emperor, as before that time, and even during the
reign of his father, he lay under public odium and censure. He was born upon the
third of the calends of January, [30th Dec.] in the year remarkable for the
death of Caius, near the Septizonium, in a mean house, and a very small and dark
room, which still exists, and is shown to the curious.
II. He was educated in the palace with Britannicus, and instructed in the same
branches of learning, and under the same masters. During this time, they say,
that a physiognomist being introduced by Narcissus, the freedman of Claudius, to
examine the features of Britannicus, positively affirmed that he would never
become emperor, but that Titus, who stood by, would. They were so familiar, that
Titus being next him at table, is thought to have tasted of the fatal potion
which put an end to Britannicus’s life, and to have contracted from it a
distemper which hung about him a long time. In remembrance of all these
circumstances, he afterwards erected a golden statue of him in the Palatium, and
dedicated to him an equestrian statue of ivory; attending it in the Circensian
procession, in which it is still carried to this day.
III. While yet a boy, he was remarkable for his noble endowments both of body
and mind; and as he advanced in years, they became still more conspicuous. He
had a fine person, combining an equal mixture of majesty and grace; was very
strong, though not tall, and somewhat corpulent. Gifted with an excellent
memory, and a capacity for all the arts of peace and war; he was a perfect
master of the use of arms and riding; very ready in the Latin and Greek tongues,
both in verse and prose; and such was the facility he possessed in both, that he
would harangue and versify extempore. Nor was he unacquainted with music, but
could both sing and play upon the harp sweetly and scientifically. I have
likewise been informed by many persons, that he was remarkably quick in writing
short-hand, would in merriment and jest engage with his secretaries in the
imitation of any hand-writing he saw, and often say, “that he was admirably
qualified for forgery.”
IV. He filled with distinction the rank of a military tribune both in Germany
and Britain, in which he conducted himself with the utmost activity, and no less
modesty and reputation; as appears evident from the great number of statues,
with honourable inscriptions, erected to him in various parts of both those
provinces. After serving in the wars, he frequented the courts of law, but with
less assiduity than applause. About the same time, he married Arricidia, the
daughter of Tertullus, who was only a knight, but had formerly been prefect of
the pretorian guards. After her decease, he married Marcia Furnilla, of a very
noble family, but afterwards divorced her, taking from her the daughter he had
by her. Upon the expiration of his quæstorship, he was raised to the rank of
commander of a legion, and took the two strong cities of Tarichæa and Gamala, in
Judæa; and having his horse killed under him in a battle, he mounted another,
whose rider he had encountered and slain.
V. Soon afterwards, when Galba came to be emperor, he was sent to congratulate
him, and turned the eyes of all people upon himself, wherever he came; it being
the general opinion amongst them, that the emperor had sent for him with a
design to adopt him for his son. But finding all things again in confusion, he
turned back upon the road; and going to consult the oracle of Venus at Paphos
about his voyage, he received assurances of obtaining the empire for himself.
These hopes were speedily strengthened, and being left to finish the reduction
of Judæa, in the final assault of Jerusalem, he slew seven of its defenders,
with the like number of arrows, and took it upon his daughter’s birth-day. So
great was the joy and attachment of the soldiers, that, in their
congratulations, they unanimously saluted him by the title of Emperor; and, upon
his quitting the province soon afterwards, would needs have detained him,
earnestly begging him, and that not without threats, “either to stay, or take
them all with him.” This occurrence gave rise to the suspicion of his being
engaged in a design to rebel against his father, and claim for himself the
government of the East; and the suspicion increased, when, on his way to
Alexandria, he wore a diadem at the consecration of the ox Apis at Memphis; and,
though he did it only in compliance with an ancient religious usage of the
country, yet there was some who put a bad construction upon it. Making,
therefore, what haste he could into Italy, he arrived first at Rhegium, and
sailing thence in a merchant ship to Puteoli, went to Rome with all possible
expedition. Presenting himself unexpectedly to his father, he said, by way of
contradicting the strange reports raised concerning him, “I am come, father, I
am come.”
VI. From that time he constantly acted as colleague with his father, and,
indeed, as regent of the empire. He triumphed with his father, bore jointly with
him the office of censor, and was, besides his colleague not only in the
tribunitian authority, but in seven consulships. Taking upon himself the care
and inspection of all offices, he dictated letters, wrote proclamations in his
father’s name, and pronounced his speeches in the senate in place of the quæstor.
He likewise assumed the command of the pretorian guards, although no one but a
Roman knight had ever before been their prefect. In this he conducted himself
with great haughtiness and violence, taking off without scruple or delay all
those he had most reason to suspect, after he had secretly sent his emissaries
into the theatres and camp, to demand, as if by general consent, that the
suspected persons should be delivered up to punishment. Among these, he invited
to supper A. Cæcina, a man of consular rank, whom he ordered to be stabbed at
his departure, immediately after he had gone out of the room. To this act,
indeed, he was provoked by an imminent danger; for he had discovered a writing
under the hand of Cæcina, containing an account of a plot hatched among the
soldiers. By these acts, though he provided for his future security, yet for the
present he so much incurred the hatred of the people, that scarcely ever any one
came to the empire with a more odious character, or more universally disliked.
VII. Besides his cruelty, he lay under the suspicion of giving way to habits of
luxury, as he often prolonged his revels till midnight with the most riotous of
his acquaintance. Nor was he unsuspected of lewdness, on account of the swarms
of catamites and eunuchs about him, and his well-known attachment to queen
Berenice, who received from him, as it is reported, a promise of marriage. He
was supposed, besides, to be of a rapacious disposition; for it is certain,
that, in causes which came before his father, he used to offer his interest for
sale, and take bribes. In short, people publicly expressed an unfavourable
opinion of him, and said he would prove another Nero. This prejudice, however,
turned out in the end to his advantage, and enhanced his praises to the highest
pitch when he was found to possess no vicious propensities, but, on the
contrary, the noblest virtues. His entertainments were agreeable rather than
extravagant; and he surrounded himself with such excellent friends, that the
succeeding princes adopted them as most serviceable to themselves and the state.
He immediately sent away Berenice from the city, much against both their
inclinations. Some of his old eunuchs, though such accomplished dancers, that
they bore an uncontrollable sway upon the stage, he was so far from treating
with any extraordinary kindness, that he would not so much as witness their
performances in the crowded theatre. He violated no private right; and if ever
man refrained from injustice, he did; nay, he would not accept of the allowable
and customary offerings. Yet, in munificence, he was inferior to none of the
princes before him. Having dedicated his amphitheatre, and built some warm baths
close by it with great expedition, he entertained the people with most
magnificent spectacles. He likewise exhibited a naval fight in the old Naumachia,
besides a combat of gladiators; and in one day brought into the theatre five
thousand wild beasts of all kinds.
VIII. He was by nature extremely benevolent; for whereas all the emperors after
Tiberius, according to the example he had set them, would not admit the grants
made by former princes to be valid, unless they received their own sanction, he
confirmed them all by one general edict, without waiting for any applications
respecting them. Of all who petitioned for any favour, he sent none away without
hopes. And when his ministers represented to him that he promised more than he
could perform, he replied, “No one ought to go away downcast from an audience
with his prince.” Once at supper, reflecting that he had done nothing for any
that day, he broke out into that memorable and justly-admired saying, “My
friends, I have lost a day.” More particularly, he treated the people on all
occasions with so much courtesy, that, on his presenting them with a show of
gladiators, he declared, “He should manage it, not according to his own fancy,
but that of the spectators,” and did accordingly. He denied them nothing, and
very frankly encouraged them to ask what they pleased. Espousing the cause of
the Thracian party among the gladiators, he frequently joined in the popular
demonstrations in their favour, but without compromising his dignity or doing
injustice. To omit no opportunity of acquiring popularity, he sometimes made use
himself of the baths he had erected, without excluding the common people. There
happened in his reign some dreadful accidents; an eruption of mount Vesuvius, in
Campania, and a fire in Rome, which continued during three days and three
nights; besides a plague, such as was scarcely ever known before. Amidst these
many great disasters, he not only manifested the concern which might be expected
from a prince, but even the affection of a father, for his people; one while
comforting them by his proclamations, and another while relieving them to the
utmost of his power. He chose by lot, from amongst the men of consular rank,
commissioners for repairing the losses in Campania. The estates of those who had
perished by the eruption of Vesuvius, and who had left no heirs, he applied to
the repair of the ruined cities. With regard to the public buildings destroyed
by fire in the City, he declared that nobody should be a loser but himself.
Accordingly, he applied all the ornaments of his palaces to the decoration of
the temples, and purposes of public utility, and appointed several men of the
equestrian order to superintend the work. For the relief of the people during
the plague, he employed, in the way of sacrifice and medicine, all means both
human and divine. Amongst the calamities of the times, were informers and their
agents; a tribe of miscreants who had grown up under the licence of former
reigns. These he frequently ordered to be scourged or beaten with sticks in the
forum, and then, after he had obliged them to pass through the amphitheatre as a
public spectacle, commanded them to be sold for slaves, or else banished them to
some rocky islands. And to discourage such practices for the future, amongst
other things, he prohibited actions to be successively brought under different
laws for the same cause, or the state of affairs of deceased persons to be
inquired into after a certain number of years.
IX. Having declared that he accepted the office of Pontifex Maximus for the
purpose of preserving his hands undefiled, he faithfully adhered to his promise.
For after that time he was neither directly nor indirectly concerned in the
death of any person, though he sometimes was justly irritated. He swore “that he
would perish himself, rather than prove the destruction of any man.” Two men of
patrician rank being convicted of aspiring to the empire, he only advised them
to desist, saying, “that the sovereign power was disposed of by fate,” and
promised them, that if there was any thing else they desired of him, he would
grant it. He also immediately sent messengers to the mother of one of them, who
was at a great distance, and in deep anxiety about her son, to assure her of his
safety. Nay, he not only invited them to sup with him, but next day, at a show
of gladiators, purposely placed them close by him; and handed to them the arms
of the combatants for his inspection. It is said likewise, that having had their
nativities cast, he assured them, “that a great calamity was impending on both
of them, but from another hand, and not from his.” Though his brother was
continually plotting against him, almost openly stirring up the armies to
rebellion, and contriving to get away, yet he could not endure to put him to
death, or to banish him from his presence; nor did he treat him with less
respect than before. But from his first accession to the empire, he constantly
declared him his partner in it, and that he should be his successor; begging of
him sometimes in private, with tears in his eyes, “to return the affection he
had for him.”
X. Amidst all these favourable circumstances, he was cut off by an untimely
death, more to the loss of mankind than himself. At the close of the public
spectacles, he wept bitterly in the presence of the people, and then retired
into the Sabine country, rather melancholy, because a victim had made its escape
while he was sacrificing, and loud thunder had been heard while the atmosphere
was serene. At the first resting-place on the road, he was seized with a fever,
and being carried forward in a litter, they say that he drew back the curtains,
and looked up to heaven, complaining heavily, “that his life was taken from him,
though he had done nothing to deserve it; for there was no action of his that he
had occasion to repent of, but one.” What that was, he neither disclosed
himself, nor is it easy for us to conjecture. Some imagine that he alluded to
the connection which he had formerly had with his brother’s wife. But Domitia
solemnly denied it on oath; which she would never have done, had there been any
truth in the report; nay, she would certainly have gloried in it, as she was
forward enough to boast of all her scandalous intrigues.
XI. He died in the same villa where his father had died before him, upon the
Ides of September [the 13th of September]; two years, two months, and twenty
days after he had succeeded his father; and in the one-and-fortieth year of his
age. As soon as the news of his death was published, all people mourned for him,
as for the loss of some near relative. The senate assembled in haste, before
they could be summoned by proclamation, and locking the doors of their house at
first, but afterwards opening them, gave him such thanks, and heaped upon him
such praises, now he was dead, as they never had done whilst he was alive and
present amongst them.
Titus Flavius Vespasian, the younger, was the first prince who succeeded to the
empire by hereditary right; and having constantly acted, after his return from
Judæa, as colleague with his father in the administration, he seemed to be as
well qualified by experience as he was by abilities, for conducting the affairs
of the empire. But with respect to his natural disposition, and moral behaviour,
the expectations entertained by the public were not equally flattering. He was
immoderately addicted to luxury; he had betrayed a strong inclination to
cruelty; and he lived in the habitual practice of lewdness, no less unnatural
than intemperate. But, with a degree of virtuous resolution unexampled in
history, he had no sooner taken into his hands the entire reins of government,
than he renounced every vicious attachment. Instead of wallowing in luxury, as
before, he became a model of temperance; instead of cruelty, he displayed the
strongest proofs of humanity and benevolence; and in the room of lewdness, he
exhibited a transition to the most unblemished chastity and virtue. In a word,
so sudden and great a change was never known in the character of mortal; and he
had the peculiar glory to receive the appellation of “the darling and delight of
mankind.”
Under a prince of such a disposition, the government of the empire could not but
be conducted with the strictest regard to the public welfare. The reform, which
was begun in the late reign, he prosecuted with the most ardent application;
and, had he lived for a longer time, it is probable that his authority and
example would have produced the most beneficial effects upon the manners of the
Romans.
During the reign of this emperor, in the seventy-ninth year of the Christian
era, happened the first eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which has ever since been
celebrated for its volcano. Before this time, Vesuvius is spoken of, by ancient
writers, as being covered with orchards and vineyards, and of which the middle
was dry and barren. The eruption was accompanied by an earthquake, which
destroyed several cities of Campania, particularly Pompeii and Herculaneum;
while the lava, pouring down the mountain in torrents, overwhelmed, in various
directions, the adjacent plains. The burning ashes were carried not only over
the neighbouring country, but as far as the shores of Egypt, Libya, and even
Syria. Amongst those to whom this dreadful eruption proved fatal, was Pliny, the
celebrated naturalist, whose curiosity to examine the phenomenon led him so far
within the verge of danger, that he could not afterwards escape.
Pliny, surnamed the Elder, was born at Verona, of a noble family. He
distinguished himself early by his military achievements in the German war,
received the dignity of an Augur, at Rome, and was afterwards appointed governor
of Spain. In every public character, he acquitted himself with great reputation,
and enjoyed the esteem of the several emperors under whom he lived. The
assiduity with which he applied himself to the collection of information, either
curious or useful, surpasses all example. From an early hour in the morning,
until late at night, he was almost constantly employed in discharging the duties
of his public station, in reading or hearing books read by his amanuensis, and
in extracting from them whatever seemed worthy of notice. Even during his meals,
and while travelling in his carriage upon business, he prosecuted with
unremitting zeal and diligence his taste for enquiry and compilation. No man
ever displayed so strong a persuasion of the value of time, or availed himself
so industriously of it. He considered every moment as lost which was not
employed in literary pursuits. The books which he wrote, in consequence of this
indefatigable exertion, were, according to the account transmitted by his
nephew, Pliny the younger, numerous, and on various subjects. The catalogue of
them is as follows: a book on Equestrian Archery, which discovered much skill in
the art; the Life of Q. Pomponius Secundus; twenty books of the Wars of Germany;
a complete treatise on the Education of an Orator, in six volumes; eight books
of Doubtful Discourses, written in the latter part of the reign of Nero, when
every kind of moral discussion was attended with danger; with a hundred and
sixty volumes of remarks on the writings of the various authors which he had
perused. For the last-mentioned production only, and before it was brought near
to its accomplishment, we are told, that he was offered by Largius Licinius four
hundred thousand sesterces, amounting to upwards of three thousand two hundred
pounds sterling; an enormous sum for the copyright of a book before the
invention of printing! But the only surviving work of this voluminous author is
his Natural History, in thirty-seven books, compiled from the various writers
who had treated of that extensive and interesting subject.
