The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars

M O D

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THE LIVES

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OF THE

TWELVE
CAESARS

BY

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COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED

Dr. B.R. AMBEDKAR OPEN UNIVERSITY
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THE LIVES OF THE
TWELVE CAESARS

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r-

THE L

OF THE

I

TWELVE
CAESARS

BY
SUETONIUS

An unexpurgated English version

Edited with notes and an introduction

BY JOSEPH GAVOR S E

MODERN LIBRARY NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY THE MODERN LIBRARY* INC

Random House is THE PUBLISHER OF

THE MODERN LIBRARY

BENNETT A. CBHF DONALD 8. KLOPFER ROBERT K. HAAS

Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed by Parkway Printing Company Bound by H. Wolff

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE . vi

INTRODUCTION vii

BOOK I. JULIUS CAESAR i

BOOK II. OCT^VIUS AUGUSTUS 51

BOOK III. TIBERIUS 119

BOOK IV. GAIUS CALIGULA 165

BOOK V. TH DEIFIED CLAUDIUS 205

BOOK VI. NERO 239

BOOK VII. GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS . . . 281

BOOK VIII. THE DEIFIED VESPASIAN, TITUS, AND

DOMITIAN , 319

THE TWELVE CAESARS

Birth and Death Reign

Julius Caesar 102 or 100 B.C.-44 B c. Dictator 44 B.C.

Augustus

63 B.C.-I4 A.D. Emperor 27 B.C.-I4 A.D.

Tiberius

42 B.C.-37 A.D.

" 14-37 AJ>.

Caligula

12-41 A.D.

" 37-41 A.D.

Claudius

10 B.C.-54 A.D.

" 4I-S4 A.D.

Nero

3 7-68 A.D.

" 54-68 A.D.

Galba

3B.C.-69 A.D.

" 68 (June)-69
(January) A.D.

Otho

32-69 A.D.

" 69 A.D. (Janu-
ary 15 to April
16)

Vitellius

15-69 A.D.

" 69 A.D. (Janu-
ary 2 to De-
cember 22)

Vespasian

9-79 A.D

" 60-79 A.D,

Titus

39 or 41-81 A.D.

" 70-8 1 A.D.

Domitlan

51-96 AJ>.

" 81-96 A.D.

INTRODUCTION

GAIUS SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS lived at a time of particu-
lar significance for western civilization. The political and cul-
tural greatness of Rome had reached its climax and begun its
long decline. The Apostles Paul and Peter had been martyred
and Christianity had begun the long ascent of its influence.

Of the manifold ramifications of effect that the events of his
century were to have on later life Suetonius was completely
oblivious. Even the mind of his time most gifted with histor-
ical perspective, that of Tacitus, could not accurately envisage
the implications of history of ist Century Rome. This, of
course, is peculiarly true in regard to the influence which
Christianity was to have, true not only of Suetonius, but of all
contemporary with its beginnings. The greatness of this in-
fluence was to surpass even the most consolatory dreams of
the most fanatical Christian zealot writhing in the arena for
his cause. To our Roman authors the Christians of the ist
Century were a pitiable lot. And they give us never a clue as
to whether a man Christ actually lived and was crucified, or
whether he was a fiction Rome herself pieced together in an
effort to create a religious tool by which further to unite the
diverse peoples under her dominion.

That Suetonius was utterly unsuspecting of the focal
strength of Christianity is readily understood. But he ap-
pears, as well, not even to have been conscious of the effects
which would issue from many of the acts of the Caesars whose
lives interested him so minutely. Important historical events
he often dismisses in a paragraph, as the Gallic conquests of
Julius, or with a casual allusion, as the defeat of Varus.
Though he was aware the age was degenerate he did not reaJ*
ize its abasement was not a valley between two hills but ait

vii

viii INTRODUCTION

incline leading inexorably toward the sea of ineffectually into
which Rome was to descqpd. He was not concerned with po-
litical ideals or with ethics, as was Tacitus. He had little ap-
preciation of the significance of events, and less historical
perspective. He presents no composite picture of the manners
or society in which his characters moved. He produced neither
history nor biography, though he handled the materials of
both. Nor is he a literary artist, though he wrote Latin with
the clarity of the conscientious grammarian.

n

If the defects of Suetonius are so considerable it may well
be asked in what way his work is valuable to us. For, the
Lives of the Twelve Caesars remains a peculiarly valuable and
interesting work.

Unlike the Annals of Tacitus, which covers much of the
same period of Roman history, the Lives has always been
popular.

Suetonius* keynote is the personal. And detail of person,
especially the persons of the powerful Caesars, had a particu-
lar fascination for the Romans of his time and that immedi-
ately following. Its popularity in the Middle Ages is shown by
the hundreds of manuscript copies which have come down to
us. There exist three Incunabula of the Lives. And between
1470 and 1820 more than forty editions appeared, some under
the editorship of such eminent scholars as Erasmus, Stephanus,
and Casaulon. Between 1606 and 1796 threa English trans*
lations appeared.

Unlike Tacitus, Suetonius has had many imitators.

Until Suetonius Roman biography was restricted to meager,
one-sided forms. They were mostly of a laudatory character.
They arose from three sources: (i) funeral eulogies spoken
from the rostrum by a son or other near relative of the de-
ceased; (2) eulogies of ancestors by magistrates on enter-
ing office; (3) the recitation at banquets of narratives dealing
with the valorous deeds and great virtues of illustrious men.

That biography among the Romans had developed no far-
ther by Suetonius' day is due largely to the rigidity of the
forms of biography they had inherited from the Greeks,

INTRODUCTION fc

Sttiong whom this branch cf writing had always been subordi-
nate to other forms of philosophic teaching. For the essence
of the "philosophic type" of Greek biography was that it
should have a moral and didactic purpose, should present
idealized pictures of the art of living as models for imitation.
The "grammatical type" of Greek biography was perhaps
even more restricted in scope. This type developed from out-
lines of the lives of authors to whose works they served as in-
troductions, drawing their material largely from these works
themselves.

Suetonius' work, therefore, though seemingly modeled on
the "grammatical type" of his time, differed so radically in
conception, scope, and form from earlier biography that he
may be taken as a starting point for subsequent Roman biog-
raphy. He gave a biographical turn to historical writing that
endured for centuries. This is seen by the number of later
writers, among them Marius Maximus, and the authors of
the Augustan History Script ores Historiae Augustae, who
used the Lives as model. His influence extended to the Greek
and Byzantine writers, and even to Christian, as appears from
the biography of Ambrosius by his Secretary Paulinus.

Nor were the other works of Suetonius without influence on
succeeding writers.

The lexicographer Suidas of the loth Century has given us
a list of eighteen titles, though doubtless some of these are
sub-headings of larger works rather than separate titles. The
titles show a vast field of interest. Among them is one "on the
origin and early import of imprecations and words of abuse."
Another treats "of those courtesans who were celebrated for
their beauty or accomplishments," of which Apuleius made
use. Hieronymus wrote of the "Illustrious Men" of the Church
in imitation of Suetonius' work of the same title, while the
ecclesiastical chronographers, such as Julius Africanus, drew
on his treatise "On the Kings." Tertullian based his De Spec-
tacidis on a similar work of Suetonius. Censorinus, Solinus,
Macrobius, Isidore, the learned bishop of Seville, were all in-
debted to him.

But of all these works only the Lives of the Twelve Caesars
has come down to us practically entire.

It INTRODUCTION

in

Though Suetonius does not compare favorably with many
authors more eminent, the reason for the anomaly of his popu-
larity and influence is, however, quite apparent.

Suetonius is inveterately human. While Tacitus soars and
views the horizons Suetonius grubs like a naturalist for every
minute act, private or public, every particular trait, habit, or
idiosyncrasy of the man under the miscroscope of his inde-
fatigable curiosity for realistic detail. He permits himself the
omission of no minute item, good, bad or indifferent. He feels
himself bound to report not only all his subject did but all
that was said about him, after he has sifted its authenticity
according to his criterions. They are high. Suetonius was crit-
ical of his sources. One may smile at his painstaking attention
to detail, but the human interests of the reader are all the
more engaged.

The result is that we are given a vivid picture of the ex-
ternal man. In not one of the twelve portraits do we perceive
the inner man. Either Suetonius had no interest in portraying
the growth of a soul in the welter of human circumstance, or
he realized he had no gift for such portrayal, chose a method
of narration which precluded it, and followed his plan wita
rigor, wisely limiting himself to the marshaling of external
facts.

These he presents with business-like brevity, stripped of
comment, but so grouped as to produce his effect without the
use of rhetoric, with no studied climaxes, no bursts of declama-
tory eloquence, no verbal pictures set in frames of rhetorical
richness, with utter absence of attempt to sway the emotions
of the reader, with no personal bias either in enthusiasm for
virtue or repugnance before vice. From this indifference the
reader comes to feel he is truly impartial, that he is merely
telling what he believes to be true, and leaving each to his
own conclusion. The impressiveness of the facts detain and
interest the reader. Suetonius is, despite the disadvantages of
his method, never colorless or dull, even in the parts devoted
to genealogy. And at times his clear, terse record of events
reaches heights of power in their very sobriety and simplicity,
s in the scene of Caesar's death, or Nero's.

INTRODUCTION xi

Such records are undoubtedly very valuable supplements to
the more formal historical sources. Suetonius is one of our
guides closest to that remarkable period of transition in the
history of Rome, the two centuries on either side of the birth
of Christ. Sometimes he is our most direct and only source,
for there are lacunae in the works of Tacitus and Dion Cassius,
as they have come down to us.

Because of the seeming sensationalism of some parts of his
work, the reliability of Suetonius as a guide and even his
honesty have been attacked. He certainly does tell a prodi-
gious number of scandalous anecdotes about the Caesars. But
there was doubtless more of that than any man could tell.
He had access to a vast amount of public and, as secretary
to Hadrian, private records now lost to us. And that he de-
pended on such sources more than, as some assert, on hearsay
and gossip, is shown not only by a critical reading of his text
but by the fact that as his narrative approaches and overlaps
the period of his own life the detail becomes meager, and the
biographies consequently shorter.

Thus, while we have in Suetonius no tracing of the connec-
tion of events or of the effects of circumstance in developing
character we have a great vividness of presentation of the
external personality. Thanks to him men know still intimately
indeed the flesh and blood of the Caesars. It is to such work
that men still grant popularity.

IV

No biography of Suetonius has come down to us. The bio-
graphical data we have is not extensive, though good. It con-
sists in: ( i ) references to himself in the Lives (five in number,
though only one gives us direct information) ; (2) six letters
of Pliny the Younger, four addressed to Suetonius, and two
concerning him; (3) a letter from Trajan to Pliny about
Suetonius; (4) a sentence concerning him in Spartianus' Life
of Hadrian; which is further elucidated by a bit of informa-
tion given us by the Byzantine antiquarian Johannes Lydus
(circa 550).

From this material we cannot reconstruct his life in detail,
but we can, fortunately, sketch its general outlines.

xii INTRODUCTION

He himself tells us in Otho, X: "My father Suetonius
Laetus took part in that war [Ojho against Vitellius] as a
Tribune of the equestrian order in the i3th legion." This was
in 69 A.D., which year Mace argues is the date of Tranquillus'
birth, an event he places in Rome. To fix either exactly will
very likely remain impossible. But from two other references
of Suetonius to himself we set it around the beginning of the
reign of Vespasian, which was from 70 to 79.

Where, how, or by whom he was educated we do not know.
For our next glimpse of him is as a lawyer in Rome, in a let-
ter from Pliny, which reads:

"Your letter informs me, that you are extremely alarmed
by a dream; apprehending that it forebodes some ill success
to you in the cause you have undertaken to defend; and,
therefore, you desire that I get it adjourned for a few days,
or, at least to the next. This is a favor, you realize, not very
easily obtained, but I will use all my influence for that pur-
pose: Tor dreams descend from Jupiter.' In the meanwhile, it
is very material for you to recollect, whether your dreams
generally represent things as they afterwards fall out, or quite
the reverse. But if I may judge of yours by one that hap-
pened to myself, you have nothing to fear; for it portends

you will acquit yourself with great success But, after all,

perhaps you will think it more safe to pursue this cautious
maxim: 'never do a thing concerning the rectitude of which
you are in doubt.' If so, write me. In the interval, I will con-
sider some expedient, and endeavor that your cause shall be
heard any day you like best. In this respect, you are in a bet-
ter situation than I was: the court of the centumviri, where
I was to plead, admits of no adjournment; whereas, in that
where your cause is to be heard, though it is not easy to pro-
cure one, still, however, it is possible.'' (Letter 18 of Book I.)

That Suetonius was not interested in military life can be in-
ferred from a second letter of Pliny addressed to him:

"The obliging way in which you request me to confer the
military Tribuneship upon your relation, which I had ob-
tained of the honorable Neratius Marcellus for yourself, is

INTRODUCTION xiii

consistent with that respect with which you always treat me.
As it would have given me great pleasure to have seen you
in that post, so it will not be less acceptable to me to see an-
other there through your means. For it would hardly, I think,
be consistent to wish the advancement of a friend's honors
and yet envy him the noblest of all distinctions, that of a gen-
erous and affectionate relation. To deserve preferment and
to bestow it is glorious, and the praise of both will be yours if
you resign to another what is your own due. In this glory I
too shall share, when the world shall learn from the present
instance that my friends can not only fill Tribuneships but
confer them as well. I therefore readily comply with your
generous request; and as your name is not yet entered upon
the roll, I can without difficulty insert that of Silvanus in its,
stead. May he accept this good office at your hands in as grate-
ful a spirit as I am sure you will receive it at mine." (Letter &
of Book III.)

Pliny's third letter to Suetonius merely concerns his desire
to have his friend's advice on how he shall present his verses
to a company of friends, and gives us no further information
of Suetonius. But in the fourth we see the character of our
author more plainly:

"It is time you should acquit the promise my verses gave of
your works to our common friends. The world is every day im-
patiently inquiring after them, and there is some danger of
their publication being forced upon you by legal proceedings.
I myself am backward in publishing. But you quite get the
better of even me in slowness and procrastination. You must
rouse yourself, then, otherwise the severity of my satire may
perhaps extort from you what the blandishments of my gentler
muse could not obtain. Your work is already arrived to that
degree of perfection that the file can only weaken, not polish
it. Allow me, then, the pleasure of seeing your name on the
title-page of a book, and suffer the works of my dear Tran-
quillus to be recited and transcribed, to be bought and read.
It is but fair, and suitable to our mutual friendship, that you
should give me in return the same pleasure you receive from
me." (Letter n of Book V.)

*iv INTRODUCTION

Pliny's petition to Trajan asking a privilege for Suetonius,
and Trajan's reply add further information:

"Suetonius Tranquillus, Sir, is a most excellent, honorable,
and learned man. I was so much pleased with his tastes and
disposition that I have long since Invited him into my family,
as my constant guest and domestic friend; and my affection
for him increased the more I knew of him. Two reasons concur
to render the privilege which the law grants to those who have
three children particularly necessary to him; I mean the
bounty of his friends, and the ill-success of his marriage. Those
advantages, therefore, which nature has denied to him, he
hopes to obtain from your goodness, by my intercession. I am
thoroughly sensible, Sir, of the value of the privilege I am ask-
ing. But I know, too, I am asking it from one whose gracious
compliance with all my desires I have amply experienced. How
passionately I wish to do so in the present instance, you will
judge by my thus requesting it in my absence ; which I would
not do had it not been a favor which I am more than ordinarily
anxious to obtain." (Letter 95 of Book X.)

"You cannot but be sensible, my dearest Secundus, how re-
served I am in granting favors of the kind you desire; having
frequently declared in the Senate that I had not exceeded the
number of which I assured that illustrious body I would be
contented with. I have yielded, however, to your request, and
have directed an article to be inserted in my register, that I
have conferred upon Tranquillus, on my usual conditions, the
privilege which the law grants to those who have three chil-
dren." (Trajan to Pliny, Letter 96 of Book X.)

The picture we have of Suetonius in Pliny's Letters is com-
pleted by a sixth letter, to one Bebius:

"My friend and guest, Tranquillus, has an inclination to
purchase a small farm, of which, as I am informed, an ac-
quaintance of yours intends to dispose. I beg you would en-
deavor he may get it upon reasonable terms, which will add
to his satisfaction in the purchase. A dear bargain is always
a disagreeable thing, particularly as it reflects upon the judg-
ment of the buyer. There are several circumstances attending
this little villa, which (supposing my friend has no objection

INTRODUCTION sv

to the price) are extremely suitable to his taste and desires:
the convenient distance from Rome, the goodness of the roads
the smallness of the building, and the very few acres of land
around it, which are just enough to amuse him, without taking
up his time. To a man of Tranquillus' studious turn, it is suffi-
cient if he have but a small spot to relieve the mind and divert
the eye, where he may saunter round his grounds, traverse his
single walk, grow familiar with all his little vines, and count
the trees in his shrubbery. I mention these particulars to let
you see how much he will be obliged to me, as I shall be to
you, if you can help him to this convenient little nest, at a
price which he shall have no occasion to repent." (Letter 24
of Book I.)

These letters cover the period between A.D. 96 and 112, ac-
cording to the dates assigned to them by Mommsen.

Our final bit of information is important though it comes
from a man who lived around 300, Aelianus Spartianus. In
Chapter X of his Life of the Emperor Hadrian we read:

"Although he [Hadrian] often complained of his wife
Sabina's difficult and cross-grained humor and said if he had
been a private person he would have divorced her, he dis-
missed Septicius Clarus, Praefect of the Guard, and Suetonius
Tranquillus, his Secretary, also several others, who had be*
haved towards her with less ceremony than was required by
court etiquette."

We thus learn that Suetonius was associated at court. But
we do not know how he obtained his post as Secretary to
Hadrian. Lydus speaks of a manuscript of the Lives of the
Twelve Caesars which he states contained a dedication to
C. Septicius Clarus, the same, presumably, who was dismissed
by Hadrian at the same time as our author. It has, therefore,
been inferred Suetonius obtained his post as Secretary through
the patronage of Clarus. Nor do we know how long he held the
post. The dismissal Mac6 dates during Hadrian's sojourn in
Britain, 121-122, when Suetonius would have been around
fifty years of age.

This is our last reference to him. But, that he was slow to
publish considered with the fact that he was a voJuminoul

ivi INTRODUCTION

writer would seem to indicate that he lived to a good, old
age, including a part of the reign of Antoninus Pius ( 138-161).

Thus, in spite of the paucity of information concerning the
external detail of Suetonius' life we have after all a rather
definite picture of Suetonius the man. "A most excellent, hon-
orable, and learned man" the gentle Pliny undoubtedly be-
lieved him to be. A tranquil, peace-loving man of scholarly
tastes and habits he most probably was ; rather disdainful of
the ordinary ambitions of men's lives, leisurely intent on liv-
ing up to his ideals of authorship. Though he did not rise
above the superstition of his age, we have some basis for in-
ferring that he did rise above the baseness of flattery and the
venality of the age. A man who enjoyed the intimate friend-
ship of a number of the more distinguished men of his age, and
who from his connection with them and his position under
Hadrian led a life not unsuitable to the purpose? to which he
had set his desire.

For the rest, those deeper purposes ana intents of Suetonius'
f ife, they are clearly enough reflected in his writings. He un-
doubtedly had a high conception of the function of the author.
Though he did not attain the heights of artistry, he was a
conscientious scholar who loved study for herself, and whose
love was fruitful. Scrupulously impartial, he was possessed
with a zeal to tell the whole truth as he saw it. One feels, at
least, that his picture of Imperial Rome is less distorted than
that of men who cannot look on evil and putrescence with so
calm a face. And not for any amount of description of con-
quest, battle, data of election, march of external event, would
men give up such glimpses as that of the great Augustus clad
in four robes playing at dice all of a holiday, or three servants
carrying home the murdered Caesar on a litter, "with one
arm hanging down."

JOSEPH GAVOKSE.
TENTREES.
May, 1931.

BOOK I
JULIUS CAESAR

THE DEIFIED JULIUS

1 IN his sixteenth year Caesar lost his father. During the
next consulate, having been nominated high-priest of Jupiter, 2
he broke his engagement with Cossutia, a lady of only eques-
trian rank but very wealthy, engaged to him since his child-
hood, and married Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna, four times
Consul, by whom he afterwards had a daughter, Julia. ID
resisting the efforts of Sulla, the Dictator, to force him to
divorce Cornelia, he suffered the loss of his sacerdotal office,
his wife's dowry, all his family inheritances, and was held to be
of the opposition. He was accordingly forced to leave Rome,
and although suffering from a quartan ague, to shift from
one hiding-place to another almost every night. He saved him-
self from Sulla's detectives by bribes, until, by the mediation
of the Vestal Virgins and of his near kinsmen, Aemilius
Mamercus and Aurelius Cotta, he obtained a pardon. Every
one knows that Sulla, after he had long denied the requests of
the most devoted and eminent men of his own party who inter-
ceded for Caesar, and they obstinately persisted, at last yielded
and cried out, either through divine inspiration or shrewd con-
jecture: "Have your way and take him. But, bear this in
mind: the man you are so eager to save will one day be the
ruin of the nobles, whose side you have upheld with me; for
in this Caesar there is more than one Marius." 8

He first served in the wars in Asia on the personal staff of
Marcus Thermus, Governor of the province, by whom he was
sent to Bithynia 4 to bring out a fleet. He loitered there so

1 The opening chapters of this life are missing.

2 Flamen Dialis, an office of great dignity, political rather than
religious.

8 Marius (Consul with Cinna in 86 B.C.) was leader of the party
of the people, Sulla of the nobles. Sulla suspected Caesar of belonging
to Marius* party because Marius' wife, Julia, was Caesar's aunt.

* South of the Black Sea.

4 THE LIVES Of THE T

!ong at the court of Nicomedes as to give occasion to rumors
that he prostituted his body to the use of the King. He aur-
mented this rumor by a hasty return to Bithynia under the pre-
text of collecting a debt for a freedman, one of his dependents.
The rest of the campaign was more favorable to his reputa-
tion, and, after the successful assault of Mytilene, Thermus
honored him with a civic garland. 1

He also served in Cilicia 2 under Servilius Isauricus, but
only for a short time. For, upon learning of the death of Sulla,
and at the same time with the hope of profiting by the new
dissensions which Marcus Lepidus was instigating, he hastily
returned to Rome. But, although he was offered highly favor-
able terms, he did not join up with Lepidus, through lack of
confidence in that leader's capacity and in the outlook, which
he found much less favorable than he had expected.

After this civil discord had been composed, he preferred a
charge of extortion against Cornelius Dolabella, an ex-Consul
who had been honored with a triumph. On the acquittal of the
accused, Caesar determined to retire to Rhodes, 8 as well to
escape the ill-will he had incurred, as to rest and have leisure
to study under Apollonius Molo, the most renowned teacher of
oratory in those days.

On his voyage there, the winter season having already
begun, he was taken by pirates near the island of Pharma-
cussa, and, burning with indignation, held captive by them
for nearly forty days, accompanied only by a physician and
two body-servants. For his traveling companions and the rest
of his attendants he had sent off at the outset, to procure
money for his ransom. Once they released him on shore, upon
payment of fifty talents, 4 he did not delay but at once col-
lected some ships, put to sea again, and did not cease pursuing
them till he had overtaken them. No sooner were they in his

1 A crown of oak leaves usually given for having saved the life of
a fellow-citizen, although officers in the army were sometimes honored
with it.

2 Southern Asia Minor, Syria to the east, the Mediterranean to the
south.

8 Famous then as a center of learning. The Colossus, a huge statue
indicated to the sun, was there.
* $56,600!

JULIUS CAESAR 5

power than he inflicted on them the punishment with which
he had often threatened them in jest. 1 He then proceeded to
Rhodes.

At that time Mithridates was ravaging the adjoining re-
gions. Because he would not be thought to sit still and do
nothing when the confederate nations and allies of Rome were
in this dangerous situation, he crossed over into Asia, gathered
a power of auxiliaries, drove the King's Governor from the
province, and so held the wavering and irresolute states to
their allegiance.

While serving as Military Tribune, 2 the first office conferred
on him by the vote of the people after his return to Rome, he
zealously supported those leaders who stood out for the resti-
tution of the authority of the Tribunes of the Commons, 8 the
extent of which Sulla had curtailed. Furthermore, through a
bill proposed by one Plotius, he effected the recall of Lucius
Cinna, his wife's brother, as well as that of the others who
had been adherents of Lepidus in his insurrection and who,
after that Consul's death, had fled to Sertorius. He himself
supported the measure in a speech.

When Quaestor, 4 he pronounced the customary orations
from the rostra in praise of his aunt Julia and his wife Cor-
nelia, both deceased. And in the eulogy of his aunt he spoke
in the following terms of her paternal and maternal ancestry
and that of his own father: "My aunt Julia is descended on
her mother's side from the Kings, and on her father's side is
akin to the immortal Gods: for the Marcii Reges, from whom
comes the name of her mother's family, are derived from
Ancus Marcius, and the Julii, the family of which ours is a
branch, from Venus. 6 Our stock therefore has at once the
sanctity of Kings, who among men are most powerful, and the

1 Suetonius says later that he was merciful. He cut their throats
before crucifying them.

2 Colonel. A legion had six, each commanding for two months in the
year.

8 A magistrate charged with the protection of the commons against
the patricians.

* Originally two deputies of the Consuls, to investigate and try capi-
tal crimes.

* Through Aeneas, fabled prince of Troy, and his son Julius.

6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

daim to reverence which attaches to the Gods, to whom Rings
themselves are subject."

In place of Cornelia he then wedded Pompeia, daughter of
Quintus Pompeius and granddaughter of Lucius Sulla. But he
afterward divorced her, suspecting her of adultery with Pub-
iius Clodius. As a matter of fact the report was so persistent
that Clodius, disguised in woman's apparel, had secretly
gained access to her at the celebration of a public religious
ceremony the Senate by decree directed that this pollution of
sacred rites be judicially investigated. 1

While he was Quaestor it fell to him by lot to serve in
Farther Spain. While there, as he rode his circuit of the assize-
towns to hold court under order of the Praetor, 2 he came to
Gades, where he noticed a statue of Alexander the Great in
the temple of Hercules. At the sight of it he drew a deep sigh,
as one displeased with his own shortcomings, in that he had
as yet performed no memorable act, whereas at his age Alex-
ander had already conquered the whole world. 8

He soon after made earnest suit for his discharge, in order
to seize the first opportunity to compass greater enterprises
at home within the city. The following night he was much
disquieted by a dream in which he imagined he had carnal
company with his own mother. But hopes of most glorious
achievement were kindled in him by the soothsayers, who
interpreted the dream to mean that he was destined to have
sovereignty over all the world, his mother whom he saw under
him signifying none other than the earth, which is counted
the mother of all things.

Leaving Spain, therefore, before the expiration of the accus-
tomed term, he went to the Latin colonies, which were then
in a state of unrest and meditating a demand for citizenship.
He might have excited them to some rash act, but that the
Consuls, 4 anticipating this very danger, detained there the

1 From the rites of Bona Dea, which were performed at night, all men
were excluded.

2 Governor of the province.

8 Alexander, it will be remembered, was only 33 at the time of his
death.

* The highest magistracy of the Roman republic was vested in two
Consuls, chosen by vote annually. About 367 B.C. plebeians were admit-
ted to the office.

JULIUS CAESAR 7

legions which had been enrolled for service in Cilicia.

And yet, for all that, he soon after entertained more daring
designs in Rome. For only a few days before he entered upon
his aedileship, 1 he was suspected of having conspired with
Marcus Crassus, an ex-consul, together with Publius Sulla
and Lucius Autronius, who, after they had been elected Con^
suls, had been convicted of bribery. The plan of the con-
spirators was to fall upon the Senate at the opening of the
new year and, after they had massacred as many as they
thought necessary, Crassus was to usurp the Dictatorship
and appoint Caesar Master of Horse. 2 When they had re
organized the state to their wishes, the consulship was to be
restored to Autronius. Mention is made of this conspiracy by
Tanusius Geminus in his History, by Marcus Bibulus 3 ir
his edicts, and by Gaius Curio the elder in his speeches. Cicero,
too, seems to imply as much in a letter to Axius, where he
says that Caesar in his consulship secured for himself that
arbitrary power which he had contemplated when Aedile.
Tanusius adds that Crassus, either from remorse or from fear,
did not appear on the day appointed for the massacre, and
that therefore Caesar did not give the signal, which it had
been agreed he should give. This signal, Curio says, was that
Caesar should let his toga fall from his shoulder. We have the
authority of the same Curio, as well as that of Marcus Actorius
Naso, that Caesar also conspired with Gnaeus Piso, a youth
to whom the province of Spain was assigned unsought and out
of regular order, 4 because he was suspected of conspiring in
the city; that they had agreed to stir up insurrection simul-
taneously, Piso abroad and Caesar at Rome, using as their
instruments the Ambrani and the tribes beyond the Po; but
that the death of Piso frustrated both their designs.

When Caesar was Aedile, he decorated not only the Co-
mitium 6 and the Forum with its adjacent halls but also the

1 Aedile, commissioner of buildings.

2 The Master of Horse commanded the Knights, and executed the
orders of the Dictator.

8 Caesar's colleague, both as Aedile and Consul.
4 An honorable banishment.

6 A covered building in which the assemblies of the people wer*
held.

8 THE LIVES OF THfc, TWELVE CAESARS

Capitol, building temporary galleries for the purpose of dis-
playing some part of the abundant paraphernalia he had col-
lected for the amusement of the people. He exhibited combats
with wild beasts, and stage-plays, too, both jointly with his
companion in office and independently. The result was that,
although the charges were borne in common by them both,
Caesar alone obtained all the credit. Nor did his colleague,
Marcus Bibulus, dissemble the matter, but openly said that
he served in the manner of Pollux; that just as the temple
erected in the Forum to both the twin brothers bore the name
of Castor alone, even so the joint munificence of Caesar and
himself was credited to Caesar alone. Caesar gave a gladiatorial
show besides, but not with so many pairs of combatants as he
had intended. 1 He had assembled from all quarters such a
huge band his enemies became alarmed, and a decree was
made restricting the number of gladiators which any one was
permitted to retain in Rome.

Having won the favor of the populace, Caesar endeavored,
through his association with some of the Tribunes, to obtain,
by a decree of the Commons, Egypt assigned him as a prov-
ince. The opportunity he seized for asking so irregular an
appointment was that the Alexandrians had deposed their
King 2 whom the Senate had named an ally and friend of the
Roman people, and this was generally resented. Nevertheless,
there was so much opposition from the party of the nobles,
he failed to carry his point. Wishing, therefore, to impair their
influence by every means in his power he restored the trophies
erected to commemorate the victories of Gaius Marius over
Jugurtha, the Cimbri, and Teutoni, which had long before
been demolished by Sulla. Furthermore, when sitting in judg-
ment upon murders he treated as assassins even those who, in
the late proscription, 8 had received money from the public
treasury for bringing in the heads of Roman citizens, although
they were expressly excepted by the Cornelian laws.

He likewise bribed some one to prefer a charge of treason

1 And yet with 320 pairs according to Plutarch.

2 Ptolemy Auletes, father of Cleopatra.

8 That of Sulla, who had outlawed the opposing faction led by
C. Marius, and had given a reward of $2,264 for the head of any of its
partisans brought in.

JULIUS CAESAR V

against Caius Rabirius, who, a few years before, had rendered
conspicuous service to the Senate in repressing the seditious
designs of the Tribune Lucius Saturninus, and being drawn
by lot a judge on the trial, he condemned the man with such
eagerness that when Rabirius appealed to the people, nothing
did him so much good as the extraordinary bitterness of his.
judge.

After renouncing all hope of obtaining Egypt for his prov-
ince, he announced himself candidate for the office of Chief
Priest, having recourse to the most profuse bribery. Thinking
about the enormous debts he had thus contracted, he is re-
ported to have said to his mother, when she kissed him as he
was going out in the morning to the assembly for the election,
that he would never return home except as Pontiff. And indeed,
he so decisively defeated his two most powerful competitors,
both his superiors in age and rank, that he had more votes in
their tribes than were cast for both of them in all the tribes
together.

After he was chosen Praetor, 1 the conspiracy of Catiline was
discovered. And while every other member of the Senate voted
for inflicting capital punishment on the accomplices in the
plot, he alone proposed that their property be confiscated, and
that each be imprisoned in a separate town. He even struck
such terror into those who advocated greater severity, by
representing to them what universal odium would be attached
to their memories by the Roman people, that Decius Silanus,
Consul-elect, was not ashamed to mollify his proposal, since
it would have been humiliating to change it, alleging it had
been understood in a harsher sense than he had intended.
Caesar would certainly have carried his point, for many had
already gone over to his side, among them Cicero, the Con-
sul's brother, had not a speech by Marcus Cato kept the
wavering Senate in line.

Yet not even then did he cease from obstructing the measure
until a body of the Roman Knights, who stood under arms as
a guard, threatened him with instant death, if he continued
his headstrong opposition. They even made such passes at

1 At Rome the Praetor's function was judicial. After 264 B.C. there
were two, one the judge over citizens 1 cases, one over those of
strangers.

io THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

him with their drawn swords that those who sat next him
moved away, while a few friends with difficulty protected him
by throwing their arms or togas about him. At last, in evident
fear, he not only yielded the point but, for the rest of the
year, absented himself from the senate-house.

On the first day of his praetorship, he called upon Quintus
Catulus to render an account to the people respecting the
restoration of the Capitol, proposing a bill for transferring
the office of curator to another. But he withdrew the measure,
since he could not cope with the united opposition of the
aristocrats, who he perceived had at once dropped attend-
ance on the newly elected Consuls, 1 and hastily gathered in
throngs resolved on obstinate resistance.

Nevertheless, when Caecilius Metellus, Tribune of the Com-
mons, brought forward some bills of a highly seditious nature 2
in spite of all the opposition of his colleagues, Caesar abetted
him and espoused his cause in the most stubborn manner,
until at last both were suspended from the exercise of their
public functions by a decree of the Senate. Yet in spite of
this, Caesar had the audacity to continue in office and to hold
court. But when he learned that some were ready to stop him
by force of arms, he dismissed his Lictors, 8 laid aside his robe
of office, and slipped off privily to his house, intending to re-
main in retirement because of the state of the times. Indeed,
when the populace on the following day flocked to him quite
of their own accord, and with riotous demonstrations offered
him their aid in recovering his position, he held them in check.
Since this action of his was wholly unexpected, the Senate,
which had been hurriedly convoked to take action about that
very gathering, publicly thanked him through its leading
men. Then, summoning him to the House and lauding him in
the strongest terms, they rescinded their former decree and
restored him to his office.

1 When Consuls-elect went to the Capitol to offer sacrifice at the
beginning of their term of office, January i, it was the custom for
their friends to escort them to the temple and back to their homes.

2 One of these proposed that Pompey be recalled from Asia, on the
pretext the commonwealth was in danger. Cato was one of the colleagues
who saw through the design and opposed the decree.

8 Official attendants on a magistrate.

JULIUS CAESAR

He again fell into danger by being named among the ac-
complices of Catiline, both before the commissioner Novius
Niger by an informer called Lucius Vettius and in the Senate
by Quintus Curius, who had been voted a sum of money from
the public funds for having first discovered the designs of the
conspirators. Curius alleged that his information came directly
from Catiline, while Vettius actually offered to produce a
letter to Catiline in Caesar's handwriting. As this was an
indignity Caesar knew intolerable, he showed by appealing
to Cicero's testimony that he had of his own accord reported
to the Consul certain details of the plot, and thus prevented
Curius from getting the reward. As for Vettius, after his
bond was declared forfeit and his goods seized, he was roughly
handled by the populace assembled before the rostra, and all
but torn to pieces. Caesar then put him in prison, and Novius
the commissioner went there, too, for allowing an official of
superior rank to be arraigned before his tribunal.

Being allotted the province of Farther Spain after his
praetorship, Caesar got rid of his creditors, who tried to
detain him, by means of sureties, 1 and, contrary to both law
and precedent, was on his way before his appointment was
confirmed by the Senate and funds and equipment provided.
It is uncertain whether this precipitancy arose through fear
of some judicial proceeding against him as a private person,
or that he might the more promptly respond to the entreaties
of our allies for help. After restoring order in his province, he
made as great haste to leave it, not waiting for the arrival of
his successor, and to sue at the same time for a triumph and
the consulship. But inasmuch as the day for the elections had
already been announced and no account could be taken of
Caesar's candidacy unless he entered the city as a private
citizen, and since his intrigues to gain exemption from the
laws met with general protest, he was forced to forego the
triumph, to avoid losing the consulship.

Of the two competing candidates for this office, Lucius Luc-
ceius and Marcus Bibulus, Caesar joined forces with the for-
mer, making a bargain with him that since Lucceius had less

1 Plutarch asserts that Caesar, when he came into office, owed
$1471,600. From then until he departed for Spain his debts increased

12 THJE LIVES OF lilE TWELVE CAESAfcS

influence but more funds, he should in their common name
promise largess to the electors from hs owr pocket. W^en
this became known, the aristocracy authorized Bibulus to
promise the same amount, being seized with fear that Caesar
would stick at nothing when he became chief magistrate, if
he had a colleague who was heart and soul with him. Many of
them contributed to the fund, and even Cato did not deny
that bribery under such circumstances was for the good of
the commonwealth. 1

So Caesar was chosen Consul with Bibulus. With the same
motives the aristocracy took care that provinces of the small-
est importance should be assigned to the newly elected Con-
suls, that is, mere woods and pastures. 2 Thereupon Caesar,
especially incensed by this slight, by every possible attention
courted the goodwill of Gnaeus Pompeius, who was at odds
with the Senate because of its tardiness in ratifying his acts
after his victory over King Mithridates. He also patched up a
peace between Pompeius and Marcus Crassus, who had been
enemies since their consulship, which had been one of con-
stant wrangling. Then he made an agreement 3 with them, that
no step should be taken in public affairs which did not suit
any one of the three.

Caesar's very first enactment after becoming Consul was,
tfiat the proceedings both of the Senate and of the people
should day by day be compiled and published. He also revived
a by-gone custom, that during the months when he did not
have the fasces an orderly should walk before him, while the
Lictors followed him. He brought forward an agrarian law,
too, and when his colleague announced adverse omens, 4 he
resorted to arms and drove him from the Forum; and when

1 Yet there were strict laws against bribery at electons. Sallust
(Jugurth. VIII, 20, 3) say* that, were one rich enough, Rome itself
might be bought.

2 The Senate would not run the risk of letting Caesar secure a prov-
ince involving the command of an army.

8 This compact bred the civil war that ensued between Caesar and
Pompey.

4 Business could be Interrupted or postponed by the announcement of
an auger or a magistrate that he had seen a flash of lightning or some
other adverse sign; sometimes an opponent merely announced that ht
would "watch the skies 1 ' for such omens.

JULIUS CAESAR 13

next day Bibulus made complaint in the Senate and no one
could be found who ventured to make a motion, or even to
express an opinion about so high-handed a proceeding (al-
though decrees had often been passed touching less serious
breaches of the peace), Caesar's conduct drove him to such a
pitch of desperation, that from that time until the end of his
term he did not leave his house, but merely issued proclama-
tions announcing adverse omens.

From that time on Caesar managed all the affairs of state
alone and according to his own pleasure ; so that sundry witty
fellows, pretending by way of jest to sign and seal testamen-
tary documents, wrote "Done in the consulship of Julius and
Caesar," instead of "Bibulus and Caesar," writing down the
same man twice, by name and by surname. Presently too the
following verses were on every one's lips:

"Caesar of late did many things, but Bibulus not one;
For naught by Consul Bibulus can I remember done."

The plain called Stellas, which had been devoted to the
Gods by the men of by-gone days, and the Campanian ter-
ritory, which had been reserved to pay revenues for the aid
of the government, he divided * without casting lots among
twenty thousand citizens who had three or more children
each. When the publicans asked for relief, he freed them from
a third part of their obligation, and openly warned them in
contracting for taxes in the future not to bid too recklessly.
He freely granted everything else that any one took it into
his head to ask, either without opposition or by intimidating
any one who tried to object. Marcus Cato, who tried to delay
proceedings, 2 was dragged from the House by a Lictor at
Caesar's command and taken off to prison. When Lucius
Lucullus was somewhat too outspoken in his opposition, he
filled him with such fear of malicious prosecution, 3 that Lucul-
lus actually fell on his knees before him. Because Cicero,
while pleading in court, deplored the state of the times, Caesar
transferred the orator's enemy Publius Clodius that very same

1 Through a special commission of twenty men.

2 By making a speech of several hours' duration.

* For his conduct during the war with Mithridates.

i 4 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

day from the patricians to the plebeians, a thing for which
Clodius had for a long time been vainly striving; 1 and that
too at the ninth hour. 8 Finally taking action against all the
opposition in a body, he bribed an informer to declare that
he had been egged on by certain men to murder Pompey, and
to come out upon the rostrum and name the guilty parties ac-
cording to a prearranged plot. But when the informer had
named one or two to no purpose and not without suspicion of
double-dealing, Caesar, hopeless of the success of his over-
hasty attempt, is supposed to have had him taken off by
poison.

At about the same time he took to wife Calpurnia, daughter
of Lucius Piso, who was to succeed him in the consulship, and
affianced his own daughter Julia to Gnaeus Pompeius, break-
ing a previous engagement with Servilius Caepio, although the
latter had shortly before rendered him conspicuous service in
his contest with Bibulus. After this new alliance he began to
call upon Pompey first to give his opinion in the Senate, al-
though it had been his habit to begin with Crassus, and it
was the rule for the Consul in calling for opinions to continue
throughout the year the order which he had established on
the Kalends of January.

Backed therefore by his father-in-law and son-in-law, out
of all the numerous provinces he made the Gauls his choice,
as the most likely to enrich him and furnish suitable material
for triumphs. At first, it is true, by the bill of Vatinius he re-
ceived only Cisalpine Gaul with the addition of Illyricum.
But presently he was assigned Gallia Comata as well by the
Senate, since the members feared that even if they should re-
fuse it, the people would give him this also. Transported with
joy at this success, he could not keep from boasting a few days
later before a crowded house, that having gained his heart's
desire to the grief and lamentation of his opponents, he would
therefore from that time mount on their heads. 8 And when
some one insultingly remarked that that would be no easy
matter for any woman, he replied in the same vein that Semi-

1 That he might be a candidate for the tribuneship of the people.

2 At 3 P.M. when the business day ended.

8 Used in a double sense, the second implying fellatio.

JULIUS CAESAR 15

ramis too had been Queen in Syria and the Amazons in days of
old had held sway over a great part of Asia.

When, at the close of his consulship, the Praetors Gaius
Memmius and Lucius Domitius moved an inquiry into his
conduct during the previous year, Caesar laid the matter be-
fore the Senate. When they failed to take it up, and three days
had been wasted in fruitless wrangling, he went off to his
province. Whereupon his Quaestor was at once arraigned on
several counts, as a preliminary to his own impeachment.
Presently he himself too was prosecuted by Lucius Antistius,
Tribune of the Commons, and it was only by appealing to the
whole college that he contrived not to be brought to trial, on
the ground that he was absent on public service. Then to se-
cure himself for the future, he took great pains always to put
the magistrates for the year under personal obligation, and
not to aid any candidates or suffer any to be elected, save such
as guaranteed to defend him in his absence. And he did not
hesitate in some cases to exact an oath to keep this pledge ot
even a written contract.

When, however, Lucius Domitius, candidate for the consul-
ship, openly threatened to effect as Consul what he had been
unable to do as Praetor, and to take his armies from him,
Caesar compelled Pompeius and Crassus to come to Luca, a
city in his province, where he prevailed on them to stand for a
second consulship, to defeat Domitius; and he also succeeded
through their influence in having his term as Governor of
Gaul made five years longer. Encouraged by this, he added to
the legions which he had received from the state others at his
own cost, one actually composed of men of Transalpine Gaul
and bearing a Gallic name too (for it was called Alauda),
which he trained in the Roman tactics and equipped with
Roman arms; and later on he gave every man of it citizenship.
After that he did not let slip any pretext for war, however
unjust and dangerous it might be, picking quarrels as well
with allied, as with hostile and barbarous nations; so that
once the Senate decreed that a commission be sent to inquire
into the condition of the Gallic provinces, and some even rec-
ommended that Caesar be handed over to the enemy. But as

16 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

his enterprises prospered, supplication days 1 were appointed
in his honor oftener and for longer periods than for any one
before his time.

During the nine years of his command this is in substance
what he did. All that part of Gaul which is bounded by the
Pyrenees, the Alps and the Cevennes, and by the Rhine and
Rhone rivers, a circuit of some 3,200 2 miles, not counting
some allied states which had rendered him good service, he
reduced to the form of a province; and imposed upon it a
yearly tribute of 40,000,000 sesterces. 8 He was the first
Roman to build a bridge and attack the Germans beyond the
Rhine; and he inflicted heavy losses upon them. He invaded
the Britons too, a people unknown before, vanquished them,
and exacted moneys and hostages. Amid all these successes
he met with adverse fortune but three times in all: in Britain,
where his fleet narrowly escaped destruction in a violent
storm; in Gaul, when one of his legions was routed at Ger-
govia; and in the land of Germany, when his lieutenants
Titurius and Aurunculeius were ambushed and slain.

Within this same space of time he lost first his mother, then
his daughter, 4 and soon afterwards his grandson. Meanwhile,
as the community was aghast at the murder of Publius
Clodius, the Senate had voted that only one Consul should be
chosen, and expressly named Gnaeus Pompeius. When the
Tribunes planned to make him Pompey's colleague, Caesar
urged them rather to propose to the people that he be per-
mitted to stand for a second consulship without coming to
Rome, when the term of his governorship drew near its end, to
prevent his being forced for the sake of the office to leave his
province prematurely and without finishing the war. On the
granting of this, aiming still higher and flushed with hope, he
neglected nothing in the way of lavish expenditure or of fa-
vors to any one, either in his public capacity or privately. He

1 Thanksgiving days in which honor was done to a victorious general.
At first the solemnities continued but one day, but in time to twelve. At
length Caesar obtained it for fifteen and even twenty days together, as
he himself proudly asserts in his Commentaries, II, 35 and VII, So*

2 Roman measure. A Roman mile was 1,000 paces.
8 $2,040,000.00.

4 Julia died in childbirth.

S CAXTSAR *5

began a ^orum with the proceeds of hisr spoils, the ground for
which cot more than a hundred million sesterces. 1 He an-
nounced a combat of gladiators and a feast for the people in
memory of his daughter, a thing quite without precedent. To
raise the expectation of these events to the highest possible
pitch, he had the material for the banquet prepared in part
by his own household, although he had let contracts to the
markets as well. He issued an order too that whenever famous
gladiators fought without winning the favor of the people, they
should be rescued by force and kept for him. 2 He had the
novices trained, not in a gladiatorial school by professionals,
but in private houses by Roman Knights and even by Sena-
tors who were skilled in arms, earnestly beseeching them, as
is shown by his own letters, to give the recruits individual
attention and personally direct their exercises. He doubled
the pay of the legions for all time. Whenever grain was plenti-
ful, he distributed it to them without stint or measure, and
now and then gave each man a slave from among the captives.

