The empresses of Rome

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THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

CRISPINA

l;U>."i' !N THF IJKITlSH MUSKUM

THE
EMPRESSES OF ROME

By

JOSEPH McGABE

AUTHOR OF "the DECAY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME'

WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1911

NOTE

THE period embraced by this work extends to the
fall of the Western Empire, or to the middle of
the fifth century. It was felt that a more extensive
range would involve either an inconveniently large work
or an inadequate treatment. While, therefore, the Em-
presses of the East have been included down to the fall
of Rome, it seemed that the collapse of the Empire in
Rome and the West indicated a quite natural term for
the present study. The restriction has enabled the author
to tell all that is known of the Empresses of Rome within
that period, to enlarge the interest of the study by framing
the Imperial characters in occasional sketches of their
surroundings, and to weave the threads of biography into
a continuous story.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction i

CHAP.

I. THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS ...... 7

n. THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 23

III. THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 46

IV. VALERIA MESSALINA 60

V. THE MOTHER OF NERO 79

VI. THE WIVES OF NERO 1 05

VII. THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION . . . .122

VIII. PLOTINA 136

IX. SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 149

X. THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 1 63

XI. THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 179

XII. JULIA DOMNA 194

XIH. IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 210

XIV. ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 22 2

XV. ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 233

vii

VIU

THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

CHAP.

XVI. THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN

XVII. THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES .

XVIII. THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN

XIX. JUSTINA

XX. THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA

XXI. THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST

INDEX

FACE

265
286
306
322

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Crispina. Bust in the British Museum .... Frontispiece
From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co.

FACING PAGE

LiviA AS Ceres. Statue in the Louvre 20

Julia. Bust in the Museum Chiaramonti 28

Agrippina the Elder. Bust in the Museum Chiaramonti . . 46

Messalina. Bust in the Uffizi Palace, Florence .... 70

Agrippina the Younger. Bust in Museo Nazionale, Florence . 82

Oct AVI a. Porphyry Bust in the Louvre 112

PopPjEA. Bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome . . . .118
From a photograph by Anderson.

DOMITIA. Bust in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence . . . .130

Plotina. Statue in the Louvre 142

From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co.

Sabina. Bust in the British Museum 154

From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co.

Faustina the Elder. Bust in the Louvre 164

From a photograph by A. Giraudon.

Faustina the Younger. Bust (reputed) in the British Museum. 172
From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co.

LUCILLA. Bust in the National Museum, Rome .... 184
From a photograph by Anderson.

Julia Domna. Bust in the Vatican Museum 202

From a photograph by Anderson.

Julia M^SA. Bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome . , .214
From a photograph by Anderson.

Julia Mam^EA. Bust in the British Museum 226

From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co.

ix

X THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

FACING PAGE

Marcia Otacilia Severa 236

From a photograph by W. A. Mansell & Co.

Zenobia 248

Enlarged from coin in the Berlin Museum.

Salonina and Valeria 262

Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.

Fausta and Flavia Helena 280

Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.

^LIA FLACCILLA and HoNORIA 316

Enlarged fi-om coins in the British Museum.

Eudoxia and Pulcheria 330

Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.

Placidia and Euphemia 342

Enlarged from coins in the British Museum.

THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

THE
EMPRESSES OF ROME

INTRODUCTION

THE story of Imperial Rome has been told frequently
and impressively in our literature, and few chapters
in the long chronicle of man's deeds and failures
have a more dramatic quality. Seven centuries before our
era opens, when the greater part of Europe is still
hidden under virgin forests or repellent swamps, and the
decaying civilizations of the East cast, as they die, their
seed upon the soil of Greece, we see, in the grey mist of
the legendary period, a meagre people settling on one of
the seven hills by the Tiber. As it grows its enemies are
driven back, and it spreads confidently over the neigh-
bouring hills and down the connecting valleys. It gradually
extends its rule over other Italian peoples, bracing its arm
and improving its art in the long struggle. It grows con-
scious of its larger power, and sends its legions eastward,
over the blue, sea, to gather the wealth and culture of Egypt,
Assyria, Persia, and Greece; and westward and northward,
over the white Alps, to sow the seed in Germany, Gaul,
Britain, and Spain. A hundred years before the opening
of the present era the tiny settlement on the Palatine has
become the mistress of the world. Its eagles cross the
waters of the Danube and the Rhine, and glitter in the sun
of Asia and Africa. But, with the wealth of the dying
East, it has inherited the germs of a deadly malady. Rome,
the heart of the giant frame, loses its vigour. The strong

2 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

bronze limbs look pale and thin ; the clear cold brain is
overcast with the fumes of wine and heated with the thrills
of sense; and Rome passes, decrepit and dishonoured,
from the stage on which it has played so useful and fateful

a part.

The fresh aspect of this familiar story which I propose
to consider is the study of the women who moulded or
marred the succeeding Emperors in their failure to arrest,
if not their guilt in accelerating, the progress of Rome's
disease. Woman had her part in the making, as well as
the unmaking, of Rome. In the earlier days, when her
work was confined within the walls of the home, no consul
ever guided the momentous fortune of Rome, no soldier
ever bore its eagles to the bounds of the world, but some
woman had taught his Ups to frame the syllables of his
national creed. However, long before the commencement
of our era, the thought and the power of the Roman woman
went out into the larger world of public life ; and wheh
the Empire is founded, when the control of the State's
mighty resources is entrusted to the hands of a single
ruler, the wife of the monarch may share his power, and
assuredly shares his interest for us. Even as mere women
of Rome, as single figures and types rising to the luminous
height of the throne out of the dark and indistinguishable
crowd, they deserve to be passed in review.

Some such review we have, no doubt, in the two great
works which spread the panorama of Imperial Rome before
the eyes of English readers. In the graceful and restrained
chapters of Merivale we find the earlier Empresses de-
lineated with no less charm than learning. In the more
genial and voluptuous narrative of Gibbon we may, at
intervals, follow the fortunes and appreciate the character
of the later Empresses. But, no matter how nice a skill
in grouping the historian may have, his stage is too
crowded either for us to pick out the single character with
proper distinctness, or for him to appraise it with entire
accuracy. The fleeting glimpses of the Empresses which
we catch, as the splendid panorama passes before us, must

INTRODUCTION 3

be blended in a fuller and steadier picture. The tramp
and shock of armies, the wiles of statesmen, the social
revolutions, which absorb the historian, must fall into the
background, that the single figure may be seen in full
contour. When this is done it will be found that there
are many judgments on the Empresses, both in Merivale
and Gibbon, which the biographer will venture to question.

For the study of the earlier Empresses the English
reader will find much aid in Mr. Baring-Gould's " Tragedy
of the Caesars" (1892). Here again, however, though the
Empresses are drawn with discriminating freshness and
full knowledge, they are constantly merging in the great
crowd of characters. The aim of the present work is to
place them in the full foreground, and to continue the
survey far beyond the limits of Mr. Baring-Gould's work.
It differs also in this latter respect from Stahr's brilliant
" Kaiser-Frauen," which is, in fact, now almost unobtain-
able ; and especially from V. Silvagni's recent work, of
unhappy title, " L'Impero e le Donne dei Cesari," which
merely includes slight and familiar sketches of four Em-
presses in a general study of the period.

The work differs in quite another way from the learned
and entertaining book of the old French writer Roergas de
Serviez, of which an early English translation has recently
been republished under the title " The Roman Empresses,
or the History of the Lives and Secret Intrigues of the
Wives of the Twelve Caesars " — an improper title, because
the work is far from confined to the wives of the Caesars.
The work is an industrious compilation of original refer-
ences to the Empresses, interwoven with considerable art,
so as to construct harmonious pictures, and adorned with
much charm and piquancy of phrase, if some hoUowness
of sentiment. But it is so intent upon entertaining us that
it frequently sacrifices accuracy to that admirable aim.
Serviez has not invented any substantial episode, but he
has encircled the facts with the most charming imaginative
haloes, and where the authorities differ, as they frequently
do, he has not hesitated to grant his verdict to the writer

4 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

who most picturesquely impeaches the virtue of one of
his Empresses. Roergas de Serviez was a gentleman of
Languedoc in the days of the "grand monarque." His
Empresses and princesses reflect too faithfully the frail
character of the ladies at the Court of Louis XIV. For
him the most reliable writer is the one who betrays least
incHnation to seek virtue in courtly ladies.

It need hardly be said that the present writer is indebted
to these authors, to the learned Tillemont, and to others
who will be named in the course of the work. But this
study is based on a careful examination of all the references
to the Empresses in the Latin and Greek authorities, with
such further aid as is afforded by coins, statues, inscrip-
tions, and the incidental research of commentators. We
shall consider, as we proceed, the varying authority of
these writers. We shall find in them defects which impose
a heavy responsibility on the writer whose aim it is to
restore those faded and delicate portraits of the Empresses,
over which later artists have spread their sharper and
more crudely coloured figures. One may, however, say
at once that it is not contemplated to urge any very
revolutionary change in the current estimate of the
character of most of them. If a few romantic adventures
must be honestly discarded, we shall find Messalina still
flaunting her vices in the palace, Agrippina still pursuing
her more masculine ambition, Poppsea still representing
the gaily-decked puppet of that luxurious world, and
Zenobia, in glittering helmet, still giving resonant com-
mands to her troops.

But it will be well, before we introduce the first, and
one of the best and greatest of the Empresses, to glance
at the development of Roman life which prepared the way
for woman to so exalted a dignity. The condition of
woman in early Rome has often been restpred. We see
the female infant, her fate trembling in the hand of man
from the moment when her eyes open to the light, brought
before the despotic father for the decision of her fate.
With a glance at the little white frame he will say whether

INTRODUCTION S

she shall be cast out, to be gathered by the merchants
in human flesh, or suffered to breed the next generation
of citizens. We follow her through her guarded girlhood,
as she learns to spin and weave, and see her passing
from the tyranny of father to the tyranny of husband
at an age when the modern girl has hardly begun to glance
nervously at marriage as a remote and mystic experience.
We then find her, not indeed so narrowly confined as her
Greek sister, yet little more than the servant of her
husband. Public feeling, it is true, mitigated the harsher
features, and forbade the graver consequences, of this
ancient tradition. For many centuries divorce was un-
known at Rome. Yet woman's horizon was limited to
her home, while her husband boasted of his share in con-
trolling the Commonwealth's increasing life.

In the second century before Christ we find symptoms
of revolt. The wealthier women of Rome resent the
curtailing of their finery by the Oppian Law, now that
the war is over (195 b.c). Old-fashioned Senators are
dismayed to find them holding a public meeting, besetting
all the approaches to the Senate, demanding their votes,
and even invading the houses of the Tribunes and coercing
them to withdraw their opposition. The truth is that
Rome has changed, and the women feel the pervading
change. The passage of the victorious Roman through
the cities of the East had corrupted the patriarchal virtues.
Roman officers could not gaze unmoved on the surviving
memorials of the culture of Athens, or make festival in
the drowsy chambers of Corinthian courtesans or the
licentious groves of Daphne, without altering their ideal
of life. The splendour of Eastern wisdom and vice made
pale the old standard of Roman virtus. The vast wealth
extorted from the subdued provinces swelled the pride of
patrician families until they disdainfully burst the narrow
walls of their fathers' homes. The hills of Rome began to
shine with marble mansions, framed in shady and spacious
gardens, from which contemptuous patrician eyes looked
down on the sordid and idle crowds in the valleys of the

6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Subura and the Velabrum. Rome aspired to have its art
and its letters.

Roman women were not content to be secluded from
the new culture, and could not escape the stimulation of
their new world. The Roman husband must be kept
away from the accomplished courtesans of Greece and
the voluptuous sirens of Asia by finding no lesser
attractions in his wife. So the near horizon of woman's
mind rolled outward. An inscription found at Lanuvium,
where the Empress Livia had a villa, shows that the little
provincial town had a curia mulierum, a women's debating
club. The walls of Pompeii, when the shroud of lava
had been removed from its scorched face, bore election-
addresses signed by women. The world was mirrored
in Rome, and few minds could retain their primitive
simplicity as they contemplated that seductive picture.

By the beginning of the first century of the older era
the women of Rome had ample opportunity for culture
and for political influence. In the great conflicts of the
time their names are chronicled as the inspirers of many
of the chief actors. They rise and fall with the cause of
the Senate or the cause of the People. They unite culture
with character, public interest with beauty and mother-
hood. At last the conflicting parties disappear one by one,
and a young commander, Octavian, the great-nephew of
Julius Caesar, gathers up the power they reUnquish.
A youth of delicate and singularly graceful features, of
refined and thoughtful, rather than assertive, appearance,
he hears that Caesar has made him heir to his wealth
and his opportunities ; he goes boldly to Rome, adroitly
uses its forces to destroy those who had slain Caesar,
forces Mark Antony to share the rule of the world with
him and Lepidus, and then destroys Lepidus and Mark
Antony. It is at this point, when he returns to Rome
from his last victories, when the whole world wonders
whether he will keep the power he has gathered or meekly
place it in the hands of the Senate, that the story opens.

CHAPTER 1

THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS

ON an August morning of the year 29 b.c. the
million citizens of Rome lined the route which
was taken by triumphal processions, to greet the
man who brought them the unfamiliar blessing of peace.
From the Triumphal Gate to the Capitol, past the Great
Circus and through the dense quarter of the Velabrum,
with its narrow streets and high tenements, the chattering
crowd was drawn out in two restless lines, on either
side of the road, ready to fling back the resonant " lo
Triumphe " of the bronzed soldiers, bubbling with dis-
cussion of the war-blackened stretch of the past and the
more pleasant prospect of the future. The hedges of
spectators were thicker, and the debate was livelier, under i
the cliff of the Palatine Hill and in the Forum, through
which ran the Sacred Way to the white Temple of
Jupiter, towering above them and crowning the Capitol
at the end of the Forum. There the conqueror would
offer sacrifice, before he sank back into the common rank
of citizens of the Republic. Would the young Octavian
really lay down his power, and become a citizen among
many, now that he was master of the Roman world ?

Possibly one woman, who looked out on the seething
Forum and the glistening temple of Jupiter from a
modest mansion on the Palatine Hill, knew the answer
to the eager question. Possibly it was unknown to
Octavian himself, her husband. She heard the blasts of
the leading trumpeters, and saw the sleek white oxen,

7

8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

with their gilded horns and their green garlands, advance
along the Sacred Way and mount the Capitol. She saw
the people rock and quiver with excitement as painted
scenes of the remote Dalmatian forests, where her
husband's latest victories had been won, and the gold
and silver of despoiled Eg3'-pt, and the very children of
the witch Cleopatra, were driven before the conqueror.
She saw the red-robed lictors slowly pass, their fasces
wreathed in laurel; she saw the band of dancers and
musicians tossing joyful music in his path ; and she saw
at last the four white horses drawing a triumphal chariot,
in which her husband and her two children received the
frenzied ovation of the people.

Octavian was then in his thirty-fourth year. Fifteen
years of struggle had drawn a manly gravity over the
handsome boyish face, though the curly golden hair still
seemed a strange bed for the chaplet of laurel that
crowned it. His full impassive lips, steady watchful eyes,
and broad smooth forehead gave a singular impression
of detachment — as if he were a disinterested spectator of
the day's events and the whole national drama, instead
of being the central figure. The busts which portray him
about this period seem to me, in profile, to recall David's
Napoleon, without the slumbering fire and the hard
egoism. Men would remind each other how, when he
'was a mere boy, fifteen years before, he had found his
way through a maze of intrigue with remarkable dexterity.
Now, Mark Antony w^s dead, Brutus and Cassius were
dead, L^idus was dead, and the followers of Pompey
were scattered. It was natural to assume that dreams of
further power were hidden behind that mask of strong
repose.

Behind Octavian went the body of Senators, with
purple-striped togas, and silver crescents on their sandals.
The lines of spectators broke into gossiping groups when
the tail of the procession had passed on. The white oxen
fell before the altar of Jupiter. Octavian gave the custo-
mary address to the Senate, and joined Livia in the small

THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 9

mansion on the Palatine. But for many a day afterward
Rome bubbled in praise of him. Not for years had such
combats reddened the sands of the amphitheatre, such
clowns and conjurors and actors filled the stage of the
theatre, such sports fired the 300,000 citizens at the circus.
Never before had the uncouth form of the rhinoceros or
hippopotamus been seen at Rome. Not since the beginning
of the civil wars had so much money flowed through the
shops of the Velabrum and the taverns of the Subura. Such
wealth had been added to the public store by the despoil-
ing of Egypt that the bankers had to reduce the rate of
interest. To a people grown parasitic the temptation to
make a king was overpowering ; and it was easy to point
out, to those who clung to the strict democratic forms, that
Octavian was extraordinarily modest for a man who had
reached so brilliant and resourceful a position. So within
a few months Octavian was Imperator, and Livia became,
in modern phrase, the Empress of Rome.^

Livia, unhappily for Rome, gave Octavian no direct
heir to the purple, and we may therefore speak briefly of
her extraction. She came of the Claudii, one of the oldest
and proudest families of the Republic, one that numbered
twenty-eight consuls and five dictators in its line. A
strong, haughty race, more useful than brilliant, religiously
devoted to the old Republic, they had helped much to make
Rome the mistress of the world. Livia's father, Livius
Drusus Claudianus, had taken arms against Octavian and
Antony, and had killed himself, with Roman dignity, when
Brutus and Cassius fell, and he saw the shadow of
despotism coming over the city.

Livia was then in her sixteenth year,'' and had early
experience of the storms of Roman political life. Her

' The title " Empress " was unknown to the Romans. " Imperator " was
a name of military command. The special use of it in connexion with
Octavian and his successors was that it was given for: life. The more novel
title " Augustus " was extended to Livia, who later became " Augusta."

' Pliny places her birth in the year 54 B.C., but Dio says 57 B.C., and this
date is confirmed by Tacitus,

lo THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

husband, Tiberius Claudius Nero, had been promoted more
than once by Julius Caesar, but, after the assassination of
Caesar, he had passed into what he regarded as the more
favourable current. He seems to have steered his course
with some skill until the year 41 B.C., when, like many
other small schemers, he came under the influence of Mark
Antony's wife, Fulvia. Antony was caught at the time in
the silken net with which Cleopatra prevented him from
carrying out the ambition of Rome at the expense of her
country. Fulvia, a virile and passionate woman, tried to
draw Antony from her arms by provoking a revolt against
Octavian. She induced her brother-in-law and other
nobles to rebel, and Nero, who was then prefect of a
small town in Campania, joined the movement.

Octavian swung his legions southward, and scattered
the thin ranks of the insurgents. With her infant — the
future Emperor Tiberius — in her arms the girl-wife fled to
the coast with her husband, and endured all the horrors of
civil warfare. So close were the soldiers of Octavian on
their heels that at one point the cry of the baby nearly
destroyed them. Octavian had little mercy on rebeUious
nobles before he married Livia. At last they reached the
coast, where the galleys of Sextus Pompeius hovered to
receive fugitives, and sailed for Sicily. They were cordi-
ally received there by the Pompeians, but went on to
Greece, and were again hunted by the troops. Long after-
wards in Rome they used to tell how the delicate girl, the
descendant of all the Claudii, fled through a burning forest
by night before Roman soldiers, and singed her hair and
garments as she rushed onward with her baby in her arms.
The troubled history of Rome for a hundred years was
stamped on her mind by a personal experience that she
could never forget. With worn feet and aching heart, she
and her husband at last found shelter, until the feud
between Antony and Octavian had been composed.

From the straits of exile they returned to their pretty
home on the Palatine Hill, and the story of her adventures
ran, and gathered substance, in Roman society. If the

THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS ii

experts be right in assigning to Livia a small mansion
which has been uncovered on the hill, we find that she was,
in the year 38 B.C., living only a short distance from the
house of Octavian. Among the palatial buildings which
now whitened the slopes of the Roman hills, Nero's house
— later, Livia's house — was poor, but its mural paintings
are amongst the most delicate that have been discovered
under the overlying centuries of mediaeval rubbish. A
small portico gave shelter from the summer sun, and the
small, cool atrium (hall) led only to some half dozen modest
rooms. But Livia was happy in her husband, and sober in
her tastes. She was then in her nineteenth year, a young
woman of regular and pleasing, though scarcely beautiful,
features and rounded form, one of those who happily
united the old matronly virtue to the new love of society
and gaiety. All Rome discussed her adventures, and the
generous feeling which her romance engendered made
people give her an exceptional beauty ,and wit — qualities
which neither her marble image nor her recorded career
permits us to accept in any large measure. There was no
whisper of slander against her until the days of her power.
From this peaceful and happy little world she was now to
be suddenly removed.

Octavian, who mingled very freely with his fellows, and
often supped with the literary men who were now %iul'ti-
plying at Rome, heard the gossip about the youthful Livia,
and sought her. He was already married, and a word may
be said about the imperatrices manquees before we unite him
to Livia.

In early youth he had been affianced to the girlish
daughter of Publius Servilius Isauricus, but a mere be-
trothal had little strength at a time when even the marriage
bond was so frail. When he came to face Mark Antony,
with many grim legions at his command, and a fresh
civil war was threatened, peacemakers suggested that the
storm might be turned from the fields of Italy by a
matrimonial alliance. The soldiers, weary of slaying each
other, acclaimed the proposal. Servilia was sacrificed, and

12 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Octavian was married to the young and hardly marriage-
able daughter of Fulvia. As we saw, there was a fresh
rupture with Antony in the year 41, and Octavian sent
back the maiden, as he described her, to her infuriated
mother. Some of our authorities declare that Fulvia had
tried to draw Antony from the arras of Cleopatra by
making love to his handsome rival, but one can only
suppose that Antony would smile if he were told that
his unpleasant spouse — the woman who is said to have
gloated over the bloody head of Cicero, and thrust her
hair-pin through his tongue — was offering her heart to
Octavian. We cannot, therefore, accept the rumour that,
when Octavian sent back her daughter to Fulvia, he
maliciously explained that he was anxious to spare Fulvia
the mortification of thinking that he had preferred the
pretty insipidity of Clodia to her own more assertive
qualities.

The marriage with Clodia had been frankly political,
and it naturally broke down in the new political dissolution.
The second marriage had the same origin, and the same
welcome termination. He had married Scribonia, a woman
older than himself, during the rupture with Antony, because
her brother was one of the chief members of the Pompeian
faction. The leader of this party, Sextus Pompeius, held
Sicily, and not only welcomed fugitives from Octavian's
anger, but commanded the sea-route to Rome. Through
his devoted friend Maecenas, the famous patron of letters,
Octavian proposed a marriage with Scribonia. It would
not be unnatural for a woman in her thirties, who had
already outlived two husbands, eagerly to espouse, and
probably love, so graceful, ambitious, and advancing a
youth as Octavian ; but to him the alliance was only one
more move in the great game he was playing. He could
bear the strain of a diplomatic marriage with ease, since
there is no reason to reject the statement of Dio and
Suetonius that he found affection among the wives of his
nobler friends.

It has been commonly held that Octavian masked a tense

THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 13

and unwavering ambition with an affectation of simple
joviality, and his irregularities have been excused on the
ground that he used them as means to detect political
whispers in Roman society. But this view of Octavian's
character may be confidently questioned. His tastes, we
shall see, remained extremely simple when he might safely
have indulged any feeling for luxury, when every rival
had been removed. That he was ambitious it would be
foolish to question ; but his ambition must not be measured
by his success. There are few other cases in history in
which fortune so wantonly smoothed the path and drew
onward an easy and vacillating ambition. Octavian could
well believe the assurances of the Chaldaean astrologers
that he was born to power.

With all his simplicity, however, Octavian had some
sense of luxury in love-matters, and his imagination
wandered. Scribonia's solid virtue was unrelieved by any
of the graces of the new womanhood of Rome, her sparing
charms had already faded under the pitiless sun of Italy,
and she had a sharp tongue. Moreover, his marriage with
her had proved a superfluous sacrifice. Fulvia's stormy
career had come to a close shortly after the return of her
daughter, and Antony and Octavian had divided the Roman
world between them. Antony married his colleague's
sister, but the pale virtue of Octavia had no avail against
the burning caresses, if not the calculated patriotism, of
Cleopatra. At the second rupture between Antony and
Octavian she was driven from Antony's palace at Rome,
where she was patiently enduring his distant infidelity,
and sent back to her brother. In the meantime Octavian
had discovered a pleasanter way of obtaming peace with
the Pompeians than by the endurance of Scribonia's jarring
laments of his infidelity. He found, or alleged, that Sextus
' Pompeius did not curb the pirates of the Mediterranean
as he ought, and he determined to wrest from him the
rich appointments that he held. He was in this mopd
when, in the year 38 B.C., the young Livia came to Rome,
and the exaggerated stor}' of her adventures and her

14 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

beauty began to circulate among the mansions of the
Palatine.

Some of the authorities describe Octavian as hovering
about her for some time, and say that the splendour with
which he celebrated his barbatoria, or first shave of the
beard, was due to the generosity of his new passion. It
is more probable that he at once informed Nero of his
resolution to marry Livia. Tacitus expressly says that
it is unknown whether Livia consented or not to the
change of husband. Great as was the liberty then enjoyed
by Roman women, they were rarely consulted on such
matters. Scribonia received a letter of divorce, in which
it was suggested that the perversity of her character made
her an unsuitable spouse for so roving a husband. She
had given birth to a daughter a few days before, and we
shall find the later chapters of this chronicle lit up more
than once by the lurid hatred which was begotten of this
despotic dismissal. For the moment I need only point out
that later Roman writers borrowed their estimate of the
character of Livia from Scribonia's great-grandchild, the
Empress Agrippina, and we must be wary in accepting
their statements. Scribonia herself, who came so near
to being an Empress, we must now dismiss, save that we
shall catch one more glimpse of her when she follows her
dissolute daughter into exile.

Roman law imposed a fitting delay on the divorced wife
before she could marry again, but Octavian was impatient.
He consulted the sacred augurs, and, if the legend is
correct, the diviners gave admirable proof of their art.
They gravely reported that the omens were auspicious for
an immediate marriage if the petitioner had ground to
believe that it would be fruitful. The verdict entertained
Rome, because Livia was well known to be far advanced in
pregnancy, and Octavian was widely regarded as the father.
Whether that be true or no, Octavian intimated to Nero
that he must divorce Livia, and we cannot think that she
felt much pain at being invited to share the mansion in the
Palatine to which all Roman e3'es were now directed. An

THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 15

anecdote of the time lightly illustrates the ease with which
such matrimonial transfers were accomplished at Rome.
Dio says that, during the festive meal, one of those
bejewelled boys who then formed part of a Roman noble's
household, and whose vicious services were rewarded with
an extraordinary license, said to Livia, as she reclined at
table with Octavian : " What do you here, mistress ? Your
husband is yonder." The pert youngster pointed to Nero
at another table. He had given away the bride, and was
cheerfully taking part in the banquet.

Livia's second son, Drusus Kero, was born three months
after her marriage, and was sent by Octavian to Nero's
house. Nero died soon afterwards, and made Octavian the
guardian of his sons, so that they returned to the care of
their mother. The extreme fondness of Octavian for the
younger boy lends no colour to the rumour that Drusus
was his own son. The probability is that Octavian, in his
impetuous way, married Livia as soon as his fancy rested
on her. The accepted busts of Drusus do not give any
support to the calumny that Octavian was his father. He
loved both the boys, and assisted in educating them, in their
early youth. It is only when his daughter Julia brings
her handsome children into the household that we detect a
beginning of an estrangement between him and his suc-
cessor, Tiberius.

The household in which these first seeds of tragedy
slowly germinated was, in the year 38 e.g., one of great
simplicity and sobriety. They lived in the comparatively
small house in which Octavian had been born, and Livia
adopted his plain ways with ease and dignity. In that age
of deadly luxury, when the veins of Rome were swollen
with the first flush of parasitic wealth, Octavian and Livia
were content with a prudent adaptation of the old Roman
ideal to the new age. The noble guests whom Octavian
brought to his table found that his simple taste shrank, not
only from the peacocks' brains and nightingales' tongues
which were served in their own more sumptuous banquets,
but even from the pheasant, the boar, and the other

1 6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

ordinary luxuries of a patrician dinner. Rough bread,
cream cheese, fish, and common fruit composed his cus-
tomary meal. Often was he seen, as he came home in his
litter from some fatiguing public business, such as the
administration of justice, to munch a little bread and fruit,
like some humble countryman. Of wine he drank little,
and he never adopted the enervating nightly carousal which
was draining away the strength of Rome. While wealthy
senators and knights prolonged the hours of entertainment
after the evening meal, and hired sinuous Syrian dancing
girls and nude bejewelled boys and salacious mimes to fire
the dull eyes of their guests, as they lay back, sated, on
the couches of silk and roses, under fine showers of
perfume from the roof, sipping choice wine cooled with the
snow of the Atlas or the Alps, Octavian withdrew to his
study, after a frugal supper, to write his diary, dictate his
generous correspondence, and enjoy the poets who were
inaugurating the golden age of Latin letters. When there
were guests, he provided fitting dishes and music for them,
but often retired to his study when the meal was over,
After seven hours' sleep in the most modest of chambers he
was ready to resume his daily round.

Since Octavian retained these sober habits to the end of
his life, years after they could have had any diplomatic aim,
it is remarkable that so many writers have regarded them
as an artful screen of his ambition. Nor can we think
differently of Livia. If Octavian presents a healthy con-
trast to the sordid sensuality of some of his successors, his
wife contrasts no less luminously with later Empresses, and
is no less unjustly accused of cunning. How far she
developed ambition in later years we shall consider later.
In the fullness of his manhood, at least, she was content to
be the wife of Octavian. With her own hands she helped
to spin, weave, and sew his everyday garments. She
carefully reared her two boys, tended the somewhat
delicate health of Octavian, and cultivated that nice degree
of affability which kept her husband affectionate, and the
husbands of other noble dames respectful. Dio would have

THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 17

us believe that her most useful quality was her willingness
to overlook the genial irregularities of Octavian ; but Dio
betrays an excessive eagerness to detect frailties in his
heroes and heroines. We have no serious evidence that
Octavian continued the loose ways of his youth after he
married Livia. The plainest and soundest reading of the
chronicle is that they lived happily, and retained a great
affection for each other, even when fate began to rain its
blows on their ill-starred house.

But before we reach those tragic days, we have to
consider briefly the years in which Octavian estabhshed
his power. His first step after his marriage with Livia
was to destroy the power of the Pompeians. Livia
followed the struggle anxiously from her country villa a
few miles from Rome. Sextus Pompeius was experienced
in naval warfare, and, as repeated messages came of blunder
and defeat on the part of Octavian's forces, she trembled
with alarm. Her confidence was restored by one of the
abundant miracles of the time. An eagle one day swooped
down on a chicken which had just picked up a sprig of
laurel in the farm-yard. The eagle clumsily dropped the
chicken, with the laurel, near Livia, and so plain an omen
could not be misinterpreted. Rumour soon had it that
the eagle had laid the laurel-bearing chick gently at Livia's
feet. As in all such cases, the sceptic of a later generation
was silenced with material proof. The chicken became the
mother of a brood which for many years spread the repute
of the village through southern Italy ; the sprig of laurel
became a tree, and in time furnished the auspicious twigs
of which the crowns of triumphing generals were woven.

Whether it was by the will of Jupiter, or by the rein-
forcement of a hundred and fifty ships which he received
from Antony, Octavian did eventually win, and, to the
delight of Rome, cleared the route by which the corn-ships
came from Africa. Only two men now remained between
Octavian and supreme power — the two who formed with
him the Triumvirate which ruled the Republic. The first,
Lepidus, was soon convicted of maladministration in his

i8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

African province, and was transferred to the innocent
duties of the pontificate, under Octavian's eyes, at Rome,
Octavian added the province of Africa to his half of the
Roman world, and found himself in command of forty-five
legions and six hundred vessels. Fresh honours were
awarded him by the Senate, in which his devoted friend
Maecenas, who foresaw the advantage to Rome of his
rule, was working for him.

Then Octavian entered on his final conflict with Mark
Antony. I have already protested against the plausible
view that Octavian was pursuing a definite ambition under
all his appearance of simplicity. Circumstances conspired
first to give him power, and then to give him the appear-
ance of a thirst for it. He really did not destroy Antony,
however : Antony destroyed himself. The apology that
has been made for Cleopatra in recent times only enhances
Antony's guilt. It is said that she used all that elusive
fascination of her person, of which ancient writers find
it difficult to convey an impression, all her wealth and
her wit, only to benumb the hand that Rome stretched
out to seize her beloved land. The theory is not in the
least inconsistent with the facts, and it is more pleasant
to believe that the last representative of the great free
womanhood of ancient Egypt sacrificed her person and her
wealth on the altar of patriotism than that her dalliance
with Antony was but a languorous and selfish indulgence
in an hour of national peril. But if it be true that Cleopatra
was the last Egyptian patriot, Antony was all the more
clearly a traitor to Rome. The quarrel does not concern
us. Octavian induced the Senate to make war on Egypt;
and we can well believe that when, in a herald's garb, he
read the declaration of war at the door of the temple of
Bellona, the thought of his despised sister added warmth
to his phrases. The pale, patient face and outraged virtue
of Octavia daily branded Antony afresh in the eyes of
Rome.

Livia and Antonia followed the swift course of the last
struggle from Rome. They heard of the meeting of the

THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 19

fleets off Actium, the victorious swoop of Octavian, the
flight of Antony and Cleopatra. What followed would
hardly be known to Livia. It is said that Cleopatra
offered to betray Antony to Octavian, and such an offer
is in entire harmony with the patriotic theory of her
conduct. While his able but ill-regulated rival, deserted
by his forces, drew near the edge of the abyss, Octavian
visited Cleopatra in her palace. Her seductive form was
displayed on a silken couch, and from the slit-like eyes the
dangerous fire caressed the young conqueror. Cleopatra
probably relied on Octavian's weakness, but his sensuous
impulses were held in check by a harder thought. He
felt that he must have this glorious creature to adorn his
triumph at Rome. Cleopatra saw that she had failed, and
she went sadly, with a last dignity, before the throne of
Osiris. Octavian returned to Rome with the immense
treasures of Egypt, to enjoy the triumph I have already
described and to await the purple.

The domestic life of Livia and Octavian lost none of its
plainness after the attainment of supreme power. Some
time after the Senate had (27 b.c.) strengthened his position
by inventing for him the title of "Augustus" — a title by
which he is generally, but improperly, described in history
after that date^ — he removed from the small house which
his father had left him to a larger mansion, built by the
orator Hortensius, on the Palatine. This was burned
down in the year 6 B.C., and the citizens built a new
palace for Livia and Octavian by public subscription. At
the Emperor's command the contribution of each was
hmited to one denarius. If we may trust the archaeo-
logists, it was modest in size, but of admirable taste,
especially in the marble lining of its interior. On one
side it looked down, over the steep slope of the hill, on the
colonnaded space, the Forum, in which the life of Rome
centred. On the other side it faced a group of public

' Improperly, because it is not a distinctive name, but common to the
smperors. Livia and Octavia received the title of "Augusta" a few years
later, yet even Livia is rarely known by it.

20 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

buildings, raised by Octavian, which impressed the citizens
with his HberaUty in the public service. The splendid
temple of Apollo, the public library and other buildings,
adorned with the most exquisite works of art that his
provincial expeditions had brought to Rome, stood in fine
contrast to his own plain mansion, of which the proudest
decoration was the faded wreath over the door — the
Victoria Cross of the Roman world — which bore witness
that he had saved the life of a citizen.

In this modest palace Livia reared her two children in
the finer traditions of the old Republic, while Octavian
made the long journeys into the provinces which filled
many years after his attainment of power. Livia was no
narrow conservative. She took her full share in the decent
distractions of patrician life, and, like many other noble
women of the period, she built temples and other edifices
of more obvious usefulness to the public. A provincial
town took the name Liviada in her honour. We have many
proofs that she was consulted on public affairs by Octavian,
and exercised a discreet and beneficent influence on him.
One of the anecdotes collected by later writers tells that
she one day met a group of naked men on the road. It
is likely that they were innocent workers or soldiers in
the heat, and not the " band of lascivious nobles " which
prurient writers have made them out to be. However,
Octavian impetuously demanded their heads when; she
told him, and Livia saved them with the remark that, "in
the eyes of a decent woman they were no more offensive
than a group of statues." On another occasion she dis-
suaded Octavian from executing a young noble for con-
spiracy. At her suggestion the noble wa^ brought to the
Emperor's private room. When, instead of the merited
sentence of death, Cinna received only a kindly admonition,
an offer of Octavian's friendship, and further promotion,
he was completely disarmed and won. We shall see further
proof that the wise and humane counsels of Livia con-
tributed not a little to the peace and prosperity which Rome
enjoyed in its golden age.

LiviA AS cp:re.s

STATUE IN THE LOUVKE

THE MAKING OF AN EMPRESS 21

For it was in trutii an age of gold in comparison with
the previous hundred years and the centuries to come.
The flames of civil war had scorched the Republic time
after time. The best soldiers of Rome were dying out ;
the best leaders were perishing in an ignoble contest of
ambitions. Corruption spread, like a cancerous growth,
through all ranks of the citizens of Rome, and far into the
provinces. The white-robed {candidati) seekers of office in
the city now relied on the purchase of votes by expert and
recognized agents. Hundreds of thousands of the citizens
lived parasitically on the State, or on the wealthy men to
whom they sold their votes, and from whom they had free
food and free entertainments. The loathsome spectacle
was seen of vast crowds of strong idle men, boasting of
their dignity as citizens of Rome, pressing to the appointed
steps for their daily doles of corn. Large numbers of them
comd hardly earn an occasional coin to buy a cup of wine,
a game of dice, or a visit to the lupanaria in the Subura.
By means of other agents the wealthy refilled their coffers
by extortion in the provinces, and paraded at Rome a
luxury that was often as puerile as it was criminal. Rome,
once so sober and virile, now shone on the face of the
earth like some parasitic flower, of deadly beauty, on the
face of a forest.

No man, perhaps, could have saved Rome from destruc-
tion, but Octavian did much to clear its veins of the poison,
and its chronicle would have run very differently if he had
not been succeeded by a Caligula, a Claudius, and a Nero.
He chastised injustice in the provinces, purified the ad-
ministration of justice at Rome, fought against the growing
practices of artificial sterility and artificial vice, and genially
pressed on the senators his own ideal of sober public
service. From his mansion on the Palatine he looked
down without remorse on the idle chatterers in the Forum,
from whom he had withdrawn the power, of which they
still boasted, of ruling their spreading empire. Nor were
there many, amongst those who looked up to his unpre-
tentious palace on the edge of the cliff, who did not feel

22 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

that they had gained by the sale of their tarnished demo-
cracy. There was more than literal truth in Octavian's
boast that he had found Rome a city of brick, and had left
it a city of marble.

Yet all the augurs and soothsayers of Rome failed to
see the swift and terrible issue that would come of this
seemingly happy change. Corrupt and repellent as demo-
cracy had become, monarchy was presently to exhibit
spectacles which would surpass all the horrors of its civil
wars, and outshame the sordid reaches of its avarice. The
new race of rulers was to descend so low as to use its
imperial power to shatter what remained of old Roman
virtue, and to embellish vice with its richest awards.
From the sobriety and public spirit of Octavian we pass
quickly to the sombre melancholy of Tiberius, the wanton
brutality of Caligula, the impotent sensuality of Claudius,
the mincing folly of Nero, and the alternating gluttony and
cruelty of Domitian, before we come to the second honest
effort to avert the fate of Rome. From the genial virtue
of Livia we are led to contemplate the dissolute gaieties of
Julia, the cold ambition of Agrippina, the robust vulgarity
of Caesonia, the infectious vice of Messalina, and the insipid
frippery of Poppsea. Had there been one syllable of truth
in the divine messages which augurs and Chaldseans saw
in every movement of nature, not even the beneficent rule
of Octavian would have lured men to sacrifice even the
effigy of power that remained to them, and that they had
lightly sold for a measure of corn and the bloody orgies of
the amphitheatre.

CHAPTER II

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE

IN tracing the further career of Livia we enter upon
the opening acts of the tragedy of the Caesars, and
we have to consider carefully if there be any truth
in the charge that Livia herself initiated the long series
of murders that now make a trail of blood over the annals
of Rome. With the coming of the Empire we more rarely
find legion pitted against legion in the horrors of civil
war, but we have nerveless ambition stooping to the
despicable aid of the poisoner, autocracy paralysing the
best of the nobility with its murderous suspicions, and
folly growing more foolish with the increasing splendour
of the imperial house. We already know that the germs
of this disease were found in the quiet home of Livia
and Octavian on the Palatine. Scribonia had received
her letter of divorce a few days after the birth of her
daughter Julia. As Livia bore no direct heir to the
Emperor, while Julia became the mother of many children,
we have at once the promise of a dramatic struggle for the
succession. When we further learn that the strain of
Imperial blood, which takes its rise in Julia, is thickly
tainted with disease, we are prepared for a bloody and
unscrupulous conflict. And when we reflect that on this
unstable pivot the vast Empire will turn for many genera-
tions, we begin to understand the larger tragedy of the
fall of Rome.

Let us first glance at the interior of the modest house-
hold on the Palatine. Besides Livia and Octavian, with

23

24 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

whom we are now familiar, there is Octavia, sister of
the Emperor and divorced wife of Mark Antony, a gentle
lady with the matronly virtues of the time when a Roman
could slay his wife or daughter for irregular conduct.
With her were her children, Marcellus and Marcella, of
whom we shall hear much. Then there were Livia's two
sons— the elder, Tiberius, a tall, silent, moody youth, with
little care to please ; the younger, Drusus, a handsome,
buoyant, fair-headed boy, threatening the elder's birthright.
Octavian closely watched the education of the boys. He
taught them to write on the wax-faced tablets in the fine
script on which he prided himself, kept them beside him
at table, and drove them in his chariot about public
business.

But the most interesting and fateful figure in the group
was Julia. Octavian had removed her at an early age
from the care of Scribonia, and adopted her in the palace.
She learned to spin and weave, and helped to make the
garments of the family, under the severe eyes of Livia
and Octavia. The Emperor was charmed with the pretty
and lively girl, and would make a second Livia of her.
Knowing well, if only from his own youth, the vice and
folly that abounded in those mansions on the hills of Rome,
and roared in its dimly-lighted valleys by night, he kept
her apart. None of the young fops who drove their
chariots madly out by the Flaminian Gate, and sipped
their wine after supper to the prurient jokes of mimes,
were suffered to approach her. And, not for the first
or last time in history, the veiling of the young eyes had
an effect quite contrary to that intended. A Roman girl
became a woman at fourteen, a mother at fifteen. At
that early age, in the year 25 B.C., Julia was married to
her cousin Marcellus, who was then seventeen. Marcellus
was so clearly a possible successor to the throne that
courtiers hung about him, and taught him the art of
princely living. The doors of the hidden world were
opened, and the tender eyes of Julia were dazec}.

The authorities are careless in chronology, and we

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 25

may decline to believe that Julia at once entered on the
riotous ways which led her to the abyss. Her marriage
concerns us in a very different respect. All the writers
who adopt the view that Livia was a hard and ijn-
scrupulous woman — a view that Tacitus must have taken
from the memoirs of her rival's granddaughter, the Empress
Agrippina, which were made public in his time — consider
that this marriage of Julia and Marcellus marks the
beginning of her career of crime. She is supposed to
have been alarmed at the marriage of two direct descend-
ants of Caesar, seeing that she herself had no child by
Octavian. Most certainly she was ambitious for her elder
son. The boy whom she had clasped to her breast, when
she fled along the roads of Campania and through the
burning forests of Greece, was now a clever and studious
youth, and she wished Octavian to adopt him. Un-
fortunately, Tiberius was of a moody and solitary nature,
and was easily displaced in Octavian's affection by the
handsome and popular Marcellus and the beautiful and
witty Julia.

The first cloud appeared in the year 23 b.c. Octavian
fell seriously ill, and Livia's hope of securing the succession
for her son was troubled by two formidable competitors.
One was Marcellus, the other was Octavian's friend and
ablest general, M. V. Agrippa. He was of poor origin,
but of commanding ability and character, and was suspected
of entertaining a design to restore the Republic. He was
married to Marcella, and had some -contempt for the spoiled
boy, her brother Marcellus — a contempt which Marcellus
repaid with petulance and rancour. Octavian recovered,
sent Agrippa on an important errand to the East, and
made Marcellus iEdile of the city. Marcellus was winning,
the eager observers thought, when suddenly he fell seriously
ill and died. The death was so opportune for Tiberius
that we cannot wonder that a faint whisper of poison went
through Rome when his ashes were laid in the lofty marble
tower that Octavian had built in the meadows by the Tiber.
But we need not linger over this first charge against Livia.

26 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Even Dit), who is no sceptic in regard to rumours which
defame Empresses, hesitates to press on us so airy and
improbable a myth. It was a hot and pestilential summer,
and Marcellus seems to have contracted fever by remain-
ing too long at his post, before going to Baiae on the
coast.

The death of Marcellus, far from promoting the cause
of Tiberius, brought a more formidable obstacle in his
way. Octavian sent for Agrippa, and directed him to
divorce Marcella and wed Julia. The general, who was
in his forty-second year, thought it immaterial which of
the two young princesses shared his bed, and Octavia
consented to the divorce of her daughter — as some con-
jecture, to thwart Livia's design. To the delight of
Octavian the union of robust manhood and amorous young
womanhood was fruitful. During the ten years of their
marriage Julia gave birth to three sons and two daughters.
Happily unconscious of the tragedies which were to close
the careers of these children in his own lifetime, Octavian
welcomed them with great enthusiasm. During his whole
reign he was engaged in a futile effort to induce or compel
the better families of Rome to take a larger share in the
peopling of the Empire. When he penahzed celibacy,
they defeated him by contracting marriages with the
intention of seeking an immediate divorce. When he
made adultery a public crime, there were noblewomen
—few in number, it is true ; the facts are often exaggerated
— who enrolled themselves on the list of shame, and noble-
men who took on the degrading rank of gladiators, in
order to escape the penalties. He created a guild of
honour for the mothers of at least three children ; but the
distinction seemed to the ladies of Rome to be an in-
adequate reward for so onerous an accomplishment, and
they scoffed when Livia was enrolled in the guild, though
the only child she had conceived of Octavian had never
seen the light.

Far greater, however, was the amusement of Rome
when Octavian held up Julia as a model of maternity,

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 27

and ostentatiously fondled her babies in public. A coarse
and witty reply that she is said to have made, when some
one asked her how it was that all her children so closely
resembled her husband, was then circulated in Roman
society, and is preserved in Macrobius.^ Beautiful, lively,
and cultivated, the young girl had exchanged with delight
the dull homeliness of her father's mansion for the rose-
crowned banquets of her new world. Her marriage with
Agrippa restrained her gaiety for a time, but her husband
was often summoned to distant provinces, and she was
left to her dissolute friends. Octavian was curiously
blind to her conduct, but when Agrippa was compelled
to undertake a lengthy mission in the East, he ordered
Julia to accompany him. The journey would not im-
probably foster her vicious tendencies. There is truth
in the old adage that all light came to Europe from the
East, but it is hardly less true that darkness came to
Rome from the East. Julia would not be ignorant how
the ancient Roman puritanism had been corrupted by the
introduction of Eastern habits and types — the poisoner,
the Chaldaean astrologer, the Syrian dancer, the eunuch,
the cultivated Greek slave, the priests of orgiastic Eastern
cults. A mind like hers would seek to penetrate the depths
from which these types had emerged. In Greece she
would find the remains of its perfumed vices lingering
at the foot of its decaying monuments. In Antioch there
would not be wanting freedwomen to gratify her curiosity
in regard to its unnatural excesses and the world-famed
license of its groves. In Judaea she was long and splen-
didly entertained at the court of Herod, a monarch with
ten wives and concubines innumerable.

They returned to Rome in the year 13, and in the
following year Agrippa died of gout, and Julia was
free. One of the most surprising features of her wild
career — one that would make us hesitate to admit
the charges against her, if hesitation were possible —
is that Livia was either ignorant of her more serious
1 " Non nisi plena nave toUo vectorem.''

28 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

misdeeds, or unable to convince Octavian of them. Livia
would hardly spare her, as Julia was inflaming Octavian's
dislike for Tiberius. Refined, sensitive, and studious,
the young man avoided the boisterous amusements in
which other young patricians spent their ample leisure,
and his cold melancholy made him distasteful to them.
One of the Roman writers would have us believe that
Julia made love to him during the life of Agrippa, and
that she incited Octavian against him in revenge for his
rejection of her advances. The story is improbable. We
need only suppose that Julia, in speaking of Tiberius,
used the disdainful language which was common to her
friends. Neither Livia nor Tiberius seems to have
attempted to open the Emperor's eyes to Julia's conduct,
Octavian disliked her luxurious ways, but was blind to
her vices, though the names of her lovers were on the
lips of all. One day Octavian scolded her for having a
crowd of fast young nobles about her, and commended
to her the staid example of Livia. She disarmed him
with the laughing reply that, when she was old, her
companions would be as old as those of the Empress.
One writer says that Octavian compelled her to give up
a too sumptuous palace which she occupied. One is
more disposed to believe the story that, when he remon-
strated with her for her luxurious ways, she replied -:*:i
' My father may forget that he is Ceesar, but I cannot
forget that I am Caesar's daughter."

In spite of their mutual aversion Octavian now ordered
Tiberius to marry her. He was already married to
Vipsania, the virtuous and affectionate daughter of Agrippa,
and this enforced separation from one whom he loved
with an ardour that was fading from Roman marriage,
and union with one who contrasted with Vipsania as the
wild flaming poppy contrasts with the lily, further soured
and embittered him. We may dismiss in a very few
words his relations with the woman who ought to have
been the second Empress of Rome. After a few years
spent, as a rule, in distant frontier wars, he returned to

JULIA

Bi:s"f T\ 'I HF ^^usl■;l'^t cut ai< aimonti

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 29

Rome in the year 6 b.c., to find that his wife had passed
the last bounds of decency and Octavian was as blind
as ever. In intense disgust, and in spite of his mother's
entreaties, he begged the Emperor's permission to spend
some years in literary and scientific studies at Rhodes.
Not daring to open the eyes of Octavian to the true
character of his daughter, he had to bow to his anger
and disdain, and seek consolation in the calm mysteries
of the planets and the fine sentiments of Greek tragedians.

Julia now cast aside the last traces of restraint. A
half-dozen of the young nobles of Rome are associated
with her in the chronicles, and, gossipy and unreliable as
the records are, in this case the issue of the story disposes
us to believe the charges. Round such a repute as hers
legends were bound to grow, and the conscientious bio-
grapher must be reserved in giving details. Dio tells us,
for instance, that she expected her lovers to put crowns,
for each success she permitted them to attain, at the foot
of the statue of Marsyas — a public statue, at the feet of
which Roman lawyers were wont to place a crown when
they had won a case. However that may be, it is certain
that in the nightly dissipation of Rome, when plebeian
offenders sought the darkness of the Milvian Bridge, or
wantoned in the taverns and brothels of the Subura,
Julia's party was one of the boldest and most conspicuous.
Not content with the riotous supper, which it was now
the fashion to prolong by lamp-light, in perfumed cham-
bers, until late hours of the night, Julia and her friends
went out into the streets, and caroused in the very
tribunal in the Forum— the Rostra, a platform decorated
with the prows of captured vessels — from which her
father made known his Imperial decisions.^

' Writers often convey the impression that Julia indulged even her
most vicious inclinations in the Rostra, but Dio merely speaks of "revel-
ling " and " carousing " : Sxttc koI iv rfj ayopa (cat eV avrov yi to2 ^ij/iorot
KoixdCtiv vvKTas Koi avumvew. The emptying of a cup of Falernian wine in
the Rostra, on some occasion of especial devilry or intoxication, may be
all that is meant.

30 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

The thunder of the Imperial anger scattered this licen-
tious band some time in the second year before Christ.
In the earlier part of the year Octavian had entertained
Rome with one of the thrilling spectacles which he often
provided. To celebrate the dedication of a new temple
of Mars, which he had built, he had the Flaminian Circus
flooded, gave the people a mock naval battle, and had
thirteen crocodiles slain by the gladiators. Julia had
hoodwinked the Emperor so long that she and her friends
seem to have abandoned all restraint, and their adventures
came to the knowledge of the Emperor.

The charges against Julia must have been beyond
cavil, since Octavian, who loved her deeply, at once
yielded her to the course of justice. A charge of con-
spiracy was made out against her companions. One of
the young nobles killed himself, and the rest were banished.
Juha was convicted of adultery— the evil that her father
had fought for ten years — and from the glitter of Rome
she was roughly conducted to the barren rock-island of
Pandateria (Ponza), in the Gulf of Gaeta. In that narrow
and depressing jail, with no female attendants, no wine
and no finery, accompanied only by her unhappy mother,
the fascinating young princess spent five years, looking
with anguish over the blue water toward the faint out-
line of the hills of Italy, or southward toward those rose-
strewn waters of Baiae, where she had dreamed away so
many brilliant summers. Rome, touched with pity for
the stricken woman, implored Octavian to forgive her ;
and when he swore that fire and water should meet
before he pardoned her, the people naively flung burning
torches into the Tiber. Hearing, after a few years, that
there was a plot to release her, Octavian had her removed
to a more secure prison in Calabria. There she dragged
out her miserable life until her father died, and Tiberius
came to the throne. When he in turn refused to release
her, she sank slowly into the peace of death.

There is no charge against Livia in connexion with
this tragic fate of Julia, but another possible rival of

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 31

Tiberius had disappeared during these years, and there
is the usual vague accusation that the Empress assisted
the action of nature. Drusus, her younger son, died in
the year 9 b.c., and Livia is charged with sacrificing him
to her affection for her elder son. The charge is pre-
posterous. Drusus had, it is true, been much more
popular than Tiberius at Rome. His genial and engaging
manner gave him a great advantage over the retiring and
almost sullen Tiberius. But the brothers loved each
other deeply, and when Tiberius, who was making a tour
in the north of Gaul, heard that Drusus was dangerously
ill in Germany, he at once rode four hundred miles on
horseback, and held JDrusus in his arms in his last hour.
Livia was at Ticinum, in the north of Italy, with Octavian
when the news reached them. That either Livia or
Tiberius — for both are accused — should have in any way
promoted, the death of Drusus is a frivolous suggestion.
The epitomist of Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius, describe
the death as natural. Drusus was thrown and injured by
a frantic horse. The libel that his death was in some
mysterious way accelerated may have been set afoot by
his partisans. It was generally believed that he favoured
a restoration of the Republic, and the corrupt officials
who, at his death, lost their faint hope of returning to
the days of peculation and bribery, may have begun the
charge. No evidence is offered for it. Livia and Octavian
accompanied the remains to Rome with great sorrow.
Seneca says that the Empress was so distressed that she
summoned one of the Stoic philosophers to console her.
The next charge against Livia requires a more careful
examination. By the beginning of the present era, when
the poor health of Octavian gave occasion for many specu-
lations as to the succession, there were only two rivals to
the chances of Tiberius. These were the elder sons of Julia,
and Livia must have reflected gloomily on their fortune.
While Tiberius remained in retirement at Rhodes the
young princes were idolized by Octavian and by the people.
Tiberius had proposed to return to Rome after the banish-

32 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

ment of Julia, but Octavian peevishly told him to remain
in Greece. Every astrologer in Rome must have read in
the planets that either Caius or Lucius was born to the
purple. They were spoiled by Octavian, enriched with
premature honours, and, glittering in silver trappings,
appeared in the spectacles as " Princes of the youth of
Rome." Let those youths be removed from the scene by
any accident, and so prurient a city as Rome will be bound
to discover some insidious action on the part of Livia ; and
later writers, brooding over a chronicle in which ambition
leads freely to the most brutal murders, will be disposed to
believe her guilty.

It is somewhat surprising to find more recent writers
caught by the fallacy. We are not puzzled when the
scandal-loving Serviez opens his chapter on Livia with a
glowing enumeration of her virtues, adopts nearly every
libel against her as he proceeds, and closes with a very
dark estimate of her character ; but we are entitled to
expect more discrimination in Merivale. Even Mr. Tarver,
in his recent "Tiberius the Tyrant" (1902), does much
injustice to the mother in vindicating the son. He speaks
of her as "hard, avaricious, and a lover of power," and,
without the least evidence — indeed, against all probability-
suggests that it was Livia who urged Octavian to keep
Tiberius in retirement at Rhodes. He makes Livia hostile
to Tiberius in favour of Julia's sons, on the ground that she
would find them more pliant than Tiberius. Every other
writer suggests precisely the contrary. They make her
murder Julia's sons in the interest of Tiberius.

The death of the younger son, Lucius, is obscure. He
was sent on a mission to Spain in the year 2 a.d., and died
at Marseilles on the way. Since the only ground for the
rumour that he was poisoned is the indubitable fact that he
died, we need not delay in considering it. Octavian then
sent the elder brother Caius on a mission into Syria under
the care of his old tutor Lollius. His counsellor unhappily
died in the East, and the young prince was left to the vicious
companions who regarded him as the future dispenser of

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 33

Imperial favours. He fell into Oriental ways, and was at
length (a.d. 3) treacherously wounded by a Syrian patriot.
Instead of returning to Rome, he remained in the unhealthy
atmosphere of the East, indulged in its habits of languor
and vice, and died eighteen months after the death of his
brother. There is no obscurity about his death. It is
beyond question that he was severely wounded by a Syrian.
But the deaths of the two brothers happened so opportunely
for Tiberius that one cannot wonder at the suspicion, in
certain minds, that Livia had had the youths poisoned.
Nothing more than this vague rumour is given us by Tacitus,
Dio, Suetonius, or Pliny ; and it is from a sheer pruriency
of romance that later writers, like Serviez, have accepted
and emphasized the suspicion recorded in the Roman
historians. Not on such slender grounds can we be
asked to sacrifice the conception of Livia's character
which is forced on us by the plainer facts of her career.
The youths were delicate ; Caius, at least, had under-
mined his frail constitution by luxury, if not by vice;
and the Roman world harboured death in a hundred
forms.

If we still hesitate to choose between the artifice of
Livia and the unaided action of natural causes in this
removal of the 'obstacles to the advancement of Tiberius,
we have only to glance at the fate of the rest of Julia's
children. The third son, Agrippa, was as robust in body
as his brothers were weak, but he was defective in mind
and devoid of moral control. His boorish conduct as a boy
gave great pain to Livia and Octavia, and his great physical
strength broke out in uncontrollable gusts of passion. In
his adolescence he readily adopted the worst vices that
Rome could teach him, and Octavian was obliged to con-
demn him to imprisonment and exile. There remained the
two daughters, Julia and Agrippina. The younger, the
sanest of Julia's children, lived to intrigue for power, and
greatly to embarrass Livia's later years ; though we shall
find the same tragic fate befalling her after the death of the
lEmpress, who protected her. The elder, Julia, was banished
3

34 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

(a.d. 9) for incest, and, like her mother, lacking the courage
or virtue to end her shame as the nobler Romans did, she
protracted her miserable life for twenty years, her hard lot
only alleviated by the charity of Livia.

Fate had removed every possible competitor to the
succession of Tiberius. He returned to Rome, and his
judicious and sedulous activity removed the last traces of
the Emperor's resentment. Peace returned, after many
years of storm, to the mansion on the Palatine. But
Octavian had suffered profoundly from those terrible and
persistent storms. The Rome of his manhood was gone. All
his friends and counsellors had disappeared, and the future
of his people filled him with apprehension. The patrician
stock was decaying from luxury and vice; the ordinary
citizens clamoured for free food and free entertainment with
a blind disregard of the laws of national health. He shrank
from the public gaze, and leaned affectionately on Livia
and Tiberius.

In the year 14 he remained at Rome in the early heat
of the summer, and became seriously ill. Livia and
Tiberius went down with him to the coast, where he
rallied, and some pleasant days were spent on the island
of Capreae (Capri), which he had bought. They passed to
the mainland, where Tiberius left them, but he was soon
recalled by a message from his mother that the Emperor
was sinking. On the last morning of his life Octavian
dressed with unaccustomed care, and summoned his friends
to his bedside. Was Rome tranquil on receiving the news
of his dangerous condition ? Did they approve of his
conduct and accomplishments ? They gave him the assur-
ance he desired, and were dismissed. Could they have
foreseen the line of rulers who were to stain the purple
robe with blood, and load it with shame, for so many
decades to come, they would have wept. The last moments
were for Livia. He died kissing her, and murmuring :
" Be mindful of our marriage, Livia. Farewell." So ended,
peacefully, a union that had lasted fifty-two years in a city
where divorce was as lightly esteemed as marriage. There

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 35

can be little serious doubt about the character of the first
Empress of Rome.

Livia probably concealed the death of Octavian until
Tiberius arrived from Dalmatia. A report was given out
that Tiberius arrived in time to receive the last injunctions
of the Emperor. This may be doubted without any serious
reflection on her character ; if, indeed, it was she, and not
Tiberius, who spread the report. There were grave fears —
well-founded fears, as we shall see — that a plot, in the
interest of corruption, had been framed to prevent the
succession of Tiberius. In the coolness of the night, so as
to avoid the intense heat of August, they bore the remains
with great pomp to the capital. There, on a bed of ivory
and purple, preceded by wax effigies of Octavian and of
earlier rulers of Rome, the body was carried to the temple
of Julius, where Tiberius read a funeral oration. The
cortege went on to the Field of Mars, by the Tiber, through
lines of black-draped citizens. The pile was fired, and
zealous eyes saw the soul of Octavian mount toward
heaven in the outward form of an eagle.

Livia, on approved custom, remained by the sacred
ashes for five days, and then returned to face the new life
which opened for her. With the especially wild suggestion
that she had accelerated the death of her husband we may
disdain to concern ourselves. It was owing to her devoted
care that the ailing and delicate Octavian had lived to old
age. But a second libel in connexion with the death of
Octavian must be briefly considered.

The apprehension, or the secret information, of the
dying Emperor was correct. No sooner was his death
annqunced than a servant of the imprisoned son of Julia
hurried to the coast, and set sail for the island of Planasia,
with the intention of bringing Agrippa to Rome as a
candidate for the purple. He arrived only to find a bleed-
ing corpse. The centurion in charge had dispatched
Agrippa as soon as the Emperor's death was made known
to him.

Who gave the order for this execution? One cannot

36 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

call it murder, for Agrippa was unfit to be restored to
society, and any attempt to raise him to the throne would
have been disastrous to Rome. The authorities, as usual,
merely give us the rumours that circulated at the time,
and leave us to choose between Octavian, Livia, and
Tiberius. We can have little difficulty in choosing. It
would be so natural for either Octavian or Tiberius to
crush the conspiracy by executing Agrippa that the intro-
duction of Livia is superfluous. Most probably Octavian
had left directions with Agrippa's custodian. There is a
curious story, in several contradictory versions, but credible
in substance, that Octavian in his later years paid a secret
visit to Planasia, to see personally what Agrippa's real
condition was. Quite the most plausible theory is that,
after personal verification of his madness, Octavian felt it
best for Rome, and not inhuman to Agrippa, to have him
put to death as soon as the question of succession was
opened.

We come to the last phase of Livia's career. Tiberius
was now a tall, handsome man, though slightly disfigured,
with long fair hair and features strangely delicate for one
of his exceptional physical strength. A better soldier than
his predecessor, and not an inept statesman, he was well
enough fitted to wield the power which Octavian had
virtually bequeathed to him. But a retiring disposition,
an unhappy youth, and long years of study, had made him ,
shrink from the society of any but scholars, and he long
hesitated to ascend the throne to which the Senate invited
him. We have not good ground to regard this reluctance
as feigned. At last he consented, and the critics of Livia
would have it that her ambition now passed such bounds
as had been set to it by the ability of Octavian. We may
freely admit that she looked forward to being closely
associated in power with the son whose career she had
followed with such devotion and helpfulness. On the
other hand, we shall see how advantageous to the State
her influence was ; the evils that at once begin to darken
the life of Rome when Tiberius rejects her counsels

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 37

will plainly show this. Nor is there any evidence that
she sought power from any other motive than the good
of the State. She might take pride in what she did,
and even exaggerate it, but such a pride is not incon-
sistent with the view that she was ever gentle, humane,
and generous.

The first searching test of her character occurs a few
years after the accession of Tiberius. As the news of the
death of Octavian slowly travelled over the Empire, there
were mutinous movements among the legions in many
provinces. In Lower Germany, especially, the troops
considered that their commander, Germanicus, the nephew
of Tiberius, was entitled to the purple, and they asked him to
lead them to Rome. He was a handsome, engaging young
general, of imperial blood, with moderate ability and much
conceit, and had won the regard of the soldiers 6y visiting
the sick and wounded, advancing their pay out of his own
purse, and other popular acts. He was married to Julia's
daughter, Agrippina, who lived in camp with him. They
dressed their little son Caius in soldier's costume, and his
quaint appearance in miniature military boots won for him
the pet-name Caligula (" Little-boots ") by which he is
known to history. The legionaries thought that they had
with them a model Imperial family, and promised to wrest
the throne from Tiberius. Germanicus weakly composed
the mutiny — mainly by forging a letter in the name of
Tiberius and then treacherously executing the leaders — and
endeavoured to cover his blunders by vigorous and rather
aimless attacks upon the Germans. Tiberius recalled him to
Rome to enjoy a " triumph," and to keep him out of further
mischief.

Merivale acknowledges that his conquests were
" wholly visionary," but Germanicus had inherited the
charm and popularity of his father, Drusus, and Rome was
easily won for him. People streamed out from the gates to
meet him, and gazed with awe on his gigantic blue-eyed
captives and on the large highly-coloured paintings of his
victories in Germany. It was a new source of concern for

38 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Livia and Tiberius, and, to the satisfaction of Livia's critics,
the danger ended like all the others.

Germanicus and Agrippina were sent on a mission to
the East. Tiberius seems to have had some disdain for his
spoiled and conceited nephew, and he was well aware of
the interested aims of those who affected to see in him a
restorer of the old republican liberty. He chose an older
statesman, Cn. Calpurnius Piso, to go out as Governor
of Syria, to watch and prudently direct the movements of
Germanicus. With Piso was his wife Plancina, an intimate
friend of Livia. From these Tiberius and Livia shortly
heard exasperating accounts of the progress of Germanicus
and Agrippina. Piso found, on calling at Athens, that
Germanicus had been flattering the Greeks for their
ancient culture, instead of pressing the dominion of Rome.
He made free comments on the young general's conduct,
pushed past his galleys, as they dallied in Greek waters,
and was hard at work in Syria when Germanicus arrived.
The wives conducted the quarrel with more asperity than
their husbands.

Rome had now its party of Germanicus and party of
Tiberius, and the news from the East was heatedly dis-
cussed. Germanicus has gone to Egyf)t, without asking
the Emperor's permission, and is patronizing the Greek
and Egyptian cults, which Tiberius represses, and going
about in Greek instead of Roman dress. Piso has had a
violent quarrel with Germanicus, and left Syria. And
before they have time to discuss this important intelligence
there comes a report that Germanicus is dangerously ill ;
that bones of dead men, half-burnt fragments of sacrificial
victims, leaden tablets with the name of Germanicus
scrawled on them, and other deadly charms, have been
found under the floors and between the walls of his house.
At length the news comes that Germanicus is dead, and
that with his last breath he has urged his friends to avenge
him. Rome goes into mourning. All the shops are closed,
and crowds gather everywhere to discuss this fresh tragedy
of the Imperial house. In the middle of the night a rumour

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 39

spreads that Germanicus is not dead, and people fill the
streets with the glare of their torches, and break into the
temples. But the fatal news is confirmed, and, when at
last Agrippina comes with the golden urn containing his
ashes, such mourning is seen as no living man can
remember.

People observed that neither Livia nor Tiberius ap-
peared at the funeral. Livia had no reason to be present,
and Tiberius knew that the demonstration was due largely
to a spirit of hostility to himself For the rest, it was merely
the feeling of a frivolous people for a handsome and un-
fortunate youth. But Livia incurred more serious censure
during the trial of Piso which followed. The ex-governor
of Syria defended himself resolutely for a day or two, and
then, hearing that his wife had deserted him, committed
suicide. The anger of the citizens now turned on the wife,
Plancina. The Empress, with whom she had been in close
communication throughout, begged Tiberius to save her,
and he reluctantly checked the prosecution. Livia was,
of course, accused of sheltering a murderess. It must be
recollected that the accounts of the story are taken in part
from the memoirs of Agrippina's daughter, and are coloured
with prejudice against Tiberius and his mother. One can-
not see anything more serious than indiscretion in Livia's
conduct. Her conviction of the innocence of Plancina is
intelligible enough, and one can equally understand how
she would distrust a trial held at Rome in the inflamed
state of pubHc feeling. There is no serious reason to sus-
pect, in the death of Germanicus, the action of any other
poison than the tainted atmosphere of the East.

But the interference of Livia annoyed Tiberius, and the
ten years that follow are full of diff"erences between mother
and son. The Emperor's resentment of his mother's share
in public affairs had begun with his reign. Livia had
proposed to erect a statue to the memory of Octavian.
Tiberius interfered, and referred her to the Senate for
permission. She then proposed to give a commemoratory
banquet to the Senators and their wives. Tiberius re-

40 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

stricted her to the wives, and entertained the Senators
himself. He reduced her escort, frowned on the public
honours that were paid to her, and resented her inter-
ference in public affairs. On one occasion her friend
Urgulania was summoned for debt, and, presuming on her
intimacy with the Empress, treated the process with con-
tempt. Livia asked Tiberius to quash the proceedings, and
he deliberately lingered so much on his way to the Forum
that the case was allowed to proceed.

These are a few of the stories which illustrate the want
of harmony between them. For this Livia was largely
to blame. It was not unnatural that she, who had been
so often and so profitably consulted by Octavian, should
expect a larger power under the young Emperor, but she
failed to take discreet account of the extreme sensitiveness
of Tiberius. If a story given in Suetonius is correct, she
so far lost her discretion in one of their quarrels as to
produce old letters in which Octavian had made bitter
reflections on the defects of Tiberius. The fault was not
wholly on her side, however. Tijberius was jealous when
he contrasted the honour and respect paid to her with the
general feeling of reserve and distrust toward himself, and
he pleaded the old-fashioned idea of woman's sphere as a
pretext to restrain her. He grumbled when he one day
found her directing the extinction of a fire, as she had done
more than once in Octavian's time, and he was seriously
angry when he found that she had placed her name before
his on a public inscription.

But we may leave these lesser matters and come to the
next tragedy in the Imperial chronicle, the shado^w of
which darkened Livia's closing years. She had retired
from the palace to the house which she had inherited from
her first husband, Tiberius Nero. Here she remained a
saddened and helpless spectator of the coming disaster.
Tiberius, whom she saw only once more before she died,
had become a peevish and gloomy old man. His tall spare
frame was bent, his head bald, his face, which had always
been disfigured with pimples, now hideous with eczema,

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 41

or concealed with bandages. His large melancholy eyes
so startled people that they believed he could see in the
dark. Astrologers and students of the occult gathered
about him in the palace he had built on the Palatine, and
the way lay open for adventurers.

The two chief aspirants for power were Agrippina, the
widow of Germanicus, and Sejanus, Tiberius's favourite
general. Julia's younger daughter seems to have concen-
trated in her person all the masculinity of her family.
"Implacable," as Tacitus says, proud, and ambitious, she
added to the gloom that was deepening on the Palatine.
Merivale calls her the " she-wolf." It seems probable that
she sought marriage with the aged Tiberius in order to
secure power for herself or her son. The only son of the
Emperor had been poisoned by Sejanus, as we shall see
presently, and her son had a plausible title to inherit the
purple. The authorities tell us that Tiberius one day
found her in tears, and was entreated, when he asked the
reason, to find her a husband. She thought it expedient to
forget the supposed share of Tiberius in the death of her
husband.

Her innocent manoeuvres were met, however, by the
sinister intrigues of Sejanus, one of the most unscrupulous
characters we have yet encountered. Under a cloak of
friendliness he was countering her schemes and ruining
her house. He had seduced her daughter Livilla, the
wife of Tiberius's son Drusus, and had, with her con-
nivance, poisoned the young prince, and kept the secret
from the Emperor for many years. It is said that he then
made proposals to Agrippina to unite their ambitions,
and, when these were rejected, he determined to destroy
her and secure the supreme power for himself. He put
his great ability astutely at the service of the Emperor,
and once had the good fortune to save his life, by arching
his herculean body over Tiberius when the roof of a cave
fell on them. It is probable that he inflamed the resent-
ment of Tiberius against his mother, and then used the
estrangement to increase the unpopularity of the Emperor.

42 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Scurrilous libels on "the ungrateful son" were current
in Rome. These are sometimes attributed to writers in
the service of Livia, but it would be a natural part of
the scheme of Sejanus to spread them. On one occasion
a noble lady, Appuleia Varilia, was charged by the Senate
with accusing Tiberius and Livia of incest. Tiberius
consulted his mother, and declared to the Senate that
they wished to treat the libel with contemptuous
indifference.

To Sejanus also we must, on the authority of Tacitus,
attribute a plot against Agrippina, which other writers
assign to Tiberius or to Livia. At a banquet in the palace
it was noticed that Agrippina, pale and sullen, passed
all the dishes untouched. Tiberius at length invited her
to eat a fine apple which he chose. Under the eyes of
all she handed it to a servant to throw away, and Tiberius
not unnaturally complained of her unjust suspicions.
Tacitus, who gives the most credible version of the story,
says that the agents of Sejanus had warned her that she
was to be poisoned at the banquet, so that she would
act in a way that the Emperor would resent.

Tiberius, weary of the violent passions of the capital,
now lived chiefly in Campania. It is not improbable that
his disfigurement made him sensitive. Rome would not
spare the feelings of so unpopular a ruler. It is not at
all clear that he shrank from his Imperial duties — Suetonius
expressly says that he thought it possible to rule better
from the provinces — or that he wished to indulge in the
wild debauches which some attribute to him. Probably
Sejanus, to secure more power for himself, persuaded him
that he could best discharge his duties from a provincial
seat.

At this juncture, in the year 29, saddened by the
estrangement from her son, by his helpless surrender to
an unscrupulous adventurer, and by the increasing de-
generation of Rome, Livia died. She had, by sober
living — Pliny adds, by the constant chewing of a sweetmeat
containing a certain medicinal root, and by the use of

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGR 43

Pucinian wine— attained the gfeat age of eighty-six. She
had seen her husband dispel the long horrors of civil
war, refresh the Empire, and adorn Rome ; and she had
felt the gloom and chill of a coming tragedy in her later
years. Few of the Empresses have been so differently
estimated as Livia. Merivale regards her as " a memorable
example of successful artifice, having obtained in succession,
by craft if not by crime, every object she could desire
in the career of female ambition." He adds : " But she
had long survived every genuine attachment she may at
any time have inspired, nor has a single voice been raised
by posterity to supply the want of honest eulogium in
her own day."^

The more concentrated research of the biographer has
often to reverse the verdict of the historian, and in this
case it must acquit Livia of either craft or vice. It is a
singular error to say that Livia had no "honest eulogium "
in her own day. The Roman Senate is exposed to the
disdain of historians for its obsequiousness to the reigning
Emperor, yet, at the death of Livia, it sought to honour
her memory in spite of the resentment of Tiberius. The
Emperor had refused to go to Rome, either to see her
before death or to attend her funeral. He gave to Rome
an example of silent indifference. Yet he had to use his
authority to prevent the Senate from decreeing divine
honours to Livia, building an arch to her memory, and
declaring her " mother of her country." Dio remarks
that the Senators were moved to do these things out of
sincere gratitude and respect. Few of the less wealthy
members of the Senate had not profited by her generosity.
Their children had been educated, and their daughters
had received dowries, from her purse. Her generosity is
recognized by all the authorities. Her humanity is made
plain by the contents of this chapter.