If we estimate this great work either by the authenticity of the information
which it contains, or its utility in promoting the advancement of arts and
sciences, we should not consider it as an object of any extraordinary encomiums;
but when we view it as a literary monument, which displays the whole knowledge
of the ancients, relative to Natural History, collected during a period of about
seven hundred years, from the time of Thales the Milesian, it has a just claim
to the attention of every speculative enquirer. It is not surprising, that the
progress of the human mind, which, in moral science, after the first dawn of
enquiry, was rapid both amongst the Greeks and Romans, should be slow in the
improvement of such branches of knowledge as depended entirely on observation
and facts, which were peculiarly difficult of attainment. Natural knowledge can
only be brought to perfection by the prosecution of enquiries in different
climates, and by a communication of discoveries amongst those by whom it is
cultivated. But neither could enquiries be prosecuted, nor discoveries
communicated, with success, while the greater part of the world was involved in
barbarism, while navigation was slow and limited, and the art of printing
unknown. The consideration of these circumstances will afford sufficient apology
for the imperfect state in which natural science existed amongst the ancients.
But we proceed to give an abstract of their extent, as they appear in the
compilation of Pliny.
This work is divided into thirty-seven books; the first of which contains the
Preface, addressed to the emperor Vespasian, probably the father, to whom the
author pays high compliments. The second book treats of the world, the elements,
and the stars. In respect to the world, or rather the universe, the author’s
opinion is the same with that of several ancient philosophers, that it is a
Deity, uncreated, infinite, and eternal. Their notions, however, as might be
expected, on a subject so incomprehensible, are vague, confused, and imperfect.
In a subsequent chapter of the same book, where the nature of the Deity is more
particularly considered, the author’s conceptions of infinite power are so
inadequate, that, by way of consolation for the limited powers of man, he
observes that there are many things even beyond the power of the Supreme Being;
such, for instance, as the annihilation of his own existence; to which the
author adds, the power of rendering mortals eternal, and of raising the dead. It
deserves to be remarked, that, though a future state of rewards and punishments
was maintained by the most eminent among the ancient philosophers, the
resurrection of the body was a doctrine with which they were wholly
unacquainted.
The author next treats of the planets, and the periods of their respective
revolutions; of the stars, comets, winds, thunder, lightning, and other natural
phenomena, concerning all which he delivers the hypothetical notions maintained
by the ancients, and mentions a variety of extraordinary incidents which had
occurred in different parts of the world. The third book contains a general
system of geography, which is continued through the fourth, fifth, and sixth
books. The seventh treats of conception, and the generation of the human
species, with a number of miscellaneous observations, unconnected with the
general subject. The eighth treats of quadrupeds; the ninth, of aquatic animals;
the tenth, of birds; the eleventh, of insects and reptiles; the twelfth, of
trees; the thirteenth, of ointments, and of trees which grow near the sea-coast;
the fourteenth, of vines; the fifteenth, of fruit-trees; the sixteenth, of
forest-trees; the seventeenth, of the cultivation of trees; the eighteenth, of
agriculture; the nineteenth, of the nature of lint, hemp, and similar
productions; the twentieth, of the medicinal qualities of vegetables cultivated
in gardens; the twenty-first, of flowers; the twenty-second, of the properties
of herbs; the twenty-third, of the medicines yielded by cultivated trees; the
twenty-fourth, of medicines derived from forest-trees; the twenty-fifth, of the
properties of wild herbs, and the origin of their use; the twenty-sixth, of
other remedies for diseases, and of some new diseases; the twenty-seventh, of
different kinds of herbs; the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth, of
medicines procured from animals; the thirty-first and thirty-second, of
medicines obtained from aquatic animals, with some extraordinary facts relative
to the subject; the thirty-third, of the nature of metals; the thirty-fourth, of
brass, iron, lead, and tin; the thirty-fifth, of pictures, and observations
relative to painting; the thirty-sixth, of the nature of stones and marbles; the
thirty-seventh, of the origin of gems. To the contents of each book, the author
subjoins a list of the writers from whom his observations have been collected.
Of Pliny’s talents as a writer, it might be deemed presumptuous to form a
decided opinion from his Natural History, which is avowedly a compilation from
various authors, and executed with greater regard to the matter of the work,
than to the elegance of composition. Making allowance, however, for a degree of
credulity, common to the human mind in the early stage of physical researches,
he is far from being deficient in the essential qualifications of a writer of
Natural History. His descriptions appear to be accurate, his observations
precise, his narrative is in general perspicuous, and he often illustrates his
subject by a vivacity of thought, as well as by a happy turn of expression. It
has been equally his endeavour to give novelty to stale disquisitions, and
authority to new observations. He has both removed the rust, and dispelled the
obscurity, which enveloped the doctrines of many ancient naturalists; but, with
all his care and industry, he has exploded fewer errors, and sanctioned a
greater number of doubtful opinions, than was consistent with the exercise of
unprejudiced and severe investigation.
Pliny was fifty-six years of age at the time of his death; the manner of which
is accurately related by his nephew, the elegant Pliny the Younger, in a letter
to Tacitus, who entertained a design of writing the life of the naturalist.
TITUS FLAVIUS DOMITIANUS.
I. Domitian was born upon the ninth of the calends of November [24th October],
when his father was consul elect, (being to enter upon his office the month
following,) in the sixth region of the city, at the Pomegranate, in the house
which he afterwards converted into a temple of the Flavian family. He is said to
have spent the time of his youth in so much want and infamy, that he had not one
piece of plate belonging to him; and it is well known, that Clodius Pollio, a
man of pretorian rank, against whom there is a poem of Nero’s extant, entitled
Luscio, kept a note in his hand-writing, which he sometimes produced, in which
Domitian made an assignation with him for the foulest purposes. Some, likewise,
have said, that he prostituted himself to Nerva, who succeeded him. In the war
with Vitellius, he fled into the Capitol with his uncle Sabinus, and a part of
the troops they had in the city. But the enemy breaking in, and the temple being
set on fire, he hid himself all night with the sacristan; and next morning,
assuming the disguise of a worshipper of Isis, and mixing with the priests of
that idle superstition, he got over the Tiber, with only one attendant, to the
house of a woman who was the mother of one of his school-fellows, and lurked
there so close, that, though the enemy, who were at his heels, searched very
strictly after him, they could not discover him. At last, after the success of
his party, appearing in public, and being unanimously saluted by the title of
Cæsar, he assumed the office of prætor of the City, with consular authority, but
in fact had nothing but the name; for the jurisdiction he transferred to his
next colleague. He used, however, his absolute power so licentiously, that even
then he plainly discovered what sort of prince he was likely to prove. Not to go
into details, after he had made free with the wives of many men of distinction,
he took Domitia Longina from her husband, Aelias Lamia, and married her; and in
one day disposed of above twenty offices in the city and the provinces; upon
which Vespasian said several times, “he wondered he did not send him a successor
too.”
II. He likewise designed an expedition into Gaul and Germany, without the least
necessity for it, and contrary to the advice of all his father’s friends; and
this he did only with the view of equalling his brother in military achievements
and glory. But for this he was severely reprimanded, and that he might the more
effectually be reminded of his age and position, was made to live with his
father, and his litter had to follow his father’s and brother’s carriage, as
often as they went abroad; but he attended them in their triumph for the
conquest of Judæa, mounted on a white horse. Of the six consulships which he
held, only one was ordinary; and that he obtained by the cession and interest of
his brother. He greatly affected a modest behaviour, and, above all, a taste for
poetry; insomuch, that he rehearsed his performances in public, though it was an
art he had formerly little cultivated, and which he afterwards despised and
abandoned. Devoted, however, as he was at this time to poetical pursuits, yet
when Vologesus, king of the Parthians, desired succours against the Alani, with
one of Vespasian’s sons to command them, he laboured hard to procure for himself
that appointment. But the scheme proving abortive, he endeavoured by presents
and promises to engage other kings of the East to make a similar request. After
his father’s death, he was for some time in doubt, whether he should not offer
the soldiers a donative double to that of his brother, and made no scruple of
saying frequently, “that he had been left his partner in the empire, but that
his father’s will had been fraudulently set aside.” From that time forward, he
was constantly engaged in plots against his brother, both publicly and
privately; until, falling dangerously ill, he ordered all his attendants to
leave him, under pretence of his being dead, before he really was so; and, at
his decease, paid him no other honour than that of enrolling him amongst the
gods; and he often, both in speeches and edicts, carped at his memory by sneers
and insinuations.
III. In the beginning of his reign, he used to spend daily an hour by himself in
private, during which time he did nothing else but catch flies, and stick them
through the body with a sharp pin. When some one therefore inquired, “whether
any one was with the emperor,” it was significantly answered by Vibius Crispus,
“Not so much as a fly.” Soon after his advancement, his wife Domitia, by whom he
had a son in his second consulship, and whom the year following he complimented
with the title of Augusta, being desperately in love with Paris, the actor, he
put her away; but within a short time afterwards, being unable to bear the
separation, he took her again, under pretence of complying with the people’s
importunity. During some time, there was in his administration a strange mixture
of virtue and vice, until at last his virtues themselves degenerated into vices;
being, as we may reasonably conjecture concerning his character, inclined to
avarice through want, and to cruelty through fear.
IV. He frequently entertained the people with most magnificent and costly shows,
not only in the amphitheatre, but the circus; where, besides the usual races
with chariots drawn by two or four horses a-breast, he exhibited the
representation of an engagement between both horse and foot, and a sea-fight in
the amphitheatre. The people were also entertained with the chase of wild beasts
and the combat of gladiators, even in the night-time, by torch-light. Nor did
men only fight in these spectacles, but women also. He constantly attended at
the games given by the quæstors, which had been disused for some time, but were
revived by him; and upon those occasions, always gave the people the liberty of
demanding two pair of gladiators out of his own school, who appeared last in
court uniforms. Whenever he attended the shows of gladiators, there stood at his
feet a little boy dressed in scarlet, with a prodigiously small head, with whom
he used to talk very much, and sometimes seriously. We are assured, that he was
overheard asking him, “if he knew for what reason he had in the late
appointment, made Metius Rufus governor of Egypt?” He presented the people with
naval fights, performed by fleets almost as numerous as those usually employed
in real engagements; making a vast lake near the Tiber, and building seats round
it. And he witnessed them himself during a very heavy rain. He likewise
celebrated the Secular games, reckoning not from the year in which they had been
exhibited by Claudius, but from the time of Augustus’s celebration of them. In
these, upon the day of the Circensian sports, in order to have a hundred races
performed, he reduced each course from seven rounds to five. He likewise
instituted, in honour of Jupiter Capitolinus, a solemn contest in music to be
performed every five years; besides horse-racing and gymnastic exercises, with
more prizes than are at present allowed. There was also a public performance in
elocution, both Greek and Latin; and besides the musicians who sung to the harp,
there were others who played concerted pieces or solos, without vocal
accompaniment. Young girls also ran races in the Stadium, at which he presided
in his sandals, dressed in a purple robe, made after the Grecian fashion, and
wearing upon his head a golden crown bearing the effigies of Jupiter, Juno, and
Minerva; with the flamen of Jupiter, and the college of priests sitting by his
side in the same dress; excepting only that their crowns had also his own image
on them. He celebrated also upon the Alban mount every year the festival of
Minerva, for whom he had appointed a college of priests, out of which were
chosen by lot persons to preside as governors over the college; who were obliged
to entertain the people with extraordinary chases of wild-beasts, and
stage-plays, besides contests for prizes in oratory and poetry. He thrice
bestowed upon the people a largess of three hundred sesterces each man; and, at
a public show of gladiators, a very plentiful feast. At the festival of the
Seven Hills, he distributed large hampers of provisions to the senatorian and
equestrian orders, and small baskets to the common people, and encouraged them
to eat by setting them the example. The day after, he scattered among the people
a variety of cakes and other delicacies to be scrambled for; and on the greater
part of them falling amidst the seats of the crowd, he ordered five hundred
tickets to be thrown into each range of benches belonging to the senatorian and
equestrian orders.
V. He rebuilt many noble edifices which had been destroyed by fire, and amongst
them the Capitol, which had been burnt down a second time; but all the
inscriptions were in his own name, without the least mention of the original
founders. He likewise erected a new temple in the Capitol to Jupiter Custos, and
a forum, which is now called Nerva’s, as also the temple of the Flavian family,
a stadium, an odeum, and a naumachia; out of the stone dug from which, the sides
of the Circus Maximus, which had been burnt down, were rebuilt.
VI. He undertook several expeditions, some from choice, and some from necessity.
That against the Catti was unprovoked, but that against the Sarmatians was
necessary; an entire legion, with its commander, having been cut off by them. He
sent two expeditions against the Dacians; the first upon the defeat of Oppius
Sabinus, a man of consular rank; and the other, upon that of Cornelius Fuscus,
prefect of the pretorian cohorts, to whom he had entrusted the conduct of that
war. After several battles with the Catti and Daci, he celebrated a double
triumph. But for his successes against the Sarmatians, he only bore in
procession the laurel crown to Jupiter Capitolinus. The civil war, begun by
Lucius Antonius, governor of Upper Germany, he quelled, without being obliged to
be personally present at it, with remarkable good fortune. For, at the very
moment of joining battle, the Rhine suddenly thawing, the troops of the
barbarians which were ready to join L. Antonius, were prevented from crossing
the river. Of this victory he had notice by some presages, before the messengers
who brought the news of it arrived. For upon the very day the battle was fought,
a splendid eagle spread its wings round his statue at Rome, making most joyful
cries And shortly after, a rumour became common, that Antonius was slain; nay,
many positively affirmed, that they saw his head brought to the city.
VII. He made many innovations in common practices. He abolished the Sportula,
and revived the old practice of regular suppers. To the four former parties in
the Circensian games, he added two new, who were gold and scarlet. He prohibited
the players from acting in the theatre, but permitted them the practice of their
art in private houses. He forbad the castration of males; and reduced the price
of the eunuchs who were still left in the hands of the dealers in slaves. On the
occasion of a great abundance of wine, accompanied by a scarcity of corn,
supposing that the tillage of the ground was neglected for the sake of attending
too much to the cultivation of vineyards, he published a proclamation forbidding
the planting of any new vines in Italy, and ordering the vines in the provinces
to be cut down, nowhere permitting more than one half of them to remain. But he
did not persist in the execution of this project. Some of the greatest offices
he conferred upon his freedmen and soldiers. He forbad two legions to be
quartered in the same camp, and more than a thousand sesterces to be deposited
by any soldier with the standards; because it was thought that Lucius Antonius
had been encouraged in his late project by the large sum deposited in the
military chest by the two legions which he had in the same winter-quarters. He
made an addition to the soldiers’ pay, of three gold pieces a year.
VIII. In the administration of justice he was diligent and assiduous; and
frequently sat in the forum out of course, to cancel the judgments of the court
of The One Hundred, which had been procured through favour, or interest. He
occasionally cautioned the judges of the court of recovery to beware of being
too ready to admit claims for freedom brought before them. He set a mark of
infamy upon judges who were convicted of taking bribes, as well as upon their
assessors. He likewise instigated the tribunes of the people to prosecute a
corrupt ædile for extortion, and to desire the senate to appoint judges for his
trial. He likewise took such effectual care in punishing magistrates of the
city, and governors of provinces, guilty of malversation, that they never were
at any time more moderate or more just. Most of these, since his reign, we have
seen prosecuted for crimes of various kinds. Having taken upon himself the
reformation of the public manners, he restrained the licence of the populace in
sitting promiscuously with the knights in the theatre. Scandalous libels,
published to defame persons of rank, of either sex, he suppressed, and inflicted
upon their authors a mark of infamy. He expelled a man of quæstorian rank from
the senate, for practising mimicry and dancing. He debarred infamous women the
use of litters; as also the right of receiving legacies, or inheriting estates.