Moreover, to retain his relationship and friendship with
Pompey, Caesar offered him his sister's granddaughter Oc-
tavia in marriage, although she was already the wife of Gaius
Marcellus, and asked for the hand of Pompey's daughter, who
was promised to Faustus Sulla. When he had put all Pompey's
friends under obligation, as well as the great part of the Sen-
ate, through loans made without interest or at a low rate, he
lavished gifts on men of all other classes, both those whom
he invited to accept his bounty and those who applied to him
unasked, including even freedmen and slaves who were special
favorites of their masters or patrons. In short, he was the sole
and ever ready help of all who were in legal difficulties or in
debt and of young spendthrifts, excepting only those whose
burden of guilt or of poverty was so heavy, or who were so
given up to riotous living, that even he could not save them.
And to these he declared in the plainest terms that what they
needed was a civil war.

He took no less pains to win the devotion of princes and

1 $4,400,000.00. Conquest had so multiplied business at Rome, the
Forum had become too small for transacting it. It could not be enlarged
without razing adjoining buildings.

9 Ordinarily they would be put to death.

i8 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

provinces all over the world, offering prisoners to some by the
thousand as a gift, and sending auxiliary troops to the aid of
others whenever they wished, and as often as they wished,
without the sanction of the Senate or people, besides adorning
the principal cities of Asia and Greece with magnificent pub-
lic works, as well as those of Italy and the provinces of Gaul
and Spain. At last, when all were thunder-struck at his actions
and wondered what their purpose could be, the Consul Mar-
cus Claudius Marcellus, after first making proclamation that
he purposed to bring before the Senate a matter of the highest
public moment, proposed that a successor to Caesar be ap-
pointed before the end of his term, on the ground that the war
was ended, peace was established, and the victorious army
ought to be disbanded. He further proposed that no account
be taken of Caesar at the elections, unless he were present,
as Pompey himself had afterwards not annulled the decree
of the people. And it was true that when Pompey proposed a
bill touching the privileges of officials, in the clause where he
debarred absentees from candidacy for office he forgot to
make a special exception in Caesar's case, and did not correct
the oversight until the law had been inscribed on a tablet of
bronze and deposited in the treasury. Not content with de-
priving Caesar of his provinces and his privilege, Marcellus
also moved that the colonists whom Caesar had settled in
Novum Comum by the bill of Vatinius should lose their citi-
zenship, on the ground that it had been given from political
motives and was not authorized by the law.

Aroused by these measures, and thinking, as they say he
was often heard to remark, that now that he was the leading
man of the state, it would be harder to push him down from
the first place to the second than from the second to the low-
est, Caesar stoutly resisted Marcellus, partly through vetoes
of the Tribunes and partly through the other Consul, Servius
Sulpicius. When next year Gaius Marcellus, who had suc-
ceeded his cousin Marcus as Consul, tried the same thing,
Caesar by means of an immense bribe secured the support
of the other Consul, Aemilius Paulus, and of Gaius Curio, the
most reckless of the Tribunes. But seeing that everything
against him was being pushed most persistently, and that even
the Consuls-elect were among the opposition, he sent a written

JULIUS CAESAR 19

appeal to the Senate, not to take from him the privilege which
the people had granted, or else to compel the others in com'
mand of armies to resign also; feeling sure, it was thought,
that he could more readily muster his veterans as soon as he
wished, than Pompey his newly levied troops. He further
proposed a compromise to his opponents, that after giving up
eight legions and Transalpine Gaul, he be allowed to keep
two legions and Cisalpine Gaul, or at least one legion x and
Illyricum, until he was elected Consul.

But when the Senate declined to interfere, and his oppo-
nents declared that they would accept no compromise in a
matter affecting the public welfare, he crossed to Hither Gaul,
and after holding all the assizes, halted at Ravenna, intend-
ing to resort to war if the Senate took any drastic action
against the Tribunes of the Commons who interposed vetoes
in his behalf. 2 Now this was his excuse for the civil war, but
it is believed that he had other motives. Gnaeus Pompeius
used to declare that since Caesar's own means were not suf-
ficient to complete the works which he had planned, nor to do
all that he had led the people to expect on his return, he de-
sired a state of general unrest and turmoil. Others say that
he dreaded the necessity of rendering an account for what he
had done in his firsc consulship contrary to the auspices and
the laws, and regardless of vetoes. For Marcus Cato often de-
clared, and took oath too, that he would impeach Caesar the
moment he had disbanded his army. It was openly said too
that if he was out of office on his return, he would be obliged,
like Milo, 8 to make his defense in a court hedged about by
armed men. The latter opinion is the more credible one in
view of the assertion of Asinius Pollio, that when Caesar at
the battle of Pharsalus 4 saw his enemies slain or in flight, he
said, word for word: "They would have it so. Even I, Gaiu?
Caesar, after so many great deeds, should have been found

1 A legion was a force of 3,600 foot-soldiers and 300 cavalry.

2 The Senate did pass a decree that Caesar should disband his armj
before a given date. The Tribunes Mark Antony and Quintus Cassiu*
exercised their privilege and vetoed it. The Senate disregarded the vetty
and the Tribunes were obliged to seek safety in flight.

8 Milo had murdered Publius Clodius.

4 Where he defeated Pompey in 48 B.C.

30 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

guilty, if I had not turned to my army for help." Some think
habit had given him a love of power, and that weighing the
strength of his adversaries against his own, he grasped the
opportunity of usurping the despotism which had been his
heart's desire from early youth. Cicero too was seemingly of
this opinion, when he wrote in the third book of his De Officiis
that Caesar ever had upon his lips these lines of Euripides, 1
of which Cicero himself adds a version:

"Be just, unless a kingdom tempts to break the laws,
For sovereign power alone can justify the cause."

Accordingly, when word came that the veto of the Tribunes
had been set aside and they themselves had left the city, he
at once sent on a few cohorts with all secrecy, and then, to
disarm suspicion, concealed his purpose by appearing at a
public show, inspecting the plans of a gladiatorial school
which he intended building, and joining as usual in a banquet
with a large company. It was not until after sunset that he
set out very privily with a small company, taking the mules
from a bakeshop hard by and harnessing them to a carriage.
When his lights went out and he lost his way, he was astray
for some time, but at last found a guide at dawn and got back
to the road on foot by narrow bypaths. Then, overtaking his
cohorts at the river Rubicon, 2 which was the boundary of his
province, he paused for a while, and realizing what a step he
was taking, he turned to those about him and said: "Even yet
we may turn back; but once cross yon little bridge, and the
whole issue is with the sword."

As he stood in doubt, this sign was given him. On a sudden
there appeared hard by a being of wondrous stature and
beauty, who sat and played upon a reed. And when not only
the shepherds flocked to hear him, but many of the soldiers
left their posts, and among them some of the trumpeters, the
apparition snatched a trumpet from one of them, rushed to
the rjyer, and sounding the warnote with mighty blast, strode
to the opposite bank. Then Caesar cried: "Take we the course

1 In Phoenissae, 524.

It was near Rimini. There was a very old law of the republic to th
effect that no general, returning from the wars, should cross the Rubicon
with his troops under arms.

JULIUSCAESAK at

rfiich the signs of the Gods and the false dealing of our foes
>oint out. The die is cast," said he.

Accordingly, crossing with his army, and welcoming the
Tribunes of the Commons, who had come to him after being
Iriven from Rome, he harangued the soldiers with tears, and
ending his robe from his breast besought their faithful serv-
ce. It is even thought that he promised every man a Knight's
state, but that came of a misunderstanding. For, since he
rften pointed to the finger of his left hand as he addressed
hem and urged them on, declaring that to satisfy all those
vho helped him to defend his honor he would gladly tear his
'ery ring from his hand, those on the edge of the assembly,
vho could see him better than they could hear his words, as-
umed that he said what his gesture seemed to mean ; and so
he report went about that he had promised them the right of
he ring and four hundred thousand sesterces l as well.

The sum total of his movements after that is, in their order,
LS follows: He overran Umbria, Picenum, and Etruria, took
>risoner Lucius Domitius, who had been irregularly named
iis successor and was holding Corfinium with a garrison, let
lim go free, and then proceeded along the Adriatic to Brun-
lisium, where Pompey and the Consuls had taken refuge, in-
ending to cross the sea as soon as might be. After vainly
rying by every kind of hindrance to prevent their sailing, he
narched off to Rome, and after calling the Senate together
o discuss public business, went to attack Pompey's strongest
brces, which were in Spain under command of three of his
ieutenants Marcus Petreius, Lucius Afranius, and Marcus
/arro saying to his friends before he left: "I go to meet an
irmy without a leader, and I shall return to meet a leader
vithout an army." And in fact, though his advance was de-
ayed by the siege of Massilia, which had shut its gates against
lim, and by extreme scarcity of supplies, he nevertheless
luickly gained a complete victory.

Returning thence to Rome, he crossed into Macedonia, and
ifter blockading Pompey for almost four months behind

1 Knights, as well as Senators, had the privilege of wearing a gold
ing, and must possess an estate of 400,000 sesterces ($16,400). Liberal
is Caesar was to his legionaries, such imagined largess was beyond all
Reasonable expectation.

22 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

mighty ramparts, finally routed him in the battle of Phar-
salus, followed him in his flight to Alexandria, and when he
learned that his rival had been slain, made war on King
Ptolemy, who he perceived had treacherous designs upon
his own life as well; a war in truth of great difficulty, con-
venient neither in time nor place, but carried on during the
winter season, within the walls of a well-provisioned and crafty
foeman, while Caesar himself was without supplies of any
kind and ill-prepared. Victor in spite of all, he turned over the
rule of Egypt to Cleopatra and her younger brother, fearing
that if he made a province of it, it might one day under a
headstrong Governor be a source of revolution. From Alex-
andria he crossed to Syria, and from there went to Pontus,
spurred on by the news that Pharnaces, son of Mithridates
the Great, had taken advantage of the situation to make war,
and was already flushed with numerous successes. But Caesar
vanquished him in a single battle within five days after his
arrival and four hours after getting sight of him, often re-
marking on Pompey's good luck in gaining his principal fame
as a general by victories over such feeble foemen. Then he
overcame Scipio and Juba, who were patching up the remnants
of their party in Africa, and the sons of Pompey in Spain.

In all the civil wars he suffered not a single disaster except
among his lieutenants, of whom Gaius Curio perished in
Africa, Gaius Antonius fell into the hands of the enemy in
Illyricum, Publius Dolabella lost a fleet also off Illyricum, and
Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus an army in Pontus. Personally he
always fought with the utmost success, and the issue was
never even in doubt save twice : once at Dyrrachium, where he
was put to flight, and said of Pompey, who failed to follow up
his success, that he did not know how to use a victory ; again
in Spain, in the final struggle, when, believing the battle lost,
he actually thought of suicide.

Having ended the wars, he celebrated five triumphs, four
in a single month, but at intervals of a few days, after van-
quishing Scipio; and another on defeating Pompey 's sons.
The first and most splendid was the Gallic triumph, the next
the Alexandrian, then the Pontic, after that the African, and
finally the Spanish, each differing from the rest in its equip-
ment and display of spoils. As he rode through the Velabrum

JULIUS CAESAR 23

on the day of his Gallic triumph, the axle of his chariot broke,
and he was all but thrown out; and he mounted the Capitol
by torchlight, with forty elephants bearing lamps on his right
and his left. In his Pontic triumph he displayed among the
show-pieces of the procession an inscription of but three words,
"I came, I saw, I conquered," not indicating the events of the
war, as the others did, but the speed with which it was finished.

To each and every foot-soldier of his veteran legions he
gave twenty-four thousand sesterces x by way of booty, over
and above the two thousand 2 apiece which he had paid them
at the beginning of the civil strife. He also assigned them
lands, but not side by side, to avoid dispossessing any of the
former owners. To every man of the people, besides ten pecks
of grain and the same number of pounds of oil, he distributed
the three hundred sesterces which he had promised at first,
and one hundred apiece to boot because of the delay. 8 He also
remitted a year's rent in Rome to tenants who paid two thou-
sand sesterces 4 or less, and in Italy up to five hundred ses-
terces. 6 He added a banquet and a dole of meat, and after his
Spanish victory two dinners. For, deeming that the former of
these had not been served with a liberality creditable to his
generosity, he gave another five days later on a most lavish
scale.

He gave entertainments of divers kinds: a combat of gladia-
tors 6 and also stage-plays in every ward all over the city, per-
formed too by actors of all languages, as well as races in the
circus, athletic contests, and a sham sea-fight. In the gladia-
torial contest in the Forum Furius Leptinus, a man of prae-
torian stock, and Quintus Calpenus, a former Senator and
pleader at the bar, fought to a finish. A Pyrrhic dance was
performed by the sons of the princes of Asia and Bithynia.
During the plays Decimus Laberius, a Roman Knight, acted

1 $984.00.

2 $82.00.

8 $16.40 altogether.

4 $82. oo.

* $20.50.

6 Gladiators were first publicly exhibited at Rome by two brothers
called Bruti, at the funeral of their father, 263 B.C., and for some time
were exhibited only on such occasions. They were prohibited by Con-
stantine, but not entirely suppressed until the time of Honoriu?,

a 4 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

a farce of his own composition, and having been presented
with five hundred thousand sesterces and a gold ring, 1 passed
from the stage through the orchestra and took his place in
the fourteen rows. 2 For the races the circus was lengthened at
either end and a broad canal was dug all about it; then young
men of the highest rank drove four-horse and two-horse chari-
ots and rode pairs of horses, vaulting from one to the other.
The game called Troy was performed by two troops, of
younger and older boys. Combats with wild beasts were pre-
sented on five successive days, and last of all there was a
battle between two opposing armies, in which five hundred
foot-soldiers, twenty elephants, and thirty horsemen engaged
on each side. To make room for this, the goals were taken
down and in their place two camps were pitched over against
each other. The athletic competition^ lasted for three days
in a temporary stadium built for the purpose in the region of
the Campus Martius. For the naval battle a pool was dug in
the lesser Codeta and there was a contest of ships of two,
three, and four banks of oars, belonging to the Tyrian and
Egyptian fleets, manned by a large force of fighting men. Such
a throng flocked to all these shows from every quarter, that
many strangers had to lodge in tents pitched in the streets or
along the roads, and the press was often such that many were
crushed to death, including two Senators.

Then turning his attention to the reorganization of the
state, he reformed the calendar, which the negligence of the
pontiffs had long since so disordered, through their privilege
of adding months or days at pleasure, that the harvest fes-
tivals did not come in summer nor those of the vintage in the
autumn. And he adjusted the year to the sun's course by mak-
ing it consist of three hundred and sixty-five days, abolishing
the intercalary month, 8 and adding one day every fourth year.

1 In token of his restoration to the rank of Knight, which he forfeited
by appearing on the stage.

2 The first fourteen rows above the orchestra were reserved for the
Knights by a law of 67 B.C.

3 The year had previously consisted of 355 days, and the deficiency
of about ii days was made up by inserting an intercalary month of 22
or 23 days after February. Caesar was assisted in this reform by Sosi-
genes, an Egyptian philosopher. The Julian calendar was in use till 1582
when Pope Gregory XIII further corrected it.

J UL1TIS CAE*AK 915

Furthermore, that the correct reckoning of time might begin
with the next Kalends of January, he inserted two other
months between those of November and December. Hence the
year in which these arrangements were made was one of fifteen
months, including the intercalary month, which belonged to
that year according to the former custom.

He filled the vacancies in the Senate, enrolled additional
patricians, and increased the number of Praetors, Aediles, and
Quaestors, as well as of the minor officials. He reinstated those
who had been degraded by official action of the Censors * or
found guilty of bribery by verdict of the jurors. He shared the
elections frith the people on this basis: that except in the case
of the consulship, half of the magistrates should be appointed
by the people's choice, while the rest should be those whom
he had personally nominated. And these he announced in
brief notes like the following, circulated in each tribe: "Caesar
the Dictator to this or that tribe. I commend to you so and so,
to hold their positions by your votes." He admitted to office
even the sons of those who had been proscribed. He limited the
right of serving as jurors to two classes, the equestrian and
senatorial orders, disqualifying the third class, the Tribunes
of the treasury.

He made the enumeration of the people neither in the usual
manner nor place, but from street to street aided by the own-
ers of blocks of houses, and reduced the number of those who
received grain at public expense from three hundred and
twenty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand. And to
prevent the calling of additional meetings at any future time
for purposes of enrollment, he provided that the places of such
as died should be filled each year by the Praetors from those
who were not on the list.

Moreover, to keep up the population of the city, depleted
as it was by the assignment of eighty thousand citizens to
colonies 2 across the sea, he made a law that no citizen older
than twenty or younger than forty, unless detained by service
in the army, should be absent from Italy for more than three

1 There were two Censors, usually patricians of high rank, elected
originally every five years.
* Principally Carthage and Corinth.

26 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

successive years; that no Senator's son should go abroad ex-
cept as the companion of a magistrate or on his staff; and that
those who made a business of grazing should have among
their herdsmen at least one-third who were men of free birth.
He conferred citizenship on all who practiced medicine at
Rome, and on all teachers of the liberal arts, to make them
more desirous of living in the city and to induce others to re-
sort to it.

As to debts, he disappointed those who looked for their
cancellation, which was often agitated, but finally decreed
that the debtors should satisfy their creditors according to a
valuation of their possessions at the price which they had paid
for them before the civil war, deducting from the principal
whatever interest had been paid in cash or pledged through
bankers; an arrangement which wiped out about a fourth part
of their indebtedness. He dissolved all guilds, except those of
ancient foundation. He increased the penalties for crimes;
and inasmuch as the rich involved themselves in guilt with
less hesitation because they merely suffered exile, without any
loss of property, lie punished murderers of freemen by the
confiscation of all their goods, as Cicero writes, and others by
the loss of one-half.

He administered justice with the utmost conscientiousness
and stnctness. Those convicted of extortion he even dismissed
from the senatorial order. He annulled the marriage of an ex-
praetor, who had married a woman the very day after her
divorce, although there was no suspicion of adultery. He im-
posed duties on foreign wares. He denied the use of litters
and the wearing of scarlet robes or pearls to all except to
those of a designated position and age, and on set days. In
particular he enforced the law against extravagance, 1 setting
watchmen in various parts of the market, to seize and bring
to him dainties which were exposed for sale in violation of the
law; and sometimes he sent his Lictors and soldiers to take
from a dining-room any articles which had escaped the vigi-
lance of his watchmen, even after they had been served.

In particular, for the beautification and convenience of the

1 There were many such laws. Their number grew with the growing
extravagance of the Emperors.

JULIUS CAESAR 27

city, as well as for guarding and extending the bounds of the
empire, he formed more projects and more extensive ones
every day: first of all, to rear a temple to Mars, greater than
any in existence, filling up and leveling the pool in which he
had exhibited the sea-fight, and to build a theater of vast
size, sloping down from the Tarpeian rock; to reduce the civil
code to fixed limits, and of the vast and prolix mass of statutes
to include only the best and most essential in a limited nunv
ber of volumes; to open to the public the greatest possible li-
braries of Greek and Latin books, assigning to Marcus Varro
the charge of procuring and classifying them; to drain the
Pomptine marshes; to let out the water from Lake Fucinus; to
make a highway from the Adriatic across the summit of the
Apennines as far as the Tiber; to cut a canal through the
Isthmus; I to check the Dacians, who had poured into Pontus
and Thrace; then to make war on the Parthians by way of
Lesser Armenia, but not to risk a battle with them until he
had first tested their mettle.

All these enterprises and plans were cut short by his death.
But before I speak of that, it will not be amiss to describe
briefly his personal appearance, his dress, his mode of life, and
his character, as well as his conduct in civil and military life.

He is said to have been tall of stature, with a fair com-
plexion, shapely limbs, a somewhat full face, and keen black
eyes; sound of health, except that towards the end he was
subject to sudden fainting fits and to nightmare as well. He
was twice attacked by the falling sickness 2 during his cam-
paigns. He was somewhat overnice in the care of his person,
not only keeping the hair of his head closely cut and his face
smoothly shaved, but, as some have charged, even having
superfluous hair plucked out. His baldness was a disfigurement
which troubled him greatly, since he found that it was often
the subject of the gibes of his detractors. Because of it he
used to comb forward his scanty locks from the crown of his
head, and of all the honors voted him by the Senate and peo-
ple there was none which he received or made use of more

1 The Isthmus of Corinth, lying between the Ionian and the Aegean
seas. This work Demetrius had before attempted, as later, Caligula and
Nero, without success.

2 Epilepsy. Sometimes a seizure was feigned for political purposes.

18 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

gladly than the privilege of wearing a laurel wreath at all
times. They say, too, that he was fantastic in his dress; that
he wore a Senator's tunic with fringed sleeves reaching to the
wrist, and always had a girdle over it, though rather a loose
one; and this, they say, was the occasion of Sulla's mot, when
he often warned the nobles to keep an eye on the ill-girt boy. 1

He lived at first in the Subura in a modest house, but after
he became Chief Priest, in the official residence on the Sacred
Way. Many have written that he was very fond of elegance
and luxury; that having laid the foundations of a country-
house on his estate at Nemi 2 and finished it at great cost, he
tore it all down because it did not suit him in every particular,
although at the time he was still poor and heavily in debt;
and that he carried tesselated and mosaic doors about with
him on his campaigns.

They say that he was led to invade Britain by the hope of
getting pearls, and that in comparing their size he sometimes
weighed them with his own hand; that he was always a most
enthusiastic collector of gems, carvings, statues, and pictures
by early artists; also of slaves of exceptional figure and train-
ing at enormous prices, of which he himself was so ashamed
that he forbade their entry in his accounts.

It is further reported that in the provinces he gave banquets
constantly in two dining-halls, in one of which his officers or
Greek companions, in the other Roman civilians and the more
distinguished of the provincials reclined at table. He was so
punctilious and strict in the management of his household,
in small matters as well as in those of greater importance,
that he put his baker in irons for serving him with one kind of
bread and his guests with another; and he inflicted capital
punishment on a favorite f reedman for adultery with the wife
of a Roman Knight, although no complaint was made against
him.

There was no stain on his reputation for chastity except his

1 His manner of dress undoubtedly impressed people as effeminate.
Macrobius relates (Sat. II, 3, 10) that Cicero, questioned as to why he
had been deceived in siding with Pompey rather than Caesar, seeing
that Caesar was victorious, replied: "I was deceived by that loose
girdling of his."

a Sixteen miles from Rome

JULIUS CAESAR 29

intimacy with King Nicomedes, but that was a deep and last-
ing reproach, which laid him open to insults from every quar-
ter. I say nothing of the notorious lines of Licinius Calvus:

"Whatever Bithynia had, and Caesar's paramour."

I pass over, too, the invectives of Dolabella and the elder
Curio, in which Dolabella calls him "the Queen's rival, the
inner partner of the royal couch," and Curio, "the brothel of
Nicomedes and the stew of Bithynia." I take no account of
the edicts of Bibulus, in which he posted his colleague as "the
Queen of Bithynia," saying that "of yore he was enamoured
of a King, but now of a King's estate." At this same time, so
Marcus Brutus declares, one Octavius, a man whose disor-
dered mind made him somewhat free with his tongue, after
saluting Pompey as "King" in a crowded assembly, greeted
Caesar as "Queen." But Gaius Memmius makes the direct
charge that he acted as cup-bearer to Nicomedes with the
rest of his wantons at a large dinner-party, and that among
the guests were some merchants from Rome, whose names
Memmius gives. Cicero, indeed, is not content with having
written in sundry letters that Caesar was led by the King's
attendants to the royal apartments, that he lay on a golden
couch arrayed in purple, and that the virginity of this scion
of Venus was lost in Bithynia; but when Caesar was once
addressing the Senate in defense of Nysa, daughter of Nic-
omedes, and was recounting the King's kindness to him,
Cicero cried: "No more of that, pray, for it is well known
what he gave you, and what you gave him in turn." Finally,
in his Gallic triumph his soldiers, among the bantering songs
which are usually sung by those who follow the chariot,
shouted these lines, which became a by-word:

"Gaul to Caesar yielded, Caesar to Nicomedes.
Lo! Caesar triumphs for his glorious deed,
But Caesar's conqueror gains no victor's meed."

It is admitted by all that he was much addicted to women,
as well as very extravagant in his intrigues with them, and
that he seduced many illustrious women, among them Pos-

30 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

tumia, wife of Servius Sulpicius, Lollia, wife of Aulus Gabinius,
Tertulla, wife of Marcus Crassus, and even Gnaeus Pompey's
wife Mucia. At all events there is no doubt that Pompey
was taken to task by the elder and the younger Curio, as well
as by many others, because through a desire for power he
had afterwards married the daughter of a man on whose ac-
count he divorced a wife who had borne him three children,
and whom he had often referred to with a groan as an Aegis-
thus. 1 But beyond all others Caesar loved Servilia, the mother
of Marcus Brutus, for whom in his first consulship he bought
a pearl costing six million sesterces. 2 During the civil war,
too, besides other presents, he knocked down some fine estates
to her in a public auction at a nominal price, and when some
expressed their surprise at the low figure, Cicero wittily re-
marked: "To let you know the real value of the purchase,
between ourselves, Tertia was deducted." 8 And in fact it was
thought that Servilia was prostituting her own daughter Tertia
to Caesar.

That he did not refrain from intrigues with married women
in the provinces is shown in particular by this distich, which
was also shouted by the soldiers in his Gallic triumph:

"Watch well your wives, O citizens

A lecher bald we bring.
In Gaul adultery cost thee gold,
Here 'tis but borrowing." 4

He had iove affairs with Queens, too, including Eunoe the
Moor, wife of Bogudes, on whom, as well as on her husband,
he bestowed many splendid presents, as Naso writes. But his
greatest favorite was Cleopatra, with whom he often feasted

1 That is, adulterer ; for Aegisthus, who, like Caesar, was a pontiff,
committed adultery with Clytemnestra while Agamemnon was off at
the Trojan war, as did Caesar with Mucia, when Pompey was absent
in the war against Mithridates.

2 $46,000.

8 Double -entendre in the Latin tertia deduct a; Tertia signifying a
third off (the value of the farm) as well as being the name of the girl for
whose favors the reduction was made.

4 Implying that as he borrowed of other men, so he lent as much in
return, for, as was said, his own wife Pompeia was kept by P. Clodius.

JULIUS CAESAR 31

until daybreak, and he would have gone through Egypt with
her in her state-barge almost to Aethiopia, had not his soldiers
refused to follow him. Finally he called her to Rome and did
not let her leave until he had laden her with high honors
and rich gifts, and he allowed her to give his name to the child
which she bore. In fact, according to certain Greek writers,
this child was very like Caesar in looks and carriage. Mark
Antony declared to the Senate that Caesar had really acknowl-
edged the boy, and that Gaius Matius, Gaius Oppius, and
other friends of Caesar knew this. Of these Gaius Oppius, as
if admitting that the situation required apology and defense,
published a book, to prove that the child whom Cleopatra
fathered on Caesar was not his. Helvius Cinna, Tribune o<
the Commons, admitted to several that he had a bill drawn
up in due form, which Caesar had ordered him to propose tc
the people in his absence, making it lawful for Caesar to
marry what wives he wished, and as many as he wished, "for
the purpose of begetting children." To leave no room for
doubt of his evil reputation both for sodomy and adultery,
Curio the elder, in one of his speeches, calls him "every
woman's man and every man's woman."

That he drank very little wine not even his enemies denied.
There is a saying of Marcus Cato that Caesar was the only
man who undertook to overthrow the state when sober. Even
in the matter of food Gaius Oppius tells us that he was so
indifferent, that once when his host served stale oil instead of
fresh, and the other guests would have none of it, Caesar par-
took even more plentifully than usual, that he might not seem
to charge his host with carelessness or lack of manners.

But his abstinence did not extend to pecuniary advantages,
either when in command of armies or when in civil office. For
we have the testimony of some writers that when he was Pro-
consul in Spain, he not only begged money from the allies, to
help pay his debts, but also attacked and sacked some towns
of the Lusitanians, although they did not refuse his terms and
opened their gates to him on his arrival. In Gaul he pillaged
shrines and temples of the Gods filled with offerings, and
oftener sacked towns for the sake of plunder than for any
fault. In consequence he had more gold than he knew what to
do with, and offered it for sale throughout Italy and the prov

$o THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

tumia, wife of Servius Sulpicius, Lollia, wife of Aulus Gabinius,
Tertulla, wife of Marcus Crassus, and even Gnaeus Pompey's
wife Mucia. At all events there is no doubt that Pompey
was taken to task by the elder and the younger Curio, as well
as by many others, because through a desire for power he
had afterwards married the daughter of a man on whose ac-
count he divorced a wife who had borne him three children,
and whom he had often referred to with a groan as an Aegis-
thus. 1 But beyond all others Caesar loved Servilia, the mother
of Marcus Brutus, for whom in his first consulship he bought
a pearl costing six million sesterces. 2 During the civil war,
too, besides other presents, he knocked down some fine estates
to her in a public auction at a nominal price, and when some
expressed their surprise at the low figure, Cicero wittily re-
marked: "To let you know the real value of the purchase,
between ourselves, Tertia was deducted." 8 And in fact it was
thought that Servilia was prostituting her own daughter Tertia
to Caesar.

That he did not refrain from intrigues with married women
in the provinces is shown in particular by this distich, which
was also shouted by the soldiers in his Gallic triumph:

"Watch well your wives, O citizens

A lecher bald we bring.
In Gaul adultery cost thee gold.
Here 'tis but borrowing." 4

He had love affairs with Queens, too, including Eunoe the
Moor, wife of Bogudes, on whom, as well as on her husband,
he bestowed many splendid presents, as Naso writes. But his
greatest favorite was Cleopatra, with whom he often feasted

1 That is, adulterer ; for Aegisthus, who, like Caesar, was a pontiff,
committed adultery with Clytemnestra while Agamemnon was off at
the Trojan war, as did Caesar with Mucia, when Pompey was absent
in the war against Mithridates.

2 $446,000.

8 Doublc-entendre in the Latin tertia dedttcta; Tertia signifying a
third off (the value of the farm) as well as being the name of the girl for
whose favors the reduction was made.

4 Implying that as he borrowed of other men, so he lent as much in
return, for, as was said, his own wife Pompeia was kept by P. Clodius.

JULIUS CAESAR 3 t

until daybreak, and he would have gone through Egypt with
her in her state-barge almost to Aethiopia, had not his soldiers
refused to follow him. Finally he called her to Rome and did
not let her leave until he had laden her with high honors
and rich gifts, and he allowed her to give his name to the child
which she bore. In fact, according to certain Greek writers,
this child was very like Caesar in looks and carriage. Mark
Antony declared to the Senate that Caesar had really acknowl-
edged the boy, and that Gaius Matius, Gaius Oppius, and
other friends of Caesar knew this. Of these Gaius Oppius, as
if admitting that the situation required apology and defense,
published a book, to prove that the child whom Cleopatra
fathered on Caesar was not his. Helvius Cinna, Tribune oJ
the Commons, admitted to several that he had a bill drawn
up in due form, which Caesar had ordered him to propose tc
the people in his absence, making it lawful for Caesar to
marry what wives he wished, and as many as he wished, "for
the purpose of begetting children." To leave no room for
doubt of his evil reputation both for sodomy and adultery,
Curio the elder, in one of his speeches, calls him "every
woman's man and every man's woman."

That he drank very little wine not even his enemies denied.
There is a saying of Marcus Cato that Caesar was the only
man who undertook to overthrow the state when sober. Even
in the matter of food Gaius Oppius tells us that he was so
indifferent, that once when his host served stale oil instead of
fresh, and the other guests would have none of it, Caesar par-
took even more plentifully than usual, that he might not seem
to charge his host with carelessness or lack of manners.

But his abstinence did not extend to pecuniary advantages,
either when in command of armies or when in civil office. For
we have the testimony of some writers that when he was Pro-
consul in Spain, he not only begged money from the allies, to
help pay his debts, but also attacked and sacked some towns
of the Lusitanians, although they did not refuse his terms and
opened their gates to him on his arrival. In Gaul he pillaged
shrines and temples of the Gods filled with offerings, and
oftener sacked towns for the sake of plunder than for any
fault. In consequence he had more gold than he knew what to
do with, and offered it for sale throughout Italy and the prov*

32 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

inces at the rate of three thousand sesterces the pound. 1 In
his first consulship he stole three thousand pounds of gold
from the Capitol, replacing it with the same weight of gilded
bronze. He made alliances and thrones a matter of barter, for
he extorted from Ptolemy alone in his own name and that of
Pompey nearly six thousand talents, 2 while later on he met
the heavy expenses of the civil wars and of his triumphs and
entertainments by the most bare-faced pillage and sacrilege.
In eloquence and in the art of war he either equaled or
excelled the glory of the very best. After his prosecution of
Dolabella, he was indisputably reckoned one of the most dis-
tinguished advocates. Cicero, at all events, in reviewing the
orators in his Brutus says that he does not see that Caesar
was inferior to any one of them, maintaining that his style
is elegant as well as brilliant, even grand and in a sense noble.
Again in a letter to Cornelius Nepos he writes thus of Caesar:
"Come now, what orator would you rank above him of those
who have devoted themselves to nothing else? Who has more
clever or more frequent epigrams? Who is more polished or
more elegant in diction?" He appears, at least in his youth, to
have imitated the manner of Caesar Strabo, from whose
speech entitled "For the Sardinians" he actually transferred
some passages word for word to a trial address 8 of his own.
He is said to have delivered himself in a high-pitched voice
with impassioned action and gestures, which were not with-
out grace. He left several speeches, including some which are
attributed to him on insufficient evidence. Augustus had good
reason to think that the speech "For Quintus Metellus" was
rather taken down by shorthand writers who could not keep
pace with his delivery, than published by Caesar himself.
For in some copies I find that even the title is not "For
Metellus," but, "Which he wrote for Metellus," although the
discourse purports to be from Caesar's lips, defending Metel-
lus and himself against the charges of their common detrac-
tors. Augustus also questions the authenticity of the address
"To his Soldiers in Spain," although there are two versions

1 Apparently about two-thirds less than the usual price.

2 $6,792,000.00.

8 That is, a speech in which he competed with other lawyers for the
right to conduct a prosecution.

JULIUS CAESAR 33

of it: one purporting to have been spoken at the first battle,
the other at the second, when Asinius Pollio writes that be*
cause of the sudden onslaught of the enemy he actually did
not have time to make an harangue.

He left memoirs too of his deeds in the Gallic war and in
the civil strife with Pompey; for the author of the Alexan-
drian, African, and Spanish Wars is unknown; some think it
was Oppius, others Hirtius, who also supplied the final book
of the Gallic War, which Caesar left unwritten. With regard
to Caesar's memoirs Cicero, also in the Brutus, speaks in the
following terms: "He wrote memoirs which deserve the high-
est praise; they are naked in their simplicity, straightforward
yet graceful, stripped of all rhetorical adornment, as of a
garment. While his purpose was to supply material to others,
on which those who wished to write history might draw, he
perhaps gratified silly folk, who will try to use the curling-irons
on his narrative, yet he has kept men of any sense from touch-
ing the subject." Of these same memoirs Hirtius uses this
emphatic language: "They are so highly rated in the judg*
ment of all men, that he seems to have deprived writers of
an opportunity, rather than given them one. Yet our admira-
tion for this feat is greater than that of others. For they
know how well and faultlessly he wrote, while we know be-
sides how easily and rapidly he finished his task." Asinius
Pollio thinks that they were put together somewhat carelessly
and without strict regard for truth; since in many cases
Caesar was too ready to believe the accounts which others gave
of their actions, and gave a perverted account of his own,
either designedly or perhaps through defect of memory; and
he thinks that he intended to revise and rewrite them. He left
besides a work in two volumes "On Analogy," the same num-
ber of "Speeches in Reply to Cato," in addition to a poem,
entitled "The Journey." He wrote the first of these works
while crossing the Alps and returning to his army from Hither
Gaul, where he had held the assizes, the second about the
time of the battle of Munda, and the third in the course of a
twenty-four days' journey from Rome to Farther Spain.
Some letters of his to the Senate are also preserved, and he
seems to have been the first to reduce such documents to pages
and the form of a memorial volume, whereas previously Con-

34 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

suls and Generals sent their reports written right across the
sheet. There are also letters of his to Cicero, as well as to his
intimates on private affairs. In the latter, if he had anything
confidential to say, he wrote it in cipher, that is, by so chang-
ing the order of the letters of the alphabet, that not a word
could be made out. If any one wishes to decipher these, and
i get at their meaning, he must substitute the fourth letter of
the alphabet, namely D, for A, and so with the others. We
also have mention of certain writings of his boyhood and
early youth, such as the "Praises of Hercules," a tragedy
"Oedipus," and a '"Collection of Apophthegms"; but Augus-
tus forbade the publication of all these minor works in a very
brief and frank letter sent to Pompeius Macer, whom he had
selected to set his libraries in order.

He was highly skilled in arms and horsemanship, and of
incredible powers of endurance. On the march he headed his
army, sometimes on horseback, but oftener on foot, bare-
headed both in the heat of the sun and in rain. He covered
great distances with incredible speed, making a hundred miles
a day in a hired carriage and with little baggage, swimming
the rivers which barred his path or crossing them on inflated
skins, and very often arriving before the messengers sent to
announce his coming.

In the conduct of his campaigns it is a question whether he
was more cautious or more daring, for he never led his army
where ambuscades were possible without carefully recon-
noitering the country, and he did not cross to Britain without
making personal inquiries about the harbors, the course, and
the approach to the island. But on the other hand, when news
came that his camp in Germany was besieged, he made his
way to his men through the enemies' pickets, disguised as a
GauL He crossed from Brundisium to Dyrrachium in winter
time, running the blockade of the enemy's fleets; and when
the troops which he had ordered to follow him delayed to do
so, and he had sent to fetch them many times in vain, at last
in secret and alone he boarded a small boat at night with his
head muffled up; and he did not reveal who he was, or suffer
the helmsman to give way to the gale blowing in their teeth,
until he was all but overwhelmed by the waves.

No regard for religion ever turned him from any undertak-

JULIUS CAESAR aj

ing, or even delayed him. Though the victim escaped as he
was offering sacrifice, he did not put off his expedition against
Scipio and Juba. Even when he had a fall as he disembarked,
he gave the omen a favorable turn by crying: "I hold thee
fast, Africa." Furthermore, to make the prophecies ridiculous
which declared that the stock of the Scipios was fated to be
fortunate and invincible in that province, he kept with him
in camp a contemptible fellow belonging to the Cornelian
family, to whom the nickname Salvito had been given as a
reproach for his manner of life.

He joined battle, not only after planning his movements
in advance but on a sudden opportunity, often immediately
at the end of a march, and sometimes in the foulest weather,
when one would least expect him to make a move. It was not
until his later years that he became slower to engage, through
a conviction that the oftener he had been victor, the less he
ought to tempt fate, and that he could not possibly gain as
much by success as he might lose by a defeat. He never put
his enemy to flight without also driving him from his camp,
thus giving him no respite in his panic. When the issue was
doubtful, he used to send away the horses, and his own among
the first, to impose upon his troops the greater necessity of
standing their ground by taking away that aid to flight.

He rode a remarkable horse, too, with feet that were al-
most human, for its hoofs were cloven in such a way as to
look like toes. This horse was foaled on his own place, and
since the soothsayers had declared that it foretold the rule of
the world for its master, he reared it with the greatest care,
and was the first to mount it, for it would endure no other
rider. Afterwards, too, he dedicated a statue of it before the
temple of Venus Genetrix.

When his army gave way, he often rallied it single-handed,
planting himself in the way of the fleeing men, laying hold of
them one by one, even seizing them by the throat and turning
them to face the enemy; that, too, when they were in such a
panic that an eagle-bearer made a pass at him with the point *

1 The principal standard of the Roman legion was a silver eagle with
outspread wings and clutching a golden thunder bolt in its claw. It was
mounted on a pole sharp at one end so that it could be set firmly in th*
ground. In camp it stood in a little shrine.

$6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

as he tried to stop him, while another left the standard fo
Caesar's hand when he would hold him baclc.

Hto presence of mind was no less Renowned and the in-
stances of it will appear even more striking. After the battle of
Pharsalus, when he had sent on his troops and was crossing
the strait of the Hellespont in a small passenger boat, he met
Lucius Cassius, of the hostile party, with ten armored ships,
and made no attempt to escape, but went to meet Cassius and
actually exhorted him to surrender. Cassius sued for mercy
and was taken on board.

At Alexandria, while assaulting a bridge, he was forced by
a sudden sally of the enemy to take to a small skiff. When
many others threw themselves into the same boat, he plunged
into the sea, and after swimming for two hundred paces, got
away to the nearest ship, holding up his left nand all the way,
so as not to wet some paper* *vhlch he was carrying, and drag-
ging his cloak after him vnth his teeth, to keep the enemy from
getting t as a frophy.

He valued his soldiers neither for their personal character
nor their fortune, but solely for their prowess, and he treated
them with equal strictness and indulgence. For he did not
curb them everywhere and at all times, but only in the pres-
ence of the enemy. Then he required the strictest discipline,
not announcing the time of a march or a battle, but keeping
them ready and alert to be led on a sudden at any moment
wheresoever he might wish. He often called them out even
when there was no occasion for it, especially on rainy days
and holidays. Sometimes, giving them orders not to lose sight
of him, he would steal away suddenly by day or night and
make a longer march than usual, to tire out those who were
tardy in following.

When they were in a panic through reports about the ene-
my's numbers, he used to rouse their courage not by denying
or discounting the rumors, but by falsely exaggerating the
true danger. For instance, when the anticipation of Juba's
coming filled them with terror, he called the soldiers together
and said: "Let me tell you that within the next few days the
king will be here with ten legions, thirty thousand horsemen,
a hundred thousand light-armed troops, and three hundred

JULIUS CAESAR 3 ,

elephants. Let none of you, therefore, presume m make fur
ther inquiry or to indulge in conjectures, but take my won*
for what I tell you, which I have on good information. Other-
wise, I shall surely have them shipped on some worn out
craft and carried off to whatever lands the wind may blow
them."

He did not take notice of all their offenses or punish them
by rule, but he kept a sharp lookout for deserters and mu-
tineers, and chastised them most severely, shutting his eyes
to other faults. Sometimes, too, after a great victory he re-
lieved them of all duties and gave them full license to revel,
being in the habit of boasting that his soldiers could fight well
even when reeking of perfumes. In the assembly he addressed
them not as "soldiers," but by the more flattering term "com-
rades," and he kept them in fine trim, furnishing them with
arms inlaid with silver and gold, both for show and to make
them hold the faster to them in battle, through fear of the
greatness of the loss. Such was his love for them that when he
heard of the disaster to Titurius, 1 he let his hair and beard
grow long, and would not cut them until he had taken venge-
ance. In this way he made them most devoted to his in-
terests as well as most valiant.

When he began the civil war, 2 every Centurion 3 of each
legion proposed to supply a horseman from his own allowance,
and the soldiers one and all offered their service without pay
and without rations, the richer assuming the care of the
poorer. Throughout the long struggle not one deserted and
many of them, on being taken prisoner, refused to accept their
lives, when offered them on the condition of consenting to
serve against Caesar. They bore hunger and other hardships,
both when in a state of siege and when besieging others, with
such fortitude, that when Pompey saw in the works at Dyr-
rachium a kind of bread made of herbs, on which they were
living, he said that he was fighting wild beasts, and gave or-

1 54 B.C. The legions under Titurius Sabinus and L. Cotta while
wintering in the territory of the Eburones. in Gaul, were attacked and
cut to pieces by Ambiorix, their chief.

2 The war against Pompey.

* Captain of a hundred men; appointed by the commande^in-duef ;
next in rank to the Military Tribunes.

38 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

ders that it be put out of sight quickly and shown to none of
bis men for fear that the endurance and resolution of the foe
would break their spirit.

How valiantly they fought is shown by the fact that when
they suffered their sole defeat before Dyrrachium, they in-
sisted on being punished, and their commander felt called
upon rather to console than to chastise them. In the other
battles they overcame with ease countless forces of the enemy,
though decidedly fewer in number themselves. Indeed one
cohort l of the sixth legion, when set to defend a redoubt,
kept four legions of Pompey at bay for several hours, though
almost all were wounded by the enemy's showers of arrows,
of which a hundred and thirty thousand were picked up
within the ramparts. And no wonder, when one thinks of the
deeds of individual soldiers, either of Cassius Scaeva the Cen-
turion, or of Gaius Acilius of the rank and file, not to mention
others. Scaeva, with one eye gone, his thigh and shoulder
wounded, and his shield bored through in a hundred and
twenty places, continued to guard the gate of a fortress put
in his charge. Acilius in the sea-fight at Massilia grasped the
stern of one of the enemy's ships, and when his right hand
was lopped off, rivaling the famous exploit of the Greek hero
Cynegirus, 2 boarded the ship and drove the enemy before him
with the boss of his shield.

They did not mutiny once during the ten years of the
Gallic war; in the civil wars they did so now and then, but
quickly resumed their duty, not so much owing to any indul-
gence of their General as to his authority. For he never gave
way to them when they were insubordinate, but always boldly
faced them, discharging the entire ninth legion in disgrace
before Placentia, though Pompey was still in the field, rein-
stating them unwillingly and only after many abject en-
treaties, and insisting on punishing the ringleaders.