The adverse estimate of Livia's character is chiefly
based on the " Annals " of Tacitus, and it has long been
recognized that Tacitus drew his account largely from

' Vol. V, p. 353-

44 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

the memoirs of the younger Agrippina, daughter of the
woman who hated Livia. Yet Tacitus adds,, when he
has recorded the death of Livia: "From this moment
the government of Tiberius became a sheer oppressive
despotism. While Augusta lived one avenue of escape
remained open, for the Emperor was habitually deferent
toward his mother, and Sejanus dared not thwart her
parental authority; but when this curb was removed,
there was nothing to check their further career."^

We have seen that Livia had used the same restraining
influence on the impetuosity of Octavian. With her died
the attribute, or the wise policy, of Imperial clemency, only
to be revived by Emperors who adopted that Stoic creed
in which she found consolation after the death of her son.
That she was " hard " and " unscrupulous " is entirely at
variance with the most authenticated facts of her career.
To say that she was " avaricious " is a sheer absurdity.
She maintained her sober personal habits to the end, and
took money only to bestow it on the indigent and worthy,
or expend it in raising public buildings. We may grant
that she had some ambition, but may claim that it was well
for Rome that she had it. She fell into many errors of
judgment in her later years, when Roman life was confused
by such strong undercurrents of intrigue ; but these very
errors tend to discredit the notion that she employed a
consummate art and strong intelligence in the furthering
of her own interests. In a word, it is the vices and follies
of later Empresses that have disposed historians to regard
her sober virtues as a mere mask.

' " Annals,'' v. 3.

THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE 45

NOTE

For the guidance of the general reader it is advisable to add a few
words on the Latin authorities, whom we now constantly quote. Tacitus,
the chief source of our knowledge down to the year 70 A.D., is not only
weakened as an historian by the very strength of his morality, but he has too
lightly followed the memoirs in which the later Agrippina defamed the rival
Imperial family. Suetonius, who takes us as far as Domitian, is no less
honest, but he has too genial and indulgent a love of anecdotes to discard
any on the mere ground that they are untrue or improbable. Dio Cassius,
who covers the first two centuries, is usually described as malignant ; but
one may question if he does more than indulge still further the same amiable
preference of piquancy to truth. The "Historia Augusta," which is our chief
authority for the greater part of the Empresses and the richest source of
scandal, has been much and profitably discussed since Gibbon placed such
reliance on it. It is now thought by some experts that the original writers
of this series of biographical sketches of the Roman Emperors lived at the
beginning of the third century, and had a comparatively sober standard ot
work. Toward the close of the third, or beginning of the fourth, century
the work was written afresh by the group of less scrupulous writers whose
names, or pseudonyms, actually stand at the head of its chapters. But a
still later writer once more recast the work, and lowered its authority. He
wrote frankly from the point of view of the piquant anecdotistr omitting
much that would interest only the prosy student of exact facts, and filling up
the vacant space with such faint legends of Imperial vice or folly as still, in
his time, lingered without the pale of history, or arose in the field of romance.
The question is fully discussed by Otto Schultr, "Leben des Kaisers
Hadrian" (1905), and Professor Kornemann, "Kaiser Hadrian" (1906).

CHAPTER III

THE WIVES OF CALIGULA

^'^HE remainder of the reign of Tiberius does not
properly concern us, but a very brief account of
it will serve at once to confirm our estimate of the
influence of Livia, and to prepare us for the almost in-
credibly degraded scenes that were witnessed under his
successor. We saw that two persons were intriguing for
the purple mantle which must soon fall from the shoulders
of the aged and unhealthy Emperor. One was a woman
of great ability and masculine courage, who sought the
succession for one of her sons. The other was a strong
soldier and an astute minister, a man of the most un-
scrupulous and hypocritical character. The change in
the form of government had already betrayed its evil. The
fate of the vast Empire seemed but a ball tossed from
player to player. But the issue was even worse than the
most sober observer anticipated. Before Tiberius died
both the strong man and the strong woman were to be
destroyed, and the Imperial power was to pass to one
who was grossly unfit to exercise it.

Less than a year after the ashes of Livia had been laid
in the marble tower by the Tiber, the Senate received a
letter from the court impeaching Agrippina and her two
elder sons. According to Tacitus, it was " commonly
believed " that this letter had been written some time
before, and had been withheld through the influence of
Livia. The only reasonable interpretation that we can
put on this rumour is that people were so convinced of

46

AGRIPPINA THE ELDER

BUST IN THE MUSEUM CHIARAMONTI

THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 47

the humanity of Livia that they did not think the letter
would have ))een written or sent if she were still alive.
However that may be, Agrippina and her sons were put
on trial and condemned to exile, in spite of the angry
crowds that gathered about the court-house. Agrippina
passed with dramatic suddenness from her dream of ruling
the world to a dreary exile in Herculaneum, and, after
a time, to the far more terrible prison of Pandateria, where
her mother had spent four years of agony. There, with
all the strength of her proud and ambitious nature, she
awaited the death of Tiberius. But the only messages
which came over the sea to her gradually broke her spirit.
Her sons, Drusus and Nero, had been convicted of un-
natural vice, as well as conspiracy ; and although we may
entertain some doubt about the conspiracy, the other
charge is only too credible when we know the habits of
the class to which the youths belonged. Nero was
imprisoned on one of the islands of the Ponza group,
and it was not long before his mother, on the neigh-
bouring island, heard that he had starved, himself, or
been starved, to death. After some time she learned
that Drusus had followed his example, and the despair-
ing woman refused food in her turn, and went into the
kindlier exile of death. The last of Julia's children did
not escape the tragic fate which hung over the family.
We have yet to see how the curse falls on the third
generation.

Sejanus, whose action we may confidently see in the
ruin of Agrippina, now stood near the steps of the throne,
waiting impatiently for the passing of the despised Emperor.
He was betrothed to Livilla, the widow of Tiberius's only
son Drusus, whom he had poisoned, with Livilla's assist-
ance. With a consort of Csesarean blood he felt that he
could easily fill the place of Tiberius. And in the height
of his corrupt power and criminal hope the vengeance of
the fates fell on him like a stroke of lightning. It is said
that the wife he proposed to divorce disclosed to Tiberius
that Sejanus was the murderer of his only son. Within

48 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

a few hours he was impeached, condemned, and put to
death. All who had gathered about him in the hope of
his coming power were scattered or destroyed by the frantic
anger of Tiberius. Livilla was urged by her mother to
bury her shame in the grave. She refused, and was
banished. We shall meet her again in the chronicle of
vice and violence.

After this terrible ordeal Tiberius withdrew to Capreae,
where he had built a palace. Wandering, some years ago,
among the ruins of what is believed to have been the
palace of Tiberius, I found that the echoes still lingered
there of the dark stories which men told in Rome of his later
years. Men said that he had shut himself in that sea-girt
palace only to indulge, unseen, in the grossest perversions
of a sensual nature, and that a new profession of ministers
to lust, of which a description may be found in Tacitus,
had grown out of his weariness even of unnatural vice.
One does not readily admit such orgies in a man between
his seventy-second and seventy-eighth year, and it seems
to me that one may offer an explanation of the myth, which
will also serve to introduce the third Emperor of Rome
and his wives.

Suetonius describes Tiberius as surrounded by learned
men and absorbed in obscure problems of astrology,
mythology, and letters. The most resolute adherent of
the more romantic story must have some difficulty in
reconciling this band of prosy pedants with the sensual
orgies which popular rumour located in the lonely palace.
When, however, we learn that two young princes of the
least intellectual and most immoral character formed part
of the household, we see that there may have been two
entirely distinct lives sheltered by the palace at Capreae.
If we suppose that these young men and their sycophantic
attendants freely indulged in the vices which were then
common to Roman youths, while their elders were intent
on the glorious planets of a Neapolitan sky, we have a
satisfactory explanation of the legend. The horror of
Rome at the Emperor's bloody avenging of the murder

THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 49

of his son would not dispose people to discriminate
conscientiously.

One of these princes was Herod Agrippa, son of the
King of Judaea, whom Octavian had brought to Rome for
security. The other, a year younger, was " Caligula," as
the soldiers had nicknamed the surviving son of Agrippina
and Germanicus. Caius Caesar — to give him his real name —
was in his nineteenth year when his mother was banished.
Tiberius a few years later took him to Capreae, where he
would prove an apt pupil to Herod in Oriental ways. The
vein of moral perversity, if not insanity, which we trace
in all the descendants of Julia, is most clearly exhibited in
Caligula, and the tragedy of the Caesars deepens when,
in the year 37, Tiberius dies, and Caligula is called to the
throne.*

He had been married in 33 to Junia Claudilla, daughter
of Junius Silanus, a proconsul of eminent services and
distinguished family. She was happily spared the fate of
sharing the throne with Caligula by dying in childbirth.
What her life in Capreae must have been is not obscurely
suggested by her early death. No prospect in Europe is
more pleasant than that which unfolds its superb and far-
lying beauty to the spectator on the green summits of
Capri, from which the eye may wander over the broad
blue bay, with its silver fringe of surf, or round the
crescent pf evergreen land that begins with Sorrento, and
sweeps majestically, past the foot of Vesuvius, to the
distant haze in which Baiae once lived. Yet to a refined
and sensitive young woman this splendid palace must
have been a deathly jail. Repelled alike by the purblind
scholars and the licentious princes, the heavy monotony
of learning and vice unrelieved by visits to Rome, she
sank under her burden in three years— just missing by
one year the title of second Empress of Rome, Her father,
a grave and illustrious Senator, endeavoured to check
Caligula's extravagance in the first year of his reign. The

• An apology should be made for retaining the nickname of the third
Emperor, but it seems to be ineradicably fixed in history.

4

so THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

brutal Emperor bade him " take his greeting to the spirit
of the dead." With a last sad glance at the future of his
country, Junius Silanus obeyed.

We are credibly told that Caligula then made love to
Ennia, wife of the Prefect of the Guard. Sejanus had
persuaded Tiberius to form a corps of " Praetorian Guards,"
an Imperial body-guard which was destined to have a
disastrous influence on the future of Rome. The actual
prefect or commander of this regiment, Macro, was the
most powerful person in the suite of Tiberius. With or
without his connivance, his wife yielded to Caligula, on
the condition that he should marry her when he became
Emperor. Macro and Ennia accompanied Caligula when
he bore the will and the ashes of Tiberius to Rome. A
gloom had settled over Italy during the later years of
Tiberius's reign, and men hailed the young Caligula as
the sun and the blue sky are hailed after days of dark
tempest at sea. Standing by their flower-girt altars,
coming out with torches at night, people greeted him
with frantic epithets of affection. He was their "star,"
their " chicken," their " dear child," as he had been to
the soldiers in Germany years before. Not that he was
a handsome youth. His frame was thin and lanky, and
his movements awkward. He was prematurely bald, and
his sunken eyes looked out with a scowl from his pallid
face. But he was the son of Germanicus, the grandson
of Julia. All the follies which the family had perpetrated
were forgotten.

For a month or two he fulfilled the hope of his people.
The reign of terror was ended at once. He recalled his
sisters from exile, and brought to Rome, with great
respect, the ashes of his mother and brothers. The circus
and the amphitheatre rang once more with the cheers
of tTie populace. The golden age of Octavian had been
restored, men said. But the emasculated system and feeble
mind of Caligula were unequal to the nervous strain.
Early in his reign Ennia reminded him of his written
promise to marry her, and Macro had an air of patronage

THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 51

in advising him. In a sudden blaze of ferocity he ordered
Ennia and her children to be executed, and graciously
permitted Macro to end his own life. He had found a
wife — his sister Drusilla.

His incestuous relation with Drusilla was soon the
topic of Rome. It had probably begun before she was
banished, and when he recalled her to his palace, a young
and beautiful girl of about twenty summers, he conceived
a violent passion for her, divorced her from her husband,
and announced that he intended to marry her. The
Emperor was above all laws, he said. Rome laughed the
laughter of fools. He was providing it with stupendous
entertainment. The games of the circus ran for twelve
hours, day after day, and the night was turned into fresh
day with illuminations, banquets, and such pleasures as
they could get with the money he freely distributed. In
the midst of it all he fell ill; not improbably he was
paying with epilepsy the price of his wild excesses. There
was such sori-ow in Rome as had rarely been felt at the
illness of its greatest citizens. Men vowed their lives for
the life of the beloved Emperor; and Caligula, when he
recovered, saw that they kept their vows. He was ill for
many weeks, and, when his strength returned, he had lost
the little sanity and sobriety that nature had ever put in
his ill-compacted frame. The rest of his reign was a
nightmare.

Drusilla died during his illness, or soon after his
recovery. Some writers suggest that her malady was a
feeling of deep shame, but the description which Dio gives
of her does not support this view, nor does the single
virtue of remorse seem to be known among the descendants
of Julia. The grief of Caligula was no less insane than
his passion had been. No illustrious Roman was ever
honoured with such pomp of funeral as this woman,
whose incestuous life he cried over the world. A Senator
saw her soul mount to heaven from the burning pile,
and was rewarded with a million sesterces. The degraded
Senate declared her a goddess, and it was decreed that

52 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

henceforward women should swear by the divinity of
Drusilla. Earth and heaven resounded with his demented
moans ; and even before Drusilla was put among the gods
he had married again.

Livia Orestilla, the second Empress of Rome, is one
of those ladies who are known to us only in the familiar
phrase, that she was a young woman of great beauty
and illustrious family. In her case we need no ampler
portrait, as she was Empress only for a few days. Before
the end of the first year of his reign (37), and in the
midst of his lamentation over Drusilla, Caligula was
invited to the wedding of Calpurnius Piso, a noble of
rank and wealth. Caligula fancied the bride, and at once
made her his Empress. With equal license he divorced
her a few days afterwards, and she learned what it was
to fall from the height of a throne. He forbade her to
have any commerce with the husband of whom he had
robbed her, and then, alleging that his order had been
disregarded, banished both of them to remote and distinct
parts of the Empire.

The next lady on whom his unbridled imagination rested
was Lollia Paulina. Caligula was probably more attracted
by her wealth than by the remarkable beauty, the high
character, and the distinguished ancestry which the
chronicles ascribe to her. The rich spoils of conquered
provinces had accumulated in her family, and her husband,
the Governor of Macedonia and Achaia, was industriously
adding to their wealth. People told at Rome that she once
went to a marriage-supper in pearls and emeralds that
were valued at fifty million sesterces. Her high virtue
seems to have been consistent with a display that made
her a topic of table-talk, and that brought upon her a
lamentable fate. Caligula, piqued by the stories of her
wealth and beauty, ordered her husband to bring her to
Rome, and she was soon afterwards established in his
palace as the third Empress of Rome. Within a year
Caligula divorced her on the ground that she gave no
promise of perpetuating his line.

THE WIVES OF CALIGULA S3

It is often said that Caligula had only married her for the
purpose of seizing her fortune, as his prodigal expenditure
was rapidly emptying the treasury. This seems to be an
error, as we shall find her in the next chapter incurring
a miserable fate on account of her immense wealth. The
truth was that Caligula had in the meantime discovered a
lady whose temper wholly suited his own, and of whose
fertility he was actually assured.

In the spring or early summer of the year 39 we find
him perpetrating one of his stupendous acts of folly at
Baise. He was accustomed, in the warmer weather, to
cruise about the coast of Campania with his wife and suite.
He had two great Liburnian galleys built, each with ten
banks of oars, their prows blazing with gold and jewels,
their decks adorned with vines, colonnades, and divers
freaks of irresponsible wealth. As they cruised by the
bay, some one reminded him of an old proverb which
spoke of riding from Baise to Puteoli, across an arm of the
bay, as one of the most certain impossibilities. At once
he ordered a bridge to be built across the water and
elaborately decorated. In what was supposed to be the
armour of Alexander the Great, over which was thrown a
mantle of purple silk, the conqueror of impossibilities rode
from Baiae to Puteoli. On the following day he drove his
chariot across ; and far into the night, the hills around
being lit up with immense fires, he carried the debauch
which celebrated his glorious feat. In their intoxication
numbers reeled from the bridge into the scented waters.

Eager for fresh victories, he transferred his delirious
court to Gaul, and declared that he was proceeding against
the fierce Germans. The tribes were not in revolt, and the
whole expedition was a comedy ; some of the Roman writers
say that a few tame captives were conveyed across the
river and hunted, so that the Emperor might truthfully
inform the Senate that he had gained a victory and merited
a triumph. Suetonius even adds that, when he did
eventually return to Rome and celebrate his triumph, a
few slaves were forced to learn a little German and dye

54 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

their hair, to pose as conquered tribesmen before his
chariot. In the meantime, events which concern us more
closely were happening at Lyons.

The extravagance of Caligula was rapidly emptying the
treasury. In twelve months he spent 2,700 million sesterces.
His baths were of the most precious ointments ; his
banquets were especially designed to waste money — one
alone cost ;^8o,ooo, in modern coinage — and, when the flow
was not fast enough, he drank pearls dissolved in vinegar,
and had gold fashioned in the shape of food and served to
his guests. He disdainfully swept the palaces of Gctavian
and Tiberius, with other mansions, from the Palatine, and
erected a palace of extraordinary proportions and barbaric
splendour. Such habits drew about him a crowd of
ignoble parasites, and one can well believe that he had
discovered a conspiracy against him at Lyons. He had
prostituted the honour of Rome in a manner so childish
and base that few could be unmoved. Observing the
wealth of the Gauls — for Lugdunum (Lyons) was then the
centre of a prosperous and cultivated region — he began to
sell to them the possessions of the Imperial house. He
was present at the auction, and the proceeds were so
satisfactory that he sent to Rome for wagon-loads of
furniture, heirlooms, and curios from the Imperial palaces,
and, as they were offered for sale, pointed out himself the
historical value of each object.

In his suite was the first husband of his sister Drusilla.
This distinguished noble, Lepidus, may have exchanged
views on the insanity of the Emperor with the disgusted
Gauls. At all events, Caligula sent word to the Senate
that he had discovered a plot against his life, and added
that his sisters, Livilla and Agrippina, had been convicted
of adultery with Lepidus. He put Lepidus to d^ath, and
compelled Agrippina, a proud and spirited young princess,
to carry on foot to Rome the urn containing the ashes of
her alleged lover. We shall see how, on his return to
Rome, Caligula made atonement to vice for this drastic
punishment of adultery. In fact, he already had a mistress

THE WIVES OF CALIGULA SS

in the Court at Lyons, and this lady now displaces LoUia
Paulina, and becomes the fourth Empress of Rome.

Milonia Caesonia is one of the oddest figures in the very
varied gallery through which our story conducts us. Julia
and Messalina are imperial in their vices. Caesonia, whose
vices are so little discussed, stands entirely apart from the
other Empresses — at least of the first century. Wholly
destitute of character or culture, already worn with the
bearing of three children, she seems to have won and
retained the fancy — one cannot call it affection or regard —
of Caligula by a handsome figure, a robust masculinity, and
an entire lack of refinement. He often exhibited her nude
to his friends, and encouraged her to dress as an Amazon
and ride her horse before the army. His disordered nvind
puzzled at times over the charm by which she held him.
He would stroke her strong white throat, and murmur
pleasantly that at one word from him the knife of the exe-
cutioner would sink into it ; and he would sometimes, with
the same brutal humour, threaten to have her tortured, in
order to discover what philtre she secretly administered
to him. She had much tact and no scruples. Their
daughter Drusilla was born on the day of their marriage,
according to Suetonius, or thirty days afterwards, according
to more credible authorities. As the child grew, it showed
the temper of a wild cat. Caligula watched its frenzies
with delight, as it screamed and bit its nurse ; there was,
he said, no room for doubt about the paternity.

With such a spouse, and with his favourite courtesan
Pyrallis, whom also he had established in his new palace,
Caligula indulged his insane impulses without the least
restraint. Within a few months of inflicting so terrible
a punishment on his sister, he was giving imperial lessons
in incest and adultery. So low had much of the Roman
nobility fallen that no sword was drawn on the Emperor,
or employed on its possessor, when he concluded his
banquets with a command of promiscuous intercourse to
the men and women of patrician rank whom he entertained.
Nor were his excesses confined within the walls of his

56 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

palace, and known only by uncertain rumour. He
developed a passion for driving chariots, and frequented
the company of grooms and gladiators. Rome genially
applauded, since it implied more and longer shows in
the circus and amphitheatre. The struggles of the
different factions in the races — of whom Caligula sup-
ported the Greens — more than- ever enlivened the dull
days of an idle populace. Caligula forced nobles to
exercise the base and dangerous profession of the gladiator,
and to drive chariots before the mob in the circus.

But the amusement of Rome reached its height when
Caligula, in the year 39, discovered his divinity. Other
Emperors were content to leave it to the flattery of their
people to detect a divinity in them after their very human
careers were over. " I am turning into a god," said one of
them ironically, as he died. Caligula believed that his
splendour was already divine. Vitellius, a contemptible
courtier, father of the later Emperor, shrewdly borrowed
the idea from Oriental monarchs, and suggested it to
Caligula. Then were witnessed scenes in Rome which
even the wildest extravagances of Nero cannot rival. Its
citizens had, at the peril of their lives, to restrain their
laughter, and bend in respectful worship, when the slim,
ungraceful youth — he was yet only in his twenty-seventh
year — with the weariness of dissipation on his pale face,
trod their streets in the garments of Jove, with a beard of
gold thread, or marched past them with the bow and
quiver and golden halo of Apollo, or dressed to the more
congenial part of Venus. A machine was made by which
he could, in a puerile way, imitate the thunder of the rival
god ; and he ordered the heads to be struck off the statues
of the Greek deities and replaced by copies of his own.
A deity must have a cult. Caligula appointed himself
and his horse, for which he provided a marble palace
and an ivory manger, the high priests of his cult. Csesonia
was associated in the priesthood, and' the position of
ordinary priest of the cult was sold to various nobles
at the price of eight million sesterces each. Poor men

THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 57

were forced to ruin themselves and put an end to their
lives; wealthier men meekly posed as the ministers of
a divinity who gorged himself with food and wine at
each meal, and resorted to the vomit that he might return
to the table.

How long nature would have suffered this madness
to debase the fallen city one cannot tell, but the exhaustion
of the treasury now led Caligula to do things which roused
a few Romans from their lethargy. He repeated in Rome
the auctions he had held at Lyons, and many stories are
told of his brutal irresponsibility. The truth of these
stories is always doubtful, but one may be quoted as
an illustration of the popular feeling. It is said that a
Senator fell asleep during one of the sales. Caligula
malignantly called the auctioneer's attention to the fact
that the sleeping man was nodding at every bid, and the
Senator awoke to find that he had bought thirteen
gladiators and other property at fabulous prices. Caligula
even stood at his palace door to receive gifts, pleading
that the addition to his family had impoverished him.

He then discovered a new source of funds in the
execution of the wealthier nobles. Brutal and sanguinary
from the first, his growing madness and his delight in
gladiatorial shows fostered his cruelty. He had an actor
burned alive in the Forum for venturing even to hint,
in an ambiguous phrase, that the Imperial behaviour was
reprehensible. Others he had tortured and executed in
his presence, in order that he might enjoy the sensation
of seeing them suffer. But it was mainly in quest of
money to maintain his terrible expenditure that he stooped
to the lowest excesses. No man of wealth in Rome was
safe. Informers were eager for the fourth part of a victim's
property, to which they were entitled after a successful
impeachment ; Caligula hungered for the remaining three-
fourths. Every ten days he would " clear his accounts,"
as he put it, or doom to death any wealthy Senators whom
he had chosen to put on his list of suspects. He would
return from the court boasting to Caesonia of the heavy

S8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

work he had done while she slept. A great terror brooded
over the city, and men talked of the Emperor in whispers.
Omens and signs multiplied. The statue of Jupiter
Olympus had been brought to Rome, and one day the
workmen rushed in alarm from the temple in which it
was placed, crying that the marble god had burst into
a fit of laughter.

On January 24th, in the year 41, this appalling gloom
came to an end, and the third Emperor and fourth Empress
of Rome were justly removed. The long hesitation of the
Romans must not too readily be ascribed to cowardice.
The Praetorian Guards were now encamped at the edge of
the city, and were richly paid for personal loyalty to the
Emperor ; so that there was very faint hope of a successful
rising of the citizens. For the greater part these formidable
soldiers were mercenaries, caring nothing for the honour of
Rome, faithful as dogs to the liberal master. It was not
until an officer of this regiment headed a conspiracy that
any action could be taken with a prospect of success. This
officer was a favourite of Caligula, but the Imperial friend-
ship was expressed in such coarse and stinging epithets
that he was driven to rebel. He and his associates deter-
mined to assassinate Caligula when he attended the Palatine
games in the later part of January. A large wooden theatre
had been erected for the occasion, and Caligula presided
with delight at the repulsive spectacles. Such was the
popular enthusiasm that the conspirators surrounded
Caligula day after day without daring to touch him. His
German guard, insensible to the grievances of the Romans,
would at once and blindly oppose a rising, and the people
seemed to have forgotten his tyranny in the blood-reeking
show he had provided for them.

They came to the fifth and final day of the games.
Caligula was unwell, and wished to remain in the palace,
but he was persuaded to make an effort to attend the final
performance. Before a vast audience the actors represented
the crucifixion of a band of robbers, and the stage was
washed with blood. The chief actor of the time had a trick

THE WIVES OF CALIGULA 59

of pouring blood from his mouth, and the other actors
clumsily imitated him. When it was over, Caligula, elated
with the wild applause of the citizens, entered the narrow
passage which led from the theatre to his house on the
Palatine. The conspirators seized their last chance, and
fell upon the Emperor with their swords. Within a fev/
hours Rome so far changed that it was the turn of the
partisans of Caligula to tremble. His body was removed
and stealthily buried by Herod Agrippa.

Csesonia seems to have remained in, or preceded Caligula
to, the palace, with her little daughter. There the cries of
the guard and the noisy confusion in the palace would soon
announce the disaster to her. She had no time to escape,
or devise any policy. A centurion rushed to her room
and stabbed her to death. Her infant was roughly seized
by a soldier, and its brain was shattered on the walls of the
palace, where the brief infamies of its father and mother
had degraded the civilization of Rome.

CHAPTER IV

VALERIA MESSALINA

THE fall of Caesonia was hardly less romantic than
the succession to her position of the woman who is
known to every reader of Roman history, and to
many others, as Messalina. When Caligula entered the
narrow passage leading to the Palatine, after the perform-
ance in the theatre, a few members of his suite walked
before him. One of these was his uncle Claudius, a slow-
witted and despised man, in his fiftieth year, whom Caligula
had rescued from humiliation and put in office. He had
already entered the palace when the raucous cries of the
German guard and the flash of weapons informed him of
the assassination of the Emperor. The guards were cutting
down such of the conspirators as they could reach. In
instinctive terror Claudius hid behind a curtain, nor was he
reassured when he saw the soldiers pass with the heads
of the nobles they had slain. Presently a soldier of the
Praetorian Guard noticed his feet below the curtain, and
drew him out. Claudius fell to the ground in terror, and
implored them to spare his life. The soldiers had recog-
nized him, however. They put him in a litter, and carried
him on their shoulders to the camp. Citizens whom they
passed in the street pitied the harmless and, as was generally
believed, half-witted prince. At last some one learned, or
divined, the purpose of the guards, and Claudius awoke
from his terror to hear the strange cry of "Salve, Im-
perator," and realized that he was to be made Emperor
of Rome.

60

VALERIA MESSALINA 6i

He had been married three years before to Valeria
Messalina, who thus became the fifth Empress. As the
youngest son of Drusus, brother of Tiberius, and Antonia,
daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia, he was the natural
heir to Caligula. The Imperial power was in no sense
hereditary, but the attachment of the Praetorian Guards to
the ruling family, and their irresistible domination over
Rome, for some time ensured a kind of hereditary
succession. There had, however, been no deliberate
proposal to put Claudius on the throne. While the
future of the Empire was being determined by the rough
mercenaries in the Praetorian camp, where Claudius
promised a substantial largess for his elevation, the
Senate was actually discussing the question of restoring
the Republic. Somewhat deformed in person, clumsy in
gait and corpulent, stuttering in speech, deficient at least
in the power of expression, Claudius had always been
regarded as a negligible oflfshoot of the Julian stock. His
mother had spoken of him as "a little monster," Octa-
vian had genially treated him as half-witted, and, when
he arrived at early manhood, Tiberius had refused to give
him any rank or office. Caligula, however, had given him
consular rank, and promoted hjm in the palace, though he
treated his uncle with the brutal jocularity which his
mental infirmity was held to justify.

We shall see that this treatment was far from just, for
Claudius had some excellent qualities ; but the disdain of
his family threw him upon the society of his servants, and
led him to seek consolation in the pleasures of the table
and the dice-board. He had in early youth been betrothed
to a daughter of Julia. This contract was dissolved when
Julia's vices were discovered, and he was married to a
young lady of distinguished and wealthy family, Livia
Medullina Camilla. She died on the wedding-day, and he
married Plautia Urgulanilla, a daughter of the Empress
Livia's intimate friend, Urgulania. Suspecting, after a few
years, that jjer friendship with his emancipated-slave
friends was warmer than he intended, he divorced her,

62 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

and married iElia Paetina, who in turn was shortly
divorced.

In the year 38 he married the notorious Valeria
Messalina, whose name conveys to every student of history
or morals a summary impression of the worst features of
the early Empire. The spirit of our time is so resolutely
bent on visiting the sins of the children on their fathers —
so determined to seek the secret of character in heredity —
that the older biographical practice of drawing out
genealogies cannot be entirely abandoned ; though one
may wonder whether the tainted atmosphere of Rome may
not have been more deadly than a tainted stock. It is
enough to say that both her parents were of the Julian
family, and were first cousins of Claudius. Her father,
Valerius Messala Barbatus, was a Senator of distinction.
He is known to us as the Senator who, in the old Roman
spirit, made a futile effort to restrain women from invading
public life and the camp. Her mother has a less reputable
record. We shall see that she eventually falls under a
charge of conspiracy and magic ; but we may find that her
more serious offence was an intense hatred of the Empress
Agrippina, who brought the charge against her.

Messalina, as we may now briefly call her — with a
passing protest against that uncouth expression, " the
Messaline " — was in her sixteenth year at the time of her
marriage. An indulgent imagination will be able to
appreciate the dangerous situation of the young girl.
Entering, in her teens, a world of the most seductive
pleasure and the utmost license, with so responsive and
impulsive a nature as she had, she needed the guidance of
a man whom she could at least respect. Instead of this,
she found herself mated to a man of forty-eight years,
whose full paunch and long thin legs and tremulous head
were the jest of the Palatine, and who spent his hours in
the company of Greek freedmen, or in too prolonged an
enjoyment of rich dishes and costly wines. Claudius, it is
true, adored her, but his adoration anly made him the surer
dupe of her craving for indulgence. Her misconduct

VALERIA MESSALINA 63

probably began early. When, after the evening meal, she
left her spouse intoxicated and snoring over the emptied
dishes, when his throat had been tickled with a feather,
so that he might disgorge and return to the Imperial
dainties, the young girl would naturally yield to the
counsels of the unscrupulous courtiers who abounded in
such a palace.

The path to the. abyss was made smoother for her by
her husband's reliance on his freedmen. In the later years
of the Republic, when the dominion of Rome was extended
over the East, the practice had grown of employing the
more accomplished slaves of Greece and Syria in the
patrician palaces. Equally expert at keeping accounts or
pandering to vice, they won their emancipation and
acquired large fortunes in the service of their new masters.
They were usually regarded with disdain, but, as we saw,
Claudius had been driven to associate familiarly with them,
and they attained great power when he ascended the
throne. Rome now discovered a new evil in the Imperial
rule it had adopted. All who wished to approach the
Emperor with a petition had to flatter or bribe the freed-
man Callistus, to whom this part of Claudius's duties
was entrusted. His steward of finances, Pallas, his
secretary. Narcissus, and his adviser in letters, Polybius,
stood at one or other avenue of the palace, and exacted
toll of all who approached. Offices were distributed
through their avaricious hands, and it was soon noticed
that they built magnificent villas in the neighbourhood of
Rome. Whether the rumour was true or not, it was
believed in Rome that some of the noblest ladies paid
an ignominious price to these men for the favours they
sought, or were surrendered to them by the Empress.
It is at all events clear that Messalina soon came to an
understanding with them. Both they and she needed to
dupe the purblind Emperor, and it was felt that a friendly
co-operation would be better than a precarious contest for
supremacy.

Before the end of the first year of Claudius's reign this

64 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

corrupt collusion began to show its influence. Claudius
had begun well. He set to work at once to redress the
injustice and follies of Caligula. A general amnesty was
granted, the courts of justice were purified, the administra-
tion was opened to the abler provincials, and the public
funds were expended on public works of solid usefulness.
How far the freedmen were responsible for these measures
it is difficult to say, but it seems that we must grant
Claudius, not only good will, but some quality of judgment.
At the same time, there is evidence from the first of some
infirmity of mind. His work as a judge seems to have been
more remarkable for industry than enlightenment. On one
occasion an angry knight {eques) threw books at him in the
court-house; on another, during a shortage of corn, the
people pelted him with mouldy crusts in the Forum.
Humane he was, apparently, in those early months, but
he does not seem to have shaken off" his earlier repute and
exhibited any personal dignity.

It was not long before even his humanity was warped
by the malignant persuasions of his wife and the corrupt
connivance of his freedmen. In our age of apologists there
has been some eff'ort to relieve the character of Messalina
from its heavy burden of infamy, or at least to discredit the
evidence adduced for it. I have already said enough about
the Roman authorities to justify one in making some re-
serve in regard to the details transmitted to us about
Messalina. When we read Tacitus we have to remember
that he had before him the memoirs of her bitter enemy
and successor, Agrippina. When we read Suetonius and
Dio and later writers we must not forget their love of
vivid colours and romantic details. Yet these writers had
in their time official records, and something like public
journals, belonging to the earlier period, which put the
malignant and unscrupulous action of Messalina beyond
question ; of the less startling stories of her infidelities we
have proof enough in the remarkable and authentic episode
which will close her career. It cannot reasonably be
doubted that the traditional estimate of the character of

VALERIA MESSALINA 65

Messalina is substantially just, though we must use some
discretion in admitting particular statements about her.

With this reserve we may follow, in fair chronological
order, the career of this young girl of nineteen, who is
dazed by the sudden attainment of Imperial wealth and
power, until, in her twenty-fifth year, her childish efforts
to pierce her bosom with a dagger are ended by the manly
thrust of a soldier's sword. She had borne a daughter,
Octavia, before the accession of her husband, and she was
far advanced in child-bearing when Caligula was assas-
sinated. Claudius, unable to believe his good fortune,
expecting daily that some fresh movement would dislodge
him from the throne, kept in the palace with her. A month
after his accession she bore a son, Tiberius Claudius
Germanicus (later known as Britannicus), and Claudius
ventured out, to exhibit his heir to the people and express
his joy. He never entirely lost his fear. Soldiers served
him at table, and all who approached him were searched.
But his clement and comparatively enlightened ruie won
him some popularity, his gluttony and weak wit were
genially overlooked, and he gave promise of a prosperous
reign.

The first indication of the evil of his feeble dependence
on Messalina and the freedmen occurred before the end
of the year 41. Claudius had recalled from exile Caligula's
sisters, Julia Livilla and Agrippina, and restored their
property. Agrippina, whose character and career will
occupy the next chapter, was in her twenty-fifth year,
Livilla in her twenty-third. Both had the beauty of the
Julian women in its ripest development. Agrippina
quickly realized her situation and discreetly concealed
her ambition, but the younger woman was too proud to
be diplomatic, and she was suspected of an ambition which
she possibly did not entertain. Messalina became jealous,
and denounced her to Claudius for adultery. Claudius
was persuaded that an open trial would entail scandal on
the Imperial family, and the unfortunate woman was exiled
without the chance of defence. She was starved to death

66 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

in her prison shortly afterwards, and, when the further
course of this story has been read, one will hardly hesitate
to accept the assurance of the chroniclers that this grave
crime was committed by the orders of Messalina.

That the charge against Livilla was malignant cannot
be doubted when we learn that her lover was said to be
the famous Stoic moralist, Seneca. The disease of Rome
had already evoked a natural remedy. The austere code
of morals which Zeno had formulated some centuries
earlier in the marble colonnade at Athens was now
adopted by the best of the Romans. Pointing to the
enfeeblement and degradation which this epidemic of
Eastern vice and luxury had brought on their city, the
philosophers argued that the curb must be placed once
more on sensual impulse, and the old virility of Rome
restored. Seneca was the most distinguished representa-
tive of this growing school at Rome, and, ambiguous
or even reprehensible as his conduct may seem to us at
a later stage, we should in this case prefer to attribute
his punishment to the known vice of Messalina rather
than to a frailty on his part of which we have no indica-
tion. The wise and just counsel that he gave to Claudius
was probably distasteful to Messalina and the freedmen.
Without trial or defence he was banished to Corsica. It
is sometimes said that, as Seneca nowhere impeaches the
virtue of Messalina, we may distrust the charge of vice
against her which we find in all the later chroniclers ;
but Seneca also fails to refer to her greater and quite
indisputable misdeeds, so that the omission has no signifi-
cance. Seneca remained in exile six years, and had no
more personal knowledge than Suetonius of the debauches
of Messalina.

Her first success emboldened the Empress. Within a
few months she selected another lady, Julia, the daughter
of Drusus, and denounced her to Claudius. Such virtue
or discernment as Claudius may have possessed was now
attenuated by the sensual excesses in which his wife and
his ministers encouraged him to indulge, and his humanity

VALERIA MESSALINA 6j

was contaminated by the passion for gladiatorial displays
which he gradually contracted. We must not too hastily
admit the lowest estimate of his powers. If OctaVian
could be so long and so easily duped by Julia, we may
admit that Claudius's ignorance was consistent with some
measure of good sense, which he still displayed in pro-
vincial administration and the accomplishment of public
works. But from the end of the first year of his reign
he lends himself so basely and ignobly to the schemes
of Messalina that it is impossible to defend him. No
sooner did his wife accuse Julia than she was banished,
without trial, and it is easy to believe that her speedy
death at the hands of the centurion in charge of her was
due to the orders of Messalina. It was said that Julia
had excited the Empress's suspicions by too tender a
regard for Claudius.

The more prudent Agrippina now sought the protection
of a husband. She is said to have chosen the future
Emperor, Sulpicius Galba, and urged him to divorce his
ailing wife ; but the wife's mother took her part, and
ended the intrigue by boxing Agrippina's ears in public.
The wife died soon afterwards, but Galba feared the
resentment of Messalina too much to wed Agrippina.
She then induced Crispus Passienus, a wealthy and dis-
tinguished noble and a famous orator, to divorce his wife
and marry her. She had inherited a moderate fortune
from an earlier husband — the father of her son, the future
Emperor Nero — and the great wealth and distinction of
Passienus put her in a much stronger position. Passienus
died soon afterwards, leaving his fortune to Agrippina
and Nero. How the fortune was used for the advance-
ment of mother and son, and how Agrippina was
eventually murdered by her son, will be told in the next
chapter. Serviez repeats without hesitation a rumour,
lightly reproduced in one of the chronicles, that she
murdered Passienus to secure the wealth. The charge
is of the most frivolous character. Her husband had
afforded her some protection : a fortune without a

68 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

husband would rather attract than divert the passion
of Messalina.

The year 42 was marked by a conspiracy that un-
happily disposed Claudius more than ever to confide in
Messalina and the freedmen. The troops in Dalmatia
were to be employed in the dethronement of Claudius.
At the last moment, however, the soldiers were startled
by so many and such undeniable signs of the anger
of the gods that they returned to their loyalty and
slew their officers. The standards could not be dragged
out of the ground — a not unnatural event, one would
think, in a Dalmatian winter — and the wreaths had fallen
from the eagles.

The plot was reported to the palace, and Messalina
and the freedmen drew up long lists of men whom it was
desirable to remove or despoil. Wealthier men redeemed
their lives by paying considerable sums ; others were put
to the torture, or were consigned to prison or the grave.
A story is told in the record of this persecution which
should guard us from admitting the common fallacy that
the older spirit of Rome was quite extinct. A distin-
guished patrician heard that his name was on the list
of the condemned. His wife urged him to escape the
ignominy of a public execution by ending his own life,
and, when he hesitated, she buried the dagger in her own
bosom, and then handed it to him with the words, worthy
of a Corneille : " It does not hurt." Another victim was
Appius Silanus, who had married Messalina's mother,
Domitia Lepida. The chroniclers say that his crime was
to have rejected the advances which Messalina made to
him. Whatever the motive was, she induced the freed-
man Narcissus to tell Claudius that he saw, in a dream,
Silanus thrusting a dagger into the Emperor's heart.
Claudius nervously consulted his wife, who confessed,
with artistic horror, that the same dream had frequently
tormented her. They had meantime summoned Silanus
to the palace, and, as he entered at that moment, the
Emperor ordered him to be executed at once.

VALERIA MESSALINA 69

Such are a few of the dark crimes attributed to Messa-
lina that we cannot seriously question, and that fully
prepare us to believe the less inhuman misdeeds which it
might otherwise be possible to doubt. In the following
year (a.d. 43) Claudius went to Britain, leaving his Empress
at Rome. It seems to have been at this time that, unless
we are arbitrarily to set aside one group of charges in
the records and admit another, Messalina indulged in the
practices which have secured for her an unenviable
immortality. The perfectly authentic sequel of the story
will show that she had so extraordinary a disregard for
even the pretence of moral feeling that the statements of
the chroniclers cannot for a moment be set down as im-
probable. In a word, Messalina surpassed Caligula both
in her own misconduct and in the propagation of vice.
Envying the trade of the lowest women of Rome, she had
one of the rooms at the palace equipped on the model of
the chambers of the meretrices in the tenements of the
Subura, put over the door the name of one of the most
notorious women of that caste, Lycisca, and offered the
lascivious embrace of an Empress to any who cared to pay
the price for which she stipulated. Others place the scene
in an actual brothel. Not content with her own abasement,
she compelled the most distinguished ladies of Rome to
follow hel- example. She bestowed the honours and offices,
which Claudius left at her disposal, on the husbands who
would complacently witness the defilement of their wives,
and offered the alternative of her deadly lists to those who
refused. Uncertain as we must always be whether these
statements are not mere exaggerations of her conduct in the
popular mind of the time, they are consistent enough with
the accredited facts of her career.

In the' year 44 Claudius returned with joy to what he
still regarded as the chaste and tender arms of his young
Empress. So lively was his esteem of her virtue that he
obtained from the Senate permission for her to ride in
the ceremonious car {carpentum), an honour which was
restricted to the priestly rank and rigorously forbidden to

^o THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

women. He granted her, also, the signal distinction of
riding in his chariot on the day of his triumphal procession.
The ease with which she duped him led her to fresh
excesses. It is said that when she saw his wine-soaked
body laid to bed at night, she placed one of her maids with
him, and went with the companions of her debauches. If
we may believe a story which has no inherent improb-
ability, and has some confirmation later, she made the
blind Emperor himself purvey to her vices. She one day
complained to Claudius that the popular actor, Mnester,
would not obey her when she commanded him to leave the
stage and enter her private service. Claudius forced him
to do so ; and three years later, when Messalina's conduct
was exposed, Mnester exhibited to the Emperor the scars
on his body which gave proof of Messalina's brutal
familiarity. Even when she used the bronze coinage of
Caligula, which had been withdrawn from circulation, to
make a statue to Mnester, Claudius suspected nothing.

This licentious conduct continued until the year 47.
Messalina was only in her twenty-fifth year when her long
impunity led her to take the step which ruined her. A
bust of her that is preserved at Florence, and a cameo at
Vienna, give a representation of her that we have no
inclination to distrust. The curly golden-yellow hair —
Juvenal tells us its colour — is elaborately dressed over the
low forehead, and the large deep-set eyes are abnormally
close. There is some irregularity in the undeniable beauty
of the face ; and the thin lips and small mouth, drooping
weakly at the corners, would irresistibly suggest a record
of adventure, if such a story were not assigned to her in
the chronicles of the time. With that record before us it
is, no doubt, easy for physiognomists to detect a moral
distortion in the features, and to discover unknown, as
well as verify the known, vices of the Empress in the
truthful marble. Yet any thoughtful observer will be
disposed to see in those pitiless lineaments a revelation
of the truth about Messalina and her race. It is a pic-
ture of strength worn to decay by reiterated storms of

MESyALINA

BUST IN THE UFFIZI PALACE, FLORENCE

VALERIA MESSALINA 71

passion, of beauty fading with the disease which foreruns
death.

One last crime must be added to the record of Messalina
before we come to the crowning folly of her career. There
remained one woman in Rome more beautiful than she;
and one distinguished patrician whose virtue rebuked her,
and whose wealth allured her. She resolved to bury the
two under a common ruin.

Valerius Asiaticus, a patrician of consular rank and
great merit, had withdrawn from Rome to Crete as the
madness of Messalina and the blindness of Claudius
increased. Unhappily for him, he owned the beautiful
and famous garden which Lucullus had laid out on the
summit of the Pincian Hill, and Messalina was now eager
for it. She employed the tutors of her children to declare
to the Emperor that Asiaticus was at the head of an
important faction at Rome, and had gone to fire the Eastern
provinces with his rebellious spirit. The omens which
were reported from the East seemed to Claudius to make
mere human testimony superfluous. The moon had been
darkened by an eclipse, and a new island had risen from
the ^gaean Sea. The Chaldaean sages interpreted these
signs with their customary art, and Asiaticus was brought
to Rome.

He listened in disdain to the charge of conspiracy
and adultery which the tutors, Sosibius and Suillius,
brought against him, but, when they proceeded to accuse
him of unnatural vice, he broke into an angry denial of the
whole accusation. Messalina was present at the trial — a
wholly irregular proceeding, in Claudius's chamber — and
saw that the Emperor was moved. She whispered to
Vitellius, the sycophant who had first discovered Caligula's
divinity and shaded his eyes from the blaze, that Asiaticus
must on no account escape, and left the room. Vitellius, with
ready wit, fell at the feet of the Emperor. He enlarged at
length on the great merits of the accused, and concluded
with an artful plea that Claudius would grant Asiaticus
the favour of being allowed to take his own life, instea4

72 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

of handing him over to the public executioner. Easily
confused by this stratagem, and fancying that he was
showing some clemency, Claudius assented. Asiaticus,
true to the finest traditions of his fathers, returned to his
palace, bathed and supped in perfect tranquillity, and then
'opened his veins. Messalina secured the gardens of
LucuUus.

The lady with whom Asiaticus is said to have offended
was Poppaea Sabina, the only woman in Rome who sur-
passed Messalina in beauty. That would be quite enough
to arouse the jealousy of Messalina, but we are told that
she had the still greater mortification of believing that
Poppaea was too intimate with the actor Mnester, whom
the Empress had appropriated. The daughter of Poppaea
will presently come before our eyes in the gallery of
Roman Empresses, and, if we may infer from her conduct
the nature of her mother's precepts and example, we cannot
set aside the charge as improbable. There is, however, no
need for us to discuss it. No sooner was Asiaticus con-
demned than Messalina sent the news to Poppaea, and she
put an end to her own life. Sosibius received a million
sesterces, in the form of a special reward for his service in
instructing the young princes ; and other ministers to the
cruelty, avarice, and passion of the Empress were richly
endowed.

Messalina now ventured upon so flagrant a violation,
not merely of decency, but of the moderate discretion that
had hitherto concealed her conduct from her husband, that
her career of infamy was brought to a violent close. She
had for some time entertained and indulged a passion for
Caius Silius, one of the most handsome men among the
Roman nobility. Tacitus assures us that there was no
secrecy in the amour. She persuaded Silius to divorce his
wife, visited his house with a large retinue, and made him
repeated gifts of slaves and other property belonging to
the Imperial house. An obscure passage in Tacitus seems
to imply that her impatience of all laws led her to form the
design of marrying Silius while married to Claudius, and

VALERIA MESSALINA 73

the details of what immediately followed have come down
to us in contradictory versions. It is said by some that
Silius proposed to her to remove Claudius and share the
throne with him, and that she hesitated only from fear
that Silius might divorce her as soon as he had secured the
purple. Other writers say that the phoenix appeared in
Egypt, as it had done before the death of Tiberius, and that
the nervous Emperor was further told of a prediction that the
husband of Messalina would die before the end of the year.
In order to cheat this decree of the fates, Suetonius says,
Claudius signed the divorce of Messalina, and went down
to the coast, leaving her free to marry Silius. He intended
to return and recover her as soon as Silius had fulfilled the
prophecy by dying.

It is clear that a good deal of legend has mingled with
the true account of the events which led to Messalina's
downfall, and one can merely try to construct a plausible
story out of the discordant versions. Tacitus, the highest
authority, knows nothing of the prophecy, or the divorce
which it is said to have occasioned. His silence is not
conclusive, and the course attributed to Claudius, however
extravagant it may seem, is not inconsistent with his
abnormally timorous nature. On the whole, however, one
is disposed to agree with Merivale, that Claudius heard of
no prophecy, signed no divorce, and knew nothing of the
liaison until a later stage, as Dio implies. But Merivale
is plainly wrong in suggesting that the marriage of
Messalina and Silius is a libellous legend borrowed from
Agrippina's memoirs. When he submits that such a
marriage could not have taken place without the Emperor's
knowledge, he forgets that, as all the authorities state or
imply, Claudius had left Rome and gone down to the
coast. The Emperor returned to the city as soon as he
heard of the marriage.

The real course of events seems to be that Claudius
was vaguely informed of the existence of a conspiracy
against him. He complained bitterly to the Senate, con-
fined himself for some time to the palace, and then, in

74 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

October, went to Ostia to inspect certain public works
which were in progress there. Delighted at his removal,
Messalina went through the form of marriage — the laxer,
not the more solemn, form (confarreatio) — with Silius, and
cast aside the last shade of reserve. Base as her nature
was, she must have been weary of the nightly spectacle
of the repulsive old man sinking back in satiety on his
couch, while slaves tickled his throat with a feather to
induce a vomit. Silius was young, handsome, and not
without wit. A better future seemed to open before her.
Perhaps the slow-witted Emperor would make no struggle
for his throne ; perhaps the city and the guards would
gladly sacrifice him for this handsome young Imperial pair.
There is calculation in the carven face of Messalina. But
the news was speeding to Ostia, and the dreadful end
was near.

Shortly after the marriage came the festival of the
vintage, the Bacchanalia, which was celebrated by the bride
and bridegroom and their friends with the wildest merri-
ment. That last scene in the licentious career of Messalina
must have made a deep impression on the feeling of Rome,
and it is lit up for ever by one of Tacitus's most vivid
flashes of description. Messalina had bestowed on Silius
the Imperial palace and its contents, and in the garden of
the palace they paid full honour to the orgiastic cult pf
Bacchus. Wine-presses were set up, and the women
of Messalina's company, their white limbs and bosoms
scantily covered with strips of fawn skin, sang and danced
the Bacchic dance round the large vats of grape-juice.
Messalina,. her golden hair flowing loose under her ivy
wreath, shook her thyrsus and led the wild dance. Silius
lay at her feet, crowned with ivy, nodding his head to the air
of the lascivious chorus. Wine flowed freely on that autumn
afternoon, and the gay world and distant Ostia were for-
gotten ; or so little heeded that when Vettius Valens, one
of Messalina's discarded lovers, had, in boyish exuberance,
climbed a high tree, and they crowded round and asked
what he saw, he gaily cried ; " A hurricane from Ostia,"

VALERIA MESSALINA 75

But before the evening was out the hurricane came from
Ostia and scattered the revellers in terror. News was
brought to the garden that Claudius was hurrying to Rome
to avenge his dishonour.

The freedman Narcissus had disliked the idea of Silius
obtaining power, especially as Messalina had recently
taken the ominous step of securing the execution of his
colleague Polybius. In the suite of Claudius at Ostia
were two female attendants, to describe them courteously,
Calpurnia and Cleopatra, who were taken into counsel by
Narcissus, and learned their parts in his scheme. Calpur-
nia flung herself at the feet of the Emperor, crying,
" Messalina is married to Silius." Cleopatra and Narcissus
were summoned by the Emperor, and they assured him
that his life was in danger, and he must hasten to Rome.
Other advisers, who had been trained to their part by
Narcissus, were drawn into the group, and the dazed and
vacillating Claudius yielded to their guidance. He was
at once placed in his chariot, and Vitellius and Narcissus
rode with him. Claudius feebly discussed the news as
they travelled, and Vitellius, not sure which party would
triumph, remained silent ; but the freedman assiduously
fed the slow-kindling anger of the Emperor.

Silius had fled from the Bacchanalian garden to the
Forum, and tried to conceal his part by a zealous absorp-
tion in business. Messalina saw all the companions of
her revels fly for safety, and leave her to face the storm
alone in the palace-garden. From the disordered relics
of the feast she hurried to her Lucullan gardens on the
Pincian. There her courage seems to have revived, and
she determined to make an effort to disarm her husband.
Directing the head of the Vestal Virgins to follow with
her children, she went out upon the road which entered
Rome from Ostia. The news had now spread over Rome.
With three companions only out of the gay throng of
her followers, and Vibidia, the Vestal Virgin, whose person
was sacred, she braved the pitiless gaze of the citizens,
who had so long seen her chariot flash by in triumph, and

76 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

walked on foot to the gate of the city. There her strength
failed, and she was forced to mount the common cart of
a gardener. When they had covered a short distance
from the gates, they saw the Emperor's chariot approach-
ing, and she dismounted. Whether from real affection
for her, or from an indolent dislike of trouble, Claudius
hesitated once more when the piteous figure of his young
wife appeared in his path ; but Narcissus reminded him
of her marriage, and ordered the charioteer to drive on.
Her last despairing appeal was unheeded. The chariot
galloped on, and left her standing on the road. A little
further on the Vestal Virgin, relying on her high position,
demanded that Claudius should grant his wife an oppor-
tunity of defending herself, and thrust his children before
him. The sight of his beloved Octavia and Britannicus
again moved the wavering Emperor. Narcissus bade the
charioteer drive onward, and Messalina slowly turned to
meet her fate in Rome.

In order to dispel the last shade of tenderness from
the Emperor's mind, Narcissus conducted him first to the
house of Silius, and showed him the treasures of the
Imperial palace which Messalina had showered on her
lover. He then led him to the camp of the Prastorian
Guards, and induced him to make a speech to the soldiers.
The feeble spirit of the Emperor was cowed by the full
revelation of Messalina's perfidy. Now completely docile
to the masterful freedman, he took his place at the tri-
bunal, and passed sentence of death, which was at once
carried out, on Silius, Mnester, Vettius Valens, and all
Messalina's accomplices. Mnester vainly stripped off his
robe, to show that he had received from the Empress
rather the imprint of her anger than the embraces of
which he was accused. The Emperor signed the doom
of all, and returned wearily to the palace. Restored by
food and wine, he began to resist the dictation of Nar-
cissus, and ordered him to inform Messalina that he would
hear her on the morrow. The freedman knew that a
delay would ruin tis design. He left the room, and told

VALERIA MESSALINA tj

the guard that the Emperor had commanded the imme-
diate execution of his wife.

Messalina had returned to her garden on the Pincian,
where she was joined by her mother. Night had come
on, and they sat in an arbour debating the mad brilliance
of the past and the terrible gloom of the future. Domitia
Lepida felt that there was no hope of recovering the favour
of Claudius, and urged her daughter to end her life as
Roman tradition prescribed. Strong only in her clinging
to life, like most of the other frail women of the Juhan
house, Messalina fell at her mother's feet and sobbed.
Presently the stillness of the deserted garden was broken
by the tramp of soldiers and a summons at the gate. Still
Messalina shrank from the eternal darkness which she
had so suddenly confronted. Only when the officer of
the guard told her the order that Narcissus had given
him, and the freedman who had come with the guard
began insolently to revile her for her crimes, did she take
the dagger from her mother's hands. In the light of the
single lamp of the arbour the little group looked on with
pity and disdain, as the nerveless hands of Messalina
lacerated her white bosom with futile gashes. Then the
tribune mercifully drove his sword through her heart.
Her children came up, and found their mother's lifeless
body in a pool of blood.

This authentic closing of the career of Messalina must
dispose us to think that there may be little or no exaggera-
tion in the stories that are told of her. Stahr, in his
brilliant apologetic study of the Empresses, ventures to say
that Seneca did not reproduce these stories about Messa-
lina because he knew that they came from the pen of an
embittered libeller; and it is safe to assume that Tacitus
did derive much of his material from the memoirs of the
woman who had shrunk from the vindictive cruelty of
Messalina, and came in time to replace her. But so much
crime is authoritatively laid to the account of the Empress,
and her l^st adventure reveals so shameless a disregard of
either law or decency, that not a single detail is incredible

;8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

or improbable. We shall find such excesses ascribed to
later Emperors, by writers who were not merely recording
rumours that may have gathered volume during decades
of passage from mouth to mouth, that nothing can be
deemed impossible to a Messalina. The humane biographer
can but plead that she entered a world of the most dazzling
allurement of vice and crime with a nature already tainted
and distorted by the sins of her fathers, and that the horror
of that last scene in the gardens of Lucullus may be left
as a merciful shroud over her unhappy memory.

CHAPTER V

THE MOTHER OF NERO

TACITUS has given us a spirited picture of life in the
Imperial palace during the months which followed
the execution of Messalina. Claudius himself had
sunk into a state of drowsy indifference when the storm
excited by his discovery had spent itself. " Where is the
Empress?" he asked, as he sat at supper the night after
her death, and noticed the empty place on the couch.
Narcissus told him that she was dead, and he asked no
more. But the palace about his slumbering figure soon
began to hum with conflicting intrigues for the succession
to her chamber. Ladies who had visited the Palatine with
nervous prudence while Messalina lived now came to dis-
play their charms, and express their tenderness, to the
doting Emperor. From the sombre night of the tragedy
Rome passed with relief to the light enjoyment of the new
comedy. The freedmen, who surrounded and controlled
Claudius, selected their candidates.

Claudius had inserted one sentiment of his own in the
speech which Narcissus had induced him to make to the
Praetorian Guards. He had sworn that he would not
marry again. There were ladies in his household, such as
Calpurnia and Cleopatra, who would encourage the resolu-
tion; but the freedmen decided that he was bound to
capitulate under so fair a siege, and it would be better
to have some share in the making of the new Empress.
Each of the Greeks chose a different lady. Narcissus, who
had been promoted to high public service for his zeal,

79

8o THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

favoured the suit of ^Elia Paetina, whom Claudius had
lightly divorced twenty-one years before. Callistus took
up the cause of Lollia Paulina, the wealthy and beautiful
woman whom Caligula had torn from her husband and
used so unjustly. The steward, Pallas, was more fortunate
in his choice. He advocated marriage with Agrippina ;
and, as the mind of Agrippina coincided more decisively
with that of her champion than seems to have happened
in the case of her rivals, his campaign succeeded. She
discovered a most tender and considerate affection for
her uncle, visited him assiduously, and persuaded him to
betroth his daughter Octavia to her son Lucius Domitius
(later Nero).

Octavia was already betrothed, and Agrippina is said
to have removed the first obstacle to her designs by a cruel
and unscrupulous act. We are told that she induced,
and it is at least clear that she permitted, the sycophantic
courtier Vitellius, who favoured her suit, to accuse the
young man, to whom Octavia was betrothed, of incest
with his daughter-in-law. Tacitus has so mean an estimate
of the young people and their generation that he does
not regard the charge as a serious libel. He insists,
however, that Agrippina had the case against them forged,
and thus opened her dark Imperial career with a crime.

We are now approaching the generation in which the
great historian lived, and we are considering the very
woman whose memoirs furnished him with his more
serious charges against her rivals and predecessors. It
may therefore seem strange that, if we are to follow our
authorities with docility, we must ascribe a very vicious
and unscrupulous character to Agrippina herself. We have
rejected the rumour that she poisoned her second husband,
but that is by no means the only charge that is brought
against her before she married Claudius. The authorities
uniformly assert that she had had incestuous relations
with Caligula in her early teens, had been notorious for her
amours during the life of Messalina, and now very flagrantly
placed such honour as she had at the disposal of Claudius.

THE MOTHER OF NERO 8i

These charges we cannot control. We shall find even
more serious accusations against her later, and shall have
to regard them with reserve or frank incredulity. It
was the literary fashion to make a consort of the Caesars
imperial in her vices. On the whole, however, we are
compelled to think that the eldest daughter of Agrippina
and Germanicus had the taint of her stock. She inherited
the virile ambition of her mother, and she had even less
scruple in pursuing it. The best that can be said for her
is that she aimed rather at making the future of her son
than her own. And when that son proves to be the
Emperor Nero, the murderer of his mother, we are disposed
to read her record with the lenient eye of pity.

When the elder Agrippina had been banished by
Tiberius, as we saw, in the year 12 a. a, her children
were brought up in the house of their grandmother
Antonia. In this plain home of old Roman virtue
Caligula is said to have infected and corrupted all his
sisters. Agrippina left it, in her thirteenth year, to
marry Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus. As the authorities
are sharply divided in regard to his character, we cannot
trace his influence in the development of her character.
He died in the year 40, leaving her with a three-year-old
boy, Lucius Domitius. Agrippina was still a young and
beautiful woman, and is said to have availed herself of
the loose morals of Roman society until, as we saw, the
attitude of Messalina forced her to marry. She was soon
a widow for the second time, with considerable wealth. Her
ambition revived at the death of Messalina, and she paid
the most winning and flagrant attentions to Claudius. We
should go beyond the letter of the chronicles if we sug-
gested that she bribed Vitellius and Pallas to promote her
suit. It is enough to say that they overcame the reluctance
of Claudius, and they profited materially by her accession
to the throne.

Claudius professed that he had a scruple about marrying
his niece, and proposed to adopt her as his daughter.
That empty honour was hardly recompense enough for
6

82 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

the daily contemplation of his senility and sensuality.
Vitellius induced him to submit his delicate feeling to
the Senate and the people, and then artfully represented
to the Senators that, if Claudius married Agrippina, she
might rid them of the hated influence of the freedmen.
Tacitus, whose disdain for the obsequious Senate of the
early Empire always aggravates his comments on their
conduct, describes how they raced each other to the palace
to inform Claudius of their decision, and how the people
not improbably incited by Vitellius, assembled below the
Palatine Hill and clamoured for the marriage. The obtuse
and weak-willed Claudius assented, and a few days later,
in the year 49, Agrippina became the sixth Empress of
Rome. Little did she dream that she was entering upon
the last decade of her eventful life, and that it would close
with the most ghastly horror.

She was in her thirty-third year, Claudius in his fifty-
eighth. Years of sensual indulgence had not improved
his character or his intelligence, and no one in Rome
can have expected him to live more than the few years
which remained for him. Agrippina was looking to the
time when she would be sole mistress of the Empire.
The fine statue of her which is exhibited in the Lateran
Museum has a moral physiognomy so concordant with
the authentic record of her career that we picture her
to ourselves with confidence. In face and figure she is
all that the word imperial suggests to the imagination.
Haughty, strong, and reposeful in her self-reliance, she
has lost the last shade of apprehension with the passing of
Messalina, and has the majestic air of a mistress of the
world. Her low brow and large, finely-carved oval face
are said by some physiognomists to have every mark
of purity and refinement, but the close observer will dis-
cover in her features only such a refinement of passion
as her ambition would lead us to expect. In a word, it
is the face of a woman who will not stoop to vice or crime
to gratify a sensual impulse, but may have recourse to
either when her ambition lends it a certain expediency.

AIJRIHPINA THE VOUNGEK

BUST, MUS. NAZ., NAfLES

THE MOTHER OF NERO 83

The career of Agrippina shows that she really was a
moral opportunist of this character. We need not pass
any censure on her ambition. Unhappy would be the
State in which men and women were not at times fired
by the impulse to exert their powers more energetically
than their fellows. But it is impossible to ignore the
persistent and harmonious statements of the Latin historians
in regard to the way in which Agrippina pursued her
ambition. We may overlook the amorous adventures of
her earlier years ; we may reject, as a light and implausible
rumour, eagerly caught up by prurient diarists, the charge
that she made any dishonourable advances to Claudius
before her marriage, or to the steward Pallas or her son
Nero at later dates ; and we may hesitate to admit that she
was concerned in the murder of Claudius. But we cannot
find any other motive than a not too nice ambition in her
marrying the aged and repulsive Emperor, and we have
strong reason to suspect her of conduct that is little short
of criminal in many of the events that follow,

The most formidable of her rivals for the throne had
been Lollia Paulina. Beautiful, wealthy, and popular, the
former wife of Caligula seemed to threaten Agrippina's
security. In their eagerness to avoid the rock of hereditary
power the Romans had steered their vessel into the
Charybdis of intrigue, and any prominent man or , woman
was regarded with concern by the one who wore the
purple, or aspired to wear it. Agrippina had a strong and
legitimate hope, but no guarantee, that her son would
succeed. Messalina's son, young Britannicus, was ailing
and epileptic, and was generally ignored in the speculations
as to the succession. It was, therefore, quite natural that
Roman gossip should accuse Agrippina of destroying
Paulina, and Tacitus is not less generous in recording the
charges against her than in admitting her slanders against
Livia. He affirms positively that it was the Empress who
persuaded Claudius to have Paulina prosecuted on the
charge of consulting oracles and astrologers as to the
duration of his marriage, and that, when her property was

84 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

confiscated and she was sent into exile, Agrippina sent a
soldier to compel her to commit suicide. Dio, as usual,
improves upon the narrative. He describes Agrippina
gloating over the bleeding head of her rival, as Fulvia had
rejoiced over the head of Cicero, and opening the mouth
to see certain peculiarities of the teeth by which it might
be identified.

The fatal defect of Dio's more vivid account is that, as
we know from Pliny, the double canine teeth, of which he
speaks, belonged to Agrippina herself, not to Paulina, and
were regarded as a sure presage of good fortune. The
substance of the story, however, we cannot lightly reject.
A beautiful and happy woman was driven to death for no
graver cause than, at the most, an idle patronage of the
Oriental charlatans who then abounded in Rome ; and, since
this consultation of oracles was common, there must have
been a special reason for the selection of Paulina. The
motive suggested by Tacitus is only too probable. He
adds that Agrippina also banished a lady named Calpurnia.
If we may identify this lady with the Calpurnia whose
services to Claudius were so amiable as to embolden her
to disclose to him the crimes of his beloved Messalina, she
would hardly remain long in the palace of Agrippina.

Apart from such episodes as these, in which jealousy
or avarice led her to make an unworthy use of her power,
she ruled judiciously and serviceably. Claudius was in his
sixtieth year. His poor mind was in complete decay, and
it was both fitting and useful that Agrippina should rule
in his name. The coinage of the time bears witness of her
activity. There is, in fact, a living memorial of her rule
in the city of Cologne, which, under the title of Colonia
Agrippina, she established as an outpost of civilization on
the farthest confines of the Empire. She gave dignity and
etiquette to the easy-going court of Claudius, had the right
to enter the precincts of the Capitol and to ride in the
gilded imperial chariot of ceremony, and, when the famous
British prince Caractacus was brought to Rome, her throne
was raised by the side of that of the Emperor. The older

THE MOTHER OF NERO 85

Roman idea of woman's sphere was now discredited by
the philosophers and contemptuously ignored by the
women themselves, but the citizens moved slowly, and
there was much discontent and consulting of astrologers.
They were expelled from the city, but in the guarded
chambers of patrician families they continued, in imposing
Chaldaean dress, to scan horoscopes and wave preternatural
wands over their symbolical tripods — much as they do in
Bond Street to-day. The more enlightened reader, who
is disposed to regard the superstition with leniency, must
reflect that the prophets might at times, for the vindication
of their art, be tempted to lend a little human aid when
nature tarried in bringing about the deaths which the
planets had so plainly foretold.

Within the palace the whole care of Agrippina was
centred in the education of her son for the purple. To the
delight of Rome, she recalled the philosopher Seneca from
exile, and gave him charge of her son's studies. When
the real character of Nero was revealed in later years, it
was said that Seneca had always disliked his task, and had
even predicted that the boy would become a savage monster.
Seneca himself merely says that the boy was spoiled, and
his training thwarted, by his mother. Nero would fly to
Agrippina when Seneca had made some attempt to check
his wayward impulses, and the whole lesson would be''
lost in her injudicious caresses. Apart from this not
unnatural weakness, Agrippina made the most commend-
able efforts to prepare her son for the throne. The corrupt
tutor whom Messalina had brought to the palace was
dismissed — Dio says that he was executed for attempting
the life of Lucius Domitius — to make way for the most
distinguished moralist of the time, and the military instruc-
tion was entrusted to Burrus, whose integrity we shall
learn presently. Pallas was rewarded with such honours
as no freedmen had ever borne before, and Vitellius was
rescued from some obscure charge of conspiracy and
restored to his rank.

Agrippina was now in a position of very great wealth

86 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

and power. She drove about Rome in a superb chariot,
flaunted the stored jewels of the Imperial house, and
received presents from the ends of the earth. A white
nightingale, which had cost 6,000 sesterces, and a talking
thrush were amongst the rare presents sent to conciliate
her. The lingering of Claudius must have been irksome
to her, but it was necessary to secure the succession of
her son before the Emperor died. The one apparent
obstacle was the boy Britannicus, who, as the son of
Claudius and Messalina, had a juster title to be chosen.
He was, however, subject to epileptic fits, delicate in
health, and peevish in temper. Agrippina had little diffi-
culty in thrusting him aside in favour of her own handsome
and engaging boy. The toga virilis, or garment of the
man, was usually donned by the Roman youth in his
seventeenth year, but the age was anticipated in the case
of princes, and Domitius was to receive it at the end of
the year 50. During the year, however, the convulsions
of nature so plainly portended some momentous event,
probably the passage of Claudius to join his divine fore-
runners, that Agrippina pressed for the immediate perform-
ance of the rite. Three suns were seen in the sky, an
earthquake shook the solid earth, and birds of evil omen
rested on the temple. Claudius assented, and manhood
and other high distinctions were prematurely conferred
on the future Emperor, whose name was changed to Nero.
He joined the priestly college, received the authority of
a proconsul, marched at the head of the guards, and drew
the attention of all at the games by the insignia of his
manly dignities, while Britannicus sat in the prcetexta and
bulla of the boy. It was Nero who pleaded in the Senate
for distressed cities, Nero who was made praetor when
Claudius was absent from Rome. In the year 52 he was
married to Octavia, and all Rome regarded him as the
virtual heir to the throne.

There can be no serious doubt that Agrippina had no
affection for Claudius, and must have waited impatiently
for his removal when the succession was secured for her

THE MOTHER OF NERO 87

son. Certainly Rome held that view, and interpreted the
events of the succeeding years in accordance with it.
We must therefore be prepared to find much libellous
conjecture in the chronicles about this time. Serviez, who
can never resist the fascination of scandal, gives us a
lively picture of Agrippina stooping to any expedient
course of vice or crime in the furtherance of her ambition.
We may have to tell a less romantic story, but it will be
romantic enough.

It is clear that the Empress now entered into a conflict
with Narcissus, the freedman who had ruined Messalina,
and had then favoured the suit of .^lia Psetina in opposi-
tion to her own. Her critics suggest that she wished to
remove this faithful servant in order to attempt the life of
the Emperor more easily, but the suggestion is superfluous.
Narcissus had found the rival freedman Pallas raised to
such high honours, and felt that his own service in exposing
Messalina had been so soon forgotten, that he clearly
intrigued against Agrippina. Tacitus says that it was
he who spread the rumour, which reached the ears of
Claudius, that Agrippina was too intimate with Pallas.
We are quite unable to examine the truth or untruth of
this charge, and may dismiss it. Agrippina took an early
occasion to attack and discredit the Greek. In the centre
of the Italian hills was a sheet of water, the Fucine Lake,
which had no regular outlet, and often caused disastrous
floods. Claudius ordered that a channel should be made
to conduct its superfluous water to the river, and celebrated
the opening of it, in the year 52, with a naval battle on
the lake. Three thrones were erected : one for the nodding,
heavy-paunched Emperor, who had somehow been squeezed
into glittering armour, one for Agrippina, in her robes of
gold cloth, and one for Nero.

The play did not run smoothly, and Agrippina did not
spare Narcissus, who controlled it. The great ships drew
up before the Emperor, and the men who were about to
risk or lose their lives to entertain him rang out the
usual salutation. Forgetting that if he returned the salute

88 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

he absolved them from their dangerous duty, Claudius
hailed them, and they claimed the right to abstain. The
Emperor is described by Suetonius as running alongside the
lake, angrily urging them to fight. The battle proceeded,
but at the close it was found that the water could not
be released, and Narcissus was bitterly assailed. The
performance was repeated later, when the works were
pronounced complete, but a number of people were
drowned, and the quarrel was renewed with spirit. Agrip-
pina suggested that the funds for the undertaking had been
diverted ; Narcissus foiled the attack with a charge of
ambition against the Empress.

The Emperor was visibly failing, and there was great
excitement at Rome when, at the beginning of the year 54,
nature announced once more that some stirring chapter
was to run from the reel of the fates. The standards and
tents of the soldiers were enveloped in mysterious flames ;
a rain of blood, in which a modern naturalist would doubt-
less discover an innocent microbe, spread terror over one
part of the Empire, and the birth of a pig with claws like
those of a hawk caused equal consternation in another;
while Rome heard, with reiterated shocks, that the doors
of the temple of Jupiter had been opened by unseen hands,
and a horrible comet, followed by the customary pestilence,
had appeared in its skies. More significant still to prudent
people, perhaps, was the report that Claudius, returning
to dine at the palace after presiding at the trial of an
adultress, gloomily observed that he had been unfortunate
in his marriages ; he had punished one unfaithful wife, and
would know how to deal with another.

In this observation of Claudius we need see no more
than an echo of the whispers of Narcissus, but one can
imagine how Rome must have throbbed with expectation
and abounded in gossip at the beginning of the year 54.
Nor was this faith in natural oracles disappointed. Two
tragedies were added to the sombre chronicle of the city
in that year, and in both of them our Empress is accused
of having acted criminally.

THE MOTHER OF NERO 89

The first was the condemnation to death of one of the
greatest ladies of Rome, Domitia Lepida, sister-in-law of
the Empress ; and in this case there is every reason to
suspect a guilty action on the part of Agrippina. When
Agrippina had been exiled by Caligula, her boy had lived
for a few years with his father's sister, Domitia Lepida,
the mother of Messalina. Lepida was far more indulgent
even than Agrippina to the pretty and wayward child,
and, when the mother returned to Rome and he was
restored to her, there was an acrimonious struggle between
the two women for his affection. As it became clear that
he would inherit the purpk, the struggle became more
passionate. Narcissus saw in it an opportunity to escape
the ruin which would befall him if Agrippina obtained
full power, and, on the ground of his charge of incon-
stancy against the Empress, he urged Claudius to make
Lepida guardian of Nero. It is very probable that this
intrigue of Narcissus is the only source of the charge
of license brought against the Empress in her mature
years.

Angry and anxious, in view of the expected death of
Claudius, she took a bold step, and impeached Lepida
of criminal conduct. How far Lepida was guilty we can-
not say, but as she was charged only with assailing the
Emperor's marriage with imprecations, and exercising so
little control over her Calabrian slaves as to endanger
the public peace, the prudent reader will acquit Agrippina
of anything more than an exaggeration of the facts. That
exaggeration sufficed, however, to ruin her distinguished
rival. Nero, schooled by his mother, gave witness that
his aunt had tried to alienate his affection; her very
natural comments on the Emperor's marriage were made
to assume the dark form of magical imprecations ; she
was condemned to death.

But those lively convulsions of nature had portended
something more momentous than the death of a noble
matron, and Rome continued to wait for the great tragedy.
Before long it was announced that Narcissus had retired

90 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

to Sinuessa for the treatment of his gout.^ The Emperor
was now entirely surrounded by adherents of Agrippina,
and we can quite understand the conviction of Rome
when Claudius was taken seriously ill at a banquet, and
died within twenty-four hours. Tacitus emphatically
attributes his death to his wife. Suetonius alone says
that, while it was certain that Claudius was poisoned, it
was not certain who was guilty; a feeble reserve, since
Agrippina was so predominantly interested in his death.

It is not surprising that recent historians have generally
followed Tacitus. Roergas de Serviez, who rarely has
such ample authority for the crimes he loves to attribute,
fastens the murder on Agrippina without the least hesita-
tion. Merivale sees no ground to question it, though he
points out several inconsistencies in the pages of Tacitus.
Mr. Henderson follows the traditional story in his recent
and discriminating study of the reign of Nero.^ But Mr.
Baring-Gould insists that the death of Qaudius was quite
natural, and any candid student of the evidence must
admit that it is inconclusive.