He struck out of the list of judges a Roman knight for taking again his wife
whom he had divorced and prosecuted for adultery. He condemned several men of
the senatorian and equestrian orders, upon the Scantinian law. The lewdness of
the Vestal Virgins, which had been overlooked by his father and brother, he
punished severely, but in different ways; viz. offences committed before his
reign, with death, and those since its commencement, according to ancient
custom. For to the two sisters called Ocellatæ, he gave liberty to choose the
mode of death which they preferred, and banished their paramours But Cornelia,
the president of the Vestals, who had formerly been acquitted upon a charge of
incontinence, being a long time after again prosecuted and condemned, he ordered
to be buried alive; and her gallants to be whipped to death with rods in the
Comitium; excepting only a man of prætorian rank, to whom, because he confessed
the fact, while the case was dubious, and it was not established against him,
though the witnesses had been put to the torture, he granted the favour of
banishment. And to preserve pure and undefiled the reverence due to the gods, he
ordered the soldiers to demolish a tomb, which one of his freedmen had erected
for his son out of the stones designed for the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus,
and to sink in the sea the bones and relics buried in it.
IX. Upon his first succeeding to power, he felt such an abhorrence for the
shedding of blood, that, before his father’s arrival in Rome, calling to mind
the verse of Virgil,
Impia quam cæsis gens est epulata juvencis,
Ere impious man, restrain’d from blood in vain,
Began to feast on flesh of bullocks slain,—
he designed to have published a proclamation, “to forbid the sacrifice of oxen.”
Before his accession to the imperial authority, and during some time afterwards,
he scarcely ever gave the least grounds for being suspected of covetousness or
avarice; but, on the contrary, he often afforded proofs, not only of his
justice, but his liberality. To all about him he was generous even to profusion,
and recommended nothing more earnestly to them than to avoid doing anything
mean. He would not accept the property left him by those who had children. He
also set aside a legacy bequeathed by the will of Ruscus Cæpio, who had ordered
“his heir to make a present yearly to each of the senators upon their first
assembling.” He exonerated all those who had been under prosecution from the
treasury for above five years before; and would not suffer suits to be renewed,
unless it was done within a year, and on condition, that the prosecutor should
be banished, if he could not make good his cause. The secretaries of the
quæstors having engaged in trade, according to custom, but contrary to the
Clodian law, he pardoned them for what was past. Such portions of land as had
been left when it was divided amongst the veteran soldiers, he granted to the
ancient possessors, as belonging to them by prescription. He put a stop to false
prosecutions in the exchequer, by severely punishing the prosecutors; and this
saying of his was much taken notice of: “that a prince who does not punish
informers, encourages them.”
X. But he did not long persevere in this course of clemency and justice,
although he sooner fell into cruelty than into avarice. He put to death a
scholar of Paris, the pantomimic, though a minor, and then sick, only because,
both in person and the practice of his art, he resembled his master; as he did
likewise Hermogenes of Tarsus for some oblique reflections in his History;
crucifying, besides, the scribes who had copied the work. One who was master of
a band of gladiators, happening to say, “that a Thrax was a match for a Marmillo,
but not so for the exhibitor of the games,” he ordered him to be dragged from
the benches into the arena, and exposed to the dogs, with this label upon him,
“A Parmularian guilty of talking impiously.” He put to death many senators, and
amongst them several men of consular rank. In this number were, Civica Cerealis,
when he was proconsul in Africa, Salvidienus Orfitus, and Acilius Glabrio in
exile, under the pretence of their planning to revolt against him. The rest he
punished upon very trivial occasions; as Aelius Lamia for some jocular
expressions, which were of old date, and perfectly harmless; because, upon his
commending his voice after he had taken his wife from him, he replied, “Alas! I
hold my tongue.” And when Titus advised him to take another wife, he answered
him thus: “What! have you a mind to marry?” Salvius Cocceianus was condemned to
death for keeping the birth day of his uncle Otho, the emperor: Metius
Pomposianus, because he was commonly reported to have an imperial nativity, and
to carry about with him a map of the world upon vellum, with the speeches of
kings and generals extracted out of Titus Livius; and for giving his slaves the
names of Mago and Annibal; Sallustius Lucullus, lieutenant in Britain, for
suffering some lances of a new invention to be called “Lucullean;” and Junius
Rusticus, for publishing a treatise in praise of Pætus Thrasea and Helvidius
Priscus, and calling them both “most upright men.” Upon this occasion, he
likewise banished all the philosophers from the city and Italy. He put to death
the younger Helvidius, for writing a farce, in which, under the character of
Paris and Œnone, he reflected upon his having divorced his wife; and also
Flavius Sabinus, one of his cousins, because, upon his being chosen at the
consular election to that office, the public crier had, by a blunder, proclaimed
him to the people not consul, but emperor. Becoming still more savage after his
success in the civil war, he employed the utmost industry to discover those of
the adverse party who absconded: many of them he racked with a new-invented
torture, inserting fire through their private parts; and from some he cut off
their hands. It is certain, that only two of any note were pardoned, a tribune
who wore the narrow stripe, and a centurion; who, to clear themselves from the
charge of being concerned in any rebellious project, proved themselves to have
been guilty of prostitution, and consequently incapable of exercising any
influence either over the general or the soldiers.
XI. His cruelties were not only excessive, but subtle and unexpected. The day
before he crucified a collector of his rents, he sent for him into his
bed-chamber, made him sit down upon the bed by him, and sent him away well
pleased, and, so far as could be inferred from his treatment, in a state of
perfect security; having vouchsafed him the favour of a plate of meat from his
own table. When he was on the point of condemning to death Aretinus Clemens, a
man of consular rank, and one of his friends and emissaries, he retained him
about his person in the same or greater favour than ever; until at last, as they
were riding together in the same litter, upon seeing the man who had informed
against him, he said, “Are you willingg that we should hear this base slave
tomorrow?” Contemptuously abusing the patience of men, he never pronounced a
severe sentence without prefacing it with words which gave hopes of mercy; so
that, at last, there was not a more certain token of a fatal conclusion, than a
mild commencement. He brought before the senate some persons accused of treason,
declaring, “that he should prove that day how dear he was to the senate;” and so
influenced them, that they condemned the accused to be punished according to the
ancient usage. Then, as if alarmed at the extreme severity of their punishment,
to lessen the odiousness of the proceeding, he interposed in these words; for it
is not foreign to the purpose to give them precisely as they were delivered:
“Permit me, Conscript Fathers, so far to prevail upon your affection for me,
however extraordinary the request may seem, as to grant the condemned criminals
the favour of dying in the manner they choose. For by so doing, ye will spare
your own eyes, and the world will understand that I interceded with the senate
on their behalf.”
XII. Having exhausted the exchequer by the expense of his buildings and public
spectacles, with the augmentation of pay lately granted to the troops, he made
an attempt at the reduction of the army, in order to lessen the military
charges. But reflecting, that he should, by this measure, expose himself to the
insults of the barbarians, while it would not suffice to extricate him from his
embarrassments, he had recourse to plundering his subjects by every mode of
exaction. The estates of the living and the dead were sequestered upon any
accusation, by whomsoever preferred. The unsupported allegation of any one
person, relative to a word or action construed to affect the dignity of the
emperor, was sufficient. Inheritances, to which he had not the slightest
pretension, were confiscated, if there was found so much as one person to say,
he had heard from the deceased when living, “that he had made the emperor his
heir.” Besides the exactions from others, the poll-tax on the Jews was levied
with extreme rigour, both on those who lived after the manner of Jews in the
city, without publicly professing themselves to be such, and on those who, by
concealing their origin, avoided paying the tribute imposed upon that people. I
remember, when I was a youth, to have been present, when an old man, ninety
years of age, had his person exposed to view in a very crowded court, in order
that, on inspection, the procurator might satisfy himself whether he was
circumcised.
From his earliest years Domitian was any thing but courteous, of a forward,
assuming disposition, and extravagant both in his words and actions. When Cænis,
his father’s concubine, upon her return from Istria, offered him a kiss, as she
had been used to do, he presented her his hand to kiss. Being indignant, that
his brother’s son-in-law should be waited on by servants dressed in white, he
exclaimed,
οὐϰ ἀγαθὸν πολυϰοιρανίη.
Too many princes are not good.
XIII After he became emperor, he had the assurance to boast in the senate, “that
he had bestowed the empire on his rather and brother, and they had restored it
to him.” And upon taking his wife again, after the divorce, he declared by
proclamation, “that he had recalled her to his pulvinar.” He was not a little
pleased too, at hearing the acclamations of the people in the amphitheatre on a
day of festival, “All happiness to our lord and lady.” But when, during the
celebration of the Capitoline trial of skill, the whole concourse of people
entreated him with one voice to restore Palfurius Sura to his place in the
senate, from which he had been long before expelled—he having then carried away
the prize of eloquence from all the orators who had contended for it,—he did not
vouchsafe to give them any answer, but only commanded silence to be proclaimed
by the voice of the crier. With equal arrogance, when he dictated the form of a
letter to be used by his procurators, he began it thus: “Our lord and god
commands so and so;” whence it became a rule that no one should style him
otherwise either in writing or speaking. He suffered no statues to be erected
for him in the Capitol, unless they were of gold and silver, and of a certain
weight. He erected so many magnificent gates and arches, surmounted by
representations of chariots drawn by four horses, and other triumphal ornaments,
in different quarters of the city, that a wag inscribed on one of the arches the
Greek word Ἀξϰει, “It is enough.” He filled the office of consul seventeen
times, which no one had ever done before him, and for the seven middle occasions
in successive years; but in scarcely any of them had he more than the title; for
he never continued in office beyond the calends of May [the 1st May], and for
the most part only till the ides of January [13th January]. After his two
triumphs, when he assumed the cognomen of Germanicus, he called the months of
September and October, Germanicus and Domitian, after his own names, because he
commenced his reign in the one, and was born in the other.
XIV. Becoming by these means universally feared and odious, he was at last taken
off by a conspiracy of his friends and favourite freedmen, in concert with his
wife. He had long entertained a suspicion of the year and day when he should
die, and even of the very hour and manner of his death; all which he had learned
from the Chaldæans, when he was a very young man. His father once at supper
laughed at him for refusing to eat some mushrooms, saying, that if he knew his
fate, he would rather be afraid of the sword. Being, therefore, in perpetual
apprehension and anxiety, he was keenly alive to the slightest suspicions,
insomuch that he is thought to have withdrawn the edict ordering the destruction
of the vines, chiefly because the copies of it which were dispersed had the
following lines written upon them:
Κᾔν με φάγῃς ἐπὶ ῤίζαν ὅμως ἔτι ϰαρτοφορήσω,
Ὅσσον ἐπισπεῖσαι Καίσαϱι ϑυόμενῳ.
Gnaw thou my root, yet shall my juice suffice
To pour on Cæsar’s head in sacrifice.
It was from the same principle of fear, that he refused a new honour, devised
and offered him by the senate, though he was greedy of all such compliments. It
was this: “that as often as he held the consulship, Roman knights, chosen by
lot, should walk before him, clad in the Trabea, with lances in their hands,
amongst his lictors and apparitors.” As the time of the danger which he
apprehended drew near, he became daily more and more disturbed in mind; insomuch
that he lined the walls of the porticos in which he used to walk, with the stone
called Phengites, by the reflection of which he could see every object behind
him. He seldom gave an audience to persons in custody, unless in private, being
alone, and he himself holding their chains in his hand. To convince his
domestics that the life of a master was not to be attempted upon any pretext,
however plausible, he condemned to death Epaphroditus his secretary, because it
was believed that he had assisted Nero, in his extremity, to kill himself.
XV. His last victim was Flavius Clemens, his cousin-german, a man below contempt
for his want of energy, whose sons, then of very tender age, he had avowedly
destined for his successors, and, discarding their former names, had ordered one
to be called Vespasian, and the other Domitian. Nevertheless, he suddenly put
him to death upon some very slight suspicion, almost before he was well out of
his consulship. By this violent act he very much hastened his own destruction.
During eight months together there was so much lightning at Rome, and such
accounts of the phænomenon were brought from other parts, that at last he cried
out, “Let him now strike whom he will.” The Capitol was struck by lightning, as
well as the temple of the Flavian family, with the Palatine-house, and his own
bed-chamber. The tablet also, inscribed upon the base of his triumphal statue
was carried away by the violence of the storm, and fell upon a neighbouring
monument. The tree which just before the advancement of Vespasian had been
prostrated, and rose again, suddenly fell to the ground. The goddess Fortune of
Præneste, to whom it was his custom on new year’s day to commend the empire for
the ensuing year, and who had always given him a favourable reply, at last
returned him a melancholy answer, not without mention of blood. He dreamt that
Minerva, whom he worshipped even to a superstitious excess, was withdrawing from
her sanctuary, declaring she could protect him no longer, because she was
disarmed by Jupiter. Nothing, however, so much affected him as an answer given
by Ascletario, the astrologer, and his subsequent fate. This person had been
informed against, and did not deny his having predicted some future events, of
which, from the principles of his art, he confessed he had a foreknowledge.
Domitian asked him, what end he thought he should come to himself? To which
replying, “I shall in a short time be torn to pieces by dogs,” he ordered him
immediately to be slain, and, in order to demonstrate the vanity of his art, to
be carefully buried. But during the preparations for executing this order, it
happened that the funeral pile was blown down by a sudden storm, and the body,
half-burnt, was torn to pieces by dogs; which being observed by Latinus, the
comic actor, as he chanced to pass that way, he told it, amongst the other news
of the day, to the emperor at supper.
XVI. The day before his death, he ordered some dates, served up at table, to be
kept till the next day, adding, “If I have the luck to use them.” And turning to
those who were nearest him, he said, “To-morrow the moon in Aquarius will be
bloody instead of watery, and an event will happen, which will be much talked of
all the world over.” About midnight, he was so terrified that he leaped out of
bed. That morning he tried and passed sentence on a soothsayer sent from
Germany, who being consulted about the lightning that had lately happened,
predicted from it a change of government. The blood running down his face as he
scratched an ulcerous tumour on his forehead, he said, “Would this were all that
is to befall me!” Then, upon his asking the time of the day, instead of five
o’clock, which was the hour he dreaded, they purposely told him it was six.
Overjoyed at this information, as if all danger were now passed, and hastening
to the bath, Parthenius, his chamberlain, stopped him, by saying that there was
a person come to wait upon him about a matter of great importance, which would
admit of no delay. Upon this, ordering all persons to withdraw, he retired into
his chamber, and was there slain.