Again at Rome, when the men of the tenth legion clamored
for their discharge and rewards with terrible threats and no
little peril to the city, though the war in Africa was then rag-
ing, he did not hesitate to appear before them, against the ad-

i A tenth part of a legion, about 400 men.
* At the battle of Marathon.

JULIUS CAESAR 3 *

<fice of his friends, and to disband them. But with a single
word, calling them "citizens," 1 instead of "soldiers," he
easily brought them round and bent them to his will. For they
at once replied that they were his "soldiers" and insisted on
following him to Africa, although he refused their service.
Even then he punished the most insubordinate by the loss of a
third part of the booty and of the land intended for them.

Even when a young man he showed no lack of devotion
and fidelity to his dependents. He defended the cause of a
noble youth, Masintha, against King Hiempsal with such
spirit, that in the dispute he caught the King's son Juba by
the beard. 2 On Masintha 's being declared subject to the King,
he at once rescued him from those who were carrying him off,
and kept him hidden for some time in his own house. When
presently he left for Spain after his praetorship, he carrie*-!
the young man off in his own litter, unnoticed amid the crovid
that came to see him off and the Lictors with their fasces.

His friends he treated with invariable kindness and con-
sideration. When Gaius Oppius was his companion on a jour-
ney through a wild, woody country and was suddenly taken
ill, Caesar gave up to him the only shelter there was, while
he himself slept on the ground out-of-doors. Moreover, when
he came to power, he advanced some of his friends to the
highest positions, even though they were of the humblest
origin, and when taken to task for it, flatly declared that if he
had been helped in defending his honor by brigands and cut-
throats, he would have requited even such men in the same
way.

On the other hand he never formed such bitter enmities
that he was not glad to lay them aside when opportunity of-
fered. Although Gaius Memmius had made highly caustic
speeches against him, to which he had replied with equal bit-
terness, he went so far as to support Memmius afterwards in
his suit for the consulship. When Gaius Calvus, after some
scurrilous epigram* took steps through his friends towards a
reconciliation, Caesar wrote to him first and of his own free

1 As though freed from the allegiance to which they were bound by
the military oath.

* A great insult to barbarians, who set great store by their beard*
which they wore long.

40 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

will. Valerius Catullus, as Caesar himself did not hesitate to
say, inflicted a lasting stain on his name by the verses about
Mamurra. Yet when he apologized, Caesar invited the poet to
dinner that very same day, and continued his usual friendly
relations with Catullus's father.

Even in avenging wrongs he was by nature most merciful.
When he got hold of the pirates who had captured him, hav-
ing sworn that he would crucify them, he did so indeed, but
ordered that their throats be cut first. He could never make
up his mind to harm Cornelius Phagites, although when he
was sick and in hiding, the man had waylaid him night after
night, and even a bribe had barely saved him from being
handed over to Sulla. 1 The slave Philemon, his amanuensis,
who had promised Caesar's enemies that he would poison him,
he merely punished by death, without torture. When sum-
moned as a witness against Publius Clodius, the paramour of
his wife Pompeia, who was being prosecuted for desecration
of sacred rights, 2 Caesar declared that he had no evidence, al-
though both his mother Aurelia and his sister Julia had given
the same jurors a faithful account of the whole affair. When
he was then asked why after all he had divorced Pompeia, he
replied: "Because I maintain that the members of my family
should be free not only from guilt, but from even the sus-
picion of guilt."

He certainly showed admirable self-restraint and mercy,
both in his conduct of the civil war and in the hour of victory.
While Pompey threatened to treat as enemies those who did
not take up arms for the government, Caesar gave out that
those who were neutral and of neither party should be num-
bered with his friends. He freely allowed all those whom he
had made Centurions on Pompey's recommendation to go
over to his rival. When conditions of surrender were under
discussion at Ilerda, and friendly intercourse between the two
parties was constant, Afranius and Petreius, with a sudden
change of purpose, put to death all of Caesar's soldiers whom
Ihey found in their camp, but Caesar could not bring himself

1 Phagites, a freedman of Sulla, and one of those delegated to appre-
hend Caesar when he was under the disfavor of Sulla. Plutarch, in his
Life of Caesar, says the amount of this bribe was $2,264.00.

2 Those of Bona Dea.

JULIUS CAESAR 41

to retaliate in kind. At the battle of Pharsalus he cried out,
"Spare your fellow citizens," and afterwards allowed each ol
his men to save any one man he pleased of the opposite party,
None on Pompey's side, so far as appears, lost their lives but
in battle, save only Afranius and Faustus, and the young
Lucius Caesar. And it is believed that not even these men
were slain by his wish, even though the two former had taken
up arms again after being pardoned, and the latter had not
only cruelly put to death the Dictator's slaves and freedmen
with fire and sword, but had even butchered the wild beasts
which he had procured for the entertainment of the people. At
last, in his later years, he went so far as to allow all those
whom he had not yet pardoned to return to Italy, and to hold
offices both civil and military; and he actually set up the
statues of Lucius Sulla and Pompey, which had been broken
to pieces by the populace. After this, if any dangerous plots
were formed against him, or slanders uttered, he chose rather
to check than to punish them. Accordingly, he took no fur-
ther notice of the conspiracies which were detected, and of
meetings by night, than to make known by proclamation that
he was aware of them. To those who spoke ill of him he
thought it enough to give public warning not to persist in
their offense, bearing with good nature the attacks on his
reputation made by the scurrilous volume of Aulus Caecina
and the abusive lampoons of Pitholaus.

Yet after all, his other actions and words so far outweigh
all his good qualities that it is thought he abused his power
and was justly slain. For not only did he accept excessive
honors, such as an uninterrupted consulship, the dictatorship
for life, and the censorship of public morals, as well as the
forename Imperator, 1 the surname of Father of his Country,
a statue among those of the Kings, 2 and a raised couch in the
orchestra of the theater. He also allowed honors to be bestowed

1 The title Imperator, synonymous with conqueror, was that by
which troops would hail a victorious commander. It first assumed a
permanent and royal character through Caesar's use of it as a pre-
nomen.

2 Statues of each of the seven Kings of Rome were in the Capitol, to
which an eighth was added in honor of Brutus, who expelled the last.
The statue of Julius was afterwards raised near them.

41 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

on him which were too great for mortal man: a golden throne
in the House and on the judgment seat; a chariot and litter *
In the procession at the circus; temples, altars, and statues be-
side those of the Gods; a special priest, an additional college
of the Luperci, and the calling of one of the months by his
name. In fact, there were no honors which he did not receive
or confer at pleasure.

He held his third and fourth consulships in name only,
content with the power of the dictatorship conferred on him
at the same time as the consulships. Moreover, in both years
he substituted two Consuls for himself for the last three
months, in the meantime holding no elections except for
Tribunes and plebeian Aediles, and appointing Praefects in-
stead of the Praetors, to manage the affairs of the city during
his absence. When one of the Consuls suddenly died the day
before the Kalends of January, he gave the vacant office for
a few hours to a man who asked for it. With the same dis-
regard of law and precedent he named magistrates for several
years to come, bestowed the emblems of consular rank on ten
ex-Praetors, and admitted to the House men who had been
given citizenship, and in some cases even half-civilized Gauls.
He assigned the charge of the mint and of the public revenues
to his own slaves, and gave the oversight and command of the
three legions which he had left at Alexandria to a favorite
boy of his called Rufio, son of one of his freedmen.

No less arrogant were his public utterances, which Titus
Ampius 2 records: that the Republic was a name only, with-
out substance or reality; that Sulla did not know his A. B. C.
when he laid down his dictatorship; that men ought now to be
more circumspect in addressing him, and to regard his word
as law. So far did he go in his presumption, that when a sooth-
sayer once announced to him the direful omen that a victim
offered for sacrifice was without a heart, he said: "The
entrails will be more favorable when I please. It ought not to
be taken as a miracle if a beast have no heart."

But it was the following action in particular that roused
deadly hatred against him. When the Senate approached him

1 For carrying an image of him among those of the Gods.

2 Titus Ampius Balbus, the friend of Cicero and one of the sup-
porters of Pompey whom Caesar pardoned after the civil war.

JULIUS CAESAR 43*

in a body with many highly honorary decrees, he received
them before the temple of Venus Genetrix without rising.
Some think that when he attempted to get up, he was held
back by Cornelius Balbus; others, that he made no such
move at all, but on the contrary frowned angrily on Gaius
Trebatius when he suggested that he should rise. This action
of his seemed the more intolerable, because when he himself
in one of his triumphal processions rode past the benches of
the Tribunes, he was so incensed because one of their number,
Pontius Aquila by name, did not rise, that he cried: "Come
then, Aquila, mighty Tribune, and take from me the Repub*
lie," and for several days afterwards, he would promise a
favor to no one without adding, "That is, if Pontius Aquila
will give me leave."

To an insult which so plainly showed his contempt for the
Senate he added an act of even greater insolence. After the
sacred rites of the Latin Festival, as he was returning to the
city, amid the extravagant and unprecedented demonstrations
of the populace, some one in the press placed on his statue
a laurel wreath with a white fillet * tied to it. When Epidius
Marullus and Caesetius Flavus, Tribunes of the Commons,
gave orders that the ribbon be removed from the crown and
the man taken off to prison, Caesar sharply rebuked and de-
posed them, either offended that the hint at regal power had
been received with so little favor, or, as was said, that he had
been robbed of the glory of refusing it. But from that time on
he could not rid himself of the odium of having aspired to
the title of monarch, although he replied to the Commons,
when they hailed him as King, "I am Caesar and not King."
At the Lupercalia, 2 when the Consul Antony several times
attempted to place a crown upon his head as he spoke from
the rostra, he put it aside and at last sent it to the Capitol,
to be offered to Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Nay, more, the

1 Emblematic of royalty.

2 An orgiastic festival in February in honor of the Lycaen Pan,
identified by the Romans with Faunus. During the solemnity, the
Luperci, priests of that god, ran naked in the streets, striking those they
met with goat-skin thongs, particularly married women, who wer*
thereby supposed to be rendered fecund.

* THE 1/VS 01 : THE TWELVE t

report had spread in various quarters that h? intend'xl to
move to Ilium * or Alexandria, taking with him the resource
of the state, draining Italy by levies, and leaving it and the
charge of the city to his friends; also that at the next meeting
of the Senate Lucius Cotta would announce as the decision
of the Fifteen, 2 that inasmuch as it was written in the books
of fate that the Parthians could be conquered only by a King,
Caesar should be given that title.

In order to avoid giving assent to this proposal the con-
spirators hastened the execution of their designs. Therefore
the plots which had previously been formed separately, often
by groups of two or three, were united in a general conspiracy,
since even the populace no longer were pleased with present
conditions, but both secretly and openly rebelled at his
tyranny and cried out for defenders of their liberty. On the
admission of foreigners to the Senate, a placard was posted:
"God bless the Commonwealth! Let no one consent to point
out the House to a newly made Senator." The following verses
too were repeated everywhere:

"The Gauls he dragged in triumph through the town
Caesar has brought into the Senate house
And changed their breeches for the purple gown."

When Quintus Maximus, whom he had appointed Consul in
his place for three months, was entering the theater, and his
Lictor in the usual manner called attention to his arrival,
a general shout was raised: "He's no Consul!" After the
removal of Caesetius and Marullus from office as Tribunes,
they were bound to have not a few votes at the next elections
of Consuls. Some wrote on the base of Lucius Brutus's statue,
"Oh, that you were still alive"; and on that of Caesar him*
self:

"Because he drove from Rome the royal race
Brutus was first made Consul in their place.
This man, because he put the Consuls down,
Has been rewarded with a royal crown."

A A city where Troy stood.

* The college of fifteen priests who inspected and expounded the
Sybilline books.

JULIUS CAESAR 45

More than sixty joined the conspiracy against him, led by
Gaius Cassius and Marcus and Decimus Brutus. At first they
hesitated whether to form two divisions at the elections in the
Campus Martius, so that while some hurled him from the
bridge * as he summoned the tribes to vote, the rest might
wait below and slay him; or to set upon him in the Sacred
Way or at the entrance to the theater. When, however, a
meeting of the Senate was called for the Ides 2 of March in
the Hall of Pompey, they readily gave that time and place
the preference.

Now Caesar's approaching murder was foretold to him by
unmistakable signs. A few months before, when the settlers
assigned to the colony at Capua by the Julian Law were de-
molishing some tombs of great antiquity, to build country
houses, and plied their work with the greater vigor because
as they rummaged about they found a quantity of vases of
ancient workmanship, there was discovered in a tomb, which
was said to be that of Capys, the founder of Capua, a bronze
tablet, inscribed with Greek words and characters to this
effect: "Whenever the bones of Capys shall be discovered,
it will come to pass that a descendant of his shall be slain at
the hands of his kindred, and presently avenged at heavy cost
to Italy." And let no one think this tale a myth or a lie, for
it is vouched for by Cornelius Balbus, an intimate friend of
Caesar. Shortly before his death, as he was told, the herds of
horses which he had dedicated to the river Rubicon when he
crossed it, and had let loose without a keeper, stubbornly re-
fused to graze and wept copiously. Again, when he was offer-
ing sacrifice, the soothsayer Spurinna warned him to beware
of danger, which would come not later than the Ides of
March. On the day before the Ides of that month a little
bird called the king-bird flew into the Hall of Pompey with
a sprig of laurel, pursued by others of various kinds from the
grove hard by, which tore it to pieces in the hall. In fact the
very night before his murder he dreamt now that he was
flying above the clouds, and now that he was clasping the

1 A temporary bridge of planks over which the voters passed one
by one to cast their ballots.

* The 1 5th of March, May, July, and October; the ijth of every
other month.

tf THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

hand of Jupiter; and his wife Calpurnia thought that the
pediment of their house fell, and that her husband was stabbed
in her arms; and on a sudden the door of the room flew open
of its own accord.

Both for these reasons and because of poor health he hesi-
tated for a long time whether to stay at home and put off
what he had planned to do in the Senate. But at last, urged
by Decimus Brutus not to disappoint the full meeting, which
had for some time been waiting for him, he went forth almost
at the end of the fifth hour. 1 When a note revealing the plot
was handed him by some one on the way, he put it with others
which he held in his left hand, intending to read them pres-
ently. Then, after many victims had been slain, and he could
not get favorable omens, he entered the House in defiance of
portents, laughing at Spurinna and calling him a false
prophet, because the Ides of March were come without bring-
ing him harm. Spurinna replied that they had of a truth
come, but they had not gone.

As he took his seat, the conspirators gathered about him
as if to pay their respects, and straightway Tillius Cimber,
who had assumed the lead, came nearer as though to ask
something. When Caesar with a gesture put him off to another
time, Cimber caught his toga by both shoulders. As Caesar
cried, "Why, this is violence!" one of the Cascas stabbed
him from one side just below the throat. Caesar caught Casca's
arm and ran it through with his stylus, 2 but as he tried to leap
to his feet, he was stopped by another wound. When he saw
that he was beset on every side by drawn daggers, he muffled
his head in his robe, and at the same time drew down its lap 8
to his feet with his left hand, in order to fall more decently,
with the lower part of his body also covered. And in this wise
he was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering not
a word, but merely a groan at the first stroke, though some
have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he

1 Eleven in the morning.

2 Used for writing on wax tablets. The Romans also wrote on
parchment with pens of sharpened reed split at the point. For ink they
used the black liquid emitted by the cuttle fish.

8 The part worn over the shoulder or tucked up slack above the
waist

JULIUS CAESAR 47

said in Greek, "You too, my child?" All the conspirators made
off, and he lay there lifeless for some time, until finally three
common slaves put him on a litter and carried him home, with
one arm hanging down. And of so many wounds none, in the
opinion of the physician Antistius, would have proved mortal
except the second one in the breast.

The conspirators had intended after slaying him to drag
his body to the Tiber, confiscate his property, and revoke his
decrees. But they forebore through fear of Marcus Antonius,
the Consul, and Lepidus, the master of horse.

At the request of his father-in-law, Lucius Piso, his will
was opened and read in Antony's house. He had made it on
the Ides of the preceding September at his villa near Lavicum,
and committed it to the care of the chief Vestal Virgin. Quin-
tus Tubero states that from his first consulship until the be-
ginning of the civil war it was his wont to write down Gnaeus
Pompeius as his heir, and to read this to the assembled
soldiers. In his last will, however, he named three heirs, the
grandsons of his sisters, namely: Gaius Octavius, 1 to three-
fourths of his estate, and Lucius Pinarius and Quintus Pedius
to share the remainder. At the end of the will, too, he adopted
Gaius Octavius into his family and gave him his name. Sev-
eral of his assassins were named among the guardians of his
son, in case one should be born to him, and Decimus Brutus
even among his heirs in the second degree. 2 To the people he
left his gardens near the Tiber for their common use and
three hundred sesterces to each man. 3

When the funeral was announced, a pyre was erected in the
Campus Martius near the tomb of Julia. On the rostra was
placed a gilded shrine, made after the model of the temple
of Venus Genetrix. Within was a bier of ivory with coverlets of
purple and gold, and at its head a pillar hung with the robe in
which he was slain. Since it was clear that the day would not
be long enough for those who offered gifts, they were directed

1 Who became Augustus.

2 To Inherit a share of his estate in the event of the death of the
heirs in the first degree or their refusal to accept the inheritance. It was
often no more than a final courtesy.

* $12.30.

43 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

to bring them to the Campus by whatsoever streets of the
city they wished, regardless of any order of precedence. 1 At
the funeral games, to rouse pity and indignation at his death,
these words from the "Contest for the Arms" of Pacuviua
were sung:

"Saved I these men that they might murder me?"

and words of a like purport from the "Electra" of Atilius.
Instead of a eulogy the Consul Antonius caused a herald to
recite the decree of the Senate in which it had voted Caesar
all divine and human honors at once, and likewise the oath
with which they had all pledged themselves to watch over his
personal safety; to which he added a very few words of his
own. The bier on the rostra was carried to the Forum by
magistrates and ex-magistrates. While some were urging that
it be burned in the temple of Jupiter of the Capitol, and others
in the Hall of Pompey, on a sudden two beings with swords
by their sides and brandishing a pair of darts set fire to it
with blazing torches, and at once the throng of bystanders
heaped upon it dry branches, the judgment sets with the
benches, and whatever else could serve as an offering. Then
the musicians and actors tore off their robes, which they had
taken from the equipment of his triumphs and put on for
the occasion, rent them to bits and threw them into the flames,
and the veterans of the legions the arms with which they had
adorned themselves for the funeral. Many of the women, too,
offered up the jewels which they wore and the amulets and
robes of their children.

At the height of the public grief a throng of foreigners went
about lamenting each after the fashion of his country, above
all the Jews, 2 who even flocked to the place for several suc-
cessive nights.

The populace, with torches in their hands, ran from the

1 The usual order on such occasions was: Magistrates and Senators
without their badges and robes of dignity ; Knights in mourning ; sol-
diers carrying the points of their weapons downwards ; commons, mar-
shaled according to tribe.

2 Caesar was beloved by the Jews, not only because he had over-
thrown Pompey, who had violated their &oly of Holies, but because of
many acts of kindness besides-

JULIUS CAESAR 49

funeral to the houses of Brutus and Cassius and after being
repelled with difficulty, they slew Helvius Cinna when they
met him, through a mistake in the name, supposing that he
was Cornelius Cinna, who had the day before made a bitter
indictment of Caesar and for whom they were looking; and
they set his head upon a spear and paraded it about the
streets. Afterwards they set up in the Forum a solid column
of Numidian marble almost twenty feet high, and inscribed
upon it, "To the Father of his Country." At the foot of this
they continued for a long time to sacrifice, make vows, and
settle some of their disputes by an oath in the name of Caesar.

Caesar left in the minds of some of his friends the suspicion
that he did not wish to live any longer and had taken no
precautions, because of his failing health; and that therefore
he neglected the warnings which came to him from portents
and from the reports of his friends. Some think that it was
because he had full trust in that last decree of the Senators
and their oath that he dismissed even the armed bodyguard
of Spanish soldiers that formerly attended him. Others, on
the contrary, believe that he elected to expose himself once
for all to the plots that threatened him on every hand, rather
than to be always anxious and on his guard. Some, too, say
that he was wont to declare that it was not so much to his
own interest as to that of his country that he remain alive.
He had long since had his fill of power and glory. But if aught
befell him, the commonwealth would have no peace, and, in-
volved in another civil war, would be in a worse state than
before.

About one thing almost all are fully agreed, that his death
was in many respects such as he would have chosen. For once
when he read in Xenophon how Cyrus in his last illness gave
directions for his funeral, he expressed his horror of such a
lingering kind of end and his wish for one which was swift
and sudden. And the day before his murder, in a conversation
which arose at a dinner at the house of Marcus Lepidus, as to
what manner of death was most to be desired, he had given
his preference to one which was sudden and unexpected.

He died in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and was num-
bered among the Gods, not only by a formal decree, but also
in the conviction of the vulgar. For at the first of the games

50 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

which his heir Augustus gave in honor of his apotheosis, a
comet shone for seven successive days, rising about the
eleventh hour, 1 and was believed to be the soul of Caesar, who
had been taken to heaven. This is why a star is set upon the
crown of his head in his statue.

It was voted that the hall in which he was slain be walled
up, that the Ides of March be called the Day of Parricide,
and that a meeting of the Senate should never be called on
that day.

Hardly any of his assassins survived him for more than
three years, or died a natural death. They were all condemned,
and they perished in various ways some by shipwreck, some
in battle; and some took their own lives with the self-same
dagger with which they had impiously slain Caesar.

1 About an hour before sunset

BOOK II

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS

THE DEIFIED AUGUSTUS

THERE are many indications that the Octavian family was
from early days a distinguished one at Velitrae. 1 For in the
most frequented part of the town there was not only a street
long called Octavian, but an altar consecrated by an Octavius
was also to be seen there. This man, leader in a war with a
neighboring people, happening once to be sacrificing to Mars
when a messenger brought news of an unexpected attack,
snatched the entrails of the victim off the fire, offered them
up half raw, marched off to battle, and returned victorious.
There was, besides, a decree of the people on record, provid-
ing that for all future time the entrails should be offered to
Mars in the same manner, and the rest of the victim be
handed over to the OctaviL

This family was admitted to the Senate by King Tarquinius
Priscus among the lesser clans; 2 was later enrolled by Servius
Tullius among the patricians; in course of time returned to
the ranks of the plebeians; and after a long interval was re-*
stored to patrician rank by the Deified Julius. The first of the
house to be elected by the people to a magistracy was Gaius
Rufus, who became Quaestor. He begot Gnaeus and Gaius,
from whom the two branches of the Octavian family were
descended, which have had very different fortunes. For
Gnaeus and all his scions in turn held the highest offices, but
Gaius and his progeny, whether from chance or choice, re-
mained in the equestrian order down to the father of Augustus.

Augustus's great-grandfather served in Sicily in the second
Punic war 8 as Tribune of the Soldiers under the command of
Aemilius Papus. His grandfather, content with the offices of

1 An ancient Volscian town, now Velctri on the road to Naples.

2 A term applied to the plebeian families in the Senate enrolled in
addition to the patricians.

* Against Hannibal and the Carthaginians.

S3

54 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

a municipal town and possessing an abundant income, lived to
a peaceful old age. This is the account given by others.
Augustus himself merely writes l that he came of an old and
wealthy equestrian family, in which his own father was the
first to become a Senator. Marcus Antonius taunts him with
his great-grandfather, saying that he was a freedman and a
rope-maker from the country about Thurii, while his grand-
father was a money-changer. This is all that I have been
able to learn about the paternal ancestors of Augustus.

His father, Gaius Octavius, was from the beginning of his
life a man of wealth and repute, and I cannot but wonder
that some have said that he too was a money-changer, and
was even employed to distribute bribes at the elections and
perform other services in the Campus. For, as a matter of fact,
having been brought up in affluence, he readily attained to
high positions and filled them with distinction. Macedonia fell
to his lot at the end of his praetorship. On his way to the
province, executing a special commission from the Senate,
he wiped out a band of runaway slaves, refugees from the
armies of Spa^tacus and Catiline, who held possession of the
country about Thurii. In governing his province he showed
equal justice and courage. Besides routing the Bessi and the
other Thracians in a great battle, his treatment of our allies
was such, that Marcus Cicero, in letters which are still in
existence, urges and admonishes his brother Quintus, who at
the time was serving as Proconsular Governor 2 of Asia with
no great credit to himself, to imitate his neighbor Octavius
in winning the favor of our allies.

While returning from Macedonia, before he could declare
himself a candidate for the consulship, he died suddenly, sur-
vived by three children, an elder Octavia by Ancharia, and
by Atia a younger Octavia and Augustus. Atia was the daugh-
ter of Marcus Atius Balbus and Julia, sister of Gaius Caesar.
Balbus, a native of Aricia on his father's side, and of a family
displaying many senatorial portraits, 8 was closely connected

1 In his Memoirs.

2 Quintus Cicero was really Propraetor, i.e. he had been Praetor and
not Consul before he had been sent out as Governor of Asia.

These were waxen masks of ancestors of senatorial rank, kept in
the hall of the homes of their descendants.

OCTAVIITS AUGUSTUS S r

on his mother's side with Pompey the Great. After holding
the office of Praetor, he was one of the commission of twenty
appointed by the Julian law to distribute lands in Campania
to the Commons. But Antonius * again, trying to disparage
the maternal ancestors of Augustus as well, twits him with
having a great-grandfather of African birth, who kept first a
perfumery shop and then a bakery at Aricia. Cassius of Parma
also taunts Augustus with being the grandson both of a baker
and of a money-changer, saying in one of his letters: "Your
mother's meal came from a vulgar bakeshop of Aricia; this
a money-changer from Nerulum kneaded into shape with
hands stained with filthy -lucre."

Augustus was born just before sunrise on the ninth day
before the Kalends of October in the consulship of Marcus
Tullius Cicero and Gaius Antonius, at the Ox-Heads in the
Palatine quarter, where he now has a shrine, built shortly after
his death. For it is recorded in the proceedings of the Senate,
that when Gaius Laetorius, a young man of patrician family,
was pleading for a milder punishment for adultery because
of his youth and position, he further urged upon the Senators
that he was the possessor and as it were the warden of the
spot which the Deified Augustus first touched at his birth,
and begged that he be pardoned for the sake of what might
be called his own special God. Whereupon it was decreed that
that part of his house should be consecrated.

A small room like a pantry is shown to this day as the
Emperor's nursery in his grandfather's country-house near
Velitrae, and the opinion prevails in the neighborhood that
he was also born there. No one ventures to enter this room
except of necessity and after purification, since there is a
conviction of long standing that those who approach it with-
out ceremony are seized with shuddering and terror; and
what is more, this has recently been shown to be true. For
when a new owner, either by chance or to test the matter, went
to bed in that room, it came to pass that, after a very few
hours of the night, he was thrown out by a sudden mysterious
force, and was found bedclothes and all half-dead before the
door.

1 Mark Antony.

56 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

In his infancy he was given the surname Thurinus in mem-
ory of the home of his ancestors, or else because it was near
Thurii that his father, Octavius, shortly before the birth of
his son, had gained his victory over the runaway slaves. That
he was surnamed Thurinus I may assert on very truthworthy
evidence, since I once owned a little bronze bust, representing
him as a boy and inscribed with that name in letters of iron
almost illegible from age. This I presented to the Emperor, 1
who cherishes it among the Lares of his bedchamber. Further-
more, he is often called Thurinus in Mark Antony's letters
by way of insult. To this Augustus merely replied he was
surprised that his former name was thrown in his face as a
reproach. Later he took the name of Gaius Caesar and then
the surname Augustus, the former by the will of his great-
uncle, the latter on the motion of Munatius Plancus. For
when some expressed the opinion that he ought to be called
Romulus as a second founder of the city, Plancus carried the
proposal that he should rather be named Augustus, on the
ground that this was not merely a new title but a more honor-
able one, inasmuch as sacred places too, and those in which
anything is consecrated by augural rites are called "august"
(august a) , from the increase (auctus) in dignity, or from the
movements or feeding of the birds (avium gestus gustusve).,
as Ennius also shows when he writes:

"After by august augury illustrious Rome was built."

At the age of four he lost his father. In his twelfth year
he delivered a funeral oration to the assembled people in honor
of his grandmother Julia. Four years later, after assuming
the gown of manhood, 2 he received military prizes at Caesar's
African triumph, although he had taken no part in the war
on account of his youth. When his uncle presently went to
Spain to engage the sons of Pompey, although Augustus had
hardly yet recovered his strength after a severe illness, he
followed over roads beset by the enemy with only a very
few companions, and that too after suffering shipwreck, and

1 That is, to Hadrian.

2 The ordinary Roman toga, all white, usually first worn at sixteen
years of age.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 57

thereby greatly endeared himself to Caesar, who soon formed
a high opinion of his character over and above the energy
with v hich he had made the journey.

When Caesar, after recovering the Spanish provinces,
planned an expedition against the Dacians and then against
the Parthians, Augustus, who had been sent on in advance
to Apollonia, devoted his leisure to study. As soon as he
learned that his uncle had been slain and that he was his
heir, he was in doubt for some time whether to appeal to the
nearest legions, but gave up the idea as hasty and premature.
He did, however, return to the city and enter upon his in-
heritance, in spite of the doubts of his mother and the strong
opposition of his stepfather, the ex-Consul Marcius Philippus.
Then he levied armies and henceforth ruled the State, at
first with Marcus Antonius and Marcus Lepidus, then with
Antony alone for nearly twelve years, and finally by himself
for forty-four.

Having given as it were a summary of his life, I shall now
take up its various phases one by one, not in chronological
order, but by classes, to make the account clearer and more
intelligible.

The civil wars which he waged were five, called by the
names of Mutina, Philippi, Perusia, Sicily, and Actium. The
first and last of these were against Marcus Antonius, the sec-
ond against Brutus and Cassius, the third against Lucius
Antonius, brother of the Triumvir, and the fourth against
Sextus Pompeius, son of Gnaeus.

The initial reason for all these wars was this: he considered
nothing more incumbent on him than to avenge his uncle's
death and maintain the validity of his enactments. He re-
solved, therefore, immediately on his return from Apollonia
to surprise Brutus and Cassius by taking up arms against
them. When they foresaw the danger and fled, he resolved to
proceed against them by an appeal to the laws in their absence
and impeach them for the murder. In the meantime, since
those who had been appointed to celebrate Caesar's last vic-
tory by games did not dare to do so, he gave them himself.
To be able to carry out his other plans with more authority,
he announced himself candidate for the office of one of the
Tribunes of the people, who happened to die at that time,

58 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

though he was a patrician, and not yet a Senator. 1 But when
his designs were opposed by Marcus Antonius, who was then
Consul, and on whose help he had especially counted, and
Antony would not allow him even common and ordinary jus-
tice without the promise of a heavy bribe, he went over to
the aristocrats, who he knew detested Antony, especially be-
cause he was besieging Decimus Brutus at Mutina, and trying
to drive him by force of arms from the province given him
by Caesar and ratified by the Senate. Accordingly at the
advice of certain men he hired assassins to kill Antony, and
when the plot was discovered, fearing retaliation he mustered
veterans, by the use of all the money he could command, both
for his own protection and that of the State. Put in command
of the army which he had raised, with the rank of Propraetor,
and bidden to join with Hirtius and Pansa, who had become
Consuls, in lending aid to Decimus Brutus, he finished the
war which had been entrusted to him within three months in
two battles. In the former of these, so Antony writes, he took
flight and was not seen again until the next day, when he re-
turned without his cloak and his horse. But in that which
followed all agree he played the part not only of a leader,
but of a soldier as well, and that, in the thick of the fight,
when the eagle-bearer of his legion was severely wounded, he
shouldered the eagle and carried it for some time.

As Hirtius lost his life in battle during this war, and Pansa
shortly afterwards from a wound, the rumor spread that he
had caused the death of both, in order that after Antony had
been put to flight and the state bereft of its Consuls, he might
gain sole control of the victorious armies. The circumstances
of Pansa's death in particular were so suspicious, that the
physician Glyco was imprisoned on the charge of having ap-
plied poison to his wound. Aquilius Niger adds to this that
Augustus himself slew the other Consul Hirtius amid the
confusion of the battle.

But when he learned that Antony after his flight had found
a protector in Marcus Lepidus, and that the rest of the
leaders and armies were coming to terms with them, he aban-
doned the cause of the nobles without hesitation, alleging as

1 Since the time of Sulla only Senators had been eligible for the
position of Tribune.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 59

a pretext for his change of allegiance the words and acts
of certain of their number, asserting that some had called him
a boy, while others had openly said that he ought to be hon-
ored and got rid of, to escape the necessity of making suitable
recompense to him or to his veterans. To show more plainly
that he regretted his connection with the former party, he
imposed a heavy fine on the people of Nursia and banished
them from their city when they were unable to pay it, because
they had at public expense erected a monument to their
citizens who were slain in the battles at Mutina and inscribed
upon it: "They fell for liberty."

Then, forming a league with Antony and Lepidus, he fin-
ished the war of Philippi also in two battles, although, weak-
ened by illness, he was in the first battle driven from his
camp and barely made his escape by fleeing to Antony's
division. He did not use his victory with moderation, but
after sending Brutus's head to Rome, 1 to be cast at the feet
of Caesar's statue, he vented his spleen upon the most dis-
tinguished of his captives, not even sparing them insulting
language. For instance, to one man who begged humbly for
burial, he is said to have replied: "The birds will soon settle
that question." When two others, father and son, begged for
their lives, he is said to have bidden them cast lots or play
mora, 2 to decide which should be spared, and then to have
looked on while both died, since the father was executed be-
cause he offered to die for his son, and the latter thereupon
took his own life. Because of this the rest, including Marcus
Favonius, the well-known imitator of Cato, saluted Antony
respectfully as Imperator, 8 when they were led out in chains,
but lashed Augustus to his face with the foulest abuse.

When the duties of administration were divided after the
victory, Antony undertaking to restore order in the East, and
Augustus to lead the veterans back to Italy and assign them

1 Defeated in the second engagement, Brutus retired to a hill, and
slew himself in the night.

2 A game still common in Italy, in which the players suddenly thrust
out their fingers, the winner being the one who names correctly the
number of fingers held out by his opponent.

8 That is, victorious general, implying that he and not Octavius was
their conqueror.

6o THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

lands in the municipalities, he could neither satisfy the vet-
erans nor the landowners, 1 since the latter complained that
they were driven from their homes, and the former that they
were not being treated as their services had led them to hope.

When Lucius Antonius at this juncture attempted a revo-
lution, relying on his position as Consul and his brother's
power, he forced him to take refuge in Perusia, and starved
him into surrender, not, however, without great personal
danger both before and during the war. For at an exhibition
of games, when he had given orders that a common soldier
who was sitting within the fourteen reserved rows be put out
by an attendant, a report was spread by his detractors that
he had afterwards tortured the man and put him to death,
and the soldiers flocked together so enraged that he narrowly
escaped with his life. The only thing that saved him was the
sudden reappearance of the man, safe and sound, no violence
having been offered him. Again, when he was sacrificing near
the walls of Perusia, he was well nigh cut off by a band of
gladiators, who had made a sally from the town.

After the capture of Perusia he took vengeance on many,
meeting all attempts to beg for pardon or to make excuses
with the one reply, "You must die." Some write that three
hundred men of both orders were selected from the prisoners
of war and sacrifices 2 on the Ides of March like so many
victims at the altar raised to the Deified Julius. Some have
written that he took up arms of a set purpose, to unmask his
secret opponents and those whom fear rather than good-will
kept faithful to him, by giving them the chance to follow the
lead of Lucius Antonius; and then by vanquishing them and
confiscating their estates to pay the rewards promised to his
veterans.

The Sicilian war was among the first that he began, but it
was long drawn out by many interruptions, now for the pur-
pose of rebuilding his fleets, which he twice lost by shipwreck
and storms, and that, too, in the summer; and again by patch*
ing up a peace to which he was forced by the clamors of the
people when supplies were cut off and there was a severe

1 Vergil was one of the landowners ejected from his farm. He nar-
rowly escaped being killed by the Centurion Ario.

2 Brained with an axe and not beheaded.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS x

famine. Finally, after new ships had been built and twenty
thousand slaves set free and trained as oarsmen, 1 he made the
Julian harbor at Baiae by letting the sea into the Lucrine lake
and lake Avernus. After drilling his forces there all winter, he
defeated Pompey between Mylae and Naulochus, though just
before the battle he was suddenly overcome by so deep a sleep
that his friends had to awaken him to give the signal. And it
was this, I think, that gave Antony opportunity for the taunt:
"He could not even look with steady eyes at the fleet when it
was ready for battle, but lay in a stupor on his back, looking
up at the sky, and did not rise or appear before the soldiers
until the enemy's ships had been put to flight by Marcus
Agrippa." Some censured another act and saying of his, de-
claring that when his fleets were lost in the storm, he cried
out, "I will have the victory spite of Neptune," ahd that on
the next day on which there were games in the Circus, he
removed the statue of that god from the sacred procession.
And it is safe to say that in none of his wars did he encounter
more dangers or greater ones. For when he had transported
an army to Sicily and was on his way back to the rest of his
forces on the mainland, he was surprised by Pompey's ad-
mirals Demochares and Apollophanes and barely escaped with
but a single ship. Again, as he was going on foot to Regium
by way of Locri, he saw some of Pompey's galleys coasting
along the shore, and taking them for his own ships and going
down to the beach, narrowly escaped capture. At that same
time, too, as he was making his escape by narrow bypaths, a
slave of his companion Aemilius Paulus, nursing a grudge
because Augustus had outlawed his master's father some time
before, and thinking that he had an opportunity for revenge,
attempted to slay him.

After the flight of Pompey, Marcus Lepidus, his other col-
league, whom he had summoned from Africa to help him, was
puffed up by confidence in his twenty legions and claimed the
first place with terrible threats. But Augustus stripped him
of his army, and though he granted him his life when he sued
for it, he banished him for all time to Circei.

1 The Romans employed slaves in their wars only in cases of great
emergency, and with much reluctance. Augustus was the first who
manumitted them and used them as rowers in his galleys.

6i THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

At last he broke off his alliance with Marcus Antonius,
which was always doubtful and uncertain, and with difficulty
kept alive by various reconcilations. The better to show that
his rival had fallen away from conduct becoming a citizen,
he had the will which Antony had left in Rome, naming his
children by Cleopatra among his heirs, opened and read before
the people. But when Antony was declared a public enemy,
he sent back to him all his kinsfolk and friends, among others
Gaius Sosius and Titus Domitius, who were still Consuls at
the time. He also excused the community of Bononia from
joining in the rally of all Italy to his standards, since they had
been from ancient days dependents of the Antonii. Not long
afterwards he won the s^a-fight at Actium, where the contest
continued to so late an hour that the victor passed the night
on board. 'From Actium he went to the Island of Samos to
winter. But being alarmed by news of a mutiny of the troops
that he had selected from every division of his army and sent
on to Brundisium l after the victory, who demanded their
rewards and discharge, he returned to Italy. On this pp jsage
he twice encountered storms at sea, first between the head-
lands of the Peloponnesus and Aetolia, and again off the
Ceraunian mountains. In both places a part of his galleys
were sunk, while the rigging of the ship in which he was sail-
ing was carried away and its rudder broken. He delayed at
Brundisium only twenty-seven days just long enough to
satisfy all the demands of the soldiers and then went to
Egypt by a roundabout way through Asia and Syria, laid siege
to Alexandria, where Antony had taken refuge with Cleopatra,
and soon took the city. Although Antony tried to make terms
at the eleventh hour, Augustus forced him to commit suicide,
and viewed his corpse. 2 He greatly desired to save Cleopatra
alive for his triumph, and even had Psylli 8 brought to her,
to snc'c the poison from her wound, since it was thought that

1 The usual port of embarkation for the East, now Brindisi. Vergil
died there.

2 We have no other authority that Octavius viewed Antony's corpse.
Plutarch says that when he heard of Antony's death he sought the
interior of his tent and wept over the fate of his colleague and friend.

8 These people were supposed to have especial skill in saving those
bitten by snakes.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 63

she died from the bite of an asp. He allowed them both the
honor of burial, and in the same tomb, giving orders that the
mausoleum which they had begun should be finished. The
young Antony, the elder of Fulvia's two sons, he dragged
from the image of the Deified Julius, to which he had fled after
many vain entreaties, and slew him. Caesarion, too, whom
Cleopatra fathered on Caesar, he overtook in his flight, brought
back, and put to death. But he spared the rest of the off-
spring of Antony and Cleopatra, and afterwards maintained
and reared them according to their several positions, as care-
fully as if they were his own kin.

About this time he had the sarcophagus and body of Alex-
ander the Great brought forth from its shrine, and after gazing
on it, showed his respect by placing upon it a golden crown
and strewing it with flowers. When he was then asked if he
wished to see the tomb of the Ptolemies as well, he replied,
"My wish was to see a King, not corpses."

He reduced Egypt to the form of a province, and then to
make it more fruitful and better adapted to supply the city
tfith grain, he set his soldiers at work cleaning out all the
canals into which the Nils overflows, which in the course of
many years had become choked with mud. To extend tbe fame
of his victory at Actium and perpetuate its memory, he
founded a city called Nicopolis near Actium, and provided
for the celebration of games there every five years; enlarged
the ancient temple of Apollo; and after adorning the site
of the camp which he had occupied with naval trophies, 4 -
consecrated it to Neptune and Mars.

After this he nipped in the bud at various times several
outbreaks, insurrections, and conspiracies, which were be-
trayed before they became formidable. The ringleaders were,
first the young Lepidus, then Varro Murena and Fannius
Caepio, later Marcus Egnatius, next Plautius Rufus and
Lucius Paulus, husband of the Emperor 's granddaughter, and
besides these Lucius Audasius, who had been charged with
forgery, and was moreover old and feeble; also Asinius Epi-
cadus, a half-breed of Parthian descent, and finally Telephus,

Formed of the prows of ships.

64 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

slave and page l of a woman, for even men of the lowest con-
dition conspired against him and imperiled his safety. Auda-
sius and Epicadus had formed the design of forcibly carrying
off to the armies his daughter Julia, and his grandson Agrippa,
from the islands where they were confined. Telephus, under
the delusion that he himself was destined for empire, proposed
to fall upon both Octavius and the Senate. Even a soldier's
servant from the army in Illyricum, who had escaped the vigi-
lance of the door-keepers, was caught at night near the Em-
peror's bedroom, armed with a hunting knife. But whether
this fellow was crazy or only feigned madness is uncertain,
since nothing could be wrung from him by torture.

He conducted in person only two foreign wars: the Dal-
matian, when he was but a youth; and after Antony's final
defeat, the Cantabrian. He was wounded, too, in the former
campaign, being struck on the right knee with a stone in one
battle, and in another having a leg and both arms severely in-
jured by the collapse of a bridge. His other wars he carried
on through his generals, although he was either present at
some of those in Pannonia and Germany, or was not far from
the front, since he went from Rome as far as Ravenna, Medio-
lanum, or Aquileia.

In part as leader, and in part with armies serving under his
auspices, he subdued Cantabria, Aquitania, Pannonia, Dal-
matia, and all Illyricum, as well as Raetia and the Vindelici
and Salassi, which are Alpine tribes. He also put a stop to
the inroads of the Dacians, slaying great numbers of them,
together with three of their leaders, and forced the Germans
back to the farther side of the river Albis, with the exception
of the Suebi and Sigambri, who submitted to him and were
taken into Gaul and settled in lands near the Rhine. He re-
duced to submission other peoples, too, that were in a state
of unrest.

But he never made war on any nation without just and due
cause, and he was so far from desiring to increase his do-
minion or his military glory at any cost, that he forced the
chiefs of certain barbarians to take oath in the temple of

1 Nomenculator: a name-prompter, used most often by candidates
electioneering, when it was of course most necessary to address by his
right name one whose vote was being solicited.

OCTAVIdS AUGUSTUS 65

Mars the Avenger that they would faithfully keep the peace
for which they asked. Of some he demanded a new kind of
hostages, their women, having found from experience that
they cared little for pledges secured by males. But he always
afforded them the privilege of reclaiming their hostages when-
ever they wished. On those who rebelled often or under cir-
cumstances of especial treachery he never inflicted any severer
punishment than that of selling the prisoners, with the con-
dition that they should not pass their term of slavery in a
country near their own, nor be set free within thirty years.
The reputation for virtue and moderation which he thus
gained led even the Indians and the Scythians, nations known
to us only by hearsay, to send envoys of their own free will
and sue for his friendship and that of the Roman people.
The Parthians, too, readily yielded to him, when he laid claim
to Armenia, and at his demand surrendered the standards
which they had taken from Marcus Crassus and Marcus
Antonius. They offered him hostages besides, and once when
there were several claimants of their throne, they would accept
only the one whom he selected.

The temple of Janus Quirinus, which had been closed but
twice before his time since the founding of the city, 1 he closed
three times in a far shorter period, having won peace on land
and sea. He twice entered the city in an ovation, after the
war of Philippi, and again after that in Sicily, and he cele-
brated three regular triumphs 2 for his victories in Dalmatia,
at Actium, and at Alexandria, all on three successive days.

He suffered but two severe and ignominious defeats, those
of Lollius and Varus, both of which were in Germany. Of
these the former was more humiliating than serious, but the
latter was almost fatal, since three legions were cut to pieces
with their general, his lieutenants, and all the auxiliaries.
When the news of this came, he ordered that watch be kept
by night throughout the city, to prevent any outbreak, and

1 In the reign of Numa, and in 235 B.C., after the first Punic war. It
was Numa, successor of Romulus, founder of Rome, who was said to
have ordained the temple be open when Rome was at war, closed when
at peace.

2 The ovation was a lesser triumph, in which the general entered the
city on foot or horseback* instead of a chariot. He received the myrtle
crown in an ovation, in a triumph the laurel.

6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

he prolonged the terms of the Governors of the provinces,
that the allies might be held to their allegiance by experienced
men with whom they were acquaintd. He also made a vow to
celebrate great games in honor of Jupiter Optimus Maximus,
a thing which had been done in the Cimbric and Marsic wars,
if the condition of the commonwealth were restored to greater
prosperity. In fact, they say that he was so greatly affected
that for several months in succession he cut neither his beard
nor his hair, and sometimes he would dash his head against a
door, 1 crying: "Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!"
And he observed the day of the disaster each year as one of
sorrow and mourning.