The facts are that on October 12th, a.d. 54, Claudius
attended a banquet of -the priestly college with Agrippina.
After eating some mushrooms (or figs, according to others)
from a dish that was served, he became violently ill and
vomited. He was taken back to the palace, attended by
his (and Agrippina's) physician, but gradually sank, and
died on the morning of the 13th. The theory of the
opponents of Agrippina is that she employed a notorious
poisoner, Locusta— a Gaulish woman, who was certainly
in Rome at the time, and was afterwards employed by
Nero — to concoct a slow poison (" a drug that would
disturb his mind and inflict a slow death," says Tacitus).
This is supposed to have been inserted in a fine mushroom
(or fig), which was taken by Claudius when Agrippina

' Tacitus, who is followed by Merivale and other historians, makes
Claudius also retire to Sinuessa. This is probably an error, as the Emperor
fell ill and died at Rome.

' " The Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero,' 1903,

THE MOTHER OF NERO 91

had eaten one from the dish to encourage him. He fell
back and began to vomit, and the theory runs that Agrip-
pina, fearing that he might recover and suspect her, called
in the physician Xenophon, a dependent of hers, who
tickled the Emperor's throat with a poisoned feather and
made an end of him.

Mr. Baring-Gould points out that, since Tacitus ex-
pressly describes the poison as " slow," Agrippina could
hardly be surprised and alarmed when it did not take
immediate effect. He concludes that Claudius contracted
a violent indigestion from eating too many figs.'^^ This is
no more convincing than the opposite theory. An attack
of vomiting, whether from a natural cause or as an un-
intended effect of poison, might easily alarm Claudius,
who was very suspicious, and so induce Agrippina to act.
An attack of indigestion, on the other hand, would hardly
have so violent and immediate an effect. The circumstance
of tickling his throat with a feather to cause a vomit, and
at the same time introducing poison, is puzzling ; but it
was an age of skill in poisoning, and the feat may have
been possible. The question must remain open. The
discrepancies in the narrative are not fatal to it, but the
Story itself is no more than a retailing of Roman gossip,
which was at all times more prurient than scrupulous.
The problem really turns on the character of Agrippina,
and this is ambiguous enough to make us hesitate. One
may scan the record of her career with the most pene-
trating charity without discovering any plain indication
of high character, while the ruin of Lollia Paulina, Domitia
Lepida, and others, may be confidently traced to her. We
can only conclude that she was quite capable of accelerating
the death of her husband, and would have no light interest
in doing so ; but the circumstances of his death are quite
consistent with the kindlier view that it was due to his
own intemperance. We have not yet, however, reached
the close o*f her career, and it may be felt that her conduct
after the death of Claudius confirms the darker estimate
of her character.

92 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

The malcontents of Rome would be sure to agitate in
favour of Britannicus unless the succession was secured
for Nero before the death of Claudius was known. The
art with which Agrippina averted this danger may excite
our admiration of her virility and astuteness, but must
inevitably lessen our appreciation of her sensibility. She
announced that Claudius was dangerously ill, and called
an assembly of the Senate. Conscious that the servants
of a palace commonly draw their pay from some one
without, she put guards at every approach to the chamber
of the dead man, and devised and carried out a tragi-
comedy of the most extraordinary character. The clothes
were drawn over the lifeless body, bandages and poultices
were ostentatiously applied to it by her servants, and even
the mimes, who had been Avont to dance and ring their
bells and crack their jokes before the Emperor, were
brought in to perpetrate their follies in the chamber of
death. In a neighbouring room Agrippina joined her
conjugal sobs with the laments of the youthful Britan-
nicus. We are asked to believe, and we have little diffi-
culty in believing, that while she clung in tears to the
weeping youth, she was merely, with cold calculation,
preventing him from leaving the palace, lest he should
fall in the way of the Guards, or some ambitious partisan,
and be proclaimed Emperor.

By noon the preparations of her agents were completed.
The gates of the palace were thrown open, and Nero was
sent out, under the care of his military tutor Burrus, the
commander of the Guards. A few voices were heard to
mutter the name of Britannicus, but the cry was feeble,
and the response insignificant. The Guards were long
accustomed to see the superiority of Nero over the
sickly young prince, and their support was secured by
a liberal promise of money. They conducted Nero to
the Senate, and bade that helpless body accept him.
The same evening a courier from Agrippina brought
word to Sinuessa that Nero was Emperor. Narcissus
had lost, and his figure passes from the scene — with the

THE MOTHER OF NERO 93

inevitable rumour that he was imprisoned or poisoned
by Agrippina.

When the Guards came to Nero that night for the
watchword he gave them "The best of mothers," and
Agrippina looked confidently from her supreme height
into the future. Within five years her son would put her
to death with horrible brutality, and jeer at her naked
body. No one of the hundreds of thousands who hailed
him with the wildest delight, and smiled at his amiable
irregularities, can have foreseen so rapid and portentous
a degradation. He was then a youth of seventeen, strik-
ingly handsome both in face and figure, with blue-grey
eyes and light curly hair and finely proportioned limbs.
His tutor in arms pronounced him " a young Apollo."
But his moral and intellectual trainer had failed as signally
as his physical trainer had succeeded. Seneca had vainly
endeavoured to implant in his mind the germs of the
noble Stoic philosophy. Men have disputed from all time
whether it was the teacher or the doctrine that was at
fault, while the eugenic school of our time would relieve
both from censure, and regard Nero's mind as an incur-
ably corrupt soil. One may venture to differ from both,
and wonder if circumstances had not the greater share
in his demoralization. However that may be, his accession
to irresponsible power at such an age, in such surround-
ings as we shall discover about him, was a tragedy.
His real advisers were young men, slightly older than
himself, and better versed in the ways of luxury and vice ;
and the first use he made of his Imperial power was to
toss aside the treatises of the moralists, and give his
whole attention to art, to chariot-racing, and to dissipation.
What sinister use he made of the later hours, or earlier
hours, of the day, and in what melancholy condition his
girl-wife 'must have been, we shall see in the next chapter.
Here we have to consider only his relations with his
mother.

For a few years after Nero's accession his mother
willingly and profitably ruled in his name. It must not

94 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

be imagined that she had, with the astuteness of a Marie
de' Medici, educated him in an indifference to politics so
that she might indulge her own ambition. The appoint-
ment of Seneca as his tutor is the most creditable, though
unhappily the most futile, act of her career. When, how-
ever, the young Emperor refused to be interested in any
problem graver than the art of driving a chariot or playing
the flute, she undertook his Imperial duties, or continued
to have that share in the ruling of the Empire which she
had had under Claudius. She received embassies, was
surrounded by a special German guard when she went
abroad, and was associated with Nero on the coinage. It
would be difficult to measure with any precision the in-
fluence which she had on Roman affairs during this period,
since Seneca and Burrus had an equal, if not greater, part
in the government ; but it may be recalled, with some
honour to her, that the first four years of Nero's reign were
amongst the happiest and most prosperous that Rome
witnessed during the first century.

The first thing to trouble her prosperous and happy
use of power was a certain discontent arising from the old
prejudice against women in politics. The Senators were
annoyed because she injudiciously listened to their debates.
They met at this time in the Imperial library, and the
Empress had a door pierced into it from the palace, and
sat listening behind a curtain. The Senators are said to
have punished her indiscretion by making unflattering
remarks in the course of the debates, though it is difficult
to believe that they were still capable of so courageous a
protest. On one occasion an important embassy came to
Rome from Armenia, and Agrippina declared that she
would sit by the side of Nero when he received it. This
seems to have been a startling innovation, and Seneca had
to avert trouble by advising Nero to descend from his
throne, when his mother entered, and lead her affectionately
from the room.

An incident that shortly occurred gave a nucleus for the
crystallization of this diffused annoyance. A distinguished

THE MOTHER OF NERO 95

noble, Junius Silanus, died, and the familiar whisper of
foul play went once more through all classes of the citizens.
His brother Lucius Silanus was the young noble who had
been betrothed to Octavia, and had so cruelly been
separated from her by Agrippina. Was it not natural
that Junius Silanus should wish to avenge his younger
brother, and that Agrippina should detect his plot and
have him removed ? Tacitus and Dio fully believed this.
As in so many of these cases, however, the only ground
for the charge, as far as we know, is the fact that Silanus
undoubtedly died, and we will not waste time in discussing
it. The Senator had so little of the conspirator in him
that even Caligula used to call him " the golden sheep."
But Rome was convinced that the Empress was guilty, and
the story spread, and is fully accepted by Tacitus, that she
meditated a long series of executions of the men who had
opposed her progress, and that Seneca and Burrus had to
restrain her bloody vindictiveness.

One may decline to accept this charge on such poor
and disputable evidence ; but Agrippina now incurred the
anger of her son, and descended rapidly from the height
of her power. The young Emperor had, as I said, used
his Imperial license to ignore his tutors and indulge his
low and sensual tastes. He attracted to his side a band of
the most dissipated youths in the city, and his nightly
exploits were the talk of Rome. One of the less hurtful
of his indulgences was his passion for Acte, a beautiful
freed slave from the Eastern market, whom Dumas has
made familiar. Agrippina resented the liaison — apparently
from a sense of justice to Octavia — and rebuked Nero. He
turned on her with violence the moment she tried to check
his licentious ways, and threatened to discharge her
favourite Pallas. Agrippina was alarmed. She saw a
powerful party, deeply hostile to herself, growing up about
her son, and she felt that the support of Seneca and Burrus
was being withdrawn. She ceased to speak of Acte, and
regarded with silent distress the coarse ways that her son
was exhibiting on the streets every night. A reconciliation

96 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

at this heavy price could not last. Shortly afterwards
Nero sent her some rich jewels and robes from the Imperial
treasures. She chose to regard this as a reminder that
the Imperial wardrobe was no longer at her disposal, and
angrily refused the gifts.

Pallas was at once impeached for treason. The charge
was so clumsy, and Seneca defended him so ably, that he
had to be acquitted ; but Agrippina forgot discretion in
her victory. In the course of a quarrel with Nero, she
threatened to retire to the camp of the Praetorian Guard
with Britannicus and have him proclaimed Emperor. The
only effect of this was to open Nero's long career of crime.
The few months — we are still at the beginning of the
year 55 — of unrestrained license and flattery had destroyed
the little moral restraint that Seneca had taught him, and
he determined to murder Britannicus. In the Roman
prison was the skilled poisoner, Locusta, whom Agrippina
was believed to have employed in the murder of her
husband. Nero ordered her to prepare a deadly poison,
and, when the iirst preparation failed, he had her brought
to the palace. With blows and oaths he forced her to
prepare a more deadly drug under his eyes, and it was
used the same evening. Britannicus sat with his friends
on one of the couches in the dining-hall at the palace, and
asked for a drink. It was winter-time, and the wine (not
soup, as Serviez says) was heated. He complained that it
was too hot, and the poison was administered with the
cooling water, so that the taster would not need to take
a second sip.

A great horror fell upon the room as Britannicus, writh-
ing with pain, sank to the floor. Octavia sat in silent terror
by the side of her husband, who carelessly observed that
Britannicus had one of his usual epileptic fits. Agrippina
openly betrayed her horror and disgust, and from that date
was regarded by her son with bitter hostility. Whether
or no it be true that Nero whitened with chalk the spots
which broke out on the body, the substance of the story
cannot be discredited. It is true that Nero was yet in his

THE MOTHER OF NERO 97

eighteenth year only, but his conduct had been vicious and
unbridled to a criminal extent. Within a very short time
we shall find him sinking to the lowest depths of brutality.
The fact that he is praised in the treatise " On Clemency,"
which Seneca wrote about that time, can only show either
that the too indulgent tutor refused to believe the crime, or
that, as we have too many reasons to know, the distinguished
Stoic came perilously close to that art of casuistry in which
moralists of many schools have been apt to excel.

In her abhorrence of the foul deed Agrippina drew
closer to the tender and virtuous Octavia, and confronted
Nero with a sternness that had been too long delayed.
The breach between them widened. One day Nero ordered
that two and a half million denarii should be given to his
favourite secretary. Agrippina had the mass of coin brought
under the eyes of the Emperor, to make him realize his
extravagance. He laughingly observed that he did not
think the sum was so small, and ordered it to be doubled.
The more lavishly he squandered, the more carefully
Agrippina saved, until the frivolous or malicious companions
of his revels suggested that she was gathering funds for the
purpose of dethroning him. He at once withdrew the guard
he had given her, and ordered her to leave his palace.

Agrippina had enjoyed only for one year the power
which she had sought so long. She was yet only in her
fortieth year. The envoys of kings had sued humbly at
her feet, and her litter and guard had flashed through the
streets of Rome with an impression of greatness that no
other woman then known had ever possessed. But the
reins passed from her hands to her brutal son and his
despicable courtiers. From the palace she passed, with a
few devoted followers, to the small mansion of her grand-
mother Antonia, and the sycophantic courtiers deserted
her. Graver citizens, watching the rapid degradation of
the Imperial house, followed her with sympathy, but few
dared to visit her in the lonely mansion. Unfortunately,
she quarrelled with one of these few, and came near to
losing her life.

7

5»8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Her old friend Julia Silana, a woman of great wealth
but very faded beauty, proposed to marry a handsome
young Roman knight. Agrippina imprudently advised
him not to marry a woman of such advanced years and so
adventurous a record. Her words were repeated to Julia,
and friendship was exchanged for the most bitter animosity.
Julia Silana was childless, and it is conjectured that Agrip-
pina hoped to inherit her wealth if she died unmarried.
Whether she believed this or no, Julia conceived a deep
hatred, and induced two of her clients to accuse Agrippina
of high treason. Nero seems to have been in an uncertain
mood, and an ingenious plot was devised to win him.

One night when he lay, flushed with wine, after the
banquet, his favourite comedian Paris came to amuse him.
Nero noticed that the man was agitated and less merry
than usual, and asked the reason. Paris, who was acting
in the service of the plotters, confessed with artistic tears
that there was a conspiracy afoot to dethrone his noble
master ; that Agrippina was about to marry RubeUius
Plautus, a Senator of Imperial descent, and seize the throne.
The inebriated Emperor at once demanded their heads, but
Seneca and Burrus restrained him, and compelled him to
hear Agrippina on the morrow. In her speech, which
Tacitus has preserved, she refuted and routed her assailants
with such vigour that she was, apparently, reconciled to
Nero and restored to some authority. Julia Silana was
banished, Domitia's chamberlain (who had instructed the
actor) was executed, and Agrippina's own followers were
rewarded.

The two years that followed this reconciliation are
obscure, and we can only dimly conjecture that Agrippina
had some peace and prestige, but no longer shared the
Imperial rule. Then, in the year 58, another and unexpected
woman came into the field, and Agrippina sank rapidly
toward an abyss of tragedy.

In an earlier chapter we saw that Messalina drove to
death a very wealthy and beautiful Roman lady named
Poppaea Sabina. It was her daughter, who had inherited

THE MOTHER OF NERO 99

her wealth and her beauty, that now attracted the amorous
regard of the Emperor. She had married one of Nero's
favourite companions, who babbled in his cups of her
dazzling beauty, and inflamed the desire of Nero. In the
next chapter we shall read of her natural charms, of the
singular art with which she cultivated them and the coquetry
with which she employed them, and of the superb and
fabulous splendour of her equipage. It is enough to say
here that Nero visited her, learned that she was willing to
be an Empress, but not the mistress of an Emperor, and
resolved to make any sacrifice to secure so unique a treasure.
The first victim to be sacrificed to the new passion was
Octavia, and the delicate and timid girl would make little
resistance. But Agrippina had espoused her cause with
a spirit that redeems much of her irregular conduct, and
she now saw that her own interest, as well as that of
Octavia, required that she should oppose Poppaea with all
her strength. In that resolution she wrote her death-
sentence, not ignobly.

Even if we refuse to admit some of the incredible
statements that are made regarding it in the chronicles,
it is clear that an extraordinary struggle now took place
about the person of the Emperor. The antagonists were
Poppaea and Agrippina. Octavia was one of those frail,
lily-like Roman women who never struggled ; Poppaea's
husband was easily set aside. Poppaea affected coyness,
and refused to have any other than conjugal relations
with Nero, while she employed all her charms to inflame
him. Agrippina fought so desperately that Roman gossip,
and Roman historians, ascribed the most infamous devices
to her. In spite of his expression of doubt, it is plain
that Tacitus shares the popular belief, which he relates,
that Agrippina used to sit with her son in loose robes
when he was heated with wine, and to ride in the same
litter with him. Against this charge, however, Dio defends
her (Ixi, 11). He says that one of Nero's courtesans
resembled his mother, and that a light remark of his on
i;hat circumstance gave birth to the libel. Poppaea would

loo THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

not be indisposed to encourage the story. On the other
hand, Mr. Baring-Gould attempts an untenable defeijce
when he speaks of Agrippina as " the poor old lady."
She was only in her forty-second year, and was a woman
of great beauty and little scruple.

Whatever arts Agrippina employed in the struggle,
she rapidly lost ground before so formidable a rival, and
Poppaea incited Nero against her. He harassed her with
lawsuits when she was in Rome, and sent men to insult
her when she withdrew to her villa in the country. Before
long Agrippina became sensible that her struggle for power
had passed into the appalling experience of a struggle for
life against her own son. Nero made several attempts to
poison her, but she was on her guard against this familiar
weapon. It is said that she had an antidote compounded
of walnuts, figs, rue, and salt. Then a freedman in Nero's
suite suggested a more insidious scheme. Her country
house was in repair, and Anicetus directed the workmen
to saw through the heavy timber over her bed, so that
the room would collapse when she went to rest. Agrippina
was warned, however, and the plot was defeated.

By the early spring of the year 59 Nero had fallen into
a mood of the most sombre and bitter dejection. Poppaea
continued to taunt him with his dependence on his mother,
and to display her maddening charms just beyond the
range of his eager arms. The better citizens of Rome,
on the other hand, now perceived his horrible design,
and watched the struggle with anxiety. As he sat at
the theatre one day in this mood, his attention was caught
by one of the elaborate mechanical spectacles which were
often put on the stage at the time. A ship sailed into
view of the spectators, fell into pieces, and disgorged a
number of wild beasts upon the stage. Nero asked
Anicetus, who was a skilful mechanic, whether he could
build a ship that would thus fall to pieces on the water
at a given moment. The man promised to do so, and Nero
went down to the coast in more cheerful temper.

It was the month of March, when wealthy Romans

THE MOTHER OF NERO loi

were wont to forsake the city for the marble villas
which shone in the spring sun on the flowered hills about
the northern corner of the Bay of Naples. The season
began with the festival of Minerva on March 19th. With
some surprise and suspicion, Agrippina, who had gone
down to her villa, received an affectionate invitation to
join her son at Baise for the celebration ; and she heard
from other quarters that he had announced a desire to
be reconciled with her. She went on board the Liburnian
galley which lay off the gardens of her villa at Antiura,
and sailed to Baiae. Nero met her in the Imperial galley,
kissed her affectionately, and invited her to a banquet
which his friend Otho, the husband of Poppaea, would
give that night in honour of their reconciliation. She
consented, but it is clear that she wavered between her
consciousness of the utter unscrupulousness of her son
and the bright vision of a return to happiness which he
held before her.

When the hour came for going, she was told that her
galley had met with an accident, but that a superb gilded
galley, with sails of silk and a military guard on board, had
been sent as a love-gift from her son in commemoration of
their restored affection. She gazed with suspicion on the
beautiful object, as it lay mirrored in the waters of the little
haven, and decided to go overland, on a litter, to Otho's
villa. But the amiable behaviour of Nero at the banquet
dispelled the last shade of her suspicion. In the joy which
his caresses and his well-feigned affection gave her, she
did not notice the passing of the hours until midnight,
when she rose to go. The beautiful ship with the gilded
flanks and the silken sails awaited her once more, and this
time she embarked on it. Nero kissed her eyes and her
hands, put his arms about her and pressed her to his
bosom, held her while he gave a last long look into her
eyes, and then — abandoned her to the murderer Anicetus.

The galley shot out over the smooth scented waters
under a canopy of brilliant stars. Agrippina sat in her
cabin, in the soft spring air, and talked about the happy

102 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

future with her one male attendant, Crepereius Gallus, and
her one maid, Acerronia Pollia. And suddenly, as they
reached the deep water, there was an ugly crack, and the
roof of the cabin fell on them. Gallus was killed outright,
but the two women were saved, as the stout walls failed to
collapse, and there was some misunderstanding among the
crew in the dark. The maid rushed to the deck calling for
aid for the Empress — others say that she represented her-
self as the Empress — and was slain. Agrippina listened
with terror to the crash of timber and the rush of armed
men, and realized the treachery of her son. Still she did
not court death. She dropped quietly over the side, and
swam toward the distant shore. Her strength gradually
failed, and she was about to abandon the awful struggle,
when some men who were fishing by night picked her up
and took her ashore.

Wounded by the falling timbers, exhausted by the
struggle, stricken to the heart by the brutality of her son,
she nevertheless rallied at once, and devised a fresh plan.
She calmly sent a message to Nero that, by the favour of
the gods, she had survived the wreck of the galley which
he had given her, but requested that he would not come to
visit her until her wound was healed. Without a word to
her attendants about the horrible plot, she ordered the
remedies for her condition, and trusted that Nero would
repent. Through the remaining hours of the night she lay
on her couch, with one maid in attendance, her room feebly
lit by a single light. The whole country without was alive
with men. The shore was lit up with their torches, and
they gathered about the house to express their joy that
Agrippina had escaped shipwreck on the very night of so
auspicious a reconciliation. As the first light of dawn
broke on the encircling hills, Anicetus and his men entered
the house with Nero's reply. She read something of its
tenor in their faces, and said to their leader : " Hast thou
come to visit me ? Then tell my son that I have recovered.
Hast thou come to slay me? Then I say it is not my son
who sent thee." A sailor struck her over the head with a

THE MOTHER OF NERO 103

stick, and she saw that the end had come. Tearing aside
her loose robe, and baring her white body to the men, she
said sadly : " Strike here, Anicetus, for it was here that
Nero was born." She fell dead under a shower of blows.

Nero had heard that his mother had escaped. Dreading
that she might stir into flame the resentment of Rome, he
called a council of his friends. Seneca is said to have been
silent, Burrus indignant. At that moment Agrippina's
chamberlain entered with her message. In a flash of
cunning Anicetus threw a sword at his feet, and pretended
that he had been sent by Agrippina to kill Nero. The
Emperor accepted the sordid pretext, and, as Burrus
bluntly refused to send his soldiers to execute her, Anicetus
gladly charged himself with the task. He was appointed
admiral of one of the fleets for his services. It is even
recorded, though details like this must always be regarded
with reserve, that when the servants bore their mistress's
body to the garden, and stripped it for the pile, Nero stood
by and said, jeeringly : " I had no idea she was so hand-
some."

A report was issued, and a formal announcement made
to the Senate, that Agrippina had attempted the Emperor's
life, and that, when Nero sent men to arrest her, she took
her own life. And the Senate licked the feet of Nero,
decreed games and festivals in gratitude for his preserva-
tion, and led the enthusiasm of the people. So well known
was the murder that an actor referred mockingly to it in
the theatre. " Farewell, my father," he said, eating a mush-
room—" Farewell, mother," he added, imitating the action
of a swimmer. The common folk repeated numbers of
these grim jokes. But they enjoyed the games of thanks-
giving, and Senators and nobles took part in them on the
stage and in the arena, and Rome sank swiftly into the
terrible degradation of Nero's later reign, which will
occupy us in the next chapter.

It is hardly necessary to add a summary estimate of
Agrippina's character. In the view of Stahr and Baring-
Gould and a few other recent writers, she was " queenly^,

I04

THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

honourable, and pure," and had only the doubtful vices
of ambition and pride. For Tacitus and the other Latin
writers she was capable of any enormity, and guilty of
most. It will be seen that I hold an intermediate view.
She was a woman of great distinction, ability, and strength.
Had she lived in an age when virtue was not inexpedient,
she would have been an illustrious and virtuous queen.
But she had to struggle to obtain and retain power in an
age when a new and more intellectual moral standard was
replacing an older and more instinctive standard, and,
where it seemed profitable, she availed herself of the moral
scepticism which such a change always engenders. She
was queenly, but she was not entirely honourable, and she
was almost certainly not pure. But she served Rome well,
and left it happy and prosperous ; and her unselfish passion
for the advancement of her son, her chivalrous and fatal
defence of his injured wife, and the bravery with which
she met his unspeakable brutality, do much to outweigh
her evil deeds in the scale of Osiris.

CHAPTER VI

THE WIVES OF NERO

NERO was no longer " the young Apollo " of his boy-
hood. Unbridled dissipation and precocious crime
had made their impress on body no less than on
mind. He was a little above the average height, but his
prematurely swollen paunch was poorly balanced on his
slender and ungraceful limbs, and his skin was blotched
and repellent. The dull grey eyes betrayed his unceasing
indulgence, and the yellow hair, dressed in stages of short
curls, framed a face that was certainly no longer handsome.
His mind was in unmistakable disorder. Our kindly age
would invoke this mental trouble in extenuation of the
brutal crimes he had committed and the stupendous folly
he is about to perpetrate. Were this a biography of the
Emperors, we might boldly essay to prove rather that the
insanity followed the matricide, but that does not concern
us. He was, as yet, only in his twenty-second year.

To this precocious monstrosity of vice and crime was
mated one of the gentlest young matrons of the Caesarean
house, Octavia, the daughter of Claudius and Messalina.
Married at the very early age of thirteen to Nero, her
timid girlish nature was paralyzed by the coarse habits of
her husband, and she merely hovers about the stage, like a
dimly perceptible shadow, during the earlier part of Nero's
reign. It must have been shortly after their marriage that
Nero disdained her for the beautiful Greek slave, Acte, to
whom he was more constant than to any other living thing,
and who, in return, paid the last tribute to his despised

105

io6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

remains. At first one of Nero's associates screened the en-
tanglement, but, as we saw, it became known in the palace,
and Agrippina made a fruitless eflFort to press the rights
of his girl-wife. The injustice was, however, one that
Roman ladies were not unaccustomed to bear. Nero soon
fell into more disreputable ways. Octavia would see him
leave the palace after supper with his wild companions,
and needed little effort of imagination to follow his course
when he returned, in the early morning, with torn gar-
ments and flushed, if not bruised, features and, occasionally,
the painted signs that he had wrenched from shop-doors,
or the cups he had stolen in a raid upon some low tavern.

He had gathered about him a band of older youths, who
encouraged him in the licentious use of his power, and
endeared themselves to him by the fertility of their imagina-
tions. Chief among them was Salvius Otho, a young noble
of Etruscan descent, five years older than Nero — the
Emperor Otho of a later date. He had entered the palace
in virtue of an amorous relation with one of Agrippina's
ladies, and his wide knowledge of adolescent amusements
won him the regard of Nero, whom he led into the wildest
adventures. They would wander at night through the
streets, and revel in the taverns and brothels of the popular
quarters of the city, the mysterious dim-lit valleys on
which patrician maidens looked down from the mansions
on the hills. In those centres of nightly disorder Nero
and his companions were the most daring Mohocks, if we
may use a phrase that belongs to later history. They
violated women and boys, and played the most brutal
pranks upon unarmed folk. One night Nero was severely
thrashed by a Senator, whose wife he had insulted. The
man learned afterwards that it was the Emperor whom he
had beaten, and went to the palace to apologize. Nero
forced him to atone with his life for the injury he had done
to the Imperial dignity. He withdrew the guards from the
Circus, in order that he might enjoy the fights of the rival
factions, and from the Milvian Bridge, at night, so as to
give complete liberty to vice iii that nocturnal resort,

THE WIVES OF NERO lo;

The chaste and trembling Octavia, who was still only
in her sixteenth year, shrank from his brutal disdain. It
was enough for her to have the title of Empress, he said
to his mother, when she urged the rights of Octavia.
Presently Nero declared that he would divorce her, and
marry the handsome Greek girl, but Seneca and Burrus
succeeded in preventing him. To check his disorders
entirely they were quite powerless, and they seem to
have thought it better to direct, than to resist, his
vices. Suddenly, however, in the year 58, Nero trans-
ferred his passion to the daughter of Poppaea Sabina,
and began the long, tragic struggle to secure her as his
Empress.

Poppaea, who will be the next figure in our gallery

of Roman Empresses, and therefore may at once be

introduced, was One of the prettiest, vainest, and most

discussed ladies in Rome. Her mother, with whom we

are already acquainted as one of Messalina's victims, had

been the daughter of a very wealthy and illustrious

provincial governor, Poppaeus Sabinus. Poppaea's father,

Titus Ollius, had been a friend of Sejanus, and had been

swept away in the flood of Tiberius's anger. She was,

therefore, of mature years, but she had protected her

charms so industriously that she still had the soft beauty

and the fresh complexion of a girl. She had inherited

also the wealth, the wit, and— it is said— the easy morals

of her mother. The pretence of modesty which she made,

by wearing a veil whenever she went abroad, was redeemed

by the splendour of her establishment and the elaborate

culture of her fair skin and pretty face. The mules which

drew the litter of the veiled lady were shod with gold,

and the traces of their harness were woven from gold

thread. When she moved to her country house, or to

Baiae, five hundred she-asses ran in the train of her

litter and cars, to provide the milk for her daily bath. If

we may trust the busts to which her name is attached,

she had a childish grace and deUcacy of feature, instead

of the tense face of the adventuress ; and we know that

io8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

her amber-coloured hair was so much admired that it set,
or revived, a fashion in amber.

She had married a knight, Rufus Crispinus, by whom
she had had a son. This marriage was ended by divorce,
and she became the wife of Nero's favourite, Salvius Otho.
It is suggested, and not difficult to believe, that she had
married Otho on account of his intimacy with the Emperor.
He was by no means handsome, though he covered his
baldness with a wig, dressed sumptuously, and had wealth,
wit, and taste for art. From him Nero heard, over their
cups, the piquant story of Poppsea's beauty and luxury,
and it was not long before Imperial messengers were sent
to her mansion. They were not admitted, and even Nero,
when he sought entrance, was coyly reminded that Poppaea
was married, and was devoted to her husband. After a
stormy siege she gracefully capitulated so far as to receive
innocent visits from Nero, and inflame him to madness
with the display of her cultivated beauty. He spoke
bitterly of his mother as an obstacle in the way of their
marriage. Poppaea twitted him with his dependence on
her, and we have seen the outcome.

When Agrippina had been removed, Nero proposed
at once to divorce Octavia and wed Poppaea. The silence
of Seneca at all these critical points in the degradation
of Nero is painful to every admirer of the distinguished
moralist. It was the less courtly and less virtuous Burrus
who defended the young Empress. If Nero abandoned
Octavia, he brusquely said, he must also give up her
dowry— the throne — and Burrus was too generally respected
to be flouted. Octavia therefore remained in her lonely
chamber at the palace, a helpless witness of the vices of
her husband.

For a month or two after the murder of Agrippina he
behaved as one stricken with a wild and haunting remorse.
He went feverishly from place to place, and gathered about
him a band of magicians and charlatans. He feared to go
to Rome until he was assured that Rome was rejoicing
at his escape from his mother's plot. Few pages in the

THE WIVES OF NERO 109

story of that degenerate city are sadder than that which
records the reception, in the month of May, of the Imperial
matricide. The Senators and their families, dressed in their
gayest robes, hurried out along the Appian Way to meet
him, and his route was lined deep with cheering crowds.
He rewarded them royally. Five or six theatres opened
their doors, day after day, to the degraded citizens. New
things — things that had never before been seen in the
whole history of the city — were provided for their enter-
tainment. Men and women of the highest rank played
the most lascivious parts of the mimes on the public
stage, and drove their chariots in the public circus. Nero
was a champion of the " green " faction, and pitted his
royal skill daily in the circus against the charioteers of
the other factions. He sang in the theatre, and organized
a band of five thousand handsome youths, in splendid
costumes, to lead the applause, and shower upon him his
favourite epithet of "Apollo." He even ventured to win
praise in the amphitheatre, but the one young lion which
he vanquished had been prudently gorged and stupefied
before he encountered it. He announced that his skill
might be hired for private banquets, and nobles paid him
a million sesterces for his services. Apollo, he reflected,
had no beard in Greek statuary, so he shaved his beard,
and the handful of yellow hair was enclosed in a golden
casket studded with pearls, and carried in solemn pro-
cession to the Capitol. In the mighty rejoicing over this
complete assimilation to Apollo of the tun-bellied, lanky-
legged, half-crazy youth, it is recorded that a noble dame
in her eightieth year danced on the stage in the theatre.
The descendants of the greatest Roman families volun-
tarily entered the base ranks of the comedian and the
charioteer.

Mr. Henderson is reluctant to admit, in his study of
Nero, that he was insane. It would, no doubt, puzzle the
most penetrating psychologist to assign the respective
portions of guilt and of irresponsible disorder in his
conduct ; but that there was mental disorder it is at once

110 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

more natural and more charitable to assume. In any case,
a year or so of this delirious life wore out his robust
frame, and a serious illness suspended for a time the
disgraceful performances. Unfortunately, when he re-
covered, he lost the one man who had had some power to
restrain him, and sufficient honesty to use it. Burrus died
in the year 62, and at the same time the slender influence
of Seneca was destroyed. This is no place to discuss the
difficult and delicate problem of Seneca's conduct in his
association with Nero. Enough to say that he was now
accused of conspiracy, and, although he successfully
defended himself, he ceased to have any power at the
palace.

It was now possible for Nero to rid himself of the pale
young prude, who shrank in her apartments, and there were
men enough to devise the procedure. Salvius Otho had
already been sent to a remote part of the Empire, and his
place had been taken by a horse-dealer, named Tigellihus,
of little culture and even less character. With this new
favourite Poppaea entered into alliance, and the young
Empress presently found herself accused, with brutal
levity, of adultery with Eucer, an Alexandrian slave and
musician, and of covering her shame by the crime of
abortion. Tigellinus easily obtained witnesses, but most
of Octavia's servants refused, even under torture, to belie
the virtue of their gentle mistress. The coarseness of
Tigellinus had carried him too far, and public feeling was
strongly aroused in her favour. Nero fell back upon the
ground of her childlessness, of which he could probably
have furnished a simple explanation, and divorced her. In
deference to the sentiment of Rome, he at first gave her the
house of Burrus and the fortune of a noble whom he had
executed. A little later, however, probably under pressure
from Poppaea, he banished her to Campania. He had
married Poppaea a fortnight after the divorce of Octavia.

But the flagrant outrage quickened the better feeling
that Rome had not yet entirely lost, and Nero was forced
to recall her. To the deep mortification of Poppaea, the

THE WIVES OF NERO in

crowds invaded the outer court of the palace, crying the
name of Octavia. They removed the statues of the new
Empress from the temples and public places, and restored
to their positions, and crowned with flowers, the discarded
statues of Octavia. Poppaea angrily pressed Nero to assert
his power, and the resourceful Anicetus, the murderer of
Agrippina, was summoned to Rome. Bolder even than
Tigellinus, he swore that he himself had had commerce
with Octavia, and, after a pretence of trial, she was banished
to Sardinia. Poppaea was not yet content, and Nero next
announced that Octavia had been detected in an attempt
to corrupt the commander of the fleet. She was taken to
the rock-island of Pandateria that had already witnessed
tragedies.

The good feeling of Rome seems by this time to have
been exhausted, and Octavia was lazily surrendered to
the brutal band who now surrounded Nero. There is
a peculiar melancholy in the closing of that frail and
innocent career. Rough soldiers seize the timid form,
carry her to the bath, bind her limbs, and open her veins.
Timid and shrinking to the end, the young girl — even now
she is only in her twentieth year — starts back with horror
from the great darkness, and piteously implores them to
spare her life. She faints, and the flow of her blood is
arrested. The last pretence of pity is tossed aside, and she
is stifled in the vapour-bath.

Poppaea, Tacitus says, sent for her head. It is difficult
to decide whether the frequent repetition of this horrible
detail in the chronicles increases or lessens its credulity.
But we can have no hesitation in believing Tacitus when
he says that the Senate ordered services of thanksgiving
in the temples for this fresh preservation of the life of the
Emperor.

Another Empress had stepped in blood to the throne,
and was in turn to stain it with her blood after a few years
of imperial folly. We have seen what type of woman it
was whom Nero put in the place of Octavia. Wealthy,
coquettish, and beautiful, Poppaea saw in life only a sunny

112 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

path for the pursuit of butterflies. When she is represented
to us as licentious we must remember that no definite
scandal attaches to her name, and that she is actually
described as " pious " by no less an authority than the
Jewish historian Josephus. In fact this circumstance, and
a peculiar feature of the disposal of her body, which we
will consider, gave birth to a speculation in early times
that she had become a Christian. Serviez finds the story
of her conversion by St. Paul, and subsequent " return to
her abominations," too piquant to admit of doubt. But the
conversion is even more disputable than the abominations.
It is now much disputed among our leading divines
whether St. Paul ever visited Rome, and there is a
simpler explanation of the phrase used by Josephus. The
Roman governor of Judaea — the biblical Felix, a brother of
Agrippina's favourite, Pallas — had dealt harshly with the
Jews, and sent some of their priests in chains to Rome.
Josephus and others went to intercede for them, and luckily
met a Jewish comedian who was in the favour of Poppsea
and Nero. The historian was received with distinction at
the palace, and was so successful in his suit that he might
well ascribe piety to Poppaea. We may agree that the
incident probably argues some culture on her part. But
we shall discover her later in conduct that makes it un-
desirable to count her as a disciple of St. Paul.

Before the end of the year Poppaea presented Nero with
a daughter, and a few weeks of wild rejoicing restored her
to general favour, and obliterated the memory of Octavia.
The title of "Augusta" was, in an excess of flattery,
bestowed upon both the mother and the infant. Senators
raced each other to the Imperial villa at Antium, to express
their joy at this substantial promise of a continuance of
the Caesarean house which had dragged them in the mire.
The whole of Italy was lit up with rejoicing. Poppaea felt
that her position was at last secure. And then, by one
of those dread changes which were almost as common in
the life of Rome as in the tragedies of Greece, and made
men assume that there was a stern and mighty fate behind

OCTAVIA { '. '.

PORPHYRY BUST IN THE LOUVRE

THE WIVES OF NERO 113

their puny and indulgent gods, the storm broke over Italy
once more. The child withered and died, and Nero's mind
fell once more into dark disorder. He glanced round with
insane suspicion for possible aspirants to the throne, and
Poppaea's remaining son was the first victim. One day
he saw her boy (by her former husband) playing at being
emperor in his games with the other children. In a few
days Poppaea heard that the boy had lost his life while
fishing. Many another execution was ordered with the
same levity.

As before, these terrible deeds were mingled with the
most splendid and the most licentious entertainments.
Noble dames of the highest rank wrestled and fought in
the amphitheatre before the frivolous crowds; the city
abounded in schools where the nobility learned to ape the
Emperor's folly, and contribute to the gaiety of Rome with
the flute, the zither, or the dance. Nero conceived a new
idea, and pursued it with zeal. He would contest the
crown with the artists of Greece. Poppaea saw him train-
ing in the palace, lying for hours with heavy plates of lead
on his chest, restricting himself to a diet of leeks and oil.
She saw him exhibit his skill in the theatre, lifting up his
blotched and swollen body, in extraordinary contortions,
on his thin legs, as he strained after the high notes. Woe
to the man who openly laughed, or who excelled him !
One of his masters was put to death because Nero per-
ceived that he could not equal the man. At last his
training was complete, and Rome sighed with relief as the
thousand carts, drawn by silver-shod mules, and the five
thousand youths of the Augustan band, set out for the
coast. They gratified Naples with a show as they passed
through. For several days Nero kept the .amazed citizens
in the theatre, and took his meals in the orchestra, so as
to lose no time. Then came the inevitable epilepsy; and
it was announced that Nero, perceiving the grief of his
subjects at the prospect of his departure, had postponed
the Grecian tour.

On his return to comparative health, and to Rome, he
8

114 1'HE EMPRESSES OF ROME

once more kept the citizens agog with alternate bursts of
frantic dissipation and sanguinary melancholy. From the
death of her child until her own violent end, two years
later, Poppaea appears very little in the chronicles; but,
as we shall see that, willing or unwilling, she supported
her husband in his bloody crimes, we may assume that
she joined him in his less criminal orgies. One instance
will suffice. He ordered that a banquet should be given
on a raft, on the large sheet of water known as Lake
Agrippa. When the citizens crowded to the shore on the
appointed evening, they found the great raft towed by
vessels plated with ivory and gold, manned by youths
who had won distinction in infamy. Round the shore
taverns, brothels, and dining-rooms had been erected.
And when the night fell, and the beautiful scene was lit
by the light of innumerable torches, the public found that
women of the highest rank were no less accessible to them
than prostitutes in the houses by the lake, and the slave
was at liberty to embrace his mistress under the eye of
her husband. Nero even outdistanced Caligula in the
Imperial teaching of vice. In the garb of a bride, he went
through the religious ceremony of marriage with a man of
base character, named Pythagoras. He had nude children
fastened to stakes, and rushed upon them fittingly clad
in the skin of a wild beast. And round the frontiers of
that vast Empire, which the strength and sobriety of his
ancestors had created, the weary soldiers watched the
barbarians who prepared to invade it.

It was about this time that the great fire occurred
which turned the laughter of Nero's subjects into resent-
ment. For six days and seven nights the flames ate their
way through the blocks of tall tenements, divided only
by narrow streets, in the parching heat of July. Nero was
in the provinces at the time, and from the conflicting
accounts it is impossible to pass an opinion on the rumour
that he had ordered the burning of Rome. Dio gives us
the familiar picture of Nero twanging his zither, and
chanting the " Fall of Troy " from the summit of a high

THE WIVES OF NERO 115

tower on the hill. Others declare, however, that he at
once ordered the most expedient methods for checking the
conflagration. But it was angrily whispered among the
camps of the homeless that men had been seen throwing
torches upon their houses, and that they were acting under
orders from the palace. Nor were the citizens appeased
when he threw the blame on the obscure and unpopular
devotees who went by the name of Christians, and afforded
them the brutal spectacle of driving round the circus to
the light of burning men and women, whose living bodies
had been wrapped in tow and soaked in wax and tar. Few
beheved in their guilt. Even Seneca at length broke his
casuistic or diplomatic reserve, and retired in disgust from
Rome. Nero went down in great dejection to Baiae,
leaving orders that, in the restoration of the city, a new
palace should be built for him that should transcend
anything within the memory of Rome or of history.

This "golden house," which Nero raised round the
more modest palaces of his predecessors, gave a fresh
grievance to discontent. The great and unselfish Octavian
had been satisfied with a small patrician mansion ; Tiberius
had built a palace ; Caligula had enlarged it ; Nero flung
out its wings over a vast space. It seemed that Emperors
squandered the money of the State in proportion to their
uselessness. The colossal edifice and its wonderful park
stretched from the Palatine to the Esquiline, across the
intervening valley, and was surrounded by a triple colon-
nade in marble. Citizens huddled in the crowded blocks
of the Subura and the Velabrum, while Nero created a
miniature world within his marble girdle. There was a
great lake, filled with salt water from Ostia, with a small
town on its shore ; there were vineyards, cornfields, groves
in which wild beasts ran loose, fountains, and gardens.
The palace itself was of such proportions that a statue
of Nero one hundred and twenty feet high could be
conveniently lodged in its porch. Some of the rooms were
plated with gold and adorned with precious stones. The
supper-room had a ceiling of ivory, with openings through

ii6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

which flowers and costly perfumes might be shed upon
the guests. The Egyptian roses whose beauty withered
in one banquet in this chamber had a value of ;^3S,ooo
in our coinage.

There now dawned on Rome some consciousness of the
price that the Empire was paying for the stupendous folly
it had so long applauded. While the treasury was being
exhausted in entertainments that all could enjoy, the
murmuring was confined to the sober few. From the
moment when this colossal symbol of Nero's selfishness
towered above the city, the murmurs became audible and
were multiplied. Nero, alarmed at the sullen looks and
the vague reports of plots, went down angrily to the coast.
Then a slave brought a definite accusation of conspiracy
against his master, and the stream of blood began to flow.

It is an unhappy fact, and one that confirms the darker
view of Poppaea's character, that almost the only detail
related of her in the chronicles, after the death of her
child, is that she was one of the council of three who
directed this horrible series of executions. Nero would
not trust the ordinary procedure of Roman justice. With
Poppsea and Tigellinus as associate-judges, he himself
examined, or endorsed, every charge that cupidity or
malignity brought to the palace. Rome was reddened
for weeks with torture, murder, and suicide. Students of
the decay of Rome have, perhaps, not sufficiently appre-
ciated the effect of this periodic eff"usion of the best blood
in the city. In the earlier wars, both civil and foreign,
the good and the base alike had fallen. In these inquisitions
for conspiracy, which fill Rome with mourning time after
time from the death of Octavian to the accession of Trajan,
it is chiefly the men and women of honour who suifer.
They constitute a natural selection of the cowardly and
the sycophantic.

The city " teemed with funerals," .in the terse phrase
of Tacitus, and the gatherings of its citizens were black
with mourning. Large numbers of officers and patricians
were executed or driven to suicide, and their children were

THE WIVES OF NERO 117

scourged or banished to the provinces. Seneca paid the
penalty of his tardy outspokenness, and his admirable end
sustains our trust that his character may, in spite of our
unconquerable hesitations, have been not inconsistent with
his high creed. He and his wife, who nobly asked per-
mission to quit the world with him, had their veins opened,
and Seneca passed into the silence with quiet dignity;
his wife was, to her regret, recalled to life by the soldiers.

Poppaea did not live to share the punishment which
these crimes brought upon Nero. Her end came more
swiftly and in more .terrible form. The carnage had been
interrupted by a fresh outburst of rejoicing. A man
declared to Nero that he knew where the fabulous treasures
of the Carthaginian queen Dido, which Vergil had so
recently sung in the " ^Eneid," were buried. A fleet was
sent to Africa to recover them, and from his sombre
brooding Nero passed into a new fit of prodigal enter-
taining. He emptied the last depths of his treasury in
spectacles and donations. When the fleet returned at
length without a single cup or coin, his anger stormed
with ungovernable fury, and one day, when Poppaea ex-
postulated with him, he kicked her in the abdomen. The
outrage proved fatal, as she was pregnant, and Nero's
light mind turned from rage to the most extravagant
lamentation. Her body was not burned, as was usual
at Rome, but embalmed, and vast quantities of rare per-
fumes were sacrificed on the funeral pile. This peculiarity
of her funeral has been thought to strengthen the interest-
ing legend of her conversion to Christianity. It was more
probably due to Nero's frenzied desire to give a unique
burial to so unique a goddess, as the Senate declared
her to be. It is unthinkable that Nero should make such
a concession to Christian ideas, even if she had shared
them in any measure, and her life does not dispose us to
claim that honour for her. The legend has no foundation
in history, and the early Church may easily be relieved
of the stain of having counted Poppaea among its adherents.

It is not our place to pursue the insanity of the Em-

Ii8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

peror through all the forms it assumed after the death of
Poppaea, but he took a third wife, whom Mr. Baring-Gould
seems to have overlooked, and we must briefly relate the
story of her experience. Immediately after the death of
Poppaea Nero took a consort whom the pen almost shrinks
from describing. It seemed to him that he discovered a
resemblance to his beloved Poppaea in one of his freedmen,
Sporus. The man was entrusted to the surgeons for a loath-
some operation, and then solemnly married to the Emperor.
Dressed in the Empress's robes and jewels, he travelled in
Nero's litter, and was publicly kissed and caressed by
him.

This abominable comedy soon lost its interest, and
Nero decided to marry Octavia's sister, Antonia. Recollect-
ing the recent fate of her sister, she boldly refused, and she
was put to death on a charge of aspiring to the throne.
Nero then chose Statilia Messalina, the granddaughter of
a distinguished and wealthy Senator who had been driven
to take his own life under Agrippina. The last part of the
" Annals " of Tacitus, which would cover this date, is miss-
ing, and if we are to believe the less reputable chroniclers,
Messalina had already been familiar with Nero, and had
married, as her third husband, one of his close companions
in debauch, Atticus Vestinus. She is described as beauti-
ful, witty, wealthy, and lax ; but the description is applied
to so large a proportion of the ladies of the time that
it gives little aid to the imagination. From some later
details we shall conclude that she had more culture, and
probably more character, than most of the courtly ladies of
Nero's time. One is disposed to think that she married
Nero on the maxim, literally interpreted, that it is better to
be married than burned. Her husband was one night
entertaining his friends when soldiers from the palace
entered the room. They took him to his bath, opened his
veins, and let him bleed to death ; and Statilia Messalina
became the tenth Empress of Rome.

There is every reason to believe that she shrank, with
prudence, from the executions and entertainments which

POPP^A

UUST IN THE CAI'lTOLENK MUSEUM, ROME

THE WIVES OF NERO 119

again proceeded with ghastly alternation. Her five pre-
decessors had been murdered ; the preceding lady of Nero's
choice had been murdered; and she had herself been
divorced by murder. Messalina seems to have concentrated
her resources upon remaining alive, until a last and most
just murder should release her from her odious connexion.
Men were wearying even of Nero's ridiculous performances,
and were stung by his cruelty. He put soldiers amongst
his audience, to note the absent and detect the scoffer, so
that his festivals became an affliction. Men were driven to
the subterfuge of shamming death, and being borne out by
their slaves, to avoid the exacting part of admiring
spectators. Nero swore that he would exterminate the
whole senatorial order ; it is the most honourable mention
we find of them in the chronicles for many decades. To
their relief he now announced that he would proceed with
his Greek tour. The silver-shod mules and the gay regi-
ment of the Augustans were set in motion, Nero's hair was
permitted to attain an artistic length and negligence, and
the comedy was transferred for a time to the land of
Aristophanes. How he won every prize for which he
competed, how he plundered the temples and the mansions
of the Greeks, how his retinue passed like a flight of
locusts over the helpless province, must be read elsewhere.
After some eighteen months he was recalled to Italy by
grave tidings.

It has been impossible to refrain from speaking in
accents of disdain of the way in which Rome had silently
witnessed, or joyously acclaimed, the successive follies of
Nero, but, as I have previously noticed, it was in a
peculiarly difficult situation. The Praetorian Guards were
an army of twenty thousand disciplined soldiers, and were
paid for personal service to the ruling house, and blind to
any other interest than their own. They kept an irresistible
check upon every impulse to rebel. That there were such
impulses, and probably some attempt to seduce the Guards,
the unfailing stream of blood at Rome justifies us in believ-
ing. The hope of the Empire was in the more sober and

120 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

more industrious provinces, and it was here that the revolt
began. The leader of the troops in Gaul, Vindex, entered
into correspondence with the troops in Spain. The
Spanish commander, Servius Sulpicius Galba, was a
Roman -of illustrious family, venerable age, and stern
character. Nero had heard that the purple had been
offered to Galba, and that the legions of Gaul and Spain
were preparing to advance on Italy.

On his return to Italy, however, Nero hears that the
German legions are advancing against those of Gaul, and
that Galba is hesitating. He gaily resumes his follies,
and is deaf to political exhortations. At last a manifesto
is put into his hands, in which Vindex refers to him as a
"miserable player," and the insult to his art cuts deeply.
He writes to the Senate to demand redress, and sets out
for Rome. Nothing in the whole of his extraordinary
career is so tragi-comic as this penultimate scene. Clothed
in a mantle of purple embroidered with gold stars, wearing
the Olympian chaplet on his head, he enters Rome as the
god of art. Servants bear before him the i,8oo crowns or
chaplets he has won in Greece ; the five thousand Augustans
march behind his chariot. A sacrifice is made to Apollo,
and the games resume their familiar course. Then Nero is
told that, though Vindex has committed suicide, the German
and other legions have joined Galba, and the fire of revolt
is spreading round the Empire. He announces that he
will advance on Gaul. The ladies of his harem, who form
a fair regiment, have their hair cut short, and, with toy
shields and other theatrical properties, masquerade as
Amazons.

The last scene is brief and inevitable. Galba is
marching on Rome, the Praetorian guards have been
won for him, the nobles find it safe to desert Nero.
The nerveless brute whimpers and weeps in his help-
lessness. He will fly to Alexandria, and earn his living
as a musician. The great " golden house " is silent and
deserted. Rome is openly deriding him. Hip servants
have fled ; one has even stolen the box in which he

THE WIVES OF NERO 121

kept poison for such an emergency. The faithful Acte,
Sporus, and a very few of those who fed on his folly,
remain with him. Messalina has deserted him, and will
appear later as the friend of one of his successors.

In the great silent house, with its walls of gold and
its ceilings of ivory, he puts off the purple robes and
clothes himself in an old shirt and a ragged cloak. On
a miserable horse he rides with them across the vast
deserted park, and makes for the house of one of his
dependents, a few miles from Rome. There they admit
him by a hole they have made in the wall, give him black
bread and water, and cover him with a blanket. They
discuss the situation, and conclude by offering him a
dagger. He shrinks, like Julia, like Messalina, from the
horrible darkness, and vainly strains his eyes for a ray
of hope. At last they hear the clatter of cavalry on the
road, and Nero feebly points the dagger at his breast, for
a servant to drive home. And when the customary
cremation is over, there are none but Acte and a faithful
old nurse to lay the degraded ashes in the tomb.

So the tenth Empress of Rome laid down her brief
dignity. Statilia Messalina had had little reason to follow
Nero in his humiliation. Whether the charge of laxity
that is brought against her be true or no, she was a
woman of exceptional intelligence and culture, and had
probably only married Nero out of fear. We meet her
again, at a later stage, in the chronicles. After Galba's
short hour of supremacy we shall find an equally short
reign of Salvius Otho, the man who once pillaged taverns
with Nero in the Subura. Provincial government had
sobered him, and he wrote affectionate letters to Messalina.
He would, no doubt, have made her Empress once more
if he had lived, but the throne was wrested from him,
and Messalina retired to the calmer world of letters and
rhetoric. Our last glimpse of her discovers her deliver-
ing orations of great eloquence and learning among the
intellectual ladies of Rome.

CHAPTER VII

THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION

THE house of Caesar had perished with Nero, and
few sober folk can have regretted that it had no
living representative to win the fancy of the
frivolous people or the blind cupidity of the Guards.
There must have been men living in Rome who had
witnessed the whole of that appalling degradation, so
swift it had been. The Caesars had sunk in little over
forty years from the sobriety of Octavian to the insanity
of Nero ; their consorts had fallen from the strong standard
of Livia to the insipidity of Poppaea ; the resources of the
Empire had been squandered in spectacles that had left its
people nerveless and debauched ; the old Roman ideal of
character had been almost obliterated in the Imperial city.
It was our concern to see what part the Empresses played
in this lamentable history of four decades. It is, on the
whole, one that their biographer must blush to acknow-
ledge. We must remember, however, that corrupt rulers
would necessarily choose weak or corrupt wives, and we
cannot affect surprise or disappointment when we find
them floating in the swift current.

We have now to open a new and more attractive
gallery of Imperial portraits, to pass in review the wives
of those great Emperors who restored the high character
of Rome and strengthened anew the fabric of the Empire.
A very brief summary of events will suffice to Hnk the
Caesars with the Antonines, and introduce to us one or
two curious types of Empresses who dimly figure in the
transition.

122

THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 123

For a year after the fall of Statilia Messalina the
throne of the Empress was vacant, and that of the Em-
peror had three successive occupants. Galba was a
widower at the time of his elevation to the throne. We saw
in an earlier chapter that Agrippina had wished to marry
him twenty-six years earlier, and he had refused. His
wife, Lepida, was a delicate woman, of high character,
and he refused to divorce her. She had an energetic
champion in her mother, who fought Agrippina sturdily
and, if the story be true, laid fair patrician hands on her.
But Lepida died long before her husband was made Em-
peror, and he refused to marry again. His reign was brief.
Tradition has blamed him for an excessive sternness and
parsimony. They were not inopportune vices, but Rome
had been too long habituated to indulgence, and Galba
was too confident. The discontent at Rome was inflamed
by the news of the revolt in the provinces, and within a few
weeks the Guards, to whom he had refused the customary
donation, set up a new Emperor, and put Galba to death.

The new ruler was no other than the first husband of
Poppaea, the companion of Nero's revels, Salvius Otho.
Rome acclaimed the choice, and expected that the circus
and theatre were about to reopen their doors. But Otho,
who had matured during his years of office in Spain,
turned from them in disgust. He did, it is true, restore
the statues of Poppsea, and contemplated restoring the
discarded statues of Nero, but the alienation of Roman
feeling from him is a proof that he intended to rule with
sobriety. The same spirit is seen in the fact that he
corresponded affectionately with Statilia Messalina, and
apparently thought of marrying her. But the legions in
the provinces almost immediately rebelled against him,
and, in the midst of the struggle, he committed suicide.

There had been no Empress of Rome for twelve
months. With the death of Otho, and the accession of
Vitellius, we come to the eleventh Empress, Galeria Fun-
dana, a very new and incongruous type in the series of
Imperial women.

124 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

The name of Vitellius is already familiar to us. His
father was the fulsome courtier who had inspired Caligula
with the idea that he Was a god, and who had worn one
of Messalina's little silk shoes under his tunic. His wife,
Sextilia, was a woman of strict morality and unambitious
temper, but their son, the younger Vitellius, lived in too
tainted an atmosphere to prefer the plainness of his
mother to the craft and greed of his father. He had
learned vice in the band of young men who brought so
evil a fame on Tiberius's villa at Capri, and had made
his way astutely through the successive reigns of Caligula,
Claudius, and Nero. He had made a considerable fortune
as proconsul of Africa, and had, on his return to Rome,
married Petronia, the daughter of a wealthy consul. She
settled her large fortune on her son, and when Vitellius,
having consumed his own wealth in luxury and riot, went
on to sacrifice his son for the purpose of securing the
fortune held in his name, Petronia angrily remonstrated,
and was divorced.

He then married Galeria Fundana. She was, says
Tacitus, " a pattern of virtue," and since this defect — as
Vitellius would find it — was united with plainness of per-
son, modesty of taste, and dull, if not defective, conversa-
tion, the match was a singularly unhappy one. Vitellius
had so far squandered his money that he was unable to
pay his expenses to Lower Germany when Galba gave
him the command of the troops there. How he obtained
that important appointment is not clear. Some say that
Galba selected him because he was not ambitious ; others
that he secured it through the influence of the "blue" faction
at the Circus, of which he was a partisan. He mortgaged
his house, and Sextilia sold her jewels, to obtain funds
for the journey. Fundana and her child were left in a
poor tenement at Rome, little dreaming that they would
be summoned from it to Nero's " golden house " in a few
weeks.

It is expressly recorded that Sextilia and Fundana had
no ambition, and dreaded lest Vitellius should aspire to

THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 125

reach the dizzy heights which some early prophet had
promised him. They were, therefore, dismayed to hear,
shortly after his arrival on the Rhine, that the troops
were offering to secure the throne for him. His genial
and indulgent treatment of the soldiers was a betrayal of
his trust to the stern Galba, and may have been deliber-
ately effected to win their support. He became very
popular, and was hailed as a second " Germanicus." Galba
was presently murdered, and, as the German legions had
had no part in the choice of Otho, they urged Vitellius
to lead them against him. Vitellius wavered for a time
between the safe and considerable means of self-indulgence,
which he had as commander, and the uncertain, but
immeasurably greater, prospect which the throne sug-
gested to his sensual dreams. The officers conquered
his hesitation, and he set out for Rome in the rear of
the eight legions who had declared for him.

Sextilia and Fundana seemed to be in peril when the
news came to Rome that Vitellius was marching upon the
city. It is said that Vitellius threatened reprisals if his
family were injured, but there is no indication that Otho
would stoop to take a revenge on women and children.
They saw him march out at the head of his troops to give
battle to Vitellius, and waited anxiously, with all Rome,
to hear the issue of the civil war. And while Senate and
people were enjoying the mummery of the theatre, a horse-
man rode in with the news that Otho had taken his own
life, and Vitellius was leading his German troops upon
Rome. Senate and people united at once to receive him,
and sent him the title of Augustus. He politely declined
it for the time, and continued his leisurely march upon the
city. There had been many a triumphant march over the
roads of Italy in the annals of Rome, but never one so
singular as that of the new monarch. " The roads from
sea to sea groaned with the burden of his luxuries," says
Tacitus; and, if we distrust Tacitus, as an admirer of
Vitellius's rival and successor, all the Roman writers agree
that his first use of supreme power was to command a

126 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

stupendous ministration to his sensual appetites. He
ordered his legions to move slowly southward, while he,
in their train, exhausted each successive region of its
delicacies, and filled the days and nights with his princely
feasting. His example encouraged his wild German troops,
and their line of march could be traced across Gaul, and
Italy by their pillage, cruelty, and debauchery.

The repeated messages from the provinces filled Rome
with laughter, in spite of its anxiety. People remembered
this princely epicure sheltering, a few months before, in the
poorer quarter of the town and evading the duns. The
modest and virtuous Sextilia and Fundana shrank in pain
from the hollow flattery which was paid them, and followed
the march of the Emperor with disgust. He was approach-
ing Rome at the head of sixty thousand men. Legions of
tall, fierce, fur-clad Germans, with heavy javelins, were
thundering along the Italian roads and terrifying the
peasantry. In their rear was a vast army of slaves, cooks,
comedians, charioteers, and other ministers to the Imperial
appetite. He had sent for the whole of Nero's servants
and appointments. It was said that he even intended to
outrage one of the most sacred traditions of the city by
entering it in full armour, at the head of an army with
drawn swords ; but the friends who met him at the Milvian
Bridge persuaded him to change his costume, and sheathe
the swords of his soldiers. He entered, in civil toga, at
the head of the terrible Germans, his officers clad in white
as they bore the eagles. After visiting the Capitol, and
addressing the Senate in terms of pleasant submissiveness
to that body and of somewhat nauseating praise of himself,
he settled in Nero's magnificent palace with Fundana and
her child. His troops, debauched with the license of their
march, scattered in disorder through the city ; and Rome
resigned itself to the inauspicious rule of its eighth
Emperor.

We may dismiss the nine months in which Galeria
Fundana was Empress of Rome in a phrase : she was a
helpless and disgusted spectator of the most imperjal

THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 127

debauch that Rome had yet witnessed. Dio strangely
accuses her of haughtily complaining of the poverty of the
robes she found in Nero's golden house, but the testimony
to her modesty is too strong for us to admit this. A more
credible statement in the chroniclers is that she begged to
be allowed to retire to a humble dwelling of her own, and
Vitellius refused. His mother did not long survive her
morftfication. One rumour preserved in Suetonius is that
Vitellius had her starved to death, as it was predicted
that she would outlive him ; another version says that he
sent her poison, at her own request. Fundana was left
alone to bewail his colossal gluttony. She saw his chief
officers encourage him in his stupefying orgies, while they
enriched themselves ; and she had to submit in silence
while his sister-in-law, Triaria, " a woman of masculine
fierceness," goaded him to continued excesses. During the
few months of his reign he spent 900,000,000 . sesterces
(about ;£'7,ooo,ooo) in eating, drinking, and entertainment.
He had three meals during the day, and ended with a costly
and drunken supper. His brother one day entertained him
at a banquet, at which two thousand choice fishes and seven
thousand rare birds were served. Vitellius in return gave
a^banquet, at which one dish — a compound of the livers of
pheasants, the tongues of flamingoes, the brains of pea-
cocks, the entrails of lampreys, and the roes of mullets —
cost more than the whole of his brother's dinner.

From this loathsome and stupid dream of Imperial
power Vitellius was at length awakened by the echoes of
rebellion in the provinces. After a few futile executions,
and several relapses into his besetting gluttony, he was
forced to set out for the north. He quickly returned,
however, and wandered about Rome in hysterical im-
potence, while the followers of Vespasian closed upon the
city. Civil war jiad broken out, and the Romans gazed with
horror on the sacred Capitol besieged by the German troops
and bursting into flames. At last Vitellius came out with
Fundana and her child, in rnourning dress, and announced
that he would resign. The consul refused his sword, and

128 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

the mournful procession directed its steps towards his
brother's house. He was persuaded to return to the palace,
but the Vespasianists captured Rome, and he was taken to
Fundana's house on the Aventine. From this he somehow
wandered back to the palace. " The awful silence terrified
him; he tried the closed doors, and shuddered at the empty
chambers," says Tacitus. Dazed and incapable of flight,
he hid in the sordid room where the dogs were kept.
Here the soldiers found him, torn and bleeding, and forced
him to walk the streets, while they kept his head erect
with the point of a sword, and the people flung filth and
epithets at him. They then inflicted on him a slow and
painful death, and flung his remains in the Tiber.

Fundana was spared, and her daughter honourably
given in marriage, by his magnanimous successor. From
the brief and unwelcome splendour of the " golden house"
she passed into private life, and lived only to bemoan
the cruel fate that had lifted her husband to the intoxi-
cating height of the Roman throne.

There was no Empress in the reigns of Vespasian and
Titus, but a word may be said of the two remarkable
women who shared their power to some extent. Vespasian,
whose sober and solid administration it would be pleasant
to contrast with the orgiastic reigns of his predecessors,
was a rough soldier, of humble extraction and homely
ways. He had, in the time of Caligula, married the
mistress of a knight, Flavia Domitilla, who remains little
more than a name in the chronicles. He had won dis-
tinction under Narcissus, but the triumph of Agrippina
drove him and Domitilla into exile. Nero employed him
to crush the rebellion in Judaea, and it was during this
campaign that his wife died, leaving him with her two
sons— his successors — Titus and Domitian. He was, there-
fore, a widower when the Eastern troops made him
Emperor, but he took into his palace, and treated as
Empress, an emancipated slave of the name of Csenis.

The mistress of Vespasian has the distinction of being
associated — actively and usefully associated — with him in

THE EMPRESSES OE, THE TRANSITION 129

one of the soundest attempts to restore the decaying
Empire. She had been in the service of Antonia, the
grandmother of Agrippina, and is said to have been the
one who first disclosed to Tiberius the perfidy of Sejanus.
From the first she was a dangerous rival ^f Domitilla,
and, when his wife died, Vespasian entered into the quasi-
matrimonial relation with her which is known in Roman
law as contubernium. She would probably have been
Empress if the law had permitted him to contract a
solemn marriage with her. She had considerable ability,
but an unhappy reputation for extortion and the sale of
offices. It is not clear, however, that the wealth she
obtained did not contribute to Vespasian's rehabilitation
of the resources of the Empire. They abandoned and
destroyed the golden house of Nero, the central site of
which is now marked by the Flavian Amphitheatre, or
Coliseum. In their quiet gardens in the Quirinal they
received any citizen who cared to visit them, and main-
tained no timorous hedge of soldiers between themselves
and their people. They wished to see money spent on
public purposes, or hoarded for public emergencies, rather
than squandered. " My hand is the base of the statue :
give me the money," Caenis is said to have told a wealthy
man who proposed to raise a statue to her; but Dio
informs us that this and other stories of Caenis's avarice
properly belong to Vespasian. She died, however — if the
date assigned in Dio is correct— in the second year of
Vespasian's reign, and must not be credited with too
large a share in that great purification of Rome and re-
invigoration of its life with healthy provincial blood which
Tacitus regards as the beginning of the recovery of the
Empire.

Titus, who succeeded his father in the year 79, and
reigned for two years, threatened at one time to give
Rome an even more singular and unwelcome type of
Empress. He had in ea/ly youth married Arricidia
TertuUa, who died soon afterwards, and then Marcia
Furnilla, a lady of illustrious family. He left his wife
9

I30 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

in Rome when he took command under his father in
Judaea, and became infatuated with a brilliant princess
of the Herod family, Berenice. He divorced Furnilla,
and brought Berenice to live with him at Rome. But
the Romans resented the prospect of a Jewish Empress,
and she was forced to return. On his accession to the
throne he made no attempt to enforce her on them. He
reigned alone for two years, " the love and delight of
the human race," and maintained the sober administration
of his father.

With the accession of his younger brother, Domitian,
Rome received a new Empress, and, by an unhappy
coincidence, saw the imperial palace return to the evil
ways of the Caesars. Those of our time who attach
almost the entire importance to stock or birth, and Httle
to circumstances, in the formation of character, will find
a peculiar problem in Domitian and his wife. The
Emperor was the second son of the " plain Sabine burgher"
and sturdy soldier, Vespasian, and of the lowly provincial
woman, Flavia Domitilla. The Empress, Domitia Longina,
was the daughter of Domitius Corbulo, one of the strongest
and ablest generals that Rome produced in the first
century. Yet of these sound and vigorous stocks came,
in one generation, one of the most morbid of the
Emperors and an Empress who, in some respects, rivalled
Messalina. Rome knew them both, and had no false
hope.

Domitia — as she is usually called — makes her first
appearance as a young girl of great beauty and promise,
caressed and protected by the wealth and prestige of her
distinguished father, who, it is interesting to note, was a
brother of Caligula's masculine wife Caesonia. She was
married to a noble of distinction and character, Lucius
^lius Lamia .^milianus, and she seems to have been an
estimable young matron until her father incurred the anger
of Nero and was forced to commit suicide. Procopius and
Josephus, indeed, represent her as virtuous to the end, but
there seems to be little room for doubt that the nearer and

DOMITIA

UFFIZ! GAI.LEKV, FLORENCK

THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 131

less indulgent authorities are correct. Her young mind
opened on the sordid scenes of the closing part of Nero's
reign and the folly of Vitellius. She then met the
fascinating and effeminate Domitian, and very speedily
capitulated to his assaults.

Gibbon speaks of him as " the timid and inhuman
Domitian," while Dio opens his biographical sketch of the
Emperor with the deliberate epithet, " bold and wrathful."
We shall find a very natural dread of assassination in
Domitian's later years, but he was undoubtedly bold and
crafty in the service of Venus, and a stranger to moral
sentiment. His elder brother Titus had developed the
manly qualities of their father on the battlefields of Judaea,
and had proved strong enough to crush his irregular
feelings on his accession to the throne. Domitian had
remained at Rome, discharging only Icivic duties, and had
become one of the most heartless dandies in the group of
degenerate young patricians. During the civil strife of the
Vitellianists and Vespasianists on the streets of Rome he
had made his escape in the fitting disguise of a priest of
Isis. Titus knew his vicious and luxurious ways, and en-
deavoured to check him by ofTering him his own charming
daughter Julia in marriage; but Domitian was engaged
in fascinating the pretty and accomplished wife of Lamia
.^Emilianus, and refused. Titus, on his accession, associated
him in the government, and his first act was to separate
his mistress from her husband, and marry her.

Domitia's triumph was quickly tempered with morti-
fication. Julia married her cousin Sabinus, and, out of
pique or devilry, Domitian now discovered her charm and
seduced, her. To such a pair as these the attainment of
supreme power meant an occasion of Imperial license, and
sober Romans saw their community rapidly lose the ground
that had been won in the previous reigns. It was even
rumoured that Domitian had hastened his brother's death
by putting him in a box of snow during his last illness,
though this remains no more than an idle rumour. At all
events, Domitia soon discovered the despicable character

132 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

for whom — or for whose prospects — she had abandoned
her saner husband. While the affairs of the Empire needed
his most strenuous attention, he would spend hours catching
flies and spitting them with a bodkin ; and from the
spitting of flies he presently passed to the larger sport of
murdering men. He conducted his little frontier-wars from
safe and luxurious quarters, and came home to enjoy a
triumph and erect a colossal bronze memorial of his valour.
He banished eunuchs from Rome, and kept them in his
palace ; waged war against vice in all forms, and practised
it in all forms. In the general relaxation of Roman
manners even the Vestal Virgins had been for some
decades permitted an alleviation of their onerous vows.
Domitian posed as a moralist, on no other apparent ground
than that he was closely acquainted with every shade of
immorality, and drastically punished them. He raised
fine public buildings, and depleted the public treasury by
reckless expenditure and incompetent administration ; pro-
secuted officials for extortion, and put men to death for
their wealth; gave brilliant entertainments, and darkened
the city and the Empire with his sanguinary brooding.

If we were to accept Josephus's estimate of the virtue of
Domitia, we should conceive her as living in melancholy
isolation in the gloomy palace, an outraged spectator of
her husband's relations with Julia. But there is good
evidence that she sought relief with something of the
freedom of a Messalina. An authentic occurrence in the
third year of Domitian's reign puts her guilt beyond ques-
tion. He had the actor Paris murdered in the street, and
divorced Domitia. The people boldly sympathized with
her, and covered with flowers the spot on which Paris had
been killed. The Emperor had a number of them executed,
but public feeling seems to have been expressed so strongly
that he was forced to recall Domitia to the palace, and the
sordid comedy ran on amid the jeers of Rome. A poet
was put to death for making it the theme of his verse;
Domitia's former husband and others were executed for
their freedom of speech. Then the beautiful and capti-

THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 133

vating Julia perished miserably in an attempt of Domitian's
to destroy the too obvious proof of their incest, and he
became more sombre than ever.

This is not the place to tell the long and dreary story
of the reign of Domitian, of which, for twelve further years,
the Empress remains an inconspicuous, and perhaps a
sobered, spectator. For a few years he maintained his
singular and obscure mixture of good and evil, but the
brighter features of his administration gradually faded,
and a horrible gloom settled on the palace and the city.
Hosts of spies and informers sprang up ; large numbers
of nobles, of both sexes, were executed or banished, on
the slightest suspicion, and their wealth divided between
the informers and the Emperor's shrinking treasury. So
great was, his dread of assassination that he lined the
portico at the palace, in which he used to walk, with white
glazed tiles that would reflect the approach of any person
behind him. But an extraordinary incident that Dio relates
will suffice to give some idea of the reign of terror under
which the Empress and all Rome suffered.

A number of the leading citizens of Rome were sum-
moned to a banquet at the palace at a late hour of the
night. They were frozen with horror when they found
that the entire dining-room — walls, ceiling, and floor —
was draped in black, and a miniature tombstone, with his
name engraved on it, was placed opposite each guest. As
they gazed, a number of nude boys, whose bodies were
washed with ink, burst into the room and danced amongst
them, and then the dishes of a funeral banquet were served.
The guests sat silent and shivering; the Emperor grimly
discoursed to them of deaths and executions. When the
banquet was over, they were relieved to find themselves
dismissed. They found, however, that their litters had
been sent away, and they were put into strange vehicles,
with strange servants. The gloomy journey ended at their
own houses, and they were beginning to breathe, when
they were thrown into fresh alarm by the news that a
messenger had come from the palace. The messenger to

134 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

each guest was one of the dancing boys, now cleaned,
perfumed, and clothed with flowers, bearing the gold and
silver vessels which the guest had used at the banquet.
The boys and the dishes were presented to them with the
Emperor's greeting.

Unhappily, Domitian did not confine himself to intimi-
dation. The heads of the wealthier nobles fell in quick
succession, and, in great secrecy, amid an army of spies,
the Empress and a few others came to an understanding.
The story of the actual fall of the tyrant has clearly
been embroidered with a good deal of unauthentic detail
in popular gossip, but even in its most sober version it does
not lack romance.

The version which Dio assures us he " had heard " is
one that the conscientious historian must hesitate to accept.
The Emperor, he says, had been informed of the con-
spiracy, and had drawn up a list of those who were to be
executed for taking part in it. He put the list under his
pillow, with the sword which he always kept there, and
went to sleep. We have previously seen something of
the bejewelled boys who used to run with great freedom
about the palaces of the Romans of the first century.
Domitian, the great censor of other people's vices, had a
number of them, and the legend is that one of them, playing
in his bedroom, noticed the parchment under his pillow,
and took it out into the palace. Domitia met the boy, and
idly glanced at the parchment. She saw her own name
at the head of the list of the condemned, and at once
summoned the other conspirators. They entered the
Emperor's room, snatched the sword from under his pillow,
and despatched him.

Pretty as the story is, we must prefer the more prosaic
account given us by Suetonius, who lived in the next
generation. Domitia felt that the Emperor had at last
conceived a design on her life, and she sent her steward
to despatch him. He offered Domitian a fictitious report
of a plot, and stabbed him while he read it. Other servants
rushed in at the signal, and completed the assassination.

THE EMPRESSES OF THE TRANSITION 135

It is the one action that historians have recorded to the
honour of the twelfth Empress of Rome, and we leave
her company with httle regret. She was an ordinary
woman of the patrician world at the time — fair, frail, accom-
plished, and luxurious. With the death of her husband
she merges in the indistinguishable crowd of selfish and
wayward ladies on whom Juvenal was then beginning to
pour his exaggerated rhetoric.