XVII. Concerning the contrivance and mode of his death, the common account is
this. The conspirators being in some doubt when and where they should attack
him, whether while he was in the bath, or at supper, Stephanus, a steward of
Domitilla’s, then under prosecution for defrauding his mistress, offered them
his advice and assistance; and wrapping up his left arm, as if it was hurt, in
wool and bandages for some days, to prevent suspicion, at the hour appointed, he
secreted a dagger in them. Pretending then to make a discovery of a conspiracy,
and being for that reason admitted, he presented to the emperor a memorial, and
while he was reading it in great astonishment, stabbed him in the groin. But
Domitian, though wounded, making resistance, Clodianus, one of his guards,
Maximus, a freedman of Parthenius’s, Saturius, his principal chamberlain, with
some gladiators, fell upon him, and stabbed him in seven places. A boy who had
the charge of the Lares in his bed-chamber, and was then in attendance as usual,
gave these further particulars: that he was ordered by Domitian, upon receiving
his first wound, to reach him a dagger which lay under his pillow, and call in
his domestics; but that he found nothing at the head of the bed, excepting the
hilt of a poniard, and that all the doors were fastened: that the emperor in the
mean time got hold of Stephanus, and throwing him upon the ground, struggled a
long time with him; one while endeavouring to wrench the dagger from him,
another while, though his fingers were miserably mangled, to tear out his eyes.
He was slain upon the fourteenth of the calends of October [18th Sept.], in the
forty-fifth year of his age, and the fifteenth of his reign. His corpse was
carried out upon a common bier by the public bearers, and buried by his nurse
Phyllis, at his suburban villa on the Latin Way. But she afterwards privately
conveyed his remains to the temple of the Flavian family, and mingled them with
the ashes of Julia, the daughter of Titus, whom she had also nursed.
XVIII. He was tall in stature, his face modest, and very ruddy; he had large
eyes, but was dim-sighted; naturally graceful in his person, particularly in his
youth, excepting only that his toes were bent somewhat inward, he was at last
disfigured by baldness, corpulence, and the slenderness of his legs, which were
reduced by a long illness. He was so sensible how much the modesty of his
countenance recommended him, that he once made this boast to the senate, “Thus
far you have approved both of my disposition and my countenance.” His baldness
so much annoyed him, that he considered it an affront to himself, if any other
person was reproached with it, either in jest or in earnest; though in a small
tract he published, addressed to a friend, “concerning the preservation of the
hair,” he uses for their mutual consolation the words following:
Ὀυχ ὁράας οἷος κάγὼ καλός τε μέγας τε;
Seest thou my graceful mien, my stately form?
“and yet the fate of my hair awaits me; however, I bear with fortitude this loss
of my hair while I am still young. Remember that nothing is more fascinating
than beauty, but nothing of shorter duration.”
XIX. He so shrunk from undergoing fatigue, that he scarcely ever walked through
the city on foot. In his expeditions and on a march, he seldom rode on
horse-back, but was generally carried in a litter. He had no inclination for the
exercise of arms, but was very expert in the use of the bow. Many persons have
seen him often kill a hundred wild animals, of various kinds, at his Alban
retreat, and fix his arrows in their heads with such dexterity, that he could,
in two shots, plant them, like a pair of horns, in each. He would sometimes
direct his arrows against the hand of a boy standing at a distance, and expanded
as a mark, with such precision, that they all passed between the boy’s fingers,
without hurting him.
XX. In the beginning of his reign, he gave up the study of the liberal sciences,
though he took care to restore, at a vast expense, the libraries which had been
burnt down; collecting manuscripts from all parts, and sending scribes to
Alexandria, either to copy or correct them. Yet he never gave himself the
trouble of reading history or poetry, or of employing his pen even for his
private purposes. He perused nothing but the Commentaries and Acts of Tiberius
Cæsar. His letters, speeches, and edicts, were all drawn up for him by others;
though he could converse with elegance, and sometimes expressed himself in
memorable sentiments. “I could wish,” said he once, “that I was but as handsome
as Metius fancies himself to be.” And of the head of some one whose hair was
partly reddish, and partly grey, he said, “that it was snow sprinkled with
mead.”
XXI. “The lot of princes,” he remarked, “was very miserable, for no one believed
them when they discovered a conspiracy, until they were murdered.” When he had
leisure, he amused himself with dice, even on days that were not festivals, and
in the morning. He went to the bath early, and made a plentiful dinner, insomuch
that he seldom ate more at supper than a Matian apple, to which he added a
draught of wine, out of a small flask. He gave frequent and splendid
entertainments, but they were soon over, for he never prolonged them after
sun-set, and indulged in no revel after. For, till bed-time, he did nothing else
but walk by himself in private.
XXII. He was insatiable in his lusts, calling frequent commerce with women, as
if it was a sort of exercise, ϰλινοπάλην, bed-wrestling; and it was reported
that he plucked the hair from his concubines, and swam about in company with the
lowest prostitutes. His brother’s daughter was offered him in marriage when she
was a virgin; but being at that time enamoured of Domitia, he obstinately
refused her. Yet not long afterwards, when she was given to another, he was
ready enough to debauch her, and that even while Titus was living. But after she
had lost both her father and her husband, he loved her most passionately, and
without disguise; insomuch that he was the occasion of her death, by obliging
her to procure a miscarriage when she was with child by him.
XXIII. The people shewed little concern at his death, but the soldiers were
roused by it to great indignation, and immediately endeavoured to have him
ranked among the gods. They were also ready to revenge his loss, if there had
been any to take the lead. However, they soon after effected it, by resolutely
demanding the punishment of all those who had been concerned in his
assassination. On the other hand, the senate was so overjoyed, that they met in
all haste, and in a full assembly reviled his memory in the most bitter terms;
ordering ladders to be brought in, and his shields and images to be pulled down
before their eyes, and dashed in pieces upon the floor of the senate-house;
passing at the same time a decree to obliterate his titles every where, and
abolish all memory of him. A few months before he was slain, a raven on the
Capitol uttered these words: “All will be well.” Some person gave the following
interpretation of this prodigy:
Nuper Tarpeio quæ sedit culmine cornix,
“Est bene,” non potuit dicere; dixit, “Erit.”
Late croaked a raven from Tarpeia’s height,
“All is not yet, but shortly will be, right.”
They say likewise that Domitian dreamed that a golden hump grew out of the back
of his neck, which he considered as a certain sign of happy days for the empire
after him. Such an auspicious change indeed shortly afterwards took place,
through the justice and moderation of the succeeding emperors.
If we view Domitian in the different lights in which he is represented, during
his lifetime and after his decease, his character and conduct discover a greater
diversity than is commonly observed in the objects of historical detail. But as
posthumous character is always the most just, its decisive verdict affords the
surest criterion by which this variegated emperor must be estimated by impartial
posterity. According to this rule, it is beyond a doubt that his vices were more
predominant than his virtues: and when we follow him into his closet, for some
time after his accession, when he was thirty years of age, the frivolity of his
daily employment, in the killing of flies, exhibits an instance of dissipation,
which surpasses all that has been recorded of his imperial predecessors. The
encouragement, however, which the first Vespasian had shown to literature,
continued to operate during the present reign; and we behold the first fruits of
its auspicious influence in the valuable treatise of Quintilian.
Of the life of this celebrated writer, little is known upon any authority that
has a title to much credit. We learn, however, that he was the son of a lawyer
in the service of some of the preceding emperors, and was born at Rome, though
in what consulship, or under what emperor, it is impossible to determine. He
married a woman of a noble family, by whom he had two sons. The mother died in
the flower of her age, and the sons, at the distance of some time from each
other, when their father was advanced in years. The precise time of Quintilian’s
own death is equally inauthenticated with that of his birth; nor can we rely
upon an author of suspicious veracity, who says that he passed the latter part
of his life in a state of indigence, which was alleviated by the liberality of
his pupil, Pliny the Younger. Quintilian opened a school of rhetoric at Rome,
where he not only discharged that laborious employment with great applause,
during more than twenty years, but pleaded at the bar, and was the first who
obtained a salary from the state, for executing the office of a public teacher.
He was also appointed by Domitian preceptor to the two young princes who were
intended to succeed him on the throne.
After his retirement from the situation of a teacher, Quintilian devoted his
attention to the study of literature, and composed a treatise on the Causes of
the Corruption of Eloquence. At the earnest solicitation of his friends, he was
afterwards induced to undertake his Institutiones Oratoriæ, the most elaborate
system of oratory extant in any language. This work is divided into twelve
books, in which the author treats with great precision of the qualities of a
perfect orator; explaining not only the fundamental principles of eloquence, as
connected with the constitution of the human mind, but pointing out, both by
argument and observation, the most successful method of exercising that
admirable art, for the accomplishment of its purpose. So minutely, and upon so
extensive a plan, has he prosecuted the subject, that he delineates the
education suitable to a perfect orator, from the stage of infancy in the cradle,
to the consummation of rhetorical fame, in the pursuits of the bar, or those, in
general, of any public assembly. It is sufficient to say, that in the execution
of this elaborate work, Quintilian has called to the assistance of his own acute
and comprehensive understanding, the profound penetration of Aristotle, the
exquisite graces of Cicero; all the stores of observation, experience, and
practice; and in a word, the whole accumulated exertions of ancient genius on
the subject of oratory.
It may justly be regarded as an extraordinary circumstance in the progress of
scientific improvement, that the endowments of a perfect orator were never fully
exhibited to the world, until it had become dangerous to exercise them for the
important purposes for which they were originally cultivated. And it is no less
remarkable, that, under all the violence and caprice of imperial despotism which
the Romans had now experienced, their sensibility to the enjoyment of poetical
compositions remained still unabated; as if it served to console the nation for
the irretrievable loss of public liberty. From this source of entertainment,
they reaped more pleasure during the present reign, than they had done since the
time of Augustus. The poets of this period were Juvenal, Statius, and Martial.
Juvenal was born at Aquinum, but in what year is uncertain; though, from some
circumstances, it seems to have been in the reign of Augustus. Some say that he
was the son of a freedman, while others, without specifying the condition of his
father, relate only that he was brought up by a freedman. He came at an early
age to Rome, where he declaimed for many years, and pleaded causes in the forum
with great applause; but at last he betook himself to the writing of satires, in
which he acquired great fame. One of the first, and the most constant object of
his satire, was the pantomime Paris, the great favourite of the emperor Nero,
and afterwards of Domitian. During the reign of the former of these emperors, no
resentment was shown towards the poet; but he experienced not the same impunity
after the accession of the latter; when, to remove him from the capital, he was
sent as governor to the frontiers of Egypt, but in reality, into an honourable
exile. According to some authors, he died of chagrin in that province: but this
is not authenticated, and seems to be a mistake: for in some of Martial’s
epigrams, which appear to have been written after the death of Domitian, Juvenal
is spoken of as residing at Rome. It is said that he lived to upwards of eighty
years of age.
The remaining compositions of this author are sixteen satires, all written
against the dissipation and enormous vices which prevailed at Rome in his time.
The various objects of animadversion are painted in the strongest colours, and
placed in the most conspicuous points of view. Giving loose reins to just and
moral indignation, Juvenal is every where animated, vehement, petulant, and
incessantly acrimonious. Disdaining the more lenient modes of correction, or
despairing of their success, he neither adopts the raillery of Horace, nor the
derision of Persius, but prosecutes vice and folly with all the severity of
sentiment, passion, and expression. He sometimes exhibits a mixture of humour
with his invectives; but it is a humour which partakes more of virulent rage
than of pleasantry; broad, hostile, but coarse, and rivalling in indelicacy the
profligate manners which it assails. The satires of Juvenal abound in
philosophical apophthegms; and, where they are not sullied by obscene
description, are supported with a uniform air of virtuous elevation. Amidst all
the intemperance of sarcasm, his numbers are harmonious. Had his zeal permitted
him to direct the current of his impetuous genius into the channel of ridicule,
and endeavour to put to shame the vices and follies of those licentious times,
as much as he perhaps exasperated conviction rather than excited contrition, he
would have carried satire to the highest possible pitch, both of literary
excellence and moral utility. With every abatement of attainable perfection, we
hesitate not to place him at the head of this arduous department of poetry.
Of Statius no farther particulars are preserved than that he was born at Naples;
that his father’s name was Statius of Epirus, and his mother’s Agelina, and that
he died about the end of the first century of the Christian era. Some have
conjectured that he maintained himself by writing for the stage, but of this
there is no sufficient evidence; and if ever he composed dramatic productions,
they have perished. The works of Statius now extant, are two poems, viz. the
Thebaïs and the Achilleïs, besides a collection, named Silvæ.
The Thebaïs consists of twelve books, and the subject of it is the Theban war,
which happened 1236 years before the Christian era, in consequence of a dispute
between Eteocles and Polynices, the sons of Œdipus and Jocasta. These brothers
had entered into an agreement with each other to reign alternately for a year at
a time; and Eteocles being the elder, got first possession of the throne. This
prince refusing to abdicate at the expiration of the year, Polynices fled to
Argos, where marrying Argia, the daughter of Adrastus, king of that country, he
procured the assistance of his father-in-law, to enforce the engagement
stipulated with his brother Eteocles. The Argives marched under the command of
seven able generals, who were to attack separately the seven gates of Thebes.
After much blood had been spilt without any effect, it was at last agreed
between the two parties, that the brothers should determine the dispute by
single combat. In the desperate engagement which ensued, they both fell; and
being burnt together upon the funeral pile, it is said that their ashes
separated, as if actuated by the implacable resentment which they had borne to
each other.
If we except the Aeneid, this is the only Latin production extant which is epic
in its form; and it likewise approaches nearest in merit to that celebrated
poem, which Statius appears to have been ambitious of emulating. In unity and
greatness of action, the Thebaïs corresponds to the laws of the Epopea; but the
fable may be regarded as defective in some particulars, which, however, arise
more from the nature of the subject, than from any fault of the poet. The
distinction of the hero is not sufficiently prominent; and the poem possesses
not those circumstances which are requisite towards interesting the reader’s
affections in the issue of the contest. To this it may be added, that the
unnatural complexion of the incestuous progeny diffuses a kind of gloom which
obscures the splendour of thought, and restrains the sympathetic indulgence of
fancy to some of the boldest excursions of the poet. For grandeur, however, and
animation of sentiment and description, as well as for harmony of numbers, the
Thebaïs is eminently conspicuous, and deserves to be held in a much higher
degree of estimation than it has generally obtained. In the contrivance of some
of the episodes, and frequently in the modes of expression, Statius keeps an
attentive eye to the style of Virgil. It is said that he was twelve years
employed in the composition of this poem; and we have his own authority for
affirming, that he polished it with all the care and assiduity practised by the
poets in the Augustan age:
Quippe, te fido monitore, nostra
Thebaïs, multâ cruciata limâ,
Tentat audaci fide Mantuanæ
Gaudia famæ.
—Silvar. lib. iv. 7.
For, taught by you, with stedfast care
I trim my “Song of Thebes,” and dare
With generous rivalry to share
The glories of the Mantuan bard.
The Achillëis relates to the same hero who is celebrated by Homer in the Iliad;
but it is the previous history of Achilles, not his conduct in the Trojan war,
which forms the subject of the poem of Statius. While the young hero is under
the care of the Centaur Chiron, Thetis makes a visit to the preceptor’s
sequestered habitation, where, to save her son from the fate which, it was
predicted, would befall him at Troy, if he should go to the siege of that place,
she orders him to be dressed in the disguise of a girl, and sent to live in the
family of Lycomedes, king of Scyros. But as Troy could not be taken without the
aid of Achilles, Ulysses, accompanied by Diomed, is deputed by the Greeks to go
to Scyros, and bring him thence to the Grecian camp. The artifice by which the
sagacious ambassador detected Achilles amongst his female companions, was by
placing before them various articles of merchandise, amongst which was some
armour. Achilles no sooner perceived the latter, than he eagerly seized a sword
and shield, and manifesting the strongest emotions of heroic enthusiasm,
discovered his sex. After an affectionate parting with Lycomedes’ daughter,
Deïdamia, whom he left pregnant of a son, he set sail with the Grecian chiefs,
and, during the voyage, gives them an account of the manner of his education
with Chiron.