He made many changes and innovations in the army, be-
sides reviving some usages of former times. He exacted the
strictest discipline. It was with great reluctance that he a -
lowed even his generals to visit their wives, and then only in
the winter season. He sold a Roman knight and his property
at public auction, because he had cut off the thumbs of his
two young sons to make them unfit for military service; but
when he saw that some tax-gatherers were intent upon buying
him, he knocked him down to a freeman of his own, with the
understanding that he should be banished to the country
districts, but allowed to live in freedom. He dismissed the en-
tire tenth legion in disgrace, because they were insubordinate,
and others, too, that demanded their discharge in an insolent
fashion, he disbanded without the rewards which would have
been due for faithful service. If any cohorts gave way in bat-
tle, he decimated them, 2 and fed the rest on barley. When
Centurions left their posts, he punished them with death, just
as he did the rank and file ; for faults of other kinds he im-
posed various ignominious penalties, such as ordering them
to stand all day long before the general's tent, sometimes in
their tunics without their sword-belts, or again holding ten-
foot poles or even a clod of earth. 8

1 In the belief that by doing injury to one's own body the Gods
would be sooner pacified.

2 That is, executed every tenth man, selected by lot.

8 Carrying the pole to measure off the camp, or clods for building
the rampart, was the work of common soldiers, hence degrading for
officers.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 67

After the civil wars he never called any of the troops "com-
rades," either in the assembly or in an edict, but always
"soldiers"; and he would not allow them to be addressed
otherwise, even by those of his sons or stepsons who held
military commands, thinking the former term too flattering
for the requirements of discipline, the peaceful state of the
times, and his own dignity and that of his household. Except
as a fire-brigade at Rome, and when there was fear of riots
in times of scarcity, he employed freedmen as soldiers only
twice: once as a guard for the colonies in the vicinity of
Illyricum, and again to defend the bank of the river Rhine.
These he conscripted from men and women of wealth, and
at once gave them their freedom. But he kept them under a
standard of their own, not mingling them with the soldiers of
free birth or arming them in the same fashion.

As military prizes he was somewhat more ready to give
trappings or collars, valuable for their gold and silver, than
crowns for scaling ramparts or walls, which conferred high
honor. The latter he gave as sparingly as possible and with-
out favoritism, often even to the common soldiers. He pre-
sented Marcus Agrippa with a blue banner in Sicily after his
naval victory. Those who had celebrated triumphs were the
only ones whom he thought ineligible for prizes, even though
they had been the companions of his campaigns and shared
in his victories, on the ground that they themselves had the
privilege of bestowing such honors wherever they wished. He
thought nothing less becoming in a well-trained leader than
haste and rashness, and, accordingly, favorite sayings of his
were: "More haste, less speed"; "Better a safe commander
than a bold 7 ' 1 ; and "That is done quickly enough which is
done well enough." He used to say that a war or a battle
should not be begun under any circumstances unless the hope
of gain was clearly greater than the fear of loss; for he likened
such as grasped at slight gains with no slight risk to those who
fished with a golden hook, the loss of which, if it were car^
ried off, could not be made good by any catch.

He received offices and honors before the usual age, and
some of a new kind and for life. He usurped the consulship in

1 From Euripides' Phoenicians.

*8 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

the twentieth year of his age/ leading his legions against the
city as if it were that of an enemy, and sending messengers
to demand the office for him in the name of his army. When
the Senate hesitated, his Centurion, Cornelius, leader of the
deputation, throwing back his cloak and showing the hilt of
his sword, did not hesitate to say in the House, "This will
make him Consul, if you do not." He held his second consul-
ship nine years later, a third after a year's interval, and the
rest up to the eleventh were in successive years. Then after
declining a number of terms that were offered him, he asked
of his own accord for a twelfth after a long interval, no less
than seventeen years, and two years later for a thirteenth,
wishing to hold the highest magistracy at the time when he
introduced each of his sons, Gaius and Lucius, to public life
upon their coming of age. The five consulships from the sixth
to the tenth he held for the full year, the rest for nine, six,
four, or three months, except the second, which lasted only a
few hours; for after sitting for a short time on the curule 2
chair in front of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus in the early
morning, he resigned the honor on the Kalends of January
and appointed another in his place. He did not begin all his
consulships in Rome, but the fourth in Asia, the fifth on the
Isle of Samos, the eighth and ninth at Tarraco.

He was for ten years a member of the Triumvirate 8 for
restoring the State to order, and though he opposed his col-
leagues for some time and tried to prevent a proscription, yet
when it was begun, he carried it through with greater severity
than either of them. For while they could oftentimes be moved
by personal influence and entreaties, he alone was most in-
sistent that no one should be spared, even adding to the list
his guardian, Gaius Toranius, who had also been the colleague
of his father, Octavius, in the aedileship. Julius Saturninus
adds that after the proscription was over Marcus Lepidus
made an apology in the Senate for their past proceedings, and
gave them hopes of a more mild administration for the

1 The law called Annalis required Consuls to be at least 43.

2 Used by a principal magistrate. Constructed of wood, inlaid with
ivory, the seat of leather. It could be folded for convenience in carrying)
and had no back.

8 The other two being Antony and Lepidus.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 69

future, since enough punishment had been inflicted; but that
Augustus on the contrary declared that he had consented to
end the proscription only on condition that he was allowed a
free hand for the future. However, to show his regret for this
inflexibility, he later honored Titus Vinius Philopoemen with
equestrian rank, because it was said that he had hidden his
patron, who was on the proscription list.

While he was Triumvir, Augustus incurred general detesta-
tion by many of his acts. For example, when he was addressing
the soldiers and a throng of civilians had been admitted to the
assembly, noticing that Pinarius, a Roman Knight, was tak-
ing notes, he ordered that he be stabbed on the spot, thinking
him an eavesdropper and a spy. Because Tedius Afer, Consul-
elect, railed at some act ot his in spiteful terms, he uttered
such terrible threats that Afer committed suicide. Again, when
Quintus Galhus, a Praetor, held some folded tablets under
his robe as he was paying his respects, Augustus, suspecting
that he had a sword concealed there, did not dare to make a
search on the spot for fear it should turn out to be something
else; but a little later he had Gallius hustled from the tribunal
by some Centurions, tortured him as if he were a slave, and
though he made no confession, ordered his execution, first
tearing out the man's eyes with his own hand, lie himself
writes, however, that Gallius made a treacherous attack on
him after asking for an audience, and was haled to prison;
and that after he was dismissed under sentence of banishment,
he either lost his life by shipwreck or was waylaid by brigands.

He received the tribunician power for life, and once or twice
chose a colleague in the office for periods of five years each.
He was also given the supervision of morals and of the laws
for all time, and by the virtue of this position, although with-
out the title of Censor, he nevertheless took the census thrice,
the first and last time with a colleague, the second time alone.

He twice thought of restoring the republic; first immedi-
ately after the overthrow of Antony, remembering that his
rival had often made the charge that it was his fault that it
was not restored; and again in the weariness of a lingering
illness, when he went so far as to summon the magistrates
and the Senate to his house, and submit an account of the gen-
eral condition of the empire. Reflecting, however, that as be

70 THE LIVES O F Til E TWELVE CAESARS

himself would not be free from danger if he should retire, so
too it would be hazardous to trust the State to the control of
the populace, he continued to keep it in his hands; and it is
not easy to say whether his intentions or their results were the
better. His good intentions he not only expressed from time
to time, but put them on record as well in an edict in the fol-
lowirg words: "May it be my privilege to establish the State
in a firm and secure position, and enjoy therefrom the rewards
of which I am ambitious, that of being called the author of
the best possible government, and of carrying with me when
I die the hope that the foundations which I have laid for the
State will remain unshaken." And he realized his hope by
making every effort to prevent any dissatisfaction with the
new regime.

The city, which was not built in a manner suitable to the
grandeur of the Empire, and was liable to inundations as well
as to fires, was so improved and beautified under his adminis-
tration that he boasted, not without reason, that he had found
it built of brick and left it in marble. He made it secure for
the future against such disasters as far as human foresight
could effect this.

He built many public works, in particular the following:
his Forum with the temple of Mars the Avenger, the temple
of Apollo on the Palatine, and the fane of Jupiter the Thun-
derer on the Capitol. His reason for building the Forum was
the increase in the number of the people and of cases at law,
which seemed to call for a third Forum, since two were no
longer adequate. Therefore it was opened to the public with
some haste, before the temple of Mars was finished, and it
was provided that the public prosecutions be held there apart
from the rest, as well as the selection of jurors by lot. He
had made a vow to build the temple of Mars in the war of
Philippi, which he undertook to avenge his father. Accord-
ingly he decreed that in it the Senate should consider wars
and claims for triumphs, from it those who were on their
way to the provinces with military commands should be
escorted, and to it victors on their return should bear the
tokens of their triumphs. He reared the temple of Apollo in
that part of his house on the Palatine for which the sooth-
sayers declared that the God had shown his desire by striking

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 71

it with lightning. He joined to it colonnades with Latin and
Greek libraries, and when he was getting to be an old man
he often held meetings of the Senate there as well, and revised
the lists of jurors. He dedicated the shrine to Jupiter the
Thunderer because of a narrow escape. For, on his Cantabrian
expedition during a march by night, a flash of lightning
grazed his litter and struck the slave dead who was carrying
a torch before him. He constructed some works, too, in the
name of others, his grandsons to wit, his wife and his sister,
such as the colonnade and basilica of Gaius and Lucius; also
the colonnades of Livia and Octavia, and the theater of Mar-
cellus. More than that, 'he often urged other prominent men
to adorn the city with new monuments or to restore and em-
bellish old ones, each according to his means. And many such
works were built at that time by many men; for example, the
temple of Hercules of the Muses by Marcius Philippus, the
temple of Diana by Lucius Cornificius, the Hall of Liberty
by Asinius Pollio, the temple of Saturn by Munatius Plancus>
a theater by Cornelius Balbus, an amphitheater by Statilius
Taurus, and by Marcus Agrippa in particular many magnifi-
cent structures.

He divided the area of the city into regions and wards,
arranging that the former should be under the charge of
magistrates selected each year by lot, and the latter under
wardens elected by the inhabitants of the respective neighbor-
hoods. To guard against fires he devised a system of stations
of night watchmen, and to control the floods, he widened
and cleared out the channel of the Tiber, which had for some
time been filled with rubbish and narrowed by jutting build-
ings. Further, to make the approach to the city easier from
every direction, he personally undertook to rebuild the
Flanrnian Road all the way to Ariminum, and assigned the
rest of the highways to others who had been honored with
triumphs, asking them to use their prize-money in paving
them.

He restored sacred edifices which had gone to ruin through
lapse of time or had been destroyed by fire, and adorned both
these and the other temples with most lavish gifts, depositing
in the shrine of Jupiter Capitolinus as a single offering sixteen

ft THE LIVES OF THB TWELVE CAESARS

thousand pounds of gold, besides pearls and other precious
stones to the value of fifty million sesterces. 1

The office of High Priest, of which he could not decently
deprive Lepidus as long as he lived, he assumed as soon as he
was dead. 2 He then collected whatever prophetic writings of
Greek or Latin origin were in circulation anonymously or
tinder the names of authors of little repute, and burned more
than two thousand of them, preserving only the Sibylline
books, and even among those he made a choice. These he
deposited in two gilded cases under the pedestal of the Pala-
tine Apollo. Inasmuch as the calendar, which had been set
in order by the Deified Julius, had later been confused and
disordered through negligence, he restored it to its former
system. In making this arrangement he called the month
Sextilis by his own surname, rather than his birth-month
September, because in the former he had won his first consul-
ship and his most brilliant victories. He increased the number
and importance of the priests, and also their allowances and
privileges, in particular those of the Vestal Virgins. Moreover,
when there was occasion to choose another Vestal in place
of one who had died, and many used all their influence to
avoid submitting their daughters to the hazard of the lot,
he solemnly swore that if any one of his granddaughters were
of eligible age, he would have proposed her name. He also
revived some of the ancient rites which had gradually fallen
into disuse, such as the augury of Public Health, 8 the office
of Flamen Dialis, the ceremonies of the Lupercalia, the Secu-
lar Games, and the festival of the Compitalia. At the Luper-
calia he forbade beardless youths to join in the running, and at
the Secular Games he would not allow young people of either
sex to attend any entertainment by night except in company
with some adult relative. He provided that the Guardian Gods

1 $2,050,000.00.

2 This office, Pontijex Maximus, was of importance from the sane*
tity attached to it and the influence which could be wielded from it
over the whole system of religion. In this case it served as a sort of
honorable retirement in which Lepidus had been shelved when Augustus
got rid of him quietly from the Triumviiate.

8 "\s if even that could not be implored from the gods, unless the
Signs were propitious." Dio xxxvii, 24.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 73

of the Crossroads be crowned twice a year, with spring and
summer flowers.

Next to the immortal Gods he honored the memory of the
leaders who had raised the estate of the Roman people from
obscurity to greatness. Accordingly he restored the works of
such men with their original inscriptions, and in the two
colonnades of his Forum dedicated statues of all of them in
triumphal garb, declaring besides in a proclamation: "I have
contrived this to lead the citizens to require me, while I live,
and the rulers of later times as well, to attain the standard set
by those worthies of old." He also moved the statue of Pompey
from the hall in which Gaius Caesar had been slain and placed
it on a marble arch opposite the grand door of Pompey's
theater.

Many pernicious practices militating against public se-
curity had survived as a result of the lawless habits of the
ivil wars, or had even arisen in time of peace. Gangs of foot-
pads openly went about with swords by their sides, ostensibly
to protect themselves, and travelers in the country, freeman
and slaves alike, were seized and kept in confinement in the
slave-prisons 1 of the landowners. Numerous leagues, too,
were formed for the commission of crimes of every kind, as-
suming the title of some new guild. Therefore to put a stop
to brigandage, he stationed guards of soldiers wherever it
seemed advisable, inspected the workhouses, and disbanded
all guilds, except such as were of long standing and formed
for legitimate purposes. He burned the records of old debts
to the treasury, which were by far the most frequent source
of blackmail. He made over to their holders places in the city
to which the claim of the state was uncertain. He struck off
the lists the names of those who had long been under accusa-
tion, from whose humiliation nothing was to be gained except
the gratification of their enemies, with the stipulation that if
any one was minded to renew the charge, he should be liable
to the same penalty. 2 To prevent any action for damages or

1 These were underground strong rooms, in country houses, where
unruly slaves were confined in letters.

* That is, if he failed to win his suit, he should suffer the penalty
that would have been inflicted on the defendant, if he had bee*
convicted.

74 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

a disputed claim from falling through or being put off, he or-
dered the courts to sit during the thirty days which were spent
in celebrating honorary games. To the three divisions of jur-
ors he added a fourth of a lower estate, to be called ducenarii *
and to sit on cases involving trifling amounts. He enrolled as
jurors men of thirty years or more, that is five years younger
than usual. But when many strove to escape court duty, he
reluctantly consented that each division in turn should have
a year's exemption, and that the custom of holding court
during the months of November and December should be
given up. 2

He himself administered justice regularly and sometimes
up to nightfall, having a litter placed upon the tribunal, if he
was indisposed, or even lying down at home. In his adminis-
tration of justice he was both highly conscientious and very
lenient ; for to save a man clearly guilty of parricide from be-
ing sewn up in the sack, 3 a punishment which was inflicted
only on those who pleaded guilty, he is said to have put the
question to him in this form: "You surely did not kill your
father, did you?" Again, in a case touching a forged will, in
which all the signers were liable to punishment by the Corne-
lian Law, he distributed to the jury not merely the two tablets
for condemnation or acquittal, but a third as well, for the
pardon of those who were shown to have been induced to sign
by misrepresentation or misunderstanding. Each year he re-
ferred appeals of cases involving citizens to the city Praetor,
but those between foreigners to ex-Consuls, of whom he had
put one in charge of the business affairs of each province.

He revised existing laws and enacted some new ones, for
example, on extravagance, on adultery and chastity, on brib-
ery, and on the encouragement of marriage among the vari-
ous classes of citizens. Having made somewhat more stringent
changes in the last of these than in the others, he was unable

1 Men whose property amounted to 200,000 sesterces ($8,200.00) ,
half of a Knight's estate.

2 During these months there were a great number of holidays, includ-
ing those of the gay Saturnalia. There was consequently a general re-
laxation and cessation of business in Rome at this time.

8 Parriddf.3 were beaten with rods, sewn up in a leather sack, with
* dog, a cock y a monkey, and a snake, and thrown into the sea or a
kiver.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 75

to carry it out because of an open revolt against its provisions,
until he had abolished or mitigated a part of the penalties, be-
sides increasing the rewards and allowing a three years' ex-
emption from the obligation to marry after the death of a
husband or wife. When the Knights even then persistently
called for its repeal at a public show, he sent for the children
of Germanicus and exhibited them, some in his own lap and
some in their father's, intimating by his gestures and expres-
sion that they should not refuse to follow that young man's
example. And on finding that the spirit of the law was being
evaded by betrothal with immature girls and by frequent
changes of wives, he shortened the duration of betrothals and
set a limit on divorce.

The number of the Senators was swelled by a low-born
and ill-assorted rabble. That body, in fact, now numbered
more than a thousand, some of whom, called by the vulgar
Orcivi, 1 were wholly unworthy, and had been admitted after
Caesar's death 2 through favor or bribery. He therefore re-
stored it to its former limits and distinction by two enrol-
ments, one according to the choice of the members themselves,
each man naming one other, and a second made by Agrippa
and himself. On the latter occasion it is thought that he wore
a coat of mail under his tunic as he presided, and a sword by
his side, while ten of the most robust of his friends among the
Senators stood by his chair. Cremutius Cordus ? - writes that
even then the Senators were not allowed to approach except,
one by one, and after the folds of their robes had been care-
fully searched. Some he shamed into resigning, but he allowed
even these to retain their distinctive dress, as well as the privi-
lege of viewing the games from the orchestra and taking part
in the public banquets of the order. Furthermore, that those
who were chosen and approved might perform their duties
more conscientiously, and also with less inconvenience, he
provided that before taking his seat each member should

1 The Orcivi "men freed by the grace of Orcus" (God of the dead)
were slaves set free in the wills of their masters.

2 By Mark Antony under the pretense they had been so named in
papers left by Caesar.

8 Who lived at the time of Augustus and Tiberius and wrote a History
of the Civil Wars and the times of Augustus, as Dio (VI, 52) informs
us.

tf THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

offer incense and wine at the altar of the god in whose temple
the meeting was held; that regular meetings of the Senate
should be held not oftener than twice a month, on the Kal-
ends * and the Ides; and that in the months of September and
October 2 only those should be obliged to attend who were
drawn by lot, to a number sufficient for the passing of decrees.
He also adopted the plan of privy councils chosen by lot for
terms of six months, with which to discuss in advance mat-
ters which were to come before the entire body. On questions
of special importance he called upon the Senators to give their
opinions, not according to the order established by precedent,
but just as he fancied, to induce each man to keep his mind
on the alert, to induce every one to hold himself ready to give
his opinion rather than a mere vote of assent.

He introduced other innovations too, among them these:
that the proceedings of the Senate should not be published;
that magistrates should not be sent to the provinces imme-
diately after laying down their office; that a fixed sum should
be allowed the Proconsuls for mules and tents, which it was
the custom to contract for and charge to the State; that the
management of the public treasury should be transferred from
the city Quaestors to ex-Praetors or Praetors; and that the
centumviral court, which it was usual for ex-Quaestors to con-
voke, should be summoned by the Board of Ten.

To enable more men to take part in the administration of
the State, he devised new offices: the charge of public build-
ings, of the roads, of the aqueducts, of the channel of the
Tiber, of the distribution of grain to the people, as well as the
prefecture of the city, a board of three for choosing Senators,
and another for reviewing the companies of the knights when-
ever it should be necessary. He appointed Censors, 8 an office
which had long been discontinued. He increased the number
of Praetors. He also demanded that whenever the consulship

1 ist of every month.

2 Doubtless to allow of their absence during the vintage.

8 The office of Censor was first established in 441 B.C. with duties to
take a census of the people and make an account of the value of their
estates. Power as arbiter of morals was afterwards given them. The
office then became one of great importance. Under most of the Em-
perors the office was dispensed with, the Emperor himself exercising
its functions, frequently with both caprice and severity.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 77

was conferred on him, he should have two colleagues instead
of one; but this was not granted, since all cried out that it was
a sufficient offense to his supreme dignity that he held the
office with another and not alone.

He was not less geneorus in honoring martial prowess, for
- he had regular triumphs voted to above thirty generals, and
the triumphal regalia to somewhat more than that number.

To enable Senators' sons to gain an earlier acquaintance
with public affairs, he allowed them to assume the broad pur-
ple stripe immediately after the gown of manhood and to
attend mer tings of the Senate; and when they began then
military caresr, he gave them not merely a tribunate in a le-
gion, but the command of a division of cavalry as well; and
to furnish all of them with experience in camp life, he usually
appointed tvvo Senators' sons to command each division.

He reviewed the companies of Knights at frequent inter-
vals, reviving the custom of the procession a after long disuse.
But he Vtouid not allow an accuser to force any one to dis-
mount as he rode by, as was often done in the past; and he
permitted those who were conspicuous because of old age or
any bodily infirmity to send on their horses in the review, and
come on foot to answer to their names whenever they were
summoned. Later, those who were over thirty-five years of age
and desired to keep their horses no longer be excused from
formally surrendering them.

Having obtained ten assistants from the Senate, he com-
pelled each Knight to render an account of his life, punishing
some of those whose conduct was scandalous and degrading
others; but the greater part he reprimanded with varying de-
grees of severity. The mildest form of reprimand was to hand
them a pair of tablets publicly, which they were to read in
silence on the spot. 2 He censured some "
rowed money at low interest and invested iy

At the elections for Tribunes if

1 A splendid parade on July 15 of the Knij
Dressed in scarlet, wearing their decoratt
rode their horses through the city to the Ca]
and, leading his horse, passed in review b
corrupt in his morals, or had diminished
scribed standard for Knights, the Censor

* And learn the faults they should

78 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

enough of senatorial rank, he made appointments from among
the Knights, with the understanding that after their term they
might remain in whichever order they wished. Moreover, since
many Knights whose property was diminished during the civil
wars did not venture to view the games from the fourteen rows
through fear of the penalty of the law regarding seating of'
the theaters, he declared that none were liable to its provi-
sions, if they themselves or their parents had ever possessed
a Knight's estate.

He revised the lists of the people street by street, and to
prevent the Commons from being called away from their occu-
pations too often because of the distributions of grain, he de-
termined to give out tickets for four months' supply three
times a year; but at their urgent request he allowed a return
to the old custom of receiving a share every month. He also
revived the old time election privileges, endeavoring, by nu-
merous penalties, to suppress the practice of bribery, and dis-
tributing to his fellow members of the Fabian and Scaptian
tribes 1 a thousand sesterces 2 a man from his own purse on
the day of the elections, to keep them from looking for any-
thing from any of the candidates.

Considering it also of great importance to keep the people
pure and unsullied by any taint of foreign or servile blood, he
was most chary of conferring Roman citizenship and set a
limit to manumission. When Tiberius requested citizenship
for a Grecian dependent of his, Augustus wrote in reply that
he would not grant it unless the man appeared in person and
convinced him that he had reasonable grounds for the re-
quest. When Livia asked it for a Gaul from a tributary prov-
ince, he refused, offering instead freedom from tribute, and
declaring that he would more willingly suffer a loss to his
privy purse than the prostitution of the honor of Roman citi-
zenship. Not content with making it difficult for slaves to ac-
quire freedom, and still more so for them to attain full rights,
by making careful provision as to the number, condition, and
status of those who were manumitted, he added the proviso

1 Augustus was a member of the Fabian tribe through his adoption
into the Julian family, and a member of the Scaptian tribe because of
his connection with the Octavian family.

a $41-00-

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 79

that any one who had ever been put in irons or tortured
should never, by any grade of freedom, acquire citizenship.

He desired also to revive the ancient fashion of dress, and
once when he saw in an assembly a throng of men in dark
cloaks, he cried out indignantly, "Behold them

Romans, lords of the world, the nation clad in the toga," '

and he directed the Aediles never again to allow any one to
appear in the Forum or its neighborhood except in the toga
and without a cloak.

He often showed generosity to all classes when occasion
offered. For example, by bringing the royal treasures to Rome
in his Alexandrian triumph he made ready money so abun-
dant, that the rate of interest fell, and the value of real estate
rose greatly. And after that, whenever there was an excess of
funds from the property of those who had been condemned,
he loaned it without interest for fixed periods to any who
could give security for double the amount. He increased the
property qualification for Senators, requiring one million two
hundred thousand sesterces, instead of eight hundred thou-
sand, 2 and making up the amount for those who did not pos*
sess it. He often gave largess to the people, but usually oi
different sums: now four hundred, now three hundred, now
two hundred and fifty sesterces a man; and he did not even
exclude young boys, though it had been usual for them to re-
ceive a share only after the age of eleven. In times of scarcity
too he often distributed grain to each man at a very low fig-
ure, sometimes for nothing, and he doubled the money tickets. 8

But to show that he was a prince who desired the public
welfare rather than popularity, when the people complained of
the scarcity and high price of wine, he sharply rebuked thsm
by saying: "My son-in-law Agrippa has taken good care, by
building several aqueducts, that men shall not go thirsty/

* Aeneid I, 282.

2 $49,200.00 instead of $32,800.00.

8 These were small tablets or round, hollow balls of wood marked
with numbers, sometimes distributed to the people instead of money t
and entitling the holder to receive the amount inscribed on them*
Grain, oil, and various other commodities were thus distributee!.

go THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Again, when the people demanded largess which he had in
fact promised, he replied: "I am a man of my word"; but
when they called for one which had not been promised, he re-
buked them in a proclamation for their shameless impudence,
and declared that he would not give it, even though he was
intending to do so. With equal dignity and firmness, when he
had announced a distribution of money and found that many
had been manumitted and added to the list of citizens, he de-
clared that those to whom no promise had been made should
receive nothing, and gave the rest less than he had promised,
to make the appointed sum suffice. Once indeed in a season
of great scarcity, which it was difficult to remedy, he expelled
from the city the slaves that were for sale, as well as the
schools of gladiators, all foreigners with the exception of phy-
sicians and teachers, and a part of the household slaves; and
when grain at last became more plentiful, he writes: "I was
strongly inclined to abolish forever the custom of distributing
grain to the people at the public expense, because they depend
so much on it that agriculture has been neglected. But I did
not carry out my purpose, feeling sure that the practice would
one day be renewed by some one ambitious of popular favor."
But from that time on he regulated the practice with no less
regard for the interests of the farmers and grain-dealers than
for those of the populace.

He surpassed all his predecessors in the frequency, variety,
and magnificence of his public shows. He says that he gave
games four times in his own name and twenty-three times for
other magistrates, who v/ere either away from Rome or lacked
means. He gave them sometimes in all the wards and on many
stages with actors in all languages, and combats of gladiators
not only in the Forum or the amphitheater, but in the Circus
and in the Saepta. Sometimes, however, he gave nothing ex-
cept a fight with wild beasts. He gave athletic contests too in
the Campus Martius, erecting wooden seats ; also a sea-fight,
constructing an artificial lake near the Tiber, where the grove
of the Caesars now stands. On such occasions he stationed
guards in various parts of the city, to prevent it from falling
a prey to footpads because of the few people who remained
at home. In the Circus he exhibited charioteers, runners, and
slayers of wild animals, who were sometimes young men of

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 81

the highest rank. Besides he gave frequent performances of
the game of Troy by older and younger boys, thinking it a
time-honored and worthy custom for the flower of the nobility
to become known in this way. When Nonius Asprenas was
lamed by a fall while taking part in this game, he presented
him with a golden necklace and allowed him and his descend-
ants to bear the surname Torquatus. But soon afterwards he
gave up that form of entertainment, because Asinius Pollio
the orator complained bitterly and angrily in the Senate of an
accident to his grandson Aeserninus, who also had broken his
leg.

He sometimes employed even Roman Knights in scenic and
gladiatorial performance, but only before it was forbidden
by decree of the Senate. After that he exhibited no one of re-
spectable parentage, with the exception of a young man
named Lycius, whom he showed merely as a curiosity; for he
was less than two feet tall, weighed but seventeen pounds, yet
had a stentorian voice. He did however on the day of one of
the shows make a display of the first Parthian hostages that
had ever been sent to Rome, by leading them through the
middle of the arena and placing them in the second row above
his own seat. Furthermore, if anything rare and worth seeing
was ever brought to the city, it was his habit to make a special
exhibit of it in any convenient place on days when no shows
were appointed. For example a rhinoceros in the Saepta, a
tiger on the stage and a snake of fifty cubits in the Comitium.

It chanced that at the time of the games which he had
vowed to give in the circus, he was taken ill and headed the
sacred procession lying in a litter. Again, at the opening of
the games with which he dedicated the theater of Marcellus,
it happened that the joints of his curule chair gave way and he
fell on his back. At the games for his grandsons, when the peo-
ple were in a panic for fear the theater should fall, and he
could not calm them or encourage them in any way, he left his
own place and took his seat in the part which appeared most
dangerous.

He put a stop by special regulations to the disorderly and
indiscriminate fashion of viewing the games, through exas-
peration at the insult to a Senator, to whom no one offered
a seat in a crowded house at some largely attended games in

82 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Puteoli. In consequence of this the Senate decreed that, when-
ever any public show was given anywhere, the first row of
seats should be reserved for Senators. At Rome he would not
allow the envoys of the free and allied nations to sit in the
orchestra, since he was informed that even freedmen were
sometimes appointed. He separated the soldiery from the peo-
ple. He assigned special seats to the married men of the Com-
mons, to boys under age their own section and the adjoining
one to their tutors ; and he decreed that no one wearing a dark
cloak should sit in the middle rows of the house. He would not
allow women to view even the gladiators except from the up-
per seats, though it had been the custom for men and women
to sit together at such shows. Only the Vestal Virgins were
assigned a place to themselves, opposite the Praetor's tribunal.
As for the contests of the athletes, he excluded women from
them so strictly, that when a contest between a pair of boxers
had been called for at the games in honor of his appointment
as High Priest, he postponed it until early the following day,
making proclamation that it was his desire that women should
not come to the theater before the fifth hour. 1

He himself usually watched the games in the Circus from
the upper rooms of his friends and freedmen, but sometimes
from the imperial box, and even in company with his wife and
children. He was sometimes absent for several hours, and now
and then for whole days, making his excuses and appointing
presiding officers to take his place. But whenever he was pres-
ent, he gave his entire attention to the performance, either to
avoid the censure to which he realized that his father Caesar
had been generally exposed, because he spent his time in read-
ing or answering letters and petitions; or from his interest
and pleasure in the spectacle, which he never denied but often
frankly confessed. Because of this he used to offer special
prizes and numerous valuable gifts from his own purse at
games given by others, and he appeared at no contest given
in the Greek language and dress without making a present to
each of the participants according to his deserts. He took espe-
cial pleasure in watching boxers, particularly those of Latin
birth, not merely such as were recognized and classed as pro-

1 zi A.M.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 83

fessionals, whom he was wont to match even with Greeks, but
the common untrained townspeople that fought rough and
tumble and without skill in the narrow streets. In fine, he
honored with his interest all classes of performers who took
part in the public shows; maintained the privileges of the
athletes and even increased them; forbade the matching of
gladiators without the right of appeal for quarter; and de-
prived the magistrates of the power allowed them by an an-
cient law of punishing actors anywhere and everywhere,
restricting it to the time of games and to the theater. Never-
theless he exacted the severest discipline in the contests in the
wrestling halls and the combats of the gladiators. In particu-
lar he was so strict in curbing the lawlessness of the actors,
that when he learned that Stephanie, an actor of Roman plays,
was waited on by a matron with hair cut short to look like a
boy, he had him whipped with rods through the three theaters
and then banished him. Hylas, a pantomimic actor, was pub-
licly scourged in the atrium of his own house, on complaint of
a Praetor, and Pylades was expelled from the city and from
Italy as well, because by pointing at him with his finger he
turned all eyes upon a spectator who was hissing him.

After having thus set the city and its affairs in order, he
added to the population of Italy by personally establishing
twenty-eight colonies ; furnished many parts of it with public
buildings and revenues; and even gave it, at least to some de-
gree, equal rights and dignity with the city of Rome, by de-
vising a kind of votes which the members of the local Senate
were to cast in each colony for candidates for the city offices
and send under seal to Rome against the day of the elections.
To keep up the supply of men of rank and induce the Com-
mons to increase and multiply, he admitted to the equestrian
military career those who were recommended^
while to those of the Commons who could I
sons and daughters when he made his
distributed a thousand sesterces for <

The stronger provinces, which
safely be governed by annual magis
the others he assigned to proconsul] (verigjrspelttted by\

ACC. NO.

84 THE LIVES OP THE TWELVE CAESARS

lot. But he changed some of them at times from one class to
the other, and often visited many of both sorts. Certain of the
cities which had treaties with Rome, but were on the road
to ruin through their lawlessness, he deprived of their inde-
pendence; he relieved others that were overwhelmed with
debt, rebuilt some which had been destroyed by earthquakes,
and gave Latin rights 1 or full citizenship to such as could point
to services rendered the Roman people. I believe there is no
province, excepting only Africa and Sardinia, which he did
not visit; and he was planning to cross to these from Sicily
after his defeat of Sextus Pompeius, but was prevented by a
series of violent storms, and later had neither opportunity
nor occasion to make the voyage.

Except in a few instances he restored the kingdoms of which
he gained possession by the right of conquest to those from
whom he had taken them or joined them with other foreign
nations. He also united the Kings with whom he was in alli-
ance by mutual ties, and was very ready to propose or favor
intermarriages or friendships among them. He never failed to
treat them all with consideration as integral parts of the Em*
pire, regularly appointing a guardian for such as were too
young to rule or whose minds were affected, until they grew
up or recovered; and he brought up the children of many of
them and educated them with his own.

Of his military forces he assigned legions and auxiliaries to
the various provinces, stationed a fleet at Misenum and an-
other at Ravenna, to defend the Upper and Lower seas, and
employed the remainder partly in the defense of the city and
partly in that of his own person, disbanding a troop of Cala-
gurritani which had formed a part of his body-guard until
the overthrow of Antony, and also one of Germans, which he
had retained until the defeat of Varus. However, he never al-
lowed more than three cohorts to remain in the city and even
those were without a permanent camp. The rest he regularly
sent to winter or summer quarters in the towns near Rome.
Furthermore, he restricted all the soldiery everywhere to a
fixed scale of pay and allowances, designating the duration
of their service and the rewards on its completion according

1 A limited citizenship, tht rights of which varied.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 85

to each man's rank, in order to keep them from being tempted
to revolution after their discharge either by age or poverty.
To have funds ready at all times without difficulty for main-
taining the soldiers and paying the rewards due to them, he
established a military treasury, supported by new taxes.

To enable what was going on in each of the provinces to
be reported and known more speedily and promptly, he at
first stationed young men at short intervals along the military
roads, and afterwards post-chaises. The latter has seemed the
more convenient arrangement, since the same men who bring
the dispatches from any place can, if occasion demands, be
questioned as well.

In passports, dispatches, and private letters he used as his
seal at first a sphinx, later an image of Alexander the Great,
and finally his own, carved by the hand of Dioscurides; and
this his successors continued to use as their seal. He always
attached to all letters the exact hour, not only of the day, but
even of the night, to indicate precisely when they were written.

Of his clemency and moderation there were abundant and
signal instances. Not to give the full list of the men of the op-
posite factions whom he not only pardoned and spared, but
allowed to hold high positions in the state, I may say that he
thought it enough to punish two plebeians, Junius Novatus
and Cassius Patavinus, with a fine and with a rnild form of
banishment respectively, although the former had circulated
a most scathing letter about him under the name of the young
Agrippa, while the latter had openly declared at a large din-
ner party that he lacked neither the earnest desire nor the
courage to stab him. Again, when he was hearing a case
against Aemilius Aelianus of Corduba and it was made tl e
chief offense, amongst other charges, that he was in the habit
of expressing a bad opinion of Caesar, Augustus turned to
the accuser with assumed anger and said: "I wish you could
prove the truth of that. I'll let Aelianus know that I have a
tongue as well as he, for I'll say even more about him"; and
he made no further inquiry either at the time or afterwards.
When Tiberius complained to him of the same thing in a let-
ter, but in more forcible language, he replied as follows: "My
dear Tiberius, do not be carried away by the ardor of youth
in this matter, or take it too much to heart that any one speak

36 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

evil of me; we must be content if we can stop any one from
doing evil to us."

Although well aware that it was usual to vote temples even
to Proconsuls, yet he would not accept that honor even in a
province save jointly in his own name and that of Rome. In
the city itself he refused this honor most emphatically, even
melting down the silver statues which had been erected to him
in former times and with the money coined from them dedi-
cating golden tripods to Apollo of the Palatine.

When the people did their best to force the Dictatorship
upon him, he knelt down, threw off his toga from his shoulders
and with bare breast begged them not to insist.

He always shrank from the title of Lord 1 as reproachful
and insulting. When the words

"O just and gracious Lord!"

were uttered in a farce at which he was a spectator and all
the people sprang to their feet and applauded as if they were
said of him, he at once checked their unseemly flattery by
look and gesture, and on the following day sharply reproved
them in an edict. After that he would not suffer himself to be
addressed by that term even by his children or his grand-
children either in jest or earnest, and he iorbade them to use
such flattering terms even among themselves. He did not if he
could help it leave or enter any city or town except in the
evening or at night, to avoid disturbing any one by the obli-
gations of ceremony. In his consulship he commonly went
through the streets on foot, and when he was not Consul, gen-
erally in a closed litter. His morning receptions were open to
all, including even the Commons, and he met the requests of
those who approached him with great affability, jocosely re-
proving one man because he presented a petition to him with
as much hesitation "as he would a penny to an elephant."
On the day of a meeting of the Senate he always greeted the
members in the House as they sat, addressing each by name

1 Dominus, "master," in the time of the Republic indicated the rela-
tion between master and slave. Tiberius also shrank from it, and it was
first adopted by Caligula and Domitian. From the time of Trajan it
Was usual in the sense of "lord" or "sire."

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 87

without a prompter; and when he left the House, he used to
bid them farewell in the same manner, while they remained
seated. He exchanged social calls with many, and did not
cease to attend all their anniversaries, until he was well on in
years and was once incommoded by the crowd on the day of
a betrothal. When Callus Cerrinius, a Senator with whom he
was not at all intimate, had become blind and had therefore
resolved to end his life by starvation, Augustus called on him
and by his consoling words induced him to live.

As he was delivering a speech in the Senate some one said
to him: "I did not understand," and another: "I would con-
tradict you if I had an opportunity." Several times when he
was rushing from the House in anger at the excessive bicker-
ing of the disputants, some shouted after him: "Senators
ought to have the right of speaking their mind on public
affairs." At the selection of Senators when each member chose
another, Antistius Labeo nominated Marcus Lepidus, an old
enemy of the Emperor's who was at the time in banishment;
and when Augustus asked him whether there were not others
more deserving of the honor, Labeo replied that every man
had his own opinion. Yet for all that no one suffered for his
freedom of speech or insolence.

Even when some infamous libels against him were scat-
tered in the Senate house he was neither disturbed nor gave
himself great trouble to refute them. Without trying to dis-
cover the authors, he merely proposed that henceforth those
who under a false name published notes or verses defamatory
of any one should be called to account.

When he was assailed with scurrilous or spiteful jests by
certain men, he made reply in a public proclamation; yet he
vetoed a law to check freedom of speech in wills. 1 Whenever
he took part in the election of magistrates, he went the round
of the tribes with his candidates and appealed for them ih the
traditional manner. He also cast his own vote in his tribe, as
one of the people. When he gave testimony in court, he was
most patient in submitting to questions and even to contra-
diction. He made his Forum narrower than he had planned)

1 The Romans in their wills often expressed their opinions freclv
about public men and affairs.

C8 THE LIVES OF THE TWEtVfe 'CAESARS

because he did not venture to eject the owners of the neigh-
boring houses. He never recommended his sons for office
without adding "If they be worthy of it." When they were
still under age and the audience at the theater rose as one
man in their honor, and stood up and applauded them, he
expressed strong disapproval. He wished his friends to be
prominent and influential in the state, but to be bound by the
same laws as the rest and equally liable to prosecution. When
Nonius Asprenas, a close friend of his, was meeting a charge
of poisoning made by Cassius Severus, 1 Augustus asked the
Senate what they thought he ought to do; for he hesitated,
he said for fear that if he should support him, it might be
thought that he was shielding a guilty man, but if he failed
to do so, that he was proving false to a friend and prejudicing
his case. Then, since all approved of his appearing in the case,
he sat on the benches for several hours, but in silence and
without even speaking in praise of the defendant. 2 He did
however defend some of his clients, for instance a certain
Scutarius, one of his former officers, who was accused of
slander. But he secured the acquittal of no more than one
single man, and then only by entreaty, making a successful
appeal to the accuser in the presence of the jurors. This was
Castricius, through whom he had learned of Murena's con-
spiracy.

How much he was beloved for his admirable conduct in all
these respects it is easy to imagine. I say nothing of decrees of
the Senate, which might seem to have been dictated by neces-
sity or by awe. The Roman Knights celebrated his birthday
of their own accord by common consent, and always for
two successive days. All sorts and conditions of men, in ful-
fillment of a vow for his welfare, each year threw a small coin
into the Laeus Curtius, 8 and also brought a New Year's gift
to the Capitol on the Kalends of January, even when he was
away from Rome. With this sum he bought and dedicated in
each of the city wards costly statues of the gods, such as

1 Cassius' charge was that Nonius had with one platter of poisoned
meat killed a hundred and thirty gliests.

2 It was customary in defending an accused person to make a general
eulogy of his character.

8 An altar in the Forum, restored by Augustus.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 89

Apollo Sandaliarius, Jupiter Tragoedus, and others. To re-
build his house on the Palatine, which had been destroyed by
fire, the veterans, the guilds, the tribes, and even individuals
of other conditions gladly contributed money, each according
to his means. But he merely took a little from each sum col-
lected as a matter of form, not more than a denarius 1 from
any of them. On his return from a province they received him
not only with prayers and good wishes, but with songs. It was
the rule, too, that whenever he entered the city, no one that,
day should suffer punishment.

The whole body of pitizens with a sudden unanimous im-
pulse proffered him the title of Father of his Country: first
the Commons, by a deputation sent to Antium, and then,
because he declined it, again at Rome as he entered the
theater, which they attended in throngs, all wearing laurel
wreaths; the Senate afterwards in the House, not by a decree
or by acclamation, but through Valerius Messala. He, speak-
ing for the whole body, said: "Good fortune and divine favor
attend thee and thy house, Caesar Augustus; for thus we feel
that we are praying for lasting prosperity for our country
and happiness for our city. The Senate in accord with the peo-
ple of Rome hails thee Father of thy Country." Then Augus-
tus, with tears in his eyes, replied as follows (and I have
given his exact words, as I did those of Messala) : "Having
attained my highest hopes, Fathers of the Senate, what more
have I to ask of the immortal gods than that I may retain
this same unanimous approval of yours to the very end of my
life."

In honor of his physician, Antonius Musa, through whose
care he had recovered from a dangerous illness, a sum of
money was raised and Musa's statue set up beside that of
Aesculapius. Some householders provided in their wills that
their heirs should drive victims to the Capitol and pay a
thank-offering in their behalf, because Augustus had sur
vived them, and that a placard to this effect should be carried
before them. Some of the Italian cities made the day on which
he first visited them the beginning of their year. Many of the
provinces in almost every one of their towns, besides erecting

1 About $0.15.

90 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

temples and altars' to his honor, instituted games to be cele-
brated every fifth year.

Kings who were his friends aivd allies, built cities in
their respective kingdoms, to which they gave the name of
Caesarea; and all with one consent resolved to finish, at their
common expense, the temple of Jupiter Olympius, which was
begun at Athens in ancient days, and to consecrate it to his
genius. 1 They also would frequently leave their kingdoms and
show him the attentions usual in dependents, clad in the toga
and without the emblems of royalty, not only at Rome, but
even when he was traveling through the provinces.

Now that I have shown how he conducted himself in civil
and military positions, and in ruling the State in all parts of
the world in peace and in war, I shall next give an account of
his private and domestic life, describing his character and his
fortune at home and in his household from his youth until
the last day of his life.

He lost his mother during his first consulship and his sister
Octavia in his fifty-fourth year. To both he showed marked
devotion during their lifetime, and also paid them the highest
honors after their death.

In his youth he was betrothed to the daughter of Publius
Servilius Isauricus, but when he became reconciled with An^
tony after their first quarrel, and their troops begged that
the rivals be further united by some tie of kinship, he took to
wife Antony's stepdaughter Claudia, daughter of Fulvia by
Publius Clodius, although she was barely of marriageable
age; but because of a falling out with his mother-in-law
Fulvia, he divorced her before they had begun to live together.
Shortly after that he married Scribonia, who had been wedded
oefore to two ex-Consuls, and was a mother by one of them.
He divorced her also, "unable to put up with her shrewish
disposition," as he himself writes, and at once took Livia
Drusilla from her husband Tiberius Nero, although she was
with child at the time. Her he loved and esteemed to the end
without a rival.

. 1 His tutelary God, or protecting spirit, analogous to the daemon of
the Greeks and the guardian angels of the Catholic Church. To the
Romans every living being, animal as well as man, and every place,
had its genius.

DCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 91

By Scribonia he had a daughter Julia, by Livia no children
at all, although he earnestly desired issue. One baby was con-
ceived, but was prematurely born. He gave Julia in marriage
first to Marcellus, son of his sister Octavia and hardly more
than a boy, and then after his death to Marcus Agrippa, pre-
vailing upon his sister to yield her son-in-law to his wishes;
for at that time Agrippa had to wife one of the Marcellas and
had chcildren from her. When Agrippa also died, Augustus,
after considering various alliances for a long time, even in the
equestrian order, finally chose for her his stepson Tiberius, 1
obliging him to divorce his wife, who was with child and by
whom he was already a father. Mark Antony writes that
Augustus first betrothed his daughter to his son Antonius and
then to Cotiso, King of the Getae, at the same time asking for
the hand of the King's daughter for himself in turn.