It remains to describe very briefly how the sceptre
passes into the nobler hands of the Stoic Emperors and
their wives. The throne was offered to, and accepted by,
M. Cocceius Nerva, an aged noble of known moderation
and long public service. He at once removed all traces
of the hateful reign of his predecessor, and entered upon
a" sober and useful administration of the Empire. He was
in the later sixties of his age, and we find no mention of
a wife. But the task of enforcing sobriety on so corrupted
a population was too great for his age and moderate ability.
A conspiracy against him was discovered. He disarmed
the conspirators by inviting them to sit by him in the
theatre, and even putting a sword in their hands and asking
them what they thought of its keenness ; but he saw that
a stronger man was needed, and he chose as his colleague
Marcus Ulpius Nerva Trajanus, a Spaniard of great
military ability and commanding personality, who was
then at the head of the troops in Germany. Nerva died
soon afterwards, and, with the accession of Trajan, we
come to the thirteenth Empress of Rome and the com-
mencement of a new and more splendid chapter in the
story of the Empire.

CHAPTER VIII

PLOTINA

" T F," says Gibbon, " a man were called to fix the period
X in the history of the world, during which the con-
dition of the human race was most happy and pros-
perous, he would, without hesitation, name that which
elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of
Commodus " ; and he observes of Antoninus Pius and
Marcus Aurelius that " their united reigns are possibly
the only period of history in which the happiness of a great
people was the sole object of government."

This monumental eulogy of the period which we now
approach — a eulogy which the more penetrating study of
Renan and the more recent research of M. Boissier and
Dr. Dill have not materially lessened — will suffice to warn
the inexpert reader against the ancient and popular legend
that Rome continued to sink under the burden of its vices
until it tottered into the tomb of outworn nations. Under
the Empresses whom we have now to consider there was
a great improvement of character and recovery of vigour
in the Roman Empire, but before we pass to that brighter
phase I would enter a brief protest against the general
exaggeration of the darkness of the period we have tra-
versed. Even under its worst rulers Rome was far from
being wholly corrupt. The vices of a Messalina, the crimes
of an Agrippina, and the follies of a Poppsea, stand out
so prominently in that period only because they were
perpetrated on the height of the throne. Even they were
hardly worse than the crimes and follies of the wives or

136

PLOTINA 137

mistresses of kings in many a less censured period of
history ; and, if you care to count them, the lilies were as
numerous as the poppies in this first series of Empresses,
but the lilies drooped earlier, and have been less noticed.
Whenever, in the course of our story, the light has passed
from the throne to the less elevated crowd, we have found
fine character mingled with the corrupt even in the darkest
years of the early Empire. The heads that fell before
the Imperial monsters were as many as the heads that
bowed.

The truth is that, if we are not misled by the hasty
generalizations and plebeian diatribes which Juvenal, in his
" Satires," founds upon the dubious bits of gossip that he
picked up on the fringe of Roman society, and against
which historians now warn us, there was much the same
diversity of conduct in the early Empire as in most of the
corresponding periods of luxury. The wealthier women
of Rome assuredly fell far short of the cloistered virtue of
the maid and the matron of Greece ; but Greece had only
succeeded in maintaining that standard of domestic virtue
in its wives and daughters by cultivating a high caste of
courtesans for their roaming husbands. It may be ad-
mitted, too, that the Roman woman was morally inferior
to the wife of the Egyptian noble, and to the wife of the
noble or the wealthy merchant of Babylonia. But the
patrician women, even of Csesarean Rome, will compare
with the women of most of the later civilizations at the
same stage of development ; at the stage, that is to say,
when the nation relaxes from the strain of empire-making,
and its veins are flushed with the wealth of its conquests.
I would instance the women of the early Teutonic nations
as soon as they settle on southern Europe ; the women of
Italy in the early Middle Ages ; the women of England
under the Stuarts and, after a later expansion, under the
Georges ; the women of France under Louis XIII and
Louis XIV ; the women of Russia in the nineteenth cen-
tury. At Rome, in spite of the positive insistence on vice
of Caligula, Messalina, and Nero, in spite of their determined

138 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

effort to weed out the good, we have found virtue and
courage springing up afresh in each generation.

We now come to a period when, three centuries before
the fall of Rome, the Empire is purged of its exceptional
corruption, and character assumes the normal diversity
that it has in any old and wealthy civilization. The city
of Rome was assuredly vicious and in decay. But the city
was not the Empire, as those rhetoricians forget who talk
of its entire demoralization. Rome had been drenched
with degrading agencies for half a century ; but there was
a quite normal amount of stout will and high character in
the provinces, and this is now infused more freely into the
metropolis. It is only by a similar influx of sounder blood
from the provinces that any great city survives the feverish
waste of its tissue. The remedy was retarded in Rome
because the provincials, even of Italy, but especially of
Gaul and Spain, were of alien race. Rome jealously
remembered that it was the conqueror ; the rest were the
conquered. Under Vespasian, however, the provincials
were admitted more freely, and with the accession of a
Spaniard, Trajan, the process increased.

In the remote and primitive settlement which Agrippina
had established on the banks of the Rhine, where the
towers of Cologne Cathedral now keep watch over a
splendid city, there dwelt, in the year 97, the commander
of the forces in Lower Germany, Marcus Ulpius Trajanus,
with his wife and a few female relatives. Trajan was of a
moderate Spanish family, and had, like his father, cut his
own path in the military service of the Empire. He was
unambitious, but popular. A large, handsome man, in his
forty-fifth year, of singularly graceful bearing and serene
features, he charmed everybody by his simplicity and
affability of manner, and liked a good carouse and a rough
soldierly jest. His wife Plotina was a plain, honest matron
of unknown origin. It has been conjectured that she was
related to Pompeius Planta, at one time Governor of
Egypt, but the only ground for the conjecture seems to
be that Planta was a friend of Trajan's. As she had

PLOTINA

139

neither beauty of person nor romantic defect of character,
the chroniclers have left her largely to our imagination ;
but she was a type of woman whom it is not difficult to
picture— a woman of plain features, level judgment, and of
what is euphemistically called grave but agreeable con-
versation. She was by no means brilliant, but her close
friendship for Hadrian suggests that she was not too dull
and prosy, and had pretensions to culture. Her ways were
simple, and her character can be relieved of the one
imputation made against it. She compares well with
Livia, but as a higher bourgeoise compares with a grande
dame. In a word, she had none of the autumnal colour,
the beauty of decay, of the Csesarean women, but she had
the less aesthetic and more useful quality that they lacked,
conscientiousness. To the courtly Pliny (" Panegyr.," 83)
she is the embodiment of all the virtues.

With her at Cologne was Trajan's sister Marciana, a
widow of much the same complexion as Plotina, and
Marciana's daughter Matidia, who in turn had two daughters,
Sabina and Matidia. We can imagine the agitation of this
tranquil establishment among the forests of Germany when
a courier came from Rome with the news that Trajan was
chosen as colleague of the Emperor. They had left Rome
six years before, in the middle of Domitian's reign. How-
ever, they seem to have received very sedately the prospect
of a removal from the camp on the Rhine to the Imperial
palace. Although Nerva died in the following January (98),
Trajan remained for the year in Germany, completing his
task of strengthening the frontier against the northern
barbarians. Then the family set out on the long journey
to the capital.

The fame of Trajan's simplicity and geniality of manner
had preceded him, but Rome looked with surprise on an
Emperor who could wait a year before occupying the
palace, enter the city on foot, without guards, and talk so
affably with any of his subjects. Nor was Plotina long
before she showed that they had received a new type of
Empress. As she ascended the steps of the palace, she

I40

THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

turned round and said to those below : " As I enter here
to-day, I trust I shall leave it when the time comes." The
refreshing amiability, simplicity, and moderation of the
Imperial couple captivated the Romans, and Trajan re-
sponded to their good will with the most judicious and
untiring exertions in the public service. He trod out at
once the hideous brood of informers, checked corrupt
officials, and appointed the best men to public offices.
Indifferent to the splendour and luxury of even the modest
palace of Vespasian, he spent most of his reign in frontier-
wars or in long journeys for the purpose of bracing the
relaxed frame of the Empire ; and he enriched and adorned
Rome as no Emperor had done since Octavian.

That he was vigorously supported by Plotina is quite
certain, and there is evidence that she was much more than
a sympathetic witness of his labours. It is related by the
Emperor Julian that Trajan often sought the advice of
Plotina, and that it was always sound. At the beginning
of his reign she had occasion to use her influence. Trajan's
dislike of informers was carried so far that, when a case of
real extortion occurred in the provinces, the injured were
prevented from bringing it to his notice. They appealed
to Plotina, and she put the case judiciously to her husband
and secured relief. In many other ways she gave useful
assistance, so that the Senate offered the title of Augusta
to her and Marciana, They declined, as Trajan had refused
the special title offered to him, but he relented, and they
followed his example.

The reign of Trajan and Plotina was thus one long
episode of strenuous and enlightened public service, but
before we enter into the particulars of their achievements
it is proper to endeavour to obtain a nearer view of their
personalities. In this the chroniclers give us little assist-
ance, and the result cannot be very interesting. It is ever
the painful reflection of the biographer that the description
of a sober life — a life which neither sinks to the lower levels
of vice nor soars to some unaccustomed height of virtue —
has little interest for the majority of his readers ; and this

PLOTINA 141

was the life of the Imperial court during the twenty years
of Trajan's reign. The Emperor himself was no paragon.
Preferring the easy ways of a camp, he drank somewhat
deeply of nights, his jests were apt to be coarse, and he
was popularly accused of the vice which so generally
infected the men of the Empire Yet he had this distinction
in a long line of Emperors, in the prime of life, that no
woman ever shared, or sullied, his aifection for Plotina.
Gibbon has remarked, in extenuation of the conduct of his
successor, that " of the first fifteen Emperors, Claudius was
the only one whose taste in love was entirely correct."
That would be a high compliment to Messalina, but in
point of fact, as we saw, Claudius was not entitled to that
distinction. The charge against Trajan is vague, and we
must rather award the distinction to him. Merivale some-
what harshly speaks of him as only maintaining his self-
respect because of the bluntness of his moral sense. If we
put his strong sense of public duty and 'his fidelity in the
scale against his one certain indulgence, in drink, we shall
hardly agree to that verdict.

The virtue of Plotina, on the other hand, has been more
seriously assailed by both ancient and recent writers. In
the service of the Emperor was a very handsome and
accomplished youth named Hadrian, an orphan, with great
taste and skill in art and letters. He had been employed
by Trajan at Cologne, both in military service and in filling
up the long nights with an occasional carouse, and, after
their return to Rome, he was a great favourite of the ladies
at the palace. They formed a little circle in which letters
were discussed and literary men were patronized. There
was something of a literary revival; it was the age of
Juvenal, Martial, Quinctilian, Pliny, Suetonius, Celsus, and
Dio Chrysostom. Hadrian was a brilliant student, and he
appreciated this open and easy way to distinction. Trajan
is represented as using the young man for companion, but
not regarding him as fitted for promotion, so that it fell to
Plotina to urge, and ultimately to make, the fortune of
the future Emperor. The magnificent mausoleum which

142 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Hadrian raised in memory of her long testified to his
ardent and grateful attachment.

There is a good deal of exaggeration in this conception.
We shall see that Trajan promoted Hadrian in such a way
as to mark him in the eyes of all as his successor ; and his
chief advisers in this were the statesmen Sura and Attianus.
In any case, there is no proof that Plotina, who must have
been twenty years older than Hadrian, felt more than a
very natural fondness for the gifted and charming youth.
Pliny mentions that her friendship for him gave rise to
gossip, but insists that she was " a most virtuous woman."
The "Augustan History" leaves her unassailed. Suetonius
has no scandal to record. Dio alone describes their attach-
ment as " erotic love " ; but on an earlier page Dio has
expressly said that her career was stainless. When he has
described her standing at the top of the palace steps, to say
that she trusted to leave that palace just asshe entered it,
he adds : " And she so bore herself throughout the whole
reign as to incur no blame." ^ The remarkable eulogy of
Pliny, the silence of the other authorities, and the conduct
of Trajan, must enable us to choose between these contra-
dictory statements of Dio, and indeed compel us to reject
this unsubstantial charge against the virtue of Plotina.

The other ladies df the Imperial household were equally
without reproach, and life at the palace was harmonious
and uneventful. Emperor and Empress moved about
Rome without guards, and entertained, or were entertained
by, their friends in a simple and unceremonious way. But
Trajan had little love for the atmosphere of a palace^ and
an outbreak in Dacia, two years after his arrival in Rome,
gave him an excuse to return to the camp. He took
Hadrian with him, and remained in Dacia a year. In the
year 103 he rejoined Plotina at Rome, but the war broke
out afresh shortly afterwards, and it now took him three
years to subdue the province and link it to the Empire by
a great bridge over the Danube. He returned in 107, and

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PI.OTINA 143

spent seven years in Rome before he set out on his final
journey in the year 1 14.

The prolonged absence of the Emperor threw a good
deal of responsibility on Plotina, and it would be of great
interest, if it were possible, to trace her share in the vast
work which was done for the city and the Empire at that
time. This, unfortunately, we cannot do. There were able
counsellors left at Rome in Trajan's absence, and no doubt
most of the work was directly controlled by Trajan during
his stay in Rome from 107 to 114. We know only that he
conferred freely with Plotina, and that he left great power
to her when he went abroad. We can, therefore, only
regard her, in a general way, as contributing to the
prosperity and progress that characterize the reign of her
husband. She kept Rome tranquil and content, and no
doubt followed with close interest the great improvements
which Trajan commanded. The neck of hill which linked
the Capitoline to the Quirinal, in the heart of Rome, was
cut away, and a fine Forum, or broad street with sheltered
colonnade on either side, was constructed on the cleared
ground between the hills. As previous Emperors had
already made slight extensions of the old Forum, the
citizens of Rome now had, in the centre of the city, a
magnificent corso running out toward the great Circus, in
the porticoes of which the packed dwellers of the Subura on
one side, and Velabrum on the other, could lounge and take
the air with comfort. Nor was this a mere meretricious
concession to their entertainment. Trajan was equally
attentive to their education. A beautiful basilica, two public
libraries — one for Greek and one for Roman letters — and
other splendid buildings were raised along the sides of the
new Forum, and statues of marble and bronze were brought
from all parts, even from the palace, to adorn it.

Other cities of the Empire shared in the generosity
and public spirit of the new reign. Harbours were con-
structed for the increase of commerce, fresh roads were
flung across the intervening country, and many towns
were enriched with stimulating public edifices. Nor were

144 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

the social needs of the Empire less regarded than the
material. Previous Emperors had given a scanty practical
expression to the doctrine of the brotherhood of men,
which the Stoic philosophy was disseminating. Trajan
gave a great extension to this new philanthropy, as we
learn from the inscriptions that have been found in the soil
of Italy. It is estimated that 300,000 poor and orphaned
children were fed by charity or Imperial aid in Italy alone.
The lot of the slave was improved, and the school system of
the Empire became better than any that has since appeared
in Europe until the second half of the nineteenth century.
Men were returning to the sobriety of their fathers, and
were tempering it with the new spirit of peace and mercy,
and a regard for culture. Morality improved, and character
became a qualification for office. The one open scandal of
the long reign — an intrigue of the Vestal Virgins with three
young knights — was punished with all the rigour of the old
Roman law.

We must be content to know that Plotina had her
part in this noble work of restoring the jaded frame of
the Empire, and refrain from attempting to measure her
particular influence. By the year 114 the administration
ran so smoothly, and the Western world was so settled,
that Trajan turned his attention to the East. The Parthians
had been interfering in the affairs of the Ethiopians, who
were vassals of Rome, and Trajan saw in this a pretext
of establishing more stjongly, if not enlarging, the eastern
frontier of the Empire. He had never been in the East,
and the deep attraction of its ancient cities and decadent
mysticism gave a cultural interest to his expedition. He
took with him Plotina and Matidia, his niece. Marciana
seems to have died before this time, and Hadrian had
married Sabina, the daughter of Matidia. Hadrian, and
probably his wife, accompanied them.

The path to the East for the Roman lay through Athens,
where Plotina and her companions would survey the
decaying splendour of the Greek civilization in which
they had long been interested. Envoys from the Parthians

PLOTINA 145

met Trajan there, and tried to disarm him, but he dis-
missed them, and pushed on to the field in which he trusted
to win fresh laurels. They reached Antioch at the end
of the year, and had, during their stay in that metropoUs
of Oriental vice and luxury, a novel experience. A great
earthquake shook the city, and even the house in which
the Emperor lodged. He was forced to make his escape
by the window. The accounts of their later movements
are meagre, and we can only imagine Plotina passing
with wonder through the strange spectacles of western
Asia. During the spring and summer an indecisive
campaign was waged against the Parthians, and Trajan
returned to Antioch for the winter. In the spring of the
year 116 the Emperor set out again for Mesopotamia. He
passed down the Euphrates, took the Parthian capital,
sailed on the Persian Gulf, and even directed a longing
eye over the ocean in the direction of India. The spirit
of Alexander breathed iff him as he trod this theatre
of the historic conquerors, but the burden of age and an
increasing infirmity put a reluctant limit to his ambition.
He had, in fact, passed the range of his powers, and
distended too far the frontier of the Empire. In the
following year he became weaker, and the Eastern tribes
advanced with spirit. Leaving the task to his generals,
the Emperor turned towards Italy.

How far Plotina had accompanied her husband on
these remote journeys we are not informed. It would
not be surprising, or out of harmony with a general custom
of the time, if she covered the whole, or the greater part,
of the territory with him. However that may be, we
find her with Trajan and Hadrian at Antioch once more in
the course of the year 117. Trajan was seriously ill, and
had to abandon all hope of settling the Eastern question.
He maintained the troops at the frontier, left Hadrian at
Antioch as legate of the East, and slowly and sadly moved
towards Europe. His tall frame was bent with age, his
hair was white, his limbs made heavy with dropsy and
numbed with incipient paralysis. When they arrived at

146 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Selinus, a small town on a precipitous rock of the Cilician
coast, only a few hundred miles from Edessa, his illness
increased, and he died, in the month of August, 117, in
the sixty-third year of his age.

The exact truth about Plotina's conduct at the time
of Trajan's death will never be known, but an impartial
analysis of the statements made by the chroniclers cannot
discover any clear ground for dissatisfaction. Dio, whose
authority on this point is claimed to be considerable, since
his father was then governor of the province of Cilicia,
first insinuates a suggestion of poison, in the usual form
of an unsubstantial rumour, and then insists that Plotina
forged a letter in Trajan's name, nominating Hadrian
his successor in the Imperial power. The writer of the
sketch of Hadrian in the " Historia Augusta," Spartianus,
carries the legend further. He describes how Plotina put
a confidant in the bed of the dead Emperor, drew the
clothes about him, and directed him to murmur, in a
feeble voice, to the assembled officials that he wished
Hadrian to succeed him. This second version is wholly
negligible. It comes only from an anonymous writer of
the fourth century who excites our distrust at all times
by his extravagant and unsupported statements. The
latest commentators on his work warn us that his aim
is prurient and his method devoid of scruple.

The authority of Dio, on the other hand, must not be
exaggerated. His father might purvey gossip to him, like
any other Greek or Roman, and his story of the forged
letter — or forged signature to a letter — might easily be
a piece of local gossip. Plotina was evidently anxious
to secure the succession for Hadrian, and one may well
admit that she concealed her husband's death until Hadrian
arrived at Selinus. That concealment would easily give
rise to conjectures. Serviez naturally forces on his readers
the more romantic version, but more sober writers acquit
Plotina of anything more than a formal use of Trajan's
name after his death.

The suggestion of poison is frivolous. Trajan had been

PLOTINA 147

ailing for months, and his assiduous travelling in a climate
so different from that to which he had been accustomed all
his life must have worn him out. He arrived in Asia
Minor in the sweltering and dangerous month of August,
and a touch of the enteric fever which so commonly over-
came the European in the insanitary East of the time put
an end to his life. Plotina had for some time urged him to
nominate Hadrian as his successor. We must not hastily
infer from his reluctance that he thought Hadrian unfit to
succeed him. He had just left him in a position of the
gravest responsibility, and must have appreciated what a
great historian calls Hadrian's "vast and active genius."
But he may not have deemed it proper for him to dictate
to the Senate how they should exercise their power of
choice. What actually occurred is certainly obscure. A
letter was dispatched to tlie Senate, after Trajan's death,
in which Hadrian was nominated, and Dio says that the
signature was put to this letter by Plotina. One would
imagine that such a deception, as Dio represents it to
be, would easily be detected and resented by Hadrian's
powerful enemies in the Senate. It is probable that, as
Merivale supposes, the letter was really dictated by Trajan,
and the signing of it by Plotina was only formal. We may
admit Dio's narrative of facts, yet believe that the Empress
was merely carrying out Trajan's will.

On the other hand, there is no reason to quarrel with,
or put a base interpretation on, her zeal for the succession
of Hadrian. We shall see how well he maintained the
sound work of Trajan. He was at once summoned to
Sehnus, to consult with Plotina and with the elderly
Senator Attianus, who had been his guardian together
with Trajan, and had been as zealous as the Empress
in urging his advancement. They decided that Hadrian
must return to his post at Antioch, and Plotina set out
for Rome with the ashes of her husband in a golden urn.
The last resting-place of Trajan was under the magnificent
column which still bears witness in Rome to his many
victories, and for centuries afterwards the most flattering

148 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

compliment that the Senators could pay to an Emperor
was to cry that he was "more fortunate than Augustus,
and better than Trajan."

Plotina lived at Rome for four years after the death of
her husband. The first year was, as we shall see, one of
great anxiety and trial. There was much discontent at
Hadrian's accession, and before long his reign was stained
by the execution of four of the most distinguished nobles.
Matidia died in the following year, and it was known to
all Rome that Sabina lived unhappily with Hadrian. It is
said that Plotina continued to have an active share in the
administration of the Empire, though she must now have
been in, or near, her seventh decade of life. Dio places
her death in the year 121. Hadrian was in Gaul at the
time, and the luxuriance of his mourning gave encourage-
ment to the libellers. He went into deep mourning,
breathed a passionate grief in a beautiful poem, and ordered
the building of a temple for the cult of the divinity which
he conferred on her. In Nimes, where he was staying at
the time when her death was announced, he raised the
superb mausoleum which kept her name for ages in the
mind of Europe.

It is both pleasant and legitimate to believe that there
was neither rhetorical display nor the memory of an
irregular love in the princely mourning of Hadrian over
the death of his patroness. Apart from his own indebted-
ness to her, the world owed her much. She had been at
least a most worthy and helpful companion of a great
Emperor, a type of womanhood to which the eyes of
Roman matrons might happily be directed. On the day
when her inanimate frame was borne from the palace to
the funeral pile, men could repeat that she had in truth
left that home of temptation as she had entered it. The
saner and sunnier life of the vast Empire was, in part, her
monument.^

' Duruy quotes Aurelius Victor ("Epitome," xiv) as saying: " It is impos-
sible to say how mucli Plotina enhanced the glory of Trajan." The passage
is really found in c. xxxix of the "Epitome."

CHAPTER IX

SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN

WE are already familiar with the extraction and the
training of the next Empress of Rome. Sabina
was the elder daughter of Trajan's niece Matidia,
and came of the sound and sober stock of the Spanish
provincials. We first meet her in the little settlement on
the Rhine, where she lived with her widowed mother and
grandmother, in Trajan's house, during the reign of Galba
and Nerva. She was in her early teens, a grave and
modest child, easily directed by the three sedate ladies of
the house. Very shortly after the accession of Trajan, a
charming young officer burst into the camp to offer his
congratulations. He had a romantic story to tell, how a
jealous brother-in-law had bribed his servants to break
, down the chariot on the way, and he had crossed the great
forests on foot to greet his guardian and cousin. It was
the future Emperor, and her future husband, Hadrian.

The wicked brother-in-law, Ursus Servianus, presently
arrived, and put before Trajan a proof of his ward's
enormities in the shape of a list of his debts. But Trajan
was charmed with the handsome and brilliant young
officer, kept him in his suite, and took him to Rome when
he went up to occupy the throne; and we saw that he
became a great favourite of the Imperial ladies. His
father had been a first cousin of Trajan, but Hadrian lost
him at the age of ten, and was committed to the guardian-
ship of Trajan and Attianus. The finest masters of Rome
directed his studies in letters, art, rhetoric, and philosophy,

149

ISO THE EMPRESSES QF ROME

and he became a most accomplished and learned, as well
as, by hunting and exercise, a graceful and energetic youth.
The " Historia Augusta " expressly says that Trajan " loved
him," and he advanced quickly, and enjoyed the brilliant
literary society of the palace and the capital. About two
years after their coming to Rome he married Sabina. One
chronicler represents him as spending large sums of money
to win her, and so incurring the annoyance of Trajan;
another states that he turned with disdain from her plain
propriety, and had to be persuaded by Plotina that the
marriage was to his interest. It Was, at all events, clearly
a manage de convenance, and was destined to have the
customary sequel.

Sabina would be in her twelfth or thirteenth year at the
time, and we can imagine the mating of the prim httle
maiden with the brilliant scholar and promising officer of
twenty-four. For many years she is no more than the
silent shadow of her husband, and we can only dimly
follow her movements as she accompanies him about the
Empire. Whether she accompanied him on the Dacian
wars between loi and io6, or, as seems more probable,
remained at Rome to develop a taste for letters in the
palace of Plotina, we cannot confidently say, but it is
recorded that she did lean to culture. Hadrian was back
in io6, high in the favour of Trajan, who gave him the
diamond ring he had received from Nerva. He could both
fight and carouse to the Emperor's satisfaction. He was
made praetor on his return, and gave brilliant games— at
Trajan's expense — in which ii,ooo beasts were slain. In
quick succession he became legate in Lower Pannonia
and consul. The aged statesman Sura told him that
he was destined for the throne; the rumour went about
Rome, and the nobles, at first disdainful of his provincial
accent and jealous of his progress, began to respect
him. He, and most probably Sabina, accompanied Trajan
on his fatal journey to the East, and we have seen what
happened.

In the year 117, in about the thirtieth year of her age,

SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 151

Sabina found herself Empress of Rome, but the elevation
seems to have brought her little happiness and impelled
her to no exertion. There is little room for doubt that,
either in the camp or in the tainted atmosphere of Rome
or Antioch, Hadrian had contracted the vice which prevailed
among Roman men. There is another reason, however,
why Sabina remains in obscurity in the chronicles.
Hadrian's biographer, Gregorovius, has relieved him of the
common charge that he relinquished the conquests of
Trajan, and neglected Imperial interests, in a less enlight-
ened zeal for art and letters. Hadrian had a clear,
commendable, and vast policy. He believed that the
Empire would only be weakened by extension, and that it
was a saner ambition to enrich and uplift the life within its
frontiers than to enlarge them. His life was spent in a
magnificent realization of this design ; and it was a design
so far beyond the modest range of Sabina's political
intelligence that she was forced to remain a spectator of
his work. She seems, very naturally, to have carped at his
one frailty, which so nearly concerned her, and Hadrian
replied peevishly, and merely conveyed her as an un-
interested encumbrance in the remarkable voyages which
fill the twenty years of his reign.

Hadrian was then in his fortieth year, a tall, very
handsome and athletic man, of brilliant conversation, un-
tiring energy, and great public spirit. The most artistic
of all Roman Emperors, one of the mbst artistic and
cultured of monarchs, indeed, he could nevertheless endure
the plain bread-and-cheese of the soldier for weeks to-
gether; and he so much discarded his horse and his
chariot, for their encouragement, that a chronicler de-
scribes him as having covered the entire Empire on foot.
By diplomacy and by bribes, which we may or may not
admire, he secured an almost unbroken peace for the
Ejnpire during two decades; and the works of use or
adornment with which he enriched every province of the
Empire during those twenty years make up an almost
, fabulous achievement. Much as we must sympathize with

152 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

the Empress in her resentment of the practice into which
his Greek-Oriental tastes betrayed him, we cannot deny
that Hadrian was a great and beneficent ruler. The
sketch of his life in that prurient work, the " Historia
Augusta " — the chronique scandaleuse of the middle Empire
— is a monumental, if unconscious, panegyric.

The biographer of the Empresses cannot escape the
conclusion that Sabina was not a fitting mate for so
versatile and constructive a genius. Her superiority in
decency is enormously outweighed by Hadrian's magnifi-
cent work for the Empire. The natural alienation of the
two in sentiment would not encourage her to co-operate
in his work, in the fashion set by Livia and Plotina,
but one feels that this is not the sole explanation, and
that her mediocre faculty was entirely absorbed in a
small pursuit of culture. It is not impossible that, if
there had been cordial co-operation between them, she
would have saved Hadrian from the only serious stains
on the record of his reign.

The first of these occurred in the year following his
accession. Bringing to the Imperial task a fresh and
vigorous mind, untainted by mere military ambition—
though he was an excellent soldier — Hadrian glanced
round the Empire, and saw that peace must first be
established on its frontiers. The East was aflame with
revolt, the African and German boundaries were disturbed,
and trouble was announced from Britain. He at once
sacrificed the conquests beyond the Tigris and Euphrates,
appeased the Jews and the other peoples of the East, and
passed to Lower Germany to still the restlessness of the
northern frontier. There had been some discontent among
the older soldiers and statesmen of Rome at his being
forced on them. From Judaea he had imprudently sent
one of Trajan's most fiery commanders, the Moorish prince
Lusius Quietus, back in some disgrace to the capital, and
this man and others formed a party of opposition. When
they saw that he was sacrificing Trajan's conquests and
reversing his policy, and especially when he proposed to

SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 153

evacuate Dacia also, they entered, it is said, into something
of the nature of a conspiracy.

How far Hadrian was really responsible for the
execution of the leaders of this party we cannot say, and
his emphatic denial of responsibility is entitled to con-
sideration. We know that, when the aged statesman
Attianus wrote to urge him that the Roman prefect and
other distinguished malcontents ought to be removed,
he refused to take any action. The Senate now announced
that a plot to assassinate Hadrian had been detected, and
it put to death, without trial, four men of consular rank,
Nigrinus, Palma, Celsus, and Lusius Quietus. A sullen
murmur passed through the city, and Hadrian hastily
composed his affairs on the Danube and went to Rome.
He resolutely denied that he had consented to the execu-
tions, and the question remains open.

With this public resentment in view, Hadrian at once
lavished the most princely favours on Rome, and swore
that he would never execute a Senator without the consent
of his order. He remitted debts to the treasury to the
extent of ;£'9,ooo,ooo, extended the existing charities to
orphans and widows, provided magnificent spectacles for
the people, and made a sacrifice of Attianus, by deposing
him, to the anger of the malcontents. When the Senate
offered him the triumph which had been due to Trajan
for the Eastern victories, he refused it, and placed a wax
image of the dead Emperor in the triumphal chariot. The
citizens of Rome may have been less impressed when
he showed a zeal for public morals, and forbade the mixed
bathing that had hitherto been permitted ; but he suc-
ceeded, by two years of untiring public service, in removing
the earlier resentment. That he wished to kill Attianus,
and did actually execute the architect Apollodorus, are
idle legends. Serviez seriously reproduces the story that
the architect had snubbed him— telling him to "go and
paint his pumpkins "—when he had made a suggestion
to him in earlier years, and that Hadrian avenged himself
when he came to the throne. The truth is that the " Historia

154 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Augusta " describes him in consultation with Apollodorus
on some building project ten years later.

The details of this vast activity of Hadrian's do not
concern us, as Sabina seems to have taken no part in it.
The busts we have of her seem to show a cold and irre-
sponsive temper, as if the Empress were contemplating
disdainfully the figure of the beautiful Oriental youth on
whom Hadrian's affection became concentrated. There is
distinction in the smooth lines of the face and in the lofty
forehead, and there is a proud strength that might very
well m^ke her " morose and harsh," as Hadrian described
her, when he gave her such palpable cause for resentment.
Her mother died in 119. In a florid oration Hadrian
praised her beauty of person and character, but the death
would not be likely to improve the relations of the Imperial
spouses.

In the year 120 or 121 Hadrian set out on the first of
the long journeys which fill the rest of his career, and
Sabina made the tour of the world with him. Had their
intercourse been more pleasant, the lot of Sabina during
the next fifteen years would have been one of great fortune.
They passed together over the whole Roman world from
Eboracum (York) to Arabia and Egypt, surveying the
ruined Empires of the past and the young nations of the
future in the light of whatever culture the age afforded ;
and so beneficent was their passage that myriads of in-
scriptions and coins, bearing such legends as " Golden
Age " and " Restorer of the Earth," handed on to posterity
the memory of the great works which Hadrian everywhere
inaugurated. Through Gaul — probably through the flour-
ishing Greek colony of Massilia (Marseilles), the solid and
cultured city of Lugdunum (Lyons), and the little trading
centre, Lutetia, that would one day be brilliant Paris—
they passed on to Germany, and traversed the boundless
forests that hid the soil of a great modern nation. No
glittering pomp of guards surrounded the Emperor. Bare-
headed alike in the snows of Germany and under the
sun of Syria, marching commonly on foot in the dress of

SABINA

BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 155

a soldier, and living on soldier's fare, he restored the rigid
discipline of the legions wherever he went. Bridges,
aqueducts, roads, temples, and colonnaded squares sprang
up in the rear of his march. His staff was a band of
engineers and architects.

In this novel and admirable company Sabina made the
round of Gaul and Germany, and crossed over to Britain
in the Imperial galleys. From the little colony of Lon-
dinium (London), which had been destroyed sixty years
before, and was now restored by Hadrian, they passed
along the solid Roman road to Eboracum (York), the last
great station from which civihzation looked out on the
turbulent waves of Scottish barbarism. It was then that
Hadrian ordered the building of the great wall, to keep
off the Caledonian marauders, of which the traces still
exist. Sabina may have remained in York while Hadrian
surveyed the rough territory to the north, and it seems
to have been on the Emperor's return that an episode
occurred which must have greatly embittered her.

One of Hadrian's secretaries was the historian Suetonius,
whose work on the Emperors has provided us with much
material. With him and the cultivated commander of the
Praetorian Guards Sabina maintained a close friendship,
and Hadrian made a grievance of it. So closely did he
pry into the affairs of his friends that the rumour was set
about that he had many mistresses among their wives.
It was reported to him that Suetonius and Septicius Clarus
" were behaving with more familiarity than the dignity of
the Imperial house permitted," as Spartianus puts it, and
they were dismissed. There is no suggestion of grave
irregularity on her part. The idea of divorcing Sabina,
which Hadrian is said to have discussed, is expressly
connected with what he called her "moroseness and
asperity " ; and we can well believe that her asperity took
the form of bitter complaints about his own conduct.
Nothing further was done, and, though we may regard
with reserve the statement that Sabina deliberately pre-
vented herself from having a child, lest she should put a

1^6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

new monster on the throne, the Imperial couple continued
their uncongenial companionship.^ Some of the coins
which were struck in commemoration of their passage
ventured to bear the legend, " Concordia Augusta '' — struck
in honour of the harmony of the Imperial household.

From Britain they returned to Gaul, where Hadrian
excited comment by the opulence of his mourning over
the death of Plotina. They then passed to Spain, where
Roman civilization had taken deep root, and on to the
land of the Moors. The colonies which Rome had planted
along the strip of territory descending from the mountains
to the sea had been devastated by the barbarians, and the
frontier had been obliterated. Hadrian drove back the
tribes, restored the towns, and returned, after an absence
of more than a year, to Rome. The city was tranquil, and
the building of the great villa which still, in its ruins,
excites the amazement of the visitor at Tivoli, was pro-
ceeding. After a year or two of peaceful administration,
seeing that the west, north, and south of the Empire were
secure and prospering, Hadrian turned his face towards
the east.

We need not follow him in this journey to Greece and
Asia Minor, since it is not clear whether Sabina accom-
panied him, but it had a sequel of melancholy interest to
the Empress. From the cities of Greece he made his way
along the coast of the Black Sea to the region of the
Parthians, where he again restored peace, and back
through Asia Minor and the islands to Rome. Two or
three years had been occupied in this journey, and
Hadrian had become less Roman in taste than ever.
He came home surrounded by Greeks, and with a great

1 Gregorovius points out that the incident may have occurred at Rome,
and that we have no positive proof that Sabina accompanied him on this
journey. But the narrative of Spartianus seems to imply that she was in
Britain, and we shall see that she accompanied him on his longer journey
to the East. Duruy and other writers hold that the officers were dismissed
for lack, not excess, of respect for Sabina, but the word " familiarius,"
coupled with a threat of divorce, seems to demand the interpretation I have
put on it.

SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 157

zeal for Greek and Eastern institutions. In particular he
brought in his train a beautiful Bithynian youth whose
name is from that time inseparably connected with his.
Hadrian's passion for Antinous is the chief stain on his
character, and was probably the chief ground of Sabina's
resentment. The Emperor had visited Bithynia, and. pre-
sumably met the youth there. Every traveller among
rude and healthy nations is aware that such practices are
by no means confined to decadent civihzations, nor does
the student of contemporary morals see in them anything
distinctive of the life of ancient Syria, Greece, or Rome.
Nevertheless, the remarkable beauty of Antinous, which is
familiar to us in many a statue, and the wanton openness
of his association with the Emperor, attracted general
attention and greatly embittered Sabina.

When, therefore, she set out with Hadrian, at the end
of 128 or the beginning of 129, for a fresh and more exten-
sive tour in the East, her enjoyment must have been
heavily clouded by the daily and hourly presence of the
Emperor's companions. The young Adonis was not the
only source of offence in Hadrian's suite. Closer still to
Hadrian was a young Roman noble of the most effemi-
nate charm and the most dissolute Hfe. Lucius Ceionius
Commodus was later taken into Imperial partnership by
Hadrian, and, although he did not live to attain supreme
power, his descendants will more than once enter and
disturb our story of the Empresses. Spartianus ascribes
to him a "regal beauty" of face and person, a manner
of great charm,' a witty and sparkling conversation, and
an utter depravity of morals. He had won the regard of
Hadrian, not so much by the famous new dish which he
had invented for the epicures of Rome — a boar, ham,
pheasant, and peacock pie — as by the sensuous charm of
his person and the exotic sensuality of his life. He would
lie, washed in exquisite Persian ointments, on a couch
strewn with roses, with a coverlet of lilies drawn over
himself and his companion. Such ways were entirely
foreign to the nature of Hadrian, but his robust vigour

158 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

was singularly united with a fine artistic sensibility and
a love of the softer east, which led him into many
inconsistencies.

Sabina had for companion a Greek poetess, Julia
Fadilla, of such virtue and attainments that a stgtue was
somewhere raised to honour her as a pattern of integrity.
The incongruous party, with its conflicting groups of virtue
and vice — a fitting symbol of the unhappy union of West
and East — crossed the sea to Athens, and then visited
Corinth, Eleusis, and the other surviving cities of Greece.
The frame of that superb civilization still gleamed, almost
intact, on the soil of Hellas, though the soul of Greece had
departed. It was as if one gazed on the smooth white
corpse of a beautiful woman. Groups of sophists still
disputed in the gardens or under the shady colonnades;
but they were puny mimics of Socrates, Zeno, and
Epicurus. Politicians still babbled in the Agora ; but
they blessed the hand of Rome that had closed brutally
on the throat of their fair country. The Acropolis still
shone in its panoply of Parian marble, and Hadrian had
restored the harbour and repaired many of the ravages
of time and violence. He regretted the greed of his fore-
runners, and sought to restore the ancient spirit. But
the poor revival of art and letters and religion, which he
succeeded in effecting, was only the last flicker of the
vitality of Greece.

They crossed the sea to Ephesus, which at that time
rivalled Antioch and Alexandria as a metropolis of the
decaying civilizations of the East. Its great Temple of
Diana, a teeming store of art and treasure, drew men
from all parts, while priests of all religions mingled in its
streets with panders to all vices and ministers to every
form of art and luxury. Smyrna, another flourishing city
of Asia Minor, attracted them next, with its magnificent
assemblage of temples, colonnades, baths, and theatres,
and they passed on to Sardis and the other cities of that
fascinating and repellent Greek-Oriental region, where
new mysticism ran like veins of gold in the old volcanic

SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN 159

deposits. The winter was spent in the luxury of Ephesus
and Smyrna, and with the spring they traversed the
successive provinces of Asia Minor, admiring and restoring
the remains of Greek and Persian grandeur. Through
Syria, where famous Antioch detained them for a time,
they went on, probably, to the ruined cities of Tyre and
Sidon, and returned to Heliopolis, Damascus, and Palmyra.
In Palestine they found the survivors of the scattered
Jewish nation living in great poverty and dejection among
the ruins of their cities, or still scrutinizing the prophets
and looking for the Messiah in the larger communities on
the coast. On the site of Jerusalem, where a few broken
towers gave a melancholy reminder of their former pros-
perity, Hadrian ordered that a new Roman colony should
be established.

From Judaea they moved to Arabia, and then to Egypt.
Alexandria was then the second city of the world in
importance, the first in interest. All the exhausted streams
of the older civilizations had poured into it. Never before
or since was there so cosmopolitan a population, such a
gathering of old vices and new moralities, dead religions
and fresh religions, cults six thousand years old and the
latest gospels of Judaea and Persia. Its harbour still held
the ships of every port in the Mediterranean, its Serapeum,
Museum, and Caesareum sheltered the art and culture of
the world, and its deafening streets rang with the tongues
of the world. But the soul of Egypt, too, was dead, and
the Imperial party moved up the Nile to admire the
surviving rehcs of its past. No doubt priests and learned
men from Alexandria would attend as interpreters. They
wandered in Memphis, which the sand of the desert was
beginning to bury, passed through Heliopolis, and reached
Besa, where they experienced the great sensation of the
tour. The beautiful Bithynian youth was drowned in the
Nile, and Sabina had to regard with disdain the womanly
tears and the extravagant mourning of the Emperor. It
is not clear to this day whether the death was accidental or
voluntary. Hadrian, of course, said that it was accidental ;

i6o THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

but a rumour lingers in the chronicles that the Emperor,
in his new zeal for Oriental superstition, had learned that
his life was doomed unless some loved being was sacrificed
for him, and Antinous offered himself. Hadrian has taken
the secret with him, but the temples and statues he raised
all over the Empire kept the memory of the pretty youth
fresh for centuries.

This occurred about the month of October. The dates
of these journeys of Hadrian are much disputed, but a
trivial detail has determined this part of the tour. They
went on to Thebes, and, in accordance with custom, cut
their names and the date in the great statue of Memnon.
They probably pushed on as far as Philse, to see the
temple of Isis, but we find them back in Syria at the
end of the year, or the beginning of 132, and soon after-
wards in Rome. The great villa had now been completed
at Tivoli, and we must assume that Sabina lived there
during the three or four years that remained for her.
They were years of continued melancholy. Hadrian was
sobered, but soured. The Jews had disturbed his cherished
peace by rebelling, on account of his design to cover the
site of their holy city with a Roman colony, and he had
ruthlessly destroyed what remained of their cities, and
erased the name of Jerusalem by calling the new town
JElia Capitolina. Illness began to enfeeble his frame,
and he brooded darkly over the question of a successor,
which men were discussing. He passed in heavy dejection
through the lovely gardens and marble temples of his
villa, still mourning the loss of Antinous. An obehsk
has been found there with the inscription that it was
raised to the youth by Hadrian and Sabina — a fiction
that must have angered the Empress, if it were done
before her death. But she did not live to see the darker
gloom of his closing years. She died in, or about, the
year 136, "not without a rumour of poison," says
Spartianus; the rumour is not worth considering. She
had been entitled "Augusta" by the Senate in 127, but
Hadrian refused her the divine honours which were

SABINA, THE WIFE OF HADRIAN i6i

usually bestowed on dead Empresses. They were awarded
by his successor.

The busts of Sabina which we have suggest just such a
personality as we have gathered from the meagre references
to her in the chronicles. She was a woman of smooth and
regular features and fine person, without beauty or charm.
Her face gives an impression of intellect, virtue, and silent
suffering. She is the kind of woman who would neither
overlook the vice of her husband nor actively resent it,
or assert herself in any way; the kind of woman to
retreat in disdain to her books. That she was " treated
as a slave " by Hadrian, as Aurelius Victor says, we may
decline to believe, and regard the statement as a popular
exaggeration ; nor, on the other hand, can we agree with
Gregorovius that a letter in which Hadrian invites his
mother to dine with him on his birthday, and says that
Sabina has gone into the country, shows their " mutual
dislike." Duruy quotes this very letter in disproof of
the belief that they were estranged, and points out that
it goes on to say that Sabina had "sent her share for the
family dinner." The French historian believes that the
legend, " Concordia Augusta," on some of the medals of
the time expressed a fact. We cannot, however, imagine
Sabina resigning herself to her husband's passion for
youths, and the few authentic details left us about her
relations with Hadrian generally indicate a mutual aversion.
As an Empress, she was a nonentity; as a woman, an
admirable blend of old-world sobriety and new-world
culture.

Hadrian survived her for two unhappy years. The
whole Empire was covered with monuments of his public
service, the coinage of every province proclaimed his
beneficence, the slave, the widow, and the orphan gratefully
told of his magnanimity. But the illness and depression of
his last year permitted him to commit a crime, and, so
accustomed was the new generation to good conduct in its
rulers, the recollection of his great deeds was almost
obliterated. To the astonishment of all, and the indigna-
II

l62 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

tion of the thoughtful, Hadrian announced that he had
chosen as Caesar his dissolute and decadent companion,
Lucius Verus. His brother-in-law Servianus, now an old
man of ninety, and the grandson of Servianus, a youth
of nineteen, seem to have been among the murmurers, and,
on trivial pretexts, they were put to death. These cruel
murders brought a deep shadow over Hadrian's last year,
but a last opportunity was given him to repair his action.
Lucius Verus, worn and consumptive from debauch, died,
and Hadrian now made choice of the most worthy man in
the Senate, Titus Antoninus ; adding, however, in his quaint
way of mingling good and evil, that he must in turn adopt
the son of Lucius Verus and young Marcus Aurelius, a
Sybarite and a Stoic, two antithetic types of Roman life.
He went down to Baise, suffering acutely from dropsy.
The pain and weariness were so great that he tried to
secure poison or a sword, but Antoninus prudently
guarded and nursed him. He died in the year 138, "done
to death by physicians," he ironically said. In his last
days he composed some slight verses, which I may
translate :

Little soul, so tired and still,
Guest of this decaying flesh,
Whither, now, will thy flight be ?
Pale and cold and reft of speech,
Never more to utter joke.

It was the note of the time-spirit, which was so strangely
incarnated in Hadrian. He united in his person all the
contradictions that were at strife in his era of change-
asceticism and sensuality, public spirit and selfish sensi-
bility. Stoicism and Cyrenaicism. He needed a stronger
Empress. But the better spirit prevailed in him at the end,
artd the Stoics came to the throne.

CHAPTER X

THE WIVES OF THE STOICS

ON the twenty-fifth of February, in the year 138,
Hadrian had summoned the Senators to the palace.
Verus was dead, and the whole world wondered on
whom the erratic fancy of the ailing Emperor would rest
next. Among the Senators was a distinguished, able, and
amiable statesman and commander, Titus Aurelius Fulvus
Boionius Arrius Antoninus, whose great merit had — as the
long series of names imphes — been richly rewarded by
older relatives. He had been much consulted by Hadrian
in his last years, and was respected by all. To the great
relief of the Senate the wavering finger of the Emperor fell
on this man, and he was acclaimed Caesar. He attended
Hadrian devotedly, prolonged the useless life which
lingered between him and the throne, and — it was rumoured
— saved many a noble head from execution in the last
frenzies of Hadrian. Early in July that great traveller set
out on his last journey, and Aurelius Antoninus — a name
to which the Senate soon added the appellation of Pius —
ascended the throne.

The new Empress of Rome was Annia Galeria Faustina,
a matron in her thirty-fourth year, of an ancient and dis-
tinguished Italian family. It is of some interest to regard
the extraction of Faustina. Through her the Imperial
throne is about to pass once more to one of its most ignoble
occupants, and Rome will sink rapidly from the reign of
Marcus Aurelius to the riot of Commodus. The two
opposing tendencies of Roman life meet in her family, and

163

1 64 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

the Stoic succumbs to the Epicurean — or, rather, to the
Sybaritic or Cyrenaic, for the gospel of Epicurus was one
of dignity and sobriety. Rome might have said, in the
later language of Goethe, as he depicted himself passing
through a similar phase :

Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust.

One soul leaned to sloth, sensual and selfish indulgence :
one, with larger horizon, was for temperance, vigour, and
Imperial duty. The curious feature of this critical stage in
the fortunes of Rome is that the two tendencies are
developed within the same family, and the Stoic yields to
the Sybarite. Annia Galeria Faustina was born of the same
parents as the father of Marcus Aurelius, and was reared
in the same atmosphere of old Roman virtue, or manliness,
as the word signifies. The great-grandfather of Marcus
Aurelius was Annius Verus, a Senator of great merit and
of Spanish extraction. His son Annius Verus was twice
consul, and both his sons in turn — the father and uncle of
Marcus Aurelius — were promoted to the consulate. Every-
thing we know of the family suggests a fine and sober
patrician type, and confirms the beautiful picture of it given
us by Marcus Aurelius in his " Meditations."

The one element of possible weakness in the ancestry of
the Faustinas and of Commodus is in the mother of Annia
Galeria Faustina. Annius Verus had married Rupilia
Faustina. Her family is obscure, and, though one must
hesitate to trace to her this strain of weakness and vice on
such slender grounds, one is disposed to believe that she
was married for her beauty, and brought into that strong
family the tainted germ which ripened in more than one of
her descendants. It may, however, very well be that the
strength of the stock was decaying — Marcus Aurelius him-
self was delicate — and its later descendants succumbed to
the evil influences about them. A genealogical table will
show how the fate of Rome hung on this family for more
than a generation : — ,

FAUSTINA THE ELDER

BUST IN THE LOUVRE

THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 165

Annius Verus (twice consul)
and Rupilia Faustina

Annius Libo Annius Verus (consul) Annia Galeria Faustina

(consul) (marries Domitia Calvilla) (marries Antoninus Pius)

I I I

Annia Cornificia Marcus Aurelius Annia Faustina

(marries Annia Faustina) /

Commodus

Faustina had inherited her mother's beauty, and was
reared in a very conscientious home. It was the home in
which Marcus Aurelius learned his first lessons in virtue,
as his father died early, and all the chroniclers speak of it
with great respect. We know very little about her, how-
ever, until she becomes Empress, and, as she died three
years afterwards, we have not much concern with her.
She is believed to have married somewhat late for a Roman
girl, in or about her sixteenth year (120). Titus Aurelius
Antoninus was then in his thirty-fourth year, a tall, grace-
ful, and handsome man, of quiet and captivating manners,
good cultivation, fine character, and a face of great dignity
and sweetness. He was of good family, and was advancing
rapidly in the public service. Shortly after the marriage
he became consul, and he remained in Rome in one or
other civic capacity until 128 or 129. He was very wealthy
and greatly esteemed.

One of the chroniclers has charged her with light
behaviour, and, as this is the only period in which we can
plausibly entertain it, we may regard the charge for a
moment. The book of Dio's history for the reign of
Antoninus Pius is lost, so that neither he nor his com-
mentators throw any light on Faustina. Aurelius Victor
and Eutropius say nothing of her character. The one
hostile witness is "JuHus Capitolinus," the anonymous
writer of the fourth century who provides the sketch of the

1 66 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

life of Antoninus Pius in the " Historia Augusta." He
says (c. 3) : " Many things are said of his wife's excessive
freedom and looseness of life, which he had painfully to
overlook." Serviez enlarges on this with his usual license.
But as he makes Faustina the sister of iElius Verus, and
says that she neglected the education of her children, which
is also untrue, we may ignore him.

It is now more customary to reject this charge against
the elder Faustina, on the ground that the single witness is
a light anecdotist of the fourth century. Moreover, when
the tutor Fronto wrote a glowing panegyric of Faustina
after her death, Antoninus Pius answered that it was even
more true than eloquent, and swore that he " would rather
live with her at Gyaros [a barren island, to which criminals
were deported] than in a palace without her." Neverthe-
less, we must leave the question open. Antoninus Pius
was not a puritan. When the Emperor Julian introduces
him before the gods, in his charming contest of the
Emperors for the highest praise (" The Caesars "), he calls
him " a moderate man, not indeed in love-affairs, but in the
administration of the Empire." Faustina was probably
charming enough to merit his sincere lament. But as
Capitolinus mingles truth and untruth with a very light
hand, and the relevant book of Dio is wanting, we cannot
decide the issue.

In the year 128 or 129 Antoninus was appointed Pro-
consul of Asia, and he and Faustina went to Smyrna. The
elder of their two daughters died about the same time. An
amusing incident in connexion with their arrival is
narrated by Philostratus in his " Lives of the Sophists." The
Proconsul at once occupied the finest house in Smyrna,
the home of the teacher Polemo, who was absent. Polemo
was the idol of Smyrna, and was proportionately conceited.
He drew youths from all parts to his school, and had won
much favour from Hadrian for the city. He travelled in a
superb Phrygian chariot, and his mules had silver trap-
pings ; and when some grumblers had hinted that he had
diverted to his own pocket some of Hadrian's subsidies, he

THE WIVES OF THE STOICS i6;

had pompously written to the Emperor : " Polemo has
given me an account of money given by you to him." This
conceited sophist reached his house in the middle of the
night, and found the Proconsul and Faustina abed there.
He promptly turned them out, and roundly abused them.
Years afterwards, when the genial Antoninus was Em-
peror, and Polemo came to the palace, he said laughingly
to an attendant : " See that Polemo has a chamber in the
palace, and that no one turns him out." Later an actor
came from Smyrna to complain that Polemo, the autocrat,
had turned him out of the theatre. "At what hour?"
asked the Emperor gravely. It was at midday. "That is
nothing ; he turned me out at midnight," said the Emperor.
The amiability and solid work of Antoninus must have
won Polemo, as Hadrian is reported to have said in his will
that it was he who advised the adoption of Antoninus. But
the East generally so much appreciated the Proconsul that,
when he returned to Rome, he stood very high in the
favour of Hadrian. We again lose sight of Faustina until
he becomes Emperor, and then there are one or two brief
references to her before she dies in 141. At his accession
he refused the greater part of the money {aurum coronarium)
which was due to him, by custom, from the provinces, and
drew very liberally on his private fortune for paying the
great expenses entailed. Faustina naturally demurred.
" Foolish woman," he is said to have answered, " when we
obtained the Empire we lost what we previously pos-
sessed." The only other reference is contained in a letter
of the younger Faustina to Marcus Aurelius : " In the
defection of Gelsus my mother exhorted Antoninus to be
concerned first about his own family." We know nothing
of this revolt. Apparently Antoninus, like Marcus Aurelius,
was disposed to be dangerously lenient. The final refer-
ence to Faustina is that she died in the third year of his
reign (141), and was deeply mourned by him. Nominated
" Augusta " in life, she was deified at death, and Antoninus
built in her honour the beautiful temple of which traces are
§till se?n ip Rome. He ajso instituted in her hpnour a

1 68 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

fresh charity for orphans, the " Puellae Faustinianae," arid
ordered that gold and silver statues of her should be borne ^
in the processions.

This sincere tribute of the Emperor tells at least of a
great affection and esteem, but the literary references to
Faustina are too meagre and disputable to bring her clearly
before us. The busts that are believed to represent her
do not, unfortunately, assist us much. In the Capitoline
Museum at Rome is one that may depict her in her
twenties or earlier. It has a round and tranquil face, not
devoid of strength, but more directly suggesting an even
and sober character. Another bust, in the Vatican
Museum, shows the same features at a later age; but a
third, in the same Museum, has not so pleasant an expres-
sion. The oval face is hard and querulous. The loose
lips droop at the ends; the large eyes, prominent cheek-
bones, and strong chin have an expression that is very
far from tender or spiritual. The bust that is attributed
to her in the British Museum is between the two. The
elder Faustina remains in obscurity, and we pass to her
more notorious daughter and successor.

For twenty years after the death of Faustina there
was no Empress of Rome. Antoninus, who was in his
^ fifty-fifth year, refused to marry again, and took a concu-
bine — an arrangement recognized in Roman law and
practice, in which marriage had several degrees. It was
an era of general peace and great prosperity. The group
of Stoic lawyers that the Emperor gathered about him
humanely moderated the rigour of the laws, medical
service was supplied to the poor in the towns, the school-
system was further endowed, and works of mercy con-
tinued to multiply. The armies usually rested — and, It
is to be feared, rusted — the treasury was again filled, the
Empire was happy and prosperous. In the year i6i the
cheerful, benevolent Antoninus passed away, and the two
men whom Hadrian had compelled him to adopt came to
their joint reign. With them are introduced two new
Empresses of no little interest,

THE WIVES OF THE STOICS , 169

The two boys whom Hadrian had lightly designated as
the heirs to the throne after Antoninus were Annius Verus,
or Verissimus, as Hadrian genially called him on account
of his precocious gravity and piety, and Lucius Verus, son
of Hadrian's dissolute companion. Annius was a great
favourite of the Emperor. He received office in his sixth
year, and donned the philosopher's cloak in his twelfth.
He was the pet of his grandfather's palace, but so serious
in his Stoicism that his mother had difficulty in persuading
him to sleep in a bed instead of on the floor. In his sixteenth
year Hadrian gave him the manly toga, and betrothed him
to the daughter of Lucius Verus. In his eighteenth year
he was " terrified " to hear that he had been chosen for the
succession, and must go to live in the palace. Then Hadrian
died, and Antoninus adopted him.

Gibbon has greatly praised Antoninus for preferring
the welfare of the State to the interest of his family in this
adoption. It is true that, as we know from coins, Antoninus
and Faustina had had two sons, as well as two daughters,
but they must have died before the year 138. Dio expressly
says that Hadrian ordered Antoninus to adopt the two
youths " because he had no male children at the time."
His boys, like his elder daughter, must have died before
that time ; and indeed we have no further mention of them.
But if this particular grace cannot be allowed to Antoninus,
we must admire his careful control of their education and
his discriminating guidance of their fortunes. The best
masters in Rome instructed each of them, and it was
only the deep-rooted difference in their constitutions — the
moral strength of the one and weakness of the other — that
led them to diverge so widely. The vigila^lt eye of the
Emperor observed the dissimilarity of promise. He left
Lucius Verus out of the way of promotion, and destined
Marcus for the great advancement.

No sooner was Antoninus on the throne than he
approached Marcus, through Faustina, with a proposal
of marriage with his daughter. She had been promised
by Hadrian to young Lucius Verus, and Marcus was to

170 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

marry Geionia. The Emperor proposed to cancel these
contracts, and marry the younger Faustina to the young
Stoic. It would be extremely interesting if we could
penetrate the feelings of the young princess at the time.
The later busts of her suggest a pretty, round-faced girl,
probably in her early teens, with small eyes and a lively
temperament. The grim and austere young scholar would
not attract her, and one can imagine her feelings when he
asked time to consider whether he would accept the hand
of the Emperor's charming daughter. Marcus philosophic-
ally weighed the proposal in his mind until the time he
asked had expired, and then he consented to betrothal.
He was appointed Caesar and consul designate, and given
the palace of Tiberius for a dwelling. A bust that we have
of him, in the Capitol Museum, represents him about this
time — a face of singular beauty and refinement framed in
a mass of short curly hair.

Their marriage — a superb ceremony — did not take place
until about seven years later (145), a circumstance which
we may regard as a further philosophic error. During the
years of waiting, and during most of the reign of Antoninus,
Marcus was absorbed in study. He was penetrated with
the aphorism of Plato, that the State would be happy whose
prince was a philosopher. What the effect was on Faustina
we may be in a better position to say later. Her mother
had died in 141, her womanhood was fully born, and the eye
of her father had an Empire to survey. At the death of
Antoninus the throne was at once offered to Marcus. In
his last moments Antoninus had ordered the golden statue
of Fortune, which he kept in his chamber, to be conveyed
to Marcus. From a sense of duty he, unluckily for Rome,
associated Lucius Verus with him in the Empire. Some-
what delicate himself, he relied on Verus for such work
abroad as was immediately necessary, and continued to
frequent the schools.

His peaceful studies were quickly interrupted. Fatal
floods and scarcity of food disturbed the capital ; the eastern
frontier was again aflame, and the Germa,n frontier w^s

THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 171

threatened. Marcus sent Verus to take command in the
East, after betrothing him to his daughter Lucilla, held off
the northern barbarians with bribes and diplomacy, and
worked hard for the relief of Rome. For a time his policy
seemed to triumph. The Germans were pacified, and the
eastern peoples repressed. Verus, indeed, advanced no
farther than the voluptuous palaces of Antioch and the
licentious groves of Daphne. Once only during the cam-
paign did he quit the luxury of Antioch. He heard that
Marcus was coming East with his daughter Lucilla, and
hastened to meet him otherwhere than in garrulous Antioch.
Marcus did not leave Italy, however, and Verus wedded
Lucilla, and returned to his perfumed vices. Happily, there
was in the East a Roman general of the old stamp, Avidius
Cassius, a strong and blunt man, disdainful of luxury. He
lashed the debauched troops into a state of discipline,
pacified the East, and let Verus return to Rome to enjoy his
triumph.

Here begin the stories that have gathered about the
memory of the younger Faustina, and have persuaded
many a writer that, as one of the authorities says, she
became a second Messalina. If we are to believe the
" Augustan History," she behaved with the most abominable
license throughout her whole married life. Four Roman
nobles are specifically named as notorious lovers of the
Empress, and she is charged with general license. One
of the four was named TertuUus, and it is said that one
day, when Marcus was in the theatre, an actor made flagrant
reference to this liaison. Asked for the name of a certain
lover, he said three times {ter), " TuUus, TuUus, Tullus."
It is added that Marcus— who might very well miss a point
in the theatre, as he read and wrote letters there — was
quite aware of the liaison, because he one day surprised
Faustina at breakfast with TertuUus. The Empress is
further charged with adultery with the voluptuous
colleague of her husband, and with wantoning among
actors, gladiators, sailors, and others of the baser sort.

The more sober writers on Faustina have generally

172 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

been unwilling to admit this debauchery. Duruy rejects
the stories altogether, Merivale recommends reserve, and
Renan thinks that "careful research has reduced to very
small proportions the accusations which scandal was
pleased to bring against the wife of Marcus Aurelius." It
seems to me that we can only come to the same conclusion
as we did in regard to Messalina ; we must regard par-
ticular legends with reserve, but must conclude that the
general opinion of Faustina at the time, which the stories
embody, must have had a serious basis. Some of the
stories put on record by Capitolinus in the " Augustan
History " are palpably false. One runs that she confessed
to Marcus her passion for a certain gladiator, and that
Marcus was directed by the Chaldaean sages, whom he
consulted, to kill the man and bathe the Empress in his
blood. Her passion was cured, but her next child was the
brutal Commodus. This story is so gross — I do not
reproduce all the details — that the writer does not insist on
it, but he continues : " Still, as her conduct with the gladia-
tors is well known, Commodus probably was the son of a
gladiator." Now the tutor of the princes, Fronto, remarks
in one of his letters, and the surviving busts bear him out,
that Commodus had a striking likeness to Marcus Aurelius.
I may add that Commodus was born in the year of the
Emperor's accession, when such conduct is incredible.

Other parts of the legend are just as vulnerable. Thus
it is said that Faustina poisoned Verus when he boasted
to his wife of his relations with her. He died a very
natural death, as we shall see later. On the other hand,
Dio, who lived shortly afterwards, and had no dislike for
scandal, knows nothing whatever about this looseness on
the part of the Empress, and there is nothing in Eutropius
or Aurelius Victor. The only other writer who, in a
general way, accuses Faustina of dissoluteness is the
Emperor Julian (" Caesars," c. 28). We are therefore in a
dilemma, and must not too readily speak of Faustina as
a second Messalina. The quiet assumption of her guilt
in Julian, and the fact that the stories in the "Augustan

FAUSTINA THE YOUNGER

EUST (reputed) IN" THE BRlTIi^H MUSEUM

THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 173

History " are professedly taken from Marius Maximus, an
historical writer not far removed from her time, imply a
very general belief in her guilt. In one place Capitolinus
says (c. 23) that the Emperor " cleared her by his letters"
of the charge of loose behaviour with actors, and in another
represents him as saying, when he is urged to divorce her
on account of her vices : " If we send away the wife, we
must give up her dowry," though the Empire could hardly
be called Faustina's dowry. In a third place, however,
Capitolinus leaves it open whether Marcus " was ignorant
of, or ignored," his wife's misconduct. For many writers,
in fact, the attitude of Marcus is decisive. If such things
had been done he must have known, and, with such
knowledge, he could not have spoken so highly of his wife
in his " Meditations," and would not have dared to set up,
in her memory, an altar on which the maidens of Rome
should offer sacrifice before marriage.

The scale, in truth, is somewhat evenly balanced, yet
one cannot easily conceive that the heavy charges of
Marius Maximus and the deliberate verdict of Julian had
no foundation. Whether from weakness, or from an excess
of casuistry, Marcus Aurelius lacked decision or penetra-
tion in such matters. He married his daughter to a
profligate, whom he afterwards deified, and he committed
the Empire to a son who had given early promise of vice.
His grave and ascetic ways probably repelled the gay and
beautiful woman whom he had diplomatically married, and
she seems to have sought relief None of the busts,
medallions, or coins, which more or less convey an image
of her to us, suggest character or culture, but rather a
weak control and a sensuous temper. From her Corn-
modus derived the enfeebled will that put him at the
mercy of his more dissolute courtiers, and the sensuality
that made his short reign an indescribable debauch. Much
as we should like to relieve Marcus Aurelius of the shame
of having begotten such a monster, we must admit his
parentage, and cast what blame there is on the mother.

In this unsatisfactory haze we must leave the conduct

174

THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

of the Empress during the years in which her husband
wrought for the safety of the Empire, bequeathed his
austere reflections to later ages, or contemplated the
golden images of his teachers in his lararium. The
triumphant return of Verus was quickly followed by years
of gravest anxiety. In the pestilential East the legions
had absorbed the germs of plague, had strewn them along
their route, and had now disseminated them throughout
Rome. Thousands of victims, rich and poor, succumbed
to the subtle malady. Marcus vainly summoned the
ministers of every religion and the medical men of all
schools, and sacrificed those obscure Christians on whom
popular anger was ever ready to visit a calamity. His
trouble increased when it was announced that the fierce
Marcomanni of the north had burst into the Empire, and
were driving the Romans before them. With great energy
he mustered the demoralized legions in the north, and
set out with Verus against the enemy. In the middle
of the war (i68) Verus, who had repeatedly tried to return
to the comfort of the capital, died. He had an apoplectic
fit on the journey, and we may ignore the various sug-
gestions that either Lucilla, or Faustina, or Marcus put
an end to his useless career.

Marcus continued for several years the task of settling
the frontier tribes. It seems that Faustina went with him
on these arduous campaigns, though whether we may
see in the circumstance any merit on her part, or a device
of the Emperor to control her conduct, it is impossible
to say. She at least earned a title—" Mother of the
Camps " and " Mother of the Legions "—which is found
on few coins of the Empresses. It is probable that her
disorders belonged to an earlier date, before and in the
early part of the Emperor's reign. It is chiefly at Gaeta,
the pretty bay on the coast where many Romans had
villas, that Capitolinus places her familiarity with gladiators
and sailors. Possibly the sobriety of her later years was
accepted by her husband as an expiation, and held to
justify his eulogy of her.

THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 175

Those later years were full of trouble and anxiety.
Not only did two of their children die, and their daughter
Lucilla become the widow of a notorious profligate, but
the gods seemed to have entered upon a contest with the
virtue of Marcus Aurelius. A great earthquake shook
the East, the plague left a blackened trail over the Empire
and infested the camps, and other disasters were crowded
into a few years. The treasury ran short, and Marcus
was obliged to put up the Imperial treasures at auction
to obtain funds for carrying on the war. His one con-
solation was that the Eastern frontier was tranquil, yet
in the year 175 a messenger came to announce that his
great general, Avidius Cassius, was in revolt, and claimed
the Empire.

Verus, who must have felt the scorn of the stronger
man, had warned Marcus years before that Cassius was
dangerous, but the actual revolt is persistently connected
in the chronicles with Faustina. Cassius had ambition,
and had only been prevented by his father in earlier years
from rising against Antoninus Pius. In 174 or 175, it is
said by Dio, he received a message from Faustina, pro-
posing that, in the event of Marcus dying, he should
marry her, and occupy the throne. Shortly after this a
false message reached him that Marcus was dead, and he
at once announced to the legions that he assumed the
Empire. The message was quickly contradicted, but
Cassius thought it too late to retire, and he prepared
for a struggle. Marcus sadly moved towards the East.
Before he had gone far, however, he learned that the
soldiers, who hated Cassius for his rigour, had put him
to death.

The position of Faustina is once more in grave
ambiguity. The writer on Cassius in the " Historia
Augusta" gives the rumour implicating her, but rejects
it. Unfortunately, his rejection is in this case no more
weighty than his acceptance in others. He admits that
his source, Marius Maximus, believes Faustina guilty,
and ascribes it to "a, wish to defame" the Empress.

176 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Except that the hatred of Commodus at Rome may have
for some time been extended to the woman who had borne
him, there is no clear reason why Maximus should
calumniate Faustina. Dio, who lives very close to the
time, gives it as a positive fact that Faustina secretly
urged Cassius to marry her, and occupy the throne, if
Marcus died. We may concur in the verdict of most of
the writers on the matter. Marcus was ailing, delicate,
and overburdened with work. It seemed to Faustina
that he would not live long, and, as Commodus was a
callow and unpromising youth, and by no means sure
of succession, she sought an arrangement by which she
should remain on the throne if her husband died.

It is not generally felt that there was anything gravely
reprehensible in this, but a secret negotiation of such a
character does not present her to us in an attractive light.
Her subsequent zeal for the punishment of Cassius and
his friends is equally unpleasant, even if we recall that
she had no intention of raising him against the Emperor
while he lived. Several letters which passed between
Marcus and Faustina have been preserved in the " Historia
Augusta," from Marius Maximus, and there seems to be
little ground to doubt their genuineness. They suggest
that Marcus was in the habit of consulting with Faustina
on matters of grave importance. " Come up to the Alban
Mount," he writes her, after telling of the sedition, "and
by the favour of the gods, we will discuss the affair in
safety." Faustina replies :

" I will set out to-morrow for the Alban Mount, as you
command, but I at once implore you, if you love your
children, to visit these rebels with the utmost severity.
The soldiers and their leaders have fallen into evil ways,
and they will crush us if we do not coerce them."

In another letter she presses him again :

" My mother Faustina urged your father [by adoption]
Pius, at the time of the secession of Celsus, to feel first
for his own family. . . You see how young Commodus is,

THE WIVES OF THE STOICS 177

and our son-in-law Pompeianus is older and is abroad.
Do not spare men who have not spared you, and would not
spare me and the children if they won."

A later letter of Marcus tells that he has read her
exhortation in his villa at Formiae (on the Gulf of Gaeta).
By that time he has heard that Cassius is dead, and he will
hear of no further revenge on his family. He will spare
his wife and children, and beg the Senate to be moderate
in punishing the accomplices, because "there is nothing
that so much commends the Emperor of Rome to the
nations as clemency." We know, in fact, that he treated
the family of Cassius with great generosity.

The Emperor and Empress then went to the East to
complete the work of pacification. In the course of the
voyage, in a little village at the foot of Mount Taurus,
Faustina met her end in the year 175. As a matter of
course she was placed among the gods, but Marcus was
not content with the customary honouring of her memory.
He gave the village the name of Faustinopolis, founded a
fresh charity with the title of " Puellae Faustinianae," and
built a beautiful temple at Rome, which, when he died a
few years later, was dedicated in their joint names by the
Senate. As if to obliterate all the rumours about her in-
fidelity, he went on to ask extraordinary honours for her of
the Senate. He set up a special altar, with a silver statue
of her, in the temple of Venus, and directed that maidens
about to marry should offer sacrifice on it ; and he had a
golden statue of her placed on her seat in the theatre
whenever he attended its performances.

Dio gives two versions of the death of Faustina which
were current in his time. Some said that she died of gout,
from which she suffered ; others held that she put an end to
her life in fear lest her complicity with Cassius should be
discovered by Marcus in the East. The second theory is
superfluous. The natural cause of death seems adequate
enough, nor would she be in any serious danger if Marcus
heard that Cassius had made her the pretext of his
12

i;8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

rebellion. Her chief misdeeds were to live after her.
Frivolous, and probably licentious, in her early married life,
she seems to have settled in sober ways when she became
Empress, but we find no influence of hers in the ordering
of affairs. Had she only reared healthy children to succeed
her husband, she might have contributed worthily to the
mighty task of supporting the shaken Empire. Instead,
she gave to the Empire Lucilla and Commodus, her two
surviving children, and it fell into a fresh degradation.

CHAPTER XI

THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES

AS Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus had been equal
in Imperial power, and both were married, we have
one more Empress to regard before we pass on to
the wives of Commodus ; and the account we have already
given of Verus will justify us in relegating her to this
distinct chapter. Verus had married Lucilla, the eldest
daughter of Marcus and Faustina; but the ambiguous
repute of her mother will warn us not to expect a painful
spectacle of vice in alliance with lofty virtue. Lucilla
carries a step further the unhappy disposition which we
have suspected in her grandmother, and more palpably
detected in her mother. By her union with Lucius Verus
vice was once more decked with the Imperial purple and
justified in the eyes of Rome. We may briefly consider
Lucilla as Empress before we follow her lamentable career
under the reign of her brother.

Lucilla was born in the first year of the married life of
Marcus and Faustina. Marcus was then a pale and thin-
blooded scholar, Faustina in the full warmth and sensuous-
ness of young womanhood, and it was not unnatural that
the child should inherit the temper of her mother without
the spiritual restraint of her sire. She was educated with
the greatest care, and was betrothed to Verus in her
sixteenth year. Presumably by the will of her father, and
certainly with the full assent of Verus, she remained two
further years in the palace, while Verus wore out his
strength in the dissipations of Antioch. Marcus heard of

179

i8o THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

his conduct, and sent out Lucilla to marry him ; as if a
union with a young woman of seventeen or eighteen would
be apt to have a sobering influence on a man of Verus's
habits and parentage. Verus met her at Ephesus, married
her there with great pomp, and returned with her to his
pleasures at Antioch.

They came to Rome at the peace of i66, and Marcus
could not fail to learn in full the character of the man to
whom he had entrusted his daughter and half his power.
The villa which Verus occupied in the Clodian Way was
the most notorious house of debauch in Rome. It swarmed
with the dancing-girls, boys, Eastern slaves, musicians,
conjurors, etc., that Verus had brought from the East.
One room was fitted up as a popular tavern, and we must
leave under the veil of a dead language the abominations
that were perpetrated there. One can only repeat such
comparatively decent details as that Verus would have
gladiators to fight in his house during dinner, and prolong
the carouse until his slaves had to bear away his stupefied
form on his couch ; or that, on other occasions, he would
emulate the early feats of Nero, and revel at nights in the
wine-shops and brothels of the popular quarter. One night
he gave a superbly furnished banquet, and at the close, in
a drunken fit, presented to his guests the costly plate, and
even the litters, with silver-harnessed mules, in which they
were taken home.

Marcus made several futile attempts to brace him by
a campaign in the north, and must have been sincerely
relieved when he at last paid, by a premature death, the price
of his excesses. Lucilla had then been Empress for eleven
years. As she is barely noticed in the chronicles, we are
left to imagine the effect on her of living through her early
womanhood in such a palace as that of Verus. Probably
disgust saved her very largely from the taint. Verus's
sister Fabia lived with them, and was generally believed to
be intimate with her brother. She at least usurped the
place of Lucilla in authority, and the Empress must have
been as much relieved as her father when Verus died. He

THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES i8i

was rumoured to have been j)oisoned by Lucilla because
of his relations with Fabia ; by Faustina, for betraying his
relations with her ; and by Marcus, to rid the Empire of
his sottishness. But an apoplectic fit would be so natural
a crown to such a career that we can dispense with so
much poison.