This poem consists of two books, in heroic measure, and is written with taste
and fancy. Commentators are of opinion, that the Achilleïs was left incomplete
by the death of the author; but this is extremely improbable, from various
circumstances, and appears to be founded only upon the word Hactenus, in the
conclusion of the poem:
Hactenus annorum, comites, elementa meorum
Et memini, et meminisse juvat: scit cætera mater.
Thus far, companions dear, with mindful joy I’ve told
My youthful deeds; the rest my mother can unfold.
That any consequential reference was intended by hactenus, seems to me plainly
contradicted by the words which immediately follow, scit cætera mater. Statius
could not propose the giving any further account of Achilles’s life, because a
general narrative of it had been given in the first book. The voyage from Scyros
to the Trojan coast, conducted with the celerity which suited the purpose of the
poet, admitted of no incidents which required description or recital: and after
the voyagers had reached the Grecian camp, it is reasonable to suppose, that the
action of the Iliad immediately commenced. But that Statius had no design of
extending the plan of the Achilleïs beyond this period, is expressly declared in
the exordium of the poem:
Magnanimum Aeaciden, formidatamque Tonanti
Progeniem, et patrio vetitam succedere cœlo,
Diva, refer; quanquam acta viri multum inclyta cantu
Mæonio; sed plura vacant. Nos ire per omnem
(Sic amor est) heroa velis, Scyroque latentem
Dulichiâ proferre tubâ: nec in Hectore tracto
Sistere, sed totâ juvenem deducere Trojâ.
Aid me, O goddess! while I sing of him,
Who shook the Thunderer’s throne, and, for his crime,
Was doomed to lose his birthright in the skies;
The great Aeacides. Mæonian strains
Have made his mighty deeds their glorious theme;
Still much remains: be mine the pleasing task
To trace the future hero’s young career,
Not dragging Hector at his chariot wheels,
But while disguised in Scyros yet he lurked,
Till trumpet-stirred, he sprung to manly arms,
And sage Ulysses led him to the Trojan coast.
The Silvæ is a collection of poems almost entirely in heroic verse, divided into
five books, and for the most part written extempore. Statius himself affirms, in
his Dedication to Stella, that the production of none of them employed him more
than two days; yet many of them consist of between one hundred and two hundred
hexameter lines. We meet with one of two hundred and sixteen lines; one, of two
hundred and thirty-four; one, of two hundred and sixty-two; and one of two
hundred and seventy-seven; a rapidity of composition approaching to what Horace
mentions of the poet Lucilius. It is no small encomium to observe, that,
considered as extemporaneous productions, the meanest in the collection is far
from meriting censure, either in point of sentiment or expression; and many of
them contain passages which command our applause.
The poet Martial, surnamed likewise Coquus, was born at Bilbilis, in Spain, of
obscure parents. At the age of twenty-one, he came to Rome, where he lived
during five-and-thirty years under the emperors Galba, Otho, Vitellius, the two
Vespasians, Domitian, Nerva, and the beginning of the reign of Trajan. He was
the panegyrist of several of those emperors, by whom he was liberally rewarded,
raised to the Equestrian order, and promoted by Domitian to the tribuneship; but
being treated with coldness and neglect by Trajan, he returned to his native
country, and, a few years after, ended his days, at the age of seventy-five He
had lived at Rome in great splendour and affluence, as well as in high esteem
for his poetical talents; but upon his return to Bilbilis, it is said that he
experienced a great reverse of fortune, and was chiefly indebted for his support
to the gratuitous benefactions of Pliny the Younger, whom he had extolled in
some epigrams.
The poems of Martial consist of fourteen books, all written in the epigrammatic
form, to which species of composition, introduced by the Greeks, he had a
peculiar propensity. Amidst such a multitude of verses, on a variety of
subjects, often composed extempore, and many of them, probably, in the moments
of fashionable dissipation, it is not surprising that we find a large number
unworthy the genius of the author. Delicacy, and even decency, is often violated
in the productions of Martial. Grasping at every thought which afforded even the
shadow of ingenuity, he gave unlimited scope to the exercise of an active and
fruitful imagination. In respect to composition, he is likewise liable to
censure. At one time he wearies, and at another tantalises the reader, with the
prolixity or ambiguity of his preambles. His prelusive sentiments are sometimes
far-fetched, and converge not with a natural declination into the focus of
epigram. In dispensing praise and censure, he often seems to be governed more by
prejudice or policy, than by justice and truth; and he is more constantly
attentive to the production of wit, than to the improvement of morality.
But while we remark the blemishes and imperfections of this poet, we must
acknowledge his extraordinary merits. In composition he is, in general, elegant
and correct; and where the subject is capable of connection with sentiment, his
inventive ingenuity never fails to extract from it the essence of delight and
surprise. His fancy is prolific of beautiful images, and his judgment expert in
arranging them to the greatest advantage. He bestows panegyric with inimitable
grace, and satirises with equal dexterity. In a fund of Attic salt, he surpasses
every other writer; and though he seems to have at command all the varied stores
of gall, he is not destitute of candour. With almost every kind of versification
he appears to be familiar; and notwithstanding a facility of temper, too
accommodating, perhaps, on many occasions, to the licentiousness of the times,
we may venture from strong indications to pronounce, that, as a moralist, his
principles were virtuous. It is observed of this author, by Pliny the Younger,
that, though his compositions might, perhaps, not obtain immortality, he wrote
as if they would. [Aeterna, quæ scripsit, non erunt fortasse: ille tamen
scripsit tanquam futura.] The character which Martial gives of his epigrams, is
just and comprehensive:
Sunt bona, sunt quædam mediocria, sunt mala plura,
Quæ legis: hic aliter non fit, Avite, liber.
Some are good, some indifferent, and some again still worse;
Such, Avitus, you will find is a common case with verse.
the end of the twelve cæsars.
LIVES OF EMINENT GRAMMARIANS.
I.The science of grammar was in ancient times far from being in vogue at Rome;
indeed, it was of little use in a rude state of society, when the people were
engaged in constant wars, and had not much time to bestow on the cultivation of
the liberal arts. At the outset, its pretensions were very slender, for the
earliest men of learning, who were both poets and orators, may be considered as
half-Greek: I speak of Livius and Ennius, who are acknowledged to have taught
both languages as well at Rome as in foreign parts. But they only translated
from the Greek, and if they composed anything of their own in Latin, it was only
from what they had before read. For although there are those who say that this
Ennius published two books, one on “Letters and Syllables,” and the other on “Metres,”
Lucius Cotta has satisfactorily proved that they are not the works of the poet
Ennius, but of another writer of the same name, to whom also the treatise on the
“Rules of Augury” is attributed.
II. Crates of Mallos, then, was, in our opinion, the first who introduced the
study of grammar at Rome. He was cotemporary with Aristarchus, and having been
sent by king Attalus as envoy to the senate in the interval between the second
and third Punic wars, soon after the death of Ennius, he had the misfortune to
fall into an open sewer in the Palatine quarter of the city, and broke his leg.
After which, during the whole period of his embassy and convalescence, he gave
frequent lectures, taking much pains to instruct his hearers, and he has left us
an example well worthy of imitation. It was so far followed, that poems hitherto
little known, the works either of deceased friends or other approved writers,
were brought to light, and being read and commented on, were explained to
others. Thus, Caius Octavius Lampadio edited the Punic War of Nævius, which
having been written in one volume without any break in the manuscript, he
divided into seven books. After that, Quintus Vargonteius undertook the Annals
of Ennius, which he read on certain fixed days to crowded audiences. So Lælius
Archelaus, and Vectius Philocomus, read and commented on the Satires of their
friend Lucilius, which Lenæus Pompeius, a freedman, tells us he studied under
Archelaus; and Valerius Cato, under Philocomus. Two others also taught and
promoted grammar in various branches, namely, Lucius Aelius Lanuvinus, the
son-in-law of Quintus Aelius, and Servius Claudius, both of whom were Roman
knights, and men who rendered great services both to learning and the republic.
III. Lucius Aelius had a double cognomen, for he was called Præconius, because
his father was a herald; Stilo, because he was in the habit of composing
orations for most of the speakers of highest rank; indeed, he was so strong a
partisan of the nobles, that he accompanied Quintus Metellus Numidicus in his
exile. Servius having clandestinely obtained his father-in-law’s book before it
was published, was disowned for the fraud, which he took so much to heart, that,
overwhelmed with shame and distress, he retired from Rome; and being seized with
a fit of the gout, in his impatience, he applied a poisonous ointment to his
feet, which half-killed him, so that his lower limbs mortified while he was
still alive. After this, more attention was paid to the science of letters, and
it grew in public estimation, insomuch, that men of the highest rank did not
hesitate in undertaking to write something on the subject; and it is related
that sometimes there were no less than twenty celebrated scholars in Rome. So
high was the value, and so great were the rewards, of grammarians, that Lutatius
Daphnides, jocularly called “Pan’s herd” by Lenæus Melissus, was purchased by
Quintus Catullus for two hundred thousand sesterces, and shortly afterwards made
a freedman; and that Lucius Apuleius, who was taken into the pay of Epicius
Calvinus, a wealthy Roman knight, at the annual salary of ten thousand crowns,
had many scholars. Grammar also penetrated into the provinces, and some of the
most eminent amongst the learned taught it in foreign parts, particularly in
Gallia Togata. In the number of these, we may reckon Octavius Teucer, Siscennius
Jacchus, and Oppius Cares, who persisted in teaching to a most advanced period
of his life, at a time when he was not only unable to walk, but his sight
failed.
IV. The appellation of grammarian was borrowed from the Greeks; but at first,
the Latins called such persons literati. Cornelius Nopos, also, in his book,
where he draws a distinction between a literate and a philologist, says that in
common phrase, those are properly called literati who are skilled in speaking or
writing with care or accuracy, and those more especially deserve the name who
translated the poets, and were called grammarians by the Greeks. It appears that
they were named literators by Messala Corvinus, in one of his letters, when he
says, “that it does not refer to Furius Bibaculus, nor even to Sigida, nor to
Cato, the literator,” meaning, doubtless, that Valerius Cato was both a poet and
an eminent grammarian. Some there are who draw a distinction between a literati
and a literator, as the Greeks do between a grammarian and a grammatist,
applying the former term to men of real erudition, the latter to those whose
pretensions to learning are moderate; and this opinion Orbilius supports by
examples. For he says that in old times, when a company of slaves was offered
for sale by any person, it was not customary, without good reason, to describe
either of them in the catalogue as a literate, but only as a literator, meaning
that he was not a proficient in letters, but had a smattering of knowledge.
The early grammarians taught rhetoric also, and we have many of their treatises
which include both sciences; whence it arose, I think, that in later times,
although the two professions had then become distinct, the old custom was
retained, or the grammarians introduced into their teaching some of the elements
required for public speaking, such as the problem, the periphrasis, the choice
of words, description of character, and the like; in order that they might not
transfer their pupils to the rhetoricians no better than ill-taught boys But I
perceive that these lessons are now given up in some cases, on account of the
want of application, or the tender years, of the scholar, for I do not believe
that it arises from any dislike in the master. I recollect that when I was a boy
it was the custom of one of these, whose name was Princeps, to take alternate
days for declaiming and disputing; and sometimes he would lecture in the
morning, and declaim in the afternoon, when he had his pulpit removed. I heard,
also, that even within the memories of our own fathers, some of the pupils of
the grammarians passed directly from the schools to the courts, and at once took
a high place in the ranks of the most distinguished advocates. The professors at
that time were, indeed, men of great eminence, of some of whom I may be able to
give an account in the following chapters.
V.SæviusNicanor first acquired fame and reputation by his teaching: and,
besides, he made commentaries, the greater part of which, however, are said to
have been borrowed. He also wrote a satire, in which he informs us that he was a
freedman, and had a double cognomen, in the following verses;
Sævius Nicanor Marci libertus negabit,
Sævius Posthumius idem, sed Marcus, docebit.
What Sævius Nicanor, the freedman of Marcus, will deny,
The same Sævius, called also Posthumius Marcus, will assert.
It is reported, that in consequence of some infamy attached to his character, he
retired to Sardinia, and there ended his days.
VI.Aurelius Opilius, the freedman of some Epicurean, first taught philosophy,
then rhetoric, and last of all, grammar. Having closed his school, he followed
Rutilius Rufus, when he was banished to Asia, and there the two friends grew old
together. He also wrote several volumes on a variety of learned topics, nine
books of which he distinguished by the number and names of the nine Muses; as he
says, not without reason, they being the patrons of authors and poets. I observe
that its title is given in several indexes by a single letter, but he uses two
in the heading of a book called Finax.
VII.Marcus Antonius Gnipho, a free-born native of Gaul, was exposed in his
infancy, and afterwards received his freedom from his foster-father; and, as
some say, was educated at Alexandria, where Dionysius Scytobrachion was his
fellow pupil. This, however, I am not very ready to believe, as the times at
which they flourished scarcely agree. He is said to have been a man of great
genius, of singular memory, well read in Greek as well as Latin, and of a most
obliging and agreeable temper, who never haggled about remuneration, but
generally left it to the liberality of his scholars. He first taught in the
house of Julius Cæsar, when the latter was yet but a boy, and, afterwards, in
his own private house. He gave instruction in rhetoric also, teaching the rules
of eloquence every day, but declaiming only on festivals. It is said that some
very celebrated men frequented his school,—and, among others, Marcus Cicero,
during the time he held the prætorship. He wrote a number of works, although he
did not live beyond his fiftieth year; but Atteius, the philologist, says, that
he left only two volumes, “De Latino Sermone;” and, that the other works
ascribed to him, were composed by his disciples, and were not his, although his
name is sometimes to be found in them.
VIII. M. Pompilius Andronicus, a native of Syria, while he professed to be a
grammarian, was considered an idle follower of the Epicurean sect, and little
qualified to be a master of a school. Finding, therefore, that, at Rome, not
only Antonius Gnipho, but even other teachers of less note were preferred to
him, he retired to Cumæ, where he lived at his ease; and, though he wrote
several books, he was so needy, and reduced to such straits, as to be compelled
to sell that excellent little work of his, “The Index to the Annals,” for
sixteen thousand sesterces. Orbilius has informed us, that he redeemed this work
from the oblivion into which it had fallen, and took care to have it published
with the author’s name.
IX.Orbilius Pupillus, of Beneventum, being left an orphan, by the death of his
parents, who both fell a sacrifice to the plots of their enemies on the same
day, acted, at first, as apparitor to the magistrates. He then joined the troops
in Macedonia, when he was first decorated with the plumed helmet, and,
afterwards, promoted to serve on horseback. Having completed his military
service, he resumed his studies, which he had pursued with no small diligence
from his youth upwards: and, having been a professor for a long period in his
own country, at last, during the consulship of Cicero, made his way to Rome,
where he taught with more reputation than profit. For in one of his works he
says, that “he was then very old, and lived in a garret.” He also published a
book with the title of Perialogos; containing complaints of the injurious
treatment to which professors submitted, without seeking redress at the hands of
parents. His sour temper betrayed itself, not only in his disputes with the
sophists opposed to him, whom he lashed on every occasion, but also towards his
scholars, as Horace tells us, who calls him “a flogger;” and Domitius Marsus,
who says of him:—
Si quos Orbilius ferulâ scuticâque cecidit.