From Agrippa and Julia he had three grandsons, Gaius,
Lucius, and Agrippa, and two granddaughters, Julia and
Agrippina. He married Julia to Lucius Paulus, the Censor's
son, and Agrippina to Germanicus x his sister's grandson. Gaius
and Lucius he adopted at home, privately buying them from
their father by a symbolic sale, 2 and initiated them into ad-
ministrative life when they were still young, sending them to
the provinces and the armies as Consuls-elect. In bringing up
his daughter and his granddaughters he even had them taught
spinning and weaving, and he forbade them to say or do any-
thing except openly and such as might be recorded in the
household diary. He so strictly prohibited them from all con-
verse with strangers that he once wrote to Lucius Vinicius, a
young man of good position and character: "You have acted
presumptuously in coming to Baiae to call on my daughter."
He taught his grandsons reading, swimming, and the other
elements of education, for the most part himself, taking spe-
cial pains to train them to imitate his own handwriting. He
never dined in their company unless they sat beside him on
the lowest couch, or made a journey unless they preceded his
carriage or rode close by it on either side.

But at the height of his happiness and his confidence in his

1 The same who afterwards became Emperor.

2 The form of purchase consisted in touching a pair of scales three
times with a penny in the presence of the Praetor.

92 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

family and its training, Fortune proved fickle. He found the
two Julias, his daughter and granddaughter, guilty of every
form of vice, and banished them. He lost Gaius and Lucius
within the span of eighteen months, for the former died in
Lycia and the latter at Massilia. He then publicly adopted
his third grandson Agrippa and at the same time his stepson
Tiberius by a bill passed in the assembly of the curiae; l but
he soon disowned Agrippa because of his low tastes and vio-
lent temper, and sent him off to Surrentum.

He bore the death of his kin with far more resignation than
their misconduct. For he was not greatly broken by the fate
of Gaius and Lucius, but he informed the Senate of his daugh-
ter's fall through a letter read in his absence by a Quaestor,
and for very shame would meet no one for a long time, and
even thought of putting her to death. At all events, when one
of her confidantes, a freedwoman called Phoebe, hanged her-
self at about that same time, he said: "I would rather have
been Phoebe's father." In her banishment he denied Julia
the use of wine, and every form of luxury, and would not al-
low any man, bond or free, to come near her without his per-
mission, and then not without being informed of his stature,
complexion, and even of any marks or scars upon his body.
It was not until five years later that he moved her from the
island to the mainland 2 and treated her with somewhat less
severity. But he could not by any means be prevailed on to
recall her altogether, and when the Roman people several
times interceded for her and urgently pressed their suit, he in
open assembly called upon the gods to curse them with like
daughters and like wives. He would not allow the child born
to his granddaughter Julia after her sentence to be recog-
nized or reared. As Agrippa grew no more manageable, but
on the contrary became madder from day to day, he trans-
ferred him to an island 8 and set a guard of soldiers over him
besides. He also provided by a decree of the Senate that he

1 Romulus was supposed to have divided the people of Rome into
three Tribes and each Tribe into ten Curiae. The number of Tribes was
gradually increased to thirty-five, but that of the Curiae always re-
mained the same.
* 2 rom Pandataria to Reggio in Calabria.

8 Planasia, a little desolate island between Elba and Corsica.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 93

should be confined there for all time, and at every mention of
him and of the Julias he would sigh deeply and even cry out;

"Would God I never had wedded bride
Or elsa that I had childless died." *

and he never alluded to them except as his three boils and his
three ulcers.

He was cautious in forming friendships, but he clung to
them with the utmost constancy, not only suitably rewarding
their virtues and deserts but even condoning their faults, pro-
vided they were not too great. In fact one cannot readily
name any of his numerous friends who fell into disgrace, ex-
cept Salvidienus Rufus, whom he had advanced to a Consul's
rank, and Cornelius Callus, whom he had raised to the Prefec-
ture of Egypt, both from the lowest estate. The former he
handed over to the Senate that it might condemn him to
death, because he was plotting revolution ; the latter he for-
bade his house and the privilege of residence in the imperial
provinces, because of his ungrateful and envious spirit. But
when Callus died by his own hand, driven to it by the menaces
of his accusers and the decrees of the Senate, though com-
mending their loyalty and their indignation on his account,
Augustus yet shed tears and bewailed his lot, because he alone
could not set what limits he chose to his anger with hfe
friends. All the rest of his friends continued to enjoy powei
and wealth to the end of their lives, each holding a leading
place in his own class, although sometimes differences arose.
Not to mention the others, he occasionally found Agrippa
lacking in patience and Maecenas in the gift of silence; for
the former because of a slight suspicion of coolness and of
a preference shown for Marcellus, threw up everything and
Went off to Mytilene, while the latter betrayed to his wife
Terentia the secret of the discovery of the conspiracy of
Murena.

He demanded of his friends proofs of reciprocal attachment
at their deaths as well as during their lives. For though he
was in no sense a legacy-hunter, and in fact could never bring

1 An adaptation of line 40 Book III of the Iliad in a passage in which
Hector is cursing Paris.

94 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

himself to accept anything from the will of a stranger, yet he
was highly sensitive in weighing the death-bed utterances of
his friends, concealing neither his chagrin if he was left a nig-
gardly bequest or one unaccompanied with compliments, nor
his satisfaction, if he was praised in terms of gratitude and
affection. Whenever legacies or shares in inheritances were
left him by men of any station who had offspring, he either
turned them over to the children at once, or if the latter were
in their minority, paid the money back with interest on the
day when they assumed the gown of manhood or married.

As patron and master he was no less strict than gracious
and merciful, while he held many of his freedmen in high
honor and close intimacy, such as Licinus, Celadus, and
others. His slave Cosmus, who spoke of him most insultingly,
he merely put in irons. When he was walking with his steward
Diomedes, and the latter in a panic got behind him when they
were suddenly charged by a wild boar, he preferred to tax the
man with timorousness rather than with anything more seri-
ous, and turned a matter of grave danger into a jest, because
after all there was no evil intent. But he forced Polus, a fa-
vorite freedman of his, to take his own life, because he was
convicted of adultery with Roman matrons, and broke the
legs of his secretary Thallus for taking five hundred denarii l
to betray the contents of a letter. Because the tutor and at-
tendants of his son Gaius took advantage of their master's ill-
ness and death to commit acts of arrogance and greed in his
province, he had them thrown into a river with heavy weights
about their necks.

In early youth he incurred the reproach of sundry shame-
less acts. Sextus Pompey taunted him with effeminacy; Mark
Antony with having earned adoption by his uncle through
unnatural relations; and Lucius, brother of Mark Antony,
that after sacrificing his honor to Caesar he had given himself
to Aulus Hirtius in Spain for three hundred thousand ses-
terces, 2 and that he used to singe his legs with red-hot nut-
shells, to make the hair grow softer. What is more, one day
when there werft plays in the theater, all the people took as

1 About $75-0"

2 $12,300.00.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 95,

directed against him and loudly applauded the following line,
spoken on the stage and referring to a priest of the Mother of
the Gods, as he beat his drum:

"See'st how a wanton's finger sways the world?" 1

That he was given to adultery not even his friends deny,
although it is true that they excuse it as committed not from
passion but from policy, in order to discover more easily the
designs of his adversaries through the women of their house-
holds. Mark Antony charged him, besides his hasty marriage
with Livia, with taking the wife of an ex-Consul from her
husband's dining room before his very eyes into a bed-
chamber, and bringing her back to the table with her hair in
disorder and her ears glowing; that he divorced Scribonia be-
cause she expressed her resentment too freely at the excessive
influence of a rival; that his friends acted as his panders, and
stripped and inspected matrons and well-grown girls, as if
Toranius the slave-dealer were putting them up for sale.
Antony also writes to Augustus himself in the following fa-
miliar terms, when he had not yet wholly broken with him
privately or publicly: "What has made such a change in you?
Because I lie with the Queen? She is my wife. Am I just be-
ginning this, or was it nine years ago? What then of you do
you lie only with Drusilla? Good luck to you if when you read
this letter you have not been with Tertulla or Terentilla or
Rufilla or Salvia Titisenia, or all of them. Does it matter
where or with whom you take your pleasure?"

There was besides a private entertainment which he gave,
commonly called the Supper of the Twelve Gods, which was
the subject of gossip. At this the guests appeared in the guise
of Gods and Goddesses, while he himself was made up to rep-
resent Apollo, as was charged not merely in letters of Antony,
who spitefully gives the names of all the guests, but also in
these anonymous verses, which every one knows:

1 There is a double play on words: "Sways the world" might also be
rendered "tops the orb." The allusion is to a priest of Cybele ("Mo the;'
of the Gods") beating a drum in the orgiastic rites of that Goddess.

V6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

<r When Mallia late beheld, in mingled train,
Twelve mortals ape twelve deities in vain;
Caesar assumed what was Apollo's due,
And wine and lust inflamed the motley crew.
At the foul sight the Gods avert their eyes,
And from his throne great Jove indignant flies."

llie scandal of this banquet was the greater because of dearth
and famine in the land at the time, and on the following
day there was an outcry that the Gods had eaten all the grain
and that Caesar was in truth Apollo, but Apollo the Tormen-
tor, a surname under which the God was worshiped in one
part of the city. He was also charged with being excessively
fond of costly furniture and Corinthian bronzes as well as
with being addicted to gambling. Indeed, as early as the time
of the proscriptions there was written on his statue

"In silver once my father dealt, now in Corinthians I,"

since it was believed that he caused some men to be entered
in the list of the proscribed only because he coveted their
Corinthian vases. Later, during the Sicilian war, this epigram
was current:

"Twice having lost a fleet in luckless flight,
To win at last, he games both day and night."

Of these charges or slanders (whichever we may call them)
he easily refuted that for unnatural vice by the purity of his
life at the time and afterwards; so, too, the odium of extrava-
gance by the fact that when he took Alexandria, he kept none
of the furniture of the palace for himself except a single agate
rup, and presently melted down all the golden vessels in-
iended for everyday use. He could not dispose of the charge
of histfulness and they say that even in his later years he was
fond of deflowering maidens, who were brought together for
him from all quarters, even by his own wife. He did not in the
least shrink from a reputation for gaming, and played frankly
and openly for recreation, even when he was well on in years,
not only in the month of December, 1 but on other holidays

1 When freedom to gamble, feast, and revel was granted by the spirit
of the Saturnalia.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 97

as well, and on working days too. There is no question about
this, for in a letter in his own handwriting he says: "I dined,
dear Tiberius, with the same company; we had besides as
guests Vinicius and the elder Silius. We gambled like old men
during the meal both yesterday and to-day; for when the
dice were thrown, whoever turned up the 'dog* or the six, put
a denarius in the pool for each one of the dice, and the whole
was taken by any one who threw the 'Venus.' " x Again in an-
other letter: "We spent the Quinquatria 2 very merrily, my
dear Tiberius, for we played all day long and kept the gaming-
board warm. Your brother made a great outcry about his
luck, but after all did not come out far behind in the long
run; for after losing heavily, he unexpectedly and little by
little got back a good deal. For my part, I lost twenty thou-
sand sesterces, 3 but because I was extravagantly generous in
my play, as usual. If I had demanded of every one the stakes
which I let go, or had kept all that I gave away, I should
have won fully fifty thousand. But I like that better, for my
generosity will exalt me to immortal glory." To his daughter
he writes: "I send you two hundred and fifty denarii, 4 the
sum which I gave each of my guests, in case they wished to
play at dice or at odd and even during the dinner."

In the other details of his life it is generally agreed that he
was most temperate and without even the suspicion oi any
vice. He lived at first near the Forum Romanum, above the
Stairs of the Kingmakers, in a house which had belonged to
the orator Calvus; afterwards, on the Palatine, but in the no
less modest dwelling of Hortensius, no way remarkable eithei
for size or elegance, having but a short colonnade with col-
umns of Alban stone, 6 and rooms without any marble decora-
tions or handsome pavements. For more than forty years toe 4
he used the same bedroom in winter and summer; for al*
though he found the city unfavorable to his health in the win-
ter, yet he nevertheless continued to winter there. If ever he

1 When only aces appeared, the throw was called the "dog"; when
all the dice turned up different numbers, "Venus."

2 A five-day festival in March in honor of Minerva.
8 $820.00.

* $37-50.

A gray, volcanic stone, cheaply procured and easily worked*

98 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

planned to do anything in private or without interruption,
he had a retired place at the top of the house, which he called
"Syracuse" and "little workshop." In this he used to take
refuge, or else in the villa of one of his freedmen in the sub-
urbs. But whenever he was not well, he slept at Maecenas's
house. For retirement he went most frequently to places by
the sea and the islands of Campania, or to the towns near
Rome, such as Lanuvium, Praeneste or Tibur, where he very
often sat for the administration of justice in the colonnades
of the Temple of Hercules. He disliked large and sumptuous
country palaces, actually razing to the ground one which his
granddaughter Julia built on a lavish scale. His own villas,
which were modest enough, he decorated not so much with
tendsome statues and pictures as with terraces, groves, and
objects noteworthy for their antiquity and rarity; for ex-
ample, at Capreae the monstrous bones of huge sea monsters
and wild beasts, called the "bones of the giants," and the
weapons of ancient heroes.

The simplicity of his furniture and household goods may
be seen from couches and tables still in existence, many of
which are scarcely fine enough for a private citizen. They say
that he always slept on a low and plainly furnished bed. Ex-
cept on special occasions he wore common clothes for the
house, made by his sister, wife, daughter or granddaughters.
His togas were neither close nor full, his purple stripe neither
narrow nor broad, and his shoes somewhat high-soled, to make
him look taller than he really was. But he always kept shoes
and clothing to wear in public ready in his room for sudden
and unexpected occasions. '

He gave dinner parties constantly and always formally,
with great regard to the rank and personality of his guests.
Valerius Messala writes that he never invited a freedman to
dinner with the exception of Menas, and then only when he
had been enrolled among the freeborn after betraying the
fleet of Sextus Pompey. Augustus himself writes that he once
entertained a man at whose villa he used to stop, who had
been one of his body-guard. He would sometimes come to
table late on these occasions and leave early, allowing his
guests to begin to dine before he took his place and keep their

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 99

places after he went out. He served a dinner of three courses
or of six when he was most lavish, without needless extrava-
gance but with the greatest goodfellowship. For he drew into
the general conversation those who were silent or chatted
under their breath, and introduced music and actors, or even
strolling players from the circus, and especially story-tellers.

Festivals and holidays he celebrated lavishly as a rule, but
sometimes only with merrymaking. In the Saturnalia, or at
any other time when the fancy took him, he distributed to
his company clothes, gold, or silver; sometimes corns of all
sorts, even of the ancient Kings of Rome and of foreign na-
tions; sometimes nothing but hair cloth, sponges, pokers and
tongs, and other such things under names that were enigmatical
and had a double meaning. He used also at a dinner party to
put up for auction lottery-tickets for articles of most unequal
value, and paintings of which only the back was shown, and
so, by the unknown quality of the lot disappoint or fully
gratify the expectations of the purchasers. He required, how-
ever, that all the guests take part in the bidding and share the
loss or gain.

He was a light eater (for I would not omit even this de-
tail) and as a rule ate plain food. He particularly liked coarse
bread, small fishes, handmade moist cheese, and green figs
of the second crop; and he would eat even before dinner,
wherever and whenever he felt hungry. I quote word for word
from some of his letters: "I ate a little bread and some dates
in my carriage." And again: "As I was returning home from
the palace in my litter, I devoured an ounce of bread and a
few hard-pulped grapes." Once more: "Not even a Jew, my
dear Tiberius, fasts so scrupulously on his sabbaths as I have
to-day; for it was not until after the first hour of the night
that I ate two mouthfuls of bread in the bath before I began
to be anointed." Because of this irregularity he sometimes
ate alone either before a dinner party began or after it was
over, touching nothing while it was in progress.

He was by nature most sparing also in his use of wine.
Cornelius Nepos writes that in camp before Mutina it was
his habit to drink not more than three times at dinner. After-
wards, when he indulged most freely he never exceeded a
pint; or if he did, he used to throw it up. He liked Raetian

xoo THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

wine * best, but rarely drank before dinner. Instead he would
take a bit of bread soaked in cold water, a slice of cucumber,
a sprig of young lettuce, or an apple with a tart flavor, either
fresh or dried.

After his midday meal he used to rest for a while just as he
was, without taking off his clothes or his shoes, with his feet
uncovered and his hand to his eyes. After dinner he went to a
couch in his study, where he remained to late at night, until
he had attended to what was left of the day's business, either
wholly or in great part. Then he went to bed and slept not
more than seven hours at most, and not even that length of
time without a break, but waking three or four times. If he
could not resume his sleep when it was interrupted, as would
happen, he sent for readers or story-tellers, and when sleep
came to him he often prolonged it until after daylight. He
would never lie awake in the dark without having some one
sit by his side. He detested early rising and when he had to
get up earlier than usual because of some official or religious
duty, to avoid inconveniencing himself he spent the night in
the room of one of his friends near the appointed place. Even
so, he often suffered from want of sleep, and he would drop
off while he was being carried through the streets and when
his litter was set down because of some delay.

In person he was unusually handsome and exceedingly
graceful at all periods of his life, though he cared nothing for
personal adornment. Ha was so far from being particular
about the dressing of his hair, that he would have several
barbers working in a hurry at the same time, and as for his
beard he now had it clipped and now shaved, while at the
very same time he would either be reading or writing some-
thing. His expression, whether in conversation or when he
was silent, was so calm and mild, that one of the leading men
of the Gallic provinces admitted to his countrymen that it
had softened his heart, and kept him from carrying out his
design of pushing the Emperor over a cliff, when he had been
allowed to approach him under the pretense of a conference,
as he was crossing the Alps. He had clear, bright eyes, in
which he liked to have it thought that there was a kind of di-

1 A wine of great reputation from the foot of the Rhaetian Alps.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 101

vine power, and it greatly pleased him, whenever he looked
keenly at any one, if he let his face fall as if before the radi*
ance of the sun. But in his old age he could not see very weU
with his left eye. His teeth were wide apart, small and ill-kept
His hair was slightly curly and inclining to golden. His eye*
brows met. His ears wers of moderate size, and his nose pro-
jected a little at the top and then bent slightly inward. 1 His
complexion was between dark and fair. He was short of stature
(although Julius Marathus, his freedman and keeper of his
records, says that he was five feet and nine inches in height 2 )*
but this was concealed by the fine proportion and symmetry
of his figure, and was noticeable only by comparison with
some taller person standing beside him.

It is said that his body was covered with spots and that he
had birthmarks scattered over his breast and belly, corre-
sponding in form, order and number with the stars of the
Bear in the heavens ; 8 a!so numerous callous places resem-
bling ringworm, caused by a constant itching of his body and
a vigorous use of the strigil. 4 He was not very strong in his
left hip, thigh, and leg, and even limped slightly at times; but
he strengthened them by treatment with sand and reeds. 5 He
sometimes found the forefinger of his right hand so weak,
when it was numb and shrunken with the cold, that he could
hardly use it for writing even with the aid of a finger-stall of
horn. He complained of his bladder too, and was relieved of
the pain only after passing stones in his urine.

In the course of his life he suffered from several severe and
dangerous illnesses, especially after the subjugation of Can-
tabria, when he was in such a desperate plight from abscesses
of the liver, that he was forced to submit to an unprecedented
and hazardous course of treatment. Since hot fomentations
gave him no relief, he was led by the advice of his physician
Antonius Musa to try cold ones.

He experienced also some disorders which recurred every

* The so-called "Romin nose."

2 Roman measure. A little less than five feet seven inches English.
8 The Great Dipper.

4 An instrument of metal not unlike a curry-comb used in the bth|
for scraping the body.
fl Apparently in a sort of poultice. -- - '. ; :. . :

102 THE LIVES OF TH1 TWELVE CAESARS

year at definite times; for he was commonly ailing just before
his birthday; and at the beginning of spring he was troubled
with an enlargement of the diaphragm, and when the wind
was in the south, with catarrh. Hence his constitution was so
weakened that he could not readily endure either cold or heat.

In the winter he protected himself with four tunics and a
heavy toga, besides an undershirt, a woolen chest-protector
and wraps for his thighs and shins, while in summer he slept
with the doors of his bedroom open, oftentimes in the open
court near a fountain, besides having some one to fan him.
Yet he could not endure the sun even in winter, and never
walked in the 0pen air without wearing a broad-brimmed hat,
even at home. He traveled in a litter, usually at night, and by
such slow and easy stages that he took two days to go to
Praeneste or Tibur. If he could reach his destination by sea,
he preferred to sail. Yet in spite of all he made good his weak-
ness by great care, especially by moderation in bathing; for
as a rule he was anointed or took a sweat by a fire, after which
he was doused with water either lukewarm or tepid from long
exposure to the sun. When however he had to use hot salt
water and sulphur baths for rheumatism, he contented him-
self with sitting on a wooden bath-seat, which he called by
the Spanish name dureta, and plunging his hands and feet in
the water one after the other.

Immediately after the civil war he gave up exercise with
horses and arms in the Campus Martius, at first turning to
pass-ball and balloon-ball, but soon confining himself to rid-
ing or taking a walk, ending the latter by running and leap-
ing, wrapped in a mantle or a blanket. To divert his mind he
sometimes angled and sometimes played at dice, marbles and
nuts * with little boys, searching everywhere for such as were
attractive for their pretty faces or their prattle, especially
Syrians and Moors; for he abhorred dwarfs, cripples, and
everything of that sort, as freaks of nature and of ill omen.

From early youth he devoted himself eagerly and with the
utmost diligence to oratory and liberal studies. During the
war at Mutina, amid such a press of affairs, he is said to have
read, written and declaimed every day. In fact he never after*

1 The Romans had many games that were played with nuts.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 103

wards spoke in the Senate, or to the people or the soldiers,
except in a studied and written address, although he did not
lack the gift of speaking offhand without preparation. More-
over, to avoid the danger of forgetting what he was to say,
or wasting time in committing it to memory, he adopted the
practice of reading everything from a manuscript. Even his
conversations with individuals and the more important of
those with his own wife Livia, he always wrote out and read
from a notebook, for fear of saying too much or too little if
he spoke offhand. He had an agreeable and rather characteris-
tic enunciation, and he practiced constantly with a teacher of
elocution; but sometimes because of weakness of the throat
he addressed the people through a herald.

He wrote numerous works of various kinds in prose, some
of which he read to a group of his intimate friends, as one
might in a lecture-room; for example, his "Reply to Brutui/
on Cato." At the reading of these volumes he had all but come
to the end, when he grew tired and handed them to Tiberius
to finish, for he was well on in years. He also wrote "Exhorta-
tions to Philosophy" and some volumes of an Autobiography,
giving an account of his life in thirteen books up to the time
of the Cantabrian war, but no farther. His essays in poetry
were but slight. One book has come down to us written in
hexameter verse, of which the subject and the title is "Sicily."
There is another, equally brief, of "Epigrams," which he com-
posed for the most part while he was in his bath. Though he
began a tragedy with much enthusiasm, he destroyed it be-
cause his style did not satisfy him, and when some of his
friends asked him what in the world had become of Ajax,
he answered that "his Ajax had fallen on his sponge." 1

He cultivated a style of speaking that was chaste and ele-
gant, avoiding the vanity of attempts at epigram and an
artificial order, and as he himself expresses it, "the noisome-
ness of far-fetched words," making it his chief aim to express
his thought as clearly as possible. With this end in view, to
avoid confusing and checking his reader or hearer at any
point, he did not hesitate to use prepositions with names of
cities, nor to repeat conjunctions several times, the omission

1 Ajax is said to have perished by falling upon his sword.

104 THE LIVES OF THfc TWELVE CAESARS

of which causes some obscurity, though it adds grace. He
looked on innovators and archaizers with equal contempt,
as faulty in opposite directions, and he sometimes had a fling
at them, in particular his friend Maecenas, whose "unguent-
dripping curls,*' as he calls them, he loses no opportunity of
belaboring and pokes fun at them by parody. He did not spare
even Tiberius, who sometimes hunted up obsolete and pedantic
expressions; and as for Mark Antony, he calls him a mad-
man, for writing rather to be admired than to be understood.
Then going on to ridicule his perverse and inconsistent taste in
choosing an oratorical style, he adds the following: "Can you
doubt whether you ought to imitate Annius Cimber or Ve-
ranius Flaccus, that you use the words which Sallustis Crispus
gleaned from Cato's Origines? Or would you rather introduce
into our tongue the verbose and unmeaning fluency of the
Asiatic orators?" And in a letter praising the talent of his
granddaughter Agrippina he writes: "But you must take great
care not to write and talk affectedly."

That in his everyday conversation he used certain favorite
and peculiar expressions appears from letters in his own hand,
in which he says every now and then, when he wishes to indi-
cate that certain men will never pay, that "they will pay on
the Greek Kalends." 1 Urging his correspondent to put up
with present circumstances, such as they are, he says: "Let's
be satisfied with the Cato we have"; and to express the speed
of a hasty action, "Quicker than you can cook asparagus."
He continually used baceolus (dolt) for stultus (fool), for
pullus (dark) pulleiaceus (darkish), and for cerritus (mad)
vacerrosus (blockhead); also vapide se habere (feel flat) for
male se habere (feel badly), and betizare (be like a beet) for
languere (be weak), for which the vulgar term is lachani-
zare? Besides he used simus for sumus and domos in the geni-
tive singular instead of domuos. The last two forms he wrote
invariably, for fear they should be thought errors rather
than a habit.

I have also observed this special peculiarity in his manner

1 That is, never, for the Greeks had nothing corresponding to the
Roman Kalends.

2 All these words which Augustus is said to have used are colloquial-
isms or slang of his day.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 105

of writing: he does not divide words or carry superfluous let-
ters from the end of one line to the beginning of the next,
but writes them just below the rest of the word and draws a
loop around them.

He does not strictly comply with orthography, that is to
say the theoretical rules of spelling laid down by the gram-
marians, seeming to be rather of the mind of those who be-
lieve that we should spell exactly as we pronounce. Of course
his frequent transposition or omission of syllables as well as
of letters are slips common to all mankind. I should not have
noted this, did it not seem to me surprising that some have
written that he cashiered a consular Governor, as an uncul-
tivated and ignorant fellow, because he observed that he had
written ixi for ipsi. Whenever he wrote in cipher, he wrote
B for A, C for B, and the rest of the letters on the same prin-
ciple, using AA for X.

He was equally interested in Greek studies, and in these,
too, he greatly excelled. His teacher of declamation was Apol-
lodorus of Pergamon, whom he even took with him in his
youthful days from Rome to Apollonia, though Apollodorus
was an old man at the time. Later he became versed in various
forms of learning through association with the philosopher
Areus and his sons Dionysius and Nicanor. Yet he never
acquired the ability to speak Greek fluently or to compose
anything in it; for if he had occasion to use the language,
he wrote what he had to say in Latin and gave it to some
one else to translate. Still he was far from being ignorant
of Greek poetry, even taking great pleasure in the Old
Comedy and frequently staging it at his public entertain-
ments. In reading the writers of both tongues there was noth-
ing for which he looked so carefully as precepts and examples
instructive to the public or to individuals. These he would
often copy word for word, and send to the members of his
household, or to his Generals and provincial Governors, when-
ever any of them required admonition. He even read entire
volumes to the Senate and called the attention of the people
to them by proclamations; for example, the speeches of
Quintus Metellus "On Increasing the Family," and of Ru-
tilius "On the Height of Buildings"; to convince them that

io6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

he was not the first to give attention to such matters, but
that they aroused the interest even of their forefathers.

He gave every encouragement to the men of talent of his
own age, listening with courtesy and patience to their read-
ings, not only of poetry and history, but of speeches and
dialogues as well. But he took offense at being made the
subject of any composition except in serious earnest and by
the most eminent writers, often charging the Praetors not
to let his name be cheapened in prize declamations.

This is what we are told of his attitude towards matters
of religion. 1 He was somewhat weak in his fear of thunder
and lightning, for he always carried a seal-skin about with
him everywhere as a protection, and at any sign of a violent
storm took refuge in an underground vaulted room; 2 for as
I have said 3 he was once badly frightened by a narrow escape
from lightning during a journey by night.

He was not indifferent to his own dreams or to those which
others dreamed about him. At the battle of Philippi, though
he had made up his mind not to leave his tent because of
illness, he did so after all when warned by a friend's dream;
fortunately, as it turned out, for his camp was taken and
when the enemy rushed in, his litter was stabbed through
and through and torn to pieces, in the belief that he was
i$till lying there ill. All through the spring his own dreams
were very numerous and fearful, but idle and unfulfilled;
during the rest of the year they were less frequent and more
reliable. Being in the habit of making constant visits to the
temple of Jupiter the Thunderer, which he had founded on
the Capitol, he dreamed that Jupitei Capitolinus complained
that his worshipers were being taken from him, and that he
answered that he had placed the Thunderer hard by to be
his doorkeeper. He therefore soon after festooned the gable
of the temple with bells, because these commonly hung at
house-doors. It was likewise because of a dream that every

1 Religiones: which for the Roman included religious belief as we
still know it, and especially regard for omens and portents,

2 Pliny (Natural History II, 55) says that lightning never goes more
than five feet below the ground, and also that the laurel tree and the
seal are never struck by it.

See Gains Caligula.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 107

year on an appointed day he begged alms of the people,
holding out his open hand to have pennies dropped in it.

Certain auspices and omens he regarded as infallible. If
his shoes were put on in the wrong way in the morning, the
left instead of the right, he considered it a bad sign. If there
chanced to be a drizzle of rain when ^e was starting on a long
journey by land or sea, he thought it a good omen, betoken-
ing a speedy and prosperous return. But he was especially
affected by prodigies. When a palm tree 1 sprang up between
the crevices of the pavement before his house, he trans-
planted it to the inner court beside his household Gods and
took great pains to make it grow. He was so pleased that
the branches of an old oak, which had already drooped to
the ground and were withering, became vigorous again on his
arrival in the island of Capri, that he arranged with the city
of Naples to give him the island in exchange for Aenaria.
He also had regard to certain days, refusing ever to begin a
journey on the day after a market day, 2 or to take up any
important business on the Nones; 3 though in the latter case,
as he writes to Tiberius, he merely dreaded the unlucky
sound of the name.

He treated with great respect such foreign rites as were
ancient and well established, but held the rest in contempt.
For example, having been initiated at Athens 4 and after-
wards sitting in judgment of a case at Rome involving the
privileges of the priests of Ceres, in which certain matters of
secrecy were brought up, he dismissed his councilors and the
throng of bystanders and heard the disputants in private. But
on the other hand he not only omitted to make a slight detour
to visit Apis, when he was traveling through Egypt, but

1 If this is true, winters in Rome in Augustus* time must have been
much milder than they now are.

2 The Roman month was divided into periods of eight days, lettered
in the calendar A to H. On the last of these, every ninth day according
to the Roman reckoning, a market and fair was held at Rome, and
many people came in from the country. It was not till near the reign
of Severus that the Romans began to divide their time into weeks, ai
we do, in imitation of the Jews.

8 Ninth day before the Ides.

4 Into the Eleusinian Mysteries of Ceres.

108 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

highly commended his grandson Gaius for not offering prayers
at Jerusalem as he passed by Judaea, 1

Having reached this point, it will not be out of place to add
an account of the omens which occurred before he was born,
on the very day of his birth, and afterwards, from which it
was possible to anticipate and perceive his future greatness
and uninterrupted good fortune.

In ancient days, when a part of the wall of Velitrae had
been struck by lightning, the prediction was made that a
citizen of that town would one day rule the world. Through
their confidence in this the people of Velitrae had at once
made war on the Roman people and fought with them many
times after that almost to their utter destruction ; but at last
long afterward the event proved that the omen had foretold
the rule of Augustus.

According to Julius Marathus, a few months before Augus-
tus was born a portent was generally observed at Rome,
which gave warning that nature was pregnant with a King
for the Roman people. Thereupon the Senate in consterna-
tion decreed that no male child born that year should be
reared. But those whose wives were with child saw to it
that the decree was not filed in the treasury, 2 since each one
appropriated the prediction to his own family.

I have read the following story in the books of Asclepias
of Mendes entitled "Discourses about the Gods." When Atia 8
had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service
of Apollo, she had her Ktter set down in the temple and fell
asleep, while the rest of the matrons also slept. On a sudden
a serpent 4 glided up to her and shortly went away. When
she awoke, she puraied herself, as if after the embraces of
her husband, and at once there appeared on her body a mark
in the form and colors of a serpent, which she never after
could efface, and which obliged -her, during the subsequent
part of her life, to forego the use of the public baths. In the

1 Augustus' attitude toward the Jews was favorable.

2 The decree was not complete until this was done.
8 The mother of Augustus.

4 The familiar spirit or genius was often represented by a serpent,
and those of husband and wife by two serpents, as we may see in
Pompeian frescoes.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 109

tenth month after that Augustus was born and was therefore
regarded as the son of Apollo. Atia too, before she gave him
birth, dreamed that her vitals were borne up to the stars
and spread over the whole extent of land and sea, while
Octavius, his father, dreamed that the sun rose from Atia's
womb.

The day be was born the conspiracy of Catiline was before
the House, and Octavius came late because of his wife's con-
finement. Whereupon Publius Nigidius, as every one knows,
learning the reason for his tardiness and being informed also
of the hour of the birth, declared that the ruler of the world
had been born. Later, when Octavius was leading an army
through remote parts of Thrace, and in the grove of Father
Bacchus consulted the priests about his son according to the
barbarians' rites, they made the same prediction; since such
a pillar of flame sprang forth from the wine that was poured
over the altar, that it rose above the temple roof and mounted
to the very sky. Such an omen had befallen no one save
Alexander the Great, when he offered sacrifice at the same
altar. Moreover, the very next night he dreamt that his son
appeared to him in a guise more majestic than that of mortal
man, with the thunderbolt, scepter, and insignia of Jupiter
Optimus Maximus, wearing a crown begirt with rays and
mounted upon a laurel-wreathed chariot drawn by twelve
horses of surpassing whiteness.

When Augustus was still an infant, as is recorded by the
hand of Gaius Drusus, he was placed by his nurse at evening
in his cradle on the ground floor and the next morning had
disappeared. After long search he was at last discovered on
a lofty tower, lying with his face towards the rising sun
As soon as he began to talk, it chanced that the frogs were
making a great noise at his grandfather's country place. He
bade them be silent, and they say that since then no frog has
ever croaked there. As he was breakfasting in a grove at the
fourth milestone on the Campanian road, an eagle surprised
him by snatching his bread from His hand, and after flying
to a great height, equally to his surprise dropped gently down
again and gave it back to him.

Quintus Catulus,^ after he had dedicated the Capitol,
dreamed two nights in succession. The first night/he dreamed

ixo THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

that Jupiter Optimus Maximus, out of a group of boys of good
family who were playing about his altar, called aside one
and put the public seal of the commonwealth which he car-
ried in his hand in the lap of the boy's toga. The next night
he dreamt that he saw this same boy in the lap of Jupiter of
the Capitol, and that when he ordered that he be removed,
the God warned him to desist, declaring that the boy was
being reared to be the savior of his country. When Catulus
next day met Augustus, whom he had never seen before, he
looked at him in great surprise and said that he was very
like the boy of whom he had dreamed. Some give a different
account of Catulus's first dream, namely, that Jupiter, when
a group of well-born children requested him for a tutor,
pointed out one of their number, to whom they were to sub-
mit all their requests, and then, after lightly touching the
boy's mouth with his fingers, laid them on his own lips.

As Marcus Cicero was once attending Gaius Caesar to the
Capitol, he happened to tell his friends a dream which he had
had the night before, in which a boy of noble countenance
was let down from heaven on a golden chain and, standing
at the door of the temple, was given a whip by Jupiter. Just
chen suddenly catching sight of Augustus, who was still un-
known to the greater number of those present and had been
brought to the ceremony by his uncle Caesar, he declared
that he was the very one whose form had appeared to him in
his dream.

When Augustus was assuming the gown of manhood, his
senatorial tunic 1 becoming loose in the seam on each side,
fell at his feet, which some interpreted as a sure sign that the
order of which the tunic was the badge 2 would one day be
brought to his feet.

As the Deified Julius was cutting down a wood at Munda
and preparing a place for his camp, coming acrtfss a palm
tree, he caused it to be spared as an omen of victory. From
this a shoot at once sprang forth and in a few days grew so
great that it not only equalled the parent tree, but even over-

1 Augustus was not yet a Senator, but the privilege of wearing the
broad purple stripe, which distinguished the gown of the Senators,
was doubtless one of the honors conferred on him by Caesar.
, the Senate.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS nx

shadowed it. Many doves, moreover, built their nests there,
although that kind of bird especially avoids hard and rough
foliage. Indeed, it was that omen in particular, they say, that
led Caesar to wish that none other than his sister's grandson
should be his successor.

While in retirement at Apollonia, Augustus mounted with
Agrippa to the studio of the astrologer Theogenes. Agrippa
was the first to try his fortune, and when a great and almost
incredible career was predicted for him, Augustus chose not
to disclose the time of his own birth, and persisted for some
time in the refusal, from a mixture of shame and fear lest
he be predicted less eminent. When he at last gave it unwill-
ingly and hesitatingly, and only after many urgent requests,
Theogenes sprang up and threw himself at his feet. From
that time on Augustus had such faith in his destiny, that he
made his horoscope public and issued a silver coin stamped
with the sign of the constellation Capricornus, under which he
was born.

As he was entering the city on his return from Apollonia
after Caesar's death, though the heaven was clear and cloud-
less, a circle like a rainbow suddenly formed around the
sun's disc, and straightway the tomb of Caesar's daughter
Julia was struck by lightning. Again, as he was taking the
auspices in his first consulship, twelve vultures appeared to
him, as to Romulus, and when he slew the victims, the livers
within all of them were found to be double at the lower end,
which all those who were skilled in such matters unanimously
declared to be an omen of a great and happy future.

He even divined beforehand the outcome of all his wars,
When the forces of the Triumvirs were assembled at Bononia,
an eagle that had perched upon his tent made a dash at two
ravens, which attacked it on either side, and struck them to
the ground. From this the whole army inferred that there
would one day be discord among the colleagues, as actually
came to pass, and divined its result. As he was on his way to
Philippi, a Thessalian gave him notice of his coming victory
on the authority of the deified Caesar, whose shade had met
him on a lonely road. When he was sacrificing at Perusia
without getting a favorable omen, and so had ordered more
victims to be brought, the enemy made a sudden sally and

ji2 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

carried off all the equipment of the sacrifice. Whereupon
the soothsayers agreed that all the dangers and disasters
with which the sacrificer had been threatened would recoil
on the heads of those who were in possession of the entrails.
And so it turned out. As he was walking on the shore the day
before the sea-fight off Sicily, a fish sprang from the sea and
fell at his feet. At Actium, as he was going down to begin the
battle, he met an ass with his driver, the man having the
name Eutychus * and the beast that of Nicon. 2 And after
the victory he set up bronze images of the two in the sacred
enclosure into which he converted the side of his camp.

His death, too, of which I shall speak next, and hk deifica-
tion after death, were known in advance by unmistakable
signs. As he was bringing the lustrum 8 to an end in the
Campus Martius before a great throng of people, an eagle
flew several times about him and then going across to the
temple hard by, perched above the first letter of Agrippa's
name. On noticing this, Augustus bade his colleague Tiberius
recite the vows which it is usual to make for the next five
years; for although he had them prepared and written out
on a tablet, he declared that he would not be responsible for
vows which he should never accomplish. At about the same
time the first letter of his name was melted from the inscrip-
tion on one of his statues by a flash of lightning. This was
interpreted to mean that he would live only a hundred days
from that time, the number indicated by the letter C, and
that he would be numbered with the gods, since acsar (that
is, the part of the name Caesar which was left) is the word
for god in the Etruscan tongue.

Then, too, when he was on the point of sending Tiberius to
Illyricum and was proposing to escort him as far as Bene-
ventum, and litigants detained him on the judgment seat by
bringing forward case after case, he cried out that he would
stay no longer in Rome, even if everything conspired to de-
lay him and this too was afterwards looked upon as one

1 Prosper.

* Victor.

t 8 The sacrifice of purification made every five years by one of the
Censors after the taking of the census. A pig, a sheep; 'and bull were
sacrificed. - . *' * :

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 115

of the omens of his death. So entered upon his journey, he
went on as far as Astura * and from there, contrary to his
custom, took ship by night since it chanced that there was
a favorable breeze, and thus contracted an illness beginning
with diarrhoea.

Then after skirting the coast of Campania and the neigh-
boring islands, he spent four more days at his villa in Capri,
where he gave himself up wholly to rest and social diver-
sions. As he sailed by the gulf of Puteoli, it happened that
from an Alexandrian ship which had just arrived there, the
passengers and crew, clad in white, crowned with garlands,
and burning incense, lavished upon him good wishes and the
highest praise, saying that it was through him they lived,
through him that they sailed the seas, and through him that
they enjoyed their liberty and their fortunes. Exceedingly
pleased at this, he gave forty gold pieces to each of his com-
panions, exacting from every one of them a pledge under
oath not to spend the sum that had been given them in any
other way than in b jying wares from Alexandria. More than
that, for the several remaining days of his stay, among little
presents of various kinds, he distributed togas and pallia 2
as well, stipulating that the Romans should use the Greek
dress and language and the Greeks the Romans. He con-
tinually watched the exercises of the ephebi, 8 of whom there
was still a goodly number at Capri, according to the ancient
usage. He also gave these youths a banquet at. which he
himself was present, and not only allowed, but even required
perfect freedom in jesting and in scrambling for tickets for
fruit, dainties and all kinds of things, which he threw to
them. In short, there was no form of gayety in which he did
not indulge.

The neighboring part of the island of Capri he called "City
of Do-littles," from the indolent life which some of his
party led there. Besides he used to call one of his favorites,

1 On the road to Naples.

2 The pallium corresponded to the himation, the distinctive garment
of the Greeks, as the toga of the Romans.

8 Greek youths between the ages of 18 and that of full citizenship,
who had regular gymnastic training as a part of their education.

xi4 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Masgaba by name, Ktistes, 1 as if he were the founder of the
island. Noticing from his dining-room that the tomb of this
Masgaba, who had died the year before, was visited by a
large crowd with many torches, he uttered aloud this verse,
composed offhand: 2

"I see the founder's tomb alight with fire";

and turning to Thrasyllus, one of the suite of Tiberius who
was reclining opposite him and knew nothing about the mat-
ter, he asked of what poet he thought it was the work. When
Thrasyllus hesitated, he added another verse:

"See you with lights Masgaba honored now?"

and asked his opinion of this one also. When Thrasyllus
could say nothing except that they were very good, whoever
made them, he burst into a laugh and fell a joking about it.

Presently he crossed over to Naples, although his bowels
were still weak from intermittent attacks. In spite of this he
witnessed an exhibition of the gymnastic games which were
performed in his honor every five years, and then started
with Tiberius for his destination. But as he was returning
his illness increased and he at last took to his bed at Nola,
calling back Tiberius, who was on his way to Illyricum, and
keeping him for a long time in private conversation, after
which he gave attention to no business of importance.

On the last day of his life he asked every now and then
whether there was any disturbance without on his account.
He then called for a mirror and had his hair combed and his
falling jaws set straight. 3 After that, calling in his friends
and asking whether* it seemed to them that he had played
the comedy of life fitly, he added the tag:

"Since IVe played well, with joy your voices raise
And from the stage dismiss me with your praise." 4

1 Greek name for the founder of a city or colony.

2 In Greek, as also the next verse.

* As though from weakness he could not keep his mouth closed.

* It was customary at the end of comedies to call for applause.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 115

Then he sent them all off, and while he was asking some new*
comers from the city about the daughter of Drusus, who was
ill, suddenly, amidst the kisses of Livia, he passed away,
uttering these last words: "Live mindful of our wedlock,
Livia, and farewell." Thus was he blessed with an easy death
and such a one as he had always longed for. For almost al-
ways on hearing that any one had died swiftly and painlessly,
he prayed that he and his might have a like euthanasia, for
that was the term he was wont to use. He gave but one single
sign of wandering before he breathed his last, calling out in
sudden terror that forty young men were carrying him off.
And even this was rather a premonition than a delusion,
since it was that very number of soldiers of the pretorian
guard that carried him forth to lie in state.

He died in the same room as his father Octavius had died,
when the two Sextuses, Pompeius and Appuleius, were Con-
suls, on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of September
at the ninth hour, just thirty-five days before his seventy-
sixth birthday.

His body was carried by the Senators of the municipalities
and colonies from Nola all the way to Bovillae, in the night
time because of the season of the year, being placed by day
in the basilica of the town at which they arrived or in its
principal temple. 1 At Bovillae the members of the eques-
trian order 2 met it and bore it to the city, where they placed
it in the vestibule of his house.

The Senate proceeded with so much zeal in the arrangement
of his funeral, and paying honor to his memory, that, among
many other suggestions, some proposed that his cortege pass
through the triumphal gate, preceded by the statue of Vic-
tory which stands in the House, while a dirge was sung by
children of both sexes belonging to the leading families.
Others proposed that on the day of the obsequies golden
rings be laid aside and iron ones worn ; and others, that his
ashes be collected by the priests of the highest colleges. One
man proposed that the name of the month of August be trans-
ferred to September, because Augustus was born in the lat-

1 An especial .honor, for it was against Roman custom and law to
bring a dead body into a sacred place for fear of polluting it.
See The Deified Claudius.

1x6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESAR3

ter, but died in the former; another, that all the period from
the day of his birth until his demise be called the Augustan
Age, and so entered in the Calendar. But though a limit was
set to the honors paid him, his eulogy was twice delivered:
before the temple of the Deified Julius by Tiberius, and from
the old rostra by Drusus, son of Tiberius. The body was
then carried on the shoulders of Senators to the Campus
Martius and there cremated. There was even an ex-praetor
who took oath that he had seen the form of the Emperor,
after he had been reduced to ashes, on its way to heaven.
His remains were gathered up by the leading men of the
equestrian order, bare-footed and in ungirt tunics, and placed
in the Mausoleum. This structure he had built in his sixth
consulship between the Via Flaminia and the bank of the
Tiber, and at the same time opened to the public the groves
and walks by which it was surrounded.