Lucilla was then married by Marcus to an elderly and
worthy Senator, Claudius Pompeianus. She and her
mother strongly resented the marriage, and demanded a
younger and more attractive husband; but the Emperor
was unusually firm. Unhappily, his firmness was mis-
placed, for the austerity or age of Pompeianus effected
what the profligacy of Verus had failed to do, and Lucilla
fell into vicious ways. We may conjecture that this did
not happen until after her father's death. Marcus had
returned to the war against the Marcomanni, and, after
three years of great exertion and sacrifice, was within sight
of victory when death carried him off. He had not married
again, in spite of Fabia's efforts to win him. In the fashion
approved even by philosophers, he took a concubine to his
bed, and virtuously refused to put a stepmother over his
children. At his death a new Empress comes upon the
scene, and, as Lucilla still retained her Imperial dignities
and privileges, we shall have to consider them in an un-
amiable conjunction.

The last and most fatal blunder of Marcus Aurelius was
to leave the Empire in the very uncertain hands of his son
Commodus. War had drained the treasury; plague, famine,
and sloth had thinned and weakened the population ; vice
had again been enthroned for all to admire and imitate ;
the lusty barbarians were thundering at its gates. A new
Vespasian or Trajan was needed to restore its vigour, if
such a restoration were possible. Yet Marcus persuaded
himself that the pretty youth, with bright eyes and curly
golden hair, who played at soldiering in his suite in
Germany, could bear this enormous burden. Herodian,
whose history of the Emperors now opens for us, tells us
that Marcus was really concerned on the matter as he lay

1 82 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

in his last illness. There were disquieting stories about
the character of Commodus. It was said that in his twelfth
year he had, at Centumcellae (Civita Vecchia), ordered the
bath-attendant to be thrown into the furnace because the
water was not hot enough. On another occasion Marcus
had driven away certain corrupting attendants, but had
recalled them at the petulant tears of his son. They were
with him in Pannonia. We may at least assume that even
the fond eye of a father must have discerned the weakness
of character which, in the course of a year or two, would
let Commodus sink to indescribable depths. Marcus,
however, trustful to the end in the sublime truths of his
philosophy, was content to summon Commodus to his
tent, make a pretty speech to him in the presence of
his counsellors, and hand over to him the reins of govern-
ment.

For a time Commodus remained in the camp, and let
the elders govern. Before long the lighter courtiers hint
that it is more comfortable in Rome, and he talks of going.
The elders frown, and Pompeianus lectures him. He bows
submissively, but it is not long before he decides to go.
Numbers of oflficers discover a similar call to the capital,
and a gay cavalcade sets out. Rome is enchanted, and
goes out miles along the road to meet Commodus, and
strews flowers and laurel in his path, and enthuses over
his handsome face and the curly hair that shines like gold
in the sun. It was the coming of Caligula and Nero over
again. The Roman people — quantum mutatus ab illo ! — had
come to appreciate a pretty face, and a prospect of endless
games, immeasurably more than the security of the
frontier.

When Commodus had set out with his father for
Germany, he had been married — " hastily married," the
chronicle says — to a lady as young and thoughtless as
himself Crispina was a very beautiful girl, and of distin-
guished family. Her father, Bruttius Praesens, was a
Senator of great merit. It seems that she accompanied
Commodus to the camp, and returned with him to Rome.

THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 183

In his train were the evil counsellors whom Marcus had
banished and recalled. Their hour had come.

For three years Commodus enjoyed the pleasures which
they provided or invented for him, and left the administra-
tion in the capable hands of his father's servants. Possibly
this was the highest virtue Marcus had expected of him.
But the ambition of his confidants steadily grew, and a
bitter feud in the palace now came to a head and gave
them an opportunity. Crispina and Lucilla were violently
opposed to each other. The Imperial title of Lucilla paled
beside that of the wife of the ruling Emperor. The fire
which had been borne before her when she went abroad
now passed to Crispina, and she had to yield precedence
in the palace and the theatre. Crispina, on the other hand,
resented the familiarity of Commodus with his sister, and
would hardly be ignorant of the interpretation that was
generally put on it. The adherents of the palace were
thus divided into two parties, and the Empresses fought
for the monopoly of Commodus's favour. At last Lucilla
despaired of gaining her end through Commodus, and
resolved to have him murdered.

There is no room for doubt that the daughter of
Faustina and Marcus Aurelius was an abandoned woman.
Dio declares that she was " no better than Commodus."
We may trust that this is an exaggeration, but the other
authorities speak of the looseness of her conduct, and
are emphatically agreed that she inspired the plot to
murder her brother. No one doubts that her purpose
was to recover supreme power. The inferences and im-
pressions we draw from Imperial portraits are not very
substantial, but it is interesting that the statue of Lucilla,
which we have, suggests just the type of woman that
the historians represent her to have been. It is the figure
of a full-bodied woman, of strong and imperious temper,
sensual to the limit of grossness. In her the beauty of
her mother, instead of being enhanced by the purity of her
father, is blighted by a general expression of coarseness
and self-assertion.

1 84 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Her criminal design was gradually imparted to her
lovers. Among these was a young noble named Quadratus,
whom she soon fired with a sense of her grievances,
and a conspiracy was framed. The actual assassination
was undertaken by her stepson, Claudius Pompeianus.
Herodian says that his name was Quintianus, and he may
have had this name in addition. Dio gives a confused and
contradictory account — he describes Pompeianus as married
to Lucilla's daughter, whereas Lucilla was married to his
father, and he says that she was intimate with him, yet
hated him and wished to destroy him — but, as he lived
in Rome at the time, we must accept the substance of
his story. The young Senator Pompeianus was an intimate
friend of Commodus, and only an infatuation for Lucilla
could have drawn him into the plot. He spoiled it, and
ruined the conspirators, by his melodramatic display. As
Commodus entered the amphitheatre, he rushed upon
him with a drawn sword. But he announced his purpose
by crying out : " The Senate sends thee this sword," and
the guards arrested him.

The plot gave Commodus an opportunity to make a
bloody clearance of those who hampered his plans, and
caused him to regard the Senate with dark suspicion.
The male conspirators were executed, and Lucilla was
banished to Capreae. But Crispina had no triumph by
the removal of her rival. She had herself been tainted in
that atmosphere of vice, and was detected in one of her
liaisons by Commodus. She was banished to Capreae, and
there both she and Lucilla were put to death.

The conspiracy took place in the year 182, the third
year of Commodus's reign. The remaining ten years of
his life it would be more agreeable to leave in the un-
translatable language of the chroniclers, but he virtually
shared his throne with a woman of a singular and in-
teresting type, and we must include her in the gallery
of wives of the Emperors. Among the property of the
wealthy young conspirator, Quadratus, which was at once
confiscated, was a very handsome and engaging concubine

LUCILLA

BUST IN rHK NA'i'IONAL MUSKUM, RoMI-

THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 185

of the name of Marcia. The concubinatus was, as I have
said, a legal and recognized union in Rome, and we must
not regard these women, who enter our chronicle in that
capacity, in quite the same light as the mistresses of later
Christian princes. They were sometimes of moderately
good family, though they seem generally to have belonged
to the class of emancipated slaves, and were included in the
man's property. Marcia was of the latter class. Probably
an orphan at an early age, she was brought up by a
eunuch, and sold by him to Quadratus. At the dispersal
of his property, or even during his life, she attracted the
notice of Commodus, and was transferred to the populous
harem of his three hundred concubines.

A few years later (185) an event occurred that greatly
increased her growing power over the Emperor. The chief
favourite of Commodus was a low-born and despicable
courtier named Perennis, who encouraged the Emperor to
pursue his morbid sensual impulses, while he himself
accumulated wealth and power. He flattered and indulged
every fancy of his besotted master, and controlled all the
resources of the State in his own interest. He was com-
mander of the guards, and seems to have at length conceived
an ambition to displace Commodus. One day, when Com-
modus presided at the games, which he very liberally
provided, before an immense crowd, a mild-looking man —
said to be a philosopher — rushed into the centre of the
stage and roared out a warning to the Emperor that
Perennis was acquiring wealth and aiming at the throne.
The prefect had him burned alive, and escaped the Em-
peror's suspicion ; but the end was nearer than he expected.
A regiment of fifteen hundred men from the legions of
Britain marched into Rome, demanded the head of Perennis,
and forced Commodus to recognize and punish the faults of
his minister.

From that time Marcia occupies the place of prima inter
pares in the harem of Commodus. A good deal of re-
search has been expended on this leading concubine of the
Emperor, because there was a tradition in early Christian

i86 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

literature that she favoured and protected, if she did not
herself belong to, the new religion.* It was said that she
sent the eunuch, who had reared her, to liberate the
repressed Christians of Sardinia, and the peace which they
enjoyed at Rome during the reign of Commodus is attri-
buted to her influence. But if Marcia had ever belonged
to the austere sect of the early Christians, we must, for its
credit, entirely dissociate her from it in her Imperial days.
She seems to have been to the brutal Commodus what
Csesonia had been to the equally licentious Caligula. She
dressed willingly as an Amazon, and is actually represented
on the coins, with Commodus, in the helmet of a female
warrior. If we may put any trust in that meagre portrait
of her, she seems to have been of much the same type as
Caesonia : a handsome, strong, vulgar woman, owing her
influence to her masculine robustness.

For seven years she occupied, without a quarrel, the
chief place in a palace in which all the orgies of Caligula,
Nero, and Verus were concentrated. At her persuasion
Commodus changed the name of Rome to "the Colony
of Commodus." One might almost suspect her of genial
irony in thus removing the venerable name from the Im-
perial city during the years when it was degraded by
Commodus. Evil as the practices of Caligula and Nero had
been, they were surpassed by the insanities and obscenities
of the son of Marcus Aurelius. We must leave the veil
over the life that was witnessed in the palace during those
ten years ; but the crimes of Commodus were not confined
to the wild indulgence of his unbridled appetites. The
company of gladiators and the daily pleasure of killing
degraded him to the character of a mere butcher. He
forced the priests of orgiastic Eastern cults to perform on
themselves the mutilations which their ritual described;
he beat them with the emblem of Anubis which he carried
in their processions. On one occasion he had all the
citizens of Rome with some infirmity of the feet gathered
in one place, and more or less dressed as dragons. Then

' See Dr. Bassani's little work, "Commodo e Marcia,"

THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 187

the Roman Hercules — as Commodus loved to be called —
fell upon them with a club, and killed numbers of them.
This and other stories of his indescribable lust and cruelty
are told by an historian who saw Commodus daily.

In the year 189 Marcia obtained even greater power
over her insane lover. The place of Perennis had been
at once occupied by another of the Emperor's despicable
courtiers, Cleander, a Phrygian slave who had risen, by
base means, to be the first minister of the Empire. Like
his predecessor, he encouraged Commodus to wallow in his
vices, while he took advantage of his insanity to enrich
himself. The highest positions in the State were sold by
him, and men could even purchase from him the right to
take vengeance on their enemies, or the privilege not to
be executed for their wealth. The treasury was again
diminishing, and noble blood poured out freely to refresh
it. A great pestilence swept over Italy, exacting thousands
of victims daily in Rome alone. A terrible famine suc-
ceeded it. The people, observing that the avaricious
minister was endeavouring to make a corner in corn, now
broke into rebellion and pressed to the palace of the
Emperor.

Commodus was enjoying himself at the beautiful palace
of the Quintilians in the suburbs, which he had obtained
by murder, when the crowd surged up to the gates.
Cleander turned the cavalry upon the people, but the
infantry sided with them, and they returned in a storm
of anger to the palace. None of his ministers dare
approach the room in which Commodus wantoned with
his companions, but his sister Fadilla and Marcia broke
in with the news that his life was in danger. Some
writers say that it was Fadilla who informed him, some
that it was Marcia. We may suppose that both of them
endeavoured to awake him. The voluptuous coward at
once sacrificed Cleander to the crowd, and returned to
his vices.

Marcia had now the leading influence over Commodus,
and Rome sank lower and lower. The butcheries of the

1 88 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

amphitheatre were his chief concern. He consorted daily
with the gladiators, killed vast numbers of beasts in the
arena, and even fought with men who had meekly to
submit to be slain by him. Numbers of distinguished or
wealthy Romans were put to death on the most frivolous
pretexts, yet the Senators were compelled to view and
applaud his daily slaughters with such cries as : " Thou
conquerest the world, O brave Amazonian." Dio, who
sat among the Senators, tells us that one day Commodus
made a grotesque attempt to intimidate them. He had
just killed an ostrich, and came toward them with the
head in one hand and the bloody sword in the other.
He grinned and wagged his head, without saying a word,
as he approached them, as if intimating that it would
be their turn next. Dio says that his appearance was
so ludicrous that he had hastily to pluck a leaf of laurel,
and chew it, to prevent him from laughing. We nearly
missed the writing of one of the most valuable histories
of the period.

The " Golden Age," as the Senate was compelled to
describe this appalling decade, came to a close through a
fresh excess on the part of Commodus Pius, as he was
now styled. They had reached the last day of the year
192, and were preparing for the great festivities of the
morrow. Commodus informed Marcia that he would
spend the night in the house of the gladiators, and issue
from it on the morrow at their head. He ordered his
chamberlain Eclectus and his commander of the guard
Laetus to make the necessary preparation. Marcia and
the officers were horrified at his proposal, and besought
him to abandon it. After reading the disgusting details
of his career in the " Historia Augusta" — even if we
make allowance for exaggeration — one has some difficulty
in realizing their indignation. Apparently, however, this
proposal to identify himself so intimately with the de-
graded caste of public gladiators was regarded by them
as something of an entirely different nature from the filth
and obscenity of his practices in the palace, and they

THE WIVES OP THE SYBARITES 189

boldly opposed him. He angrily shook them off, and put
their names on his condemned list. The "Augustan
History," recalling a story we have heard before, intro-
duces an element of romance into the adventure. It
makes Commodus tie the tablet to his bed, and go to
sleep, when the tablet is playfully removed by one of his
jewel-decked boys, and delivered accidentally into the
hands of Marcia.

It is better to follow the version of Dio, who was in
Rome at the time. The two officers and Marcia, realizing
that they had incurred his anger, discussed the matter,
and decided to assassinate him. Marcia was directed to
poison him. She put the poison in the meat he ate, but
its effect was spoiled by the quantity of wine he had
drunk, and it caused him to vomit. He became suspicious
and threatening, and went to the bath. They then hastily
took into their confidence his powerful and athletic bath-
attendant. Narcissus, and he entered and strangled the
Emperor.

One reads with something like amazement that the
successful conspirators, instead of gladly announcing that
they had rid Rome of such a brute and tyrant, deliberated
anxiously how they should proceed. So blind was the
attachment of the troops to their paymaster, and of the
common citizens to any generous provider of games, that
they concealed the deed. Commodus had himself fought
735 times in the public amphitheatre, and on those per-
formances alone had spent 200,000,000 drachmas. The
temper of the demoralized people and soldiers was un-
certain, and they decided to put the Empire at once in
the hands of a strong soldier.

In the romantic story of the accession of the various
Empresses of Rome there are few cases so dramatic as
that which introduces the next Empress in the series.
There was living in Rome at the time an experienced
commander, in his sixtieth year, of the name of Pertinax.
His father had kept a kind of tavern in a village of
Liguria. The son had obtained some education, and

1 90 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

rapidly climbed the ladder of promotion. He had married
Flavia Titiana, the accomplished daughter of a very
wealthy and distinguished Senator. Himself enamoured
of Cornificia, the sister of Marcus Aurelius, he had over-
looked the vivacity of his wife, and she had at one time
attracted comment by her open regard for a musician. At
the time of the murder of Commodus, Pertinax was
Prefect of Rome. He retired to bed on that last night
of the year 192 with no suspicion of the great events
that were happening in the Domus Vectiliana, to which,
it seems, Commodus had gone.

In the middle of the night he was awakened with the
message that the captain of the Praetorian Guards wished
to see him. He calmly said that he had for some time
expected to be executed by Commodus, and he continued
to lie, in quiet dignity, when Laetus entered to tell him
that they offered him the Empire. He begged Laetus to
abandon his unseemly joke, and carry out his orders. He
was at last convinced that Commodus was dead, and,
through the darkness of the stormy winter night, they
made their way to the camp. They announced to the
guards that Commodus had died of apoplexy, and that
Pertinax was submitted to be chosen by them as Emperor.
The soldiers listened with no enthusiasm. Under the
license of the reign of Commodus they had been permitted
to take the most extraordinary liberties, and they dreaded
the accession of a commander. The news had, however,
spread by this time through the city. People crowded
into the torch-lit streets, and poured out toward the
camp, hailing the name of Pertinax and execrating that
of Commodus. A promise of 3,000 denarii to each man
overcame the last opposition of the Guards, and they
coldly consented to the choice. In the Senate, too, there
was hesitation. " We sep behind you," said the consul
Falco, " the ministers of Commodus's crimes, Laetus and
Marcia." Pertinax himself, indeed, was still very reluc-
tant ; but the Senate urged the Imperial power upon him,
and the new year dawned at Rome upon a people angrily

THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 191

scattering the sjtatues and nieniorials of Commodus, and
expressing a wild rejoicing over the advent of its new
•uler.

Titiana never bore the title of Augusta, and we may
dismiss very briefly her few months of residence in the
salace. The Senate offered the title of Augusta to Titiana,
ind that of Caesar to their son, but Pertinax refused both.
' Let the boy earn it," he said of his son ; and Dio says
;hat he kept the title from his wife, either because of the
nsecurity of his position, or " because he would not let his
ascivious consort stain the name of Augusta." Titiana
was evidently not the kind of woman to co-operate with
Pertinax in his reforms, and she probably shared the dis-
lain with which her friends regarded his ways. Although
le at once began to undo the evil wrought by Commodus —
o banish the informers, regulate the taxes, and purify the
idministration of justice — he alienated the Romans by
massing to an extreme of sobriety. The palace he purified
n very summary fashion. He had the whole apparatus
)f Commodus's luxury sold by auction, and Rome looked
)n with delight as the three hundred pretty boys and three
mndred choice concubines, the gold and silver plate, the
)recious vases and silks and chariots and wonderful
nachines of the Sybarite were exposed to their view.
But Pertinax carried his economy too far. Patricians
old with contempt that he would put half a lettuce on
he Imperial board, and would make a hare last three
lays ; the people missed the unceasing stimulation of
he amphitheatre ; the soldiers chafed at the discipline he
ought to enforce. Within three months of his remark-
ble accession to power Pertinax was assassinated by the
Juards, and Titiana fell back into the obscurity from
i^hich she had momentarily emerged.

Another Empress of a day, and one that came to the
hrone under no less romantic circumstances, claims our
ttention for a moment before we pass on to a more
uposing figure.

It was on the 28th of March, 193, that the soldiers

192 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

brutally assassinated Pertinax. On the rumour of trouble
Pertinax had sent his father-in-law, Sulpicianus, to secure
tranquillity in the camp. As he lingered there the soldiers
returned with the dripping head of the Emperor, and he
recognized that the throne was vacant. With a callousness
that is almost incredible, but is fully attested, he at once
made an offer of money to the soldiers for the Imperial
power. It occurred to some of the soldiers that a higher
bid might be secured, and they announced from the ram-
part of their camp, in which they had enclosed themselves,
that the throne was, virtually, on sale. In particular,
they sent word to one of the wealthiest citizens, Didius
Julianus, and invited him to make an offer. Whether or
no it be true that he yielded to the vanity of his wife
and daughter — he does not seem to have needed pressure
— Julianus went to the camp, and made a higher offer
than that of Sulpicianus.

It was the early evening, and a crowd had gathered
to witness the appalling spectacle of the sale of the Empire.
Julianus pointed out that his rival was the father-in-law of
the man they had killed, and might be expected to have some
design of revenge. The soldiers admitted Julianus by a
ladder, and the two Senators made bids against each other,
the soldiers on the wall announcing their offers. At length
Julianus made an offer equal to more than ;^200 to each
soldier, and he was greeted as Emperor. Under the close
guard of the soldiers he was conducted, amid an angry
people, to the Senate, and forced upon the Senators. They
then concluded their bargain by conducting him to the
palace, and the vain old man had time to reflect on the
extraordinary situation he had suddenly reached. His
wife, Manila Scantilla, and daughter, Didia Clara, joined
him " in fear and concern " (the " Historia Augusta " says),
and he finished the day with a prolonged entertainment.

His wife and daughter were decorated with the title of
Augusta on the morrow, but they soon found that Julianus
had squandered his comfortable wealth on a dangerous
bauble. Not only did the Roman people jeer at him

THE WIVES OF THE SYBARITES 193

whenever he appeared, but the news soon came that the
distant legions were aflame with anger, and were about
to march on Rome to wrest the Empire from hirn. Pre-
sently he heard that the commander of the troops in
Pannonia had begun his march at the head of a formidable
army. Julianus first had him declared a public enemy, and
sent men to assassinate him ; then he offered to share the
Empire with him. Severus and his hardened troops passed
relentlessly over the Alps, and proceeded along the plains
of Italy. Julianus stung the demoralized soldiers who had
sold him the Empire into some pretence of resistance,
threw up earthworks in the suburbs, endeavoured to train
his elephants for the fight, and, as a last resort, fortified
the palace. But his effeminate troops quailed before the
seasoned legions from Germany, and, when Severus reached
Rome, Julianus found himself deserted. The Senate de-
creed his death, and he was beheaded in the palace which
he had enjoyed, at the price of his fortune and his life, for
sixty-six days. And the two broken-hearted Augustse
laid down their dignity, and bore the body of Didius
Julianus to the tomb of his ancestors.

Marcia, too, had ended her semi-imperial career with a
violent death. After the assassination of Commodus she
had married the chamberlain Eclectus, with whom she had
long been intimate. Eclectus became the chamberlain of
Pertinax, and perished, not ignobly, with his master.
Marcia did not long survive her husband, however.
Julianus had promised the soldiers that he would avenge
the murder of Commodus, and he sought the remaining
members of the conspiracy, Lsetus, Narcissus, and Marcia,
and put them to death.

13

CHAPTER XII

JULIA DOMNA

WITH the accession of Septimius Severus to the
throne, we find ourselves confronting one of the
most dominant personalities in the long line of
Roman Empresses — a woman of the standard of Livia,
Agrippina, and Plotina — and passing again into one of the
brighter periods of the life of the Empire. The degrada-
tion of Commodus's reign will disappear like a mist on a
summer morn; the jaded frame of the Empire will seem
to recover all its vigour in a few years. These periods
of rapid recovery are not sufficiently appreciated by the
rhetorical censors of the morals of Rome, whose investi-
gations are almost entirely confined to the reigns of
Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus ; as
if it were just to define the climate of a region by its worst
days only. Let a strong man rise to power, let an imperial
encouragement be given to virtue and manliness, and even
the city of Rome takes on a normal moral aspect. The
throne is but an electric point, and, according as it is posi-
tive or negative, it draws into the light of history either the
good or the bad elements of Rome. Both are there all the
time. And if the good rulers had made as drastic a purge
of evil types, as evil rulers made of good types, when they
came to power, the Empire might not have provided so
much material to the censors of extinct civiUzations.

The Empresses whom we have hitherto considered
were, with a few exceptions, the daughters of Roman
patricians, or of distinguished provincials who had lived in
Rome for a generation or two. In lulia Domna, the wife

194

JULIA DOMNA 195

of Severus, we have for the first time a woman of the East
on the throne ; and, as her family will for some time
deeply influence the fortunes of the Empire, it will be
interesting to glance at her origin.

On the bank of the Orontes in Syria, at the large village
or small town of Emesa (now Hems), there was in the
second century a very ancient and prosperous religious
centre. At some early date in the history of the land a
mysterious stone had been cast on the country from the
home of the gods — a meteorite, modern science would call
it— and it had been set up as a symbol of the Regenerating
God (Elagabal, which the Greeks improperly turned into
Heliogabalus, or Sun-god). A fine temple was in time
built to shelter it, pilgrims sought it from the whole
country, and the richest gifts were made to the god and
his living representatives. About the middle of the second
century the priest in charge was a certain Bassianus, who
had two handsome and very clever daughters. The planets
which presided at the birth of the elder promised her,
according to the astrologers, a throne ; and, as there was
a camp of Roman soldiers near Emesa, and the temple
was a great attraction to the soldiers in their exile, the
pretty Syrian girl and her horoscope came to be known
very far away. In the year 186 or 187 an offer of marriage
came to the priest's daughter from one of the highest
officials, the legatus, of the rich province of Lower Gaul,
and she crossed sea and land to accept it. Within six
years this officer, Septimius Severus, was Emperor of
Rome, and Julia Domna was Empress.

Some doubt has been thrown on this pretty story, and
Serviez, whose chapter on Julia Domna is a piece of irre-
sponsible fiction, describes her as coming to Rome, on her
own account, in search of adventure. But we have abun-
dant evidence that Severus was a most enthusiastic
astrologer, and there is nothing improbable in the story.
Severus was of the province of Roman Africa, of humble
family, and, like so many energetic men in the days of
Antoninus and Marcus, had earned promotion from office

196 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

to office. He had first married a ceitain Paccia Marciana
at Rome. He was then made Praetor, had a military
command in Spain and Gaul, spent some years in study
at Athens, and became Legate of the Lugdunian province.
At Lyons he lost his first wife, and sought a second. Hear-
ing that there was a maid in Syria with a royal horoscope,
he sent for her, and married her at Lyons. A child was born
the first year, and, although Bassianus (more popularly,
Caracalla) is described by Eutropius and Aurelius Victor
as her stepson, he was undoubtedly her first child. Geta,
his brother and co-Emperor, was born two years later.

By that time they were living in Rome, where Severus
was Consul. Commodus, whose follies excited his ambition
no less than his disdain, gave him the command in Lower
Germany. Immediately afterwards Commodus was assas-
sinated, and about three months later came the news of the
murder of Pertinax. It was easy to inflame the troops
with anger on this occasion, and, as Severus offered a more
than usually heavy bribe, he was acclaimed Emperor, and,
as we saw, led the legions upon Rome. We do not know
whether Julia had remained at Rome, or accompanied him,
but she would be present when Rome greeted its new
ruler. He rode in full armour, in the centre of a picked
body of six hundred men. When, however, he saw that
Rome had entirely deserted Julianus, he entered the city in
civic costume, on foot. Flowers and laurel and gay hang-
ings decorated all the houses, and the early summer sun
shone on the white-robed masses of the citizens. Another
splendid, but less joyous, spectacle was offered on the
morrow, when a wax image of Pertinax was honoured with
an Imperial funeral. Then he set about the stern business
of securing his Empire. He had no title to it but his sword,
and there were two other able generals — Albinus in Britain
and Niger in Syria— urging the same title on their own
behalf.

We do not know whether Julia accompanied Severus
during the long civil war that followed. Some of the
authorities represent her as egging on her husband to the

JULIA DOMNA 197

destruction of his rivals. The advice would not be un-
natural, but it would be so superfluous that we disregard
the statement. With a craft that has not won him the
regard of historians, Severus held Albinus in Britain with
the empty title of Caesar, while he proceeded to crush
Niger in the East. As there are coins of the year 196 which
entitle Julia " Mother of the Camps," ^ she probably accom-
panied Severus to the East, but we need not pursue the
long campaign. Severus committed the work to his
generals, and kept watch over Rome and the West. Several
years were absorbed in pacifying the East, and he then
turned toward Britain. Acting under the strain of African
barbarism which undoubtedly existed in the nature of
Severus, he sent men with a treacherous commission to
murder Albinus, and the discovery of the plot brought the
British legions thundering over Gaul. The rivals met
decisively at Lyons, and a titanic conflict ended with the
triumph of Severus.

Rome had followed the even struggle with suspense,
and some had ventured to take sides. The omens were
ambiguous. A strange light — the aurora — flickered in the
northern sky, and a rain mixed with silver — Dio soberly
assures us that he plated several bronze coins with it — fell
upon the city. Human judgment had been as uncertain as
that of the gods, and many of the Romans had espoused
the "white" (Albinus) or the "black" (Niger) cause,
instead of that of the " grey," to put it in the language of
the hour. For Severus to have abstained entirely from
punishing those who had supported his rivals, after the
years of anxiety they had caused him, is too much to
expect; but it must be admitted that his vengeance was
cruel, and that his plea of the security of the State was

' The references on coins and inscriptions to Julia Domna have been
industriously collected by Mary Gilmore Wilkins, American Journal of
Archmology, 2nd series, vol. vi. They do not add materially to our knowrledge
of her, but are so abundant that they show her to have been an Empress
of exceptional prominence and influence. She became Augusta in the first
year.

198 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

little more than a cloak for a very human resentment. The
"Historia Augusta" gives a ghastly list of forty-one Senators
whom he put to death, and crowds of lesser folk suffered
from his vindictiveness. From Syria to Gaul he marked
the progress of his triumph with a trail of human blood.

Of the attitude of Julia in regard to these executions we
have no knowledge. Severus was a cruel and passionate
African, and we have no reason to think that any one
impelled him to commit these deeds. His whole behaviour
in the hour of triumph was injudicious and unworthy. He
made a most unpleasant speech to the Senate in praise of
Commodus, and directed that the highest honours should
be pajd to his memory. It may be that the consciousness
of his lowly origin — which his sister tactlessly irritated by
coming to Rome, and displaying her rural innocence to the
amusement of the nobles — made him more suspicious of the
patrician order than he need have been. Albinus, however,
had come of a most ancient and honourable, if somewhat
decayed, stock, and his finer blood may have influenced the
Senate.

Leaving Rome under a painful impression of his harsh
use of power, he set out for the East, where the Parthians
were again in arms. Julia accompanied him on this cam-
paign, but it is of little interest. The Parthians retired
before his advance, and he pursued them down the
Euphrates, and for a time held Babylon and several of the
ancient cities of the East. Foiled, and incurring heavy
losses, in the siege of Hatra, he retired sullenly from
Mesopotamia, and sought consolation in a pleasant tour
through Palestine and Egypt. They returned to Rome,
about the beginning of the third century, for their first long
stay in the capital.

The remarkable number of inscriptions that still survive
in the most distant parts of the Empire bear witness that
Julia was already regarded as an active Empress, not
merely as the companion of Severus. Probably she comes
next to Livia — some would place her before Livia — in the
general recognition of her political existence. But on her

JULIA DOMNA 199

return to Rome she found a bitter opponent in the person
of Severus's chief minister, and for a time she confined
herself to personal concerns. This minister, Plautianus,
was a fellow-townsman, possibly a relative, of the Emperor,
and enjoyed and abused his entire confidence. He was
promoted to the command of the Praetorian Guards, whom
Severus, after punishing them for the murder of Pertinax,
had reorganized and enormously increased. Finding him-
self at the head of fifty thousand picked men, and entrusted,
during the long absence of the Emperor, with the supreme
affairs of State, Plautianus indulged his vanity in the
strangest excesses. When his superb chariot drove through
Rome, runners were sent ahead to warn the common folk
that they must turn away, and not gaze on his august
person ; and there were more statues of him in Rome than
of the Emperor. He even had a hundred Romans, of
all ages, including many of noble birth, emasculated, in
order that his daughter might be attended with all the
splendour and security of an Oriental harem. Severus
begged the hand of this privileged maiden for his elder
son. Bassianus was then (203) in his sixteenth year, and
had just been nominated Caesar by his father. Plautianus
consented, and a princely wedding took place. People
remarked, as the rich gifts were borne through the Forum
to the palace, that the Prefect of the Guards had been able
to give his daughter a dowry that would have sufficed for
the daughters of fifty kings.

Two circumstances conspired to wreck this auspicious
marriage. Bassianus disliked Plautilla, Julia hated her
conceited and overbearing father. A third circumstance,
ip the opinion of Rome, was that Bassianus was already
too intimate with a fiery little Syrian cousin, then living at
the palace, of whom we shall see much in the next chapter.
At length Plautianus brought a formal charge against the
Empress, and there was agitation in the palace. The
charge seems to have been one of adultery, and, though
it was not established, some of the later historians declare
that she owed her escape only to the fondness of Severus.

200 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Aurelius Victor (" De Caesaribus," xx) says that " his wife's
infamies robbed Severus of the height of his glory " ; and
he charges her with, to the Emperor's knowledge, loose ways
and treason. Lampridius (" Historia Augusta," " Severus,"
c. 1 8) affirms that she was "notorious for her adulteries
and guilty of conspiracy." Eutropius and Herodian join
with them in bringing an even graver charge against her
later. Dio, however, who was on the spot, brings no
charge against her character, and many hold that his
silence is more instructive than the chatter of later
compilers. We may add that Severus was very eager to
stamp out adultery, and, although his efforts were
frustrated by the Unwillingness of the citizens to use his
law — Dio, when he was consul, found three thousand charges
lying unheeded in the offices — his known temper must be
taken into account. On the other hand, Dio wrote his
history in the reign of a member of Julia's family, and may
have omitted much out of discretion.

The evidence is, as usual, perplexing, and there is no
need to press for a verdict. The Oriental religion, to
which Julia adhered, was not one to lay bonds upon the
passion of love, and the removal from the guarded seclusion
of the East to the free life of the West would not engender
scruples. The charge, in fact, was not admitted by Severus
to be proved, though noble dames were tortured to wring
evidence from them. After this scorching ordeal, how-
ever, Julia moderated her open hostihty to Plautianus,
and sought consolation in a close application to letters
and philosophy. Her sister, Julia Maesa, had by this
time come from Emesa to join her in the palace, and
had brought two married daughters, of whom we shall
hear more.^ With these, and the literary men of Rome,
she formed an intellectual circle, and withdrew from politics.

But there can be little doubt that Julia encouraged her

' I conclude that they had already come to Rome because Elagabalus, the
son of Sosemias, was given serious consideration in his later claim that he was
the son of Bassianus. He was born in 204, and, unless his mother had been
in the palace before that date, the claim could not have been made.

JULIA DOMNA 201

son's dislike of Plautilla. Herodian declares that the
young wife was "a most shameless creature." We may
refuse to accept this description of the unhappy young
princess, and see in it only an echo of the attack upon
her. Bullied and threatened by Bassianus, she at last
returned in tears to her father's mansion, and the Prefect
renewed his attacks with great warmth. Severus refused
to hear complaints against him, until his brother Geta
suggested to him, on his death-bed, that Plautianus was
acquiring his enormous wealth with a view to seizing the
throne. From that hour Severus behaved more coldly to
his minister, and Julia's party took courage. At length
Bassianus persuaded his father that the minister was
plotting. If we may believe the romantic version, Plau-
tianus sent a man to assassinate Severus and his sons.
The man betrayed him at the palace, and was directed
by Bassianus to return and pretend to bring the Prefect
to see the dead bodies. At all events, Plautianus came
in haste to the palace, was alarmed to see the gates close
behind him, and was led to the presence of the Emperor
and Bassianus. Shortly afterwards, the head of Plautianus
was tossed on to the street from the roof of the palace.
Dio adds that a man plucked a handful of hair from the
bleeding head, and rushed with it to Julia and Plautilla,
crying : " Behold your Plautianus ! " The unhappy girl was
banished to Lipara, and was executed there by Bassianus
after the death of his father.

It was perhaps inevitable that a series of executions
should follow the fall of the favourite, but in a short time
the life of the palace fell into a quiet routine. Severus,
a big, powerful man, with a crown of grey hair above
his venerable features, set an example of sobriety and
industry. He was generally at work before dawn, and
would return to work after a frugal midday-meal with
his boys. They were years of peace and prosperity, and
he made admirable use of the opportunity to restore the
decaying buildings and institutions of the Empire, and to
replenish the treasury. He regretted his lack of culture.

202 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

and listened with deference to the learned discussions in
which his wife and her relatives engaged. His one ac-
complishment in the way of science was a thorough com-
mand of the mysteries of astrology, as the golden stars
with which he decorated the ceilings of his palace informed
the visitor.

Julia joined with him in the work of restoration. We
know that at Rome she rebuilt the temple of Vesta, and
the numerous provincial inscriptions suggest a much wider
interest. Under her lead the women of Rome were en-
couraged to look beyond their homes. Sabina had erected,
or dedicated, a meeting-hall for women in the Forum of
Trajan, but it had fallen into decay. Julia restored this
early " women's club," and no doubt introduced into it
the enthusiasm for letters and philosophy which she still
had. Her " circle," as Philostratus calls it, probably in-
cluded the historian Dio, who was still at Rome, and the
poet Appian, who had some years before described her
as "the great Domna." Philostratus himself, a Greek
writer and rhetorician, one of the most learned men of the
time, was closely associated with her. It was at her request
that he wrote his famous " Life of Apollonius of Tyana."
In his "Lives of the Sophists" (Philiscus) he speaks of
her as "Julia the Philosopher," and in one of his letters
(Ixxiii) he refers with high appreciation to her learning.

Julia was then in the prime of her life, and in her
happiest days. The bust of her that quickly catches the
eye in the Vatican Museum— the largest surviving portrait-
bust of the period — will hardly be deemed to possess the
beauty with which the historians invest her. The thick
lips and large nose, which betray her ancestry, do not
compare well with the features of other Empresses. But
the grave, strong, thoughtful face and large eyes, which
we may imagine instinct with Syrian fire, are undeniably
handsome. Her sister, Julia Maesa, was with her— a
woman of similar strength, moderation, and judgment.
But the younger generation in the palace gave them con-
cern. The young men, Bassianus and Geta, were loose

JULIA DOMNA

BUST IN THE VATICAN MUSEUM

JULIA DOMNA 203

and luxurious in their ways ; and one of the daughters of
Maesa, Julia Soaemias, was a fit companion for Bassianus.
Severus, noting the advance of his gout, looked with grave
eyes on the soft habits and the constant quarrels of the
sons whom he wished to leave partners in the Empire.

An irruption of the Caledonians in the north of Britain
led him to think that a campaign under his eyes would
alter the evil ways of his sons, and he set out for the
West. Julia accompanied them, but we can hardly suppose
that she ventured further north than Eboracum (York).
The mist-wrapped hills and watery lowlands beyond were
to the Roman a shuddering wilderness, fit only for the
breeding of savages who were as amphibious as rats.
Dio unflatteringly describes the north Britons and Scots
of the time as " inhabiting wild, waterless mountains and
desolate, swampy plains," and " dweUing in tents, without
coats or shoes, possessing their wives and rearing their
offspring in common." We may find some consolation in
the assurance of Lampridius that Britain (south of this
region) was "the greatest glory of the Empire." Even
the Scots, however, had their glories. When Severus
returned to York, after having pushed to the extreme
north of Caledonia, and lost 50,000 men without bringing
the elusive enemy to battle, he brought with him envoys
of the Caledonians to discuss the terms of peace. Among
them was the wife of the chief " Argentocoxus " — should
it be Macdermott ?— with whom the philosophic Empress
held converse through an interpreter. Julia insinuated that
their matrimonial arrangements were not all that could be
desired. " We satisfy the needs of nature in a much better
way than you Roman women," said the hardy Scot. " We
have dealings openly with the best of our men, whereas
you let yourselves be debauched in secret by the vilest."
Eugenics is an ancient practice, if a modern theory.

Severus was borne back, weary and dispirited, on his
litter to York. Bassianus, impatient to reach the throne
that he would soon disgrace, had attempted his father's
life, and fully exhibited the brutality of his character. Yet

204 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Severus, who had often censured Marcus Aurelius for
entrusting the Empire to Commodus, listened in turn to
the fond pleading of his parental feeling, and designated
his sons as his successors. He died at York in February,
211, and a hasty settlement was made of affairs in Britain
that they might return at once to the capital. They
placed the ashes of the Emperor in an alabaster urn, and
set out with it for Rome.

From that day the life of Julia Domna was one of
anxiety, and we may trust that it was one of pain. Even
on the journey homeward her sons were ostentatiously
armed against each other's designs. Bassianus — or Anto-
ninus, as he had now been named — was a strong, brutal,
and imperious youth, as eager to murder his brother as
he had been to shorten his father's life. Geta was brighter,
gentler, and more cultivated, and the affection of the
legions for him kept Antoninus in check while they were
with the army. When they arrived in Rome, their first
business was the funeral of Severus. His pale wax image
was laid on a lofty ivory couch, and the black-robed
Senators and white-clad matrons watched it for seven days.
Then it was borne to the old Forum, where the chorus of
sons and women of the nobility sang the old funeral
chants, and on to the great wooden tower, stuffed with
spices and inflammable matter, in the Field of Mars;
where, from the midst of the flaming pile, the released
eagle symbolized the passage of the soul of Severus to
the home of the gods.

The quarrel between Antoninus and Geta at once broke
out with greater mexiace than ever. They kept their
separate apartments rigidly guarded in the palace, and
a troop of soldiers and athletes watched day and night
over the person of the younger Emperor. Some one sug-
gested that the Empire should be divided, as it was later,
and that Geta should take the Asiatic half. Herodian
says — though one reads with suspicion his full reports of
speeches that were made a century before — that Julia
opposed this plan passionately. They must divide their

JULIA DOMNA 205

mother, she declared, before they should divide the Empire.
The gloom grew deeper over the palace, and the inevitable
end did not tarry long. Antoninus one day professed that
he wished to be reconciled, and invited Geta to meet him
in his mother's room. As soon as Geta entered, the
officers whom Antoninus had at hand drew their swords.
Geta flew to his mother's bosom, and she put her arms
about him ; but they killed him in her embrace, and even
cut the arm in which she clasped him. Once more the
channels ran with the best blood of Rome, as Antoninus
turned vindictively upon the supporters of his brother.
Even ancient nobles who had survived several of these
massacres, such as Claudius Pompeianus, the second hus-
band of Marcus Aurelius's daughter, now came to a violent
end. The aged sister of Marcus Aurelius, Cornificia, was
put to death for weeping at the news of the brutal crime.
Dio assures us that no less than 20,000 men and women,
including some of the finest of the time, were put to death
in that awful carnage. Surely one of the chief causes of
the deterioration of Rome — these repeated purges of its
best elements — has been overlooked in the endless specu-
lations about its fall !

The " Historia Augusta " tells us that Julia herself was
discovered in tears by Antoninus, and only escaped death
because the Emperor feared a rebellion if he killed her.
Curiously enough, the same historian, and several others,
go on to give us a far different and less honourable
account of her conduct after the death of Geta. In the
general horror with which his abominable deeds were
contemplated, Antoninus had the astuteness to purchase
the favour of the army. He bestowed an extraordinary
donation on the Guards, and entered upon a systematic
policy of enriching and indulging the troops. From the
pale faces of the citizens of Rome he retired to the military
quarters on the Danube, and endeavoured by a year of
hard hunting and carousing to banish the ghosts which,
he confessed, haunted him. Inscriptions have been found
in Germany which suggest that his mother was with him.

206 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

However that may be, she joined him when he crossed
the Hellespont to Asia — and was nearly drowned in the
passage — and began to take a most important part in the
administration. With the Senate, over whom he had set
in authority a Spanish juggler, he was too disdainful to
deal, except on the most important subjects. His chief
aim was to wring money out of Rome and the provinces,
and spend it on the troops. He "plundered the whole
earth," says Dio. He wore the long rough cloak of a
Goth — from which he was given the nickname of " Cara-
calla " (the name of the garment) — and ate the rough food
of a soldier on campaign ; though he gave himself wildly
to the luxurious life of the cities of Asia Minor.

Julia settled in Nicomedia, where she spent a good part
of 214 and 215, and then in Antioch. Caracalla never
married again; indeed, there can be little doubt that
venereal disease was the chief cause of his madness and
brutality during these years. As a boy, "reared by a
Christian nurse," says TertuUian, he had been most gentle
and humane. Julia, therefore, was still Empress, and she
undertook the greater part of Caracalla's work. All letters
from Rome were forwarded to her, and she dealt with
them all, except a few that had to be submitted to the
Emperor. The inscriptions cut in honour of her during
these years were remarkably numerous, and from them
and the coins we learn how great were her authority and
influence. Her official title grew until it at length became :
"Julia Pia Felix Augusta, Mater Augusti et Castrorum
et Senatus et Patriae." All the several epithets that were
ever bestowed on other Empresses were gathered together
in her name.

This intimate association with so foul an Emperor as
Caracalla lent colour to the current belief that she was
linked with him in another capacity than that of mother.
Herodian (iiii), Eutropius (viii), and Aurelius Victor
(" Epitome," xxi), give the charge as an undoubted fact.
Spartianus (" Historia Augusta," " Caracalla," x) gives a
circumstantial story of the mother leading the son astray,

JULIA DOMNA

207

and Aurelius Victor gives the same anecdote in his " De
Caesaribus," xxi. She is said to have presented herself to
Caracalla in what Serviez calls " an exceedingly magnifi-
cent and becoming dress" — se maxima corporis parte de-
nudasset, is the text— and yielded with ease. The anecdote
is too common a sample of the salacious gossip of the time
to be taken seriously, but the substantial charge is not
so easily set aside. Dio, it is true, does not give it. When
he speaks (c. 10) of Caracalla having " possessed the
rascality [wavovpyov] of his mother," he does not indeed
pay a tribute to her character, but the word he employs
seems to indicate craft, perhaps unscrupulous craft, rather
than lasciviousness.

But even Dio relates an adventure which fairly shows
that this grave charge against Julia was widely credited
in his day. In the year 216, during his tour in the East,
Caracalla announced that he would honour Alexandria
with a visit. Unsparing as the Alexandrians had been in
their witticisms on the ugly, bald, and prematurely old young
man, with all his brutality and folly, they had no suspicion
of his real intention, and they prepared to receive him
with great honour. Once inside their gates, however, he
savagely precipitated his troops on the unarmed citizens
and for several days directed the carnage and pillage from
the temple of Ser^pis. This savage onslaught is said by
Dio to have been a punishment for the jibes of the Alex-
andrians, and we know from Herodian that one of their
most deadly shafts was to speak of him and his mother as
(Edipus and Jocaste.

It cannot therefore be said that Dio is unaware of the
current belief, nor can we follow Miss Wilkins when she
suggests that the " elderly Empress " was incapable of such
conduct. Julia had been married only twenty-nine years
before, and may very well be presuiptied to have been in
her early forties in the year 216. She was in "the full
flush of life," as Dio expressly says, and is not known to
have embraced any system of ethics or religion which
would lay a stigma on incest. But the general moderation

2o8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

of her career and the repellent character of Caracalla,
unrelieved by a single grace of person or disposition, must
weigh heavily in the scale against the gossip of Rome.

We know, at least, that she endeavoured to curb the
wild excesses that were bringing a doom on her son and
endangering the stability of the Empire. When he debased
the coinage, and despoiled his subjects, she remonstrated,
but he laughingly drew his sword and said : " Courage,
mother, while we have this, money will not fail us." "In
such things," says Dio, "he paid no heed to his mother,
who gave him much excellent advice." She continued to
act as the first minister of her son, while he wandered
from region to region in search of adventure. One of his
exploits will suffice to illustrate his peculiar method of
winning glory. From Egypt he advanced against the
Parthians. He sent a flattering letter to the Parthian
king, submitting that the two great Empires ought amic-
ably to divide the world, and asking for the hand of his
daughter. His persistent lying disarmed even the crafty
Parthians, and he was admitted into their kingdom with
a body of troops. He at once flung his troops upon
the vast unarmed multitude that came out to greet him,
mingled their blood with the flowers they had strewn
in his path, and sacked a large part of Medea and Parthia.

But the end of his infamous life was rapidly approach-
ing. He had written to Rome, some time previously, to
direct that the Chaldseans should be consulted as to the
name of his successor, so that he might slay the man
named. The minister to whom he wrote had some griev-
ance against one of the officials in the East, Opilius
Macrinus, and he wrote to inform Caracalla that Macrinus
was designated by an African soothsayer. The more
romantic historians say that this letter reached Caracalla
just as he was engaged in directing a race, and that he
gave it, unopened, to Macrinus himself to deal with. More
plausible is the story related by Dio. The letter went,
as all letters went, to the Empress at Antioch, and a delay
was caused. Macrinus had, in the meantime, learned from

JULIA DOMNA " 209

Rome the danger that threatened him, and he set energetic-
ally to work. A discontented soldier in Caracalla's body-
guard was secured, and on the 8th of March, 217, he ended
that Emperor's infamies with the thrust of a dagger. It
was a timely release for Rome. It was discovered after
his death that he had bought great quantities of poison in
Asia.

Julia indulged in an unusual display of violence when
the news reached her at Antioch. She mourned little
over the removal of her son, says Dio, as she " had hated
him when he was alive " ; but the prospect of laying down
her Imperial power, and retiring into private life, in the
prime, of her womanhood, filled her with anger. She
learned that, after a brief hesitation, Macrinus had promised
the usual bribe to the troops, and obtained the Empire.
Rumour quickly recognized in him the assassin of Cara-
calla, and Julia made the most violent attacks on him.
Meantime, he had written to assure her that he would
recognize her Imperial status, and not remove her guard
of honour. He feared the attachment of the soldiers to
Caracalla, and disavowed his share in the assassination.
Julia perceived his weakness, and, abandoning her first
resolve to take her life by refusing food, she enter-
tained a hope of unseating the upstart. But the soldiers,
however much attached to Caracalla, had little idea of
putting a Semiramis on the throne of Rome. Her plan
miscarried, and Macrinus heard of her invectives. He
ordered her to leave Antioch, and go where she willed.
Her sister and nieces returned to the paternal temple
at Emesa, where we shall soon rejoin them, but Julia,
failing entirely to foresee the extraordinary adventure by
which they would shortly return to power, racked with
the pain of a cancer, which she had aggravated by a blow
on the breast in her first anger, decided to leave the
world. She refused food, and died in May or June, 217.
Her remains were afterwards buried with great pomp at
Rome, and her name was added to the quaint list of the
Imperial gods and goddesses.
14 .

CHAPTER XIII

IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS

THE fates were now preparing as strange a revolution,
and bringing upon the Imperial stage as grotesque
a figure, as any that have yet come under our
notice. Three women — the sister and the nieces of JuHa
Domna — are the engineers of this revolution, and, clothed
with the Imperial dignity, control the fortunes of Rome
in the extraordinary period that followed it. But before
we introduce the tragi-comic figure of Elagabalus, we must
clear the stage of the temporary Emperor and his faint
shadow of an Empress.

Opilius Macrinus was a weak, vain, and unimpressive
old man. Accident had put the Empire within his reach.
He timidly grasped it because no other offered to do so,
and held it until another desired it. He was in his fifty-
third year, a man of obscure African origin, an adventurer
in the public service. He was married to Nonia Celsa,
of whom we know only that her qualities were not
generally believed to include the possession of virtue.
Their son Diadumenianus was a tall and handsome youth,
with black eyes and curly yellow hair. When his father
made him Caesar, and he donned a purple robe, the
spectators are said to have melted with affection. He
lived long enough to show, by urging his parents to deal
more drastically with rebels, that his heart was not so
tender as his pretty looks had suggested.

" How happy and fortunate we are," Macrinus wrote
to his family, when his accession was secured. In little

IN ^HE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS an

more than a year he would be flying over the hills of
Asia Minor, and he and his handsome boy would be cruelly
put to death. He set out at once, with great display,
against the unruly Parthians. But he soon purchased
an ignoble peace from them, and repaired to the banquets
and pleasures of Antioch. Anxious as he was about his
position, he made the fatal error of keeping the troops
in camp, and there soon passed from legion to legion an
ominous murmur. The soldiers contrasted his luxury with
Caracalla's sharing of their march and their cheese, and
chafed under the discipline he rightly sought to enforce.
The rumour spread, too, that Macrinus had given offence
to the Senate ; and that a mule had borne a mule at Rome,
and a sow had given birth to a little pig with two heads and
eight feet. The apparition of a comet and an eclipse of the
sun made it yet more certain that something was going
to happen, and confirmed those- who were preparing the
event. In the month of^May Macrinus heard that a boy
of fourteen, supported by three women and a eunuch, had
claimed the throne, and seduced some troops. He sent a
general, with a moderate force, to bring him the boy's head.
In a week or two a messenger returned with a head — his
general's head. He roused himself from the drowsy luxury
of Antioch, and set out with his army.

The three women were, as I have said, Julia Msesa,
sister of Julia Domna, and her daughters, Soaemias and
Mamaea. At the death of Julia Domna they had retired
to the ancestral home at Emesa, in Syria, but with a very
considerable fortune, which Massa had gathered at the
court of Severus and Caracalla. The two daughters seem
to have lost their husbands, though each had a son.
Soaemias had a child of fourteen years, named Varius
Avitus Bassianus, a strikingly pretty boy.* His cousin
' It is difficult to imagine Elagabalus beginning his appalling career at
such an age, and Gibbon, calculating from the age given to Alexander Severus
in the " Historia Augusta " at the time of his death, changes the age to seven-
teen. But the " Historia Augusta " is very commonly wrong in the ages it
ascribes to Emperors at their death. Professor Bury admits that Gibbon is
probably wrong, and we may follow Herodian.

212 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Alexianus was three or four years younger. Avitus was
therefore clothed with the dignity of priest of the temple,
which seems to have been hereditary, and the little group
resumed the life they had quitted, twenty years before, to
dwell in the Imperial court. Msesa, and probably Sosemias,
found this rustic tranquillity unendurable, and followed
political events with interest. The one retained dreams
of Imperial power, the other of Imperial indulgence. Their
chief servant was a clever eunuch, Gannys by name, who
is strangely described by Dio as " practically living with
Soaemias." A geographical accident brought their vague
dreams to a practical issue.

Near the little town of Emesa was a camp of the Roman
soldiers. Cosmopolitan as they now were in race and
religion, and fretting at their detention in the dull country-
side, the soldiers took a close interest in the temple of
the strange god. The great wealth and fame of the shrine,
the peculiar nature of its deity and its ritual, often attracted
them, and the knowledge that these rich and handsome
women of the priestly family had been so closely connected
with their popular Caracalla increased the interest. But
the chief feature that drew their attention was the beauty
of the young high-priest. The soft and feminine delicacy
of his form and features was enhanced by a long robe of
Imperial purple, fringed with gold, and a crown that flashed
back the rays of the Syrian sun from its precious gems.
The romance was not lessened when they reflected that
the great Severus had often fondled this boy in his arms,
and that he might have inherited the throne. The women,
or their servants, now doubled the interest of the soldiers
by insinuating a whisper that he was the son of their
Caracalla, and when Maesa's gold began to pass freely
into their purses, they contrived to see a resemblance
to the dark and repellent features of the late Emperor in
the girlish beauty of the boy. Sosemias had no difficulty
in paying the poor price of her reputation for a return to
court. Lampridius bluntly calls her a meretrix.

On the night of May isth, 2i8, the three women and

IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 213

the two boys were transferred to the camp. Maesa's
fortune went with them, as the price of Empire, and on
the following day the soldiers announced that Bassianus,
as he was now called, was Emperor. The camp was
fortified, and in a few days Macrinus's general, Julianus,
appeared before it with his troops. Their companions
in the camp e^ihibited the young son of Caracalla on the
rampart, and, as they exhibited also the bags of Maesa's
gold, they convinced and seduced the assailants. Julianus's
head was cut off, and sent to Antioch. Macrinus now
marched against them, and the two armies met in the inter-
vening country on June 8th. The softened troops wavered
on both sides, and it looked as if Macrinus might win, when
Msesa and Soaemias sprang from their chariots in the
rear of the army, rushed into the ranks, and spurred their
flagging followers on to victory. Macrinus fled, in an
ignominious disguise, across the hills and valleys of Asia
Minor, and within a few weeks Nonia Celsa learned that
she had lost her throne, her husband, and her boy. The
Emperor of Rome was the pretty boy-priest of Elagabalus.
Imperial power, however, meant to the Syrian youth
an unrestrained indulgence of his sensual dreams, not a
grave concern with the affairs of a mighty people. He
dallied in the East, and willingly left his duties to his
grandmother, while he devoted himself entirely to his
rights. He gathered about him the ignoble company of
ministers to lust which the cities of Asia Minor were at
all times ready to supply, and there was no depth or
eccentricity of vice in Antioch or Nicomedia which he
did not explore. Before the end of that year the boy's
nature was completely perverted, and the last trace of
masculinity eUminated from it. Maesa was alarmed, for
the cities of the East were wont to talk freely of the vices
they implanted or cultivated in their visitors, and the
sentiment of Rome could not be ignored. But Bassianus
laughed at her timidity, and lingered throughout the
following winter in the voluptuous chambers of Nicomedia.
As to this Roman Senate, of which she spoke, he sent the

214 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

grey-beards a painting of himself in hife flowing sacerdotal
robes and womanly jewels, to be placed over the altar
of Victory in their meeting-place.

In the following spring he condescended to visit the
capital of his Empire. Rome had received many a strange
procession during the centuries of its Imperial expansion,
but no spectacle had aroused so much curiosity as the
arrival of the young monarch on whose picture the
Senators had gazed with bewilderment. The original was
even more extraordinary than the portrayal. For the entry
into Rome the young priest-Emperor stained his cheeks
with vermilion, and artfully enhanced the brilliance of his
eyes, like a Syrian courtesan or an actress. He wore his
loose robes of purple silk trimmed with gold, his delicate
arms were encircled with costly bracelets and his white
neck with a string of pearls, and a tiara of successive
crowns, flashing with jewels, surmounted his strange figure.
And, as the alternative and real power in administration,
the Romans regarded with anxiety the two women who
rode with him — the grave and dignified Maesa, and the
richly sensuous and evil-famed Soaemias. There is in
the Vatican Museum a statue of the mother of Elagabalus
as she appeared at this time. She has chosen to be
portrayed in the costume, or lack of costume, of Venus ;
and the voluptuous body and soft round limbs, the low
forehead, thick lips, and large nose, combined with the hard
and shameless expression, reconcile us to the coarsest
epithets the historians have attached to her memory.

To the horror of the Senate this woman was at once
associated with him in a character that no Empress, or
no woman, had ever assumed in the long history of Rome.
At his first visit to the Senate the Emperor demanded
that she should be invited to sit by his side and listen to
their deliberations. Even Livia had been content to listen
behind the decent shade of a curtain. Soaemias, however,
had not the wit or seriousness to interfere in any way.
She was appointed president of the Senaculum, or " Little
Senate," of women, which Sabina had founded, and Julia re-

JULIA M^SA

BUST IN THE CAPITOLINE MUSEUM,

IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 215

stored, in the Forum of Trajan ; and she found an easier and
more congenial occupation in;controlling the grave delibera-
tions of the matrons of Rome on questions of etiquette,
precedence, costume, and jewellery. It was left to Maesa
to wield the political power, and she did so with sobriety
and judgment. Unhappily, the Emperor was more willing
to listen to the easier counsels of his mother than to Maesa,
and he began at once to entertain or disgust Rome with
the appalling license which makes his short reign an in-
describable nightmare.

He had brought from Emesa the celestial stone, the
emblem of Ela-gabal, to which all his prosperity was
due, and his first care was to provide the god with a
worthy home. A magnificent temple was raised to it,
and the stone, encrusted with gems, was borne to it on
a chariot drawn by six white horses, the Emperor walking
backwards before it in an ecstasy of adoration. In the
temple a number of altars were set up, and rivers of
blood — even the blood of children — were poured out on
them ; while the Emperor and his family croned the barbaric
chants of primitive Syria, and the highest dignitaries of
Rome stood in silent respect. As the earlier officials were
soon replaced by men of infamy, chosen, very frequently,
on a qualification that one may not describe, we need pay
little attention to their feelings. If we suppose that the
Emperor, or Elagabalus, as he now called himself, was
aware that the conical stone was really a phallic emblem,
we may find a clue to some of the stranger vagaries of
his erotomania.

Rome had long been accustomed to the barbarism of
the more ancient Oriental cults, and had indeed taken a
willing part in the orgiastic processions of the mysterious
Mother of the Gods, whenever their rulers permitted
them. But the security of the Empire seemed to them
in danger when Elagabalus went on to place every other
idol in a position of subordinate respect in the temple of
his fetich. Jupiter, Juno, Venus, and Mars, were not at
that time favoured very widely with a Uteral belief; nor

2i6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

were the Romans concerned when he stole the Astarte
of the Carthaginians, and married her, in a magnificent
festival, to his lonely deity. The temples and cults of
Rome were like the temples and cults of modern Japan.
They contributed to the gaiety of life. But if there was
little sincere polytheism at Rome — the educated world
was divided between an Epicurean Agnosticism and an
eclectic Monotheism — there was much superstition, and few
could regard without concern a desecration of the ancient
Palladium, or statue in the temple of Vesta, to which the
fortune of the city was peculiarly attached, and other
ancient emblems. Elagabalus despotically overrode their
feelings. He broke forcibly into the home of the Vestal
Virgins, and bore away the sacred Palladium ; since we
may regard the later boast of the Virgins, that they cheated
him with a substituted statue, as insincere.

Of the Empresses whom he made by marriage we
have little knowledge. In less than three years he married,
and unmarried, either four or five women. The first was
Julia Cornelia Paula, a woman of very distinguished
family and, if we may trust the bust in the Louvre, a
woman of dignity, refinement, and some strength of
character. We may see the action of Maesa in the choice.
A few months later he divorced her and, to the horror
of Rome, married one of the Vestal Virgins. Possibly the
beauty of Julia Aquilia Severa had caught his fancy when
he broke into their sacred enclosure. The Senators were
deeply concerned at this sacrilege, for the fate of Rome
was still closely connected with the integrity of the noble
virgins who tended the undying fire before the altar of
Vesta. Elagabalus, who, it was generally known, had no
liope of progeny, brazenly argued with the Senate that
he was consulting the future of the State, since a union
of priest and priestess gave promise of a family of divine
children. In any case, he said, he was a maker, not an
observer, of laws ; and he established Severa in his palace.
The coins give her the title of Augusta.

His roving eye soon afterwards was attracted by the

IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 217

charms of Annia Faustina, the great-granddaughter of
Marcus Aurelius. The portrait-bust of her in the Capitol
Museum has a round full face of great beauty and an
expression of sweetness and modesty. She seems to
have escaped the taint of the Faustinae. She was married
to Pomponius Bassus, and Elagabalus released her by the
familiar device of executing her husband, and transferred
her, leaving no time for mourning, to the palace. Her
beauty seems to have been too tempered with refinement
to engage his affections long. She was dismissed, and
replaced by some unknown victim. Then Elagabalus
returned to his priestess of Vesta. In all, he seems to
have married four women in three years, not counting
Severa, whose marriage Dio does not seem to regard as
valid.

Severa was the chief associate of his life in the palace,
and it is quite impossible to convey an impression of the
sordid scenes into which she had passed from the austere
sanctuary of Vesta. Twelve condensed pages of the
" Historia Augusta " are occupied with his enormities, and
at the close of what is probably the most appalling picture
of unrestrained license in any literature — even if we admit
exaggeration — Lampridius assures us that he has, from a
feeling of modesty, omitted the worst details. It would
seem that the human imagination, in its most diseased
condition, could devise nothing lower. We do not know
whether Severa was an Octavia or a Poppaea, but the cir-
cumstance that she consented to live is grave enough. In
that vast colony of vice, to which a system of pandars,
spread over the Empire, dispatched every man who had
some special physical Or moral feature to fit him for the
orgies, no decent woman would have clung to mbrtality.
A Caesonia or a Marcia might laugh when Elagabalus
returned at night, dressed as a common female tavern-
keeper, from the low wine-shops in which he had been
rioting— might even smile when she saw Elagabalus's
" husband," a burly slave, beating and bruising him for his
infidelity, or when she heard at night the rattle of the

2i8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

golden rings and the shameful appeal of the new Messalina
behind his curtain — but Severa was of noble birth, the
daughter of a man who had twice been consul.

One of the unpardonable sins of Rome was that it
hesitated so long to assassinate some of its rulers. The
very excesses of Elagabalus protected him for a long
time, as he urged the people to share or imitate his
pleasures. No screen was drawn about his vices. He
would discuss them with the Senate, or collect all the
meretrices of Rome in a hall, and address them on those
various schemes of vice which we find to-day depicted
on the walls of the lupanar in Pompeii. He would invite
the common folk to come and drink with him at the palace,
where they might see the furniture of solid silver, the beds
loaded with roses and hyacinths, the swimming-baths of
perfume, the gold dust strewn in the colonnades, the paths
paved with porphyry. He provided for them the spectacle
of naval battles in lakes of wine, and a mountain of snow,
brought from the remote mountains, in the middle of
summer. But his chief device for cajoling the citizens
was to distribute tickets, as for a lottery, and see them
press for the sight of the gifts corresponding to their
numbers. You might get ten eggs or ten ostriches, ten
flies or ten camels, ten toy balloons or ten pounds of gold ;
and the mania grew until your chance lay between a dead
dog, a slave, a richly caparisoned horse, a chariot, or a
hundred pounds of gold. At times he would invite a
crowd to dinner, and smother them, with fatal effect to
some, under a thick shower of flowers ; or seat them on
inflated bags, which slaves would deflate in the middle
of the banquet; or have them borne away intoxicated at
the end, to find themselves in the morning sleeping with
bears or lions.

The frivolous Romans were so much entertained by
these vagaries that they overlooked his personal luxury,
and made no inquiry into the state of the treasury. No
dinner could be placed before him that had not cost thirty
pounds of silver. Robed in a tunic of pure gold or pure

IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 219

Chinese silk, sitting under perfumed lamps, amid masses
of the choicest blooms, he picked delicately at the tongues
of larks and peacbcks, the brains of thrushes, the eggs of
pheasants, the heads of parrots, or the heels of camels.
He fed his horses with choice grapes and his lions with
pheasants. His chariots were of gold only, studded with
gems, and they were drawn through the streets by strings
of nude women, or by stags. Delicate in every detail,
he had cords of silk and swords of gold prepared for
inflicting death on himself in case of need. He little knew
that he would die in the latrine of the soldiers' camp.

Soaemias seems to have enjoyed this orgiastic life, but
the more prudent Maesa was concerned. Finding that
remonstrances were quite useless, she cunningly persuaded
Elagabalus to associate his cousin with him in the govern-
ment. Alexander — as Alexianus had now been named —
was three or four years younger than the Emperor, and did
not share his disease. His mother, Mamsea, inherited the
prudence and sobriety of Msesa, and guarded her boy from
the contamination with the utmost care. His excellent
disposition ensured the success of their plan, and Elagabalufe
began to perceive that the younger boy was winning a
dangerous popularity. It is said that a judicious distribu-
tion of money by Mamaea fostered the growing esteem for
him, especially among the soldiers.

From suspicion Elagabalus passed to hatred, and from
hatred to a design on his cousin's life. Mamaea secured
the favour of the guards with great adroitness, and watched
the actions of Elagabalus. He first, in order to test public
feeling, sent word to the Senate and the camp that he had
withdrawn the title of Caesar from his cousin; and he
directed that the boy should be put to death if this
announcement created no disorder. In the anxious hour
that followed, Alexander waited in a room of the palace
with his trembling mother and Maesa; Elagabalus went
down to the gardens to supervise the preparations for a
chariot-race, and await impatiently the news that his cousin
was dead. Presently a tumultuous crowd of the guards

220 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

rushed across the city, and burst into the gardens of the
palace. Elagabalus fled to his room, and covered himself
with a curtain ; and the soldiers conveyed the two women
and the boy in triumph to the camp, many of them remain-
ing in the garden to threaten Elagabalus.

Sosemias, seeing the Empire slip from her, awoke to
energetic action. She hastened on foot to the camp, and
pleaded passionately for her son. They did not wish to
take his life, the guards said, but must have a security
for the life of Alexander and a promise of reform. They
returned to the gardens, and the young autocrat, in his
purple silks and jewelled shoes, had to plead with the
rough soldiers to spare the favourite ministers of his
vices. He had filled the highest posts with men whose
only qualifications were such that we cannot describe
them, and his army of attendants were the scum of the
Empire. The guards forced him to dismiss the most
obnoxious, preached him an inglorious sermon on his
infamies, and directed their officers to watch over the life
of Alexander.

The swords of gold and the cords of variegated silk
were not employed, but Elagabalus could never forgive
the degradation he had experienced. He made several
attempts to remove the obstacles to his design : sent the
Senate from Rome, and removed or executed several of
the soldiers. Mamaea watched him assiduously, and Maesa
easily penetrated his secrets. Not a particle of food or
drink from the Imperial kitchen was allowed to pass the
lips of Alexander. Rome knew that the end was near. It
was only a few years since Bassianus and Geta had dis-
graced the palace with a similar quarrel. Maesa attempted
in vain to conciliate them. On January ist, 222, they were
both to receive the consular dignity from the Senate.
She had to threaten Elagabalus with a fresh mutiny of the
guards before he would go.

Some ten weeks later the feud came to a crisis. Ela-
gabalus, to test the soldiers, sets afoot a rumour that
Alexander is dead. The guards, believing the rumour,

IN THE DAYS OF ELAGABALUS 221

withdraw their contingent from the palace, and shut them-
selves in the camp. Elagabalus takes his cousin in his
golden chariot to the camp, to show that the rumour is
false, and loses control of himself when the guards burst
into exclamations of joy at the sight of Alexander. Mamaea
and Soaemias come upon the scene, and an angry alterca-
tion follows, each mother making a wild appeal to the
soldiers. Either there is a division of feeling among the
soldiers, or some of Elagabalus's ministers are present,
for swords are drawn and are soon at work. Elagabalus
and Soaemias, the Sybarites, rush into the latrine of the
camp for safety, and are slain there by the guards. Their
bodies are disdainfully thrown out to the mob, who have
gathered outside. The effeminate frame of the young
Emperor, with its soft limbs and large pendent breasts,
and the voluptuous body of his mother, are dragged through
the streets, and, as the opening of the sewer is too narrow
to receive them, they are thrown into the Tiber. And the
cry of " Ave, Imperator ! " rings in the ears of Mamaea and
her boy.

CHAPTER XIV

ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS

TO the thoughtful Roman the name of Syria must have
suggested an abyss of corruption, and the extension
of the Empire over that swarm of Asiatic peoples
to whom the name was vaguely applied must have seemed
an infelicitous triumph. From the cities of nearer Asia, in
which the senile energies of the older civilizations seemed
incapable of rising above the ministry to vice, luxury, and
folly, had come the larger part of the taint that had infected
the blood of Rome. It is therefore singular to observe
that, of the five women whom Syria placed on, or above,
the Roman throne in the third century, four were dis-
tinguished for sobriety of judgment and concern for the
common weal. The family from which the first four of
these women sprang is variously described as " humble "
and "noble." We may reconcile the epithets by a con-
jecture that the family which controlled the wealthy shrine
of Emesa descended from some branch of the fallen nobility
of the East. Both Sosemias and Mamsea had married
Syrians, and we may assume that Mamaea had done the
same. In those circumstances, the public spirit with which
Julia Domna, Julia Maesa, and Julia Mamsea used the great
influence they had is not a little remarkable.

Of the three — to whom we must presently add a fourth
remarkable woman of the East — Mamaea had the greatest
power, and made the best use of it. She is not blameless,
as we shall see ; but even if it be true, as is commonly said,
that she was unduly covetous of money and power, we

ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 223

must at least admit that she employed them solely to restore
peace and prosperity to the Empire, and prolong the reign
of a high-principled ruler.

Mamaea entered upon her work with all the shrewdness
which we have already recognized in her. Instead of
claiming the right, which Soaemias had enjoyed, to sit in
the Senate and sign its decrees, she preserved a discreet
silence when the Senate abolished the innovation, and
poured out their long-repressed annoyance on the memory
of its author. The Senators ostentatiously enjoyed their
shadow of power : Mamaea quietly possessed the substance.
She provided the finest preceptors for the education of
her son Alexander, who was in his fourteenth year, and
selected sixteen of the most distinguished Senators and
lawyers as a Council of State. With these she worked
energetically and harmoniously for the renovation of the
Empire. The palace was purged of the quaint and the
loathsome officers that she found in it, Rome was relieved
of Ela-gabal and his ghastly ritual, competent officials were
substituted for the ministers to the lust of the late Emperor,
and the heavier taxes of the previous two reigns were
remitted or lessened. In this work, which extends over
the thirteen years of the reign of Alexander Severus, Maesa
had little part. She died soon after the beginning of this
happier era, and Mamaea alone guided the willing hands
of her son. It is remarked by all the authorities that
Alexander was singularly subservient to his mother.

Troops and Senate had been happily united in the
elevation of Alexander, and all the epithets of Imperial
dignity were at once conferred on him. The title of
Severus he accepted from the soldiers, but he declined
the name of Antoninus, which the Senate pressed on him,
since that revered name had been so impiously disgraced
by his predecessors. He spontaneously discarded the
womanly silks and jewels of his cousin, covered the rough
shirts of Severus with the Roman toga, and gave equal
attention to manly exercises, the lessons of his tutors, and
the wise counsels of his mother. He thus grew into a

224 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

handsome and virile youth, with the piercing black eyes
of his race, but with a moderation of temper that delighted
his Stoic teachers. When we read the account of his career
in the " Historia Augusta " — an account that might have
been written by a Xenophon or a Fenelon for the edifica-
tion of a young prince — we are tempted to feel that, either
the gossipy Lampridius had for the moment a more serious
object than the entertainment of Rome, or Alexander
Severus was more virtuous than the circumstances re-
quired.

Mamsea is described by the same writer as " holy, but
avaricious." Avarice was a not inopportune vice. Ela-
gabalus had squandered the treasury on his follies ; the
troops, encouraged by him and by Caracalla, were becoming
more and more exacting ; while Mamaea had, by lightening
the taxes, spared the Empire a substantial share of its
contribution. In these circumstances it was prudent to
cultivate a close concern about money, and no single writer
ventures to say that the Empress— the Senate had at once
entitled her Augusta — spent much on her personal service
or pleasure. It is said that her zeal for the accumulation
of money was carried to a stage of offensiveness. But it
was necessary for her murderers to detect or invent some
vice in extenuation of their foul deed, and the position in
which the charge is found in the historians reveals that it
came from that tainted source. " Avarice " means little
more than that she would not yield to the improper
demands of a demoralized army.

When we reflect that both her parents were Syrians,
we notice with some surprise that the portrait-bust of
Mamaea has a singularly Roman face ; and in her strength,
solidity, and sobriety she recalls the old Roman type rather
than accords with the general conception of a Syrian
woman. She had the defect of her type, and an incident
that occurred early in her reign is regarded as a grave
betrayal of it. It is not at all clear, however, that Mamaea
acted with the "jealous cruelty " which Gibbon sees in her
conduct. For the wife of her son she had chosen Sallustia

ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 225

Barbia Orbiana — we find the name on coins, tiiough the
historians do not give it — daughter of the Senator
Sallustius Macrinus. Alexander, not an exacting husband,
seems to have lived happily with his bride, and her father
was promoted to the rank of Csesar. Before long, however,
we find Macrinus executed on a charge of treason, and his
daughter banished to Africa.

Gibbon believes, on the authority of Dio, that this was
entirely due to Mamaea's unwillingness to share the power
and the affection of her son with another woman. The
word of an historian and a member of the Senate, whom
we may almost describe as an eye-witness, must assuredly
have weight, yet we cannot ignore the assertion of the
other authorities that Macrinus was betrayed into acts
which easily bore the construction of treason. We may
recall Merivale's just warning, on another occasion, that
a contemporary Roman writer is particularly apt to re-
produce the unsubstantial gossip of his day. Herodian,
who nevertheless believes that Macrinus had no treasonable
intention, says that Mamaea was so cruel to Orbiana that
the girl went in tears to her father, and he repaired to the
Praetorian camp with bitter complaints against Mamaea.
Such a course very strongly suggests a treasonable design.
The troops, chafing under the rule of Mamsea and her son,
whom- they eventually murdered, were notoriously dis-
contented ; and flying to the camp was commonly the first
overt act in a plot to displace the ruling Emperor. When
we further find that Lampridius (" Historia Augusta ") says,
on the authority of Dexippus, an Athenian writer of the
succeeding generation, that Macrinus was expressly at-
tempting to replace Alexander, we must at least suspend
our censures. We know nothing of the character of
Macrinus and his daughter, and are therefore unable to
say how far Mamaea's ihterpretation of their conduct may
have been influenced by her feelings, and how far her
harsh treatment of Orbiana may have been justified.