If those Orbilius with rod or ferule thrashed.
And not even men of rank escaped his sarcasms: for, before he became noticed,
happening to be examined as a witness in a crowded court, Varro, the advocate on
the other side, put the question to him, “What he did, and by what profession he
gained his livelihood?” He replied, “That he lived by removing hunchbacks from
the sunshine into the shade,” alluding to Muræna’s deformity. He lived till he
was near a hundred years old; but he had long lost his memory, as the verse of
Bibaculus informs us:—
Orbilius ubinam est, literarum oblivio?
Where is Orbilius now, that wreck of learning lost?
His statue is shown in the Capitol at Beneventum. It stands on the left hand,
and is sculptured in marble, representing him in a sitting posture, wearing the
pallium, with two writing-cases in his hand. He left a son, named also Orbilius,
who, like his father, was a professor of grammar.
X.Atteius, the Philologist, a freedman, was born at Athens. Of him, Capito
Atteius, the well-known jurisconsult, says that he was a rhetorician among the
grammarians, and a grammarian among the rhetoricians. Asinius Pollio, in the
book in which he finds fault with the writings of Sallust for his great
affectation of obsolete words, speaks thus: “In this work his chief assistant
was a certain Atteius, a man of rank, a splendid Latin grammarian, the aider and
preceptor of those who studied the practice of declamation; in short, one who
claimed for himself the cognomen of Philologus.” Writing to Lucius Hermas, he
says, “that he had made great proficiency in Greek literature, and some in
Latin; that he had been a hearer of Antonius Gnipho, and his Hermas, and
afterwards began to teach others. Moreover, that he had for pupils many
illustrious youths, among whom were the two brothers, Appius and Pulcher
Claudius; and that he even accompanied them to their province.” He appears to
have assumed the name of Philologus, because, like Eratosthenes, who first
adopted that cognomen, he was in high repute for his rich and varied stores of
learning; which, indeed, is evident from his commentaries, though but few of
them are extant. Another letter, however, to the same Hermas, shews that they
were very numerous: “Remember,” it says, “to recommend generally our Extracts,
which we have collected, as you know, of all kinds, into eight hundred books.”
He afterwards formed an intimate acquaintance with Caius Sallustius, and, on his
death, with Asinius Pollio; and when they undertook to write a history, he
supplied the one with short annals of all Roman affairs, from which he could
select at pleasure; and the other, with rules on the art of composition. I am,
therefore, surprised that Asinius Pollio should have supposed that he was in the
habit of collecting old words and figures of speech for Sallust, when he must
have known that his own advice was, that none but well known, and common and
appropriate expressions should be made use of; and that, above all things, the
obscurity of the style of Sallust, and his bold freedom in translations, should
be avoided.
XI.Valerius Cato was, as some have informed us, the freedman of one Bursenus, a
native of Gaul. He himself tells us, in his little work called “Indignatio,”
that he was born free, and being left an orphan, was exposed to be easily
stripped of his patrimony during the licence of Sylla’s administrations. He had
a great number of distinguished pupils, and was highly esteemed as a preceptor
suited to those who had a poetical turn, as appears from these short lines:
Cato grammaticus, Latina Siren,
Qui solus legit ac facit poetas.
Cato, the Latin Siren, grammar taught and verse,
To form the poet skilled, and poetry rehearse.
Besides his Treatise on Grammar, he composed some poems, of which, his Lydia and
Diana are most admired. Ticida mentions his “Lydia.”
Lydia, doctorum maxima cura liber.
“Lydia,” a work to men of learning dear.
Cinna thus notices the “Diana.”
Secula permaneat nostri Diana Catonis.
Immortal be our Cato’s song of Dian.
He lived to extreme old age, but in the lowest state of penury, and almost in
actual want; having retired to a small cottage when he gave up his Tusculan
villa to his creditors; as Bibaculus tells us:
Si quis forte mei domum Catonis,
Depictas minio assulas, et illos
Custodis vidit hortulos Priapi,
Miratur, quibus ille disciplinis,
Tantam sit sapientiam assecutus,
Quem tres cauliculi et selibra farris;
Racemi duo, tegulâ sub unâ,
Ad summam prope nutriant senectam.
“If, perchance, any one has seen the house of my Cato, with marble slabs of the
richest hues, and his gardens worthy of having Priapus for their guardian, he
may well wonder by what philosophy he has gained so much wisdom, that a daily
allowance of three coleworts, half-a-pound of meal, and two bunches of grapes,
under a narrow roof, should serve for his subsistence to extreme old age.”
And he says in another place:
Catonis modo, Galle, Tusculanum
Tota creditor urbe venditabat.
Mirati sumus unicum magistrum,
Summum grammaticum, optimum poetam,
Omnes solvere posse quæstiones,
Unum difficile expedire nomen.
En cor Zenodoti, en jecur Cratetis!3
“We lately saw, my Gallus, Cato’s Tusculan villa exposed to public sale by his
creditors; and wondered that such an unrivalled master of the schools, most
eminent grammarian, and accomplished poet, could solve all propositions and yet
found one question too difficult for him to settle,—how to pay his debts. We
find in him the genius of Zenodotus, the wisdom of Crates.”
XII.Cornelius Epicadius, a freedman of Lucius Cornelius Sylla, the dictator, was
his apparitor in the Augural priesthood, and much beloved by his son Faustus; so
that he was proud to call himself the freedman of both. He completed the last
book of Sylla’s Commentaries, which his patron had left unfinished.
XIII.Laberius Hiera was bought by his master out of a slave-dealer’s cage, and
obtained his freedom on account of his devotion to learning. It is reported that
his disinterestedness was such, that he gave gratuitous instruction to the
children of those who were proscribed in the time of Sylla.
XIV.Curtius Nicia was the intimate friend of Cneius Pompeius and Caius Memmius;
but having carried notes from Memmius to Pompey’s wife, when she was debauched
by Memmius, Pompey was indignant, and forbad him his house. He was also on
familiar terms with Marcus Cicero, who thus speaks of him in his epistle to
Dolabella: “I have more need of receiving letters from you, than you have of
desiring them from me. For there is nothing going on at Rome in which I think
you would take any interest, except, perhaps, that you may like to know that I
am appointed umpire between our friends Nicias and Vidius. The one, it appears,
alleges in two short verses that Nicias owes him money; the other, like an
Aristarchus, cavils at them. I, like an old critic, am to decide whether they
are Nicias’s or spurious.”
Again, in a letter to Atticus, he says: “As to what you write about Nicias,
nothing could give me greater pleasure than to have him with me, if I was in a
position to enjoy his society; but my province is to me a place of retirement
and solitude. Sicca easily reconciled himself to this state of things, and,
therefore, I would prefer having him. Besides, you are well aware of the
feebleness, and the nice and luxurious habits, of our friend Nicias. Why should
I be the means of making him uncomfortable, when he can afford me no pleasure?
At the same time, I value his goodwill.”
XV.Lenæus was a freedman of Pompey the Great, and attended him in most of his
expeditions. On the death of his patron and his sons, he supported himself by
teaching in a school which he opened near the temple of Tellus, in the Carinæ,
in the quarter of the city where the house of the Pompeys stood. Such was his
regard for his patron’s memory, that when Sallust described him as having a
brazen face, and a shameless mind, he lashed the historian in a most bitter
satire, as “a bull’s-pizzle, a gormandizer, a braggart, and a tippler, a man
whose life and writings were equally monstrous;” besides charging him with being
“a most unskilful plagiarist, who borrowed the language of Cato and other old
writers.” It is related, that, in his youth, having escaped from slavery by the
contrivance of some of his friends, he took refuge in his own country; and, that
after he had applied himself to the liberal arts, he brought the price of his
freedom to his former master, who, however, struck by his talents and learning,
gave him manumission gratuitously.
XVI.Quintus Cæcilius, an Epirot by descent, but born at Tusculum, was a freedman
of Atticus Satrius, a Roman knight, to whom Cicero addressed his Epistles. He
became the tutor of his patron’s daughter, who was contracted to Marcus Agrippa,
but being suspected of an illicit intercourse with her, and sent away on that
account, he betook himself to Cornelius Gallus, and lived with him on terms of
the greatest intimacy, which, indeed, was imputed to Gallus as one of his
heaviest offences, by Augustus. Then, after the condemnation and death of
Gallus, he opened a school, but had few pupils, and those very young, nor any
belonging to the higher orders, excepting the children of those he could not
refuse to admit. He was the first, it is said, who held disputations in Latin,
and who began to lecture on Virgil and the other modern poets; which the verse
of Domitius Marcus points out.
Epirota tenellorum nutricula vatum.
The Epirot who,
With tender care, our unfledged poets nursed.
XVII.Verrius Flaccus, a freedman, distinguished himself by a new mode of
teaching; for it was his practice to exercise the wits of his scholars, by
encouraging emulation among them; not only proposing the subjects on which they
were to write, but offering rewards for those who were successful in the
contest. These consisted of some ancient, handsome, or rare book. Being, in
consequence, selected by Augustus, as preceptor to his grandsons, he transferred
his entire school to the Palatium, but with the understanding that he should
admit no fresh scholars. The hall in Catiline’s house, which had then been added
to the palace, was assigned him for his school, with a yearly allowance of one
hundred thousand sesterces. He died of old age, in the reign of Tiberius. There
is a statue of him at Præneste, in the semi-circle at the lower side of the
forum, where he had set up calendars arranged by himself, and inscribed on slabs
of marble.
XVIII.Lucius Crassitius, a native of Tarentum, and in rank a freedman, had the
cognomen of Pasides, which he afterwards changed for Pansa. His first employment
was connected with the stage, and his business was to assist the writers of
farces. After that, he took to giving lessons in a gallery attached to a house,
until his commentary on “The Smyrna” so brought him into notice, that the
following lines were written on him:
Uni Crassitio se credere Smyrna probavit:
Desinite indocti, conjugio hanc petere.
Soli Crassitio se dixit nubere velle:
Intima cui soli nota sua exstiterint.
Crassitius only counts on Smyrna’s love,
Fruitless the wooings of the unlettered prove;
Crassitius she receives with loving arms,
For he alone unveiled her hidden charms.
However, after having taught many scholars, some of whom were of high rank, and
amongst others, Julius Antonius, the triumvir’s son, so that he might be even
compared with Verrius Flaccus; he suddenly closed his school, and joined the
sect of Quintus Septimius, the philosopher.
XIX.Scribonius Aphrodisius, the slave and disciple of Orbilius, who was
afterwards redeemed and presented with his freedom by Scribonia, the daughter of
Libo who had been the wife of Augustus, taught in the time of Verrius; whose
books on Orthography he also revised, not without some severe remarks on his
pursuits and conduct.
XX.C. Julius Hyginus, a freedman of Augustus, was a native of Spain, although
some say he was born at Alexandria, and that when that city was taken, Cæsar
brought him, then a boy, to Rome. He closely and carefully imitated Cornelius
Alexander, a Greek grammarian, who, for his antiquarian knowledge, was called by
many Polyhistor, and by some History. He had the charge of the Palatine library,
but that did not prevent him from having many scholars; and he was one of the
most intimate friends of the poet Ovid, and of Caius Licinius, the historian, a
man of consular rank, who has related that Hyginus died very poor, and was
supported by his liberality as long as he lived. Julius Modestus, who was a
freedman of Hyginus, followed the footsteps of his patron in his studies and
learning.
XXI.Caius Melissus, a native of Spoletum, was free-born, but having been exposed
by his parents in consequence of quarrels between them, he received a good
education from his foster-father, by whose care and industry he was brought up,
and was made a present of to Mecænas, as a grammarian. Finding himself valued
and treated as a friend, he preferred to continue in his state of servitude,
although he was claimed by his mother, choosing rather his present condition
than that which his real origin entitled him to. In consequence, his freedom was
speedily given him, and he even became a favourite with Augustus. By his
appointment he was made curator of the library in the portico of Octavia; and,
as he himself informs us, undertook to compose, when he was a sexagenarian, his
books of “Witticisms,” which are now called “The Book of Jests.” Of these he
accomplished one hundred and fifty, to which he afterwards added several more.
He also composed a new kind of story about those who wore the toga, and called
it “Trabeat.”
XXII.Marcus Pomponius Marcellus, a very severe critic of the Latin tongue, who
sometimes pleaded causes, in a certain address on the plaintiff’s behalf,
persisted in charging his adversary with making a solecism, until Cassius
Severus appealed to the judges to grant an adjournment until his client should
produce another grammarian, as he was not prepared to enter into a controversy
respecting a solecism, instead of defending his client’s rights. On another
occasion, when he had found fault with some expression in a speech made by
Tiberius, Atteius Capito affirmed, “that if it was not Latin, at least it would
be so in time to come;” “Capito is wrong,” cried Marcellus; “it is certainly in
your power, Cæsar, to confer the freedom of the city on whom you please, but you
cannot make words for us.” Asinius Gallus tells us that he was formerly a
pugilist, in the following epigram.
Qui caput ad lævam deicit, glossemata nobis
Præcipit; os nullum, vel potius pugilis.
Who ducked his head, to shun another’s fist,
Though he expound old saws,—yet, well I wist,
With pummelled nose and face, he’s but a pugilist.
XXIII.Remmius Palæmon, of Vicentia, the offspring of a bond-woman, acquired the
rudiments of learning, first as the companion of a weaver’s, and then of his
master’s, son, at school. Being afterwards made free, he taught at Rome, where
he stood highest in the rank of the grammarians; but he was so infamous for
every sort of vice, that Tiberius and his successor Claudius publicly denounced
him as an improper person to have the education of boys and young men entrusted
to him. Still, his powers of narrative and agreeable style of speaking made him
very popular; besides which, he had the gift of making extempore verses. He also
wrote a great many in various and uncommon metres. His insolence was such, that
he called Marcus Varro “a hog;” and bragged that “letters were born and would
perish with him;” and that “his name was not introduced inadvertently in the
Bucolics, as Virgil divined that a Palæmon would some day be the judge of all
poets and poems.” He also boasted, that having once fallen into the hands of
robbers, they spared him on account of the celebrity his name had acquired.
He was so luxurious, that he took the bath many times in a day; nor did his
means suffice for his extravagance, although his school brought him in forty
thousand sesterces yearly, and he received not much less from his private
estate, which he managed with great care. He also kept a broker’s shop for the
sale of old clothes; and it is well known that a vine, he planted himself,
yielded three hundred and fifty bottles of wine. But the greatest of all his
vices was his unbridled licentiousness in his commerce with women, which he
carried to the utmost pitch of foul indecency. They tell a droll story of some
one who met him in a crowd, and upon his offering to kiss him, could not escape
the salute. “Master,” said he, “do you want to mouth every one you meet with in
a hurry?”
XXIV.Marcus Valerius Probus, of Berytus, after long aspiring to the rank of
centurion, being at last tired of waiting, devoted himself to study. He had met
with some old authors at a bookseller’s shop in the provinces, where the memory
of ancient times still lingers, and is not quite forgotten, as it is at Rome.
Being anxious carefully to reperuse these, and afterwards to make acquaintance
with other works of the same kind, he found himself an object of contempt, and
was laughed at for his lectures, instead of their gaining him fame or profit.