He had made a will in the consulship of Lucius Plancus
and Gaius Silius on the third day before the Nones of April,
a year and four months before he died, in two note-books,
written in part in his own hand and in part in that of his
freedmen Polybius and Hilarion. These the Vestal Virgins,
with whom they had been deposited, now produced, together
with three rolls, which were sealed in the same way. All these
were opened and read in the Senate. He appointed as his chief
heirs Tiberius, to receive two-thirds of the estate, and Livia,
one-third; these he also bade assume his name. His heirs in
the second degree were Drusus, son of Tiberius, for one-
third, and Germanicus and his three sons for the rest. In the
third grade he mentioned many of his relatives and friends.
He left to the Roman people forty million sesterces; l to the
tribes three million five hundred thousand each; to the sol-
diers of the pretorian guard a thousand each; and to the
legionaries three hundred. This sum he ordered to be paid
at once; for he had always kept the amount at hand and ready
for the purpose. He gave other legacies to various individuals,
some amounting to as much as twenty thousand sesterces,
and provided for the payment of these a year later, giving
as his excuse for the delay the small amount of his property,

1 $1,640,000.00, taking .04 i-io as equivalent to the sestertius.

OCTAVIUS AUGUSTUS 117

and declaring that not more than a hundred and fifty mil-
lions would come to his heirs. For, though he had received
fourteen hundred millions during the last twenty years from
the wills of his friends, he said that he had spent nearly all
of it, as well as his two paternal estates * and his other in-
heritances, for the benefit of the State. He gave orders that
his daughter and his granddaughter Julia should not be put
in his Mausoleum, if anything befell them. 2 In one of the
three rolls he included directions for his funeral ; in the sec-
ond, an account of what he had accomplished, which he de-
sired to have cut upon bronze tablets and set up at the
entrance to the Mausoleum; 3 in the third, a summary of the
condition of the whole empire ; how many soldiers there were
in active service in all parts of it, how much money there was
in the public treasury and in the privy-purse, and what rev-
enues were in arrears. He added, besides, the names of the
freedmen and slaves from whom the details could be de-
manded.

1 Those of his father Octavius, and his father by adoption, Julius
Caesar.

2 The common euphemism for, when they died.

3 The original of this inscription is lost, but the greater part of a
copy inscribed in Greek and Latin on marble is preserved at Ancyra
in Asia Minor and is known as the Monument urn Ancyranum.

BOOK III
TIBERIUS

TIBERIUS

THE patrician branch of the Claudian family (for there
was, besides, a plebeian branch of no less influence and pres-
tige) came originally from Regilli, a town of the Sabines. From
there it moved to Rome shortly after the founding of the city
with a large band of dependents, through the influence of
Titus Tatius, who shared the kingly power with Romulus; or,
perhaps, according to better authority, under Atta Claudius,
the head of the family, about six years after the expulsion of
the Kings. 1 It was admitted among the patrician families, re-
ceiving, besides, from the State a piece of land beyond the
river Anio for its dependents, and a burial-site for the family
at the fooi of the Capitoline hill. After this period, as time
went on it was honored with twenty-eight consulships, five
dictatorships, seven censorships, six triumphs, and two ova-
tions. While the members of the family were known by vari-
ous forenames and surnames, 2 they by common consent dis-
carded the forename Lucius after two of the family who bore
it had been found guilty, the one of highway robbery, and the
other of murder. To their surnames, on the other hand, they
added that of Nero, which in the Sabine tongue means "strong
and valiant."

There are on record many distinguished services of the
Claudii to their country, as well as many deeds of the opposite
character. But to mention only the principal instances, Appius
Claudius advised against forming an alliance with King
Pyrrhus as not at all expedient. Claudius Caudex was the

1 The Tarquins.

2 The Romans had commonly three names: (i) the praenomen
designated the individual; (2) the nomen marked the gens; (3) the
cognomen came last and marked the familia. Sometimes there was a
fourth name, properly called the agnomen, but sometimes likewise
cognomen, which was added on account of some illustrious action.

Z2I

122 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

first to cross the straits with a fleet, and drove the Carthagini-
ans from Sicily. Tiberius Nero crushed Hasdrubal, on his ar-
rival from Spain with a vast army, before he could unite with
his brother Hannibal. On the other hand, Claudius Regil-
lianus, Decemvir for codifying the laws, through his lawless at-
tempt to enslave a f reeborn maid, to gratify his passion for her,
was the cause of the second secession of the plebeians from the
patricians. Claudius Russus, having set up his statue at
Forum Appi * with a crown upon its head, tried to take posses-
sion of Italy through his dependents. Claudius Pulcher began
a sea-fight off Sicily, though the sacred chickens would not
eat when he took the auspices, throwing them into the sea in
defiance of the omen, and saying that they might drink, since
they would not eat. He was defeated, and on being bidden by
the Senate to appoint a Dictator, he appointed his messenger
Glycias, as if again making a jest of his country's peril.

The women also have records equally diverse, since both
the famous Claudias belonged to that family: the one who
drew the ship freighted with things sacred to the Idaean
Mother of the Gods 2 from the shoal in the Tiber on which it
was stranded, after first publicly praying that it might yield
to her efforts only if her chastity were beyond question ; and
the one who was convicted by the people of treason, an un-
precedented thing in the case of a woman, because when her
carriage made but slow progress through the throng, she
openly gave vent to the wish that her brother Pulcher might
come to life and lose another fleet, to make less of a crowd
in Rome. It is notorious besides that all the Claudii were aris-
tocrats and staunch upholders of the prestige and influence
of the patricians, with the sole exception of Publius Clodius,
who for the sake of driving Cicero from the city had himself
adopted by a plebeian and one too who was younger than
himself. 8 Their attitude towards the commons was so head-
strong and stubborn that not even when on trial for his life
before the people did any one of them deign to put on mourn-

1 An ancient Latin town in the Via Appia, the present road to Naples.

2 Cybele, a Phrygian goddess worshiped near Mount Ida. In 204
B.C. her cult was introduced into Rome where she was worshiped as
Magna Mater, "Mother of the Gods."

8 Mentioned also in Julius.

TIBERIUS 123

ing or beg for mercy; and some of them during bickerings
and disputes struck the Tribunes of the Commons. A Vestal
Virgin likewise of the family, when her brother was resolved
to have the honor of a triumph contrary to the will of the
people, mounted the chariot with him, and attended him into
the Capitol, in order to make it an act of sacrilege for any one
of the Tribunes to forbid him or interpose his veto.

Such was the stock from which Tiberius Caesar derived his
origin, and that too on both sides: on his father's from Tiberius
Nero; on his mother's from Appius Pulcher, both of whom
were sons of Appius Caecus. He was a member also of the
family of the Livii, through the adoption into it of his mater-
nal grandfather. This family too, though of plebeian origin,
was yet of great prominence and had been honored with eight
consulships, two censorships, and three triumphs, as well as
with the offices of Dictator and Master of the Horse. It was
made illustrious too by distinguished members, in particular
Salinator and the Drusi. The former in his censorship branded
all the tribes l for their inconstancy because having convicted
and fined him after a previous consulship, they made him
Consul a second time and Censor as well. Drusus gained a
surname for himself and his descendants by slaying Drausus,
leader of the enemy, in single combat. It is also said that
when Propraetor he brought back from his province of Gaul
the gold which was paid long before to the Senones, when they
beleaguered the Capitol, and that this had not been wrested
from them by Camillus, as tradition has it. His grandson's
grandson, called "Patron of the Senate" because of his dis-
tinguished services against the Gracchi, left a son who was
treacherously slain by the party of his opponents, while he }
was busily agitating many plans during a similar dissension.

Nero, the father of Tiberius, as Quaestor of Julius Caesar
during the Alexandrian war and commander of a fleet, con-
tributed materially to the victory. For this he was made Pon-
tiff in place of Publius Scipio and sent to conduct colonies to
Gaul, among them Narbonne and Aries. Yet after the murder
of Caesar, when all the others voted for an amnesty through
fear of mob violence, he even favored a proposal for reward-

1 That is, affixed the mark of ignominy to their names on the census
roll.

124 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

ing those who had killed a tyrant, Later on, having held the
praetorship, since a dispute arose among the Triumvirs at the
dose of his term, he retained the badges of his rank beyond
the legitimate time and followed Lucius Antonius, Consul and
brother of the Triumvir, to Perusia. When the others capitu-
lated, he alone held to his allegiance and got away first to
Praeneste and then to Naples; and after vainly trying to en-
list the slaves by a promise of freedom, he took refuge in
Sicily. Piqued however because he was not at once given an
audience with Sextus Pompeius, and was denied the use of
the fasces, he crossed to Achaia and joined Mark Antony.
With him he shortly returned to Rome, on the conclusion of
a general peace, and gave up to Augustus at his request his
wife Livia Drusilla, who was pregnant at the time and had
already borne him a son. 1 Not long afterward he died, sur-
vived by both his sons, Tiberius Nero and Drusus Nero.

Some have supposed that Tiberius was born at Fundi, on
no better evidence than that his maternal grandmother was a
native of that place, and that later a statue of Good Fortune
was set up there by decree of the Senate. But according to
the most numerous and trustworthy authorities, fie was born
at Rome, on the Palatine, the sixteenth day before the Kalends
of December, in the consulship of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus
and Lucius Munatius Plancus (the former for the second
time) while the war of Philippi was going on. In fact it is so
recorded both in the calendar and in the public registers. Yet
in spite of this some write that he was born in the preceding
year, that of Hirtius and Pansa, and others in the following
year, in the consulate of Servilius Isauricus and Lucius An-
tonius.

He passed his infancy and his youth amid hardship and
tribulation, since he was everywhere the companion of his
parents in their flight. At Naples indeed he all but betrayed
them twice by his crying, as they were secretly on their way
to a ship, just as the enemy burst into the town; once when
he was snatched from his nurse's breast, and again from his
mother's arms, by some of the company, who in the sudden
danger tried to relieve the women of their burden. After being

1 For further detail see Augustus.

TIBERIUS * i xa$

taken all over Sicily also and Achaia, and consigned U> the
public care of the Lacedaemonians, because they were depend-
ents of the Claudii, he almost lost his life as he wad leaving
there by night, when the wood5 suddenly took fire all about
them, and the flames so encircled the whole company that
part of Livia's robe and her hair were scorched* The gilts
which were given him in Sicily by Pompeia, si$ter-of Sextus
Pompeius, a cloak and clasp, as well as studs of gold, are still
kept and exhibited at Baiae. Being adopted, after his return
to the city, in the will of Marcus Gallius, a Senator, he ac-
cepted the inheritance, but soon gave up the name, because
Gallius had been a member of the party opposed to Augustus.

At the age of nine he delivered a eulogy of his dead father
from the rostra. Then, just as he was arriving at puberty, he
accompanied the chariot of Augustus in his triumph after
Actium, riding the left trace-horse, while Marcellus, son of
Octavia, rode the one on the right. He presided, too, at the
city festival, and took part in the game of Troy during the
performances in the circus, leading the band of older boys.

The principal events of his youth and later life, from the
time he assumed the gown of manhood to the beginning of
his reign, were these. He gave a gladiatorial show in memory
of his father, and a second in honor of his grandfather Drusus,
at different times and in different places, the former in the
Forum and the latter in the amphitheater, inducing some re-
tired gladiators to appear with the rest by the payment of a
hundred thousand sesterces to each. 1 He also gave stage-plays,
but without being present in person. All these were on a grand
scale, at the expense of his mother and his stepfather. 2

He married Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Agrippa, and
granddaughter of Caecilius Atticus, the Roman Knight to
whom Cicero's letters are addressed; but after he had ac-
knowledged 8 a son from her, Drusus, although she was thor-
oughly congenial and was a second time with child, he was

1 $4,100.00.

2 Livia and Augustus.

8 A child at birth was laid at his father's feet. He then acknowledged
the infant by taking it in his arms. Otherwise he assumed no responsi-
bility for it.

z6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

forced to divorce her and to contract a hurried marriage with
Julia, 1 daughter of Augustus. This caused him no little dis-
tress of mind, for he was living happily with Agrippina, and
disapproved of Julia's character, having perceived that she
had a passion for him even during the lifetime of her former
husband, as was in fact the general opinion. But even after
the divorce he regretted his separation from Agrippina, and
the only time that he chanced to see her, he followed her with
such an intent and tearful gaze that care was taken that she
should never again come before his eyes. With Julia he lived
in harmony at first, and returned her love; but he soon grew
cold, and went so far as to cease to live with her at all, after
the severing of the tie formed by a child which was born to
them, but died at Aquileia in infancy. He lost his brother
Drusus in Germany and brought his body to Rome, going be-
fore it on foot all the way.

He began his civil career by defending King Archelaus, the
people of Tralles, and those of Thessaly, before the judgment
seat of Augustus, the charge in each case being different. He
made a plea to the Senate in behalf of the citizens of Laodicea,
Thyatira, and Chios, who had suffered loss from an earth-
quake and begged for help. Fannius Caepio, who had con-
spired with Varro Murena against Augustus, he arraigned
for high treason and secured his condemnation. In the mean
time he undertook two public charges: that of the grain sup
ply, which, as it happened, was deficient; and the investiga-
tion of the slave-prisons 2 throughout Italy, the owners of
which had gained a bad reputation; for they were charged
with holding in durance not only travelers, but also those
whom dread of military service had driven to such places of
concealment.

His first military service was as Tribune of the soldiers in
the campaign against the Cantabrians. He then led an army
to the Orient and restored the throne of Armenia to Tigranes,
crowning him on the tribunal. He besides recovered the stand-
ards which the Parthians had taken from Marcus Crassus '

1 Scc Augustus. x

8 See also Augustus.
8 But see Augustus.

TIBERIUS 127

Then for about a year he was governor of Gallia Comata, 1
which was in a state of unrest through the inroads of the bar-
barians and the dissensions of its chiefs. Next he carried on
war with the Raeti and Vindelici, then in Pannonia, and finally
in Germany. In the first of these wars he subdued the Alpine
tribes, in the second the Breuci and Dalmatians, and in the
third he brought forty thousand prisoners of war over into
Gaul and assigned them homes near the bank of the Rhine.
Because of these exploits he entered the city both in an ova-
tion and in a triumph having previously, as some think, been
honored with the triumphal regalia, a new kind of distinction
never before conferred upon any one.

He entered upon the offices of Quaestor, Praetor, and Con-
sul before the usual age, and held them almost successively.
After an interval he was made Consul again, at the same time
receiving the tribunicial power for five years.

At the flood-tide of success, though in the prime of life and
health, he suddenly decided to go into retirement and to
withdraw as far as possible from the center of the stage. It is
uncertain whether this was from disgust at his wife, whom he
dared neither accuse nor put away, though he could no longer
endure her; or from hope by avoiding the contempt born of
familiarity to support and augment his prestige by absence,
in case his country should ever need him. Some think that,
since the children of Augustus were now of age, he volun-
tarily gave up the position and the virtual assumption of the
second rank which he had long held, thus following the ex-
ample of Marcus Agrippa, who withdrew to Mytilene when
Marcellus began his public career, so that he might not seem
either to oppose or belittle him by his presence. This was, in
fact, the reason which Tiberius himself gave, but afterwards.
At the time he asked for leave of absence on the ground of
weariness of office and a desire to rest. Neither his mother's
urgent entreaties nor the complaint which his stepfather
openly made in the Senate, could alter his resolution. On the
contrary, when they made more strenuous efforts to detain
him, he refused to take food for four days. Being at last al-

i Transalpine Gaul was called Comata, "long-haired"; the southern
part, Braccata, "breeches-wearing," and Cisalpine Gaul, Togata, "toga-
wearing."

ia8 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

lowed to depart, he left his wife* and son m Rome and went
down to Ostia l in haste, without saying a single word to any
of those who saw him off, and kissing only a very few when
he left.

From Ostia he coasted along the shore of Campania, and
learning of an indisposition of Augustus, he stopped for a
while. But since gossip was rife that he was lingering on the
chance of realizing his highest hopes, although the wind was
all but dead ahead, he sailed directly to Rhodes, for he had
been attracted by the charm and healthfulness of that island
ever since the time when he put in there on his return from
Armenia. Content there with a modest house and a villa in
the suburbs not much more spacious, he adopted a most un-
assuming manner of life, at times walking in the gymnasium
without a Lictor or a messenger, and exchanging courtesies
with the good people of Greece almost as though he were one
of them.

It chanced one morning in arranging his program for the
day, that he had announced his wish to visit whatever sick
folk there were in the city. This was misunderstood by his
attendants, and orders were given that all the sick should be
taken to a public portico and arranged according to the nature
of their complaints. Whereupon Tiberius, shocked at this
unexpected sight, and in doubt for some time what to do,
at last went about to each one, apologizing for what had hap-
pened even to the humblest and most obscure of them.

One instance only was noticed in which he appeared to ex-
ercise his tribunicial authority. He was a constant attendant
at the schools and lecture-rooms of the professors of philoso-
phy, and once when a hot dispute had arisen among rival
sophists, a fellow had the audacity to ply him with abuse
when he took part and appeared to favor one side. Thereupon
he gradually backed away to his house, and then suddenly
coming out with his Lictors and attendants, and bidding his
crier to summon the foul-mouthed fellow before his tribunal,
he ordered them to take him off to prison.

Shortly after this he learned that his wife Julia had been
banished because of her immorality and adulteries, and that

i Ostia, the port of Rome, about 13 miles from the city.

TIBERIUS 129

a bill of divorce had been sent her in his name by authority of
Augustus. Welcome as this news was, he yet considered it his
duty to make every possible effort in numerous letters to
reconcile the father to his daughter; and, regardless of her
deserts, to allow her to keep any gifts which he had himself
made her at any time. Moreover, when the term of his tri-
bunicial power was at an end, at last admitting that the sole
object of his retirement had been to avoid the suspicion of
rivalry with Gaius and Lucius, he asked that inasmuch as
he was free from care in that icgard, since they were now
grown up and had an undisputed claim on the succession, he
be allowed to visit his relatives, whom he sorely missed. But
his request was denied and he was besides admonished to
give up all thought of his kindred, whom he had so eagerly
abandoned.

Accordingly he remained in Rhode? against his will, hav-
ing with difficulty through his mothers aid secured permis-
sion that, while away from Rome, he should have the title of
envoy of Augustus, so as to conceal hi* disgrace.

Then in very truth he lived not only in private, but even
in danger and fear, secluded in the country away from the
sea, and shunning the attentions of those who sailed that way.
These, however, were constantly thrust on bira, since no gen-
eral or magistrate who was on his way to any province failed
to put in at Rhodes. He had besides reasons for still greater
anxiety. For when he had crossed the Samos to visit his
stepson Gaius, who had been made Governor of the Orient,
he found him somewhat estranged through the slanders of
Marcus Lollius, a member of Gaius' staff and his guardian. He
also incurred the suspicion of having through some centurions
of his appointment, who were returning to camp after a fur-
lough, sent messages to several persons which were of an am-
biguous character and apparently designed to incite them to
revolution. On being informed by Augustus of this suspicion,
he unceasingly demanded the appointment of some one, of
any rank whatsoever, to keep watch over his actions and
words.

He also gave up his usual exercises with horses and arms,
and laying aside the garb of his country, took to the Greek
iress. In this state he continued for upwards of two years,

130 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

becoming daily an object of greater contempt and aversion.
This went so far that the citizens of Nemausus x threw down
his statues and busts, and when mention was once made of
him at a private dinner party, a man got up and assured Gaius
that if he would say the word, he would at once take ship for
Rhodes and bring back the head of "the exile," as he was
commonly called. It was this act especially, which made his
position no longer one of mere fear but of actual peril, that
drove Tiberius to sue for his recall with most urgent prayers,
in which he was joined by his mother. And he obtained it, al-
though partly owing to a fortunate chance. Augustus had re-
solved to come to no decision on the question which was not
agreeable to his elder son, 2 who, as it happened, was at the
time somewhat at odds with Marcus Lollius, and accordingly
ready to lend an ear to his stepfather's prayers. With his con-
sent therefore Tiberius was recalled, but on the understanding
that he should take no part or active interest in public affairs.

So he returned in the eighth year after his retirement, with
that strong and unwavering confidence in his destiny, which
he had conceived from his early years because of omens and
predictions.

When Livia was with child with him, and was trying to
divine by various omens whether she would bring forth a
male, she took an egg from under a setting-hen, and when
she had warmed it in her own hand and those of her atten-
dants in turn, a cock with a fine crest was hatched. In his in-
fancy the astrologer Scribonius promised him an illustrious
career and even that he would one day be King, but without
the crown of royalty, for at that time of course the rule of the
Caesars was as yet unheard of. Again, on his first campaign,
when he was leading an army through Macedonia into Syria,
it chanced that at Philippi the altars consecrated in bygone
days by the victorious legions gleamed of their own accord
with sudden fires. When later, on his way to Illyricum, he
visited the oracle of Geryon near Patavium, and drew a lot
which advised him to seek an answer to his inquiries by
throwing golden dice into the fount of Aponus, it came to pass

1 In Gallia Comata, where Tiberius had been governor. Now Nfmes.
His grandson Gaius, the same mentioned just above, eldest ion of
his daughter Julia by Agrippa.

TIBERIUS 131

that the dice which he threw showed the highest possible num-
ber and even to-day those very dice may be seen under the
water. A few days before his recall an eagle, a bird never be-
fore seen in Rhodes, perched upon the roof of his house and
the day before he was notified that he might return, as he was
changing his clothes, his tunic appeared to be all on fire.
It was just at this time that he was convinced of the powers of
the astrologer Thrasyllus, whom he had attached to his house-
hold as an adept in the art. For, as soon as he caught sight
of the ship, Thrasyllus declared that it brought good news.
This happened at the very moment when Tiberius had made
up his mind to push the man off into the sea as they were
strolling together, believing him a false prophet and too hastily
made the confidant of his secrets, because things were turn-
ing out adversely and contrary to his predictions.

On his return to Rome, after introducing his son Drusus
to public life, he at once moved from Pompey's house in the
Carinae district to the gardens of Maecenas on the Esquiline,
where he led a very retired life, merely attending to his per-
sonal affairs and exercising no public functions.

When Gaius and Lucius died within three years, he, along
with their brother Marcus Agrippa, was adopted by Augustus,
being himself first compelled to adopt his nephew Germanicus.
From that time on he ceased to act as the head of a family,
or to retain in any particular the privileges which he had given
up. For he neither made gifts nor freed slaves, and he did not
even receive any estate left him by will, or any legacy without
reckoning it as part of his property held under his father.
From this time on nothing was left undone which could add
to his prestige, especially after the disowning and banishment
of Agrippa made it clear that the hope of the succession lay in
him alone.

He was given the tribunicial power for a second term of
three years, the duty of subjugating Germany was assigned
him, and the envoys of the Parthians, after presenting their
instructions to Augustus in Rome, were bidden to appear also
before him in his province. But when the revolt of Illyricum
Was reported, he was transferred to the charge of a new war,
the most serious of all foreign wars since those with Carthage,
which he carried on for three years with fifteen legions and a

132 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

corresponding force of auxiliaries, amid great difficulties of
every kind and the utmost scarcity of supplies. But though
he was often recalled, he none the less kept on, for fear that
the enemy, who were close at hand and very strong, might
assume the offensive if the Romans gave ground. He reaped
an ample reward for his perseverance, for he completely sub-
dued and reduced to submission the whole of Illyricum, which
is bounded by Italy and the kingdom of Noricum, by Thrace
and Macedonia, by the Danube, and by the Adriatic sea.

Circumstances gave this exploit a larger and crowning
glory; for it was at just about that time that Quintilius Varus
perished with three legions in Germany, and no one doubted
that the victorious Germans would have united with the PaD-
nonians, had not Illyricum been subdued first. Consequently
a triumph was voted him and many high honors. Some also
recommended that he be given the surname of Pannonicus,
others of Invictus, others of Pius. Augustus, however, vetoed
the surname, reiterating the promise that Tiberius would be
satisfied with the one which he would receive at his father's
death. Tiberius himself put off the triumph, because the coun-
try was in mourning for the disaster to Varus. But he entered
the city clad in the purple-bordered toga and crowned with
laurel, and mounting a tribunal which had been set up in the
Saepta, while the Senate stood alongside, he took his seat
beside Augustus between the two Consuls. Having greeted
the people from this position, he was escorted to the various
temples.

The next year he returned to Germany, and realizing that
the disaster to Varus was due to that general's rashness an4
lack of care, he took no step without the approval of a coun-
cil. Whereas he had always before been a man of independent
judgment and self-reliance, at this time, contrary to his habit,
he consulted with many advisers about the conduct of the
campaign. He also observed more scrupulous care than usual.
When on the point of crossing the Rhine, he reduced all the
baggage to a prescribed limit, and would not start without
standing on the bank and inspecting the loads of the wagons,
to make sure that nothing was taken except what was allowed
or necessary. Once on the other side, he adopted the follow-
ing manner of life: he took his meals sitting on the bare turf,

TIBERITT-S *33

of tea passed the night without a tent, and gave all his orders
for the following day, as well as notice of any sudden emer-
gency, in writing; adding the injunction that if any one was
in doubt about any matter, he was to consult him personally
at any hour whatsoever, even of the night.

He required the strictest discipline, reviving bygone meth-
ods of punishment and ignominy, and even degrading the
commander of a legion for sending a few soldiers across the
river to accompany one of his freedmen on a hunting expedi-
tion. Although he left very little to fortune and chance he
entered battles with considerably greater confidence whenever
it happened that, as he was working at night, his lamp sud-
denly and without human agency died down and went out;
trusting, as he used to say, to an omen in which he had great
confidence, since both he and his ancestors had found it trust-
worthy in all of their campaigns. Yet in the very hour of
victory he narrowly escaped assassination by one of the Bruc-
teri, who got access to him among his attendants, but was de-
'ected through his nervousness; whereupon a confession of
ftis intended crime was wrung from him by torture.

After two years he returned to the city from Germany and
celebrated the triumph which he had postponed, accompanied
also by his generals, for whom he had obtained the triumphal
regalia. And before turning to enter the Capitol, he dis-
mounted from his chariot and fell at the knees of his father,
who was presiding over the ceremonies. He sent Bato, the
leader of the Pannonians, to Ravenna, 1 after presenting him
with rich gifts; thus showing his gratitude to him for allowing
him to escape when he was trapped with his army in a danger-
ous place. Then he gave a banquet to the people at a thousand
tables, and a largess of three hundred sesterces 2 to every man.
With the proceeds of his spoils he restored and dedicated the
temple of Concord, as well as that of Pollux and Castor, in his
own name and that of his brother.

Since the Consuls caused a law to be passed soon after this
that he should govern the provinces jointly with Augustus and
hold the census with him, he set out for Illyricum on the con*

1 Ordinarily the leaders of the enemy were strangled in the dungeon
at the loot' of the Capitolinc Hill. r

2 $12. 30.

134 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

elusion of the lustral ceremonies. 1 But he was at once recalled,
and finding Augustus in his last illness but still alive, he spent
an entire day with him in private.

I know that it is commonly believed, that when Tiberius
left the room after this confidential talk, Augustus was over-
heard by his chamberlains to say: "Alas for the Roman peo-
ple, to be ground by jaws that crunch so slowly!" I also am
aware that some have written that Augustus so openly and
unreservedly disapproved of the sourness of his manner that
he sometimes broke off his freer and lighter conversation
when Tiberius appeared; but that overcome by his wife's
entreaties he did not reject his adoption, or perhaps was even
led by selfish considerations, that with such a successor he
himself might one day be more regretted. But after all I can-
not be led to believe that an Emperor of the utmost prudence
and foresight acted without consideration, especially in a
matter of so great moment. It is my opinion that after weigh-
ing the faults and the merits of Tiberius, he decided that the
latter preponderated, especially since he took oath before the
people that he was adopting Tiberius for the good of the
country, and alludes to him in several letters as a most able
general and the sole defense of the Roman people. In illustra-
tion of both these points, I append a few extracts from these
letters.

"Fare thee well, Tiberius, most charming of men, and suc-
cess go with you, as you war for me and for the Muses. Fare
thee well, most charming and valiant of men and most con-
scientious of generals, or may I never know happiness."

"I have only praise for the conduct of your summer cam-
paigns, dear Tiberius, and I am sure that no one could have
acted with better judgment than you did amid so many diffi-
culties and such apathy of your army. All who were with you
agree that the well-known verses could be applied to you:

"One man alone by watchful sight
Our tottering state hath set upright." *

*See Augustus.

3 From Ennius' Annalium V, 370, with one word changed by Augus*
tus to make it more applicable in this case.

TIBERIUS 135

"If anything comes up that calls for careful thought, or if
I am vexed at anything, so help me the God of Truth, I
long mightily for my dear Tiberius, and the lines of Honwr
come to my mind:

"Let him but bear me company,

So prudent, he, and sage,
And home we'll come, both he and I

Though flames about us rage." I

"When I hear and read that you are worn out by constant
hardships, may the Gods confound me if my own body does
not wince in sympathy. So I beseech you to spare yourself,
that the news of your illness may not kill your mother and
me, and endanger the Roman people in the person of their
future ruler."

"It matters not whether I am well or not, if you are not
well."

"I pray the Gods to preserve you to us and to grant you
good health now and forever, if they do not utterly hate the
people of Rome."

Tiberius did not make the death of Augustus public until
the young Agrippa had been disposed of. The latter was slain
by a Tribune of the soldiers appointed to guard him, who re-
ceived a letter in which he was bidden to do the deed. But it
is not known whether Augustus left this letter when he died,
to remove a future source of discord, or whether Livia wrote
it herself in the name of her husband; and in the latter case,
whether it was with or without the connivance of Tiberius.
At all events, when the Tribune reported that he had done his
bidding, Tiberius replied that he had given no such order, and
that the man must render an account to the Senate. Appar-
ently he was trying to avoid odium at the time, for later his
silence consigned the matter to oblivion.

When, however, by virtue of his tribunicial power, he had
convened the Senate and had begun to address it, he suddenly
groaned aloud, as if overcome by grief, and with the wish
that not only his voice, but his life as well might leave him,

1 Iliad, X, 246. Diomede is speaking of Ulysses, where he asks that
he may accompany him as a spy into the Trojan camp.

vjtt THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

handed the written speech to his son Drusus to finish. Then
bringing in the will of Augustus, he had it read by a freedman,
admitting of the signers only such as were of the senatorial
order, while the others acknowledged their seals outside the
House. The will began thus: "Since a cruel fate has bereft me
of my sons Gaius and Lucius, be Tiberius Caesar heir to two-
thirds of my estate." These words in themselves added to the
suspicion of those who believed that he had named Tiberius
his successor from necessity rather than from choice, since
he allowed himself to write such a preamble.

Though Tiberius did not hesitate at once to assume and to
exercise the imperial authority, surrounding himself with a
guard of soldiers, that is, with the actual power and the out-
ward sign of sovereignty, yet he long refused the title, at one
time with barefaced hypocrisy upbraiding his friends who
urged him to accept it, saying that they did not realize what
a monster the empire was, at another by evasive answers ancj
calculating hesitancy keeping the Senators in suspense when
they implored him to yield, and fell at his feet. Finally, some
lost patience, and one man cried out in the confusion: "Let
him take it or leave it." Another openly voiced the taunt that
others were slow in doing what they promised, but that he
was slow to promise what he was already doing. At last, as
though on compulsion, and complaining that a wretched and
burdensome slavery was being forced upon him, he accepted
the empire, but in such fashion as to suggest the hope that he
would one day lay it down. His own words are: "Until I come
to the time when it may seem right to you to grant an old
man some repose."

The cause of his hesitation was fear of the dangers which
threatened him on every hand, and often led him to say that
be was "holding a wolf by the ears." l For a slave of Agrippa,
Clemens by name, had collected a band of no mean size to
avenge his master; Lucius Scribonius Libo, one of the nobles,
was secretly plotting a revolution; and a mutiny of the sol-
diers broke out in two places, Illyricum and Germany. Both
armies demanded numerous special privileges, particularly,
that they should receive the same pay as the praetorian sol-

1 A Greek provexb.

TIBERIUS 137

diers. The army in Germany was, besides, reluctant to accept
an Emperor who was not HS own choice, and with the greatest
urgency besought Germanicus, their commander at the time,
to assume the purple, in spite of his positive refusal. It was
fear of this possibility in particular which led him to request
the Senate to assign him any part in the administration that
it might please them, saying that no one man could bear the
whole burden without a colleague, or even several colleagues.
He also feigned ill-health, to induce Germanicus to wait with
more patience for a speedy succession, or at least for a share
in the sovereignty. The mutinies were put down, and he also
got Clemens into his power, outwitting him by stratagem.
Not until his second year did he finally arraign Libo in the
Senate, fearing to take any severe measures before his power
was secure, being content in the meantime with taking pre-
cautions for his own security. Thus when Libo was offering
sacrifice with him among the Pontiffs, instead of the usual
knife he ordered one of lead to be given him; and when he
asked for a private interview, Tiberius would not grant it
except with his son Drusus present, and as long as the con-
ference lasted he held fast to Libo's right arm, under pre-
tence of leaning on it as they walked together.

Once relieved of fear, he at first played a most unassum-
ing part, almost humbler than that of a private citizen. Of
many high honors he accepted only a few of the more modest.
He barely consented to allow his birthday, which came at
the time of the Plebeian games in the Circus, to be recognized
by the addition of a single two-horse chariot. He forbade the
voting of temples, flamens, and priests in his honor, and even
the setting up of statues and busts without his permission;
and this he gave only with the understanding that they were
not to be placed among the likenesses of the Gods, but among
the adornments of the temples. He would not allow an oath
to be taken ratifying his acts, nor the name Tiberius to be
given to the month of September, or that of Livia to October.
He also declined the forename Imperator, the surname of
Father of his Country, and the placing of the civic crown x
at his door. He did not even use the title of Augustus in any

* See Julius.

Sjg THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

letters except those to Kings and potentates, although it was
his by inheritance. He held but three consulships after be-
coming Emperor: one for a few days, a second for three
months, and a third, during his absence from the city, until
the Ides of May.

He so loathed flattery that he would not allow any Senator
to approach his litter, either to pay his respects or on business,
and when an ex-consul in apologizing to him attempted to em-
brace his knees, he drew back in such haste that he fell over
backward. In fact, if any one in conversation or in a set speech
spoke of him in too flattering terms, he did not hesitate to
interrupt him, to take him to task, and to correct his language
on the spot. Being once called "Lord," * he warned the speaker
not to address him again in an insulting fashion. When another
spoke of his "sacred duties/' and still another said that he
appeared before the Senate "by the Emperor's authority,"
he forced them to change their language, substituting "ad-
vice" for "authority" and "laborious" for "sacred."

More than that, he was self-contained and patient in the
face of abuse and slander, and of lampoons on himself and his
family, often asserting that in a free country there should be
free speech and free thought. When the Senate on one occa-
sion demanded that cognizance be taken of such offenses and
those guilty of them, he said: "We have not enough spare
time to warrant involving ourselves in more affairs. If you
open this loophole you will find no time for any other busi-
ness. It will be an excuse for laying everybody's quarrels be-
fore you." A most unassuming remark of his in the Senate
is also a matter of record: "If so and so criticizes me I shall
take care to render an account of my acts and words; if he
persist, I shall return him in kind."

All this was the more noteworthy, because in addressing
and in paying his respects to the Senators individually and
as a body he himself almost exceeded the requirements of
courtesy. In a disagreement with Quintius Haterius in the
House, he said: "I crave your pardon, if in my capacity as
Senator I use too free language in opposing you." Then ad-
dressing the whole body: "I say now and have often said

1 See Augustus.

TIBERIUS 131)

before, Fathers of the Senate, that a well-disposed and help*
ful prince, to whom you have given such great and unre-
strained power, ought to be the servant of the Senate, often
of the citizens as a whole, and sometimes of individuals. I do
not regret my words, but I have looked upon you as kind,
just, and indulgent masters, 1 and still so regard you."

He even introduced a semblance of free government by
maintaining the ancient dignity and powers of the Senate and
the magistrates. For there was no matter of public or private
business so small or so great that he did not lay it before the
Senators, consulting them about revenues and monopolies, 2
constructing and restoring public buildings, even about levy-
ing and disbanding the soldiers, and the disposal of the legion-
aries and auxiliaries; finally about the extension of military
commands and appointments to the conduct of wars, and the
form and content of his replies to the letters of Kings. He
forced the commander of a troop of horse, when charged with
violence and robbery, to plead his cause before the Senate.
He always entered the House alone. Once when he was taken
there in a litter because of illness he dismissed his attendants
at the door.

When certain decrees were passed contrary to his expressed
opinion, he did not even remonstrate. Although he declared
that those who were elected to office ought to remain in the
city and give personal attention to their duties, a Praetor-
elect obtained permission to travel abroad with the privileges
of an Ambassador. On another occasion when he recommended
that the people of Trebia be allowed to use, in making a road,
a sum of money which had been left them for the construction
of a new theater, he could not prevent the wish of the testator
from being carried out. Once, when the Senate was divided
and the act might pass by the difference of a few votes he
went over to the side of the minority, but not a man followed
him.

Other business as well was done solely through the magis-
trates and the ordinary process of law, while the importance
of the Consuls was so great that certain envoys from Africa

1 Using the term by which a slave addressed his owner.

2 Grants to an individual or a company of an exclusive right to stB
Certain commodities.

Uo THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

presented themselves before them with the complaint that
they could not have their affairs attended to by Caesar, to
whom they had been sent. And no wonder: since it was ob-
served that he himself actually arose in the presence of the
Consuls, and made way for them on the street.

He rebuked some ex-consuls in command of armies, be-
cause they did not write their reports to the Senate, and for
referring to him the award of some military prizes, 1 as if they
had not themselves the right to bestow everything of the kind.
He highly complimented a Praetor, because on entering upon
his office he had revived the custom of eulogizing his ances-
tors before the people. He attended the obsequies of certain
distinguished men, even going to the funeral-pyre.

He showed equal modesty towards persons of lower rank
and in matters of less moment. When he had summoned the
magistrates of Rhodes, because they had written him letters
on public business without the concluding formula, 2 he uttered
not a word of censure, but merely dismissed them with or-
ders to supply the omission. The grammarian Diogenes, who
used to lecture every Sabbath, 8 at Rhodes, would not admit
Tiberius when he came to hear him on a different day, but
sent a message by a common slave of his, putting him off to
the seventh day. When this man waited before the Emperor's
door at Rome to pay his respects, Tiberius took no further
revenge than to bid him return seven years later. To the gov-
ernors who recommended burdensome taxes for his provinces,
he wrote in answer that it was the part of a good shepherd to
shear his flock, not skin it.

Little by little he unmasked the ruler, and although for
some time his conduct was variable, yet he more often showed
himself kindly and devoted to the public weal. His interven-
tion too was at first limited to the prevention of abuses. Thus
he revoked some regulations of the Senate and sometimes of-
fered the magistrates his services as adviser, when they sat
in judgment on the tribunal, taking his place beside them or

1 Compare with Augustus' chary bestowal of military prizes.

2 Which consisted of prayers for the Emperor's welfare.

8 Calling the seventh day of the week (Saturday) by the Jewish
term "Sabbath" seems to have been common.

TIBERIUS 341

opposite them at one end of the platform; and iMt was ru-.
mored that any of the accused were being acquitted through
influence, he would suddenly appear, and either from the floor
or from the judge's tribunal remind the jurors of the laws and
of their oath, as well as of the nature of the crime on which
they were sitting in judgment. Moreover, if the public morals
were in any way affected by laziness or bad habits he under-
took to reform them.

He reduced the cost of the games and shows by cutting
down the pay of the actors and limiting the pairs of gladiators
to a fixed number. Complaining bitterly that the prices of
Corinthian bronze vessels had risen to an immense figure and
that three mullets 1 had been sold for thirty thousand ses-
terces 2 he proposed that a limit be set to household furniture
and that the prices in the market should be regulated each
year at the discretion of the Senate. And the Aediles were
instructed to put such restrictions on cook-shops and eating-
houses as not to allow even pastry to be exposed for sale.
Furthermore, to encourage general frugality by his personal
example, he often served at formal dinners meats left over
from the day before and partly consumed, or the half of a
boar, declaring that it had all the qualities of a whole one.

He issued an edict forbidding general kissing, as well as the
exchange of New Year's gifts 8 after the Kalends of January,
It was his custom to return a gift four times the value of ths
one received, and in person; but annoyed at being interrupted
all through the month by those who did not have access to
him on the holiday, he did not continue it.

He revived the custom of our forefathers, that in the ab-
sence of a public prosecutor wives of ill-repute be punished
according to the decision of a council of their relatives. He
absolved a Roman Knight from his oath and allowed him to
put away his wife, who was taken in adultery with her son-
in-law, even though he had previously sworn that he would
never divorce her. Notorious women 'had begun to make ati
open profession of prostitution, to avoid the punishment oj

i A fish much esteemed as food.
' 2 $1,230.00.
8 Given for good luck.

i 4 3 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

the laws by giving up the privileges and rank of matrons/
while the most profligate young men of both orders voluntarily
incurred degradation from their rank, so as not to be pre-
vented by the decree of the Senate from appearing on the
stage and in the arena. All such men and women he punished
with exile, to prevent any one from shielding himself by such
a device. He deprived a Senator of his broad stripe on learn-
ing that he had moved into his gardens just before the
Kalends of July, 2 with the design of renting a house in the city
at a lower figure after that date. He deposed another from his
quaestorship, because he had taken a wife the day before cast-
ing lots and divorced her the day after.

He abolished foreign cults, especially the Egyptian and the
Jewish rites, compelling all who were addicted to such super-
stitions to burn their religious vestments and all their para-
phernalia. Those of the Jews who were of military age he
assigned to provinces of less healthy climate, ostensibly to
serve in the army. Others of the same race or of similar beliefs
he banished from the city, on pain of slavery for life if they
did not obey. He banished the astrologers as well, but par-
doned such as begged for indulgence and promised to give up
their art.

He gave special attention to securing the public peace
against lawless persons, prowling brigands, and those who
were disaffected to the government. He stationed garrisons
of soldiers nearer together than before throughout Italy,
while at Rome he established a camp for the barracks of
the praetorian cohorts, which before that time had been
quartered in isolated groups in divers lodging houses.

He took great pains to prevent outbreaks of the populace
and punished such as occurred with the utmost severity.
When a quarrel in the theater ended in bloodshed, he ban-
ished the leaders of the factions, as well as the actors who
were the cause of the dissension; and no entreaties of the
people could ever induce him to recall them. When the popu-
lace of Pollentia would not allow the body of a Chief-Cen-

1 Augustus had made the punishments for adultery very severe. To
escape these some matrons sacrificed their rights and responsibilities by
registering with the Aediles as prostitutes.

2 July xst was the day for renewing rents; "moving-day."

TIBERIUS 143

turion to be taken from the Forum until their violence had
extorted money from his heirs for a gladiatorial show, he dis*
patched one cohort from the city and another from the king-
dom of Cottius, concealing the reason for the move, sent them
into the city by different gates, suddenly revealing tkeir arms
and sounding their trumpets, and consigned the greater part
of the populace and of the Decurions x to life imprisonment.
He abolished the customary right of asylum * in all parts of
the empire. Because the people of Cyzicus ventured to commit
acts of special lawlessness against Roman citizens, he took
from them the freedom which they had earned in the war
with Mithridates.

He undertook no campaign after his accession, but quelled
outbreaks of the enemy through his generals; and even this
he did only reluctantly and of necessity. Such Kings as were
disaffected and objects of his suspicion he held in check
rather by threats and remonstrances than by force; some he
lured to Rome by flattering promises and detained there,
such as Marobodus the German, Rhascuporis the Thracian,
and Archelaus of Cappadocia, whose realm he also reduced
to the form of a province.

For two whole years after becoming Emperor he did not
set foot outside the gates. After that he went nowhere except
to the neighboring towns, at farthest to Antium, 8 and even
that very seldom and for a few days at a time. Yet he often
gave out that he would visit the provinces too and the armies,
and nearly every year he made preparations for a journey by
chartering carriages and arranging for supplies in the free
towns and colonies. Finally he allowed vows to be put up
for his voyage and return, so that at last everybody jokingly
gave him the name of Callippides, who was proverbial among
the Greeks for running without getting ahead a cubit's
length. 4

1 Members of the local Senate.

3 Criminals frequently took refuge in temples or other holy places
wbere all were immune from arrest.

8 A favorite resort of the Emperors on the coast about 30 miles from
Rome. The statue known as the Apollo Belvedere was found in its
ruin?.

* This reference is to an Athenian dawn who imitated the movement!
of running but remained in the same spot.

144 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

But after being bereft of both his sons, Germanicus 1
had died in Syria and Drusus 2 at Rome,* he retired to Cam**
pania, and almost every one firmly believed and openly de-
clared that he would never come back, but would soon die
there. And both predictions were all but fulfilled; for he did
not return again to Rome, and it chanced a few days later
that as he was dining near Tarracina in a villa called the
Grotto, many huge rocks fell from the ceiling and crushed
a number of the guests and servants, while the Emperor him-
self had a narrow escape.

After traversing Campania and dedicating the Capitolium
at Capua and a temple to Augustus at Nola, which was the
pretext he had given for his journey, he went to Capri, par-
ticularly attracted to that island because it was accessible by
only one small beach, being everywhere else girt with sheer
cliffs of great height and by deep water. But he was at once
recalled by the constant entreaties of the people, because of
a disaster at Fidenae, where more than twenty thousand
spectators had perished through the collapse of the amphi-
theater during a gladiatorial show. So he crossed to the main-
land and made himself accessible to all, the more willingly
because he had given orders on leaving the city that no one
was to disturb him, and during the whole trip had repulsed
those who tried to approach him.

Then returning to the island, he utterly neglected the con-
duct of state affairs, from that time on never filling the va-
cancies in the Decuries of the Knights, nor changing the
Tribunes of the soldiers and Prefects or the Governors of any
of his provinces. He left Spain and Syria without consular
Governors for several years, suffered Armenia to be overrun
by the Parthians, Moesia to be laid waste by the Dacians
and Sarmatians, and the Gallic provinces by the Germans, to
the great dishonor of the empire and no less to its danger.

1 Adopted son of Tiberius, natural son of Drusus, Tiberius' brother.
Tiberius was suspected of having caused Germanicus, a general greatly
loved by the people, to be poisoned. For more of Germanicus see be-
low and Caligula.