The charge against her is further weakened by a
circumstance that Gibbon has overlooked. Lampridius
'5

226 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

says that Alexander married Memnia, the daughter of the
ex-consul Sulpicius, and speaks incidentally of " his boys."
It seems, then, that the jealousy of Mamsea did not prevent
Alexander from marrying again, and that Memnia must
have shared the palace with the Empress-mother for a
number of years. Of her character we know nothing,
except that, together with Mamaea, she remonstrated with
Alexander on account of his excessive affability with his
subjects. No guards, it seems, barred the entrance of the
palace against them. The austere character of the life
which adorned it was the only test of the integrity of those
who approached him. After a day of exertion he would
spend the evening in the refining enjoyment of letters or
the exercise of his musical skill. He sang and played well,
but guarded his Imperial dignity by admitting none to hear
him except his young sons. Actors and gladiators he
avoided, nor would he spend much in exhibiting their
skill to the public. His one luxury was a remarkable
collection of birds, which included 20,000 doves ; his one
weakness a delight in the puny and almost bloodless
combats of partridges, kittens, or pups. His baths were of
cold water, and his table was regulated by the most minute
directions, admitting even the slight luxury of a goose only
on festive occasions. When a string of costly pearls was
presented to Memnia, he ordered that they should be sold,
and, when no purchaser could be found in Rome, he hung
them upon the statue of Venus in the temple.

From such details as these we may construct a picture
of the quiet and temperate life of Alexander's palace, and
we shall be disposed to think lightly of the quarrels which
are said to have disturbed the relations of mother and son.
We can hardly believe that one so frugal as Alexander
would profess much indignation at his mother's assiduous
nursing of the treasury, nor can we suppose that Mamsea,
greatly resented the young monarch's accessibility to his
subjects. Their frugality, indeed, must not be exaggerated,
as they were generous in gifts. Instead of sending men to
extort their incomes from the provinces in which they took

JULIA MAMJS.A

BUST IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 227

office, Alexander provided them, when they left Rome,
with an outfit so complete as to include a concubine. His
deference to his mother may, in fact, be said to be the only
consistent charge against him. The Emperor Julian (" The
Peesars ") insinuates that he showed a mediocrity of intelli-
gence in allowing his mother to accumulate money, instead
of prudently spending it. In a sense Julian was right;
though it was not weakness of intelligence, but severity of
principle, that restrained Alexander and Mamaea from this
prudent expenditure. Had they lavished their funds upon
the troops, the history of Rome during the next ten years
might have run differently.

From Ian early period in the reign of Alexander the
attitijde of the troops cast a shadow over the palace and
the Empire. Five successive Emperors, besides earlier
ones, had received the purple from the hands of the troops,
and had been compelled either to refrain from pressing the
necessary discipline upon them, or to compensate the
rigours of discipline with excessive rewards. The soldiers
became conscious of their power, and sufficiently demoral-
ized to abuse it. Less exercise and more pay led to a
lamentable enervation; and the filling of the ranks from
the more distant peoples, who had not contributed to the
making of the Empire and were insensible to its prestige,
dissolved in the legions the old spirit of nationality. From
the lonely forests, the frozen hills, or the blistering deserts
of the frontiers, they sought ever to be withdrawn to the
comforts and pleasures of the cities. And when they found
that a fresh effort was being made to restrict their indul-
gences and restore the earlier discipline, when they reflected
that it was only the feeble hands of a woman and a youth
that would enforce this austerity, they broke into sullen
murmurs of discontent.

The most dangerous part of the army was the extensive
regiment of Praetorian Guards, which, from its camp at the
walls, overshadowed Rome with its power. Over these
men Mamaea had placed a civilian, the distinguished jurist
Domitius Ulpianus. It was natural that Ulpian should

228 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

wish to extend to the guards the valuable reforms which
he was introducing into every department of the State;
equally natural that the soldiers should chafe under his
discipline. The citizens took the part of Ulpian and
Mamsea, who protected him, and the irritation at last
erupted in a bloody struggle, in which the populace fought
for three days against the soldiers in the streets of Rome.
The quarrel was arrested, but some time afterwards — not
in the fight, as Gibbon says — the angry guards put an end
to the reforms of Ulpian. The statesman fled before them
into the palace, and sought the protection of the Emperor ;
but the insolent guards penetrated the sanctuary of the
royal house with drawn swords, and murdered, in
Alexander's presence, the most eminent and enlightened of
his counsellors. The provincial troops were giving little
less concern. We take our leave at this stage of the
historian Dio. His work closes with a mournful lament
of the condition of the army, and a just presentiment of
impending calamity. He too had endeavoured to enforce
discipline on the legions, and had found the authority of
the Emperor insufficient to protect him from their murder-
ous resentment.

As if this lamentable situation had been communicated
to the countless peoples who pressed eagerly against the
barriers of the Empire, we find a new boldness arising
amongst them, and a serious beginning of those raids which
will at last put the mighty power under the heel of the
barbarian. The tragedy of the fall of Rome reaches a more
certain stage. It is a singular and melancholy reflection
that Rome suffered most under its most virtuous rulers.
During the reign of Marcus Aurelius the gods had seemed
to make a war upon virtue. The new Stoicand his virtuous
mother were destined to see the enemies gathering fiercely
about their enfeebled frontiers, and to perish tragically in
a futile effort to repel them.

The gravest trouble arose in the East. The ancient
kingdom of Persia revived, and its vigorous rulers deter-
mined to regain the provinces which Greece and Rome had

ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 229

shorn from their once vast empire. Alexander, and prob-
ably Mamaea, went to the East. If we may believe the
panegyrist of Alexander in the " Historia Augusta," he dis-
played an admirable firmness in enforcing discipline upon
the troops when he arrived at Antioch. Gathering their
sullen and spoiled officers from the haunts of Antioch and
the licentious groves of the suburb of Daphne, he punished
a number of them severely, boldly confronted the drawn
swords of their demoralized followers, and set the legions
in motion against the Persians. But the plan of the
campaign was injudicious, and the execution weak. The
Romans suffered a heavy reverse, and, before they could
recover and check the advancing spirit of the Persians,
Alexander was recalled to Europe with the news that the
Germanic tribes were bursting through the northern
frontier.

From the sunny lands of their native East the Emperor
and his mother passed, in the year 234, to the banks of the
Rhine. They had passed through Rome, where the citizens
were easily persuaded to celebrate his triumph over the
Persians. From the Capitol they had carried the young
Emperor on their shoulders to his palace, his chariot with
its four elephants walking behind them, and a great wave
of enthusiasm went with him as he started for Gaul. He
was now in his twenty-sixth year, and Mamsea must have
felt that he was at the beginning of a glorious career.
They little suspected that they were going to meet their
deaths at the hands of their own troops.

One of the commanders on the Rhine was a gigantic
and powerful barbarian, half Goth and half Alan, of the
name of Maximinus. More than eight feet in height, with
a thumb so large that he wore his wife's bracelet on it as a
ring, the giant had made his way in the army by sheer
strength. A man who could eat forty pounds of meat in a
day, drink a proportionate quantity of wine, and fell you
with a finger, had the respect of the barbarian soldiers.
Elagabalus had repelled him, when he sought office, with
salacious questions about his strength; Alexander had

230 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

eagerly welcomed him, and put him in command of the
younger troops. But Alexander had afterwards refused
him an honour, which Mamaea desired to confer on him,
and he probably heard this. He had given his son a good
Roman education, and Mamaea thought that the young
man was a suitable match for her daughter Theoclea.
Alexander protested that his sister would find the father-
in-law too boorish, and the young Maximinus, now a tall,
handsome, cultivated, and dissolute noble, married a grand-
daughter of Antoninus Pius, Junia Fadilla.

Whether this affront was remembered, or whether
Maximinus acted from mere ambition, we cannot say. He
began, in any case, to spread discontent in the army.
When Alexander practically bought peace from the bar-
barians, instead of conducting a vigorous campaign against
them, the whispers were changed into open murmuring.
These effeminate Syrians, it was said, were unable to
endure the sturdy North, and were eager to return to the
East. The Emperor was a maudlin youth, who could not
act without his mother's permission. He had abandoned
the war against Persia in order to return to her side, and
he was again sacrificing the honour of Rome out of regard
for het comfort. Her palace at Rome was full of hoarded
treasure, while the hard-worked soldiers were insufficiently
paid. These complaints circulated freely in the camp
during the long German winter. A lavish distribution of
money might have defeated the plot of Maximinus, and a
speedy retirement to Rome would certainly have saved the
lives of the Emperor and Empress. But they remained in
camp until the middle of March, 235, and then the end
came.

They were at, or in the neighbourhood of, the small
frontier town which is now known as Mainz. One morn-
ing, when Maximinus rode out to control the exercises, he
was greeted with the name of Emperor. He feigned sur-
prise and reluctance, but the soldiers — probably in pursuance
of an arranged plan — drew their swords, and threatened
to kill him if he did not take the power from the hands of

ANOTHER SYRIAN EMPRESS 231

the effeminate Syrians. He consented, promised a liberal
donation in honour of his accession, and said that all
punishments that had been inflicted on the soldiers would
be remitted. He then led them toward the tent of Alex-
ander. The young Emperor came out to meet them, and
made an appeal that seems to have divided the followers of
the usurper, as they went away to their tents. At night,
however, the guards at the Imperial tent announced that
the mutinous troops were gathering about it. Alexander
rushed out, and called upon the loyal soldiers to defend
him, making a tardy promise of money and concessions.
Many of them came to his side, but at last the massive
figure of Maximinus was seen to approach at the head of
a strong body of troops. For the last time the soldiers
were urged to choose between the strong, generous man
and the avaricious woman and her child. Alexander saw
the faithful few pass sullenly to the side of Maximinus, and
he returned to his tent. It is said that the last moments
were spent in a violent quarrel between mother and son
about the responsibility for the disaster. There was little
time for it. The soldiers of Maximinus entered at once,
and slew Mamsea, Alexander, and their few remaining
friends.

A popular and spirited work of the fourth century
described " the deaths of the persecutors," or the terrible
fate which befell every Emperor who persecuted the
Christians. No fate in the terrible series of Imperial
calamities was so tragic as that of Alexander, though he
had favoured the Christians, and had cherished a bust of
Christ among those of the heroes and sages in his lararium.
No other Empress in the long line of murdered women so
little deserved a violent death as Julia Mdmaea. During
the fourteen years of her son's reign she had solely studied
the welfare of the Empire. The one charge that her
murderers could bring against her was that she had
hoarded money instead of spending it on, or giving it to,
the troops. On public buildings, public works, and civic
administration she had spent freely; she, or Alexander,

232 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

had even expended large sums in providing surer susten-
ance and more effective transport for the troops themselves.
The charge is little, if at all, more than a cowardly subter-
fuge. But it needed half-a-dozen strong and unselfish
generals to restore the efficiency and docility of the legions,
and they were not to be found. We pass into a period of
anarchy, in which Emperors and Empresses rise and wither
like mushrooms, and Rome stumbles blindly onward to-
wards its doom. In that period of confusion, when every
section of the army makes its Emperor, only two dominant
personalities are found, and they are two Empresses of
barbaric origin.

CHAPTER XV

ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA

THE Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother were
murdered in the year 235. We may convey a just
impression of the period that followed this odious
crime by the brief observation that in forty years nearly
forty Emperors appeared on the darkened stage of the
Roman Empire, and that nearly every one of them perished
at the hands of Roman soldiers. The anarchy was arrested
for a time when, in the year 270, the energetic Aurelian
came to the throne. People and Senate greeted the strong
man with genuine enthusiasm, and among the cries of joy
or hope with which the Senators hailed him we find this
singular aspiration : " Thou wilt deliver us from Zenobia
and Vitruvia." It is a piquant contrast with the disdain
that their fathers had had for women — a confession that
their vast Empire was now dominated by two women,
without male consorts. But for the timely appearance
of Aurelian there was a prospect that they would divide
the rule of the world between them. One was a Syrian,
the other a Gallic, queen; but each of them bore the title
of Augusta, and they are the next commanding personalities
to engage our interest.

Many years were to elapse between the death of
Mamaea and the appearance of these two remarkable
women, but we need do no more than glance at the many
Empresses of an hour whose names are hardly discernible
in that turbulent era. The huge barbarian who had pur-
chased the throne by a brutal murder did not long enjoy

a33

234 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

it. The Empire heard with horror and disdain that this
Thracian shepherd had seized the mantle of Antoninus
and Marcus. The people of Rome, in particular, recol-
lected with alarm the contempt they had shown him in
his earlier years, and offered prayer in the temples that
the gods might divert his steps from the south of Italy.
He met their disdain with vindictiveness, and ruthlessly
executed those who remembered his humble origin, or
whose wealth could add to his revenue. His Empress,
Paulina, vainly endeavoured to restrain his bloody hand,
and succeeded only in drawing it upon herself.^ At length
his exactions struck a spark of rebellion in Africa, and a
new Emperor was appointed.

The African Proconsul, Gordianus, was an excellent
Epicurean of the fine old Roman type. He had wealth,
culture, character, and taste. After filling the highest
offices at Rome with grace and applause, he was now
quietly discharging the duties of Proconsul, and relieving
the long hours of leisure with a tranquil enjoyment of
letters, at the little town of Thysdrus, about a hundred
and fifty miles to the south of Carthage. With him in
Africa was his son Gordianus, an epicure rather than an
Epicurean, who solaced his exile from Rome with the
engaging company of twenty-two ladies. Their respective
pleasures were violently interrupted in the beginning of
the year 238. The father, a white-haired old man, with
broad red face, was resting in his house after his judicial
labours, when a band of men, with blood-smeared swords,
burst into the luxurious villa, told him that they had
rebelled against the tyrant, and peremptorily informed him
that he was Emperor. His objections were unheeded,
and he set out, with misgiving, for Carthage. But the
pride of the Carthaginians was quickly chilled by the
news that Maximinus's commander in Africa was advancing
against their city. An armed force was hastily equipped,
sent out under the lead of the younger Gordian, and cut

' Ammianus Marcellinus tells us the one fact, Zosimus the other.
Neither mentions her name, but we learn it fiom coins.

ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 23 S

to pieces. The younger Emperor had died on the field:
the white-haired old man hanged himself.

Rome, meantime, had recognized the rule of the
Gordians, and was now throbbing with a just apprehension
of the vengeance of Maximinus. The certainty of punish-
ment inspired it with a measure of courage, and two new
Emperors were created — a vigorous son of the people,
Pupienus Maximus, and a perfumed representative of the
nobles, Balbinus. The choice did not please the people,
who beset the Senate with sticks and stones, so a hand-
some boy, such as Rome loved, was associated with them.
He was a Gordianus, the fourteen-year-old son of the elder
Gordian's daughter. The city rang with preparations for
war, and in the early summer Maximus led out his weak
and apprehensive force. The terrible Maximinus and his
legions had crossed the Alps, and were descending on the
plains of Italy. Luckily for Rome, they met a desperate
resistance at Aquileia. Protected by strong and well-
equipped fortifications, with ample provisions, the in-
habitants repelled the fiercest attacks of Maximinus,
and jeered at him and his dissolute son from the walls.
When the thongs of their slinging-machines wore out,
the women of Aquileia gave their long tresses to the
soldiers to weave into cords. Maximinus vented his
temper on his own troops, and one morning the besieged
were delighted to see the soldiers advancing with the
grisly heads of Maximinus and his son on the tips of
their spears.

Maximus returned to gladden Rome with the news,
but it was decreed that six Emperors were to die that
year. The soldiers, who had had another fight with the
Romans during the war, were sullen and treacherous.
Balbinus they hated for his eff'eminacy, Maximus for his
rigour. The returning troops brought grievances of their
own, and it was only the loyalty of the German soldiers
that held the guards off" the palace. Then there came a
day when the delight of the games drew most of the
soldiers away, and the guards marched upon the palace.

236 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Maximus hastily ordered the loyal troops to be summoned :
Balbinus cancelled the order. Their relations had been
strained for some time, and each looked upon this sudden
onslaught as a device of the other. The German troops
arrived at last, to find the palace empty, and learn that
the three Emperors were in the hands of the guards.
They started at once for the camp, and found the bleeding
remains of Maximus and Balbinus on the street. With
them another ephemeral Empress passes dimly before us.
The coins seem to indicate that Maximus was the husband
of Quintia Crispilla at the time of his death.

The youthful Gordian had been taken to the camp, and
Rome was forced to acknowledge him as sole Emperor.
Intoxicated, as so many had been, by the sudden obtaining
of so vast a power, he seemed at first inclined to the model
of Caligula. His uncle's concubines and his mother's eunuchs
were in a fair way to rule the ruler. But a wise tutor,
Timesitheus, obtained a better influence over him, and he
soberly chose his daughter, Furia Sabina Tranquillina, as
his Empress. The whole prospect of the Empire changed
with his marriage, in 241 or 242, but the evil genius of
Rome intervened once more. The Persians had again
crossed the eastern frontier, and the Emperor and his
father-in-law went to Asia to take command. The war was
proceeding with success, when Timesitheus contracted a
mysterious illness and died. Gordian gave his command
to a dashing cavalry leader named Philip — the man who,
we have strong reason to think, had poisoned Timesitheus.
Philip was a handsome Arab, whose father had led a band
of robbers in the desert. But the son was astute, and
Gordian suspected nothing. Before many months the
camps were simmering with discontent. Pay was reduced,
and the troops were reluctantly informed by Philip that it
was the command of the Emperor. Regiments found
themselves quartered in districts where it was impossible
to obtain sufficient food, and Philip begged them to regard
the youth and military inexperience of Gordian. The plot
culminated in the early spring of 244. Gordian was slain.

MARCIA OTACIUA SEVERA

ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 237

and the son of the Arab pillager of caravans received the
purple from the soldiers.

The new Empress of Rome, Marcia Otacilia Severa,
attracts our attention for a moment on account of the claim
of the early Christian writers that she belonged to the new
religion. The claim must have had some foundation, but
the story on which it is generally based is regarded with
reserve by historians. St. Chrysostom and others declare
that, when Philip and Otacilia passed from the Euphrates,
where Gordian had been murdered, to Antioch, they went
to the Christian church for service on Easter-eve ; and that
the bishop "refused to admit them in any other character
than that of penitents expiating a foul crime. Duruy
ridicules the idea that a bishop would have dared so to
address an Emperor in public before the middle of the
third century, and it is certainly difficult to believe.
Indeed, historians generally suspect that, as the story
itself implies, Otacilia supported her husband in his
criminal ambition, and are reluctant to regard her as a
Christian. Her nationality is unknown, and she hardly
emerges from the obscurity in which the scanty chronicles
have left the reign of her husband.

Let us hasten through the pages of ghastly adventure,
and come to more interesting women. In the year 249 the
troops in Moesia pressed the purple on one of the ablest
Roman generals, Decius, and Philip was slain in the
contest that followed. Otacilia fled with her son to the
Praetorian camp, but the guards killed the boy in her arms,
and sent her back sadly into the common ranks from which
she had so unhappily risen. The wife of Decius, Herennia
Etruscilla, who is known to us only from coins and an
inscription, had little better fortune, since Decius perished
in a war with the Goths two years later (25 1). His son and
successor, Hostilianus, died in the following year, not
without a suspicion of crime. The colleague of Decius and
successor of his son, Gallus, was murdered in 253, together
with his son Volusianus, with whom he had shared the
Empire ; and the rival and successor of Gallus was

238 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

assassinated within four months. Then Valerianus, an
aged and distinguished Senator, came to the throne, and
we begin to have less fleeting glimpses of the ladies of the
court, and to make acquaintance with the two remarkable
women who will especially occupy us.

The elder Valerian does not long remain on the stage.
The weakness into which the Empire had fallen was soon
observed by its enemies on every side, and the frontier
provinces were being devastated. Investing his elder son,
Gallienus, with the purple. Valerian went to the East to
oppose the Persian monarch. Sapor, who threatened the
whole of Roman Asia, and after a time fell, with his army,
into the hands of the enemy. Whether or no it be true
that the proud Persian used to step on the person of the
aged Emperor to mount his horse, it is at least certain that
Valerian died among the Persians after some years of
ignominious captivity, and his skin, stuffed and padded to
the proportions of a man, was long exhibited as the most
glorious of Sapor's many trophies. There are later writers
who assert that his second wife, the Empress Mariniana,
was captured with him, and brutally treated until she died,
but the authority is slender. Cohen, the great authority
on Roman coins, warns us that, though there are coins
of a certain Mariniana, who seems to have been a lady of
Valerian's court, it is not certain that she was his wife.

So feeble did the Empire now become that its enemies
made the most extensive and destructive inroads. The
Persians advanced so far as to sack Antioch, the Franks
overran Spain and reached Africa, the Alemanni spread
terror in the north of Italy and even threatened Rome, and
the Goths poured over Greece and Asia Minor. Gallienus
received the news of each successive disaster with an
insipid joke. Glittering with the jewels which encrusted
his belt, his dress, and even his shqes, his hair powdered
with gold dust, he dined from dishes of solid gold, in the
company of his concubines, while his father suffered in
captivity, and his subjects groaned under the hardship of
invasion, famine, pestilence, and earthquake. His Empress,

ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 239

Cornelia Salonina, seems to have disdained his cowardly
luxury, and she was replaced in his affection, though not
in her position, by a charming barbarian. Attalus, King
of the Marcomanni, had a beautiful daughter named Pipa
or Pipara, whose attractiveness was brought to the notice
of Gallienus. He frivolously submitted to the Senate that,
since Rome had so many enemies, it were wise to disarm
some of them ; and he asked Attalus for the hand of his
daughter. The shrewd barbarian stipulated for a large
part of Pannonia, and in return for that valuable slice of
the Empire permitted his pretty daughter to be the concu-
bine of the Roman Emperor. She never appears on the
coinage, while Salonina — ^whose grave, intellectual features
suggest that she found solace in culture — remains Augusta
to the end. Serviez finds an admirable trait of Salonina's
character in the punishment of a man who had sold her
some false jewels. He was sentenced to the lions ; but
when the terrible gates were opened, a harmless fowl
flew out upon him, and he was discharged with the fright.
The Roman historian, however, ascribes the trick expressly
to Gallienus.^

In the eight years of Gallienus's complete control of the
Empire (260-268) it was distracted and worn with misery
and anarchy. The " Historia Augusta " estimates that
" thirty tyrants " arose in that short period to dispute the
power of the corrupt Gallienus ; Gibbon reduces the num-
ber to nineteen; Duruy counts twenty-eight claimants to
the throne. There was, in any case, a period of profound
demoralization, and as nearly all these generals met with
a violent death, involved many others in their fall, and very
frequently led their troops in civil warfare, the drain on the
impoverished system was disastrous. It is amongst these
" thirty tyrants " that we find Zenobia and Victoria.

' Some writers have conjectured, from the fact that the legend " In Pace "
occurs on the coins of Salonina after her death, that she became a Christian.
The phrase is not found otherwise except on Christian monuments. Duruy
does not admit the inference, and points out that she built a temple to the
goddess of the seasons.

240 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Zenobia was the wife of Odenathus, the ruling man
in the independent town of Palmyra. The town, which
had become an important commercial centre, lay on the
edge of the Syrian desert, and had long maintained a
position of neutrality between the Romans on the west
and the Parthians to the east. It had the title of a Roman
colony, and Odenathus cannot have been more than its
leading citizen and, perhaps, head of its Senate. To this
little State came the news that the Roman Emperor was
detained in ignominy by the King of Persia. Odenathus
sent to Sapor a most polite suggestion that his conduct
was improper, and gilded his remonstrance with a caravan
of valuable presents. The presents were disdainfully
thrown into the Euphrates, and the blustering Sapor
threatened to punish his insolence. With great boldness
the leading citizen of Palmyra formed an irregular army
out of the neighbouring villages and the Arabs, with a few
Roman troops, and inflicted a substantial reverse on the
Persian troops. Gallienus gracefully acknowledged his
service, and extended the Imperial title to him and his
wife Zenobia, who became the representatives of Roman
power in the East.

Zenobia was, says Trebellius PoUio in the " Historia
Augusta," " one of the most noble of all the women of the
East, and also one of the most beautiful." Her nobility
rests upon her claim that she descended from Cleopatra,
a point that we are unable to examine. The portrait-bust
of her in the Vatican does not so much suggest exceptional
beauty as exceptional power. It is a face of extraordinary
strength and peculiar features. We can very well imagine
her, as she is described for us, riding out on horseback before
the assembled troops, her piercing black eyes aflame with
spirit, a military helmet on her head, and a purple robe,
embroidered with gems, so attached to her person as to
leave naked the fine arm with which she emphasized her
orders. She maintained a court of Persian magnificence,
but was far removed from Persian insolence. She did not
disdain to drink with her officers, and even to endeavour

ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 241

to surpass them in drinking. Yet it is uniformly stated
that this remarkable independence of Syrian ideas as to a
woman's position was united with a chastity of the most
sensitive and peculiarly scrupulous character. When we
add that she was a woman of exceptional culture, spoke
Latin, Greek, and Egyptian, had so complete a command
of the history of the East that she wrote a book on it,
and enjoyed the daily companionship of the philosopher
Longinus, who was tutor to her sons, we seem to have
exhausted possible merit, and ventured into the province of
legend. But we have still to say that her military and
political ability was no less than her beauty, her culture,
or her virtue. We shall see later that the finest Emperor
o£ the age, Aurelian, spoke with extraordinary appreciation
of her skill in warfare and in polity.

Even as the wife of Odenathus, Zenobia was not in-
active. She is said to have urged his bold attack on Persia,
and she shared the longest marches of the soldiers when
the campaign began. But she was soon the sole ruler of
the East, in the interest, at first, of Rome. During the
Persian war Odenathus quarrelled with a relative and
officer, named Maeonius, and was only prevented by the
intercession of his son, Herodes, from putting him to
death. Herodes was the son of Odenathus by a former
wife, and would be the natural heir to his dignity. The
two sons whom Zenobia had borne him, Timolaus and
Herennianus, were mere boys, but Zenobia had an older
son, Vaballath, by a former husband. We can understand
that there would be some jealousy in the family, now that
the Roman purple and a practical sovereignty of the East
were conferred on the " king of Palmyra." Zenobia could
not but dislike and despise Herodes. He adopted the
voluptuous ways of the East, and received from his father,
as an immediate share of his heritage, the jewels, silks, and
fair ladies which he had detached from the baggage of
Sapor when that monarch retired before him.

Yet there is no ground for the assertion that Zenobia
was privy to the conspiracy which removed Odenathus and
16

242 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Herodes. Maeonius was consulting his own ambition, as
well as appeasing his hatred, in having them assassinated.
For a moment Zenobia was in a position of some anxiety,
but she acted with vigour. She thrust her son Vaballath
— the " Historia Augusta" at first says her two younger sons,
but afterwards corrects this — before the Palmyreans as the
most worthy heir of the power of Odenathus, and Maeonius
passes into a significant obscurity. Vaballath was declared
Augustus, and Zenobia became " Queen of the East," as
she liked to call herself. The two younger boys were
entitled Caesars. Within a short time it was felt at Rome
that a new and rival power had arisen in the East,

The voluptuous Gallienus could at times start from his
rose-strewn couches and the arms of his mistresses, and
conduct an energetic raid upon the opponents of his
Empire. The victories of Odenathus seem to have inspired
one of these fits of vigour. The legions in Gaul had cast
off their allegiance to their degraded ruler, put his son
Saloninus to death, and chosen as Emperor their able
and upright commander, Cassianus Postumus, Gallienus
marched against him, pressed him hard for a time, and
then returned to Rome to enjoy a magnificent triumph.
One hundred white oxen, with gilded horns, two hundred
white lambs, several hundred lions, tigers, bears, and other
animals, and twelve hundred gladiators, in superb costumes,
preceded his car. The more serious Romans looked on in
disdain. Some of the mimes, or comedians, dressed as
Persians, and went about in the procession, staring in each
other's faces, and saying that they were " looking for the
Emperor's father." Gallienus had them burned alive.

But the chief interest of this dash into Gaul is that it
first brings to our notice the famous Gallic princess
Vitruvia or Victoria,^ We find her supporting Postumus

' Her name is variously given as Vitruvia, Victoria, or Victorina. Since it
appears as Vitruvia where the " Augustan History " copies from the Acts of
the Senate, and no Roman virould corrupt Victoria into Vitruvia, I take it that
it was originally Vitruvia, and was Latinized, or changed by her when she
became Empress, into Victoria.

ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 243

against Gallienus. When he is hard pressed, she persuades
him to associate her son, Victorinus, with him in the
Empire, and presently she herself becomes Augusta and
" Mother of the Camp" — a proof that she accompanied the
army. Victorinus is said by one of the contemporary
writers to have been more manly than Trajan, more clement
than Antonine, graver than Nerva, and a better financier
than Vespasian ; but this paragon of excellence had the one
serious defect that he could not withhold his covetous eyes
from the prettier wives of his officers. The responsibility
of power sobered him for a time, but before long he led
astray the wife of one of his officers, and was assassinated.
At his mother's suggestion he, with his dying voice, named
his young son his successor, but the angry soldiers
murdered the boy.

Victoria now put forward as candidate one of the
soldiers themselves, a brawny officer named Marius, who
had at one time been armourer or smith to the camp. He
was accepted, but a slight that he was imprudent enough
to put upon one of his old associates led to his receiving
in his own breast one of the swords he had himself forged,
after enjoying the delirious dignity of the purple for two
days. The " thirty tyrants " were playing their parts with
great rapidity. Tetricus, the commander of the troops and
a Senator, was next put forward by Victoria, and he left
her in control of the affairs of Gaul while he led the army
into Spain. Victoria's power was not of long duration,
and the references to her in the chronicles are too meagre
to enable us to picture her remarkable personality. For
many years her power in Gaul was so great that her fame
ran through the Empire, and Zenobia, as she afterwards
told Aurelian, had the design of communicating with her
and proposing to divide the Roman world between them.
Her end is obscure. When Tetricus returned from Spain,
he is said to have resented her domination and put her to
death ; though it is elsewhere said that her death was due
to natural causes. She did not live to witness or share the
humiliation of Tetricus a few years later.

244 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

We return to Zenobia, who had in the meantime become
an independent sovereign. Gallienus had taken alarm at
the growth of her power, and sent his general Heraclian
with secret instructions to dislodge her. Zenobia divined
the real intention of Heraclian and his troops, treated
him as an invader, and destroyed his force. An invitation
was then received, or obtained, from Egypt, and Zenobia
sent 70,000 men to expel the troops of Gallienus from
what she regarded as the kingdom of her fathers. Egypt
was added to her dominions. Rome was now fully
alarmed at the success of the two barbaric women, while
every other province of the Empire was overrun by
invaders or detached by locally-chosen Emperors. One
of these rivals at length drew Gallienus from his palace
once more, and gave an opportunity to remove his insolent
weakness from the throne. The Emperor was besieging
the pretender to the throne in Milan, when some of the
leading officers conspired to assassinate him. He was
drawn from his tent one night in March (268) by a false
alarm that the besieged had made a sally, and, devoid
alike of guards and armour, he was soon stricken with a
mortal wound. Salonina is said by some to have perished
with him, but of this there is no evidence.

His successor, Claudius, an experienced soldier of
obscure descent but great personal merit, decided to leave
Zenobia and Victoria in possession of their power until
he had rid the Empire of the formidable Goths. They
were said to have an army of 320,000 men, and the
whole of Greece and the north of Asia Minor had been
plundered by them. The instruments of Roman comfort
or luxury that they took back into the bleak forests of
the north seemed to be drawing an inexhaustible stream
of marauders upon the debilitated south. Two years were
occupied by Claudius in destroying their power, and he
had just cleansed the Roman territory of their presence
when he died of the pestilence, in the spring of 270. The
obscure brother of so virtuous and valorous a ruler was
deemed a worthy successor to the purple, but the army

ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 245

made choice of a strong and capable commander, Aurelian,
and, after two or three weeks' timid enjoyment of his power,
Quintilius opened his veins and gracefully yielded the
throne.

The new Emperor was the bold and sturdy son of a
provincial peasant, who had cut his way to the position of
commander. Marriage with the daughter of a wealthy
noble had further improved his position, and his temperance,
zeal for discipline, skill, and bravery had made him a most
effective leader. His first care was to complete the victory
over the Goths, who were again advancing. After an
exhausting struggle he entered into friendly alliance with
them, drove back the other barbaric tribes who threatened
or ignored the northern frontier of the Empire, and then
turned his eyes toward the East. Gibbon makes him first
apply himself to the restoration of Gaul, but the historians
Vopiscus and Zosimus expressly say that he dealt first
with the Queen of the East.

Zenobia had now, in 272, enjoyed her remarkable power
for about four years, and seemed, owing to the preoccupa-
tion of Rome with the northern barbarians, to have
established a solid and durable kingdom. Parthia and
Persia respected her southern boundaries ; Egypt peacefully
acknowledged her rule ; and even the cities of Asia Minor
were beginning to bow to her title. But Palmyra was not
a Rome, and provided too slender a base for so vast a
dominion. As Aurelian and his formidable legions marched
across Asia Minor, the cities returned at once to the
Roman allegiance, and Zenobia prepared for a severe
struggle. She led her army out in person from Antioch,
and met the Romans near the river Orontes. Modern
historians usually follow the account of the battle which
describes Aurelian as stealing a victory by stratagem. He
is said to have noticed the weight of Zenobia's heavily-
armoured cavalry, drawn them into a wild gallop by a
feigned retreat, and then wheeled his troops, when they
showed signs of fatigue, and scattered them. But the
"Histdria Augusta," the nearest authority, tells us that

246 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Aurelian's troops were really routed at first, and then
recovered — owing to a miraculous apparition — and won.

Zenobia retired to Antioch. Her general, Zabda, de-
luded the inhabitants with a false report of victory, and
trailed through the streets a captive whom he had dressed
as Aurelian. But the Emperor was advancing, and they
fled during the night to Emesa, where they were still
able to put 70,000 men in the path of Aurelian. The
second battle proved as disastrous to Zenobia as the first,
and it was decided to retire at once on Palmyra. For a
long time the city held Aurelian at bay, and he magnani-
mously allowed that its successful resistance was due to
the sagacity of Zenobia. In the midst of the long siege
he wrote to a friend at Rome :

" I hear that it is said that I do not the work of a
man in triumphing over Zenobia. Those who blame me
have no idea what kind of a woman she is — how prudent
in counsel, how assiduous in arrangement, how severe
with the troops, how liberal when it is expedient, how
stern when there is need for sternness. I may venture to
say that it was due to her that Odenathus put Sapor to
flight, and advanced as far as Ctesiphon. 1 can assure
you that she was held in such terror in the East and in
Egypt that the Arabs, the Saracens, and the Armenians
were afraid to move."

So difficult and protracted did the siege prove that
Aurelian at length wrote to- her, offering to spare her
life if she would surrender. The answer seems to, have
bfeen preserved in one of those libraries of valuable docu-
ments at Rome, from which the writers of the " Historia
Augusta " obtained their material, as they tell us. It ran :

"Zenobia, Queen of the East, to Aurelius Augustus.
No one has ever yet made by letter such a request as you
make. In matters of war you must obtain what you want
by deeds. You ask me to surrender, as if you were
unaware that Cleopatra preferred to die rather than lose
her dignity. We are expecting auxiliaries from Persia,
and the Saracens and Armenians are with us. The robbers
of Syria beat your army, Aurelian. What will happen to
you when our reinforcements come ? You will assuredly

ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 247

have to lay aside the pride with which, as if you were a
universal conqueror, you call on me to surrender."

The expectation of reinforcements was sincere, but was
destined to be disappointed. Day after day Zenobia arjd
her officers looked out over the desert from their invincible
walls, and descried no sign of the deliverers. Persia was
distracted by the death of Sapor ; the Armenians and the
Saracens had been seduced from her by Aurelian. Food
began to fail, and the iron legions clung tenaciously to the
little strip of country and intercepted whatever aid came to
her. Zenobia resolved to go to Persia herself in quest of
aid. Under cover of the night she stole out of the town,
and fled toward Persia on a dromedary.

Within a few days the anxious Palmyreans again saw
their Queen — a captive in the hands of the Roman soldiers.
It is probable that she had been betrayed. Aurelian, at all
events, heard of her flight, and sent a company of horse in
pursuit. They reached the banks of the Euphrates just as
Zenobia and her attendants had entered a boat, and brought
her back to the camp. She was one hour too late to save her
liberty, or sacrifice her life. Palmyra sadly opened its gates,
and Aurelian transferred its priceless treasures and rare
curiosities to his wagons. Its chief officers and Zenobia
he led away to Emesa, and put them on trial for rebellion.

The reader of Gibbon will expect that we have now
reached a point where the virility of Zenobia faints and the
eternal feminine reveals itself. Gibbon records, indeed, the
bold answer which Zenobia made to Aurelian's complaint
of her infidelity to Rome ; but he goes on to say that, as the
fierce demands of the soldiers for her death fell on her
ears, she tremblingly pleaded for hfe, and, with a cowardice
that her sex only could palliate, insisted that Longinus and
the others had seduced her from her duty. Happily, we
have a clear right to quarrel with the procedure of the
great historian at this point. There are two versions of
the behaviour of Zenobia : that of the Latin historians,
Trebellius Pollio and Vopiscus in the " Historia Augusta,'-

248 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

and that of the Greek historian Zosimus. The Latin
writers, who lived at Rome in the generation after Zenobia,
make her reply boldly to Aurelian, and do not say a word
about her casting the blame on others. The Greek writer,
a much later compiler, represents her as, in the words of
Gibbon, " ignominiously purchasing life by the sacrifice of
her fame and her friends." Gibbon affects to reconcile the
two by making the woman's weakness follow upon the
momentary show of courage.

To this method of reconciling contradictory and unequal
authorities we may justly demur. The much later version
of Zosimus is not only less entitled in itself to acceptance,
but it is seriously enfeebled when he goes on to make the
wildly erroneous statement that Zenobia died on the way
to Rome, and her companions were sunk in the Bosphorus.
We have every right to follow the Latin historians.
Zenobia was brought before Aurelian, and the soldiers
fiercely demanded that she should be put to death. Ex-
asperated as the Emperor was, he refused to slay a woman,
and asked her why she had dared to resist the majesty of
Rome. " In you," she replied, " I recognize an Imperial
majesty, because 3rou have vanquished me, but I saw none in
Gallienus." Her life was spared. What Roman general
could have resisted the wish to grace his triumph at Rome
with a greater than Cleopatra ? The troops, with their
vast treasures and their captives, moved slowly homeward,
after executing Longinus and some others.

In the triumph which Aurelian had so splendidly earned,
and no less splendidly celebrated, we catch our last certain
glimpse of the Queen of the East, one of the most notable
women of all time. Along the flower-strewn lane between
the dense walls of citizens passes one of the longest and
grandest processions that ever led a victor to the Capitol
An immense number of tamed elephants? lions, tigers,
leopards, bears, and other beasts move slowly and sullenly
along, and eight hundred pairs of gladiators give promise
of the impending spectacles. Then there are cars heavily
laden with the gold, silver, and jewels of Palmyra, the rare

ZENOBIA

ENLARGED FROM THE COIN IN THE BERLIN I^IUSEUMI

ZENOBIA AND VICTORIA 249

presents of Persia, the purples of India, and the silks of
China. Then there is the long and extraordinary train of
captives, representing the nineteen nations which Aurelian
has subdued, even women who have been taken, in male
costume, in the sternest battles. At last the melancholy
line is closed by the hthe bronzed figure, with brilliant
black eyes and teeth like pearls, of the woman whose
beauty, genius, and daring have been on the lips of Rome
for several years. Clothed for the last time in the heavily-
jewelled robes of a queen — she had complained that she
was not strong enough to walk under the load of jewels —
she drags along the golden chains which bind her hands
and feet, and a slave sustains the weight of the gold band
round her throat. Beside her, in scarlet cloak and Gallic
trousers, is Tetricus, Victoria's last Emperor in Gaul. The
whole Empire is again subject to Rome. And before the
car of the conqueror three empty chariots are driven : one
is the gold and silver car of Odenathus, one, of gold studded
with gems, is a present from Persia, and the third is the car
which Zenobia had made for her triumphant entry into
Rome. Never had Emperor looked from his car on so
superb a triumph. In less than a year Aurelian would be
assassinated.

The last phase of Zenobia's life is not quite clear.
-Zosimus is certainly wrong in his reproduction of a
story that she died, or took her life, before she reached
Rome. Still later and equally negligible writers ventured
to say that she became a Christian, and even that Aurelian
married one of her daughters. The " Historia Augusta,"
which we may follow, as it was written in Rome a
generation later, tells us that Aurelian gave her a villa
near Hadrian's palace at Tivoli, where she spent the rest
of her life in the education of her children and the prosy
duties of a Roman matron, and, we may conjecture, in
looking back with sad but proud recollection on the
stirring romance of her career. Bishop Eusebius observes
briefly in bis " Chronicle " that she lived to a great age,
and was held in the greatest regard at Rome.

CHAPTER XVI

THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN

ALTHOUGH we have already indicated the fate of
Aurelian, we have not yet referred to the woman
who shared his Imperial title and his great renown.
Her personality is, in fact, entirely unknown; even her
name is preserved for us only on the coinage. We may
fairly conjecture that she disliked the plebeian ways of her
husband, and discharged the duties of a consort without
enthusiasm. Daughter of a wealthy and prominent noble,
Ulpius Crinitus, she had conferred a useful distinction
on the ambitious peasant at a time when he was making
his way in the Imperial service, and it is conjectured, on
somewhat slender grounds, that she accompanied him on
his campaigns. But his life at the palace was short and
inglorious. He disliked its pomp and luxury, and found
his chief delight in pitting his comedians against each
other in eating-contests. He pampered the common citi-
zens by increasing their free ration of bread, and adding
pork to it. When he went on to meditate a free dis-
tribution of wine, one of his ministers sarcastically sug-
gested that he might add geese and chickens. When the
Empress, Ulpia Severina, thought it fitting that she should
wear silk mantles, her husband forbade her to indulge
in that rare and costly product of a precarious commerce
with China.

Aurelian was, in fact, essentially a soldier. His manner,
and even the reforms which he endeavoured to make,
caused grave dissatisfaction at Rome, and a conspiracy

250

THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 251

against him was discovered within a few months of the
magnificent triumph he had enjoyed. He crushed it with
a fierceness that almost obliterated the memory of his
great services, and then returned to Asia to meet the
Persians. On his march he was assassinated, in the be-
ginning of the year 275, and the great promise of his
reign was unfulfilled. Ulpia Severina seems to have died
before him, as the historian speaks only of a daughter
who survived him.

Once more we pass swiftly over a number of turbulent
years until we come to an Empress of whom we have
a comparatively ample knowledge. It is generally ad-
mitted, though not entirely beyond doubt, that the throne
remained vacant for the greater part of the year 275.
The " Historia Augusta," at least, which was written in
the next generation, describes a situation in remarkable
contrast to the earlier haste in appointing Emperors.
We are asked to believe that the Senate and the army
spent many months in a most edifying encounter, each
endeavouring to induce the other to choose a ruler. At
length the Senators chose one of their number, the aged
and upright Tacitus, who set out to take command of the
troops in Asia. Within a few weeks, worn by the un-
wonted fatigue and pained by the unruly behaviour of
the soldiers, he passed away. Some of the historians
declare that he died of actual violence. There is no
trace of an Empress. We read that Tacitus, like Aurelian,
forbade his wife to wear sumptuous clothing, but this
was probably in earlier days. The absence of coins leads
us to think that she had died.

He was succeeded by a young and vigorous officer,
of peasant extraction, named Probus, under whom the
Empire recovered much of its strength. For six years he
laboured successfully to restore the prestige of Rome,
but his severity led at length to assassination. During
a mutiny of the soldiers, in the year 282, "a thousand
swords were plunged at once into the bosom of the un-
fortunate Probus," as Gibbon too floridly expresses it.

252 THE EMPRESSES CfF ROME

From the absence of coins we may almost gather that
his wife had died before his accession. Carus, who
succeeded him, was an aged general of sixty years; He
died after a year of strenuous warfare, and left the
Empire to his sons Carinus and Numerianus. The
younger Emperor was dispatched to the East, and Carinus
virtually reigned alone.

Even the experience of our own time has so frequently
taught us to expect a mediocre or effeminate issue from
a distinguished and virile stock that we do not wonder
at this happening constantly in the history of Rome. We
need not refer it to the mystery of heredity. The vigorous
sire had developed and enhanced his strength in the labori-
ous climb to the heights of his chosen world. The son,
finding the paths to the summit smoothed, and an engaging
luxury at his command without exertion, allows it to
degenerate. The finest steel and the purest gold yield and
crumble in a corroding atmosphere. We cannot, therefore,
affect astonishment at the almost invariable failure of the
Roman practice of eagerly welcoming a son to the place
of his gifted father.

The reign of Carinus affords one of the worst illustra-
tions of the evil. Indolent, insolent, and luxurious, he
saw in his Imperial power an opulent ministry to his
depraved tastes. He did indeed provide Rome with the
most splendid entertainments. The amphitheatre rang
once more with the coarse applause of the ninety thousand
spectators of its bloody contests ; the Circus was trans-
formed into a forest, in which the strange or beautiful
beasts of remote lands lived under the eyes of three
hundred thousand Romans. But this indulgence of the
people's appetites was held to excuse an unbridled ministry
to those of the prince. The whisper went once more
through the fetid depths of Roman life that there were
rich awards for the ingenious and industrious pandar tb
a sated voluptuary, and the palace exhibited again the
loathsome spectacles that had long been expelled from it.

They have little interest for us, as although Carinus

THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 253

made and unmade nine Empresses in little over a year,
they are lost in the riot of the time. One poor name,
that of Magnia Urbica, has survived on a few coins. She
is given by Serviez as the wife of Carus, because she is
represented with two children on one of the coins. Cohen
points out, however, that the group does not properly
consist of a mother and two children, and he concludes
that she was one of the nine wives of Carinus. In the
number of his consorts Carinus surpassed the high record
of Imperial license, and he was not less original in the
grounds for his divorces. Sterility has often been pleaded
by monarchs as a fit reason for repudiating their wives ;
it was reserved to Carinus to dismiss them the moment
they gave proof of fertility. So the women of Rome
succeeded each other rapidly in the dissolute palace, where
the Emperor, surrounded by his courtesans, glittering down
to his shoes with diamonds and emeralds, sat on rose-
strewn couches to his costly banquets.

The new pestilence was blown out of the Imperial
city by a storm from the East. The younger Emperor,
Numerianus, was a gentle, cultured, and delicate youth.
As he led the troops home from the East, he sheltered
his eyes from the burning sun by keeping to his tent
or his closed litter. At length his complete- seclusion
gave rise to suspicion, and the soldiers broke into his
tent, only to find a mouldering body. The ambition of
Aper, his father-in-law, who commanded the guards,
fastened the guilt upon him, and a general assembly of
the soldiers appointed one of their abler officers, Diocletian,
to judge him. Diocletian, possibly with reason, preferred
to execute rather than to try Aper, and he was at once
saluted as Emperor by the troops. The son of two slaves,
he had educated himself and pushed his way to the highest
offices and commands; and he now composedly donned
the purple mantle which the soldiers offered him, and
led the legions toward Rome. Carinus marched out
against him, but was assassinated by an offiicer whose wife
he had appropriated, and a new chapter opened in the

254 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

annals of Rome. A strong man and judicious statesman
had come to the throne, and he would occupy it for twenty
years.

From our point of view it is disappointing that the
wife of Diocletian does not come to our notice until his
reign is nearly over. Her very name was disputed for
ages ; even now her personality is only faintly illumined
by the adventures of her later years. Her daughter is
a more commanding figure, and other Imperial ladies stand
out in the chronicle of the times. Some of these, such
as the mother and wife of Constantine, we reserve for the
next chapter ; and we may compress into a few lines the
story of the twenty years' reign of Diocletian.

A year after his accession, which took place in the year
285, Diocletian chose a colleague to share the control of
the vast Empire. This friend and partner, Maximian, was
the son of peasants, rough, ignorant, and unscrupulous,
but an effective commander. He was entrusted with the
care of the West, Diocletian passed to the East, and several
years were profitably spent in restoring the crumbling
frontiers. The task proved so formidable that, in 292, they
chose two officers for the inferior dignity of " Csesars " —
a title which implied that they would probably one day be
Augusti, and should meantime wear the purple, but have
no power to make laws or control finance. Of the two,
Galerius again was a child of the soil, while Constantius
was the son of a provincial noble ; and they were compelled
to dismiss their humbler wives, and wed the daughters of
the Emperors. Four courts were thus set up within the
Empire, while Rome found itself coldly neglected, its palace
deserted, and its Senate impotent.

To the court of Galerius we shall return presently,
while we leave the affairs of Constantius and his wife to
the next chapter. The court and the Empress of Maximian
need not detain us. He chose Milan as his seat, and began
to adorn the northern town with the marble edifices that
befitted its new dignity. His wife was a very attractive
Syrian woman, Galeria Valeria Eutropia. Her name has

THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 255

led some to conjecture that she was related to the father
of Constantius, Eutropius, one of the chief nobles of
Dardania, though the connexion is feeble. She seems, in
any case, to have regarded her uncultivated husband with
disdain, and sought more genial company. Her son
Maxentius is said by some to have been the issue of a
liaison with a compatriot, while others declare that he was
a boy substituted for the daughter she bore, because
Maximian desired a son. We may leave these disputable
scandals and come to the court of Diocletian.

The son of a Roman slave had created a glittering
court at Nicomedia. His palace, round which the city
quickly grew in size and magnificence, was adorned and
served with an Oriental pomp. The successive approaches
to the chamber of the Emperor were guarded by splendid
officials, and when the suppliant or ambassador penetrated
at length to the inner apartment, he found the stately
Diocletian in purple and gold robes, his brow encircled
by a glistening diadem, and was compelled to prostrate
himself before the divine majesty. It was not, however,
the vanity or folly of a Caligula, but a calculated policy,
that had prompted Diocletian to clothe himself with this
Olympic dignity. Earlier Emperors, of the same mean
extraction, had refused to put a barrier of royal ceremony
between themselves and their subjects or soldiers, and
had invariably fallen by the hand of the assassin. Diocletian
was too shrewd, too much attached to life, and too sensible
of his beneficent use of power, to incur the risk. He had
restored Egypt to obedience, humiliated the Persians, and
devoted an even greater ability to the reform of the
administration. Co-operating with his vigorous colleague
in the West, he had brought peace and prosperity back to
the Empire,

In the settled years of his reign we begin again to
recognize the various personalities of the court. The
Empress herself is more or less involved in a piquant
obscurity. Until the end of the seventeenth century her
name was unknown, and a great deal of romantic legend was

2S6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

reproduced in regard to her. Cardinal Baronius fpund in
"Acts of St. Susanna" that her name was St. Serena, a martyr
for the Christian faith. Other " Acts " of the martyrs
furnished a St. Eleuthera and a St. Alexandra as consorts
of Diocletian. He seemed to have been an Imperial Blue-
beard. But in 1679 the manuscript was found of an early
Christian work, " On the Deaths of the Persecutors/' and
the earlier writings were proved, in the words of the
learned Franciscan, Father Pagi, to be fictitious and full of
untruths. The many saintly martyrs gave way to an
Empress Prisca, who broke down lamentably at the first
test of her faith. It is very curious that we have no coins
whatever of Prisca, though she must have lived through
the whole reign of Diocletian. This, and the fact that she
left him many years before his death, suggest either that
she was not married to him at all or that he had little
regard for her. She was, in any case, a woman of weak
and retiring character, and is mentioned only in associa-
tion with her daughter.

Valeria was a beautiful, attractive, and spirited young
woman, with a good deal of the strength, and not a
little of the ambition, of her father. She was married
to Galerius, the Caesar whom Diocletian had chosen, and
remained with him by the side of the Emperor. Galerius
was, as I said, of peasant origin, and never laid aside
the uncultivated roughness of his class. Diocletian had,
by diligent education, erased the traces of his own lowly
origin, but his peasant colleagues had gone straight from
the soil to the camp, and the work of a soldier had not
given them the least inclination to seek culture. The
character of Galerius has been painted in the most lurid
colours on account of his persecution of the Christians, but
it is significant that both Valeria and Prisca clung to his
court when Diocletian retired. His mother, Romula, and
other rustic relatives were attracted to his court. There
was, it is clear, a most incongruous group of personalities
about the court of Diocletian, and in the nineteenth year
of his reign they were shaken by a severe storm. The

THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 257

great and final struggle began between the old faith and
the new, and Prisca and Valeria favoured the latter.

Christianity had not been persecuted for half a century,
and had made great progress. The cult of the old gods
was palpably insincere, and half-a-dozen Asiatic creeds
were steadily supplanting it. On the streets of Nicomedia,
as on the streets of Rome or any other large city, one
might meet any day the white-robed shaven priests of Isis,
the painted and effeminate ministers of Cybele, the Persian
representatives of the popular cult of Mithra, and — until
they were expelled by Diocletian — the black-garbed clergy
of the Manichaeans and the Christians. The Christians
were now advancing. There had been some slight and
irregular repression of them from time to time since the
days of Nero, but more than forty years of toleration, and
the knowledge that their adherents were now occupying
high places in the camp and the court, and that even the
wives of the Emperor and the Caesar favoured them, gave
them strong confidence. One of their churches occupied
a central and commanding position in Nicomedia. Four
influential officers of the court attended it, and it seems
that Valeria and Prisca were, if not Christians, openly
disposed to the new religion. All we know in that regard
is that they were " compelled " to sacrifice when the per-
secution began.

Persecution on account of religion, as such, was not
natural to the cosmopolitan builders of the Pantheon, and
Diocletian was a broad-minded statesman, so that the
origin of the persecution is not so clear as it was once
held to be. The literary remains which we have to use
have to be handled with caution. The " Historia Augusta "
has ended with Carinus, and we shall greatly miss its
minute and gossipy descriptions. Zosimus, a pagan writing
in a Christian age, has an appearance of sullen reticence
at times and a perceptible bias. Aurelius Victor and
Eutropius are scanty, and the immediate Christian writers
are used very cautiously by modern historians. Bishop
Eusebius says frankly, in his " Life of Constantine," that

17

2S8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

he will write only what tends to edify, and the little work
" On the Deaths of the Persecutors " is obviously imagi-
native in many pages and inaccurate in others. Experts
still differ as to whether it comes from the pen of the
brilliant Christian rhetorician Lactantius, but all warn us
to take account of its strong feeling. Our authorities, in
a word, now belong to two antagonistic and bitterly hostile
creeds, and, as all subsequent historians favour one side
or the other, we have to proceed with caution. I have
endeavoured, in the remaining chapters, to make my
way between them with more than ordinary care and
independence.

A few incautious hints given in Lactantius throw
a faint light on the origin of the great persecution. The
writer of the treatise has himself a very positive theory.
The root of the evil was, he says, Romula, the peasant-
mother of the Caesar. Fanatically attached to the gods of
her native mountains, she inspired her son with a hatred
of Christianity, and Galerius bullied the older Emperor
into issuing the Edict of Persecution. We feel that the
policy of Diocletian would hardly yield to the prejudice
of a superstitious woman. There is more enlightenment
in the incidental statements that Romula was stung by
the disdain of Christian officers in the palace, and that
Diocletian was greatly annoyed at seeing Christian soldiers
disturb the harmony, if not the efficacy, of his sacrificial
ceremonies by making the sign of the cross. Galerius
may have been moved by the growing reluctance of
Christians to bear arms, and the very pronounced rejection
by some of the arms they bore. There is no need to trust
the imaginary conversation which Lactantius puts in the
mouths of Diocletian and Galerius. They agreed that the
zeal of the Christians was impertinent or dangerous, and,
in the month of February (303), a troop of soldiers was
sent to raze to the ground their large and commanding
church. On the following day Diocletian published an
Edict forbidding the cult under grave penalties. When
the Imperial decree was torn down by a zealous Christian,

THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 259

and this act of treason was openly applauded by his
fellows, Diocletian was embittered, and blood began to
flow. During the next fortnight the Emperor's quarters
in the palace were twice found to be in flames. Diocletian
was convinced that the fire was kindled by Christian
officers, and gave a full sanction to the work of repressing
them.

Prisca and Valeria were not among the heroines of the
persecution. Lactantius destroys all the myths of martyred
Empresses by telling us that they consented to burn a few
grains of incense in honour of Jupiter, and impotently
witnessed the dark roll of the wave of persecution through
the provinces. He does not even say that they joined,
or rejoined, the Church when the persecution was over,
and we lose sight of them for a few years. Probably they
went with Diocletian to Rome for his triumph in November,
and returned with him to Nicomedia in the summer of 304.
He was confined to the palace by a serious illness during
the following winter, and as soon as he recovered he
abdicated the throne. It is untrue that the threats of
Galerius forced him to do this. He had expressed the
intention years before.

On a wide plain near Nicomedia the army assembled on
May ist, 305, for the unexampled ceremony of the abdica-
tion of an Emperor. A little hill in the centre was sur-
mounted by a lofty throne and a statue of Jupiter, and the
ageing Emperor — he was in his fifty-ninth year — surren-
dered the power he had wielded so well for more than
twenty years. By a previous arrangement, Maximian was
abdicating on the same day at Milan. The two Caesars
became Augusti, and two new Caesars were appointed. In
their selection we recognize the partial and unskilful hand
of Galerius. He handed his own Caesarean dignity to a
rustic nephew, Daza — " who had just left his herds in the
forest," Lactantius scornfully says— and sent a loyal and
undistinguished friend to receive that of Maximian in Italy.
From that selfish act would develop one of the greatest
civil wars since the founding of the Empire. In the ranks

26o THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

of the officers by the platform was the tall, handsome,
gifted, and disappointed young man who would one day
be known as Constantine the Great.

Diocletian retired to Salona, in his native province of
Dalmatia, and built, close to the town, what was for the
age a magnificent palace. Valeria remained in the palace
of Galerius, and it seems that Prisca stayed with her, as we
shall presently find her sharing the hard lot of her daughter.
Why the mother, at least, chose to remain in Nicomedia is
left to our imaginations. The religion they had favoured
was cruelly suppressed, and, if we are to believe Lactantius,
their virtue must have been outraged by the unbridled
license of the new Emperor. He is described as an ogre,
dragging the noblest women of Nicomedia from their
husbands, feeding his bears on innocent citizens, and
" never taking a meal without a taste of human blood."
Yet Valeria clung to her husband even through the painful
and repulsive illness which ended his life ; and her name
was given by him to a part of his Empire. The picture is
evidently overdrawn, yet life in the palace, with Galerius
and his boorish relatives, cannot have been very congenial,
and the temper of Galerius would be soured by the events
that followed.

The first mishap was the flight of Constantine. He had
been living for some years at the court of Diocletian, and
was deeply disappointed and rightly indignant at the choice
of the new Caesars. By birth and ability he had the
clearest title to the purple. He was now a tall and manly
young officer, handsome, popular, and successful, and
anxious to join his father Constantius in Gaul. There is
little doubt that he fled during the night, though the
romantic story told by Lactantius is now generally re-
garded as a clumsy piece of fiction. It describes Galerius
as failing to take the youth's life by engaging him in
dangerous contests, and at length devising an ingenious
scheme. He one night gives Constantine permission to
depart after he has seen him in the morning, and warns
him that he will be put to death if he is still in Nicomedia

THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 261

at noon. Then the ogre gives orders that he is not to be
awakened before noon on the morrow ; but the young hero
steals all the horses in the stables — there were probably
hundreds — cripples all other horses along his route, and
flies to his father. The only authentic point is that
Constantine fled. He would wade back through a sea of
blood. Within a few months his father was dead, Con-
stantine was chosen by the army to succeed him, and
Galerius was forced to recognize him as Caesar.

Galerius gave the title of Augustus, which Constantius
had left vacant at his death, to his loyal Severus, but he
was soon informed that the troops, the people, and the
Senate had chosen another Emperor at Rome. A brief
outline of the stirring events that followed will suffice here.
The new Emperor was Maxentius, son of the retired
Maximian. The father issued from his retreat to join in
the fray, and Galerius was botind to support Severus.
Diocletian looked on quietly from his gardens at Salona.
When Maximian urged him to return to power, he said
that if Maximian could see the vegetables he was growing
he would not make such a request. Briefly, Severus was
treacherously taken by Maximian, and induced to ease the
complication by taking his life. Maximian, Galerius, and
Diocletian met at Carnuntum, on the Danube, and it was
settled that Galerius and Licinius (one of his officers) should
be recognized as Emperors, and Constantine and Maximin
(Daza) as Caesars. Maxentius was disregarded, and Maxi-
mian was persuaded to retire once more. How the restless
and ambitious old man then clung to Constantine, and
attempted to murder and displace him, we shall see later.

The expedition of Galerius into Italy proved disastrous,
as he returned in bad health and temper to his dominions.
He died in 311, of an unpleasant disease, of which the
morbid reader may find a luxurious description in Lactantius.
Valeria remained with him to the end, and then a new and
more romantic chapter opened for her and her mother. The
two Emperors of the East made rival offers of their hospital-
ity ; for Maximin had exacted an equal dignity with Licinius.

262 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Valeria was at that time in her early thirties, and her
mourning garments did not detract from her ripe beauty
of face and figure. She is represented as weighing the
respective immoralities of the two Eastern Emperors, and
considering to which of the two it would be the less
dangerous to entrust her virtue. Lactantius does not tell
us why she was forced to choose at all ; why she and her
mother did not retire to the luxurious and unsullied palace
of Diocletian. The end of his life was approaching, it is
true, but the palace would still shelter them. On the other
hand, Maximin and Licinius are both very thickly tarred
with the brush of Lactantius. We shall see something of
the conduct of Licinius later. As to Maximin, if one half
of what Lactantius and Eusebius say is true, he must have
been known over the whole Empire as an erotic maniac.
He may not have been this romantic combination of Nero,
Elagabalus, and Carinus, but we know from other writers
that he was much more vicious than Licinius. When,
therefore, we find Valeria choosing to live in his palace, we
cannot repress a suspicion that the beautiful widow was
not quite so unworldly as she is represented to have been.
She had not been long in her new home when certain
officers came to tell her that Maximin loved her, and was
prepared to divorce his wife and wed her. When she
refused, the baffled passion turned to rage, and mother and
daughter were expelled from the palace. When we learn,
from a later passage, that Valeria refused to yield her right
to the property of Galerius, the episode seems more human.
A story of adultery was invented, a Jew — the villain of
early Christian literature — was suborned to give false
evidence, and several of Valeria's friends were implicated.
A number of ladies of high rank were publicly executed,
and the Empresses, spoiled of their goods, were driven
from province to province, until they found themselves
lodged in a mean village on the edge of the Syrian desert.
Valeria contrived to acquaint her father with their situation,
but the rough Maximin rejected his feeble entreaties. They
seem to have spent the winter (312-13) in this miserable

SALONIKA

VALERIA

ENLARGED FROM COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

THE WIFE AND DAUGHTER OF DIOCLETIAN 263

exile. The only comfort was that they had with them
Candidian, a natural son of Galerius, whom Valeria had
adopted, and Severian, the son of Severus.

In the early spring the little group were inspirited by
the news that the tyrant had fallen in a struggle with
Licinius, who was now sole Emperor in the East. What
follows, in the narrative of Lactantius, is even more obscure,
and suggests still more strongly that much is concealed
from us. Candidian went openly to the coiirt of Licinius,
and was cordially received and promoted. The other
young man followed. Licinius was naturally hostile to
all who had taken the side of Maximin, but he could hardly
be angry with these poor victims of Maximin's rage.
Valeria, however, went in disguise to Nicaea, where the
court was, to follow the fortunes of her adopted son.

Suddenly something happened which brought upon
them all the sword of the executioner. What it was we
can only conjecture. A writer like Lactantius is so
accustomed to regard a savage outbreak on the part of one
of the last pagan Emperors as a natural event that he
disdains to enlighten us. A part of the story has been
concealed, and it would not be fantastic to suppose that
the spirited, young, and ambitious Valeria meditated an
intrigue for the advancement of Candidian to the throne.
It is plain that Licinius suspected this. The royal birth
and manly bearing of the youth might suffice to draw such
a suspicion on him, but do not plausibly explain the treat-
ment of the Empresses. Nor is there any apparent reason
for her disguise. She was willing, Lactantius says, to
cede her rights to Licinius, and the sentence unjustly
passed on her by Maximin would have no weight with
him.

Whatever the cause of the trouble was, Valeria learned
one day that Candidian and Severian were arrested, and
they were presently executed. She fled to the remote
Syrian village, but she was so plainly implicated, in some
way, that she dare not remain there. Dressing in the
rough robes of the common people, the aged mother and

264 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

her brilliant daughter set out on a painful and aimless
journey. Either a sentence of death had been passed on
them, or they had ground to apprehend one ; for their
flight would certainly elicit it. Lactantius says that they
wandered in this disguise for fifteen months, but it is
difficult to believe that they could so long evade the
Imperial troops who hunted them.^ At length they were
recognized and arrested in Thessalonica, and the tragedy
of their unfortunate and, so far as we know, innocent lives
was brought to a close. Under the eyes of the assembled
citizens the wife and daughter of the great Emperor were
beheaded, and their remains were contemptuously flung
into the sea.

* It has been suggested that the fifteen months of Lactantius may date
from their expulsion from the court of Maximin. This is hardly* possible.
Galerius died in May, 311, and Valeria was still in mourning for him, and
pleaded his recent death, when Maximin sought to wed her. Maximin died
in April, 313, so that the deaths of Prisca and Valeria cannot have been
earlier than the summer of that year.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES

THE fourfold power which Diocletian had prudently
set up ensured for the Empire twenty years of
uneventful prosperity. The two Emperors and
their Caesars guarded and repaired the frontiers, at which
the strong young nations of the hills and the forests were
now gathering in ominous numbers, while the body of the
Empire tranquilly pursued its sluggish and debilitated life.
But no sooner had the balanced mind and the firm hand of
Diocletian relinquished their control than the system
revealed its weakness. The multiplication of dignities led
to a multiplication of aspirants ; the distribution of power
inflamed the ambition of the stronger and less scrupulous.
In one year eight generals claimed and bore the title of
Augustus, and our stage is crowded with Empresses.
Most of them, however, are so poorly outlined in the
records of the time that we may neglect these faint conjugal
shadows of inconspicuous rulers, and select for considera-
tion the three or four more prominent consorts of the
Emperors.

Possibly the most widely known of all the Roman
Empresses, more familiar even than the very different
figure of Messalina, is Helena, the mother of Constantine.
The first Christian Empress, the generous supporter of
the early Church, the first royal woman to find a place in
the list of the canonized, we turn to her with eagerness to
discover the contrast with her pagan predecessors. She
does not bear the Imperial title, and does not properly fall

365

266 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

within our range, until she is advanced in years, but we
cannot understand her character unless we glance first at
her earlier years.

In one of his more important sermons (" De Obitu
Theodosii," § 42) St. Ambrose observes that she " is said
to have been a maid at an inn," and he so clearly accepts
the statement that historians, sacred and profane, have not
hesitated to follow him. The claim of another Roman
writer, that Constantine had illumined Britain "by
originating there," gave rise at one time to a theory that
she was British, and our learned commentators furnished
so august a lady with a royal pedigree. The phrase is,
however, generally understood to refer to the beginning
of Constantine's Imperial career, and the native town of
Helena is sought either in Dacia or in Nicomedia. Since
Constantine gave her name to Drepanum, in Nicomedia,
we may presume that her first humble home was in that
town, and that she moved from there to Naissos, in
Dacia, where the birth of Constantine is usually placed.

A stabulum was, in the language of the time, one of the
meaner inns in the towns through which the Roman roads
ran. A stabularia — the epithet used by St. Ambrose — was
a woman or girl connected with the inn ; and those
temporary resting-places for soldiers or merchants on their
journeys were so easy in their ways that the word was
sometimes used in an unpleasant sense. We may follow
the early tradition that Helena was the daughter of a man
who kept one of these inns, possibly a quite respectable
establishment, at Drepanum, on the way to the city of
Nicomedia, which Diocletian had made his capital. Here,
in or about the year 273, the young Roman officer Constan-
tius — later, for some obscure reason, called Constantius the
Pale (Chlorus) — saw and fell in love with Helena. The
road that ran through Drepanum was much used by the
troops, and the encounter is placed at the time when
Aurelian was conducting his campaign against Zenobia.
Constantius, an excellent officer and the son of a provincial
noble of some distinction, would then (273) be in his

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 267

twenty-third year. Helena, who was over eighty at her
death in 328, must have been two or three years older.

Historians have left us a lengthy and learned debate on
the question whether she was the wife or the concubine of
Constantius, and the grouping of the combatants is singular.
In the Migne edition of the works of the Fathers we find a
note appended to the passage of St. Ambrose, which I have
quoted, in which the Benedictine commentators observe
that " all the writers on Roman affairs declare that Helena
was the concubine, not the wife, of Constantius," and they
adopt that view. Yet the critical Gibbon defends " the
legality of her marriage " with a rare and edifying chivalry,
and Mr. Firth, in his recent biography of Constantine,
asserts that it is " beyond question." With such weighty
encouragement ecclesiastical writers have confidently
deserted the Benedictines and followed Gibbon. Let us
first hear the authorities, and we may not find the problem
insoluble.

Bishop Eusebius, the chaplain of the Imperial family, as
one may term him, would not mention such a circumstance
in his " Life of Constantine," even if he knew it to be true ;
but it is not quite accurate to say peremptorily that the
bishop never mentions it. In the second book of his
"Chronicle" {ad annum 310) we read that Constantine was
" the son of Constantius by his concubine Helena." We
have no means of determining if these words were written
by Eusebius or added by St. Jerome.^ Even in the latter
case it is a weighty testimony.

Another Christian historian of Jerome's time, Orosius—
who does not follow Zosimus, as Gibbon says, but precedes
him — makes the same statement (c. xxv), and it is later
repeated in the "Chronicle" of Cassiodorus. A writer
of the generation after Constantine, commonly known as
"Anonymus Valesii," says (c. ii) that Constantine was
"born of Helena, a very common \yilissima'] woman, in
the town of Naissus." Zosimus, a century later, and a

• The Greek original of the " Chronicle " is lost, and Jerome informs us
that he has added many details in the Latin version which we now have.

268 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

pagan critic of Constantine, says (ii. 8) that he was
" born of a woman who was not respectable [a-t/ivi^']
and not legally married to Constantius," and he later
observes that Maxentius resented the raising to the throne
of a man whose mother was " not a matron." Finally, the
early mediaeval monk, Zonaras, says (" Annals," xiii. i) :
" Some say that she was lawfully married to Constantius
and divorced . . . others that she was not a legitimate wife
but a paramour." The grave and weighty Eutropius,
writing in the generation after Constantine, says that
he was born of " a somewhat ambiguous [obscurion]
marriage."

The Benedictines had an ample authority, both Christian
and pagan, for their view, and only one argument is
advanced in disproof of it by modern writers. Several
of the historians tell us that, when Constantius was made
Caesar, he was compelled by the Emperor to " divorce "
Helena, and, it is said, divorce implies marriage. The
argument is hardly conclusive. When Eusebius (or
Jerome) tells us that the Caesars were compelled to dis-
miss their "wives," he adds, on the same page, that
Helena was not a wife, but a concubine. He means
merely that Constantius was forced to dismiss Helena
and wed the daughter of Maximian, and does not imply
that any legal form of divorce was employed. It is quite
open to us to interpret the other authority, Aurelius
Victor, in the same way ; and Zonaras, the only other writer
who could be quoted, expressly leaves it open whether
Helena was married or not. In any case, the single
authority of Aurelius Victor cannot outweigh the others,
and even his words do not necessarily imply a legal divorce
on the part of both Caesars.

But there is another aspect of the question, which is
usually overlooked. Could there be a valid marriage
between Helena and Constantius in Roman law? When
we regard the subject from this point of view, we see
that Constantius could not possibly have married Helena
before the birth of Constantine, and, unless her legal

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 269

condition was subsequently altered by a special enactment,
their union could never become a valid marriage. As I
have earlier observed, the strict and ancient forms of
Roman marriage had fallen very generally out of use
under the Emperors. They had had the effect of putting
the wife under the despotic power of the husband, and
Roman feeling in regard to the position of woman had
entirely changed. Looser forms of marriage, which evaded
the older tyranny of the husband, were generally employed
and legally recognized. If a man and woman lived together
uninterruptedly for twelve months — without three nights'
interruption — their union might become a valid marriage.
Below this was the legally recognized concubine. The
ease with which Christian writers admitted that Helena
was a concubine is due to the fact that the Church, as
well as the law, permitted a concubine, if a man had no
wife. As late as the year 400, the important provincial
Council of Toledo decided that such a man and his con-
cubine were to be admitted to communion. St. Augustine,
we shall see, went even further. Below these, again,
were the ordinary paramours, the mistresses of a month
or the playthings of an hour, which Stoic and Christian
equally condemned.

The real question we have to decide is, therefore,
whether the long association of Constantius and Helena
could ever be recognized as a valid marriage in Roman
law. That they went through any form of marriage in
273 could only occur to a writer who knows nothing of
Roman law or practice. A young officer, taking a girl
from a tavern in a small provincial town on his route,
would not dream ot any such ceremony ; and no ceremony
would have been valid in Roman law. Whatever the
legal condition of Constantius was, Helena was, to Roman
law, a barbarian, or peregrina, and could not contract a
valid marriage.^ We need little acquaintance with Roman

' One of the most authoritative works on Roman institutions, Marquardt
and Mommsen's "Handbuch," says this emphatically: "Ehen, bei welchen
der eine Theil derROmischen BUrgerschaft, der Andere den Latinern jUngeren

270 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

life to imagine what happened. Constantius felt for the
young woman he found at the country inn a more tender
sentiment than that usually entertained by the young
centurion or tribune on travel, and he took her to live
with him. I do not see how this relation ever could
become a valid marriage, nor is there any clear proof
that they were ever legally divorced. At the most, it
remains " a questionable marriage," as Eutropius calls it,
and it began 'as a free union.

From Nicomedia Constantius's troop seems to have
passed, possibly after sharing Aurelian's triumph at Rome,
to Thrace, where Constantine is said to have been born
in the year 274. Helena narrowly missed the dignity of
Empress a few years later, as Carus had some disposition
to leave the purple to Constantius. The mother of Con-
stantius had been a niece of the Emperor Claudius, and
his father was one of the chief nobles of Dardania. But
the accession of Carinus dispelled this hope, and Helena
followed her husband from province to province, and
grade to grade, until, in 292, he was selected for the lofty
position of Caesar of the West. But with the purple came
a command that he must dismiss his concubine, and marry
the stepdaughter of Maximian, Flavia Maximiana Theodora.
From that date until the year of her son's brilliant triumph
Helena passes into complete obscurity.

Meantime other Empresses occupy the pages of the
historian. Theodora, of whom we have just spoken, is
one of those Empresses whose propriety of conduct and
mediocrity of person have not attracted the lamp of the
historian. She was the daughter of Eutropia, the Syrian
wife of Maximian, by a former husband. Three boys and
three girls came of her union with Constantius, and she
seems to have been a worthy consort of that judicious

Rechtes oder den Peregrinen angeharte, sind nach RSmischen Recht nicht
giiltig" (vii. 29). GSteke, in a special study of the subject (" Constantinum
honeste et ex legitime matrimonio natum"), says that special edicts made it
impossible for an officer to marry in the province in which He served. He
believes that the effect of these would not be permanent, but he fails to
consider Helena's disability as a. peregrina.

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 271

and happy ruler. The full Imperial title passed to them
when Maximian abdicated in 305, and the handsome and
spirited Constantine joined them at Gessoriacum (Boulogne),
after his romantic flight from Nicomedia, in that or the
following year. They crossed to Britain, and suppressed
a rebeUion that was in progress. But Constantius died
at Eboracum (York) in the summer of 306, and the un-
ambitious Theodora passes from our sight.

Constantius had, with a last display of prudence,
preferred his eldest son to the legitimate children of his
wife, and probably little money needed to be distributed
among the legions to ensure that they should recognize
his superiority. Constantine was then in his early man-
hood, a commanding and graceful figure, in the finest
phase of his character, and the troops followed him with
alacrity from the cold mists of north Britain to more
genial and more cultivated Gaul. From Gaul the young
Caesar watched with close interest the quarrels in which
his colleagues prepared to devour each other. In February
of 307 he heard that Severus had opened his veins, and
left the purple in the hands of the crafty Maximian and
his son Maxentius. Within a few weeks Maximian was in
Gaul, seeking an alliance with Constantine. He brought
with him his pretty and charming daughter, Fausta, and
presently she was married at Aries, with great pomp, to
Constantine, the stepson of her half-sister. The old man
returned to his intrigues in Italy, from which he was
shortly ejected by his son : Galerius expelled him from
lUyricum, where he had taken shelter ; and he returned
to the court of his son-in-law in Gaul.