Still, however, he persisted in his purpose, and employed himself in correcting,
illustrating, and adding notes to many works which he had collected, his labours
being confined to the province of a grammarian, and nothing more. He had,
properly speaking, no scholars, but some few followers. For he never taught in
such a way as to maintain the character of a master; but was in the habit of
admitting one or two, perhaps at most three or four, disciples in the afternoon;
and while he lay at case and chatted freely on ordinary topics, he occasionally
read some book to them, but that did not often happen. He published a few slight
treatises on some subtle questions, besides which, he left a large collection of
observations on the language of the ancients.
LIVES OF EMINENT RHETORICIANS.
I.Rhetoric, also, as well as Grammar, was not introduced amongst us till a late
period, and with still more difficulty, inasmuch as we find that, at times, the
practice of it was even prohibited. In order to leave no doubt of this, I will
subjoin an ancient decree of the senate, as well as an edict of the censors:—“In
the consulship of Caius Fannius Strabo, and Marcus Valerius Messala: the prætor
Marcus Pomponius moved the senate, that an act be passed respecting Philosophers
and Rhetoricians. In this matter, they have decreed as follows: ‘It shall be
lawful for M. Pomponius, the prætor, to take such measures, and make such
provisions, as the good of the Republic, and the duty of his office, require,
that no Philosophers or Rhetoricians be suffered at Rome.’ ”
After some interval, the censor Cnæus Domitius Aenobarbus and Lucius Licinius
Crassus issued the following edict upon the same subject: “It is reported to us
that certain persons have instituted a new kind of discipline; that our youth
resort to their schools; that they have assumed the title of Latin Rhetoricians;
and that young men waste their time there for whole days together. Our ancestors
have ordained what instruction it is fitting their children should receive, and
what schools they should attend. These novelties, contrary to the customs and
instructions of our ancestors, we neither approve, nor do they appear to us
good. Wherefore it appears to be our duty that we should notify our judgment
both to those who keep such schools, and those who are in the practice of
frequenting them, that they meet our disapprobation.”
However, by slow degrees, rhetoric manifested itself to be a useful and
honourable study, and many persons devoted themselves to it, both as a means of
defence and of acquiring reputation. Cicero declaimed in Greek until his
prætorship, but afterwards, as he grew older, in Latin also; and even in the
consulship of Hirtius and Pansa, whom he calls “his great and noble disciples.”
Some historians state that Cneius Pompey resumed the practice of declaiming even
during the civil war, in order to be better prepared to argue against Caius
Curio, a young man of great talents, to whom the defence of Cæsar was entrusted.
They say, likewise, that it was not forgotten by Mark Antony, nor by Augustus,
even during the war of Modena. Nero also declaimed even after he became emperor,
in the first year of his reign, which he had done before in public but twice.
Many speeches of orators were also published. In consequence, public favour was
so much attracted to the study of rhetoric, that a vast number of professors and
learned men devoted themselves to it; and it flourished to such a degree, that
some of them raised themselves by it to the rank of senators and the highest
offices.
But the same mode of teaching was not adopted by all, nor, indeed, did
individuals always confine themselves to the same system, but each varied his
plan of teaching according to circumstances. For they were accustomed, in
stating their argument with the utmost clearness, to use figures and apologies,
to put cases, as circumstances required, and to relate facts, sometimes briefly
and succinctly, and, at other times, more at large and with greater feeling. Nor
did they omit, on occasion, to resort to translations from the Greek, and to
expatiate in the praise, or to launch their censures on the faults, of
illustrious men. They also dealt with matters connected with every-day life,
pointing out such as are useful and necessary, and such as are hurtful and
needless. They had occasion often to support the authority of fabulous accounts,
and to detract from that of historical narratives, which sort the Greeks call
“Propositions,” “Refutations” and “Corroborations,” until by a gradual process
they have exhausted these topics, and arrive at the gist of the argument.
Among the ancients, subjects of controversy were drawn either from history, as
indeed some are even now, or from actual facts, of recent occurrence. It was,
therefore, the custom to state them precisely, with details of the names of
places. We certainly so find them collected and published, and it may be well to
give one or two of them literally, by way of example:
“A company of young men from the city, having made an excursion to Ostia in the
summer season, and going down to the beach, fell in with some fishermen who were
casting their nets in the sea. Having bargained with them for the haul, whatever
it might turn out to be, for a certain sum, they paid down the money. They
waited a long time while the nets were being drawn, and when at last they were
dragged on shore, there was no fish in them, but some gold sewn up in a basket.
The buyers claim the haul as theirs, the fishermen assert that it belongs to
them.”
Again: “Some dealers having to land from a ship at Brundusium a cargo of slaves,
among which there was a handsome boy of great value, they, in order to deceive
the collectors of the customs, smuggled him ashore in the dress of a freeborn
youth, with the bullum hung about his neck. The fraud easily escaped detection.
They proceed to Rome; the affair becomes the subject of judicial inquiry; it is
alleged that the boy was entitled to his freedom, because his master had
voluntarily treated him as free.”
Formerly, they called these by a Greek term, συντάξεις, but of late
“controversies;” but they may be either fictitious cases, or those which come
under trial in the courts. Of the eminent professors of this science, of whom
any memorials are extant, it would not be easy to find many others than those of
whom I shall now proceed to give an account.
II.Lucius Plotius Gallus. Of him Marcus Tullius Cicero thus writes to Marcus
Titinnius: “I remember well that when we were boys, one Lucius Plotius first
began to teach Latin; and as great numbers flocked to his school, so that all
who were most devoted to study were eager to take lessons from him, it was a
great trouble to me that I too was not allowed to do so. I was prevented,
however, by the decided opinion of men of the greatest learning, who considered
that it was best to cultivate the genius by the study of Greek.” This same
Gallus, for he lived to a great age, was pointed at by M. Cælius, in a speech
which he was forced to make in his own cause, as having supplied his accuser,
Atracinus, with materials for his charge. Suppressing his name, he says that
such a rhetorician was like barley bread compared to a wheaten loaf,—windy,
chaffy, and coarse.
III.Lucius Octacilius Pilitus is said to have been a slave, and, according to
the old custom, chained to the door like a watch-dog; until, having been
presented with his freedom for his genius and devotion to learning, he drew up
for his patron the act of accusation in a cause he was prosecuting. After that,
becoming a professor of rhetoric, he gave instructions to Cneius Pompey the
Great, and composed an account of his actions, as well as of those of his
father, being the first freedman, according to the opinion of Cornelius Nepos,
who ventured to write history, which before his time had not been done by any
one who was not of the highest ranks in society.
IV. About this time, Epidius having fallen into disgrace for bringing a false
accusation, opened a school of instruction, in which he taught, among others,
Mark Antony and Augustus. On one occasion Caius Canutius jeered them for
presuming to belong to the party of the consul Isauricus in his administration
of the republic; upon which he replied, that he would rather be the disciple of
Isauricus, than of Epidius, the false accuser. This Epidius claimed to be
descended from Epidius Nuncio, who, as ancient traditions assert, fell into the
fountain of the river Sarnus when the streams were overflown, and not being
afterwards found, was reckoned among the number of the gods.
V.Sextus Clodius, a native of Sicily, a professor both of Greek and Latin
eloquence, had bad eyes and a facetious tongue. It was a saying of his, that he
lost a pair of eyes from his intimacy with Mark Antony, the triumvir. Of his
wife, Fulvia, when there was a swelling in one of her cheeks, he said that “she
tempted the point of his style;” nor did Antony think any the worse of him for
the joke, but quite enjoyed it; and soon afterwards, when Antony was consul, he
even made him a large grant of land, which Cicero charges him with in his
Philippics. “You patronize,” he said, “a master of the schools for the sake of
his buffoonery, and make a rhetorician one of your pot-companions; allowing him
to cut his jokes on any one he pleased; a witty man, no doubt, but it was an
easy matter to say smart things of such as you and your companions. But listen,
Conscript Fathers, while I tell you what reward was given to this rhetorician,
and let the wounds of the republic be laid bare to view. You assigned two
thousand acres of the Leontine territory to Sextus Clodius, the rhetorician, and
not content with that, exonerated the estate from all taxes. Hear this, and
learn from the extravagance of the grant, how little wisdom is displayed in your
acts.”
VI.Caius Albutius Silus, of Novara, while, in the execution of the office of
edile in his native place, he was sitting for the administration of justice, was
dragged by the feet from the tribunal by some persons against whom he was
pronouncing a decree. In great indignation at this usage, he made straight for
the gate of the town, and proceeded to Rome. There he was admitted to
fellowship, and lodged, with Plancus the orator, whose practice it was, before
he made a speech in public, to set up some one to take the contrary side in the
argument. The office was undertaken by Albutius with such success, that he
silenced Plancus, who did not venture to put himself in competition with him.
This bringing him into notice, he collected an audience of his own, and it was
his custom to open the question proposed for debate, sitting; but as he warmed
with the subject, he stood up, and made his peroration in that posture. His
declamations were of different kinds; sometimes brilliant and polished, at
others, that they might not be thought to savour too much of the schools, he
curtailed them of all ornament, and used only familiar phrases. He also pleaded
causes, but rarely, being employed in such as were of the highest importance,
and in every case undertaking the peroration only.
In the end, he gave up practising in the forum, partly from shame, partly from
fear. For, in a certain trial before the court of the One Hundred, having lashed
the defendant as a man void of natural affection for his parents, he called upon
him by a bold figure of speech, “to swear by the ashes of his father and mother
which lay unburied;” his adversary taking him up for the suggestion, and the
judges frowning upon it, he lost his cause, and was much blamed. At another
time, on a trial for murder at Milan, before Lucius Piso, the proconsul, having
to defend the culprit, he worked himself up to such a pitch of vehemence, that
in a crowded court, who loudly applauded him, notwithstanding all the efforts of
the lictor to maintain order, he broke out into a lamentation on the miserable
state of Italy, then in danger of being again reduced, he said, into the form of
a province, and turning to the statue of Marcus Brutus, which stood in the
forum, he invoked him as “the founder and vindicator of the liberties of the
people.” For this he narrowly escaped a prosecution. Suffering, at an advanced
period of life, from an ulcerated tumour, he returned to Novara, and calling the
people together in a public assembly, addressed them in a set speech, of
considerable length, explaining the reasons which induced him to put an end to
existence: and this he did by abstaining from food.
end of the lives of grammarians and rhetoricians
LIVES OF THE POETS.
THE LIFE OF TERENCE.
Publius Terentius Afer, a native of Carthage, was a slave, at Rome, of the
senator Terentius Lucanus, who, struck by his abilities and handsome person,
gave him not only a liberal education in his youth, but his freedom when he
arrived at years of maturity. Some say that he was a captive taken in war, but
this, as Fenestella informs us, could by no means have been the case, since both
his birth and death took place in the interval between the termination of the
second Punic war and the commoncement of the third; nor, even supposing that he
had been taken prisoner by the Numidian or Getulian tribes, could he have fallen
into the hands of a Roman general, as there was no commercial intercourse
between the Italians and Africans until after the fall of Carthage. Terence
lived in great familiarity with many persons of high station, and especially
with Scipio Africanus, and Caius Lælius, whose favour he is even supposed to
have purchased by the foulest means. But Fenestella reverses the charge,
contending that Terence was older than either of them. Cornelius Nepos, however,
informs us that they were all of nearly equal age; and Porcius intimates a
suspicion of this criminal commerce in the following passage:—
“While Terence plays the wanton with the great, and recommends himself to them
by the meretricious ornaments of his person; while, with greedy ears, he drinks
in the divine melody of Africanus’s voice; while he thinks of being a constant
guest at the table of Furius, and the handsome Lælius; while he thinks that he
is fondly loved by them, and often invited to Albanum for his youthful beauty,
he finds himself stripped of his property, and reduced to the lowest state of
indigence. Then, withdrawing from the world, he betook himself to Greece, where
he met his end, dying at Strymphalos, a town in Arcadia. What availed him the
friendship of Scipio, of Lælius, or of Furius, three of the most affluent nobles
of that age? They did not even minister to his necessities so much as to provide
him a hired house, to which his slave might return with the intelligence of his
master’s death.”
He wrote comedies, the earliest of which, The Andria, having to be performed at
the public spectacles given by the ædiles, he was commanded to read it first
before Cæcilius. Having been introduced while Cæcilius was at supper, and being
meanly dressed, he is reported to have read the beginning of the play seated on
a low stool near the great man’s couch. But after reciting a few verses, he was
invited to take his place at table, and, having supped with his host, went
through the rest to his great delight. This play and five others were received
by the public with similar applause, although Volcatius, in his enumeration of
them, says that “The Hecyra must not be reckoned among these.”
The Eunuch was even acted twice the same day, and earned more money than any
comedy, whoever was the writer, had ever done before, namely, eight thousand
sesterces: besides which, a certain sum accrued to the author for the title. But
Varro prefers the opening of The Adelphi to that of Menander. It is very
commonly reported that Terence was assisted in his works by Lælius and Scipio,
with whom he lived in such great intimacy. He gave some currency to this report
himself, nor did he ever attempt to defend himself against it, except in a light
way; as in the prologue to The Adelphi:
Nam quod isti dicunt malevoli, homines nobiles
Hunc adjutare, assidueque una scribere;
Quod illi maledictum vehemens existimant,
Eam laudem hic ducit maximam: cum illis placet,
Qui vobis universis et populo placent;
Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio,
Suo quisque tempore usus est sine superbiâ.
— For this,
Which malice tells that certain noble persons
Assist the bard, and write in concert with him,
That which they deem a heavy slander, he
Esteems his greatest praise: that he can please
Those who in war, in peace, as counsellors,
Have rendered you the dearest services,
And ever borne their faculties so meekly.
Colman.
He appears to have protested against this imputation with less earnestness,
because the notion was far from being disagreeable to Lælius and Scipio. It
therefore gained ground, and prevailed in after-times.
Quintus Memmius, in his speech in his own defence, says: “Publius Africanus, who
borrowed from Terence a character which he had acted in private, brought it on
the stage in his name.” Nepos tells us he found in some book that C. Lælius,
when he was on some occasion at Puteoli, on the calends [the first] of March,
being requested by his wife to rise early, begged her not to suffer him to be
disturbed, as he had gone to bed late, having been engaged in writing with more
than usual success. On her asking him to tell her what he had been writing, he
repeated the verses which are found in the Heautontimoroumenos:
Satis pol proterve me Syri promessa—Heauton. IV. iv. 1.
I’faith! the rogue Syrus’s impudent pretences—
Santra is of opinion that if Terence required any assistance in his
compositions, he would not have had recourse to Scipio and Lælius, who were then
very young men, but rather to Sulpicius Gallus, an accomplished scholar, who had
been the first to introduce his plays at the games given by the consuls; or to
Q. Fabius Labeo, or Marcus Popilius, both men of consular rank, as well as
poets. It was for this reason that, in alluding to the assistance he had
received, he did not speak of his coadjutors as very young men, but as persons
of whose services the people had full experience in peace, in war, and in the
administration of affairs.
After he had given his comedies to the world, at a time when he had not passed
his thirty-fifth year, in order to avoid suspicion, as he found others
publishing their works under his name, or else to make himself acquainted with
the modes of life and habits of the Greeks, for the purpose of exhibiting them
in his plays, he withdrew from Rome, to which he never returned. Volcatius gives
this account of his death:
Sed ut Afer sei populo dedit comædias,
Iter hic in Asiam fecit. Navem cum semel
Conscendit, visus nunquam est. Sic vita vacat.
When Afer had produced six plays for the entertainment of the people,
He embarked for Asia; but from the time he went on board ship
He was never seen again. Thus he ended his life.