2 Drusus (Tiberius' own son by his first wife Vipsania) was also
poisoned, by his own wife and her paramour Sejanus, Tiberius' minister,
who aspired to supreme power.

TIBERIUS 14$

Moreover, having gained the license of privacy, and being
as it were out of sight of the citizens, he at last gave free rein
at once to all the vices which he had for a long time ill con-
cealed. Of these I shall give a detailed account from the
beginning. Even at the outset of his military career his ex-
cessive love of wine gave him the name of Biberius, instead
of Tiberius, Caldius for Claudius, and Mero for Nero. 1 Later,
when Emperor and at the very time that he was busy cor-
recting the public morals, he spent a night and two whole
days feasting and drinking with Pomponius Flaccus and
Lucius Piso, immediately afterward making the one Gov-
ernor of the province of Syria and the other Prefect of the
city, and even declaring in their commissions that they were
the most agreeable of friends, who could always be counted
on. He had a dinner given him by Cestius Callus, a lustful
and prodigal old man, who had once been degraded by Augus-
tus and whom he had himself rebuked a few days before in
the Senate, making the condition that Cestius should change
or omit none of his usual customs, and that nude girls should
wait upon them at table. He gave a very obscure candidate
for the quaestorship preference over men of the noblest
families, because at the Emperor's challenge he had drained
an amphora 2 of wine at a banquet. He paid Asellius Sabinus
two hundred thousand sesterces 3 for a dialogue, in which he
had introduced a contest of a mushroom, a fig-pecker, an
oyster and a thrush. He established a new office, Master of
the Imperial Pleasures, assigning it to Titus Caesonius Pris-
cus, a Roman Knight.

In his retreat at Capri there was a room devised by him
dedicated to the most arcane lusts. Here he had assembled
from all quarters girls and perverts, whom he called Spintriae,
who invented monstrous feats of lubricity, and defiled one
another before him, interlaced in series of threes, in order
to inflame his feeble appetite. He also had several other
rooms variously adapted to his lusts, decorated with paint-
ings and bas-reliefs depicting scenes of the most lascivious

1 Coined from bibo, to drink, calidus, hot, and merum, strong wine

2 An amphora held about seven gallons I
* $8,200.00.

I 4 6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

character,, and supplied with the books of Elephantis, 1 that
no one should lack a model for the execution of any lustful
act he was ordered to perform. Different places in the groves
and woods he also consecrated to venery, so that young peo-
ple like Pans and Nymphs lay strewn over hill and valley.
People, punning on the name of the island, openly and com*
monly called him capret.

Still more flagrant and brazen was another sort of infamy
which he practiced, one that may scarce be told, much less
believed. He taught children of the most tender years, whom
he called his little fishes, to play between his legs while he
was in his bath. Those which had not yet been weaned, but
were strong and hearty, he set at fellatio, the sort of sport
best adapted to his inclination and age. When a painting
by Parrhasius in which Atalanta was represented as doing
as much to Meleager was willed him with the provision that
if the subject was offensive to him he was to receive a million
sesterces 2 instead, he not only chose the picture, but hung
it in his bedroom as though it were a sacred object. It is also
said that one day during a sacrifice he was so smitten by the
beauty of a boy who swung a censer that he was hardly able
to wait till the rites were over before taking him aside and
abusing him as well as his brother who was playing the flute;
and that soon afterwards he had the legs of both of them
broken because they were reproaching each other with the
disgrace.

How grossly he was in the habit of abusing women even
of high birth is very clearly shown by the death of a certain
Mallonia. When she was brought to his bed and most reso-
lutely refused to submit to his unnatural lust, he turned her
over to the informers. Even when she was on trial he did not
cease to call out and ask her "whether she was not sorry,"
until she left the court, hastened home and stabbed herself,
having openly upbraided the vile old lecher with his filthy
and beastly mouth. Hence a stigma put upon him at the next
plays in an Atellan farce was received with great applause
and became current, that "the old goat lapped the caprets."

* A Greek poetess of amatory verse, cited by Martial. She is supposed
to have written a book on postures,
2 $41,000.00.

TIBERIUS 147

He was so niggardly and covetous that he never allowed
the companions of his foreign tours and campaigns a salary,
but merely their keep. Only once did he treat them liberally,
and then through the generosity of his stepfather, when he
formed three classes according to each man's rank and gave
to the first six hundred thousand sesterces, to the second
four hundred thousand, and to the third, two hundred thou-
sand, which last class he called not friends, but his Greeks. 1

While Emperor he constructed no magnificent public
works, for the only ones which he undertook, the temple of
Augustus and the restoration of Pompey's theater, he left,
after so many years, unfinished. He gave no public shows at
all, and very seldom attended those given by others, for fear
that some request would be made of him, especially after
he was forced to buy the freedom of a comic actor named
Actius. Having relieved the poverty of a few Senators, he
avoided the necessity of further aid by declaring that he
would help no others unless they proved to the Senate that
there were legitimate causes for their condition. Therefore
diffidence and a sense of shame kept many from applying,
among them Hortalus, grandson of Quintus Hortensius the
orator, who though of very limited means had begotten four
children with the encouragement of Augustus.

He showed generosity to the public in but two instances,
once when he offered to lend a hundred million sesterces
without interest for a period of three years, and again when
he made good the losses of some owners of blocks of houses
on the Caelian Mount, which had burned down. The first
was forced upon him by the clamor of the people for help in
a time of great financial stress, after he had failed to relieve
the situation by a decree of the Senate, providing that the
money-lenders should advance two-thirds of their capital on
land, and that debtors should pay at once the same propor-
tion of their indebtedness; and yet the thing was not put
through. The second also was to relieve a condition of great
hardship. Yet he made so much of his liberality in the latter
case, that he had the name of the Caelian changed to the

1 There is more about them later in this section.

148 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Augustan Mount. 1 After he had doubled the legacies pro-
vided for in the will of Augustus, he never gave largess to
the soldiers, with the exception of a thousand denarii 2 to
each of the praetorians, for not taking sides with Sejanus,
and some presents to the legions in Syria, because they alone
had consecrated no image of Sejanus among their standards.
He also very rarely allowed veteran soldiers their discharge,
having an eye to their death from years, and a saving of
money through their death. Nor did he ever relieve the prov-
inces by any act of liberality, except Asia, when some cities
had been destroyed by an earthquake.

Presently, as time went on, he even resorted to plunder.
It is certain that he drove Gnaeus Lentulus Augur, a man of
great wealth, to take his own life through fear and mental
anxiety, and to make the Emperor his sole heir; and that
Lepida, too, a woman of high birth, was condemned to death
to gratify Quirinius, an opulent and childless ex-consul, who
had divorced her after twenty years of wedded life, accus-
ing her of an attempt to poison him many years before. Be-
sides, as is well known, leading men of the Spanish and
Gallic provinces, as well as of Syria and Greece, had their
estates confiscated upon such despicably trifling and shame-
less pretenses, that against some of them no other charge
was preferred, than that they had a part of their personal
property in ready money; 8 also that many states and indi-
viduals were deprived of immunities of long standing, and
of the right of working mines and collecting revenues; and
that Vonones, King of the Parthians, who on being dethroned
by his subjects had taken refuge at Antioch with a vast
treasure, in the belief that he was putting himself under the
protection of the Roman people, was treacherously despoiled
and put to death.

He first showed his hatred of his kindred in the case of his

1 Tacitus (Annals IV, 64) states this was done by the Senate, because
the statue of Tiberius remained uninjured in the midst of the burned
district.

2 About $150.00.

8 Possibly under pretense that they were hoarding money for revolu-
tionary purposes. Caesar had limited the cash to be held by any one
person in Italy to 60,000 sesterces, ($2460,00).

TIBERIUS Z49

brother Drusus, producing a letter of his, in which Drusus
discussed with him the question of compelling Augustus to
restore the Republic. And then he turned against the rest.
So far from showing any courtesy or kindness to his wife
Julia, after her banishment, which is the least that one might
expect, 1 although her father's order had merely confined her
to one town, he would not allow her even to leave her house
or enjoy the society of mankind. Nay more, he even deprived
her of the allowance granted her by her father and of her
yearly income, under color of observance of the common law,
because in his will Augustus had made no provision for these
on her behalf. Being harassed by his mother Livia, who
claimed an equal share of power with him, he shunned fre-
quent meetings with her and long and confidential conversa-
tions, to avoid the appearance of being guided by her ad-
vice; though in point of fact he was wont every now and
then to need and to follow it. He was greatly offended too
by a decree of the Senate, providing that "son of Livia,"
as well as "son of Augustus" should be written in his honorary
inscriptions. For this reason he would not suffer her to be
named "Parent of her Country," nor to receive any con-
spicuous public honor. More than that, he often warned her
not to meddle with affairs of importance and unbecoming a
woman, especially after he learned that at a fire near the
temple of Vesta she had been present in person, and urged
the people and soldiers to greater efforts, as had been her
way while her husband was alive.

Afterwards he reached the point of open enmity, and the
reason, they say, was this. On her urging him again and
again to appoint among the jurors a man who had been made
a citizen, he declared that he would do it only on condition
that she would allow an entry to be made .
that it was forced upon him by his
rage, drew from a secret place
written to her by Augustus with
and stubbornness of Tiberius' dis
put out that these had been pr
thrown up at him in such a spiteft

1 His earlier conduct to Julia is not so

150 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

this was the very strongest of the reasons for his retire-
ment. At all events, during all the three years that she lived
after he left Rome he saw her but once, and then only one
day, for a very few hours; and when shortly after that she
fell ill, he took no trouble to visit her. When she died, and
after a delay of several days, during which he held out hope
of his coming, had at last been buried because the condition
of the corpse made it necessary, he forbade her deification,
alleging that he was acting according to her own instructions.
He further disregarded the provisions of her will, and within
a short time caused the downfall of all her friends and inti-
mates, even of those to whom she bad on her deathbed in-
trusted the care of her obsequies, actually condemning one
of them, and that a man of equestrian rank, to the treadmill.
He had a father's affection neither for his own son Drusus
nor his adopted son Germanicus, being exasperated at the
former's vices. Drusus did, in fact, lead a somewhat loose and
dissolute life. Therefore, even when he died, Tiberius was
not greatly affected, but almost immediately after the funeral
returned to his usual routine, forbidding a longer period of
mourning. Nay, more, when a deputation from Ilium offered
him somewhat belated condolences, he replied with a smile,
as if the memory of his bereavement had faded from his
mind, that they, too, had his sympathy for the loss of their
eminent fellow-citizen Hector. As to Germanicus, he was
so far from appreciating him that he made light of his il-
lustrious deeds as unimportant, and railed at his brilliant
victories as ruinous to his country. He even made complaint
in the Senate when Germanicus, on the occasion of a sudden
and terrible famine, went to Alexandria without consulting
him. It is even believed that he caused his death at the hands
of Gnaeus Piso, Governor of Syria, and some think that when
Piso was tried on that charge, he would have produced his
instructions, had not Tiberius caused them to be taken from
him when Piso privately showed them, and the man himself
to be put to death. Because of this the words, "Give us back
Germanicus/' were posted in many places, and shouted at
night all over the city. And Tiberius afterwards strengthened
this suspicion by cruelly abusing the wife and children of
Germanicus as well.

TIBERIUS 151

When his daughter-in-law Agrippina was somewhat out-
spoken in her complaints after her husband's death, he took
her by the hand and quoted a Greek verse, meaning "Be-
cause you are not Empress, dear daughter, do you think a
wrong is done you?" After that he never deigned to hold
any conversation with her. Upon her refusing once at dinner
to taste an apple which he handed her, he ceased inviting
her to his table, pretending that she had charged him with a
design to poison her, whereas the whole was a contrivance of
his own: he was to offer the fruit, and she be privately cau-
tioned against eating what contained certain death. At last,
falsely charging her with a desire to take refuge, now at the
statue of Augustus and now with the armies, he exiled her
to Pandateria, and when she loaded him with reproaches, he
had her beaten by a Centurion until one of her eyes was
destroyed. Again, when she resolved to die of starvation, he
had her mouth pried open and food crammed into it. Worst
of all, when she persisted in her resolution and so perished,
he assailed her memory with the basest slanders, persuading
the Senate to add her birthday to the days of ill omen, and
actually taking credit to himself for not having had her
strangled and her body cast out on the Stairs of Mourning.
He even allowed a decree to be passed in recognition of this
remarkable clemency, in which thanks were offered him and
a golden gift was consecrated to Jupiter of the Capitol.

By Germanicus he had three grandsons, Nero, Drusus, and
Gaius, and by Drusus one, called Tiberius. Bereft of his
own children, he recommended Nero and Drusus, the elder
sons of Germanicus, to the Senate, and celebrated the day
wiien each of them came to his majority by giving largess
to the Commons. But as soon as he learned that at the begin-
ning of the year vows were being put up for their safety also,
he referred the matter to the Senate, saying that such honors
ought to be conferred only on those of tried character and
mature years. By revealing his true feelings towards them
from that time on, he exposed them to accusations from all
quarters, and after resorting to various tricks to rouse them
to rail at him, and seeing to it that they were betrayed when
they did so, he brought most bitter charges against them
both in writing. And when they had in consequence been

IS* THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

pronounced public enemies, he starved them to death, Nero
on the island of Pontia and Drusus in a lower room of the
Palace. It is thought that Nero was forced to take his own
life, since an executioner, who pretended that he came by
authority of the Senate, showed him the noose and hooks.
It is also thought that Drusus was so tortured by hunger that
he tried to eat the stuffing of his mattress. The remains of
both were so scattered that it was with difficulty that they
rould ever be collected.

In addition to his old friends and intimates, he had asked
for twenty of the leading men of the State as advisers on pub-
lic affairs. Of all these he spared hardly two or three; the
others he destroyed on one pretext or another, including
Aelius Sejanus, whose downfall involved the death of many
others. This man he had advanced to the highest power, not
so much from regard for him, as that he might through his
services and wiles destroy the children of Germanicus and
secure the succession for his own grandson, the child of his
son Drusus.

He was not a whit milder towards his Greek companions,
in whose society he took special pleasure. When one Xeno
was holding forth in somewhat far-fetched phrases, he asked
him what dialect that was which was so affected, and on
Xeno's replying that it was Doric, he banished him to Cinaria,
believing that he was being taunted with his old-time exile
inasmuch as the Rhodians spoke Doric. He had the habil
too, of putting questions at dinner suggested by his daih
reading, and learning that the grammarian Seleucus inquired
of the imperial attendants what authors Tiberius was reading
and so came primed, he at first banished the offender froi.. LL
society, and later even forced him to commit suicide.

His cruel, and cold-blooded character was not completely
hidden even in his boyhood. His teacher of rhetoric, Theodorus
of Gadara, seems first to have had the insight to detect it, and
to have characterized it very aptly, since in taking him to task
he would now and then call him "mud mixed with blood." But
it grew still more noticeable after he became Emperor, even
at the beginning, when he was still courting popularity by a
show of moderation. When a funeral was passing by and a
jester called aloud to the corpse to let Augustus know that the

TIBERIUS 153

legacies which he had left to the people were not yet being
paid, Tiberius had the man haled before him, ordered that he
receive what was due him and then be put to death, and bade
him go tell the truth to his father. Shortly afterwards, when
a Roman knight called Pompeius stoutly opposed some action
in the Senate, Tiberius threatened him with imprisonment,
declaring that from a Pompeius he would make of him a
Pompeian, punning cruelly on the man's name and the fate
of the old party.

It was at about this time that a Praetor asked him whether
he should have the courts convened to consider cases of trea-
son. To this he replied that the laws must be enforced, and he
did enforce them most rigorously. One man had removed the
head from a statue of Augustus, to substitute that of another.
The case was tried in the Senate, and since the evidence was
conflicting, the witnesses were examined by torture. After the
defendant had been condemned, this kind of accusation grad-
ually went so far that even such acts as these were regarded
as capital crimes: to beat a slave near a statue of Augustus,
or to change one's clothes there; to carry a ring or coin
stamped with his image into a privy or a brothel, or to criticize
any word or act of his. Finally, a man was put to death
merely for allowing an honor to be voted him in his native
town on the same day that honors had previously been voted
to Augustus.

He did so many other cruel and savage deeds under the
guise of strictness and improvement of the public morals, but
in reality rather to gratify his natural instincts, that some
resorted to verses to express their detestation of the present
ills and a warning against those to come:

"Obdurate wretch! too fierce, too fell to move
The least kind yearnings of a mother's lovel

No Knight are you, as having no estate;
Will you hear all? Yours is an exile's fate.

No more the happy Golden Age we see;
The Iron's come, and sure to last with thee.

*S4 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Instead of wine he thirsted for before
He wallows now in floods of human gore.

Reflect, ye Romans, on the dreadful times,
Made such by Marius, and by Sulla's crimes*

Reflect how Antony's ambitious rage
Twice scarred with horror a distracted age.

And say, Alas! Rome's blood in streams will flow
When banished miscreants T *ule this world below."

These at first he wished to be taken as the work of those who
were impatient of his reforms, voicing not so much their real
feelings as their anger and vexation. And he used to say from
time to time: "Let them hate me, provided they respect my
conduct." Later he himself proved them only too true and un*
erring.

A few days after he reached Capri and was by himself, a
fisherman appeared unexpectedly and offered him a huge mul-
let; whereupon in his alarm that the man had clambered up
to him from the back of the island over rough and pathless
rocks, he had the poor fellow's face scrubbed with the fish.
And because in the midst of his torture the man thanked his
stars that he had not given the Emperor an enormous crab
that he had caught, Tiberius had his face torn with the crab
also. He punished a soldier of the praetorian guard with death
for having stolen a peacock from his preserves. When the litter
in which he was making a trip was stopped by brambles, he
h?d the man who went ahead to dear the way, a Centurion
oi the first cohorts, stretched out on the ground and flogged
half to death.

Presently he broke out into every form of cruelty, for which
he never lacked occasion, venting it on the friends and even
the acquaintances, first of his mother, then of his grandsons
and granddaughter, and finally of Sejanus. After the death of
Sejanus he was more cruel than ever, which showed that his
favorite was not wont to egg him on, but on the contrary gave
him the opportunities which he himself desired. Yet in a brief
and sketchy autobiography which he composed he had the

TIBERIUS 155

audacity to write that he had punished Sejantis because he
found him venting his hatred on the children of his son Ger-
manicus. Whereas in fact he had himself put one of them to
death after he had begun to suspect Sejanus, and another after
the latter's downfall.

It is a long story to run through his acts of cruelty in de-
tail. It will be enough to mention the forms which they took,
as samples of his barbarity. Not a day passed without an exe-
cution, not even days that were sacred and holy, for he put
some to death even on New Year's day. Many were accused
and condemned with their children and even by their children.
The relatives of the victims were forbidden to mourn for
them. Special rewards were voted the accusers and sometimes
even the witnesses. The word of no informer was doubted.
Every crime was treated as capital, even the utterance of a
few simple words. A poet was charged with having slandered
Agamemnon in a tragedy, and a writer of history of having
called Brutus and Cassius the last of the Romans. The writers
were at once put to death and their works destroyed, although
they had been read with approval in public some years before
in the presence of Augustus himself. Some of those who were
consigned to prison were denied not only the consolation of
reading, but even the privilege of conversing and talking to-
gether. Of those who were cited to plead their causes some
opened their veins at home, feeling sure of being condemned
and wishing to avoid annoyance and humiliation, while others
drank poison in full view of the Senate. Yet the wounds of the
former were bandaged and they were hurried half -dead, but
still quivering, to the prison. Every one of those who were exe-
cuted was thrown out upon the Stairs of Mourning and
dragged to the Tiber with hooks, as many as twenty being so
treated in a single day, including women and children. Since
ancient usage made it impious to strangle maidens, young
girls were first violated by the executioner and then strangled*
Those who wished to die were forced to live; for he thought
death so light a punishment that when he heard that one of
the accused, Carnulus by name, had anticipated his execution,
he cried: "Carnulus has given me the slip"; and when he was
inspecting the prisons and a man begged for a speedy death,
he replied: "1 have not yet become your friend." An ex-consul

156 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

has recorded in bis Annals that once at a large dinner-party, at
which the writer himself was present, Tiberius was suddenly
asked in a loud voice by one of the dwarfs that stood beside
the table among the jesters why Paconius, who was charged
with treason, remained so long alive; and that the Emperor at
the time chided him for his saucy tongue, but a few days later
wrote to the Senate to decide as soon as possible about the
execution of Paconius.

He increased his cruelty and carried it to greater lengths,
exasperated by what he learned about the death of his son
Drusus. At first supposing that he had died of disease, due to
his bad habits, on finally learning that he had been poisoned
by the treachery of his wife Livilla and Sejanus, there was no
one whom Tiberius spared from torment and death. Indeed,
he gave himself up so utterly for whole days to the investiga-
tion of this affair and was so wrapped up in it, that when he
was told of the arrival of a host of his from Rhodes, whom he
had invited to Rome in a friendly letter, he had him put to the
torture at once, supposing that some one had come whose testi-
mony was important for the case. On discovering his mistake,
he even had the man put to death, to keep him from giving
publicity to the wrong done him.

At Capri they still point out the scene of his executions,
from which he used to order that those who had been con-
demned after long and exquisite tortures be cast headlong into
the sea before his eyes, while a band of marines waited below
for the bodies and broke their bones with boathooks and oars,
to prevent any breath of life from remaining in them. Among
various forms of torture he had devised this one: he would
trick men into loading themselves with copious draughts of
wine, and then on a sudden tying up their private parts, would
torment them at the same time by the torture of the cords and
of the stoppage of their water. And had not death prevented
him, and Thrasyllus, purposely it is said, induced him to put
off some things through hope of a longer life, it is believed
that still more would have perished, and that he would not
even have spared the rest of his grandsons; for he had his sus-
picions of Gaius and detested Tiberius as the fruit of adultery.
And this is highly probable, for he used at times to call Priam
Jiappy, because he had outlived all his kindred.

TIBERIUS XS7

Many things go to show, not only how hated and execrable
he was all this time, but also that he lived a life of extreme
fear and was even exposed to insult. He forbade any one to
consult soothsayers secretly and without witnesses. Indeed,
he even attempted to do away with the oracles near the city,
but forbore through terror at the divine power of the Prae-
nestine Lots; for though he had them sealed up in a chest
and brought to Rome, yet they were not to be found in it until
the box was taken back tQ, the temple. Not daring to lose sight
of one or two ex-consuls to whom he had assigned provinces
he detained them at Rome so long he finally appointed their
successors several years later without their having left the city*
In the meantime they retained their titles, and he even con-
tinued to assign them numerous commissions, to execute
through their deputies and assistants.

After the exile of his daughter-in-law and grandchildren he
never moved them anywhere except in fetters and in a tightly
closed litter, while a guard of soldiers kept any who met them
on the road from looking at them or even from stopping as
they went by.

When Sejanus was plotting revolution, although he saw
the man's birthday publicly celebrated and his golden statues
honored everywhere, yet it was with difficulty that he at last
overthrew him, rather by craft and deceit than by his imperial
authority. First of all, to remove him from his person under
color of showing him honor, he chose him as his colleague in
a fifth consulship, which, with this very end in view, he as-
sumed after a long interval while absent from the city. Then
beguiling him with hope of marriage into the imperial family
and of the tribunicial power, he accused him when he least,
expected it in a shameful and pitiable speech, begging the
Senators among other things to send one of the Consuls l to
bring him, a lonely old man, into their presence under military
protection. Even then distrustful and fearful of an outbreak,
he had given orders that his grandson Drusus, whom he still
kept imprisoned in Rome, should be set free, if occasion de-
manded, and made commander-in-chief. He even got ships
ready and thought of flight to some of the legions, constantly

1 This must mean one of the substitute consuls who assumed the
honor for part of the year.

iSd /HE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

watching f torn a high cliff for the signals which he had ordered
to be raised afar off as each step was taken, for fear the mes-
sengers should be delayed. But even when the conspiracy of
Sejanus was crushed, he was no whit more confident or cou-
rageous, but for the next nine months he did no leave the villa
which is called lo's.

His anxiety of mind became torture because of reproaches
of all kinds from every quarter, since every single one of those
who were condemned to death heaped all kinds of abuse upon
him, either to his face or by hand-bills placed in the Senator's
seats at the shows. By these, however, he was most diversely
affected, now through a sense of shame desiring that they all
be concealed and kept secret, sometimes scorning them and
producing them of his own accord and giving them publicity.
Why, he was even attacked by Artabanus, King of the Par-
ihians, who charged him in a letter with the murder of his
kindred, with other bloody deeds, and with shameless and
dissolute living, counseling him to gratify the intense and just
Jiatred of the citizens as soon as possible by a voluntary death.

At last in utter self-disgust he all but admitted the ex*
tremity of his wretchedness in a letter 1 which began thus:
"If I know what to write to you, Fathers of the Senate, or how
to write it, or what to leave unwritten at present, may all
Gods and Goddesses visit me with more utter destruction than
I feel that I am daily suffering." Some think that through his
skill in divining the future he had foreknowledge of this situa-
tion, and knew long beforehand what detestation and ill-repute
one day awaited him; and that therefore when he became
Emperor, he positively refused the title of "Father of his
Country" and to allow the Senate to take oath to support his
acts, for fear that he might presently be found undeserving
of such honors and thus be the more shamed. In fact, this may
be gathered from the speech which he made regarding these
two matters; for example, when he says: "I shall always be
consistent and never change my ways so long as I am in my
senses. But for the sake of precedent the Senate should beware
of binding itself to support the acts of any man, since he might
through some mischance suffer a change." Again: "If you ever

* Quoted also by Tacitus in Annals VI, 6.

TIBERIUS 159

come to feel any doubt," he says, "of my character or of my
heartfelt devotion to you (and before that happens, I pray
that my last day may save me from this altered opinion of
me), the title of Father of my Country will give me no ad-
ditional honor, but will be a reproach to you, either for your
hasty action in conferring the appellation upon me, or for
your inconsistency in changing your estimate of my char-
acter."

He was large and strong of frame, and of a stature above
the average; x broad of shoulders and chest; well proportioned
and symmetrical front head to foot. His left hand was the
more nimble and stronger, and its joints were so powerful
that he could bore through a fresh, sound apple with his
finger, and break the head of a boy, or even a young man,
with a fillip. He was of fair complexion and wore his hair
rather long at the back, so much so as even to cover the
nape of his neck, which was apparently a style affected by his
family. His face was handsome, but would break out on a
sudden with many pimples. His eyes were unusually large
and. strange to say, had the power of seeing even at night and
in the dark. But that was only for a short time when first
opened after sleep, for they soon grew dim-sighted again. He
strode along with his neck stiff and bent forward, usually with
a stern countenance and for the most part in silence, never
or very rarely conversing with his companions, and then speak-
ing with great deliberation and with a kind of supple move-
ment of his fingers. All of these mannerisms of his, which were
disagreeable and signs of arrogance, were remarked by Augus-
tus, who often tried to excuse them to the Senate and people
by declaring that they were natural failings, and not inten-
tional. He enjoyed excellent health, which was all but perfect
during nearly the whole of his reign, 2 although from the thir-
tieth year of his age he took care of it according to his own
ideas, without the aid or advice of physicians.

Although somewhat neglectful of the Gods and of religious
matters, being addicted to astrology and firmly convinced that

1 The average height of the Roman male was S feet 2 inches.

2 Which has been used to support the contention that he could not
have been as debauched as alleged. Nero's health was also good! (Set
Nero.)

*Jo THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

everything was in the hands of fate, he was nevertheless im-
moderately afraid of thunder. Whenever the sky was lower-
ing, he always wore a laurel wreath, because it is said that
kind of leaf is never touched by lightning.

He was greatly devoted to liberal studies in both languages,
In his Latin oratory he followed Messala Corvinus, to whom
he had given attention in his youth, when Messala was an old
man. But he so obscured his style by excessive mannerisms
1 and pedantry, that he was thought to speak much better off-
hand than in a prepared address. He also composed a lyric
poem, entitled "A Lament for the Death of Lucius Caesar, "
and made Greek verses in imitation of Euphorion, Rhianus,
and Parthenius, 1 poets of whom he was very fond, placing
their busts in the public libraries among those of the eminent
writers of old. On this account many learned men vied with
one another in issuing commentaries on their works and dedi-
cating them to the Emperor. Yet his special aim was a knowl-
edge of mythology, which he carried to a silly and laughable
extreme; for he used to test even the grammarians, 2 a class
of men in whom, as I have said, he was especially interested,
by questions something like this: "Who was Hecuba's
mother?" "What was the name of Achilles among the maid-
ens?" 8 "What were the Sirens in the habit of singing?" More-
over, on the first day that he entered the Senate after the
death of Augustus, to satisfy at once the demands of filial
piety and of religion, he offered sacrifice after the example of
Minos with incense and wine, but without a fluteplayer, as
Minos had done in ancient times on the death of his son.

Though he spoke Greek readily and fluently, yet he would
not use it on all occasions and especially avoided it in the
Senate. So much so that before using the word "monopo-
lium," 4 he begged pardon for the necessity of employing a
foreign term. Again, when the word Sfiftifjfia 5 was read in a

1 Obscure Greek poets whose writings were full of either fabulous
or love stories.

2 Who were also teachers of literature.

8 The daughters of King Lycomedes, in the Isle of Seyros, where he
feigned himself a maiden.

4 "Monopoly," a Greek word transliterated into Latin.

8 The Greek word for inlaid ornaments of metal attached to cups
and other vessels. There is no exact equivalent in Latin.

TIBERIUS 16.

decree of the Senate, he recommended that it to be changed
and a native word substituted for the foreign one; and if one
could not be found, that the idea be expressed by several
words, if necessary, and by periphrasis. On another occasion,
when a soldier was asked in Greek to give testimony, he for-
bade him to answer except in Latin.

Twice only during the whole period of his retirement did
he try to return to Rome. Once he sailed in a trireme as far
as the gardens near the Naumachia, 1 after first posting a
guard along the banks of the Tiber to keep off those who came
out to meet him. The second time he came up the Appian
Way as far as the seventh milestone. But he returned after
merely having a distant view of the city walls, without ap-
proaching them, the first time for some unknown reason,
the second through alarm at a portent. He had among his pets
a serpent, and when he was going to feed it from his own
hand, as his custom was, and discovered that it had been
devoured by ants, he was warned to beware of the power of
the multitude. So he went back in haste to Campania, fell
ill at Astura, but recovering somewhat kept on to Circeii.
To avoid giving any suspicion of his weak condition, he not
only attended the games of the soldiers, but even threw
down darts from his high seat at a board which was let into
the arena. Immediately he was taken with a pain in the side,
and then being exposed to a draught when he was overheated,
his illness increased. For all that, he kept up for some time.
While continuing his journey as far as Misenum he made
no change in his usual habits, not even giving up his ban-
quets and other pleasures, partly from lack of self-denial and
partly to conceal his condition. Indeed, when the physician
Charicles, having obtained leave of absence, on rising to
leave the dining-room took his hand to kiss it, Tiberius,
thinking that he was trying to feel his pulse, urged him to
remain and take his place again, and prolonged the dinner
to a late hour. Even then he did not give up his custom of
standing in the middle of the dining-room with a Lictor by
his side and addressing all the guests by name as they said
farewell.

1 The artificial lake near the Tiber where Julius Caesar exhibited a
naval fight. (See Julius.)

i6a THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Meanwhile, having read in the proceedings of the Senate
that some of those under accusation, about whom he had
written briefly, merely stating that they had been named by
an informer, had been discharged without a hearing, he cried
out in anger that he was held in contempt, and resolved to
return to Capri at any cost, since he would not risk any step
except from his place of refuge. Detained, however, by bad
weather and the increasing violence of his illness, he died a
little later in the villa of Lucullus, in the seventy-eighth year
of his age and the twenty-third of his reign, on the seven-
teenth day before the Kalends of April, in the consulship
of Gnaeus Acerronius Proculus and Gaius Pontius Nigrinus.

Some think that Gaius 1 gave him a slow and wasting
poison, others that during convalescence from an attack of
fever food was refused him when he asked for it. Some say
that a pillow was thrown upon his face, when he came to and
asked for a ring which had been taken from him during a
fainting fit. Seneca writes that conscious of his approaching
end, he took off the ring, held it a while, as if to give it to
some one, but, putting it back, he clenched his left hand
and lay for a long time motionless; and that he then sud-
denly called for his attendants, and on receiving no response,
got up; but his strength failed him and he fell dead near the
couch.

On his last birthday he dreamt that the Apollo of Temenos,
a statue of remarkable size and beauty, which he had brought
from Syracuse to be set up in the library of the new temple,
appeared to him in a dream, declaring that it could not be
dedicated by Tiberius. A few days before his death the light-
house at Capri was wrecked by an earthquake. At Misenum
the ashes from the glowing cods and embers which had been
brought in to warm his dining-room, after they had died out
and been for a long time cold, suddenly blazed up in the
early evening and glowed without cessation until late at
night.

The people were so glad of his death, that at the first
news of it some ran about shouting, "Tiberius to the Tiber,"
while others prayed to Mother Earth and the Manes to allow

1 Gaius Caligula (son of Germanicus), the next Emperor.

TIBERIUS 163

the dead man no abode except among the damned. Still
others threatened his body with the hook and the Stairs of
Mourning, especially embittered by a recent outrage, added
to the memory of his former cruelty. It had been provided
by decree of the Senate that the execution of the condemned
should in all cases be put off for ten days, and it chanced that
the punishment of some fell due on the day when the news
came about Tiberius. The poor wretches begged the public
for protection. But since in the continued absence of Gaius
there was no one who could be approached and appealed to,
the jailers, fearing to* act contrary to the law, strangled them
and cast out their bodies on the Stairs of Mourning. Therefore
hatred of the tyrant waxed greater, since his cruelty endured
even after his death. When the funeral procession left Mise-
num, many cried out that the body ought rather to be car-
ried to Atella, and half-burned in the amphitheater. But it
was taken to Rome by the soldiers and reduced to ashes with
public ceremonies.

Two years before his death he had made two copies of a
will, one in his own hand and the other in that of a freedman,
but of the same content, and had caused them to be signed
and sealed by persons of the very lowest condition. In this
will he named his grandsons, Gaius, son of Germanicus, and
Tiberius, son of Drusus, heirs to equal shares of his estate,
each to be sole heir in case of the other's death. Besides, he
gave legacies to several, including the Vestal Virgins, as well
as to each and every man of the soldiers and the Commons
of Rome, with separate ones to the masters of the city wards

BOOK IV
GAIUS CALIGULA

GAIUS CALIGULA

GERMANICUS, father of Gaius Caesar, son of Drusus and
the younger Antonia, after being adopted by his paternal
uncle Tiberius, held the quaestorship five years before the
legal age and passed directly to the consulship. When the
death of Augustus was announced, he was sent to the army
in Germany, where it is hard to say whether his filial piety
or his courage was more conspicuous. For, although all the
legions obstinately refused to accept Tiberius as Emperor,
and offered him the rule of the State, 1 he held them to their
allegiance. And later he won a victory over the enemy and
celebrated a triumph. Then chosen Consul for a second time,
before he entered on his term he was hurried off to restore
order in the Orient, and after vanquishing the King of
Armenia and reducing Cappadocia to the form of a province,
died of a lingering illness at Antioch, in the thirty-fourth year
of his age. There was some suspicion that he was poisoned.
For besides the dark spots which appeared all over his body
and the froth which flowed from his mouth, after he had been
reduced to ashes his heart was found entire among his bpnes;
and it is supposed to be a characteristic of that organ that
when steeped in poison it cannot be destroyed by fire.

Now the belief was that he met his death through the wiles
of Tiberius, aided and abetted by Gnaeus Piso. 2 This man had
been made Governor of Syria at about that time, and realizing
that he must give offense either to the father or the son, as if
there were no alternative, he never ceased to show the bitter-
est enmity towards Germanicus in word and deed, even after
the latter fell ill. In consequence Piso narrowly escaped being
torn to pieces by the people on his return to Rome, and was
condemned to death by the Senate.

1 As told in Tiberius.

2 Also discussed in Tiberius.

167

z68 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

It is the general opinion that Germanicus possessed all the
highest qualities of body and mind, to a degree never equalled
by any one. He was a handsome man of extraordinary courage
and surpassing ability in the oratory and learning of Greece
and Rome. He was, besides, a man of unexampled kindliness
endowed with a remarkable desire and capacity for winning
men's regard and inspiring their affection. His legs were too
slender for the rest of his figure, but he gradually brought
them to proper proportions by constant horseback riding after
meals. He often slew a foeman in hand-to-hand combat. He
pleaded causes even after receiving the triumphal regalia.
And among other fruits of his studies he left some Greek
comedies. Unassuming at home and abroad, he always en-
tered the free and federate towns without Lictors. Wherever
he came upon the tombs of distinguished men, he always of-
fered sacrifice to their shades. Planning to bury in one mound
the old and scattered relics of those who fell in the over-
throw of Varus, he was the first to attempt to collect and as-
semble them with his own hand. Even towards his detractors,
whosoever they were and whatever their motives, he was so
mild and lenient, that when Piso was annulling his decrees
and maltreating his dependents, he could not make up his
mind to break with him, until he found himself assailed also
by potions and spells. 1 Even then he went no farther than
formally to renounce Piso's friendship in the old-time fashion,
and to bid his household avenge him, in case anything should
befall him.

He reaped plentiful fruit from these virtues, for he was
so respected and beloved by his kindred that Augustus (to
say nothing of the rest of his relatives) after hesitating for
a long time whether to appoint him his successor, had him
adopted by Tiberius. He was so popular with the masses,
that, according to many writers, whenever he came to any
place or left one, he was sometimes in danger of his life
from the crowds that met him or saw him off. In fact, when
be returned from Germany after quelling the outbreak, all
the cohorts of the praetorian guard went forth to meet him,
although orders had been given that only two should go, and

1 Fuller details are given by Tacitus, Annals II, 69.

GAIUS CALIGULA 169

the whole populace, regardless of age, sex, or rank, ppured out
of Rome as far as the twentieth milestone.

Yet far greater and stronger tokens of regard were shown
at the time of his death and immediately afterwards. On the
day when he passed away the temples were stoned and the
altars of the Gods thrown down, 1 while some flung their
household Gods into the street and cast out their newly born
children. 2 Even barbarian peoples, so they say, who were
engaged in war with us or with one another, unanimously
consented to a truce, as if all in common had suffered a
domestic tragedy. It is said that some princes put off their
beards and had their wives' heads shaved, as a token of the
deepest mourning and that even the King of Kings 3 sus-
pended his exercise at hunting and the banquets with his
grandees, which among the Parthians is a sign of public
mourning.

At Rome when the community, in grief and consternation
at the first report of his illness, was awaiting further news,
and suddenly after nightfall a report at last spread abroad,
on doubtful authority, that he had recovered, a general
rush was made from every side to the Capitol with torches
and victims, and the temple gates were all but torn off, that
nothing might hinder them in their eagerness to pay their
vows. Tiberius was roused from sleep by the cries of the
rejoicing throng, who all united in singing:

"Rome is safe, our country is safe, for our Germanicus is safe."

But when it was at last made known that he was no more,
no solace could assuage the public grief nor any edict check
it. It continued even during the festal days of the month of
December.

The fame of the deceased and regret for his loss were in-
creased by the horror of the times which followed, since all
believed, and with good reason, that the cruelty of Tiberius,
which soon burst forth, had been held in check through his
respect and awe for Germanicus.

1 For permitting such a man to die.

2 Why raise children any more?

8 A title assumed by various eastern potentates.

170 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

He had to wife Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Agrippa
and Julia, who bore him nine children. Two of these were
taken off when they were still in infancy, and one just as he
was reaching the age of boyhood, a charming child, whose
statue, in the guise of Cupid, Livia dedicated in the temple
of the Capitoline Venus, while Augustus had another placed
in his bedchamber and used to kiss it fondly whenever he
entered the room. The other children survived their father,
three girls, Agrippina, Drusilla, and Livilla, born in succes-
sive years, and three boys, Nero, Drusus, and Gaius Caesar.
Nero and Drusus were adjudged public enemies by the Senate
on the accusation of Tiberius. 1

Gaius Caesar was born the day before the Kalends of
September in the consulship of his father and Gaius Fonteius
Capito. Conflicting testimony makes his birthplace uncertain.
Gnaeus Lentulus Gaetulicus writes that he was born at
Tibur, Plinius Secundus among the Treveri, in a village
called Ambitarvium above the Confluence. Pliny adds as
proof that altars are shown there, inscribed "For the Delivery
of Agrippina." Verses which were in circulation soon after
he became Emperor indicate that he was begotten in the
winter-quarters of the legions:

"Born in a camp, reared with soldiers, he;
A sign assured he would a ruler be."

I myself find in the public records that he first saw the light
at Antium. Pliny charges Gaetulicus as guilty of a flattering
lie, merely to soothe the vanity of a young, conceited prince,
by giving him the added luster of being born in a city sacred
to Hercules, adding that he advanced this false assertion with
the more assurance, because, the year before the birth of
Gaius, Germanicus really did have a son born to him at Tibur,
also called Gaius Caesar, of whose lovable disposition and
untimely death I have already spoken. Pliny has erred in his
chronology. For the historians of Augustus agree that Ger-
manicus was not sent to Germany until the close of his con-
sulship, when Gaius was already born. Moreover, the inscrip-
tion on the altar adds no strength to Pliny's view, for Agrip-

1 See Tiberius for further details.

GAIUS CALIGULA 171

pina twice gave birth to daughters in that region, and any
childbirth, regardless of sex, is called puerperium, since the
men of old called girls puerae, just as they called boys puelli.
Furthermore, we have a letter written by Augustus to his
granddaughter Agrippina, a few months before he died, about
the Gaius in question (for no other child of the name was
still alive at that time), reading as follows: " Yesterday 1
arranged with Talarius and Asillius to bring you your boy
Gaius on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of June, if it
be the will of the Gods. I send with him besides one of my
slaves who is a physician, and I have written Germanicus to
keep him if he wishes. Farewell, my own Agrippina, and
take care to come in good health to your Germanicus."

I think it is clear enough that Gaius could not have been
born in a place to which he was first taken from Rome when
he was nearly two years old. This letter also weakens cur
confidence in the verses, the more so because they are anony-
mous. We must then accept the only remaining testimony,
that of the public record, particularly since Gaius loved
Antium as if it were his native soil, always preferring it to
all other places of retreat, and even thinking, it is said, of
transferring thither the seat and abode of the empire through
weariness of Rome.

His surname Caligula l he derived from a joke of the
troops, because he was brought up in their midst in the dress
of a common soldier. To what extent besides he won their
love and devotion by being reared in fellowship with them
is especially evident from the fact that when they threatened
mutiny after the death of Augustus and were ready for any
act of madness, the mere sight of Gaius unquestionably
calmed them. For they did not become quiet until they saw
that he was being spirited away because of the danger frow
their outbreak and taken for protection to the nearest town.
Then at last they became contrite, and laying hold of the
carriage and stopping it, begged to be spared the disgrace
which was being put upon them.

ffe attended his father also on his expedition to Syria. On
his return from there he first lived with his mother and after

^"Little Boot." The ctili$a, or half-boot, studded with nails, was tig
usual shoe of the Roman soldier.

173 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

her banishment, with his great-grandmother Livia. When
Livia died, though he was not yet of age, he spoke her eulogy
from the rostra. Then he fell to the care of his grandmother
Antonia, and in the nineteenth year of his age he was called
to Capri by Tiberius, on the same day assuming the gown
of manhood and shaving his first beard, but without any such
ceremony as had attended the coming of age of his brothers.
Although at Capri every kind of wile was resorted to by those
who tried to lure him or force him to utter complaints, he
never gave them any satisfaction, ignoring the ruin of his
kindred as if nothing at all had happened, passing over his
own ill-treatment with an incredible pretense of indifference,
and so obsequious towards his grandfather and his household,
that it was well said of him that no one had ever been a better
slave or a worse master.

Yet even at that time he could not control his natural
cruelty and viciousness, but he was a most eager witness of
the tortures and executions of those who suffered punishment,
revelling at night in gluttony and adultery, disguised in a
wig and a long robe. He was also passionately devoted to the
theatrical arts of dancing and singing, in which Tiberius very
willingly indulged him, in the hope that through these his
savage nature might be softened. This last was so clearly
evident to the shrewd old man, that he used to say now and
then that to allow Gaius to live would prove the ruin of him-
self and of all men, and that he was rearing a viper for the
Roman people and a Phaethon for the world.

Not so very long afterward Gaius took to wife Junia
Claudilla, 1 daughter of Marcus Silanus, a man of noble
rank. He was then appointed Augur to succeed his brother
Drusus. But before he was invested with the office he was
advanced to that of Pontiff, with strong commendation of
his dutiful conduct and general character. For, since the
court was deserted and deprived of its other supports, after
Sejanus had been suspected of hostile designs and pres-
ently put out of the way, he was little by little encouraged
to look forward to the succession. To have a better chance
of realizing this, after losing Junia in childbirth, he seduced

1 Diminutive of Claudia. Suetonius often uses this more familiar
form when speaking of women.

GAIUS CALIGULA 173

Ennia Naevia, wife of Macro, who at that time commanded
the praetorian guard, even promising to marry her if he be-
came Emperor, and guaranteeing this promise by an oath
and a written contract. Having through her wormed himself
into Macro's favor, 1 he poisoned Tiberius, as some think,
and ordered that his ring be taken from him while he still
breathed, and then suspecting that he was trying to hold fast
to it, that a pillow be put over his face; or even strangled the
old man with his own hand, immediately ordering the cruci-
fixion of a freedman who cried out at the awful deed. And
this is likely enough, For some writers say that Caligula him-
self later admitted, not it is true that he had committed par-
ricide, but that he had at least meditated it at one time.
For they say that he constantly boasted, in speaking of his
filial piety, that he had entered the bedchamber of the sleep-
ing Tiberius dagger in hand, to avenge the death of his
mother and brothers, but that, seized with pity, he threw
down the dagger and went out again; and that though
Tiberius knew of this, he had never dared to make any
inquiry or take any action.