The portrait-bust of Maximian might be confused with
that of a modern pugilist, but he had, in addition to
strength and ambition, a restless disposition to intrigue.
To rust in a court full of women — for we may confidently
jplace in the court of Constantine his wife, mother, step-
mother, mother-in-law, and three young half-sisters, if not
also his concubine — was to him an intolerable experience,
and he took the first opportunity of enlivening his sur-

2;2 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

roundings. An inroad of the barbarians in the north
drew away the young Emperor with much of his army,
and Maximian rebelled. He gave out a report that
Constantine was dead, emptied the treasury into the
hands of the soldiers, and assumed the purple mantle
once more. But Constantine returned with the stride of
a giant, and Maximian shut himself in Marseilles, which
was presently surrendered. The aged intriguer returned
to the palace, tried to corrupt the loyalty of his daughter,
and brought upon himself the punishment of his crimes.

It is a peculiarity of the time that, the more remote an
historian is from an event, the more he knows about it.
Eutropius and Zosimus merely know that Fausta revealed
her father's plots to her husband ; Zonaras, of the twelfth
century, is able to tell us the whole story. Maximian, he
says, persuaded his daughter to have the guards removed
from the Imperial chamber at night. Then, telling the
night-attendants that he wished to relate to Constantine
a remarkable dream he had had, he entered the chamber
and plunged his dagger into the sleeping figure on the
bed. Rushing out to announce the fall of the tyrant,
however, he found himself in face of Constantine, Fausta,
and the guards. Fausta had been true to her husband,
and it was " a vile eunuch " that Maximian had slain in
the Emperor's bed. Whatever truth there may be in
this romance, we may accept the statement that Fausta
betrayed his plots, and Maximian came to the end of his
career. Zosimus sends him into exile, and makes him
die a natural death at Tarsus. Lactantius, with a stronger
sense of propriety, tells us that he strangled himself, and it
is the general belief that Constantine did not permit him
to leave Gaul alive.

Galerius died in the following year (311), leaving the
Eastern Empire to Licinius and Maximin, while Maxentius
ruled in Italy and Africa. Four Empresses now lived in
the court of Constantine, but before we seek to penetrate
the mystery of their relations to each other, we must
briefly accompany Constantine in his rise to the position

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 273

of supreme monarch. Maxentius, who had expelled his
father from Italy, now affected a filial anger against his
destroyer, and, after some exasperated correspondence, sent
toward Gaul an army of nearly 200,000 men. Constantine
boldly led 40,000 of his soldiers across the Alps, wore
down the strength of his opponent in successive encoun-
ters, and, within a few months, exhibited the grisly head
of Maxentius to the astonished and delighted Romans.
He was now master of the Western Empire. Devoting two
months to the settlement of Roman affairs, he returned to
Milan to meet his Eastern colleague Licinius. His half-
sister Constantia was married there to Licinius, who
returned to Asia with his bride, to crush Maximin, and to
perpetrate the melancholy tragedies over which we shud-
dered in the last chapter. Anastasia, the second daughter
of Constantius, was married to the Senator Bassianus.
Constantine made him Caesar, but put no troops at his
command — he had just suppressed the Praetorian Guards
at Rome — and refused to grant him the authority that had
hitherto been associated with the title of Caesar. Bassianus
corresponded angrily with Licinius, and before the end
of 315 the Emperors of the East and West were in arms
against each other.

It would be interesting to know what share the daugh-
ters of Constantius had in promoting these disorders.
The correspondence of Bassianus and Licinius suggests a
correspondence of their wives, and, when Bassianus was
deposed and disgraced, we may assume that Constantia
was not insensible of the misfortune of her younger sister.
The superior age and ability of Constantine would hardly
reconcile the legitimate children of Constantius to their
position of dependence. Constantia is sometimes repre-
sented as a pious peacemaker, but we do not find her in
that character until her husband's power is irremediably
broken, after the second war with Constantine. She fled
in great haste with her husband after the first defeat, and.
returned with him to Nicomedia, to rule his reduced
dominions.
18

274 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

The court-life of the West flowed with uneventful
smoothness in the eight years between the first and second
war with Licinius. The only break in the monotony is
the birth of three sons and three daughters in quick suc-
cession. Zosimus emphatically asserts that these were not
the children of Fausta, but of a concubine, whom Con-
stantine put to death on a charge of adultery. We are
naturally disposed to regard this as a piece of reprehensible
malice on the part of the pagan writer, but even the most
cautious judgment will find ground for reflection in the
circumstance that Fausta had borne no children whatever
for the first nine years of her marriage, and then children
begin to appear with astonishing rapidity. We know that
Constantine had had a concubine, named Minervina, before
he married Fausta. Her son Crispus lived at the court.
It would not be entirely surprising if Minervina had
returned to the court, to rear the Imperial dynasty which
Fausta failed to provide, and was eventually destroyed in
one of Constantine's bursts of temper.^

In the Eastern court the young Empress had, if we
trust the authorities, a more adventurous career. Con-
stantia cannot have been more than seventeen or eighteen
at the time of her marriage, but she was a woman of spirit
and ability, as well as virtue and beauty. It is said that
she, with the whole court, became a Christian after Con-
stantine's victory over Maxentius, but the story of the
miraculous sign in the heavens — a story that is not found
in any form until thirty years afterwards — is now rejected,
and the conversion of Constantine is spread over many
years. At Nicomedia, however, where Constantia occupied
the magnificent palace built by Diocletian, she met the

' The question may be raised whether St. Augustine had not the case of
Constantine in mind when, in his moral treatise "De Bono Conjujali," he
refuses to condemn a man who, having a barren wife, takes a concubine in
addition, to provide a family. It is clear, at least, that early Christian opinion
was not fixed. Gibbon again improves upon Christian writers by holding
that Minervina was an earlier wife, not a concubine, of Constantine ; but, as
Professor Bury points out, the document on which he relies does not apply to
that Emperor.

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 275

accomplished and courtly Eusebius, and induced Licinius
to allow him the position of Bishop of Nicomedia. Two
things, it is said, then transpired in the character of
Licinius to excite her disgust. He not only persecuted the
Christians, but made equal war upon virtue. In brief, he,
like all the other persecutors, is depicted by the flowing
pen of Lactantius as an erotic ogre. His eye falls on a
Christian maiden, of dazzling beauty and virtue, in the
suite of Constantia, and he sends an officer to corrupt
her. She tells Constantia, who dresses her as a young
military officer, and sends her, with a splendid equipage,
to take an imaginary Imperial commission to a remote
region. In the distant city of Amasia she is embarrassed
by her masculine hosts, and confides in the bishop.
Finally, a letter of hers to Constantia is intercepted, and
she escapes by a very timely death from the embraces or
the tortures of Licinius.

Of these wicked ways, and of her husband's hostility
to the Christians, Constantia is said to have kept her
brother well informed, and, when Licinius committed the
greater enormity of refusing to surrender fugitive oifenders
to the vengeance of Constantine, the legions were once
more led toward the Bosphorus. Several disastrous battles
crippled the power of Licinius, and he retired sullenly to
Nicomedia. Whether at his request or no, Constantia
interceded for him, and Constantine swore to respect his
life. In assigning the blame for the war we may, perhaps,
hesitate between the contradictory charges of the opposing
schools of historians, though modern writers usually follow
the neutral and sober Eutropius, and ascribe it to the
ambition of Constantine. But there is a sharper indict-
ment of Constantine's conduct after the war. Licinius,
in surrendering, had relied on the oath of the conqueror.
He had been stripped of the purple, and exiled to Thessa-
lonica, but he was put to death there shortly afterwards.
Zosimus and Eutropius say that this was done " in spite
of the oath," and the statement of Constantine's more
resolute admirers, that Licinius was discovered in treason-

276 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

able intrigue, has not carried much conviction with later
historians.

Constantia passed, with her daughter Helena and her
boy Licinius, to the court of her brother, who was now
(324) master of the whole Empire. The remark of Zosimus,
that Constantine degenerated into the most wilful license
after his attainment of supreme power — a remark feebly
supported by the assurance of the cautious Eutropius that
" prosperity somewhat altered his character " — contrasts
quaintly with the circumstance that he now became the
Imperial patron of the Christian religion. Here, again, we
hesitate between conflicting accounts, or rival romances.
According to the mediaeval Christian writer Zonaras, who
supplies a remarkable amount of detail that was unknown
to contemporary historians, the conversion of Constantine
had a picturesque origin. On his return to Rome, after
crushing Licinius, he was afflicted with a painful eruption,
and his pagan physicians prescribed a bath in the warm
blood of children. " At once," says the lively writer,
"children were collected from the whole Empire," and
dispatched to the palace. The lamentations of the mothers
fell on the ear of Constantine, touched his heart, and he
left paganism in disgust for Christianity.

The pagan Greek, Zosimus, who at least faithfully
reproduces the pagan gossip of his time — as, on this point,
we know from Sozomen — gives us the legend of his school.
After committing certain murders, which will occupy us
presently, Constantine applied to the priests of the temple
of Jupiter for purification. The priests sternly replied
that their lustral water had no power to obliterate the
trace of such a crime, and Constantine turned in despair
to an Egyptian who was known to " the women-folk " of
the palace. The Christian priest, as he seems to have
been, declared that his religion contained the desired
remedy, and Constantine embraced it.

It will be seen that we now pursue our biographic way
amid a forest of legends. Happily, we may reject both
these stories as, at least, anachronisms. Constantine was

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 277

already a Christian in 324. He had abolished the decrees
of persecution in the year 313, and had taken a keen
interest in Church matters for some years. The whole
court gradually accepted the new faith. Helena, Eusebius
tells us, and Fausta for some time opposed the change
of religion, but Helena at least was converted. Eutropia
appears in the East a few years later as a zealous opponent
of paganism. From their several and ample purses the
money poured into the lean coffers of the Church, and
the conversion of the Empire proceeded rapidly. Villages
that embraced Christianity were raised to the dignity of
cities; nobles and officers were encouraged by promotion;
and ordinary citizens were rewarded with a baptismal
robe and a piece of gold.

It is not for us to inquire into the obscure question of
Constantine's real attitude. Professor Bury and other
eminent authorities believe that his creed was a liberal,
or vague, one until his death. Years afterwards we find
him building pagan temples at Constantinople, and he did
not disdain the' Imperial title of Sovereign Pontiff of the
old religion. On the other hand, the details collected by
Mr. Firth show a very real interest in the Church. He
opened the great Council of Nicaea in the year 325, and
reverently kissed the wounds of those who had suffered
in the persecution. Yet even amid this evidence of ortho-
doxy the hesitating student will find trace of his liberality.
In the letter which he sent to the Catholic bishops he
complained that the subject of their vehement quarrel with
the Arians was " quite insignificant, and entirely dispro-
portionate to such a quarrel." The question at issue was
the divinity of Christ. His experience at the Council
would give him a larger sense of its importance.

From the benedictions of the prelates and the embraces
of the martyts Constantine returned to Europe, and,
within a year, apparently, his court was rent by a tragedy
that has left an irremovable cloud on his memory. He
had gone to Rome, with the court, to celebrate the twentieth
anniversary of his accession. The city exulted in the rare

278 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

indulgence of his presence, and the games and festivities
warmed it with its old enthusiasm. The Empire was
united and at peace, and the growing brood of children
gave promise of an unending dynasty. Crispus, Con-
stantine's eldest son, was now a popular and promising
commander, clothed in the mantle of a Caesar. Two of
the sons of Fausta, or her substitute, were Caesars. Then
there was the twelve-year-old son of Constantia. Over
these watched the aged Helena and Eutropia, and the
mothers and aunts of the younger children.

In the middle of the festivity Rome was startled to
hear that Crispus had been arrested, by his father's
command, and exiled to Pola, in Istria. From that remote
and solitary region the report at length came that he had
been put to death. Every eye was turned on the palace,
and before long — most of the historians say— the gay
figure of the beautiful young Empress disappeared, and
the report spread that she had been brutally suffocated
in the steam of a dense vapour-bath. The horror was
increased, and the prospect of a humane interpretation
lessened, when it was learned that the innocent child
of Constantia also had been put to death. Such is the
grave and mysterious tragedy of Constantine's mature
years. As Fausta has been heavily indicted by those who
have sought to defend her husband, and Helena impeached
by his accusers, we may glance at the evidence on which
one's verdict must be based.

There are partisan historians who would cast doubt
on the whole story ; there are more serious historians,
such as Gibbon (who again gallantly opposes the critics),
who say that Fausta, at least, was not slain ; and the rest
are divided in opinion as to whether it was a just execution
or a ghastly crime. The first two opinions are now
untenable. There is no serious dispute that Crispus and
Licinius were put to death. That Fausta was killed is
now equally established. Gibbon relied upon a certain
anonymous writer to show that Fausta was living long after-
wards, but it has been shown that the writer is not speaking

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 279

of Fausta and Constantine. Moreover, Dr. Seeck, in a
special study of the evidence ("Die Verwandtenmorde
Constantins des Grossen," Zettschrift fur Whs. Theol.,
Bd. 33), has shown that the coins of Fausta and Crispus,
unlike those of the other members of the Imperial family,
end before the year 330. Dr. GOrres, who held Gibbon's
view, consents that this proof is decisive. The only serious
question is that of motive or justification.

Let us glance at the authorities, in the order of their
nearness to the event. Bishop Eusebius is naturally
silent ; he professes to give only the things that edify in
the life of Constantine, and is writing almost in his son's
court. Eutropius, the soundest and most impartial writer
of the next generation, says (x. 6) that the character of
Constantine "was somewhat changed with prosperity,"
and that " following the exigencies of the situation
\necessiiudines reruni], he put to death, first his excellent
son and the son of his sister, a boy of promising character,
then his wife and a number of friends." St. Jerome, in
his Latin version of the " Chronicle " of Eusebius, writes,
at the year 329, that " Crispus, the son of Constantine,
and Licinius the younger, the son of Constantia, are most
cruelly put to death in the ninth year of his reign," and
three years later we read : " Constantine put to death
his wife Fausta." ' Dr. Seeck believes that we have here
only an echo of Eutropius, but Jerome would hardly add
" most cruelly " on so cautious a narrative. Aurelius
Victor, a contemporary of Eutropius, says that Crispus
" was put to death by his father for some unknown reason,"
and Orosius, the Christian historian, merely observes
that Constantine put Crispus and Licinius to death.

From these earlier writers we learn only that the deaths
were cruel, and the motive unknown, but later writers
have successively built up a story that has provoked endless

' It is from the confusion of dates that I ascribe the words confidently
to Jerome, and not Eusebius The words "ninth year" can only refer to
the ninth year of the Csesarate of Crispus, or 326. The interval of three
years has no significance in view of the confusion of dates.

28o THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

discussion. Sidonius Apollinaris, ttie most cultivated and
liberal Christian writer of the fifth century, says, with the
confidence of a parenthesis (Ep. v), that Crispus was
poisoned, and Fausta killed in a vapour-bath; and that
a couplet was fixed on the palace-gate recalling the crimes
of Nero. The epitomist of Aurelius Victor declares that
Crispus was put to death at the instigation of Fausta,
and Fausta was " thereupon " killed in a vapour-bath, as
Helena bitterly reproached Constantine for the death of
Crispus. ZOsimus (ii. 29) says : " With no regard for the
law of nature he put to death his son Crispus, on the
ground that he was suspected of intimacy with Fausta,"
and, when Helena heavily reproached him, he, " as if to
console her," suffocated Fausta in an overheated bath.
Philostorgius, a Christian writer of the same (fifth) century,
declares that Fausta was put to death because she was
caught in adultery with a groom. The story culminates in
the twelfth-century annalist Zonaras. After telling his
incredible legend about Constantine and the babies, he
represents Fausta in the character of Potiphar's wife. She
conceived a passion for the handsome Caesar, was repelled
by him, and then, denounced him to Constantine as having
offered violence to her. Crispus was put to death. Then
Constantine learned in some way — Helena is left to the
imagination — that he had been deceived, and he angrily
killed Fausta in a vapour-bath.

It is remarkable how many grave writers have favoured
this legend of the mediaeval writer,^ yet, besides its obvious
growth through the centuries, it has the fatal weakness
of throwing no light whatever on the murder of Licinius,
the son of Constantine's most cherished sister. We are
reduced to conjecture in face of this mysterious and
terrible tragedy. That the youths met with some violent

' Gibbon, Professor Bury, and Mr. Firth make Zosimus coincide with
Zonaras. The reader will see from my literal translation of his words that
he differs very materially. He does not suggest that Fausta accused
Crispus, or that she was really guilty of any misconduct ; but he pointedly
accuses Helena.

FAUSTA

FLAVIA HELENA

ENLARGED FKO^r COINS IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 281

death at the hands of the Emperor, that Helena bitterly
remonstrated with him, and that the savage suffocation
of Fausta followed this remonstrance, seems to be clear.
We may further conclude with some confidence, from the
persistent rumour of amorous relations, that this charge
was allowed to reach the outside world in extenuation of
the murders. But it is suspected by many historians, and
seems to be suggested by the obscure language of Eutro-
pius, that the real motive was political.

Crispus was in great favour with both the people and
the troops, and had distinguished himself in the war with
Licinius. If anything happened to Constantine, who was
in his fifty-second year, Crispus had a clear prospect of
the throne. It would not be unnatural for Fausta to
resent this, and one is tempted to see, either an effect
of her importunity or a proof of Constantine's jealousy
of his son, in the fact that Constantine took away the
province of Gaul from Crispus, without compensation, in
323, and gave it to the eldest of his legitimate sons.
From that time Crispus Was retained in idleness, and
probably discontent, under the eye of his father. He
would be a natural focus for all the dissatisfaction in the
Empire, and the Romans, and pagans generally, regarded
Constantine and his family with anger and disdain on
account of their abandonment of the old religion. By
the year 326 Constantine was in a state of extraordinary
nervousness and suspicion. Before going to Rome he
issued an edict in which he revealed his frame of mind
to the whole Empire. At Rome he flouted the most
cherished customs of the city, and may well have incurred
fresh murmurs. Something occurred that brought his
suspicion of Crispus-^who may not have become a Chris-
tian — to an acute stage, and he condemned him to exile
and death. This theory is also the only one to explain,
with any plausibility, the execution of young Licinius.
He was the only other rival of Constantine's legitimate
sons. It is impossible for us to say whether Crispus had
incurred any guilt or no, but the silence of the earlier

282 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

writers and panegyrists is a grave circumstance. If there
had been plausible evidence of conspiracy they would
not have remained silent. In any case, the sentence on
Crispus was harsh and unjustifiable, and the execution of a
twelve-year-old boy was a piece of brutality that only
the worse Emperors would have perpetrated.

The murder of Fausta is even more perplexing. Even
if the late and negligible stories of Philostorgius and
Zonaras were true, she was not executed, but brutally
murdered. The only firm point in the conflicting evidence
is the persistent association of her death with the anger
of Helena. We have no evidence of any value in regard
to her relation to Crispus ; but the words of Zosimus,
which are not inconsistent with the earlier writers, en-
able us to extend the above theory to her. Constantine,
on this view, put Crispus and Licinius to death because
they were possible nuclei of the conspiracy which he
believed to pervade the Empire. Adopting a famihar
device, however, he concealed his motive under a charge
of amorous irregularity, or too great a familiarity with the
Empress. Helena, who was greatly attached to Crispus,
seems to have insisted that, if there was any guilt, both
were guilty, and Constantine savagely completed his
work by murdering his wife. The Christian historians
describe Fausta as opposing Constantine's progress in
his new faith, and, as we have no evidence that Crispus
had embraced it, one may not implausibly wonder whether
the two did not attract the favour of the pagan Romans,
to the extreme anger of the Emperor. No charge against
Fausta was made public. During the lifetime of Con-
stantine's eldest son, Julian described her, in one of his
orations, as not only one of the most beautiful, but one oi
the most virtuous and noble ladies of her time. Even if we
make allowance for the licensed flattery of a panegyrist,
the description would be too glaringly inconsistent with
any Imperial theory of her infidelity. She was probably
in her thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth year at the time when
she met her appalling death.

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 283

Constantine hastened to remove the gloomy, stricken
court from the disdainful eyes of Rome. The pagans
pointed with fierce scorn to these fruits of the new re-
ligion, as they expressed it. One day it was found that
some one had fastened a Latin couplet — written, the pagans
of a later day boasted, by the hand of the Emperor's
chief counsellor, Ablabius — on the gate of the palace :

Say ye the Golden Age of Saturn breaks again?
Of Nero's bloody hue these jewels are.

Either at once, or in the course of the next year, the
court broke up. Constantine went to direct the building
of the new capital of the West, which was to bear his
name. Later pagans said that he fled from the theatre
of his crimes and the scorn of Rome, but the ample lines
of Constantinople had been traced long before, and the
site had been chosen for its strategical importance. Helena
sought the land in which Christ had lived and died, and her
pious munificence won for her the halo of sanctity. The
legend of her finding the cross does not appear until
seventy years afterwards, and Eusebius tells us that it
was Constantine, not she, who found the sepulchre and
built a church over it. But Helena, who had now great
wealth, covered the land with churches, and returned
with a great repute for piety. She died soon after her
return — in 328, Tillemont thinks — having passed her
eightieth year.

Europia also went on a pilgrimage to Palestine, and
seems to have settled in the East. We find her a few
years later urging Constantine to scatter the pagans who
are defiling some sacred spot with their impure cere-
monies. Theodora seems to have died, at some unknown
date, before the year of the murders. Constantia died
in, or about, the year 329. Her Arian friend Eusebius
had been banished, at the triumph of the Athanasians,
but she obtained his recall, and adhered to his Unitarian
creed. In her last hours she succeeded in recommending

284 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

an Arian priest to Constantine, and prolonged the religi-
ous struggle. We pass to a new generation of Empresses,
and may dismiss briefly the ten years which remain of
Constantine's rule and introduce us to the events of the
next chapter.

In the month of May of the year 330, the new city
of Constantinople was solemnly dedicated. The curious
reader will find in Gibbon a splendid restoration of its
princely proportions, its stores of art gathered from all
parts of the Empire, its superb palace, its great hippo-
drome, its churches and temples, its spacious fora, and
its lofty column of porphyry, surmounted by a gigantic
statue, in which the head of Constantine replaced that of
Apollo, and the various attributes of the god he still
admired were hesitatingly redeemed by emblems of the
jealous God of his new faith. The enormous sums ab-
sorbed in the building of the new city were regarded by
the pagans as one of the causes of the decay of the
Empire, and the bitter strife of Arians and Athanasians,
which distracted it, irritated their resentment. But their
day was closing. The arguments with which they clung
to a Jupiter and a Venus in whom they no longer be-
lieved were hollow; the rewards of conversion were
great. The grey gods saw their crowds of worshippers
becoming thinner and less joyous. The Empire lifted the
humble cross into the sunlight from Persia to Britain.

The last decade of Constantine's life was inglorious.
We might distrust the partial and severe accusations of
Zosimus, but the substance of his charge is found in the
other authorities. His vast and hurried enterprise in
building forced him to lay heavy burdens on his enfeebled
Empire, and we have the authority of Ammianus Mar-
cellinus that he "encouraged those about him to open
devouring jaws" in a lamentable degree. Conversion
was the first right to favour and wealth. The later
Emperor Julian, we are not surprised to find, pours
acrid satire on him. In the treatise (" Caesares ") in which
he introduces the Emperors of Rome to the Olympic

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPRESSES 285

court, he makes Constantine turn to the goddess Luxury,
as the one congenial deity, and she introduces him only
to her sister Prodigality. He ridicules Constantine's
womanly finery in dress and jewels, his elaborate crown
of false hair, his complete lapse into effeminate ways.
Aurelius Victor gives us the proverbial judgment of the
next generation on Constantine : in his first decade he
was admirable, in his second decade thievish, in his third
decade a squanderer. He made the final blunder of —
without naming a successor — dividing the Empire among
his sons and nephews, of gravely unequal character, and
died in 337, leaving them and their supporters to engage
in a murderous struggle for supremacy.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN

WHEN the announcement of Constantine's death had
been borne by swift couriers to the distant pro-
vinces, and the body, in its golden coffin, had
been transferred to Constantinople, there was a nervous
rush of aspiring Emperors and Empresses to the capital.
The unification of the Empire under Constantine had cost
the State some hundred and fifty thousand of its finest
soldiers, who perished in civil warfare while powerful
nations pressed against its yielding frontiers. In his later
years he had so distributed these provinces, whose unity
had been so dearly purchased, among his sons and nephews,
worthy and unworthy, that dismemberment was certain to
follow his death. His eldest son, Constantine, now in his
twenty-first year, ruled Gaul and Britain ; Constantius,
the second son, a youth of twenty, was the Caesar of the
East ; the third son, Constans, aged seventeen, held sway
over Italy and Africa. His nephew Delmatius, also entitled
Caesar, controlled Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece, and the
younger nephew Hannibalian bore the ornate title of King
of Kings in Pontus and Cappadocia. The two brothers of
Constantine, and the husbands of his two sisters, were not
left without a share of the Imperial provision.

The race to Constantinople after the death of the
Emperor may be imagined, but the suddenness and horror
of the consequent tragedy must have sobered even the most
frivolous. Constantius, the second son, was the first to
arrive, and to him the conduct of the impressive funeral
was entrusted. The members of the family gathered round

386

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 287

the marble palace from all quarters of the Empire, and the
shade of Constantine continued for some months to rule
the State, until their conflicting claims should be adjusted.
Julius Constantius and Delmatius, the legitimate heirs of
Constantius Chlorus, who had been thrust aside thirty
years before by the vigorous son of Minervina, were now
men in the prime of life. The younger son of the latter,
Hannibalian, the " King of Kings," strutted in a scarlet and
gold mantle, and had married the fiery and ambitious young
daughter of the late Emperor, Constantina. Anastasia,
Constantine's sister, brought her husband, the "Patrician"
Optatus. The partition of power seemed a formidable
task. But in the weeks that succeeded Constantine's death
a new and sinister power arose, and its secret designs pre-
pared a ghastly simplification of the problem.

Constantius became insensibly the central figure of the
drama. A callous youth, with little strength of character,
he was selected by the eunuchs and corrupt officers of
Constantine's court as a likely instrument of their plans.
It was agreed that the interests of these officers and of the
sons of Constantine would be best served by a removal of
all the other competitors, and a diabolical plot was devised.
The details are given at length only by the Christian
historian Philostorgius, of the next century, and are re-
garded with reserve ; but an Arian writer would hardly
inculpate an Arian bishop and an Arian monarch without
some juSt ground. His story is that Constantine left a
will in which he declared that he had been poisoned by his
two half-brothers. The will was given to Bishop Eusebius.
When the brothers were eager to see the will of Constantine,
Eusebius is said to have discovered a fine piece of casuistry.
He put the will in the hands of the dead Emperor, and
covered it with his robes, so that he might, without injury
to his delicate conscience, assure the brothers that Con-
stantine had indeed shown him a will, but he had returned
it into his hands. The will — or a will — was now produced,
and the people and army were assured by their dead ruler
that he had been poisoned by his family.

288 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

The story is regarded with suspicion by most historians.
For the reason I have given, and because it is the only
plausible explanation of what followed, it seems probable
that such a will was produced and published by Constantius.
It was probably forged by the palace officials. Whether
they and the sons of Constantine used this device or no,
they somehow directed the tempestuous anger of the troops
upon the older princes and their families, and extinguished
their claims in a brutal massacre. Julian casts the blame on
Constantius, admitting that he acted under compulsion, and
the other fourth-century writers do not differ. Constantius
" permitted," rather than " commanded." The corrupt
power behind the throne directed the murders, and the sons
of Constantine purchased a larger dominion by the blood of
their uncles and cousins. The two uncles, seven cousins,
and other distinguished men, were included in the bloody
list. Then the three Imperial youths divided the Empire
between them, and departed to their provinces.

The wives of the eldest and the youngest of the brothers
are unknown to us, and the first wife of Constantius is so
little known that we may pass rapidly over a number o
years. The Imperial sisters of Constantine — except Con-
stantia, whom we have considered— enter little in the
history of the time. Anastasia disappears after the murder
of her husband. Eutropia will presently mingle her blood
with that of her insurgent son on the soil of Italy. Con-
stantina, the daughter of Constantine who had married
Hannibalian, and who already bore the title of Augusta,
retired into a long widowhood, from which we shall find
her emerging later in a monstrous character.

Constantius had been married to his cousin Galla in
336. She seems to have been the daughter of Julius
Constantius, since Julian says that her father and brother
were included in the massacre. Her personality is never
outlined for us in the historical writings of the time, and
we are left to imagine her shuddering or languishing in
the arms that were stained with the blood of her family.
She died some time before 350, as Magnentius offered his

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 289

daughter to Constantius in that year. We have, therefore,
no Empress who can engage our attention until 353, and
may be content with a slight summary of the events which
lead on to the appearance of Eusebia and the reappearance
of the repulsive Constantina.

Three years after the partition of the Empire Con-
stantine and Constans quarrelled about their territory.
The elder brother led his troops into the dominion of
Constans, and was slain ; and his provinces were added
to those of Constans. The character of the youngest son
of Constantine was gross and intolerable. He revived
the lowest vice of his pagan predecessors, and his open
parade of the handsome barbarian youths whom he bought,
or attracted to his frivolous court, disgusted his officers.
In the beginning of the year 350 they rebelled against
him. A banquet was given at Augustodunum (Autun) to
the notables of the town and the officers of the camp,
and at a late hour, when the abundant wine had warmed
the hearts and obscured the judgment of the diners, the
commander of two of the chief legions, Magnentius, was
brought before them in a purple robe. Constans awoke
from his vices to find that he had lost the throne and the
army, and fled toward Spain. He was overtaken and
slain. Some blood-curse seemed to hang over the house
of Constantine. Constantius, who had been long occupied
in resisting the Persians, now wheeled round his troops,
and faced the usurper.

In the long struggle that followed there were two
incidents of interest for us. Constantina, the Imperial
widow, was living in restless impotence at the time.
Between the rebellious provinces of the West and the loyal
provinces of the East was the intermediate district between
the Danube and the Greek sea. Constantina, it is said,
instigated the commander of the troops in these regions,
Vetranio, to assume the purple. What we shall see of her
character presently will dispose us to believe that she
meditated a return to power through Vetranio, but Con-
stantius astutely disarmed and exiled him, and accepted

19

290 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

her explanation that she had acted with the pure aim of
resisting the advance of the Western usurper. Constan-
tine's sister Eutropia also appears in the struggle. Her
son Nepotian assumed the purple at Rome, and led out
a motley army to attack Magnentius. They were quickly
annihilated, and mother and son — two of the few remaining
members of Constantine's family — were slain.

The interest of the student of the time is divided
between the clash of armies and the not wholly bloodless
conflicts of theologies. We are concerned with neither,
and need only observe that Constantius defeated Mag-
nentius, after a long and costly struggle — in one battle
54,000 Roman soldiers perished in civil warfare — and re-
united the Empire under his sole dominion. The young
Empress of the defeated Magnentius retired into widow-
hood, and will be restored to us in the next chapter. In
the meantime Constantina has returned to the field, and
her Imperial adventures call for our notice.

Two children, the sons of Julius Constantius, had sur-
vived the massacre at Constantinople. Gallus was in his
twelfth year, Julian in his sixth. They were hidden until
the fury of the soldiers had abated, and then their tender
age induced the murderers to overlook them. The jealous
eye of Constantius fell on them when they approached
manhood, and they were confined in a fortress, or ancient
palace, in Cappadocia. In the solitude of Macellum no
company was offered them but that of slaves and soldiers.
Julian, in whose mind the seeds of an elevated philosophy
had taken root, resisted the pressing temptations, and
devoted the long days to culture ; but Gallus, a sensual
and ill-balanced youth, adopted the coarse distractions
of his spacious jail. After six years (in 351) they were
not only set at liberty, but Gallus vi^as amazed to find
himself clothed with the dignity of Caesar and married
to the Emperor's sister Constantina. Constantius was
compelled to leave the East in order to face Magnentius,
and he needed a Csesar to rule in his name.

The three years' rule of Gallus and Constantina was

THE WIVES OF CONST ANTIUS AND JULIAN 291

an Imperial scandal. Unscrupulous and unbridled, the
daughter of Constantine lives in the literature of the time
as a monstrous perversion of womanhood. With her
begins the historical work (as we have it) of Ammianus
Marcellinus, a retired general, one of the most scrupulous
and ample chroniclers of his time. He bursts at once into
a vivid denunciation of her vices. She was "a mortal
Megaera," an ogre, swollen with pride and thirsting for
human blood. It is unfortunate that Ammianus gives us
no personal description of the women of his time. His
work contains charming vignettes of the Emperors and
princes, but he seems never to have looked on the face
or figure of their wives. Gallus, he tells us, was a superb
youth in figure and stature, his handsome features crowned
with soft golden hair, and bearing a look of dignity and
authority, in spite of his vices. The strain of cruelty and
coarseness in him was provoked to excesses by his wife.
When his savage conduct had exasperated his subjects
he used to send his spies, in the disguise of beggars, to
gather the secret whispers of discontent; and he even
stooped to the practice of wandering himself, in disguise,
from tavern to tavern on the well-lit streets of Antioch
to discover his critics. Antioch had been noted for cen-
turies for its freedom of speech, and the prisons and
torture-chambers of Gallus were busy.

Constantina not only encouraged this criminal conduct,
but enlarged on it. A woman of vicious character came
one day to disclose some plot, or pretended plot, to her.
She rewarded her heavily, and sent the harlot out into the
city in the royal chariot, to encourage others. An Alexan-
drian noble distinguished himself by resisting the guilty
passion of his mother-in-law. The woman presented
Constantina with a pearl necklace, and the noble was put
to death. We need not prolong the disgusting narrative.
Flavia Julia Constantina, a beautiful and able woman,
who can scarcely have passed her thirtieth year, was one
of the worst Empresses in the Imperial gallery. One can
but suggest, in some attenuation of her guilt, that the

292 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

murder of her husband by her brother when she was a
young girl in her early teens, and the fourteen years of
young widowhood that followed, had provoked the worst
elements of her nature.

As long as Constantius was occupied with the struggle
against Magnentius,he overlooked the excesses of his Caesar
and his sister in the East. His opponent, Magnentius, was
not so compliant, though he wasted no legions in an effort
to dethrone him. He sent a soldier to assassinate Gallus
and seduce the troops. As the man resided, however, in a
tavern near Antioch, he became less cautious over his cups,
and boasted to his associates of his mission. The old
woman who kept the tavern seemed too far removed from
politics to be taken into account, but she promptly de-
nounced her guest at the palace, and he was put to death.
Then Magnentius fell, and committed suicide, and Con-
stantius turned to consider the scandalous conduct of his
viceroy and his sister.

Constantius proceeded, as he usually did whenever it
was possible, by craft instead of force. The Prefect of the
East had been slain by the people of Antioch, with the
guilty connivance of Gallus, and a new Prefect, named
Domitian, was sent to Antioch, together with the Prefect
of the Palace, Montius. Domitian had orders to secure,
by the most tactful and seductive means, that Gallus should
visit Italy, and walk into the pit dug for him. He was,
however, a sturdy officer, more sensible of the just sub-
stance than the form of his instructions. Gallus and
Constantina were at once insulted because, on the day of
his arrival, he drove insolently past the gate of the palace,
and went straight to his villa. They then condescended to
invite him to the palace. In the presence of the hated
rulers he laid aside all pretence of diplomacy, and roughly
ordered the Caesar to proceed at once to Italy, or incur
the just resentment of the Emperor. Gallus, stung by his
insolence, at once gave the Prefect into the custody of the
soldiers. Montius, who was present, and who also had
lost all feeling for diplomacy in the passionate encounter.

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 293

remonstrated with Gallus, adding the taunt that a man who
had no power to dismiss one of his magistrates had no
right to imprison a Prefect of the East. We are assured
by Philostorgius that Constantina flew at the official,
dragged him from the tribunal, and pushed him into the
hands of the guard. We may prefer the more sober version
of Ammianus. Gallus impetuously called upon the troops
and the people of Antioch to defend their ruler, and they
responded with surprising alacrity. The distinguished
officers of Constantius were bound hand and foot, dragged
through the streets until the last spark of life was extinct,
and then flung into the river.

Still Constantius hesitated to enter upon a civil war
with the East, and the unscrupulous cunning which dictated
his policy discovered an alternative procedure. First, the
commander of the cavalry in the East was summoned to
Milan, that the danger of a rising might be lessened.
Then, a series of letters, couched in the most friendly and
mendacious terms, were sent to the Caesar. Constantius
was eager to see his beloved sister once more, and to confer
with his Caesar. For some time they resisted the invitation,
but at length Constantina, less apprehensive of personal
injury, set out for Italy. She died on the journey, at
Coenum in Bithynia, of fever, and her remains were buried
at Rome. She was still in her early thirties at the time of
her death. The single deed that is recorded in praise of
her is that she and Gallus planted a Christian church in the
dissolute grove of Daphne, and drew the austerity of the
new faith upon that region of sensuous superstition and
sensual license. Her share in that act of piety may be
put in the scale against her avarice, cruelty, selfishness, and
unbridled temper.

The fate of her husband may be briefly recorded. Lured
at length by the deceitful professions of Constantius, he
set out for Milan with his princely retinue. As soon as
he reached Europe, the retinue was brushed aside, and he
discovered himself a captive. When the little party arrived
in Pannonia, he was stripped of the purple, and conducted

294 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

to the remote prison at Pola, where Crispus had been
executed. There he was " tried" by a eunuch of Constan-
tius's court, and within a few days a breathless courtier —
he had ridden several horses to death — rushed into the
presence of Constantius with the shoes of the slain Caesar.
The Empire was reunited under Constantius, at a cost of
the deaths of twenty princes and princesses of his house
and their dependents, and fifty thousand soldiers ; and the
eunuchs and courtiers filled the palace at Milan with tl\e
incense they offered to the young conqueror.

Constantius had, meantime, married again, and a more
worthy and commanding Empress engages our attention.
Toward the close of his struggle with Magnentius, in the
year 352 or the beginning of 353, the Emperor married a
Macedonian lady, Aurelia Eusebia, of remarkable beauty,
no little ability, and dignified personality. Her father and
brothers had had consular rank in their province ; her
mother had been distinguished for the propriety of her
conduct and the careful rearing of her children after the
death of her husband. The language in which the Emperor
Julian describes her is enhanced by gratitude, and enjoys
the license of a panegyric ; some would say that it is
warmed by a more tender sentiment. But Ammianus, who
also knew her, pronounces that the beauty of her character
was not less splendid than that of her form, and, beyond a
peevish complaint of a later writer that she did not confine
herself to the proper and restricted sphere of a woman, she
maintains her high repute among the conflicting writers of
the time. The one grave imputation, which Ammianus
seems to find quite consistent with his superlative praise
of her, we will consider later.

We find Eusebia established in the court at Milan at
the time when the heads of the last of Constantius's
rivals are falling. When Gallus has disappeared, he
proudly takes the title of "Lord of the World," an,d
endeavours to live up to it, amid his company of eunuchs
and fawning attendants. In the hands of those astute and
concordant schemers the weak and vain monarch was

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 295

easily persuaded to arrive at decisions which he attributed
to his own judgment, and it is, perhaps, the most indulgent
plea that we can make for him that he was governed by
a power so subtle and insinuating that he never perceived
it. The high merit of a scrupulous chastity is claimed for
him; but the monastic writer Zonaras somewhat detracts
from this by affirming that his qoldness deprived him of
a dynasty and forced his beautiful and accomplished wife
into a fatal decline. His piety, at least, might be praised;
but it rested on a basis of Arian creed and is exposed
to the scorn of the orthodox, who called him Antichrist.

We may concur in the strictures of Zonaras so far as
to admit that Eusebia cannot have been happy in his
court. The eunuch Eusebius, who had tried and exe-
cuted Gallus, was the most powerful man in the Empire.
Ammianus observes, with heavy irony, that Constantius
was believed to be not without influence with his emascu-
lated chamberlain. A hierarchy of lesser, but hardly less
corrupt, officials led up to this favoured minister, and
Ammianus, from personal acquaintance with the court,
assures us that their rapacity and unscrupulousness grew
with the power of Constantius. A Persian officer, Mer-
curius, had the nickname of " The Count of Dreams," from
the skill with which he could make the most innocent
fancies of the night bear a treasonable complexion, and
bring destruction and spoliation on the dreamer. Paulus,
who had risen from the lowly position of table-steward,
was called "The Chain," because of the art with which
he could involve a man in a charge of plotting. Torture
and confiscation became common experiences once more,
and men began to shrink from even the most innocent
conversation.

This unpleasant tenor of the Imperial life at Milan
was relieved by the great controversy of the Arians and
Athanasians, which was brought to Italy for decision.
How Constantius and his officers induced the Latin
bishops to condemn Athanasius, in 355, by "stroking their
bellies instead of laying the rod on their backs," to use

296 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

the vigorous phrase of St. Hilary, does not concern us,
but it is interesting to see how Eusebia came in contact
with the prelates. When the Roman bishop, Liberius,
bravely — for a time — incurred exile rather than condemn
Athanasius, Eusebia sent him a sum of money. He
returned it with the suggestion that her husband might
find it useful for his troops or his Arian bishops. A new
power, besides that of eunuchs, was rising. Suidas pre-
serves a story that may be given here, though it may or
may not refer to this Council. As the bishops, he says,
came to the town where the court was, for the purpose
of holding a Council, they called to salute the Empress.
Leontius, Bishop of Tripoli, refused to visit her, and she
sent word that, if he would call, she would give him the
funds to build a large church. The saintly prelate replied
that he would condescend to visit her if he were assured
that she would receive him with fitting respect — if, he
explained, she would rise from her throne at his entrance,
bend for his benediction, and remain standing, while he
sat, until he permitted her to resume her seat.

In the same year (355), however, a more pleasant
diversion alleviated the weariness of Eusebia, and another
Empress is introduced to our notice. We have already
said that the unhappy Gallus had for companion in his
Cappadocian jail a young half-brother of the name of
Julian. Imbibing his early culture at the alternate hands
of Bishop Eusebius and the philosophical eunuch Mar-
donius, Julian had come to prefer the Greek culture of the
latter to the theological lore of the prelate. He had come
out untainted from the lonely fortress at Macellum, and
had passed to Constantinople and then to Nicomedia.
There the distinguished pagan Libanius attracted his alle-
giance, and from the three years in which he studied at
Nicomedia his mind was wholly given to the older culture,
however much he might be compelled to dissemble his
aversion for the new religion. After the execution of
Gallus he was brought to Milaii. With growing apprehen-
sion he awaited the decision of " the eunuch, chamberlain,

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 297

and cook" who, he says, directed the bloody counsels of
Constantius. But he found an unexpected and powerful
friend in the Empress.

It seems clear that Eusebia first espoused his cause in
a pure feeling of humanity. The officials had impeached
the innocent youth of twenty-three or twenty-four, chiefly
on the ground of having visited Gallus, and his life was
gravely threatened. Eusebia threw all her influence in
the scale against the malignant officials, and, though they
prevented Constantius from hearing him, she saved his
life. He was housed in the suburbs of Milan, and was
taken one day to see Eusebia. " I seemed to see, as in a
temple, the image of the goddess of wisdom," he afterwards
wrote in his " Letter to the Athenians." The splendid
figure of the beautiful Empress can easily be imagined
to have made a remarkable impression on the bookish
youth. Eusebia was differently, but favourably, impressed.
Julian was a well-made youth, of moderate stature and
broad shoulders. He had the soft curly hair of his brother,
a straight nose, large mouth, and brilliant eyes. The
humane feeling of the Empress assumed a more tender and
personal complexion, and she set to work to make Julian's
fortune.

He was sent for a time to Como, and, as her influence
prevailed, recalled to Milan, and permitted to reply to his
accusers before the Emperor. He was then permitted to
retire to his mother's small estate in Bithynia, but Eusebia
induced Constantius to impose on him the pleasant sentence
of an exile to Athens. From the beloved schools of Athens
he was, after a few months, recalled to Milan, to hear
the astounding news that he was to receive the purple robe
of Caesar and the hand of the Emperor's sister Helena.
He shrank in tears from the political world that opened to
him, but Eusebia tactfully overcame his opposition and
guided his conduct. Her eunuchs ran continually between
the palace and his lodging. The beard and cloak of the
philosopher were laid aside, and Julian blushed to find
himself accoutred in the splendid trappings of a com-

298 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

mander. The jeers and intrigues of the court were at
length silenced, and, on November 6th, 355, he stood on a
lofty platform before the troops while Constantius invested
him with the purple and exhorted him to sustain the
honour of Rome. The marriage with Helena followed,
and in December Julian and his bride, with a valuable
collection of books as the gift of Eusebia, set out for
Gaul.

Julian never saw Eusebia again, and cannot have had
the least correspondence with her. Even in Milan he
had, on reflection, torn up a letter in which he modestly
wished his patroness the reward of a succession of children.
On his side there was nothing but a pure feeling of
gratitude and reverence. She was, says Zosimus, " a woman
of erudition and prudence above her sex " ; a shining
example of spiritual and bodily beauty, according to
Ammianus. She had most probably saved his life, and
most certainly made his fortune. But it is believed by
many writers that Eusebia's feeling for Julian was of a less
ethereal nature. Gaetano Negri, whose life of Julian is
one of the most distinguished biographies of a Roman
Emperor, justly repudiates the suggestion of improper
feeling on her part, and it is a superfluous inference. But
one may, without casting the least reflection on her virtue,
hesitate to think that the only link between them was
a sympathy of culture. Such sympathy we may well
assume between a cultivated Greek lady and an ardent
Hellenist, but so cold and spiritual a relation may very
naturally and pardonably have been strengthened by a
warmer feeling. Julian had no sensuous attractiveness for
a beautiful woman. But his manly person and character,
his vast superiority to the crowd of ignoble parasites she
daily encountered, and to her weak and mediocre husband,
must have excited an admiration less purely intellectual
than an appreciation of his learning.

The person of Flavia Julia Helena remains faint and
elusive in the ample chronicle of the time. She was much
older than Julian, who was in his twenty-fifth year, while

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 299

Helena cannot have been less than thirty.^ She had not
been previously married, Ammianus says, and the long
maidenhood w^ould not tend to make her attractive. The
marriage was arranged by Eusebia in the political interest
of Julian, and it probably retained the chill that a manage
de convenance, with such disparity of age, would naturally
bear. In Julian's abundant, and largely autobiographical,
writings she is barely mentioned. It was the marriage of
an old maid — for the Roman world — with an austere,
if conscientious, philosopher. The gradual discovery of
Julian's secret loyalty to the old gods would not make
their relations more cordial.

We may, therefore, regret that the single line of inquiry
which we pursue will compel us to leave almost unnoticed
the brilliant episode of the reign of Julian. The more
liberal taste of our time has removed the violent and
conflicting colours which the partisan writers of the fourth
century laid upon the portrait of Julian. To Gregory
of Nazianzum he was a faint impersonation of Antichrist ;
to the pagan writers a modest incorporation of Apollo.
In modern history he is a most conscientious thinker,
a humane and unselfish ruler, a very capable commander,
a conceited and unattractive personality. His character,
in spite of the shade that clings to it as a trace of the
enforced dissimulation of his early years, is great : his
ability and achievements are just entitled to be called
brilliant.

Helena and Eusebia appear little in the years that
follow, and we must narrate the necessary events very
briefly. The frame of mind in which Constantius sent
Julian to Gaul as Caesar is not at all clear. The frontier
was obliterated ; the barbarians overrunning the country
in formidable strength; the military force inadequate, ex-
cept with fine control. Some writers are disposed to

' Miss Gardner observes, in her life of Julian, that we do not know if
Helena was older than Julian, But, while Julian is known to have been
born in 331 or 332, since he was in his sixth year at the time of the massacre
of 337, and died at thirty-two, Helena's mother had been murdered in 326,

300 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

think that Constantius was sending his cousin to death.
At all events, the faith of Eusebia, that her young and
shrinking scholar would surmount these difficulties, was
great; and it was rewarded. Julian at once discovered a
bravery that none had suspected. He cut his way through
a region occupied by the barbarians, surveyed the devastated
frontier, and passed the first year of his inexperience with
only one small disaster. The difficulty of his task seemed
greater when, in the winter, he was besieged in Sens, and
the commander of the troops in the neighbourhood refused
to go to his relief. In the trouble that followed Eusebia
obtained for him the full command of the troops, which had
been withheld from him, and from that moment he entered
on a career of victory.

It is probable that Helena did not share his peril in
this winter (356-7). We find her at Rome in April, with
Eusebia and Constantius, and a curious story of their
relations is put before us. Constantius in that month
bestowed his first and only visit upon the ancient capital
of the Empire. Sitting in a chariot that glittered with
gold and gems, preceded by officers whose spears bore
silken dragons, so fashioned as to hiss in the breeze, on
their golden and bejewelled tips, followed by his legions in
battle-array, their breastplates and shields gleaming in the
sun, the Emperor passed with affected indifference between
the dense lines of spectators and the great monuments of
Rome ; though both the vast crowds and the ancient struc-
tures, shining with a beauty that his decaying Empire
could no longer produce, wrung from him in private an
expression of astonishment. Eusebia had invited Helena
to join them in this visit to Rome.

At a later point in his narrative Ammianus makes a
reference to this visit that has perplexed every thoughtful
reader. When he comes to record the death of Helena, he
says that it was due to a poisonous drug administered to
her by Eusebia, during the visit to Rome, to prevent her
from having children, and that in the previous year, when
she was pregnant, Eusebia sent a njidwife tp destroy the

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 301

child under pretence of attending her. It does not seem
to occur to Gibbon and other historians, who adopt this
story, that it suggests in Eusebia a character in complete
contradiction to that ascribed to her by Ammianus himself
and every other Roman writer. A jealousy of Helena,
whether on account of her own childlessness or on account
of Julian, that could force her to such a malignant course,
is utterly inconsistent with the description we have quoted
of her. The story is peremptorily rejected by Miss Gardner
and Signer Negri, and its discord with all that we know of
Eusebia is noticed by most writers.

One is tempted to inquire if it may not be an interpola-
tion, but the text of Ammianus lends no support whatever
to the idea. We can only suppose that Ammianus incor-
porated a piece of idle gossip, and was inattentive to its
inconsistency with his high moral praise of Eusebia. Many
legends, we shall see, sprang up after the death of Helena.
Some of them assail Julian, and are easily traced to
their source. It is possible that the courtiers who op-
posed Eusebia, and doubtless misrepresented her zeal
for Julian, started the rumour, and Ammianus heard it in
Italy years afterwards. It is a mere feather in the scale
against the authorities for the high character of the
Empress.

From Rome Constantius was summoned to repel fresh
invasions in the East, and Helena returned to Gaul. She
remains unnoticed until the spring of the year 360, and we
will not follow Julian through the brilliant campaigns in
which he reduced the most powerful tribes of the bar-
barians, and restored peace and prosperity to his stricken
province. But while Julian succeeded in the West, the
campaign of the troops of Constantius in the East won
for the Emperor few laurels, and entailed grave disasters.
The intriguers now doubled their charges against Julian,
and plausibly suggested that he would be prompted to
claim a higher title than that of Caesar. It was decided
to reduce his power by removing a number of his finest
legions to the East.

302 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Julian was in winter quarters at Paris — as Lutetia was
beginning to be called — when the grave summons reached
him. The island on the Seine, which now bears the
Cathedral, had from early times offered a secure settlement,
and, as the province became more settled, the adjoining
slope, where the Latin Quarter of a later age began, was
occupied with a palace, an amphitheatre, and a few of the
customary institutions of a Roman town. Julian loved the
little settlement on the broad silvery river, surrounded by
dense forests, and he was spending the winter there, attend-
ing with equal judgment and humanity to the civil welfare
of his province, when the officers of Constantius arrived.
He has described at length the painful perplexity into which
he was thrown. Not only would the sacrifice of four of
his best legions seriously impair his strength, but they were
local troops and had enlisted only for local service. He
decided to obey, and ordered the troops to prepare for
departure. An angry murmur arose from the camps, as
the men reflected on the fate that might befall their families
in the ill-protected country. Julian provided that their
wives and children should accompany them, and they
gathered at Paris for the dismissal. In affecting language
the Caesar conveyed to them his thanks and his admoni-
tions, entertained their officers at a banquet, and retired
to his palace.

The sincerity of Julian has been made the theme of
an acrid discussion between his violent critics and his
resolute admirers. But we may, without serious reflection
on his character, doubt whether he entirely wished the
troops to go. Such an order, from such a source, would
plausibly relieve a Caesar from obedience. Only excessive
virtue or uncertain prospect of the issue would counsel
a man to obey it. Both feelings were at work in Julian's
mind, and there is not ground to accuse his later account
of hypocrisy. But we may surmise that, at the time, his
decision was accompanied by unsanctioned hopes and
dreams of a more satisfactory issue. In those days of
anxious deliberation his imagination, however he might

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 303

curb it, must have depicted for him the revival of cul-
ture, the arrest of superstition, the purification of the
court and Empire, that vi^ould follow his elevation to the
throne.

He retired to his palace, where, as he incidentally
observes somewhere, Helena lived with him. But shortly
after midnight a great tumult arose from the direction
of the camp, and from the windows one could see the
troops, the light of their torches gleaming on their drawn
swords, coming toward the palace. The doors were at
once closed, and Julian refused to show himself, but the
cry of " Imperator " easily penetrated to his ears. On
the following morning they broke into the palace, and
forcibly conducted Julian to the camp. He resisted,
threatened, and supplicated, but the troops were con-
sulting their own interest, now gravely threatened by
their revolt, and there was no other course possible but
to consent. He was raised up on a shield, and the legions
broke into a frenzy of delight at their escape from exile.
A diadem only was needed to complete his new dignity,
and Helena, who was present, seems to have offered a
pearl necklace of hers. Julian refused to wear the feminine
adornment, and an officer provided a rich golden collar,
studded with gems, for the coronation.

With the struggle that followed, and the dramatic
chapter that opened in the annals of Rome, we have no
concern. Both our Empresses die before a decisive stage
is reached. The date of the death of Eusebia is not
known. It was some time between the beginning of 359
and the middle of 360, as Constantius married again
toward the end of 360. She is said to have died of an
inflammation of the womb, brought on by taking drugs
for procuring fertility. That such drugs were familiar at
the time, and that the Empress would naturally try their
effect, we readily admit, but we need not entirely over-
look the statement of Zonaras that the conduct of her
husband and the unhappiness of her circumstances brought
the beautiful Greek into a decline. Had she shared the

304 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

throne with Julian, and adopted his views, the story of
Europe might have run differently.^

That Helena was won to the views of Julian is
improbable. She would, no doubt, discover soon after
her marriage that he secretly cherished the cult of the
old gods. From his first month in Gaul he had, with
one assistant, set up a private shrine to them. There
are coins that bear the names of Julian and Helena and
the figures of Isis and Serapis, but they yield no inference.
Nor can we learn the attitude of Helena in the struggle
between her husband and her brother. The complete
silence of Julian suggests that she remained moodily
silent or hostile. Several months were spent in negotia-
tion with Constantius. In December Julian celebrated,
at Vienne, the fifth anniversary of his promotion, and wore
the splendid diadem of an Emperor as he presided at the
games and exercises. In the midst of the festivities Helena
died. Zonaras, who also gives a ridiculous rumour that
she had been divorced by Julian, says that she died in
childbirth. We are tempted to think that the painful
development of her unprosperous marriage weighed
heavily on her, and her pregnancy had a premature and
fatal delivery. Her remains were conveyed to Rome, and
laid by those of her sister Constantina. We need not
notice the charge of one of Constantius's officers that
Julian had poisoned her, and paid the guilty physician
with his mother's jewels. Julian, honestly, professes no
grief at her death, and he never married again.

A third Empress makes a brief appearance at the
time when Helena passes away. Passing from his long
campaign on the Danube to the stricken regions of the
East, Constantius had, toward the close of 360, married for
the third time, at Antioch. Maxima Faustina, his third
Empress, had little time to make an impression on history,
if she were capable of it. As Constantius at length set

' Philostorgius says that, as she lay ill with her malady, Constantius
recalled Bishop Theophilus from exile, and he cured her. But Zonaras
makes her die of this very malady, scouting the 4i''^>^ miracle.

THE WIVES OF CONSTANTIUS AND JULIAN 305

out from Antioch, in the autumn of 361, to crush the
mutiny in the West, as he affected to regard it, he con-
tracted a fever, and died before he reached the European
frontier. Faustina was left with the unborn wife of
the future Emperor Gratian, and will come to our notice
again. The Roman Empire was once more united under
a strong, upright, and accomplished ruler. But Julian
was now wedded to his ideals, and, as no woman shared
his ascetic life and arduous labours, we must pass over
the reforms, the campaigns, and the religious struggles
of the next two years.

20

CHAPTER XIX

JUSTINA

THE splendour of Julian's reign was soon overcast.
In the summer of 363, as he was skilfully extricating
his troops from a dangerous position in Persia, he
was pierced with a javelin, and he expired, with dignity
and serenity, amongst his saddened supporters. Amid
the noisy intrigue for the succession that followed, the
name of Jovian, a popular and handsome officer of no
distinction, obtained the loudest support, and the mantle
bf the brilliant young Emperor was conferred on him.
How he secured the retreat of his troops by humiliating
concessions to the Persians, and the Roman soldiers and
Roman settlers sadly evacuated the provinces on which
the blood of their fathers had been freely spent, and the
emblem of the cross was borne again at the head of the
legions, need not be told here. Not only is the wife of
Jovian, Charito, no more than a name to us, but Jovian
himself died before he reached the luxury of the capital.
His brief enjoyment of power had been adorned by neither
courage nor temperance. Charito sank back into obscurity,
with her infant son, and was years afterwards laid by the
side of her husband in the Church of the Apostles at
Byzantium.

The next reign will introduce us to the stronger and
more prominent personality of the Empress Justina and
other Empresses of some interest. The hum of intrigue
had arisen again in the camp, and the struggle of Christian
and pagan was resumed. The choice of the army at length

306

JUSTINA 307

fell once more on an officer whose chief distinction was
that he had a large and handsome person, and had had
an energetic father. Valentinian had been an officer in
Julian's guards, and had one day, as he attended the
Emperor at sacrifice, cuffed the priest for dropping some
of the lustral water on his coat. Julian banished him
for this violent desecration of his cult, but, though the
more lively writers of the time promptly dispatch him
to remote and contradictory regions, even Tillemont doubts
if the sentence was carried out. It is probable that Julian
had merely dismissed him from the body-guard, as we
find him in the army at the time of Julian's death. With
two other officers he was sent by Jovian to secure the
allegiance of the troops in the West. One legion, devoted
to the memory of Julian, rebelled, and Valentinian had
to fly for his life. He returned to the East, and resumed
his post in the army, as it trailed some miles in the rear
of the retreating Emperor. And in the middle of February
(364) he was amazed to learn that Jovian had died, after
a too liberal supper, and he himself was called to the
throne. He was compelled by the troops to share the
power with his brother Valens, and, leaving the shorn
Eastern provinces under the care of Valens, he went on to
Milan to take possession of the Western throne.

Valeria Severa,^ the first wife of Valentinian, is one
of those shadowy Empresses whose form can hardly be
discerned in the records of the time. She had borne
him a son, the future Emperor Gratian, five years before,
but she does not seem to have secured his affection, and
we shall find her retiring in disgrace as soon as the
beautiful Justina appears at court. Albia Dominica, the
wife of Valens, is not more interesting, but an Empress
whom we have dismissed in a former chapter at once
reappears at Constantinople in opposition to her.

Before they separated Valens and Valentinian had fallen

' The Alexandrian Chronicle repeatedly calls her Marina, and we have no
coins to determine the full and accurate name. Cohen, at least, gives no
coins, though Tillemont refers to them.

3o8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

ill together, and, under the pretence that Julian's friends
had attempted to poison them, they turned with some
vindictiveness upon the pagan officials. The aged and
respected Sallust firmly controlled the inquiry, and no
blood was shed ; but large numbers of Julian's officials
were displaced — in many cases quite rightly, as Julian's
zeal for paganism had had the same evil effect in en-
couraging hypocrisy as the zeal of other Emperors for
Christianity — and driven into sullen discontent. Further,
Dominica's father, Petronius, a deformed and repulsive
person, had risen to power with his daughter, and was
grinding the faces of the citizens of the East with the
most extortionate demands. A spark soon fell on this
inflammable world. Procopius, a relative of Julian's, had
published a very hazy claim to the Empire after Julian's
death. He had hastily withdrawn and disowned it, but
Valens sent men to apprehend him. Ingeniously escaping
the soldiers, he fled to Constantinople, and seems there to
have fallen into the hands of abler intriguers. Two legions
were bought for him, and they made him Emperor. There
was no purple mantle to be obtained, so they clothed him
in a stagy tunic bespangled with gold, put purple shoes
on his feet and a piece of purple cloth in his hand, and
conducted him, amid the amazed and derisive spectators,
to the Senate and the Palace.

His force grew so quickly that the weak and nervous
Emperor of the East was disposed to yield him the throne,
but his older officers urged him to resist. In the short
struggle that followed we meet again the third wife, and
widow, of Constantius. Faustina had been enceinte at the
death of her husband, and she was living at Constantinople,
with her four-year-old daughter, when Procopius made
his romantic attempt on the throne. With some shrewd-
ness he withdrew her from her retirement, and associated
her with him in his claim. The legitimate dynasty seemed
to be wresting the throne from usurpers when the widow
and daughter of the son of Constantine appeared at the
head of the troops. Even when they marched out to

JUSTINA 309

meet the forces of Valens, Faustina, in a litter, accompanied
them. But the new hope of Faustina died away as quickly
as it had been born. The soldiers were persuaded to
return to their allegiance, and the power of Procopius
swiftly melted away. Faustina sank again into obscurity,
and the adventurous career of Constantia was postponed
for some years.

Dominica returned to her position in the enervated
and luxurious court, and the rest of her life offers little
interest. The ecclesiastical historians describe her as
egging her husband to persecute the Trinitarians, but
we must read the charge with discretion. There is little
positive trace of persecution. One day eighty Trinitarian
priests came to plead their cause at the court, and Valens
is said to have ordered them back to their ship. At some
distance from port the vessel was found to be aflame,
and the priests were burnt to death. The orthodox writers
declare that the vessel was purposely fired, at the command
of Valens, but it is impossible to adjust the conflicting
statements of the rival schools of theology. Valens was
an ardent Arian, but he upheld the principle of religious
toleration, and confined theologians to the use of theological
weapons. The only occasion on which he is known to
have ordered or countenanced violent persecution was
in the suppression of magic. In some obscure chamber
of the capital a group of men resorted to this dark means
of discovering who would be the successor of Valens.
Some say that a ring dangling from a mystic tripod
spelt out the name on painted letters ; some that grains
of corn were placed on letters of the alphabet, and, when
a cock was admitted to peck them, the order of the letters
which it first attacked was noticed. In either case, the
result was to give the letters Th E O D, It would be
a remarkable forecast, if the story did not belong to a
generation after the accession of Theodosius. However,
the attempt became known, and a searching inquiry and
savage persecution followed. The despicable trade of the
informer was encouraged, whole libraries of valuable books

3IO THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

were destroyed, and numbers of innocent philosophers
and matrons were included in the bloody lists of the
condemned.

The name of Dominica occurs only in one authentic
connexion during the reign of Valens. The Emperor
passed the winter of 372-3 at Caesarea in Cappadocia,
where he encountered the stern and uncompromising
champion of orthodoxy, St. Basil. Strong no less in his
personal haughtiness — St. Jerome calls it pride — than in
his glowing zeal for his Church, Basil emphatically refused
to obey him, and was threatened with banishment. At
once Dominica and her boy fell ill. Besides two daughters,
she had had a son in 366, and this boy fell into a dangerous
illness. It is said that Dominica learned in a dream that
the illness was a divine punishment, but it is not impossible
that her waking intelligence could arrive at that con-
clusion. Basil was summoned to the palace once more.
Theodoret would have it that the bishop courteously
breathed on the boy, and declared that he would re-
cover if he received Trinitarian baptism. The earlier
ecclesiastical writers, however, ascribe to him a firmer
attitude. He asked Valens if the boy would receive
orthodox baptism, and was told that he would not. " Let
him meet whatever fate God wills then," said the bishop,
quitting the palace. The boy was baptized by the Arians,
and died during the following night. A power even
greater than that of eunuchs, and more imperious than that
of Emperors, was rapidly growing. When, some days
later, one of the favourites of Valens, who had risen from
the kitchen, attempted to intervene in a discussion between
the bishop and the Emperor, Basil curtly told him to con-
fine himself to sauces and not interfere in Church matters.

Five or six years later Valens perished in the war
with the Goths, and Dominica passed to the fitting obscurity
of private life. The one indication of spirit that is recorded
of her is that, when the victorious Goths pressed on to
Constantinople and invested it, she paid the citizens out of
the public treasury to arm themselves against the barbar-

JUSTINA 311

ians. We turn from her vague and retiring personality
to the more interesting figure of Justina, who had some
years before begun to share the throne of Valentinian.

Valentinian was as fierce and choleric as his brother
was timid. A tall and powerful man, with stern blue
eyes, a brilliant complexion, and light hair, he enlisted
and encouraged his native cruelty in the service of what
he regarded as the interest of the State. The pagans he
refused to persecute, and he did much to promote the
higher culture of Rome, which was so closely connected
with the pagan beliefs. But, like his brother, he fell with
truculence upon all who could be brought under a com-
prehensive charge of magic and divination, and the blood
of Italy flowed very freely. His hard, covetous, and
brutal officers enriched themselves in the work of torture,
spoliation, and execution, and — though the statement re-
calls rather the savagery of Nero or Domitian — we are
assured by the contemporary Ammianus that he kept two
monstrous bears in cages near his chamber, and fed them
on human victims. The slightest offence might incur
sentence of death. "You had better change his head,"
he is said to have ordered, in brutal playfulness, when
some official desired to change to another province.

It is, perhaps, a circumstance of credit to Severa that
she failed to retain the affection of Valentinian, though a
less flattering reason is assigned by some of the authorities.
The truth is that, since Valentinian is described as most
chaste and most Christian, the accession of Justina to his
palace has caused the ecclesiastical historians no little
perplexity. The Church was peremptorily opposed to
divorce, and regarded as adultery a second marriage
contracted while the first wife lived. Baronius con-
veniently removes Severa by death, but Ammianus
informs us that Severa was living long afterwards at the
court of her son,^ and the Alexandrian Chronicle expressly

' Lib. xxviii. i : He says that Gratian put a certain man to death " on
the advice of his mother." Zonaras says that Severa still lived at the time
of the second marriage.

312 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

says that Gratian recalled his mother to court. Tillemont
acknowledges this, and can only blush for the guilty
connivance of the clergy of the period.

If we could believe the ecclesiastical historian Socrates,
Valentinian avoided the sin of divorce and adultery by
promulgating a decree to the eifect that it was lawful to
have two wives, and promptly marrying Justina in addition
to Severa. Of such a law, however, we have no trace,
and most writers follow the alternative theory of the
authorities.

Aviana Justina was the widow of the usurper Mag-
nentius, who had so dramatically stolen the throne of
the worthless Constans, and had been crushed by Con-
stantius in the year 353. She was a woman of great
beauty, the daughter of a high provincial official, a spirited
and ambitious young woman. She would be in her later
twenties, at least, in 368, when she entered the suite of
Severa in some capacity. She was soon associated so
intimately with the Empress that they bathed together, and
Severa made the fatal mistake of describing what Socrates
curiously calls her "virginal beauty" to the sensual
Valentinian. Before long it was announced that Severa
was divorced, and Justina occupied her bed. A late
authority throws a thin mantle over the action of
Valentinian. Severa, he says, used her Imperial position
to compel a lady of Milan to sell her an estate at a most
inadequate price, and Valentinian was unable to endure
her avarice. The vague description we have of Justina's
dazzling beauty will, perhaps, suffice.

This remarkable conduct on the part of Valentinian
and Justina is put in the year 368.^ The succeeding
years of war and religious controversy throw no light on
the character of Justina, and we need not describe them.

' Gratian, the youthful son of Severa, had been clothed with the purple by
Valentinian, " at the instigation of his wife and father-in-law," says the
epitomist of Aurelius Victor, in the autumn of 367. On the other hand,
Justina's brother was killed, in the service of Valentinian, in 369. The second
marriage falls most naturally in 368.

JUSTINA 313

Valentinian died in 375. Some delegates of the barbarians
had come, with deep humility, to implore his clemency for
their invasion of his dominions, and Valentinian burst into
one of his appalling storms of rage. So violent was his
fury in addressing them that he burst a blood-vessel, and
left the Western Empire to his son Gratian. Gratian had
married in the previous year. His Empress was the
daughter of Faustina, who had been borne in her mother's
arms at the head of the troops of Procopius. In cross-
ing the provinces to meet Gratian, Constantia had had a
singular adventure. While she was dining at an inn, some
twenty-six miles from Sirmium, the tribes broke across the
Danube and occupied the village. There was just time for
the Governor of Illyrium to snatch up the thirteen-year-old
princess and make a dash for Sirmium. She married
Gratian in 374, and became Empress of the West in the
following year. But Flavia Maxima Constantia has left
only the faint impress of her early adventures on the
chronicles of the time, and the few years of her Imperial
life have no interest for us. The next mention of her is
that she died some time before her husband, who was
assassinated in 383. He had married again, but his widow,
Lseta, is a mere name in history. Theodosius gave a
comfortable income to Lseta and her mother Pissamena,
and they were distinguished for their charity in the later
misfortunes of Rome.

When Valentinian had died in a fit of rage at Bregetio,
Justina and her four-year-old boy, Valentinian the younger,
were in the town of Murocincta, a hundred miles away.
Justina hastened to the camp, and it was presently an-
nounced that the army had decided to associate the boy
with Gratian in the rule of the West. Gratian, the most
temperate and promising of the Emperors of the period,
published his consent. A refusal to acknowledge the boy,
and an attempt to punish the intrigue by which Justina
retained her power, would have involved a civil war,
and the whole of his forces were now needed to stem the
flood of barbarism that surged against the northern frontier

314 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

of the Empire. The last days of Rome were fast approach-
ing. From the remote deserts of Asia a fierce and
numerous people, the Huns, had entered Europe, and were
sweeping the Goths and other Teutonic tribes southward.
Gratian appointed an Emperor of the East, whom we
shall meet presently, in the place of Valens, and spent
his strength in heroic efforts to defend the threatened
frontier.

Justina returned with the boy-Emperor to Milan. As
long as Gratian lived, Justina was restricted to the life
of the palace, but in 383 the throne was usurped by
Maximus, and Gratian was murdered by one of his
emissaries. Gibbon generously traces the general dis-
satisfaction out of which this revolt emerged to a
deterioration of the character of Gratian. This deteriora-
tion cannot be questioned, but one particular outcome of
it, the active persecution of the pagans, was probably
his most fatal error. Milan was now dominated by the
imperious and zealous St. Ambrose, and the two young
Emperors were expressly under his control. At the
suggestion of Ambrose, Gratian abandoned Valentinian's
policy of toleration. He rejected the title of Pontifex
Maximus, ordered the removal of the statue of Victory
from the Roman Senate, and confiscated the estates of
the temples. He even admitted the abusive epithet
" pagans " (or " villagers "), which the more forward
Christians were beginning to use, in his official decrees.'
This must have inflamed the general discontent, and the
army of Maximus marched peacefully over Gaul, and
occupied the Empire as far as the Alps. The Emperor
of the East, Theodosius, consented that Britain, Gaul,
and Spain should remain under the rule of Maximus,
and Justina continued to rule the curtailed dominions of
her son.

It was now discovered that Justina was an Arian.

' Yet St. Augustine, who was in Rome the year after the death of Gratian,
says in his " Confessions " (viii. 2) that " nearly the whole nobility of
Rome " still clung to the old religion,

JUSTINA 315

Whether she had concealed her behefs during the life
of Valentinian, or had been recently won to the sect, it
is impossible to say ; but Ambrose now found that he
had a stubborn opponent of his religious ambition. The
trouble culminated in 385, when scenes were witnessed
that effectively impress on us the change that had come
over the Roman Empire. Justina ordered that one of
the Christian churches of the city should be put at the
disposal of the Arian clergy. Ambrose sternly refused,
and, when he was summoned to the palace, and a sentence
of- banishment was apprehended, the people flocked to
the palace and intimidated the Empress and her coun-
sellors. A little later, the Gothic (Arian) soldiers were
sent to occupy the church, and orders were given that it
should be prepared for the Empress's devotions. A renewal
of the riot, and the showering of the vilest epithets upon
the person of the Empress, forced her to retire once more.
In the following year, 386, she passed sentence of exile
on the bishop, and her spirit was expended in a final
struggle. For the first time in the history of Rome — a
true index of its profound demoralization — the troops were
prevented by the people from carrying out an Imperial
decree. Ambrose was guarded day and night by thousands
of his followers. The chief church and the episcopal house
were fortified as if for a siege, and the troops of " Jezebel "
had to stand inactive before a mob of citizens. On the
advice of Theodosius, Justina refrained from any further
attempt. Indeed, her attention was soon violently with-
drawn to a very different danger.

The ambition of Maximus had once more outrun its
bounds, and he coveted the remaining provinces of Valen-
tinian. Justina's conduct betrays that her ability was
inferior to her spirit. Duped by the treacherous diplomacy
of Maximus, she was suddenly informed that the hostile
forces of Maximus were close to Milan, and she fled hastily
to the coast. At Aquileia she and her son took ship for
the East. The soldiers of Maximus followed them on swift
galleys, but they rounded the south of Greece in safety,

3i6 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

and landed at Thessalonica. Her task now was to induce
Theodosius to espouse their cause, and it proved to be one
of nearer proportion to her talent.

Her pressing appeals to Theodosius for aid were parried
or unheeded for some time. If we may believe Theodoret,
the only reply which she received was a painful assurance
that the heresy she entertained, and in which she was
educating her son, was a sufficient cause of all the evils
that had come upon them. She was directed to await a
visit from Theodosius at Thessalonica, and the visit was
much delayed. Historians usually depict the Emperor as
held in suspense by a painful dilemma. Not only would
it be a serious thing for the Empire, surrounded as it was
with peril, to engage the forces of the East and the West in
an exhausting civil war, but Theodosius would, in such a
war, be attacking an orthodox Catholic in the interest of
a fanatical Arian and enemy of the Church; and Theodosius
was a most zealous Trinitarian. The difficulty must have
occurred to him, and it would not be fantastical to assume
that there had been some correspondence between the
prelates of the East and the prelates of the West, to ensure
that the point did not escape him.

The pagan Zosimus has a different theory of the delay
of Theodosius. The character of that Emperor was, he
says, a singular union of contradictions. He could blaze
with the fury of a Valentinian, or bend his head meekly for
the blessing of a bishop ; he could lead the troops through
a campaign with the most signal dexterity, energy, and
success, and then relax into the most ignoble indolence;
he could embrace the rigour of a soldier's life without
the least effort to soften it, and then resign himself to the
most voluptuous day-dreams in his Imperial palace. Justina,
Zosimus says, was so unfortunate as to need his aid during
one of his periods of luxury and " insane pursuit of
pleasure." He resented the effort to awaken him from it.
His deep indebtedness to Gratian, however, who had con-
ferred the Empire on him, at length forced him to cross
the Greek sea, and visit Justina at Thessalonica. From the

,' -1 lu

AEl.IA FLACCILLA

HONORIA

iNLARGI':D I'KDM CdlNS IX 1 H !■; P.klllSH MUSEUM'

JUSTIN A 317

time of that visit his pulse was quickened, and he began
a vigorous preparation for war with Maximus. Justina
had with her at Thessalonica, not only the insipid boy
Valentinian, but a pretty young daughter, Galla, and
Theodosius had fallen in love with her. Justina promptly
perceived, and artfully used, her opportunity, and it was
arranged that the pretty princess should be his reward
for restoring the Western Empire to Valentinian and his
mother.