Q. Consentius reports that he perished at sea on his voyage back from Greece,
and that one hundred and eight plays, of which he had made a version from
Menander, were lost with him. Others say that he died at Stymphalos, in Arcadia,
or in Leucadia, during the consulship of Cn. Cornelius Dolabella and Marcus
Fulvius Nobilior, worn out with a severe illness, and with grief and regret for
the loss of his baggage, which he had sent forward in a ship that was wrecked,
and contained the last new plays he had written.
In person, Terence is reported to have been rather short and slender, with a
dark complexion. He had an only daughter, who was afterwards married to a Roman
knight; and he left also twenty acres of garden ground, on the Appian Way, at
the Villa of Mars. I, therefore, wonder the more how Porcius could have written
the verses,
— nihil Publius
Scipio profuit, nihil ei Lælius, nihil Furius,
Tres per idem tempus qui agitabant nobiles facillime.
Eorum ille opera ne domum quidem habuit conductitiam
Saltem ut esset, quo referret obitum domini servulus.
Afranius places him at the head of all the comic writers, declaring, in his
Compitalia,
Terentio non similem dices quempiam.
Terence’s equal cannot soon be found.
On the other hand, Volcatius reckons him inferior not only to Nævius, Plautus,
and Cæcilius, but also to Licinius Cicero pays him this high compliment, in his
Limo—
Tu quoque, qui solus lecto sermone, Terenti,
Conversum expressumque Latina voce Menandrum
In medio populi sedatis vocibus offers,
Quidquid come loquens, ac omnia dulcia dicens.
“You, only, Terence, translated into Latin, and clothed in choice language the
plays of Menander, and brought them before the public, who, in crowded
audiences, hung upon hushed applause—
Grace marked each line, and every period charmed.”
So also Caius Cæsar:
Tu quoque tu in summis, O dimidiate Menander,
Poneris, et merito, puri sermonis amator,
Lenibus atque utinam scriptis adjuncta foret vis
Comica, ut æquato virtus polleret honore
Cum Græcis, neque in hoc despectus parte jaceres!
Unum hoc maceror, et doleo tibi deesse, Terenti.
“You, too, who divide your honours with Menander, will take your place among
poets of the highest order, and justly too, such is the purity of your style.
Would only that to your graceful diction was added more comic force, that your
works might equal in merit the Greek masterpieces, and your inferiority in this
particular should not expose you to censure. This is my only regret; in this,
Terence, I grieve to say you are wanting.”
THE LIFE OF JUVENAL.
D. Junius Juvenalis, who was either the son of a wealthy freedman, or brought up
by him, it is not known which, declaimed till the middle of life, more from the
bent of his inclination, than from any desire to prepare himself either for the
schools or the forum. But having composed a short satire, which was clever
enough, on Paris, the actor of pantomimes, and also on the poet of Claudius
Nero, who was puffed up by having held some inferior military rank for six
months only: he afterwards devoted himself with much zeal to that style of
writing. For a while indeed, he had not the courage to read them even to a small
circle of auditors, but it was not long before he recited his satires to crowded
audiences, and with entire success; and this he did twice or thrice, inserting
new lines among those which he had originally composed.
Quod non dant proceres, dabit histrio, tu Camerinos,
Et Bareas, tu nobilium magna atria curas.
Præfectos Pelopea facit, Philomela tribunos.
Behold an actor’s patronage affords
A surer means of rising than a lord’s!
And wilt thou still the Camerino’s court,
Or to the hads of Bareas resort,
When tribunes Pelopea can create
And Philomela præfects, who shall rule the state?
At that time the player was in high favour at court, and many of those who
fawned upon him were daily raised to posts of honour. Juvenal therefore incurred
the suspicion of having covertly satirized occurrences which were then passing,
and, although eighty years old at that time, he was immediately removed from the
city, being sent into honourable banishment as præfect of a cohort, which was
under orders to proceed to a station at the extreme frontier of Egypt. That sort
of punishment was selected, as it appeared severe enough for an offence which
was venial, and a mere piece of drollery. However, he died very soon afterwards,
worn down by grief, and weary of his life.
THE LIFE OF PERSIUS.
Aulus Persius Flaccus was born the day before the Nones of December [4th Dec.],
in the consulship of Fabius Persicus and L. Vitellius. He died on the eighth of
the calends of December [24th Nov.], in the consulship of Rubrius Marius and
Asinius Gallus. Though born at Volterra, in Etruria, he was a Roman knight,
allied both by blood and marriage to persons of the highest rank. He ended his
days at an estate he had at the eighth milestone on the Appian Way. His father,
Flaccus, who died when he was barely six years old, left him under the care of
guardians, and his mother, Fulvia Silenna, who afterwards married Fusius, a
Roman knight, buried him also in a very few years. Persius Flaccus pursued his
studies at Volterra till he was twelve years old, and then continued them at
Rome, under Remmius Palæmon, the grammarian, and Verginius Flaccus, the
rhetorician. Arriving at the age of twenty-one, he formed a friendship with
Annæus Cornutus, which lasted through life; and from him he learned the
rudiments of philosophy. Among his earliest friends were Cæsius Bassus, and
Calpurnius Statura; the latter of whom died while Persius himself was yet in his
youth. Servilius Numanus, he reverenced as a father. Through Cornutus he was
introduced to Annæus, as well as to Lucan, who was of his own age, and also a
disciple of Cornutus. At that time Cornutus was a tragic writer; he belonged to
the sect of the Stoics, and left behind him some philosophical works. Lucan was
so delighted with the writings of Persius Flaccus, that he could scarcely
refrain from giving loud tokens of applause while the author was reciting them,
and declared that they had the true spirit of poetry. It was late before Persius
made the acquaintance of Seneca, and then he was not much struck with his
natural endowments. At the house of Cornutus he enjoyed the society of two very
learned and excellent men, who were then zealously devoting themselves to
philosophical enquiries, namely, Claudius Agaternus, a physician from Lacedæmon,
and Petronius Aristocrates, of Magnesia, men whom he held in the highest esteem,
and with whom he vied in their studies, as they were of his own age, being
younger than Cornutus. During nearly the last ten years of his life he was much
beloved by Thraseas, so that he sometimes travelled abroad in his company; and
his cousin Arria was married to him.
Persius was remarkable for gentle manners, for a modesty amounting to
bashfulness, a handsome form, and an attachment to his mother, sister, and aunt,
which was most exemplary. He was frugal and chaste. He left his mother and
sister twenty thousand sesterces, requesting his mother, in a written codicil,
to present to Cornutus, as some say, one hundred sesterces, or as others, twenty
pounds of wrought silver, besides about seven hundred books, which, indeed,
included his whole library. Cornutus, however, would only take the books, and
gave up the legacy to the sisters, whom his brother had constituted his heirs.
He wrote seldom, and not very fast; even the work we possess he left incomplete.
Some verses are wanting at the end of the book, but Cornutus thoughtlessly
recited it, as if it was finished; and on Cæsius Bassus requesting to be allowed
to publish it, he delivered it to him for that purpose. In his younger days,
Persius had written a play, as well as an Itinerary, with several copies of
verses on Thraseas’ father-in-law, and Arria’s mother, who had made away with
herself before her husband. But Cornutus used his whole influence with the
mother of Persius to prevail upon her to destroy these compositions. As soon as
his book of Satires was published, all the world began to admire it, and were
eager to buy it up. He died of a disease in the stomach, in the thirtieth year
of his age. But no sooner had he left school and his masters, than he set to
work with great vehemence to compose satires, from having read the tenth book of
Lucilius; and made the beginning of that book his model; presently launching his
invectives all around with so little scruple, that he did not spare cotemporary
poets and orators, and even lashed Nero himself, who was then the reigning
prince. The verse ran as follows:
Auriculas asini Mida rex habet;
King Midas has an ass’s ears;
but Cornutus altered it thus;
Auriculas asini quis non habet?
Who has not an ass’s ears?
in order that it might not be supposed that it was meant to apply to Nero.
THE LIFE OF HORACE.
Horatius Flaccus was a native of Venusium, his father having been, by his own
account, a freedman and collector of taxes, but, as it is generally believed, a
dealer in salted provisions; for some one with whom Horace had a quarrel, jeered
him, by saying; “How often have I seen your father wiping his nose with his
fist?” In the battle of Philippi, he served as a military tribune, which post he
filled at the instance of Marcus Brutus, the general; and having obtained a
pardon, on the overthrow of his party, he purchased the office of scribe to a
quæstor. Afterwards insinuating himself first, into the good graces of Mecænas,
and then of Augustus, he secured no small share in the regard of both. And
first, how much Mecænas loved him may be seen by the epigram in which he says:
Ni te visceribus meis, Horati,
Plus jam diligo, Titium sodalem,
Ginno tu videas strigosiorem.
But it was more strongly exhibited by Augustus, in a short sentence uttered in
his last moments: “Be as mindful of Horatius Flaccus as you are of me!” Augustus
offered to appoint him his secretery, signifying his wishes to Mecænas in a
letter to the following effect: “Hitherto I have been able to write my own
epistles to friends; but now I am too much occupied, and in an infirm state of
health. I wish, therefore, to deprive you of our Horace: let him leave,
therefore, your luxurious table and come to the palace, and he shall assist me
in writing my letters.” And upon his refusing to accept the office, he neither
exhibited the smallest displeasure, nor ceased to heap upon him tokens of his
regard. Letters of his are extant, from which I will make some short extracts to
establish this: “Use your influence over me with the same freedom as you would
do if we were living together as friends. In so doing you will be perfectly
right, and guilty of no impropriety; for I could wish that our intercourse
should be on that footing, if your health admitted of it.” And again: “How I
hold you in memory you may learn from our friend Septimius, for I happened to
mention you when he was present. And if you are so proud as to scorn my
friendship, that is no reason why I should lightly esteem yours, in return.”
Besides this, among other drolleries, he often called him, “his most immaculate
penis,” and “his charming little man,” and loaded him from time to time with
proofs of his munificence. He admired his works so much, and was so convinced of
their enduring fame, that he directed him to compose the Secular Poem, as well
as that on the victory of his stepsons Tiberius and Drusus over the Vindelici;
and for this purpose urged him to add, after a long interval, a fourth book of
Odes to the former three. After reading his “Sermones,” in which he found no
mention of himself, he complained in these terms: “You must know that I am very
angry with you, because in most of your works of this description you do not
choose to address yourself to me. Are you afraid that, in times to come, your
reputation will suffer, in case it should appear that you lived on terms of
intimate friendship with me?” And he wrung from him the eulogy which begins
with,
Cum tot sustineas, et tanta negotia solus:
Res Italas armis tuteris, moribus ornes,
Legibus emendes: in publica commoda peccem,
Si longo sermone morer tua tempora, Cæsar.
—Epist. ii. i.
While you alone sustain the important weight
Of Rome’s affairs, so various and so great;
While you the public weal with arms defend,
Adorn with morals, and with laws amend;
Shall not the tedious letter prove a crime,
That steals one moment of our Cæsar’s time.
—Francis.
In person, Horace was short and fat, as he is described by himself in his
Satires, and by Augustus in the following letter: “Dionysius has brought me your
small volume, which, little as it is, not to blame you for that, I shall judge
favourably. You seem to me, however, to be afraid lest your volumes should be
bigger than yourself. But if you are short in stature, you are corpulent enough.
You may, therefore, if you will, write in a quart, when the size of your volume
is as large round as your paunch.”
It is reported that he was immoderately addicted to venery. [For he is said to
have had obscene pictures so disposed in a bedchamber lined with mirrors, that,
whichever way he looked, lascivious images might present themselves to his view.
] He lived for the most part in the retirement of his farm, on the confines of
the Sabine and Tiburtine territories, and his house is shewn in the
neighbourhood of a little wood not far from Tibur. Some Elegies ascribed to him,
and a prose Epistle apparently written to commend himself to Mecænas, have been
handed down to us; but I believe that neither of them are genuine works of his;
for the Elegies are commonplace, and the Epistle is wanting in perspicuity, a
fault which cannot be imputed to his style. He was born on the sixth of the ides
of December [27th December], in the consulship of Lucius Cotta and Lucius
Torquatus; and died on the fifth of the calends of December [27th November], in
the consulship of Caius Marcius Censorinus and Caius Asinius Gallus; having
completed his fifty-ninth year. He made a nuncupatory will, declaring Augustus
his heir, not being able, from the violence of his disorder, to sign one in due
form. He was interred and lies buried on the skirts of the Esquiline Hill, near
the tomb of Mecænas.
THE LIFE OF LUCAN.
M. Annœus Lucanus, a native of Corduba, first tried the powers of his genius in
an encomium on Nero, at the Quinquennial games. He afterwards recited his poem
on the Civil War carried on between Pompey and Cæsar. His vanity was so immense,
and he gave such liberty to his tongue, that in some preface, comparing his age
and his first efforts with those of Virgil, he had the assurance to say: “And
what now remains for me is to deal with a gnat.” In his early youth, after being
long informed of the sort of life his father led in the country, in consequence
of an unhappy marriage, he was recalled from Athens by Nero, who admitted him
into the circle of his friends, and even gave him the honour of the quæstorship;
but he did not long remain in favour. Smarting at this, and having publicly
stated that Nero had withdrawn, all of a sudden, without communicating with the
senate, and without any other motive than his own recreation, after this he did
not cease to assail the emperor both with foul words and with acts which are
still notorious. So that on one occasion, when easing his bowels in the common
privy, there being a louder explosion than usual, he gave vent to the nemistych
of Nero: “One would suppose it was thundering under ground,” in the hearing of
those who were sitting there for the same purpose, and who took to their heels
in much consternation. In a poem also, which was in every one’s hands, he
severely lashed both the emperor and his most powerful adherents.
At length, he became nearly the most active leader in Piso’s conspiracy; and
while he dwelt without reserve in many quarters on the glory of those who dipped
their hands in the blood of tyrants, he launched out into open threats of
violence, and carried them so far as to boast that he would cast the emperor’s
head at the feet of his neighbours. When, however, the plot was discovered, he
did not exhibit any firmness of mind. A confession was wrung from him without
much difficulty; and, humbling himself to the most abject entreaties, he even
named his innocent mother as one of the conspirators; hoping that his want of
natural affection would give him favour in the eyes of a parricidal prince.
Having obtained permission to choose his mode of death, he wrote notes to his
father, containing corrections of some of his verses, and, having made a full
meal, allowed a physician to open the veins in his arm. I have also heard it
said that his poems were offered for sale, and commented upon, not only with
care and diligence, but also in a trifling way.
THE LIFE OF PLINY.
Plinius Secundus, a native of New Como, having served in the wars with strict
attention to his duties, in the rank of a knight, distinguished himself, also,
by the great integrity with which he administered the high functions of
procurator for a long period in the several provinces intrusted to his charge.
But still he devoted so much attention to literary pursuits, that it would not
have been an easy matter for a person who enjoyed entire leisure to have written
more than he did. He comprised, in twenty volumes, an account of all the various
wars carried on in successive periods with the German tribes. Besides this, he
wrote a Natural History, which extended to seven books. He fell a victim to the
calamitous event which occurred in Campania. For, having the command of the
fleet at Misenum, when Vesuvius was throwing up a fiery eruption, he put to sea
with his gallies for the purpose of exploring the causes of the phenomenon close
on the spot. But being prevented by contrary winds from sailing back, he was
suffocated in the dense cloud of dust and ashes. Some, however, think that he
was killed by his slave, having implored him to put an end to his sufferings,
when he was reduced to the last extremity by the fervent heat.