Theodosius, who is incomparably the leading ruler of
the fourth century, had come from the same part of Spain
as Trajan, to whom some of the writers of the time
compare him — with no little flattery. His father, Count
Theodosius, had been an able commander and a just
administrator, but had been unjustly disgraced and" executed
owing to some obscure jealousy. Later writers, thinking
of the magical Th E O D of Antioch, believed that his
lame led to his undoing. The younger Theodosius, a
cultivated and skilful officer, retired to his estates in Spain,
from which he was drawn by Gratian, and presently
clothed with the purple. He had, in 376 or 377, married a
Spanish lady, .^lia Flaccilla, who is believed, on slender
grounds, to have been the daughter of the consul Antonius.
Their son Arcadius, the future Emperor, was born during
the retirement in Spain. A daughter, Pulcheria, was born
in Spain . while Theodosius was on campaign. Then
Flaccilla found herself transferred from the quiet Spanish
estate to the pomp of Constantinople, and the second son,
Honorius, was born in the purple.

Although Flaccilla is canonized in the Greek Church,
it does not appear that she had a marked individuality.
She is one of the crowd of fourth-century Empresses who
live in the chronicles only as generous benefactors of the
Church. Theodosius was the first Emperor to persecute
his pagan subjects on the ground of religion, and his
successive decrees quickly changed the religious aspect of
the East. His modern biographers, Ifland and Gtllden-
penning (" Der Kaiser Theodosius "), lay much of the blame

3i8 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

for these violent measures on Flaccilla, but they point out
that the coercive legislation begins just after Theodosius
came under the influence of Bishop Acholius during a
severe illness, and that his efforts to crush paganism by
violence relaxed with his advance in age and experience.
All that we learn of Flaccilla is that she was generous to
the Church and the poor, and that she occasionally curbed
the fiery and vindictive temper of Theodosius. She seems
to have died in the year 385, and the Greek ritual celebrates
her memory on September 14th.

Theodosius was, therefore, a middle-aged widower — his
biogra,phers put his birth in 346— when, in the autumn of
387, Justina presented her daughter Galla to him, Dr.
Ifland admits that the young girl probably turned the
hesitating scale of his judgment. He returned to Con-
stantinople, and made energetic preparations for war. A
two months' campaign in the following summer (388)
completely destroyed the forces of Maximus, and the full
Empire of the West was restored to Valentinian. But
Justina had little personal profit by the victory. Zosimus
tells us that she " supplied the deficiencies of her son as
well as a woman can " after the return to Milan, while
Sozomen declared that she died before the return. The
point is obscure, but the evidence suggests, on the whole,
that she returned to Milan. It was, however, to a different
Milan from that she had quitted. Theodosius accompanied
them, and the strong, earnest character of Ambrose made
a deep impression on him. Valentinian was " converted "
to the true creed, and the policy of persecution was intro-
duced into the Western world. Justina must have remained
a powerless and embittered spectator of the ascendancy of
Ambrose. So great did it become that the coldest decisions
of the Emperor were reversed by him, and his trans-
gressions were ignominiously punished. The news came
to Milan that the monks and populace of a small town in
Persia had burned the synagogue of the Jews, and that the
prefect had ordered them to rebuild the synagogue and
restore its property. Theodosius confirmed the just

JUSTINA 319

sentence, but Ambrose assailed him so strongly, in letter
and sermon, that he was obliged to give complete im-
munity to the offenders ; and the wave of violence— the
burning of temples and synagogues, and the despoiling
and slaying of unbelievers and heretics of all shades —
continued to roll destructively over the East. The more
impressive incident of Theodosius, the greatest ruler of
his time, standing in the humble attitude of a penitent
in the church at Milan is well known. The people of
Thessalonica, stung by the heavy taxation which the ex-
travagant rule of Theodosius imposed on the East, and the
quartering of barbaric troops on them, took some occasion
to riot, and slew the representatives of the Emperor. In
a fit of passion Theodosius turned his troops upon the
defenceless people, whom he had treacherously invited to
the Circus, and a horrible and unexampled massacre was
perpetrated. Ambrose nobly insisted that the Emperor
must expiate .his crime like the humblest member of his
flock. The world was entering upon a new era.

How much of these proceedings Justina lived to see it
is impossible to determine. She died some time between
388 and 391; the obscurity of her death is a sufficient proof
of her powerlessness in her last years. Valentinian, whose
weakness was hardly compensated by the propriety of his
conduct and his docility to St. Ambrose, was instructed in
the elements of government by the older Emperor, who
remained three years in Italy, to the lasting grief of its
pagan citizens. He visited Rome, where the majority of
the leading citizens still clung to an ideahzed version of the
old cult, and appealed to the Senate to abandon the dying
gods. No answer was made to his appeal, and he resorted
to the growing practice of coercive legislation. In 391 he
returned to Constantinople.

Galla had married Theodosius soon after the destruction
of Maximus. The Chronicle of Marcellinus puts the
marriage in 386; Zosimus, more plausibly, implies that
it took place in 387 or 388. From a curious statement in
the Chronicle of Marcellinus it seems that she was sent to

320 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

live in the palace at Constantinople while Theodosius
remained in Italy. The statement is that the elder son of
the Emperor, Arcadius, a boy of thirteen years, drove her
out of the palace. Commentators are loath to believe that
so young a prince could do this, but it is not in the least
impossible, and the authority is respectable. We shall
see that Arcadius was a peevish and worthless prince,
indolently guided by eunuchs and servants, and capable
of very cruel decisions. Theodosius had departed from
the finer Imperial tradition of appointing a grave and
distinguished scholar as the tutor of his sons, and had
committed them to the care of a Roman deacon, Arsenius,
who had a repute for piety. We can hardly regard the
authority of a late Greek writer (Metaphrastes) as weighty
enough to commend the statement that Arcadius set his
servants to take the life of Arsenius for whipping him,
but the unhappy events of the next chapter will show that
the only result of this kind of education was to leave the
character unformed, and throw the stress on external
observances.

In 391 Theodosius returned to Constantinople, and
Galla entered upon her brief Imperial career. Whether
or no we accept the biased picture which Zosimus offers
us of the Eastern court, it is clear that it sustained a soft
and excessive luxury at the cost of the enfeebled Empire.
Large numbers of eunuchs found employment, and, with
the genius of their class, intrigued for favour in the sleeping
quarters, and in the service of the Empress and the Imperial
children. The kitchen employed a regiment of ministers
to the heavy and voluptuous table ; the circus and theatre
supported vast numbers of mimes, dancers, and charioteers.
Besides this large army of ministers to the Imperial
pleasure, a second army of idle and avaricious place-seekers
beset the palace, and extorted a generous revenue from
the offices which were created for them in the army and
the administration. It is even said that such offices were
openly sold in the public places and in the palace of
Constantinople. Strenuous as Theodosius was in the

JUSTINA 321

field, he was not strong enough to sustain the burden of
peace, and he unconsciously prepared the Empire for the
avalanche that was soon to be cast upon it.

But the drowsy indulgence of Theodosius was soon
startled once more by a call to arms from the West. In
the spring of 392 Valentinian was slain, or in despair slew
himself, and a Frankish commander had put his purple
robe upon the shoulders of a Roman rhetorician. The
young Emperor had been so overshadowed by the power
of his general that he had attempted to dismiss him, and
had then been found dead with a cord round his neck.
Theodosius again hesitated to exchange the softness of
his palace for the rigours of a campaign. Galla " filled the
palace with her lamentations," but Theodosius sent away
the ambassadors of the usurper with pleasant words and
presents, and continued for nearly two years to resist the
appeals of his young Empress. It was not until the
summer of 394 that he led out his legions for the punish-
ment of the murderer, as Argobastes was believed to be.
Galla did not live to see her brother avenged. She died
in childbirth just as the army was about to start, and
Theodosius is said to have mourned for her one day and
then started for Italy.

The issue does not now concern us. We pass on to a
fresh generation, a new and more interesting group of
Empresses and princesses. Suffice it to say that, partly
by valour, partly by accident and treachery, the forces of
Argobastes were destroyed, and the empurpled rhetorician
was slain. The younger son of the Emperor, Honorius,
was summoned from the East, and placed upon the throne
of the West. Arcadius remained in feeble charge of the
throne of Constantinople. And within a few months
the powerful Emperor sank into the grave, and the
Empire entered upon the unhappy reigns of Arcadius and
Honorius.

CHAPTER XX

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA

WITH the Imperial ladies of the courts of Arcadius
and Honorius we enter upon the final act in the
tragedy of the fall of Rome. The sun is sinking
rapidly to the Western horizon ; the long shadows trail
across the record of events ; the chill of evening contracts
the life of the historic Empire. The only aspect of that
tragedy that concerns us is a consideration of the part
that women played in the gradual enfeeblement of the
Roman Empire. While taking full account of the various
causes assigned by historians, it may be said that the
fall of Rome was due to a coincidence. The invasion of
Europe by the fierce Huns had pressed the Germanic
tribes against the Roman frontier just at the time when
the Empire was particularly feeble. That it was inwardly
outworn and doomed — that the organization of a State
has an appointed term of decay, like the frame of an
individual — may be confidently challenged. Egypt main-
tained its vigour for close on 8,000 years ; Babylon for
nearly 6,000.

The only question we may touch here is whether the
personality of the later Empresses counted for anything,
either for good or evil, in this enfeeblement of the Empire ;
and the answer is clear that, with one or two exceptions,
they counted for neither. They had no deep or large
influence on the life of the Empire, even through their
husbands. The Roman ideal of womanhood was changing
once more. As in the early days, they were diverted

322

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 323

from interest in public affairs, except in so far as the
cause of the Church called for their interference. We must
not conceive them as powerless witnesses of the gradual
dissolution of the Empire. No one, man or woman, saw
that the Empire was dissolving, or dreamed of its fall,
until it lay in ruins under the feet of the northern tribes.
None reflected that, since Constantine had assumed the
purple, thirteen Emperors out of twenty had been either
executed or murdered ; that the blood of able officers or
servants had generally been mingled with that of the
fallen ruler ; and that hundreds of thousands of soldiers
had been wasted in civil war. None reflected that, while
they were distracted with religious quarrels, a formidable
avalanche was gathering on the hills ; or that, while the
courts absorbed enormous sums in Oriental display, the
fiscal machinery of the State was running down. In any
case, it was no longer the place of women to notice
these things. Their duties were to rear the Imperial
family, wear pretty robes of cloth of gold, and build
churches. The age of Livia, Agrippina, or Plotina, was
over.

These reflections will be enforced by the lives of the
interesting Empresses whom we have next to consider.
The new Emperors were unmarried youths at the time
when their father died. Arcadius, a little, dark, unpleasant-
looking youth, whose laziness appeared in his dull, lustre-
less eyes, was in his eighteenth year. Honorius was a boy
of eleven, and as, during a reign of twenty-eight years,
he never rose above the character or intelligence of a boy,
and his two Empresses were timid young girls, we must
dismiss them in a page; though that page must contain
an event that sent a thrill of excitement through civilization
— the fall of the city of Rome. So little had our Imperial
characters to do with it that a later age amused itself by
saying that, when Honorius was told that " Rome was
taken," he wept for the supposed loss of his favourite
fowl, which bore that name.

The real master of the Western world, over which

324 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

young Honorius had nominal sway, was a powerful and
gifted commander, Stilicho, of Vandal extraction. He had
married Serena, the beautiful niece of Theodosius, and
he led the armies and governed the Western Empire until
his death. In 398, in his thirteenth year, Honorius was
directed to wed Maria, the elder daughter of Stilicho. It
was said that Theodosius had desired the union. Serena,
at all events, desired it, and, although her daughter
was yet immature, the wedding took place at Milan in
398. All that we have to say of her is that she died some
time within the next ten years — probably, as Tillemont
calculates, in the year 404. Her body was embalmed
and buried in a Christian church at Rome, where the
poor crumbling frame, laden with gold, was discovered
in 1544.

In the year 408 Honorius married his deceased wife's
sister, Thermantia. Tillemont very properly laments that
he finds no record of any protest on the part of the
Bishop of Rome — who probably celebrated it — against this
irregular marriage, but the modern reader will be more
seriously concerned to hear the argument with which
Serena urged it upon her reluctant husband. Maria, she
said, had died a virgin. Before entrusting her immature
child to the bed of Honorius, she had had some obscure
operation performed on her, which would guard her
virginity. Certainly, Maria had had no children. Ther-
mantia was equally unprepared for marriage, Zosimus says,
and the operation was repeated. It was a superfluous
sacrifice to the ambition of Serena, because Stilicho fell, in
a palace intrigue, a few months later, and the little maid
was restored to her mother.

Such was the short and melancholy story of the
Empresses Maria and ^Emilia Materna Thermantia, as
an inscription calls the younger. Their monument was
terrible. Within a few months the avalanche of the Gothic
army descended from the Alps and devastated Italy ; and
Serena was, with the consent of her cousin Placidia, the
Emperor's sister, strangled by the Senate on the light, and

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 325

probably false, charge of communicating with the enemy.
Zosimus, at least, says that she was innocent; but he is
not surprised at her fate, as she had one day appropriated
a jewelled ornament from the statue of one of his goddesses.
Within two years Rome was sacked by the Goths, and
Placidia was carried off by them.

We turn to the East, to follow the less tragic, but hardly
less interesting, fortunes of Eudoxia and Eudocia. In the
East, as in the West, Theodosius had left a powerful
minister to guide the hands of his young and unpromising
son. But the eastern minister, Rufinus, had not the manly
qualities of Stilicho. He had entered the palace by craft,
not by military exploits, and had easily dissembled his
vices from the too indulgent eye of Theodosius. When
that Emperor died, he cast aside the cloak, and pursued
his native avarice, and exercised his cruelty, without
restraint. By fines, taxes, despoilments, and the unscrupu-
lous ruin of his opponents, the hated Gaul amassed
wealth and power, and ruled like an autocrat. He had a
daughter of marriageable age, and Arcadius seemed to listen
in compliant mood when he proposed that she should
become his Empress. The task of destroying an opponent
took him for a time to Antioch, and he returned to hear
that the Emperor was preparing for marriage. He awaited
the appointed day with eagerness. At length the hymeneal
procession set out from the palace, and the people gathered
to witness its passage to the house of Rufinus, a superb
villa in one of the suburbs. To the intense surprise of all,
it stopped at a house in the city, and the blushing and
beautiful daughter of a Prankish chief was announced to
be the choice of the Emperor.

While Rufinus was pursuing his vengeance at Antioch,
the eunuchs of the palace had conspired to defeat his
plan and undermine his power. The chief of them was
Eutropius, a slave by birth, castrated immediately after
birth that he might bring a bigger price, and rising in time
from the occupation of hair-dresser to the daughter of
General Arintheus to the position of high chamberlain at

326 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

the palace. Such were the rulers of Emperors in the
fourth century. Eutropius knew that Arcadius had no
attraction to the daughter of Rufinus, and chafed under the
authority of her burly father. He cast about for a prettier
companion, and soon had the affection of Arcadius safely
engaged. The temporary absence of Rufinus gave them an
opportunity, and Constantinople was enlivened by the rare
spectacle of an Imperial marriage, and the still rarer
spectacle of the defeat of Rufinus.

Eudoxia — such is the Greek name under which the new
Empress is presented to us — was the beautiful daughter of
Bauto, chief of the Franks. Historians, politely accepting
the assurance of some of the writers of the time, say that
she was being "educated" at Constantinople, her father
having died in the service of the Eastern army. It is,
perhaps, a pity to disturb the plausible phrase, but the
duty of a biographer is stern. The house in the city from
which she was taken to wed the Emperor was occupied by
two young men of wealth. They were the sons of the
commander Promotus, who had been one of the first
victims of Rufinus. One of these young men, Zosimus
says, " had a beautiful maid " in the house. We will not
inquire too closely. The stern ideals of the Germanic
tribes had relaxed as they came into closer contact with
civilization, and it became common for them to lend or sell
their daughters to the Romans. We remember the adven-
ture of Pipera a century before. Eutropius submitted an
adequate picture of the girl to Arcadius, whose pulse was
quickened, and the son of Promotus easily parted with his
tender pupil when he learned that it was for the purpose
of discomfiting the destroyer of his father.

Eudoxia had no less spirit than beauty of person, and
she would watch with interest the duel between the wily
eunuch and the powerful Gaul. Arcadius, " whose feeble
and stupid goodness," says Tillemont candidly, "brought
frightful evils on Church and State," was a pawn in the
game. But the big, wealthy, powerful Gaul now found
a sterner opponent in Stilicho, of the Western Empire, and

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 32;

within a year his head was separated from his body, and
his wife and daughter were permitted to remain alive at
Jerusalem. Eutropius and Eudoxia now "led Arcadius
like a dumb beast," in the words of Zosimus, and sucked
the resources of the Empire. The people of Constantinople
gained nothing by the revolution. They had carried in
triumph the grisly, extortionate hand of Rufinus through
the streets of the city, but the supple hand of the eunuch
proved as formidable. He surrounded himself with spies
and informers, filled the prisons with men whose property
he desired for himself or his friends, scattered statues of
himself through the city, and assumed every title of honour
short of that of Augustus. He would press his deformed
person and painted face into the armour of a man, to
review the troops, and would harangue the Senate with a
feeble imitation of the authority of a statesman. While
his exactions and the luxury of the court enfeebled the
Empire of the East, he alienated the power of the West, and
had Stilicho branded as a public enemy. And the Goths
and Huns crept nearer.

Arcadius, lazily riding in his gold-plated chariot, studded
with large gems, in robes of silk embroidered with golden
dragons, or playing the monarch on a throne of solid gold,
with a crowd of adoring eunuchs before him, had no more
appreciation than a peasant of a Cappadocian village of the
true situation of the Empire. Eudoxia, beautiful, haughty,
spoiled, revelling in the luxury of the palace, generous
to the Church and the poor, floated soothingly with the
stream. She lived the languid life of an Oriental princess,
within the confines of the palace, and was rarely seen even
by the greater part of the palace servants. The only
occasion when the populace saw her quit the marble city,
which the palace of Constantine had become, was when,
in 398, she walked humbly, with downcast eyes, but
clothed in purple silk, with a glittering diadem on her
head, by the side of St. Chrysostom, as he transferred
certain relics of the saints. Chrysostom would find her ip
a different temper in a few years.

328 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

The arrogance of Eutropius at last passed all bounds,
and he ventured in the year 400 to threaten to expel
Eudoxia from the palace. Whether she knew it or no,
the time was ripe for the destruction of the repulsive
minister. The people groaned under his terrible exactions,
his infamous legislation, and his bloody tyranny ; the
leaders of the troops were prepared to sacrifice him.
Eudoxia took her baby girls, Pulcheria and Arcadia, in her
arms, and fled in tears to the Emperor. Arcadius, " be-
coming an Emperor for a moment," says Philostorgius,
signed the sentence of his favourite, and the eunuch soon
found people and soldiers pressing, like wolves, for his
destruction. He took refuge in a church, where Chrysostom
protected him from the fiery crowd, but quitted it after
a time, apparently on the oath of either Eudoxia or Arcadius
that his life would be spared. He was exiled, recalled,
tried, and — oath or no oath — put to death by the public
executioner.

Eudoxia's title of nobilissima (" most noble ") had been
elevated to that of Augusta at the beginning of the year
400, and her second daughter was born in April of the same
year.' She was now complete mistress of Arcadius and
the Empire, and she published her dignity with such ex-
travagance that the Western court sent an angry protest
that, in causing her statues to be borne through the provinces,
she had exceeded the privileges of her sex. In the follow-
ing year she completed her ascendancy by giving birth
to a boy, Theodosius H, and seemed to have a prospect
of a long and luxurious, if useless, reign. But she had
meantime quarrelled with Chrysostom, and she was to
pass through a period of humiliation to a premature grave.

In 398 Eutropius had transferred the austere and eloquent
Chrysostom from his presbytery in Antioch to the archi-
episcopal palace at Constantinople. The stern monk — as
John of the Golden Mouth always remained at heart — was

' Hence Tillemont and others, who give these dates, must be wrong in
placing the quarrel with Eutropius in 399. Philostorgius expressly says that
she had two daughters in her arms when she appealed to Arcadius,

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 329

horrified from the first at the vice and luxury of the
Christians of the Imperial city, and even of their clergy,
but he allowed two years to elapse before he bfegan his
fiery campaign against the sins of the laity. ' He applied
himself first to the reform of the priests and the control of
the monks. With that we have no concern." It is enough
to say that the clergy bitterly resented his reforms, and
were ready to co-operate with Eudoxia in an effort to get
rid of him. In 400 he began to attack the easy ways of the
laity more sternly, and it is probable that some feeling was
created between him and the Empress over the massacre
of the Gothic Arian soldiers, which took place in that year.
Their commander Gainas had rebelled, and Arcadius had
virtually surrendered to him. He marched his troops to
the city, obtained the use of a church for them, and allowed
them to roam about, to the irritation of the people ; until
at last the people rose and slew seven thousand of the
heretics.

It seems that Eudoxia was alienated from Chrysostom,
who had resented the grant of a church, from that time.
When, in the following year, St. Porphyry of Gaza came to
the capital to obtain an Imperial order to destroy the pagan
temples of his town, Chrysostom declined to introduce him
at court, and referred him to the eunuch Amantius. The
sequel is not without interest in a study of the Empress.
The holy man was presented to Eudoxia, and promised
that she should bear a boy if she would secure the
destruction of paganism in Gaza. She promised to do so,
but Arcadius, who seems to have resented religious wrangles,
refused to grant permission. Then the boy was born, and
Eudoxia felt an obligation to secure Porphyry's request.
She instructed him to draw up a formal petition, and present
it to the baby-Caesar as he was carried from the baptismal
font. The noble who carried the baby was then instructed

' See Professor Puech's "Saint Jean Chrysostome," 1891.

' The curious reader will find Chrysostom's surprising strictures of the
clergy more than confirmed in the letters of Jerome, and his fierce denuncia-
tion of the monks borne out in Augustine's treatise on them.

330 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

how he was to behave, and a little comedy was arranged.
Porphyry presented his paper to the infant Caesar. The
noble read a little of it to the baby in a low voice, so that
Arcadius should not hear, and then bobbed the child's head
as a sign of assent. Arcadius wearily overlooked the trick,
eight beautiful temples were burned at Gaza, and Eudoxia
supplied the funds for building a large church on their
ruins. Tillemont, whose admiring course through the
fourth century is much tempered by groans, complains that
" this kind of piety favours only the demons."

Chrysostom then went on to denounce, in unmeasured
language, the vicious and luxurious ways of the wealthy
women, especially widows, of his church. He had diverted
the coins of the laity from the army of monks, deprived the
clergy of their mistresses, and declared that the great
majority of the bishops of his province were hopelessly
corrupt. With the aid of his rival, the Bishop of Alexandria,
they conspired against him, and they reached the ear of
the Empress through the courtly and comfortable bishop,
Severian. The other ear of the Empress was now assailed
by the wealthy widows who smarted under the preacher's
fierce lash. Such fine ladies as Marsa and Castricia would
not be likely to sit under the Socialistic oratory of the
archbishop, but shorthand (notatio) was as commonly used
in those days as in our own, and he could thus irritate the
eye of the rich as well as gladden the ear of the poor.
They brooded darkly over his impersonal strictures, and
no doubt detected occasional references to the luxurious
Empress in them. In fine. Archbishop Theophilus was
summoned from Alexandria ; the bishops of the province
eagerly drew up and passed a lengthy indictment of their
superior ; and, before the orthodox population could gather
what was happening, their orator was on the way to exile.

But the triumph of Eudoxia was as brief as that of
Justina. The people rose in fury, and, after the slaughter
of seven thousand trained soldiers, made a light matter of
the monks and sailors of Theophilus. When, in addition,
^n earthquake shook the province, Eudoxia prudently

PULCHERIA

ENLARGED FROM COIXS IX THE BRITISH i.FUSEUAi

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 331

yielded to the human pressure, under the decent pretext
of obeying the divine will. Chrysostom returned to his
church, and the sight of the gay fleet that set out to meet
him, the flaring illumination of the shores, the frenzied
rejoicing of the returning procession, must have filled the
palace on the heights with bitterness. Such a truce could
be observed with cold discretion by neither party, and it
was not long before the struggle was renewed.

In honour of the birth of the third daughter of the
Empress, Marina, a silver statue of her was erected, on
a column of porphyry, at the door of the Senate. The
Prefect of the city commemorated the event with games or
other rejoicings in the square before the statue, and they
were naturally accompanied by profane, if not licentious,
gaiety. Straight opposite, across the square, was the door
of Chrysostom's church, and the devout regarded this
demonstration as an outrage on religion. Chrysostom's
sermons become more explicit. In a later age a sermon
was published under his name, in which the people — or the
readers — were reminded oilhe infamous Herodias clamour-
ing for the head of John. The sermon is generally regarded
as spurious, but we have the weighty authority of Socrates
for the fact that the extempore preacher did utter the fatal
name of Herodias. The conflict ended with the exile of the
archbishop (June 404), but on the following night his
church was found to be in flames, and the fire spread to,
and almost destroyed, the Senate-house, a building adorned
with the most exquisite marbles and works of art.

The condition of Constantinople, the anxiety of Eudoxia,
during the following months, may be imagined. It is
enough to know that Eudoxia met a painful death, through
miscarriage, in the month of September of the same year
(404). I will not reproduce the horrible details that a more
orthodox age discovered in connexion with her death.' If

' Gibbon makes her survive Chrysostom, and die in 408. But Tillemont
has pointed out that the " Life of Chrysostom " by George of Alexandria, on
which he seems to have relied, forges letters, and is quite unreliable. The
earlier writers put the death of Eudoxia in 404.

332 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Chrysostom spoke from " a bitter disillusion," as Dr. Puech
holds, Eudoxia had not less cause to be embittered. Even
her religious zeal had led her into the most painful
experiences. For the State, in which she had high power,
she did nothing. The vultures gathered on the hills, while
the court absorbed its little soul in voluptuous pomp, and
the people fought each other over creeds. We may dissent
from the hard verdict of Gibbon, that Eudoxia indulged her
passions while the Empire decayed, and we must regard as
too frivolous for consideration the suspicion of unchastity
which he reproduces ; but we must grant that, where
Eudoxia's action was not selfish, it was generally useless,
and frequently mischievous.

We have carried the slender story of the Empresses in
the West as far as the year 410, and we shall find no other
Empress there until 421. We may, therefore, continue the
record of the East, and consider the romantic story of
Eudocia, before we proceed to the last scene in the Empire
of the West.

After an ignoble reign of thirteen years the elder son of
Theodosius died in his bed in the year 408. His only son,
Theodosius II, was clothed with the purple, in his sixth
year, and a prudent and experienced minister controlled
the State for the next seven years. In 415 Pulcheria, the
elder sister of Theodosius, was named Augusta, and
gradually assumed the guardianship of her brother aiid
the control of the State. She was as yet only in her
sixteenth year, and Theodosius was only two years younger,
but her cold, decisive temper compensated in some measure
for the strength which Theodosius wholly lacked, and she
held the reins of the Empire. Deeply religious, she took
herself, and induced her younger sisters to take, a vow of
chastity, which was written in gold and diamonds on the
wall of the public church. The palace offered the singular
spectacle of a nunnery within a luxurious court. Only
pious eunuchs and women were allowed to approach the
Imperial virgins, in whose sober apartments no music was
ever heard save that of the psalm and sacred song ; while

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 333

the weakly youth was educated in the pomp that befits a
king, as well as the propriety that adorns a Christian. He
learned both lessons with success ; but we cannot avoid a
suspicion that less earnest and assiduous efforts were made
to fit him for the task of taking in his own hands the levers
of the heavy machinery of the State. It is proper to add,
however, that, partly from circumstances, partly from the
prudence and care of Pulcheria, that machinery ran with
unaccustomed ease, and the Empire enjoyed a span of peace
and prosperity.

At length the anxious question of the Imperial marriage
arose, and the virginal Pulcheria confronted it with her
usual coolness and decision. The task was simplified, in
a sense, by Theodosius. He declared that he would marry
only a young lady of exceptional bodily charm, and would
pay no attention to wealth or dignity. It may have
occurred to Pulcheria that an Empress thus elevated would
be less likely to dispute her power than some woman
who had been born into the world of large action. She
began her search, with the aid of Paulinus, a youth who
had been educated with Theodosius and was his intimate
friend.

One day, at this period, a young Athenian girl was
brought into her presence with a petition. She was of
the fairest Athenian type ; a supple and graceful young
woman, with skiii of a snowy complexion, large intelli-
gent eyes, and a beautiful head of golden hair. Further,
she pleaded her cause, in perfect Greek, with a surpris-
ing restraint, eloquence, and art. She was Athenais, the
daughter of an Athenian teacher. He had cultivated her
mind and her beauty with all the resources of his art,
and had, at his death, left her only a hundred pieces of
gold^ on the pretext that she was wealthy enough in her
advantages. She begged her brothers to share the in-
heritance more justly, but they refused. She had there-
fore come with a relative to the house of an aunt at
Constantinople, and asked for a just distribution of her
father's money. Pulcheria's interest was, not in the case.

334 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

but in the girl. She took the aunt aside, and prudently
inquired if the girl was a maid and a Christian. Athenais
was declared to be a virgin, though a pagan ; but the
defect was one that could easily be removed.

Pulcheria joyfully told her brother that she had found
the beauty he desired, and described her. They arranged
a second visit, during which Theodosius and Paulinus
should inspect the maiden from behind a curtain. In a
short time Athenais had changed her name into JElia
Eudocia, changed her religion into that of Christ, and
changed her condition into that of wife of the Emperor.
She was married on June 7th, 421, in, it is believed, the
twentieth year of her age. There was consternation in
the home she had quitted at Athens, and her brothers hid
themselves in the provinces. Eudocia had them sought
and conducted to Constantinople. There they learned to
their surprise that she thought herself indebted to their
conduct for her fortune, and they were richly rewarded.

From these pleasant girlish traits we pass to the in-
evitable struggle with Pulcheria. Theodosius remained
an Imperial nonentity. He could hunt, paint, and carve,
but public business so bored him that he signed docu-
ments without reading them. One day Pulcheria put a
parchment before him, and he, as usual, blindly appended
his name. Shortly afterwards he summoned Eudocia,
and was told that she was now the slave of Pulcheria,
and awaited her orders. The document he had signed
was a deed of sale of his wife, but it does not appear
that the little stratagem made much impression on him.
Pulcheria still held the reins. Eudocia had her first
child at the end pf 422, and was, in the following January,
entitled Augusta. The court had a visit, too, from the
Empress of the West, Galla Placidia, and her daughter, and
large matters were discussed. In 433 we may, perhaps,
trace some influence of Eudocia on legislation. An edict
imposing the death-sentence on the remaining pagans
may be confidently ascribed to Pulcheria; but an edict
reforming and enlarging the higher schools of Constan-

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 335

tinople seems rather to remind us of the Athenian
scholar's daughter. She occupied much of her leisure
in writing historical and religious poetry, and the little
that survives of it has been recently edited by Ludwich.
It is correct in form and devoid of inspiration.

The years passed tranquilly until 437, when we begin
to suspect that there is friction with Pulcheria. Few
things had happened, beyond the echo of the stormy
movements of the West, and the disquieting advance of
the Huns, to disturb the life of the court. One year (434)
had, indeed, brought a strange thrill into the Imperial
nunnery. A princess of the Western Empire, Honoria,
came to Constantinople, enceinte by her own steward.
But the hard lot of Honoria, and the romantic devices
by which she sought to enliven it, will occupy us later.
Pulcheria promptly enclosed the fiery young princess
in a convent, and the scandal would be mentioned only
in whispers. Three years later (437) the Western
Emperor, Valentinian III, came to Constantinople, and
led away Eudocia's beautiful daughter, Licinia Eudoxia,
to share his trembling throne. The next detail is that, in
439, Eudocia made a lengthy pilgrimage to Palestine, and
there can be little doubt that her absence from the palace
for a year — which is unconvincingly connected by Gibbon
with the marriage of her daughter, two years before — was
due, in part or entirely, to some quarrel with either
Theodosius or Pulcheria, most probably the latter.

At Antioch, on the journey, Eudocia enjoyed the
prestige of her solitary and independent dignity. From a
golden throne she delivered a studied oration to the
Senate, and the tumultuous applause and voting of statues
to her must have greatly increased her self-consciousness.
The shower of gold she rained upon the churches and
monasteries of Palestine, and indeed all along her route,
eHcited a no less stimulating demonstration. She returned
to Constantinople, apparently about the end of 439, with
a larger sense of her importance, and with such priceless
relics as the arm of St. Stephen and the authentic picture

336 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

of Mary which Luke the Physician had painted. It is only
at a much later date that Greek writers add to her luggage
a phial of the Virgin's milk, some underclothing of the
infant Christ, and similar treasures.

The pilgrimage was the turning-point in the career of
Eudocia. So far her life had been one of splendid and
powerless prestige ; it now rapidly darkens with intrigue,
is overshadowed by tragedy and suspicion, and soon ends
in a virtual exile. We are sufficiently acquainted with the
writers of the time to expect that they will throw very
little light on this fresh Imperial tragedy, but, using the
later and less weighty Greek writers with discretion, we
may obtain a fairly confident idea of its main features.
Two facts are related by writers of the time, and are
beyond question. In the year following Eudocia's return,
her friend, and the intimate friend of the Emperor, the
charming and accomplished Paulinus, was exiled and put
to death without public trial. The second fact is that,
a few years later, Eudocia left the palace for ever, to
spend the remainder of her life at Jerusalem.

The later Byzantine writers give a rounded story of
these events, and, on the whole, one is disposed to think
that in this case they are revealing the suppressed truth.
Theophanes (in his " Chronographia ") says that a eunuch
named Chrysaphius rose into favour, and urged Eudocia
to secure the dismissal of Pulcheria. They persuade
Theodosius that, since Pulcheria has taken a vow of
virginity, her proper place is among the deaconesses of
the Church, and Archbishop Flavian is instructed to take
her away. Flavian, however, prefers to have her in the
palace, and he directs her simply to live apart for a time
and wait. Then, in 440, occurs the execution — one may
almost say murder — of Paulinus. These later Greek
writers all give a romantic story in connexion with it. As
Theodosius and Eudocia go to church on Epiphany
morning, a peasant presents the Emperor with a remarkably
large apple. He gives it to Eudocia, who privately sends
it to Paulinus. Unluckily, Paulinus in turn presents it to

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 337

the Emperor, who sternly asks Eudocia what she has done
with it. She declares, and repeats with a most solemn oath,
that she has eaten it. Paulinus is at once sent away,
and decapitated. A much nearer and more weighty
authority, John Malala, confirms, in substance, this story
of the apple, and says that Paulinus was suspected of
intimacy with the Empress. There is no serious reason
to doubt it, nor is any other reason suggested for the
murder of Paulinus ; but whether Eudocia was guilty, or
the suspicion was inspired by the servants of Pulcheria,
we are unable to determine.

The eunuch then, says Theophanes, presses Eudocia to
attack Flavian and Pulcheria. He reminds her of " all the
bitter things she had endured from Pulcheria," and covers
the human motive with a pretence of religious zeal. We
know, at least, that Eudocia embraced the Eutychian
heresy, which Chrysaphius had adopted, and that a Church-
council was summoned in 441 that put an end to Flavian.
The intrigue, however, runs on in obscurity until Eudocia
suddenly asks permission to retire to Jerusalem. Theo-
dosius could not divorce her, but we can easily believe
that, as these writers say, he treated her with such severity,
repeatedly reminding her of Paulinus, that she was driven
into exile. Pulcheria returned to the palace, and resumed
her control of the Emperor and the Empire.

Gibbon scouts these " Greek fictions," but, not only
has he not taken sufficient account of John Malala, whose
authority he recognizes, but a detail he adds from the
still more authoritative Chronicle of Marcellinus (which is
almost contemporary) gives a very serious confirmation.
In the suite of Eudocia, when she set out for Palestine,
were a priest named Severus and a deacon named John,
favourites of hers. They had not long left Constantinople
when an officer named Saturninus, of the faction opposed
to Eudocia, came upon them with an order to put Severus
and John to death. It appears that they too were executed
for supposed intimacy with the Empress. Eudocia lost her
self-control at this brutal outrage, and bade her servants

22

338 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

make an end of Saturninus. When Theodosius heard, he
stripped Eudocia of her Imperial prerogatives, and left her
in the position of an ordinary citizen. These authentic
statements of Marcellinus strongly confirm the story, and
it is clear that the Byzantine court was stained by a sordid
quarrel and several brutal murders.

The romance of Eudocia's career was not yet over.
Marcellinus sends her to Jerusalem in 444: the later
writers in 442. However that may be, in the year 445
we find her again embarking on an unhappy adventure.
The monks of Palestine were infected with the Eutychian
heresy, and they welcomed so powerful a patroness.
With the aid of her servants they ousted the orthodox
bishop of Jerusalem, and a vigorous monk was put in
his place. The monk-bishop, with his militant army of
ten thousand monkish followers, held Jerusalem for twenty
months, in spite of the Imperial troops, drove all the
orthodox bishops out of Palestine, and slew and cast to
the dogs a number of their followers. In this quaint
company the delicate Greek Empress continued to build
churches and monasteries for three years, but when she
hears at length of the misfortunes of her daughter, which
the Bishop of Rome, as well as the courts of Ravenna
and Constantinople, ascribe to her heresy, she sends to
consult the famous hermit of the pillar, Simeon Stylites.
Simeon recommends her to confer with a certain saintly
monk of the desert. The monk will neither leave his
desert for her, nor permit a woman to enter it. She
therefore builds a tower on the hill some miles away,
and in that safe and public elevation the monk enlightens
her out of her heresy.

Eudocia brought her adventurous career to a close in
460, protesting with her last breath that she was innocent
of the charge of unchastity. Pulcheria continued to rule
the Eastern Empire in the name of Theodosius until he
died, in the year 450, inglorious and unhonoured. It was
now seen that the prosperity of the Empire in her earlier
years was a hollow truce of circumstances. When the

THE ROMANCE OF EUDOXIA AND EUDOCIA 339

fierce and rapacious Huns approached it, in 446 and 447,
the Eastern Empire tremblingly purchased peace by the
most ignominious concessions. When Theodosius died,
she assumed sole control of the Empire, and the head
of the eunuch Chrysaphius was at once removed from
his shoulders. But the pressure of her people forced
her to marry, and an aged Senator, Marcian, engaged
to share her throne without sharing her virginal bed.
To his more vigorous hands the affairs of State now
passed, and Pulcheria maintained her virtue and piety
to the end. But we must now leave the Oriental pomp,
the emasculated frame, arid the splendid piety of the
Byzantine court, to conclude our story in the West.

CHAPTER XXI

THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST

THE course of our inquiry has led us through five
centuries of change. We have passed from the
sober and virile integrity of the first Imperial pair,
the golden age of Roman life and letters, to the successive
depths of the Caesars. We have then seen the decrepit
and corrupt city refreshed with an inflow of sound pro-
vincial blood, the enervated patrician families replaced on
the throne by vigorous soldiers, and a new period of
sobriety and prosperity open under the Stoics, to sink
again under the burden of vice and luxury. Diocletian
restores its strength, and then a singular and momentous
change comes over the face of the Empire. The white
homes of the gods perish or decay, the gay processions
no longer enliven the streets, the cross of Christ heads
the legions and towers austerely above the public buildings
and monuments. The ante-chambers of the Emperors are
filled with Christian bishops, and the rulers of the world
bend meekly before the ragged figures of monks and
tremble at the threats of lowly priests.

We return to the Western world to find another and
a greater change. Rome has fallen, the frontiers are
obliterated, the provinces, even to Africa, are cowering
under the armies of the barbarians. Poverty, misery,
and violence are scattered over the Empire, as if the
departing gods had sown its fields with salt or with
dragons' teeth as they retired to Olympus. Civilization,
law, culture, art, seem to be doomed, and the end of the

340

THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 341

world is confidently expected. But amid the crumbling
frame of the vast Empire a few shades of Emperors and
Empresses linger for a generation, and we m^y glance
briefly at their sobered features and adventurous experi-
ences.

The chief figure of interest is iElia Galla Placidia, the
sister of Honorius, whom we found visiting Constantinople
in 423. Her adventures began when the Goths invested
Rome in 408. She is then mentioned as concurring with
the Senate in the pitiful execution of her cousin, the
widow of Stilicho. Placidia was then in her eighteenth
year. Bearing a heavy ransom, the Gothic army went
away to harass her useless and trembling brother at
Ravenna, and Placidia thought fit to remain at Rome.
It still contained wealth enough to capitulate to barbarians
on fair terms. But the Goths returned in 410. Rome
was awakened in the dead of night by the blare of their
trumpets, and looked out to find palaces in flames, the
streets filled with the terrible Goths, and the work of
looting already begun. After six days of pillage they
retreated northward, taking Placidia with them. We
cannot follow her closely in that extraordinary march.
She was treated as a princess, however, and two years
later was sought in marriage by the new king of the
Goths, Ataulph. Ataulph was a barbarian only in name ;
a large, handsome man, princely, intelligent, and amiable.
He aspired to be a Roman Emperor. Honorius weakly
resented the proposal, and demanded that he should
prove the friendship he offered to Rome by returning
Placidia. For two years she had wandered over Italy in
the Gothic army.

It appears that Placidia was attracted to the graceful
and courtly Goth, and they were married at Narbonne —
the Goths having now returned tp Gaul — in 414. When
she reflected on the splendour of the wedding gifts, she
may have thought that even an alliance with a Roman
prince could not be more magnificent. Fifty beautiful
youths, clothed in silk, brought to her one hundred dishes

342 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

laden with the gold and jewels which the Goths had
brought from Rome. But Ataulph was assassinated in
the following year, and Placidia sank again to the
position of captive. She had to walk twelve miles on
foot, amid a crowd of captives, before the victorious
barbarian who had slain her husband. Within another
year her persecutor was slain, and his more humane
successor restored her— or sold her — to the court at
Ravenna.

The Roman commander Constantius, into whose hands
she was committed, at once claimed her in marriage.
Honorius had promised that he should marry her if, by
whatever means, he recovered her from the Goths. Placidia
shrank resentfully from his embraces, and found his coarse,
large, surly person a poor exchange for her handsome
Gothic husband. The wedding took place, however, in
417, and Placidia settled down to the prosy duties of a
matron, giving birth, in succession, to the princess Honoria
and the future Emperor Valentinian III. In 421 her
husband compelled the weak-minded Honorius to clothe
him with the purple. Placidia received the title of Augusta,
and a better prospect seemed to open before her. But
Constantius died within a few months, and it was not
long before she fell into a violent quarrel with Honorius.
The cause of the quarrel is, as usual, obscure. Some
of the later writers suggest that Honorius became
enamoured of his sister in her young widowhood. We
know only that the palace at Ravenna was filled with
bitter recriminations, its courts were stained with the blood
of their followers, and Placidia fled to Constantinople with
"her children.

Honorius died a few months later (August 423), and
Placidia, confirmed in her title of Augusta by Theodosius,
was sent in the following year to claim the throne for
Theodosius, at the head of a considerable force. A secretary
had usurped the vacant throne during her absence. It
was the spring of 425 before they set out from Thessalonica
for Italy ; Placidia was with the cavalry, which reached

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THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 343

and took Aquileia with great speed. There, after a short
time, she received the captive usurper. His hand was
cut off in the public Circus, he was placed on an ass and
conducted round the town, amid the jeers of the crowd
and the actors of the Circus, and was finally beheaded.
They then proceeded to Ravenna. Valentinian, a boy of
six years, was created Emperor of the West, and Placidia
settled down to a long period of government in his name.

As the legislation which followed, bearing the name
of Valentinian but breathing the spirit of Placidia, was
mainly of an ecclesiastical character, we will not linger
over it. She fell ruthlessly upon Pagans, Jews, Pelagians,
Manichaeans, and every other class who were obnoxious
to her clergy. As in the case of most of the later
Empresses, her piety so impressed the writers of the
time that her personality is almost entirely hidden from us.
Apart from her decrees of religious coercion, we know
her only as experiencing, not doing, things. Procopius,
not a biased historian, severely complains that she reared
her son in a luxurious softness that led inevitably to his
later vices and his violent death ; and it is frequently
suspected that she had no eagerness to see him fitly
educated in the duties of a prince. Cassiodorus pronounces
that she conducted the affairs of the State with wavering
and incompetent counsel, just at the time when Rome
most urgently needed a firm and enlightened ruler.
Tillemont, after praising her piety, admits sadly that she
brought great evils upon her afflicted Empire.

Though Rome had been looted by the Goths at their
leisure, and barbaric armies commanded every province,
the cause of the Empire was not yet lost. A judicious
policy might have utilized the mutual hatreds of the
various tribes, and have put the able commanders, who
were still in the service of Rome, at the head of formid-
able armies. But the weakness and obtuseness of Placidia
led, on the contrary, to the loss of her finest general,
her last free province, and a k*ge proportion of her
troops. Listening injudiciously to the malignant per-

344 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

suasions of one general, iEtius, she commanded the other,
Count Boniface, to relinquish his post in Africa, under
the impression that he meditated treachery. ^Etius at
the same time warned Boniface that the recall was due
to suspicion, and the gallant officer was driven into re-
bellion. He invited the Vandals to Africa, and soon
twenty thousand of the tall, fair-haired northerners, with
a vast crowd of dependents and followers, spread over
the province. Placidia discovered too late the deceit o
./Etius. She was induced to send a friendly ambassador
to Boniface, and the fraud was at once detected. But
the Vandals could not be dislodged. Boniface was slain
(432) in his struggle with them, ^Etius was driven to the
camp of the Huns, and Africa, the granary of Rome, was
irretrievably lost.

The next blow that threatened the distracted Empire
was an invasion of the Huns. Placidia cannot be held
responsible for the subsequent calamities, for iEtius,
strong in his alliance with the Huns, had forced his way
back into power, and was the real governor of the Empire.
But the formidable task he undertook was made more
difficult by a romantic and unhappy occurrence within
Placidia's domestic circle. We have already spoken of
her daughter Honoria, who came in disgrace to Constan-
tinople in 434. The great distinction of the Constantino-
politan court, the possession of three royal virgins, seems
to have excited the pious jealousy of Placidia, and she
apparently designed that her court should not lack its
Vestal Virgin. We are not told that any vow was imposed
on the young Honoria, but she was reared with the
discipline of a conventual novice, and given to under-
stand that the exalted state of virginity was assigned to
her. In 433 the title of Augusta was bestowed on her,
in some compensation of her sacrifice. But the daughter
of Constantius had thicker blood in her veins than the
daughters of Arcadius, and the claustral regime — the
restriction of attendance to eunuchs and women— does
not seem to have been rigorously enforced at Ravenna.

THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 345

In 434 the seventeen-year-old princess was discovered
to be in a painful condition, and was dispatched to
Constantinople, and incarcerated in a nunnery by the
indignant Pulcheria.

But the young girl had a spirit beyond her years.
She had heard of the formidable nation of the Huns,
which awaited, in the neighbourhood of the Danube and
the Volga, its turn to fill the Imperial stage ; she had
heard that the young and powerful Attila had recently
acceded to the throne of that nation. In some way she
secured a messenger who took from her a letter and a
ring to Attila, offering him her heart and her dowry if
he would release her. The girlish freak was destined to
have terrible consequences for the Empire. The lady
herself we may dismiss in a word. She seems to have
been kept in close confinement in the East until about
450, sending fruitless messages, from time to time, to her
romantic lover. Attila had sufficient occupation during
those fifteen years, and was content to put her name on
the lengthy list of his wives. When, in 450, he formally
demanded her person, he was assured that she was
married. It is not impossible that she was released on
condition that she accepted a husband chosen for her.
But her end is obscure, and one is disposed to doubt if
she would ever have resumed her liberty without joining
the victorious Hun.

Placidia died in the year 450, leaving the astute /Etius
to aveft the oncoming disaster by an alliance with the
Ostrogoths against the Huns. For a quarter of a century
she had had supreme power over the Western Empire.
It is, perhaps, only an indication of mediocrity on her
part that she could not avert the blows that fell upon it
during that period, but it was a calamity for Rome.
Her memory survived, in a singular way, for more than
a thousand years. The pagan habit of cremating the
bodies of Emperors and Empresses had been replaced by
the Egyptian process of embalming, and Placidia had
built a chapel at Ravenna for the reception of her body.

346 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

There it sat, in a chair of cedar-wood, until the year
1577, when some children, thrusting a lighted taper into the
tomb to see it better, set it aflame and reduced it to ashes.

Meantime, another Empress of the West had appeared.
In 437 Valentinian had married Licinia Eudoxia, the
fourteen-year-old daughter of Eudocia, at Constantinople,
and brought her to Italy. He had parted with a large
slice of his Empire to Pulcheria and Theodosius for the
honour, and is said to have held it lightly. The sequel
will dispose us to believe his irregularities. A youth of
eighteen at the time, frivolous, luxurious, and light-headed,
he was content to enjoy the palace, and leave his mother,
and then vEtius, to discharge his duties. Eudoxia could
but idly follow the momentous movements of the nations,
and appreciate the defeat of the Huns in the terrible battle
of Chalons in 45 1 ; or shudder when, in the following year,
Attila marched to the gates of Rome, demanding half the
Empire as the dowry of, his distant bride, Honoria; or
when, in 453, the profligate Valentinian plunged his sword
in the breast of his great minister iEtius. A grave personal
tragedy was upon her.

The court resided generally at Rome, where Valentinian
enjoyed the larger and faster amusements of a metropoHs.
Here, in the year 455, he was stabbed by his soldiers, and
a romantic story is told in connexion with his death. The
story is rejected by a recent historical writer, Mr. Hodgkin
(" Italy and her Invaders "), but Professor Bury has shown
that it is probably true in substance. The iFuU story, to
which fictitious details may have been added before it
reached Procopius, is that Valentinian, gambling heavily
with the distinguished Senator Petronius Maximus, obtained
his ring as a security for the money he had won. Maximus
had a beautiful wife whom the Emperor desired, and he
sent the ring to her with a summons to the palace. The
unsuspecting lady was conducted to Valentinian's apart-
ments, and outraged by him. For this crime, and in virtue
of the general discontent, Maximus had him slain and
occupied his throne.

THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 347

Maximus was a wealthy Roman, of illustrious family,
and peaceful and luxurious ways, so that we have little
reason to doubt that an outrage on his wife inspired him
with the thought of assassination. The further course of
events adds authority to the narrative. His wife died very
closely after the death of Valentinian, and he invited or
compelled Eudoxia to marry him. In the obscurity and
uncertainty of the records we are unable to understand the
consent of Eudoxia, even under pressure. Some of the
later Greeks affirm that he violated her. It is certain, at
least, that she married him within a month or two of her
husband's tragic death, and almost immediately afterwards
sought to destroy him. Our authorities, late and uncertain
as they are, do not lack plausibility when they affirm that
he one day confessed that, out of love for her, he had directed
the assassination of her husband. Rome had returned
to evil days, and tragedy was brooding over its very
ruins.

In a fit of repulsion Eudoxia secretly invited the Vandals
to cross the Mediterranean and avenge her. Historians
too lightly admit, in extenuation of her criminal act, that
she had no hope of help from the East. The aged and
upright Marcian was, it is true, intent upon the internal
prosperity of his Empire, but it is extremely doubtful, as
the sequel will show, whether the deposition of Maximus
would have offered much difficulty, and Eudoxia was the
niece of Pulcheria. Her vindictive act hastened the end
of the Empire. Genseric speedily landed his fierce troops
on Italian soil, and the Romans at once slew the sullen
or remorseful Maximus and cast his mangled body in the
Tiber. The further adventures of Eudoxia, interesting as
they must have been, are compressed in a few lines. After
fourteen days' pillage, the Vandals retreated once more
from the stricken city of Octavian, laden with gold, silver,
women, and all kinds of valuables. Genseric compelled
Eudoxia and her two young daughters to accompany him.
They were detained at Carthage for seven years. The
Eastern court repeatedly asked for their release, but it

348 THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

was refused until, in 462, the elder daughter, Eudocia,
was married to Genseric's son. Eudoxia and the second
daughter, Placidia, were then sent to Constantinople. Years
afterwards — in one of the legends — we catch a last glimpse
of Eudoxia, the last prominent Empress of the West. She
is standing before the column of Simeon Stylites, asking
him to come and live somewhere on her ample estate,
Eudocia lived for sixteen years at Carthage, then escaped
to the East, and ended her life an Palestine. Placidia we
shall meet again for a moment.

We turn back to the shrinking Empire of the West, to
dismiss the last four Imperial shadows that flit about its
ruins. The vacant throne was occupied by the compander
of the Roman forces in Gaul, Avitus. He had married,
since we know that Sidonius ApoUinaris was married to
his daughter Papianilla, but his wife was dead, and we need
only say that, after he had enjoyed the Imperial banquets
for a few months, he was degraded to the rank of a
bishopric by the commander of the barbaric troops, with
the consent of the disgusted Romans, and he died soon
afterwards. He was followed by a worthy and able officer,
whose rule might have illumined a more propitious age ;
but we find no Empress in association with him, and must
pass over the four years of his earnest eflfort to redeem the
Empire. After his death Libius Severus had a nominal
and obscure reign of four years (461-5), and again we find
no Empress in the scanty records. ,

The throne remained vacant for nearly two years,
during which the Vandals harassed the miserable remnant
of the great Empire. At length the chief commander in
Italy, Ricimer, sought the aid of the Eastern Empire, and
the alliance was sealed by the Eastern court sending one
of its wealthiest and, by birth, most illustrious nobles,
Anthemius, to occupy the throne. His Empress was
Euphemia, daughter of the Emperor Marcian by his first
wife. But her name, and the names of her father and
her children, are all that we find recorded concerning
her, and we need not dwell on the failures and quarrels.

THE LAST EMPRESSES OF THE WEST 349

or^ the last faint flicker of Roman paganism, which
characterized his inauspicious reign. Within four years
he quarrelled with Ricimer, and his life was trodden out
on the streets of Rome.

For a few months Placidia, the daughter of Eudoxia,
then occupies the throne. At Constantinople, to which
she went with her mother from her Vandal captivity,
she married the wealthy noble Olybrius. He had fled
from Rome when it was looted by the Vandals, and had
little mind to exchange the safe luxury of Constantinople
for its uneasy throne when Ricimer offered it to him. It is
said that Placidia impelled him. It was a fatal adventure.
They entered Rome in the train of Ricimer's troops, but
Olybrius succumbed to that atmosphere of death in a few
months, and we have not time to discern the features
of Eudoxia's daughter before she sinks into the large
category of obscure Imperial widows. His successor,
Glycerius, a puppet of the chief commander, seems to have
had no wife. A competitor appeared immediately, and he
exchanged the uncertain sceptre of the Western Empire
for the solid crozier of a bishop.

One faint and shadowy Empress crosses the scene
before the curtain falls. Once more the Eastern court had
provided Italy — which was now the Western Roman Empire
—with a ruler. Julius Nepos set up his court at Ravenna,
and had for Empress a niece of Verina, the Empress of
the East. But the barbarian leaders of the barbarian array
— the only army that remained in the service of Rome —
resented the Eastern intruder, and marched on Ravenna.
Nepos fled ignominiously ; and one reads with interest,
though not without reserve, that he was put to death
by his predecessor, Bishop Glycerius. The fate of his
wife is unknown, and the last Empress of the Western
provinces entirely escapes our search.

The tattered purple was offered to the commander
Orestes. He refused it, and allowed them to place it on
the shoulders of his young son (476). The name of this
pretty and innocuous boy united, as if in mockery, the

3 so THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

names of Romulus and Augustus. To later times his
pathetic figure is known as Augustulus. His father was
slain by the troops immediately afterwards, because he
refused to distribute one-third of the soil of Italy between
them. The Empire was now a mere phrase; Rome a
plaything of the barbarians whom it had cowed for five
or six hundred years. Odoacer, the latest leader of the
troops, bade the child put off his purple mantle and begone,
and some time afterwards — so low had Rome fallen that
the year of this impressive consummation cannot accurately
be determined — forced the Senate to abolish the Imperial
succession in the West. Italy became the kingdom of a
barbarian. Britain, Gaul, Germany, and Spain were turned
into the battle-grounds of those fierce tribes who, after the
violence and darkness of the Middle Ages, would in their
turn scatter the seed of civilization over the earth. The
gallery of Western Empresses was closed by the irrevocable
hand of fate, and the long, quaint gallery of the Byzantine
Empresses was thrown open.

INDEX

Ablabius, 283

Acerronia PoUia, 102

Acholius, 318

Acte, 95, 105, 121

Actium, 19

Adultery at Rome, 26, 200

Mlia. Capitolina, 160

— Paetina, 62. 80
^milianus, L. A. L., 130, 131
^tius, 344, 345, 346

Afer, 253

Agrippa, M. v., 25, 26, 27

— son of Julia, 33, 35-6
Agrippina, the elder, 33, 37, 41, 42,46

— the younger, 54, 65, 67, 80, 81,
82-104

— memoirs of, 14, 44, 64, 73, 80
Ahenobarbus, C. D., 81
Albinus, 196, 197, 198

Alexander Severus, 212, 219-21, 222-

31
Alexandra, St., 256
Alexandria, 159, 207
Alexandrian Chronicle, the, 307, 311
Alexianus. See Alexander
Ambrose, St., 266, 314, 315, 318, 319
Anastasia, 288
Anicetus, 100, 102, 103, iii
Annius Verus, 164
" Anonymus Valesii," 267
Antinous, 157, 159
Antioch, 27, 145, 171
Antonia, 81

Antoninus Pius, 162, 163, 165-8, 169
Apollodorus, 153
Appian, 202

Appius Silanus, 68

Appuleia Varilia, 42

Arcadia, 328

Arcadius, 320, 321, 333, 325, 326-32

Argentocoxus, 203

Argobastes, 321

Arintheus, 325

Arsenius, 320

Asiaticus, Valerius, 71-2

Astrology at Rome, 85

Ataulph, 341, 342

Athanasius, 295, 296

Athenais, 333, 334

Athens, 158

Attains, 239

Attianus, 142, 147, 149, 153

Attila, 345, 346

Auctions of Caligula, the, 54, 57

Augustans, the, 119, 120

Augustine, St., 274, 314

Augustulus, 350

Augustus, title of, 19

Aurelian, 241, 245-51

AvituB, 348

Bacchanalia, the, 74

Baise, 53, 101

Balbinus, 235, 236

Barbatoria, 14

Baring-Gould, Mr., 3, 90, 91, 100, 103.

118
Baronius, 256, 311
Basil, St., 310
Bassani, 186
Bassianus, the elder, 195
— the younger. See Caracalla

351

352

THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Bassianus, Senator, 273

— V. A. See Elagabalus

Bassus, Pomponius, 217

Bauto, 326

Berenice, 130

Boissier, M., 136

Boniface, Count, 344

Britannicus, 65, 76, 83, 86, 92, 96

Bruttius Praesens, 182

Burrus, 85, 92, 95, 103, 107, 108

Bury, Prof., 211, 273, 277, 280, 346

Caenis, 128-9

Caesar, Julius, 6, 10

Csesonia, Milonia, 55, 56, 59, 130

Caius Caesar = Caligula

Caius, son of Julia, 32-3

Caledonians, the, 203

Caligula, 37, 49-59

Callistus, 80

Calpurnia, 75, 79, 84

Calpumius Piso, 52

Candidian, 263

Capitolinus, Julius, 166, 172, 173

Capreae, 34, 48

Caracalla, 196, 199, 202, 203, 204-9

Caractacus, 84

Carinus, 252-4

Camuntum, 261

Cams, 251

Cassianus Postumus, 242

Cassiodorus, 267

Cassius, Avidius, 175, 177

Castricia, 330

Ceionia, 170

Celsa, Nonia, 210, 213

Celsus, 153

Centumcellse, 182

Charito, 306

Christians, persecution of the, 257-9

Chrysaphius, 336, 337

Chrysostom, John, 327, 328, 329,

330-2
Cinna, 20
Circus, the, 7

— factions of the, 56, 109, 124
Claudii, the, 9

Claudius, 60, 61, 62, 64-76, 79-82, 141

— II, 244
Cleander, 187

Cleopatra, 8, 10, 13, 18, 19

— servant of Claudius, 75, 79
Clodia, 12

Cohen, 238, 253, 307
Cologne, 84, 138
Commodus, L. C, 157, 162

— L. v., 169, 170, 172, 175, 180

— son of Marcus, 172, 181, 182-9
Constans, 286, 289
Constantia, 273, 275, 276, 283

— wife of Gratian, 313
Constantina, F. J., 288, 289, 290-3
Constantine, 260, 271-85

— the younger, 286, 287
Constantinople, founding of, 283, 284
Constantius, 254, 260, 266-71

— the younger, 286, 287, 289, 29,
292-304

— General, 342
Contubernium, 129
Corbulo, Domitius, 130
Cornificia, 205

Corruption at Rome, 21, 34, 136-7
Crepereius Gallus, 102
Crinitus, Ulpius, 250
Crispilla, Quintia, 236
Crispina, 183, 184
Crispus, 274, 278-82

— Passienus, 67
Curia mulierum, 6, 202

Daza, 259

" Deaths of the Persecutors," 236,

258
Decius, 237
Delmatius, 286, 287
Dexippus, 225
Diadumenianus, 210
Didia Clara, 192, 193
Dill, Dr. S., 136
Dio, 9, 15. 16, 26, 29, 43, 45, 51, 64,

73. 84. 95. 99, "4. 129, 131, 133.

142, 146, 169, 176, 188, 200, 202,

207, 228
Diocletian, 253-60, 261, 262
Divination at Rome, 85
Dominica, Albia, 307, 308, 310
Domitia Lepida, 68, 89

— Longina, 130, 131-5
Domitian, 130-4

INDEX

353

Domitian, Prefect, 292
Domitilla, Flavia, 128, 130
Domna, Julia, 194, 195, 196-209
Domus Vectiliana, 190
Drepanum, 266
Drusilla, daughter of Agrippina, 51

— daughter of Caesonia, 55, 59
DrususNero, 15

— son of Agrippina, 47

— son of Livia, 24, 31, 37, 41, 61
Duruy, 148, 156, i6i, 172. 239

Eboracum, 155, 203.
Eclectus, 188, 193
Elagabal, 193, 215
Elagabalus, 200, 211-21
Eleuthera, St., 256
Emesa, 195, 209, 212
Empress, the title, 9
Ennia, 50-1
Ephesus, 153
Epicureanism, 164
Etruscilla, Herennia, 237
Eucer, no
Eudocia, 334-8
Eudoxia, 325, 326, 327-31

— Licinia, 335, 346, 347
Euphemia, 348

Eusebia, Aurelia, 294, 296-301, 303
Eusebius, Bishop, 249, 257, 262, 267,
275. 279. 287, 296

— eunuch, 295

Eutropia, Galena Valeria, 254, 270,

283
Eutropius, 325, 326, 327, 328

— historian, 200, 206, 257, 268, 272,
275. 279

Fabia, 180, 181
Fadilla, 187

— Julia, 158

— Junia, 230
Falco, 190

Fausta, 271, 272, 277, 278-82
Faustina, the elder, 163, 164-8

— the younger, 169, 170-8

— Maxima, 304, 308

— Rupilia, 164
Faustinopolis, 177
Felix, 112

23

Firth, Mr,, 367, 277, 280
Flaccilla, ^lia, 317, 318
Flaminian Circus, 30
Flavian, Archbishop, 336, 337
Forum, the, 7, 19

— of Trajan, the, 143
Freedmen at Rome, 62, 63, 68
Fronto, 166, 172

Fucine Lake, 87

Fulvia, 10, 12, 13

Fundana, Galeria, 123, 124, 125,

126-8
Fumilla, Marcia, 129, 130

Gainas, 329

Galba, Sulpicius, ^ij, 120, 123

Galerius, 254, 256, 258, .260, 261

Galla, 317, 318, 319, 320, 321

Gallienus, 238, 239, 242, 244

Gallus, 237, 290-4

Gannys, 212

Gardner, A., 299

Genseric, 347

Germanicus, 37-8

Geta, ig6, 201, 202, 204, 205

Gibbon, 2, 45, 131, 136, 141, 169, 211,
224, 225, 228, 239, 245, 247, 248,
267, 274, 278, 301, 331, 337

Glycerius, 349

Golden House of Nero, 115, 129

Gordianus, 234

— the younger, 236
G6rres, Dr., 279
Goteke. 270

Gratian, 307, 312, 313, 314
Greece, Nero in, 119
Gregorovius, 151, 156, 161
Guldenpenning, 317

Hadrian, 139, 141. 142, 145. 147.

149-63. 169
Hannibalian, 286, 287, 288
Helena, 265, 266-70, 277, 278, 282-3

— wife of Julian. 297, 298, 299-304
Henderson, Mr., 90, 109
Herennianus, 241

Herod, 27

— Agrippa, 49, 59
Herodes, 241

Herodian, 200, 201, 206, 225

354

THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

"Historia Augusta," the, 45, 142,
146, 150, 152, 166, i;2, 175, 188,
205, 206, 211, 217, 249, 257

Hodgkin, Mr., 346

Honoria, 335, 342, 344, 345

Honorius, 317, 321, 323, 324, 341, 342

Hortensius, 19

Hostilianus, 237

Huns, the, 344

Ifland, Dr., 317
Imperator, the title, 9

Jerome, St., 267, 279

Jerusalem, 159, 160

Josephus, 112, 130, 132

Jovian, 306, 307

Julia, daughter of Octavian, 23-30

— the younger, 33-4

— daughter of Drusus, 66-7

— daughter of Titus, 131

— Livilla, 65

Julian, the Emperor, 140, 166, 172,

227, 282, 284, 288, 290, 296-305
Julianus, Didius, 192, 193
Julius, son of Julia, 32-3
Junia Claudilla, 49

— Silana, 98
Junius Silanus, 49, 50

Justina, Aviana, 311, 312-17, 318,

319
Juvenal, 137

Komemann, Professor, 45

Lactantius, 258, 261, 272

Laeta, 313

Laetus, 188, 190, 193

Lake Agrippa, 114

Lampridius, 200, 203, 224, 225

Leontius, 296

Lepida, Domitia, 68, 89

— wife of Galba, 123
Lepidus, 54

— the Triumvir, 6, 8, 17
Libanius, 296
Liberius, 296
Licinius, 262, 263, 273-5

— the younger, 276, 278

Livia, 6, 8, 9, 10, 15-17, 19-21, 24-44

— MeduUina Camilla, 61

— Orestilla, 52
Liviada, 20
Livilla, 41, 47, 54

Livius Drusus Claudianus, 9

Locusta, 90, 96

LoUia Paulina, 52, 55, 80, 83-4

Lollius, 32

Londinium, 155

Lucilla, 175, 179, 183, 184

Lucius Domitius = Nero

Lucullan Gardens, the, 71, 72, 75

Lugdunum, 54

Lutetia, 154

Luxury at Rome, 16, 34, 54

Lycisca, 69

Macellum, 290

Macrinus, Opilius, 208, 209-12

— Sallustius, 225
Macro, 50-1
Macrobius, 27
Maecenas, 12, 18
Maeonius, 241, 242

Maesa, Julia, 200, 202, 211-19

Magnentius, 289, 290, 292

Malala, John, 337

Mamaea, Julia, 211, 219, 222-31

Marcella, 24, 25, 26

Marcellinus, Amfflianus, 234, 284, 291,

294. 299. 3°o< 3"

— Chronicle of, 319, 337
Marcellus, 24, 25
Marcia, 185-9, 193
Marcian, 339, 347
Marciana, 139, 140, 144

— Paccia, 196

Marcus Aurelius, 162, 164, 167, 169-

78
Mardonius, 296
Maria, 324
Marina, 307

— daughter of Eudoxia, 331
Mariniana, 238

Marius, 243

— Maximus, 173, 175, 17^

Mark Antony, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 18, 19
Marriage, Roman, 268-9
Marsa, 330

INDEX

355

Matidia, the elder, 139, 144, 148

— the younger, 139
Maxentius, 261, 273
Maximian, 254, 261, 271-2
Maximin, 261, 262, 263
Maximinus, 229, 230, 232-5
Maximus, 314, 315, 316, 318

— Petronius, 346-7

— Pupienus, 235, 236
Memnia, 226
Mercurius, 295

Merivale, 2, 32, 37, 41, 43, 73, 90, 141,

147, 172
Messalina, Statilia, 118, 119, 121, 123

— Valeria, 60, 61, 62, 63-78, 141
Metaphrastes, 320

Milvian Bridge, 29
Minervina, 274
Mnester, 70, 76
Montius, 292

Naissos, 266

Narcissus, 63, 68, 75, 76, 79, 87, 92

Negri, Gaetano, 298

Nepos, Julius, 349

Nepotian, 290

Nero, son of Agrlppina the elder, 47

— the Emperor, 80, 81, 85, 86, 89,
93. 95. 96-121

Nerva, M. C, 135
Nicsea, Council of, 277
Nicomedia, palace of, 255
Niger, 196, 197
Nigrinus, 153

Nlmes, mausoleum at, 148
Numerianus, 252, 253

Octavia, 13, 18, 24, 26, 33

— daughter of Messalina, 65, 76, 80,
86, 95, 96, 97, 99, 105, 108-11

Octavian, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16,

17-21, 24-36
Odenathus, 240-2
Odoacer, 350
piybrius, 349
Oppian Law, the, 5
Orbiana, Sallustia Barbia, 225
Orestes, 349
Orosius, 267, 279

Orphanages, 144, 168, 177

Ostia, 74

Otho, Salvius, loi, 106, 108, 110, 123

Paganism, insincerity of, 216

Pagans, origin of name, 314

Pagi, 256

Palatine Hill, the, 7, 10, 19

Palladium, the, 216

Pallas, 63, 80, 83, 85, 96

Palma, 153

Palmyra, 240, 241, 246

Pandateria, 30, 47, 1 1 1

Papianilla, 348

Paris in the fourth century, 302

Paris, the actor, 98, 132

Paula, Julia Cornelia, 216

Paulina, 234

Paulmus, 333, 334, 336

Paulus, 295

Perennis, 185

Pertinax, 189-91

Petronia, 124

Petronius, 307

Philanthropy in the Roman world,

144, 168, 177
Philip, the Emperor, 236, 237
Philostorgius, 280, 287, 293
Philostratus, 202
Pipara, 239
Piso, C. C, 38, 39
Pissamena, 313
Placidia, ^lia Galla, 324, 334, 341,

342-5

— the younger, 349
Planasia, 35
Plancina, 38, 39
Plautia Urgulanilla, 61
Plautianus, 199-201
Plautilla, 199, 201
Pliny, 9, 42^139
Plotma, 138-48
Polemo, 166, 167
Pollio, Trebellius, 240, 247
Polybius, 63

Pompeianus, Claudius, 181, 184, 205

Pompeius Planta, 138

Pompey, 8

Poppaea, 99, 107, 108, 110-17

— Sabina, 72, 107

3S6

THE EMPRESSES OF ROME

Poppaeus Sabinus, 107
Porphyry of Gaza, 329
Prastorian Guards, the, 50, 58, 61,

119, 227
Prisca, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261-4
Probus, 251
Procopius, 308-9
Puech, Professor, 329, 332
Puellae Faustinianae, 168, 177
Pulcheria, 317, 328, 332-9
Puteoli, 53
Pyrallis, 55
Pythagoras, 114

Quadratus, 184, 185
Quietus, Lusius, 152, 153
Quintilius, 245

Keligion at Rome, 216
Renan, 136, 172
Ricimer, 348, 349
Rome, burning of, 1 14
Romula, 256, 258
Rostra, the, 29
Rubellius Plautus, 98
Rufinus, 325, 326, 327
Rufus Crispinus, 108

Sabina, 139, 144, 148, 149-61, 202

Sabinus, 131

Sacred Way, the, 8

Sallustius, 307

Salona, 260

Salonina, Cornelia, 239, 244

Saloninus, 242

Sapor, 240, 247

Saturninus, 337

Scantilla, Manlia, 192, 193

Schultz, O., 45

Scotland, 203

Scribonia, 12, 13, 14, 22

Seeck, Dr., 279

Sejanus, 41, 42, 47

Selinus, 146

Senaculum, 214

Senate, the Roman, 43, 93, 103, iii,

119. 153
Seneca, 31. 66, f}, 85, 93, 95, 96, 97.
107, 108, no, J 15

Serena, 324

— St., 256

Servianus, Ursus, 149, 162

Serviez, Roergas de, 3, 4, 32, 33, 67,

87, 90, 112, 146, 153, 166, 207
Servilia, 11
Severa, Julia AqulUa, 216

— Marcia Otacilia, 237

— Valeria, 307, 311,312
Severian, 263

— Bishop, 330
Severina, Ulpia, 250
Severus, 261

— deacon, 337

— Livius, 348

— Septimus, 193, 194-204
Sextilia, 124, 125, 126, 127
Sextus Pompeius, 10, 12, 17
Sidonius ApoUinaris, 280, 348
Silanus, Junius, 95

— Lucius, 95

Silius, Caius, 72, 73, 74, 76

Silvagni, V., 3

Simeon Stylites, 338, 348

Sinuessa, 90

Smyrna, 158

Soaemias, Julia, 200, 203, 211, 212,

213, 214-21
Socrates, the historian, 312
Sosibius, 71, 72
Sozomen, 276

Spartianus, 146, 155, 157, 160
Sporus, 118, 121
Stahr, A., 3
Stilicho, 324, 325

Stoicism, 66, 135, 144, 162, 164, 168
Subura, 6, 9, 21, 29
Suetonius, 31, 40, 42, 45, 48, 53, 55.

64, 88. 90, 134, 155
Suidas, 296
Suillius, 71
Sulpicianus, 192
Sura, 142, 150
Syria and Rome, 222

Tacitus, 9, 14, 31, 41. 4a. 44. 45. 46.
64, 72, 79, 80, 83, 90. 95. 99. I".

"5

— the Emperor, 231
Tarvey, Mr., 32

INDEX

357

TertuUa, Arricidia, 129

TertuUus, 171

Tetricus, 243, 249

Theatre, the Roman, 58, 109

Thebes, 159, 160

Theoclea, 230

Theodora, Flavia Maximiana, 270,283

Theodoret, 310, 316

Theodosius, 313, 314, 316, 317-21

— II, 328, 332-8
Theophanes, 336, 337
Theophilus, 304, 330
Thermantia, A. M., 324
Thessalonica, massacre of, 319
Thirty Tyrants, the, 239
Tiberius Claudius Germanicus, 65
Nero, 10, II, 14, 15, 40

— the Emperor, 10, 24, 25, 28, 31, 32,

34. 35. 36-42, 4<5-9
Tigellinus, 110, 116
Tillemont, 307, 312, 324, 326, 330,

331

Timesitheus, 236
Timolaus, 241
Titiana, Flavia, 190, 191
Titus, 129, 131

— Ollius, 107
Tivoli, 156, 160
Toledo, Council of, 269
Trajan, 135, 138, 139-46
Tranquillina, Furia Sabina, 236
Triaria, 127

Triumphal procession, 7

Ulpianus, Domitius, 227, 228
Urbica, Magnia, 253
Urgulania, 40, 61

VabaUath, 241, 242
Valens, 307, 308, 309, 310

Valentinian, 307, 311-13

— II. 313. 318, 319, 321

— III. 335. 342. 343. 346
Valeria, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261-4
Valerianus, 238

Valerius Messala Barbatus, 62

Vandals, the, 344, 347

Velabrum, 6, 7, 9

Verina, 349

Vespasian, 127, 128-9, 138

Vestal Virgins, 132

Vestinus, Atticus, 118

Vetranio, 289

Vettius Valens, 74, 76

Vibidia, 75

Vice in the Roman Empire, 136-7,144

Victor, Aurelius, 161, 165, 200, 207,

257, 268, 279, 284

"Epitome," 148, 206, 280, 312

Victoria, 242-4

Victorinus, 243

Vindex, 120

Vipsania, 28

Vitellius, the elder, 56, 71, 75, So, 82,

124

— the Emperor, 124-8
Volusianus, 237
Vopiscus, 245, 247

Wilkins, M. G., 197, 207

Woman, position of, at Rome, 4-6

Xenophon, 91

Zabda, 246

Zenobia, 240, 241, 242, 244-50
Zonaras, 268, 272, 276, 303
Zosimus, 234, 245, 248, 249, 257, 267,
272, 276, 280, 284, 298, 316, 320

PRINTED BY

HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEV, LD.,

LONDON AND AYLESBURY.