By thus gaining the throne he fulfilled the highest hopes
of the Roman people, or I may say of all mankind, since he
was the prince most earnestly desired by the great part of
the provincials and soldiers, many of whom had known him
in his infancy, as well as by the whole body of the city
populace, because of the memory of his father Germanicus
and pity for a family that had been almost destroyed. Ac-
cordingly, when he set out from Misenum, though he was in
mourning garb and escorting the body of Tiberius, yet his
progress was marked by altars, victims, and blazing torches,
and he was met by a dense and joyful throng, who called him
besides other propitious names their "star," their "chick,"
their "babe," and their "nursling."

When he entered the city, full and absolute power was at
once put into his hands by the unanimous consent of the
Senate and of the mob, which forced its way into the House,
and no attention was paid to the wish of Tiberius, who in his
will had named his other grandson, still a boy, joint heir

1 Macro was instrumental in the fall of Sejanus.

174 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

with Caligula. So great was the public rejoicing, that within
the next three months, or less than that, more than a hundred
and sixty thousand victims are said to have been slain in
sacrifice.

A few days after this, when he crossed to the islands near
Campania, vows were put up for his safe return, while no
one let slip even the slightest chance of giving testimony to
his anxiety and regard for his safety. But when he fell ill,
they all spent the whole night about the Palace, some even
vowing to fight as gladiators, while others posted placards
offering their lives if the ailing prince were spared. 1 To this
unbounded love of his citizens was added marked devotion
from foreigners. Artabanus, for example, King of the Par*
thians, who was always outspoken in his hatred and contempt
for Tiberius, voluntarily sought Caligula's friendship. He
came to a conference with the consular Governor, and, cross-
ing the Euphrates, paid homage to the Roman eagles and
standards and to the statues of the Caesars.

Gaius himself tried to rouse men's devotion by courting
popularity in every way. After eulogizing Tiberius with many
tears before the assembled people and giving him a mag-
nificent funeral, he at once posted off to Pandateria and the
Pontian islands, to remove the ashes of his mother and brother
to Rome; and in stormy weather, too, to make his filial piety
the more conspicuous. He approached their remains with
reverence and placed them in the urns with his own hands.
With no less theatrical effect he brought them to Ostia in a
bireme with a banner set in the stern, and from there up the
Tiber to Rome, where he had them carried to the Mausoleum 2
on two biers by the most distinguished men of the order of
Knights, in the middle of the day, when the streets were
crowded. He appointed funeral sacrifices, too, to be offered
each year with due ceremony, as well as games in the Circus
in honor of his mother, providing a carriage to carry her image
in the procession. But in memory of his father he gave to the
month of September the name of Germanicus. After this,

1 According to the widespread belief the death of one man might
be redeemed with that of another. Thev were compelled to fulfill their
vows.

2 That built by Augustus.

GAIUS CA1IGULA 175

by a single decree of the Senate, he heaped upon his grand-
mother Antonia whatever honors Livia Augusta had ever en-
joyed; took his uncle Claudius, who up to that time had been
a Roman Knight, as his colleague in the consulship; adopted
his brother l Tiberius on the day that he assumed the gown
of manhood, and gave him the title of Chief of the Youth: 1
He caused the names of his sisters to be included in all oaths:
"And I will not hold myself and my children dearer than I
do Gaius and his sisters"; as well as in the propositions of the
Consuls: "Favor and good fortune attend Gaius Caesar and
his sisters."

With the same desire for popularity he recalled those who
had been condemned to banishment; took no cognizance of
any charges that remained untried from an earlier time; had
all documents relating to the cases of his mother and brothers
carried to the Forum and burned, to give no informer or wit-
ness occasion for further fear, having first loudly called the
Gods to witness that he had neither read nor touched any of
them. He refused a note which was offered him regarding his
own safety, maintaining that he had done nothing to make
any one hate him, and that he had no ears for informers.

He banished from the city the sexual perverts called
spintriae, 8 barely persuaded not to drown them in the sea.
The wrtings of Titus Labienus, Cremutius Cordus, and Cas-
sius Severus, which had been suppressed by decrees of the
Senate, 4 he allowed to be htinted up, circulated, and read,
saying thai it was wholly to his interest that everything which
happened be handed down to posterity. He published the
accounts of the empire, which had regularly been made public
by Augustus, a practice discontinued by Tiberius. He allowed
the magistrates unrestricted jurisdiction, without appeal to
himself. He revised the lists of the Roman Knights strictly
and scrupulously, yet with due moderation, publicly taking
their horses from those guilty of any wicked or .scandalous

1 Son of his brother Drusus. He later put him to death. For which
see Chapter XXIII.

2 Originally the title of the Knights under forty-five who wetre in
active service. Conferred on C. and L. Caesar by Augustus, It became
the designation of the heir-apparent.

8 About which see Tiberius.

Because they were too frank, of course.

i?6 THE LIVES OF THJE TWELVE CAESARS

act, but merely omitting to read the names of men convicted
of lesser offenses. To lighten the labor of the jurors, he added
a fifth division to the previous four. He tried also to restore
the suffrage to the people by reviving the custom of elec-
tions. 1 He at once paid faithfully and without dispute the
legacies named in the will of Tiberius, though this had been
set aside, as well as in that of Julia Augusta, which Tiberius
had suppressed. He remitted the tax of one half of one per
cent on auction sales in Italy. He made good to many their
losses from fires. And whenever he restored Kings to their
thrones, he allowed them all the arrears of their taxes and
their revenues which had accrued in the interval, as in the
case of Antiochus of Commagene, where the confiscation
would have amounted to a hundred million sesterces. 2 To
make it known that he encouraged every kind of noble action,
he gave eight hundred thousand sesterces 8 to a freedwoman,
because she had kept silence about the guilt of her patron,
though subjected to the utmost torture. Because of these
acts, besides other honors, a golden shield was voted him,
which was to be borne every year to the Capitol on an ap-
pointed day by the Colleges of Priests, escorted by the
Senate, while boys and girls of noble birth sang the praises
of his virtues in a choral ode. It was further decreed that the
day on which he began to reign should be called the Parilia,
as a token that the city had been founded a second time.

He held four consulships, one from the Kalends of July
for two months, a second from the Kalends of January for
thirty days, a third up to the Ides of January, and the fourth
until the seventh day before the Ides of the same month.
Of all these only the last two were continuous. The third he
assumed at Lugdunum without a colleague, not, as some
think, through arrogance or disregard of precedent, but be-
cause at that distance from Rome he had been unable to
get news of the death of the other Consul just before the
day of the Kalends. He twice gave the people a largess of

1 Julius Caesar had shared it with them. Augustus had only kept the
form. Tiberius had deprived the Roman people of the last remnant of
their part in the government.

2 $4,100,000.00.
8 $32,800.00.

GAIUS CALIGULA 177

three hundred sesterces 1 each, and twice a lavish banquet to
the Senate and the equestrian order, together with their wives
and children. At the former of these he also distributed togas
to the men, and to the women and children scarves of red
and scarlet. Furthermore, to make a permanent addition to
the public gayety, he added a day to the Saturnalia, and
called it JuvenaUs.

He gave several gladiatorial shows, some in the amphi-
theater of Taurus and some in the Saepta, in which he in-
troduced pairs of African and Campanian boxers, the pick
of both regions. He - did not always preside at the games in
person, but sometimes assigned the honor to the magistrates
or to friends. He exhibited stage-plays continually, of vari-
ous kinds and in many different places, sometimes even by
night, lighting up the whole city. He also threw various sorts
of gifts among the people to be scrambled for, and gave each
man a basket of victuals. During the feasting he sent his
share to a Roman Knight opposite him, who was eating with
evident relish and appetite, while to a Senator for the same
reason he gave a commission naming him Praetor out of the
regular order. He also gave many games in the Circus, last-
ing from early morning until evening, introducing between
the races now a baiting of panthers and now the maneuvers
of the game called Troy; some, too, of special splendor, in
which the Circus was strewn with red and green, while the
charioteers were all men of senatorial rank. He also started
some games off-hand, when a few people called for them from
the neighboring balconies, as he was inspecting the outfit
of the Circus from the Gelotian house.

Besides this, he devised a novel and unheard-of kind of
show. He bridged the gap between Baiae and the mole at
Puteoli, a distance of about thirty-six hundred paces, by
bringing together merchant ships from all sides and anchor-
ing them in a double line, after which a mound of earth
was heaped upon them and fashioned in the manner of the
Appian Way. Over this bridge he rode back and forth for
two successive days, the first day on a caparisoned horse,
himself resplendent u> a crown of oak leaves, a buckler, a

1 $15.00.

X78 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

sword r and a cloak of cloth of gold; on the second,, in the
dress of a charioteer in a car drawn by a pair of famous
horses, carrying before him a boy named Dareus, one of the
hostages from Parthia, and attended by the entire praetorian
guard and a company of his friends in Gallic chariots. I know
that many have supposed that Gaius devised this kind of
bridge in rivalry of Xerxes, who excited no little admiration
by bridging the much narrower Hellespont; others, that it
was to inspire fear in Germany and Britain, on which he had
designs, by the fame of some stupendous work. But when I
was a boy, I used to hear my grandfather say that the reason
for the work, as revealed by the Emperor's confidential cour-
tiers, was that Thrasyllus the astrologer had declared to
Tiberius, when he was worried about his successor and in-
dined towards his natural grandson, that Gaius had no more
chance of becoming Emperor than of riding about over the
gulf of Baiae with horses.

He also gave shows in foreign lands, Athenian games at
Syracuse in Sicily, and miscellaneous games at Lugdunum
[Lyons] in Gaul. At the latter place he also gave a contest in
Greek and Latin oratory, in which, they say, the losers gave
prizes to the victors and were forced to compose eulogies upon
them, while those who were least successful were ordered to
erase their writings with a sponge or with their tongue, unless
they elected rather to be beaten with rods or thrown into
the neighboring river.

He completed the public works which had been half fin-
ished under Tiberius, namely the temple of Augustus and
the theater of Pompey. He likewise began an aqueduct in
the region near Tibur and an amphitheater beside the Saepta,
the former finished by his successor Claudius, while the latter
was abandoned. At Syracuse he repaired the city walls, whicfy
had fallen into ruin through lapse of time, and the temples
of the Gods, lie had planned, besides, to rebuild the palace of
Polycraes at Samos, to finish (he temple of the Didyrnaean
Apollo at Ephesus, to found a city high up in the Alps, but,
above all, to dig a canal through, the Isthmus in Greece, and
he had already sent a Chief Centurion to survey the work.

So much for Caligula as emperor. We must faow tell of his
career as a monster.

GAIUS CALIGULA 179

After he had assumed various surnames (for he was called
"Pious," "Child of the Camp," "Father of the Armies," and
"Greatest and Best of Caesars"), chancing to overhear some
Kings, who had come to Rome to pay their respects to him,
disputing at dinner about the nobility of their descent, he
cried:

"Let there be one Lord, one King." *

And he came near assuming a crown at once and changing
the semblance of a*principate into the form of a monarchy.
But on being reminded that he had risen above the elevation
both of princes and Kings, he began from that time on to
lay claim to divine majesty. He ordered that such statues of
the Gods as were especially famous for their sanctity or their
artistic merit, including that of Jupiter of Olympia, 2 should
be brought from Greece, in order to remove their heads and
put his own in their place. He built out a part of the Palace
as far as the Forum, and making the temple of Castor and
Pollux its vestibule, he often took his place between the divine
brethren, and exhibited himself there to be worshiped by
all comers, some of whom hailed him as Jupiter Latiaris. He
also set up a special temple to his own godhead, with priests
and with victims of the choicest kind. In this temple was a
life-sized statue of the Emperor in gold, which was dressed
each day in clothing such as he wore himself. The richest
citizens used all their influence to become priests of his cult
and bid high for the honor. The victims were flamingoes,,
peacocks, woodcock, guinea-hens and pheasants, offered day
by day each after its own kind. At night he used constantly
to invite the full and radiant moon to his embraces and his
bed, while in the daytime he would talk confidentially with
Jupiter Capitolinus, now whispering and then in turn put-
ting his ear to the mouth of the God, now in louder and even
angry language; for he was heard to make the threat; "Lift
me up, or I'll lift thee." 8 Until, at last prevailed upon by the

i Iliad II, 204.
* By Pheidias.

8 Iliad XXIII, 724, where after a long and indecisive wrestling bout
Ajax thus challenges Ulysses to settle the contest. '

*8o THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

entreaties of the God, as he said, to come and live with him,
he built a bridge over the temple of the Deified Augustus,
and thus joined his Palace to the Capitol. Presently, to be
nearer yet, he laid the foundations of a new house in the
court of the Capitol.

He did not wish to be thought the grandson of Agrippa, or
called so, because of the latter's humble origin, and he grew
very angry if any one in a speech or a song included Agrippa
among the ancestors of the Caesars. He even boasted that
his own mother was born in incest, which Augustus had com-
mitted with his daughter Julia. And, not content with this
slur on the memory of Augustus, he forbade the celebration
of his victories at Actium and off Sicily by annual festivals,
on the ground that they were disastrous and ruinous to the
Roman people. He often called his great-grandmother Livia
Augusta "a Ulysses in woman's dress," and he had the au-
dacity to accuse her of low birth in a letter to the Senate,
alleging that her maternal grandfather, Aufidius Lurco, had
been nothing but a Decurion of Fundi, whereas that he held
high offices at Rome is proved by public records. When his
grandmother Antonia asked for a private interview, he re-
fused it except in the presence of the Praefect Macro. By
indignities of this kind, and annoyances he caused her death,
although some think that he also gave her poison. After she
was dead, he paid her no honor, but viewed her burning pyre
from his dining-room. He had his brother * Tiberius put to
death without warning, suddenly sending a Tribune of the
soldiers to do the deed; besides driving his father-in-law
Silanus to end his life by cutting his throat with a razor. His
charge against the latter was that Silanus had not followed
him when he put to sea in stormy weather, but had remained
behind in the hope of taking possession of the city in case
he should be lost in the storm. His charge against Tiberius
was that his breath smelled of an antidote taken to guard
against being poisoned at his hand. Now as a matter of fact,
Silanus was subject to sea-sickness and wished to avoid the
discomforts of the voyage, while Tiberius had taken medi-
cine for a chronic cough, which was growing worse. As for

1 Son of his brother Drusus.

GAIUS CALIGULA 181

his uncle Claudius, he spared him merely as a laughing-
stock.

He lived in habitual incest with all his sisters, and at a
large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while
his wife reclined above. Of these he is believed to have vio-
lated Drusilla when he was still a minor, and even to have
been caught lying with her by his grandmother Antonia, at
whose house they were brought up in company. Afterwards,
when she was the wife of Lucius Cassius Longinus, an ex-
consul, he took her from him and openly treated her as his
lawful wife. Also when he was sick he made her heir to his
property and the throne. When she died, he appointed a
season of public mourning, during which it was a capital
offense to laugh, bathe, or dine in company with one's parents,
wife, or children. He was so beside himself with grief that
suddenly fleeing the city by night and traversing Campania,
lie went to Syracuse and hurriedly returned from there with-
out cutting his hair or shaving his beard. And he never after-
wards took oath about matters of the highest moment, even
before the assembly of the people or in the presence of the
soldiers, except by the godhead of Drusilla. The rest of his
sisters he did not love with so great affection, nor honor so
highly, but often prostituted them to his favorites. He there-
fore the more readily condemned them in the case of Aemilius
Lepidus as adulteresses and privy to that conspiracy against
him. And he not only made public letters in the handwriting
of all of them, procured by fraud and seduction. He also
consecrated to Mars the Avenger three swords with which
his life was to have been taken, with an accompanying in-
scription containing the cause of his so doing.

It is not easy to decide whether in his marriages he acted
more basely in contracting them, in repudiating them, or in
continuing them. At the marriage of Livia Orestilla to Gaius
Piso, he attended the ceremony himself, gave orders that the
bride be taken to his own house, and within a few days di-
vorced her. Two years later he banished her, because of a sus-
picion that in the meantime she had gone back to her former
husband. Others write that being an invited guest at their wed-
ding banquet, he sent word to Piso, who reclined opposite to
him: "Don't take liberties with my wife," and at once carried

t8i THE LIVES Oif TE(E TWELVE CAESARS

her, off with him from the table, the next day issuing a procla-
mation that he had got himself a wife in the manner of Rocnu-
lus and Augustus. When the statement was made that the
grandmother of Lollia Paulina, who was married to Gaius
Memmius, an ex-consul commanding armies, had once been a
remarkably beautiful woman, he suddenly called Lollia from
the province, separated her from her husband, and married
her. Then in a short time, he put her away, witfc the command
never to have intercourse with any one. Though Caesonia was
neither beautiful nor young, and was already mother of three
daughters by another, besides being a woman of reckless ex-
travagance and wantonness, he loved her not only more pas-
sionately but more faithfully, often exhibiting her to the
soldiers riding by his side, decked with cloak, helmet and
shield, and to his friends even in a state of nudity. He did not
honor her with the title of wife until she had borne him a
child, announcing on the selfsame day that he had married
her and that he was the father of her babe. This babe, whom
he named Julia Drusilla, he carried to the temples of all the
goddesses, finally placing her in the lap of Minerva and com*
mending to her the child's nurture and training. And no evi-
dence convinced him so positively that she was sprung from
his own loins as her savage temper, which was even then so
violent that she would try to scratch the faces and eyes of
the little children who played with her.

It would be trivial and pointless to add to this an account
of his treatment of his relatives and friends, Ptolemy, son of
King Juba, his cousin (for he was the grandson of Mark
Antony by Antony's daughter Selene), and in particular
Macro himself and even Ennia, who helped him to the throne*
All these were rewarded for their kinship and their faithful
services by violent deaths.

He was no whit more respectful or mild towards the Senate,
allowing some who had held the hightest offices to run in their
togas for several miles beside his chariot and to wait on him at
table, standing napkin in hand either at the head of his couch,
or at his feet. Others he secretly put to death, yet continued
to send for them as if they were alive, after a few days falsely
asserting that they had committed suicide. When the Consuls
forgot to make proclamation of : his birthday, he deposed them,

GAIUS CALIGULA 183

an4, I^f t the state for' three days without its highest magis-
trates'. He flogged his Quaestor, who was charged with con-
spiracy, stripping off the man's clothes and spreading them
under the soldiers 7 feet, to give them a firm footing as they
beat him.

He treated the other orders with like insolence and cruelty.
Being disturbed by the noise made by those who came in the
middle of the night to secure the free seats in the Circus, he
drove them all out with cudgels. In the confusion more than
twenty Roman Knights were crushed to death, with as many
matrons and a couatless number of others. At the plays in
the theater, sowing discord between the Commons and the
Knights, he scattered the gift tickets ahead of time, to induce
the rabble to take the seats reserved for the equestrian order.
At a gladiatorial show he would sometimes draw back the
awnings when the sun was hottest and give orders that no one
be allowed to leave; then removing the usual equipment, he
would match worthless and decrepit gladiators against mangy
wild beasts, and have sham fights between householders who
were of good repute, but conspicuous for some bodily infirm-
ity. Sometimes too he would shut up the granaries and con-
demn the people to hunger.

The following are special instances of his innate brutality.
When cattle to feed the wild beasts which he had provided for
a gladiatorial show were rather costly, he selected criminals
to be devoured, and, merely taking a place in the middle of a
colonnade, he reviewed the line of prisoners without examin-
ing the charges and bade them be led away "from baldhead to
baldhead." A man who had made a vow to fight in the arena,
if the Emperor recovered, he compelled to keep his word<
watched him as he fought sword in hand, and would not let
him go until he was victorious, and then only after many en-
treaties. Another who had offered his life for the same reason,
but delayed to kill himself, he turned over to his slaves, with
orders to drive him through the streets decked with sacred
boughs and fillets, calling for the fulfillment of his ^ow, and
finally hurl him from the embankment. Many men of honor-
able rank were first disfigured with the marks of branding-
irons and then condemned to the mines, to work at building
roads, or to be thrown to the wild beasts ; or else he shut them

184 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

up in cages on all fours, like animals, or had them sawn
asunder. Not all these punishments were for serious offenses,
but merely for criticizing one of his shows, or for never having
sworn by his Genius. He forced parents to attend the execu-
tions of their sons, 1 sending a litter for one man who pleaded
ill health, and inviting another to dinner immediately after
witnessing the death, and trying to rouse him to gayety and
jesting by a great show of affability. He had the manager of
his gladiatorial shows and beast-baitings beaten with chains
in his presence for several successive days, and would not kill
him until he was disgusted at the stench of his putrefied brain.
He burned a writer of Atellan farces alive in the middle of the
arena of the amphitheater, because of a humorous line of
double meaning. When a Roman Knight on being thrown to
the wild beasts loudly protested his innocence, he took him
out, cut off his tongue, and put him back again.

Having asked a man who had been recalled from an exile
of long standing, how in the world he spent his time there,
the man replied by way of flattery: "I constantly prayed the
Gods for what has come to pass, that Tiberius might die and
you become Emperor." Thereupon Caligula, thinking that his
exiles were likewise praying for his death, sent emissaries from
island to island to butcher them all. Wishing to have one of
the Senators torn to pieces, he induced some of the members
to assail him suddenly, on his entrance into the House, with
the charge of being a public enemy, to stab him with their
writing-irons, and turn him over to the rest to be mangled.
His cruelty was *iot sated until he saw the man's limbs, mem-
bers, and bowels dragged through the streets and heaped up
before him.

He added to the enormity of his crimes by the brutality of
his language. He used to say that there was nothing in his own
character which he admired and approved more highly than
what he called his ddiwiQeyla, 2 that is to say, his shameless
impudence. When his grandmother Antonia gave him some
advice, he was not satisfied merely not to listen but replied:

1 Corroborated by Seneca, in Dt Ira II, 33.

9 A stoic term for a stoic virtue, meaning "immovable rigor." This in
Caligula was callous indifference. Therefore Suetonius explains it as
"his ffhftinflffft impudence*"

GAIUS CALIGULA 185

"Remember that I have the right to do anything to any-
body." When he was on the point of killing his brother, and
suspected that he had taken drugs as a precaution against
poison, he cried: "What! an antidote against Caesar?" After
banishing his sisters, he made the threat that he not only
had islands, but swords as well. An ex-praetor who had re-
tired to Anticyra for his health, sent frequent requests for an
extension of his leave. But Caligula ordered him put to
death, adding that a man who had not been helped by so
long a course of hellebore 1 needed to be bled. On signing the
list of prisoners who were to be put to death every ten days,
he said that he was clearing his accounts. Having condemned
several Gauls and Greeks to death in a body, he boasted that
he had subdued Gallograecia.

He seldom had any one put to death except by numerous
slight wounds. "Strike so that he may feel he is dying," was
his constant order, and soon became well known. When a
different man than he had intended had been killed, through
a mistake in the names, he said that the victim too had de-
served the same fate. He often uttered the familiar line of
the tragic poet 2 :

"Let them hate me, so they but fear me."

He often inveighed against all the Senators alike, as adherents
of Sejanus and informers against his mother and brothers,
producing the documents which he pretended to have burned,
and upholding the cruelty of Tiberius as forced upon him,
since he could not but believe so many accusers. He con-
stantly railed at the equestrian order as devotees of the
stage and arena. Angered at the rabble for applauding a
faction which he opposed, he cried: "I wish the Roman people
had but a single neck." When Tetrinius, the highwayman,

1 Used in antiquity in treating madness, gout, and epilepsy. Anticyra,
the refuge mentioned, was in Greece, and was celebrated for its growth
of this herb.

2 From Atreus, a tragedy by Accius (cir. 125 B.C.). Only fragment!
of his work remain.

186 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

was demanded, 1 he said all those who cried for him were
T^triniuses also. Once a band of five retiarii* in tunics,
matched against the same number of secutores? yielded with-
out a struggle. But when their death was ordered, one of them
caught up his trident and slew all the victors. Caligula be-
wailed this in a public proclamation as a most cruel murder,
and expressed his horror of those who had had the heart
to witness it.

He even used openly to deplore the state of his times, be-
cause they had been marked by no public disasters, saying
that the rule of Augustus had been made famous by the
Varus massacre, and that of Tiberius by the collapse of the
amphitheater at Fidenae, while his own was threatened with
oblivion because of its prosperity. And every now and then
he wished for some slaughter of his armies, for famine,
pestilence, fires, or a great earthquake.

His acts and words were equally cruel, even when he was
indulging in relaxation and given up to amusement ana feast-
ing. While he was lunching or reveling capital examinations
by torture were often made in his presence, and a soldier
who was an adept at decapitation cut off the heads of those
who were brought from prison. At Puteoli, at the dedication
of the bridge that he contrived, as has been said, after invit-
ing a number to come to him from the shore, on a sudden he
had them all thrown overboard; and when some caught hold
of the rudders of the ships, he pushed them off into the sea
with boathooks and oars. At a public banquet in Rome he
immediately handed a slave over to the executioners for
stealing a strip of silver from the couches, with orders that
his hands be cut off and hung from his neck upon his breast,
and that he then be led about among the guests, preceded by
a placard giving the reason for his punishment. When a
gladiator who was practicing with him with wooden swords
and fell on purpose, he stabbed him with a real dagger and
then ran about with a palm-branch, as victors do. Once when

1 Either for punishment or to fight in the arena.

2 Gladiators who wore no armor and fought with only a lance and a
net.

* Gladiators who wore helmet and shield and fought with sword or
leaden ball.

GAIUS CALIGULA 187

he stood by the altar dressed as a popa, 1 and a victim W2
brought up, he raised his mallet on high and slew the cut-
tratius. 1 At one of his more sumptuous banquets he suddenly
burst into a fit of laughter, and when the Consuls, who were
reclining next him, politely inquired at what he was laugh-
ing, he replied: "What do you suppose, except that at a single
nod of mine both of you could have your throats cut on the
spot?"

As a sample of his humor, he took his place beside a statue
of Jupiter, and asked the tragic actor Apelles which of the
two seemed to him the greater, and when he hesitated,
Caligula had him flayed with whips, extolling his voice from
time to time, when the wretch begged for mercy, as passing
sweet even in his groans. Whenever he kissed the neck of his
wife or sweetheart, he would say: "Off comes this beautiful
head whenever I give the word." He even used to threaten
now and then that he would resort to torture if necessary, to
find out from his dear Caesonia why he loved her so pas-
sionately.

He assailed mankind of almost every epoch with no less
envy and malice than insolence and cruelty. He threw down
the statues of famous men, which for lack of room Augustus
had moved from the court of the Capitol to the Campus
Marius, and so utterly demolished them that they could not
be set up again with their inscriptions entire. He then for-
bade for all time the erection of the statue of any living
man anywhere, without hi knowledge and consent. He even
thought of destroying tLc ^oems of Homer, asking why he
should not have the same privilege as Plato, who excluded
Homer from his ideal commonwealth. More than that, he
all but removed the writings and the busts of Vergil and of
Titus Livius from all the libraries, railing at the former as
a man of no talent and very little learning, and the latter as
a verbose and careless historian. With regard to lawyers too,
as if intending to do away with any practice of their pro-
fession, he often threatened that he would see to it, by Heaven^
that they could give no advice contrary to his wish.

1 The function of the Popa was to stun the animal with a sledge-blow;
that of the cultrarius to cut the victim's throat.

188 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

, He took from all the noblest of the city the ancient devices
of their families, from Torquatus his collar, 1 from Cincin-
natus his lock of hair, from Gnaeus Pompeius the surname
Great belonging to his ancient race. After inviting Ptolemy,
whom I have mentioned before, to come from his kingdom
he received him with honor, then suddenly had him executed
for no other reason than that when giving a gladiatorial
show, he noticed that Ptolemy on entering the theater at-
tracted general attention by the splendor of his purple cloak.
Whenever he ran across handsome men with fine heads of
hair, he disfigured them by having the backs of their heads
shaved. 2 There was a certain Aesius Proculus, son of a Chief
Centurion, called Colosseros because of his remarkable size
and handsome appearance. This man Caligula ordered to be
suddenly dragged from his seat in the amphitheater and led
into the arena, where he matched him first against a Thracian
and then against a heavy-armed gladiator. When Proculus
was victor in both contests, Caligula gave orders that he be
bound at once, clad in rags, and then put to death, after
first being led about the streets and exhibited to the women.
In short, there was no one of such low condition or such
abject fortune that he did not envy him such advantages
as he possessed. Since the King of Nemi 3 had now held his
priesthood for many years, he hired a stronger adversary to
attack him. When one Porius, a gladiator who fought from
a light chariot, was vigorously applauded on the day of one
of the games for setting his slave free after a victory, Caligula
rushed from the amphitheater in such haste that he trod on
the fringe of his toga and went headlong down the steps,
fuming and shouting that a people who are masters of the
world give more honor to a gladiator for a trifling act than
to their deified Emperors or to the one still present with
them.
He respected neither his own chastity nor that of any one

1 This collar of gold, taken from the neck of a gigantic Gaul killed
in single combat by Titus Manlius, afterwards called Torquatus, was
worn by his lineal male descendants. The family had become extinct but
had been revived by Augustus in C. Nonius Asprenas.

2 Because he himself was bald.

8 The priest of Diana at Nemi, who must be a fugitive slave and
obtain his office by slaying his predecessor.

GAIUS CALIGULA 189

else. He is said to have had unnatural relations with Marcus
Lepidus, with Mnester, an actor in pantomimes, and with
certain hostages. Valerius Catullus, a young man of a con-
sular family, publicly proclaimed that he had violated the
Emperor and worn himself out in commerce with him. To
say nothing of his incest with his sisters and his notorious
passion for Pyrallis, the prostitute, there was scarcely any
woman of rank whom he did not approach. These as a rule
he invited to dinner with their husbands, and as they passed
by the foot of his couch, he would inspect them critically and
deliberately, as if buying slaves, even putting out his hand
and lifting up the face of any one who looked down in mod-
esty. Then, as often as the fancy took him, he would leave
the room and send for the one who pleased him best. Return-
ing soon afterward with evident signs of what had occurred,
he would openly commend or criticize his partner, recounting
her charms or defects and commenting on her conduct. To
some he personally sent a bill of divorce in the name of their
absent husbands, and had it entered in the public records.

In reckless extravagance he outdid the prodigals of all
times in ingenuity, inventing a new sort of baths and un-
natural varieties of food and feasts. He would bathe in hot
or cold perfumed oils, drink pearls of great price dissolved
in vinegar, and set before his guests loaves and meats of
gold, declaring that a man ought either to be frugal or Caesar.
He even scattered large sums of money among the Commons
from the top of the Julian Basilica for several days in suc-
cession. He also built Liburnian galleys * with ten banks of
oars, with sterns set with gems, particolored sails, huge spa-
cious baths, colonnades, and banquet-halls, and even a great
variety of vines and fruit trees. In these he would feast even
in the daytime amongst singers and dancers as he coasted
along the shores of "Campania. He built villas and country
houses with utter disregard of expense, caring for nothing
so much as to do what men said was impossible. So he built
moles out into the deep and stormy sea, tunneled rocks of
hardest flint, built up plains to the height of mountains and
razed mountains to the level of the plain, all with incredible

1 Such galleys, famous for their speed, commonly had but one or two
banks of oars.

X90 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

dispatch, since the penalty for delay was death. To make a
long story short, vast sums of money, including the 2,700,-
000,000 sesterces * which Tiberius Caesar had amassed, were
squandered by him in less than the revolution of a year.

Having thus impoverished himself, from very need he
turned his attention to pillage through a complicated and
cunningly devised system of false accusations, auction sales,
and imposts. He ruled that Roman citizenship could not
lawfully be enjoyed by those whose forefathers had obtained
it for themselves and their descendants, except in the case
of sons, since "descendants" ought not to be understood as
going beyond that degree. When grants of the deified Julius
and Augustus were presented to him, he waved them aside
as old and out of date. Ho also charged all those with making
false returns, who, by any means whatsoever, had increased
their property since the last census. 2 If any Chief Centurions
since the beginning of Tiberius' reign had not named that Em-
peror or himself among their heirs, he set aside their wills on
the ground of ingratitude. He also declared null and void the
wills of all others who had said that they intended to make
Caesar their heir when they died. When in this way he had
aroused such fear among men that even persons unknown
to him came to appoint him joint-heir with their friends, and
in the case of parents with their children, he accused them
of making game of him by continuing to live after such a
declaration, and to many of them he sent poisoned cakes.
He used further to conduct the trial of such cases in person,
naming in advance the sum which fie proposed to raise at
each sitting, and not rising until :t was made up. Impatient
of the slightest delay, he once condemned in a single sen-
tence more than forty who were accused on different counts,
boasting to Caesonia, when she woke after a nap, of the
great amount of business he had done while she was taking
her siesta.

Appointing an auction, he put up and sold what was left
from all the shows, personally soliciting bids and running
them up so high, that some who were forced to buy articles
at an enormous price and were thus stripped of their pos-

1 $110,700,000.00;

2 As an excuse to confiscate their estates.

GAIUS CALIGULA 191

sessions, opened their veins. A well-known incident is that
of Aponius Saturninus. He fell asleep on one of the benches,
and as the auctioneer was warned by Gaius not to overlook
the praetorian gentleman who kept nodding to him, the bid-
ding was not stopped until thirteen gladiators were knocked
down to the unconscious sleeper at nine million sesterces. 1

When he was in Gaul and had sold at immense figures the
jewels, furniture, slaves, and even the freedmen of his sisters
who had been condemned to death, finding the business so
profitable, he sent to the city for all the paraphernalia of the
old palace, seizing for its transportation even public car-
riages and animals from the bakeries, so that bread was often
scarce at Rome and many who had cases in court lost them
from inability to appear and meet their bail. To get rid of
this furniture, he resorted to every artifice of fraud and
imposition. Sometimes he would rail at the bidders for being
avaricious or not ashamed that they were richer than he.
At another time he would feign regret for allowing common
men to acquire the property of princes. Having learned that
a rich provincial had paid two hundred thousand sesterces 2
to those who issued the Emperor's invitations to be smug-
gled in among the guests at one of his dinner-parties, he was
not in the least displeased that the honor of dining with him
was rated so high. But when next day the man appeared at
his auction, he sent a messenger to hand him some trifle or
other at the price of two hundred thousand sesterces and
say that he should dine with Caesar on his personal invita-
tion.

He levied new and unheard-of taxes, at first through the
Publicans and then, because their profit was so great, through
the Centurions and Tribunes of the praetorian guard, no
class of commodities or persons being exempt from some
kind of tax or other. On all eatables sold in any part of the
city he levied a fixed and definite charge; on lawsuits and
legal processes begun anywhere, a fortieth part of the sum
involved, providing a penalty in case any one was found
guilty of compromising or abandoning a suit; on the daily
wages of porters, an eighth; on the earnings of prostitutes,

1 $369,000.00.

2 $8,20000.

19* THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

as much as each received for one embrace; and a clause was
added to this chapter of the law, providing that those who
had ever been prostitutes or acted as panders should be
liable to this public tax, and that even matrimony should not
be exempt.

When taxes of this kind had been proclaimed, but not pub-
lished in writing, inasmuch as many offenses were committed
through ignorance af the letter of the law, he at last, on the
urgent demand of the people, had the law posted up, but in a
very narrow place and in excessively small letters, to prevent
the making of a copy. To leave no kind of plunder untried,
he opened a brothel in his palace, setting apart a number
of rooms and furnishing them to suit the grandeur of the
place, where matrons and freeborn youths should stand ex-
posed. Then he sent his pages about the Forums and courts
to invite young men and old to enjoy themselves, lending
money on interest to those who came and having clerks
openly take down their names, as contributors to Caesar's
revenues. He did not even disdain to make money from
gaming, and to increase his gains by falsehood and even by
perjury. Having on one occasion given up his place to the
player next him and gone into the courtyard, he spied two
wealthy Roman Knights passing by, ordered them to be
seized at once and their property confiscated, and came back
exultant, boasting that he had never played in better luck.

But when his daughter was born, complaining of his nar-
row means, and no longer merely of the burdens of a ruler
but of those of a father as well, he took up contributions for
the girl's maintenance and dowry. He also made proclamation
that he would receive New Year's gifts, and on the Kalends
of January took his place in the entrance to the Palace, to
clutch the coins which a throng of people of all classes show-
ered on him by handfuls and pocketfuls. Finally, seized
with a mania for feeling the touch of money, he would often
pour out huge piles of goldpieces in some open place, walk
over them barefooted, and wallow in them for a long time
with his whole body.

He had but one experience with military affairs or war,
and that was not from any set purpose. For, having gone to

GAIUS CALIGULA 19;,

Mevania 1 to visit the river Clitumnus and its grove, he was
reminded of the necessity of recruiting his bodyguard of
Batavians and was seized with the idea of an expedition to
Germany. So without delay he assembled legions and auxili-
aries from all quarters, holding levies everywhere with the
utmost strictness, and collecting provisions of every kind
on an unheard-of scale. Then he began his march and made
it at times so hurriedly and rapidly, that the praetorian
cohorts were forced, contrary to all precedent, to lay their
standards on the pack-animals and thus to follow him, and
at other times so lazily and daintily that he was carried in a
litter by eight bearers, requiring the inhabitants of the towns
through which he passed to sweep the roads for him and
sprinkle them to lay the dust.

On reaching his camp, to show his vigilance and strictness
as a commander, he dismissed in disgrace the generals who
were late in bringing in the auxiliaries from various places.
In reviewing his troops he deprived many of the Chief
Centurions who were well on in years of their rank, in some
cases only a few days before they would have served then
time, giving as a reason their age and infirmity. Then, railing
at the rest for their avarice, he reduced the rewards given
on completion of full military service to six thousand ses-
terces. 2

All that he accomplished was to receive the surrender of
Adminius, son of Cynobellinus, King of the Britons, who
had been banished by his father and had deserted to the
Romans with a small force. Yet as if the entire island had
submitted to him, he sent a grandiloquent letter to Rome,
commanding the couriers who carried it to ride in their post-
chaise all the way to the Forum and the House, and not to
deliver it to any one except the Consuls, in the temple of
Mars the Avenger, before a full meeting of the Senate.

Presently, finding no one to fight with, he had a few Cer*
mans of his bodyguard taken across the river and concealed
there, and word brought him after luncheon with great bustle
and confusion that the enemy were close at hand. Upon this
he rushed out with his friends and a part of the praetorian

1 Birthplace of the poet Propertius.

2 $246.00, half the amount established by Augustus.

194 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

cavalry to the woods close by, and after cutting the branches
from some trees and adorning them like trophies, he returned
by torchlight, taunting those who had not followed him as
timorous and cowardly, and presenting his companions and
the partners in his victory with crowns of a new kind and of
A new name, ornamented with figures of the sun, moon and
stars, and called exploratoriae. Another time some hostages
were taken from a common school and secretly sent on ahead
of him, when he suddenly left a banquet and pursued them
with the cavalry as if they were runaways, caught them, and
brought them back in fetters, in this farce too showing im-
moderate extravagance. On coming back to the table, when
some announced that the army was assembled, he urged them
to take their places just as they were, in their coats of mail.
He also admonished them in the familiar line of Vergil to
"bear up and save themselves for better days." *

While he was about these things he rebuked the distant
Senate and people of Rome in a stern edict for indulging
in revels and frequenting the theaters and their pleasant
villas when Caesar was fighting battles and exposing himself
to so many dangers.

Finally, as if resolved to make war in earnest, he drew
up a line of battle on the shore of the ocean, placed his
ballistas 2 and other artillery, and, no one knowing or able
to imagine what he was going to do, he all of a sudden com-
manded they gather sea shells and fill their helmets and
pockets with them, calling them "the spoils of ocean, due
to the Capitol and the Palatine." As a monument of this vic-
tory he erected a lofty tower, from which lights were to shine
at night to guide the course of ships, as from the Pharos. 8
Then promising the soldiers a gratuity of a hundred denarii 4
each, as if he had shown precedented liberality, he said,
"Go your ways and be happy. Go your ways, you are rich."

Then turning his attention to his triumph, in addition to
a few captives and deserters from the barbarians he chose
fill the tallest of the Gauls, and as he expressed it, those who

1 Aeneid I, 207.

2 Machines which cast stones.
8 The lighthouse at Alexandria.
4 About $15.00. /

'GAIUS CALIGULA 195

were "worthy of a triumph," as well as some of the chiefs.
These he reserved for his parade, compelling them not only
to dye their hair red and to let it grow long, but also to learn
the language of the Germans and assume barbarian names.
He also had the triremes in which he had entered the ocean
carried overland to Rome for the greater part of the way.
He wrote besides to his financial agents to prepare for a
triumph at the smallest possible cost, 1 but on a grander
scale than had ever before been known, since they had full
power over the property of all men.

Before leaving the province he formed a design of un-
speakable cruelty, that of butchering the legions that had
begun the mutiny years before just after the death of Augus*
tus, 1 because they had threatened his father Germanicus,
their leader, and himself, at the time an infant. And though
he was with difficulty turned from this mad purpose, he could
by no means be prevented from persisting in his desire to deci-
mate them. Accordingly he summoned them to an assembly
unarmed, without even their swords, and surrounded them
with armed horsemen. But seeing that some of the legionaries,
suspecting his purpose, were stealing off to resume their
weapons in case any violence should be offered them, he
fled from the assembly and set out for the city in a hurry,
turning all his ferocity upon the Senate, against which he
uttered open threats, in order to divert the gossip about his
own dishonor. He complained among other things that he
had been cheated out of his fairly earned triumph, whereas
a short time before he had himself given orders that on pain
of death no action should be taken about his honors.

Therefore when he was met on the road by envoys from
that distinguished body, begging him to hasten his return,
he roared, "I will come, and this will be with me," frequently
smiting the hilt of the sword which he wore at his side. He
also made proclamation that he was returning, but only to
those who desired his presence, the equestrian order and the
people, for to the Senate he would never more be fellow*
citizen nor prince. He even forbade any one of the Senators

1 To himself personally.

196 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

to meet him. Then giving up or postponing his triumph, he
entered the city on his birthday in an ovation.

Within four months he perished, having dared great crimes
and meditating still greater ones. For he had made up his
mind 'to move to Antium, and later to Alexandria, after first
slaying the noblest members of the two orders. That no
one may doubt this, let me say that among his private papers
two notebooks were found with different titles, one called
'The Sword" and the other "The Dagger," and both con-
taining the names and marks of identification of those whom
he had doomed to death. There was found besides a great
chest full of divers kinds of poisons, which they say were
later thrown into the sea by Claudius and so infected it as to
kill the fish, which were thrown up by the tide upon the
neighboring shores.

He was very tall and extremely pale, with a huge body,
but very thin neck and legs. His eyes and temples were
hollow, his forehead broad and grim, his hair thin and en-
tirely gone on the top of his head, though his body was
hairy. Because of this to look upon him from a higher place
as he passed by, or for any reason whatever to mention a
goat, was treated as a capital offense. While his face was
naturally forbidding and ugly, he purposely made it even
more savage, practicing all kinds of terrible and fearsome
expressions before a mirror.

He was sound neither of body nor mind. As a boy he was
troubled with the epilepsy, and while in his youth he had
some endurance, yet at times because of sudden faintness he
was hardly able to walk, to stand up, to collect his thoughts,
or to hold up his head. He himself realized his mental in-
firmity, and thought at times of going into retirement to
clear his brain. It is thought that his wife Caesonia gave him
a drug intended for a love potion, which however had the
effect of driving him mad. He was especially tormented with
sleeplessness. For he never rested more than three hours at
night, and even for that length of time he did not sleep
quietly, but was terrified by strange apparitions, once for
example dreaming that the spirit of the ocean talked with
him. Therefore weary of lying in bed wide awake during
the greater part of the night, he would now sit upon his

GAIUS CALIGULA 197

couch, and now wander through the Icutg colonnades, crying
out from time to time for daylight ar^i longing for its coming.

I think I may fairly attribute to mental weakness the exist*
ence of two exactly opposite faults in the same person, ex-
treme assurance and, on the other hand, excessive timorous-
ness. For this man, who so utterly despised the Gods, was
wont at the slightest thunder and lightning to shut his eyes,
to muffle up his head, and if they increased, to leap from his
bed and hide under it. In his journey through Sicily, though
he made all manner of fun of the miracles in various places,
he suddenly fled from Messana by night, panic-stricken by
the smoke and roaring from Aetna's crater. Full of threats as
he was also against the barbarians, when he was riding in a
chariot through a narrow defile on the far side of the Rhine,
and some one said that there would be no slight panic if the
enemy should appear anywhere, he immediately mounted a
horse and hastily returned to the bridges. Finding them
crowded with camp servants and baggage, in his impatience of
any delay he was passed along from hand to hand over the
men's heads. Soon after, hearing of an uprising in Germany,
he made preparations to flee from Rome and equipped fleets
for the purpose, finding comfort only in the thought that
the provinces across the sea would at any rate be left him,
in case the enemy should be victorious and take possession
of the summits of the Alps, as the Cimbri, or even of the
city, as the Senones had once done. And it was this, I think,
that later inspired his assassins with the idea of pretending
to the rioting soldiers that he had laid hands on himself in
terror at the report of a defeat.

In his clothing, his shoes, and the rest of his attire he did
not follow the usage of his country and his fellow-citizens;
not always even that of his sex; or in fact, that of an ordinary
mortal. He often appeared in public in embroidered cloaks
covered with precious stones, with a long-sleeved tunic and
bracelets; sometimes all in silks 1 and habited like a woman;
at times in sandals or buskins, at times in the sort of shoes
worn by light-armed soldiers, and sometimes in the low shoes
which are used by females. Most often he exhibited himself

1 Men were forbidden to wear silk.

*98 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

with a golden beard, holding in his hand a thunderbolt, a
trident, or a caduceus, emblems of the Qods. But sometimes
he even appeared in the garb of Venus. He frequently wore
the dress of a triumphing general, even before his campaign,
and sometimes the breastplate of Alexander the Great, which
he had taken from his sarcophagus.

As regards liberal studies, he gave little attention to liter-
ature but a great deal to oratory, and he was as ready of
speech and eloquent as you please, especially if he had occa-
sion to make a charge against any one. For when he Was
angry, he had an abundant flow of words and thoughts, and
his voice and delivery were such that for very excitement he
could not stand still and was clearly heard by those at a
distance. When about to begin an harangue he threatened in
such terms as "that he was about to draw the sword of his
lucubrations," holding a polished and elegant style in such
contempt that he used to say that Seneca, who was very
popular just then, composed "mere school exercises," and
that he was "sand without lime." He had the habit too of
writing replies to the successful pleas of orators and compos-
ing accusations or vindications of important personages who
were brought to trial before the Senate. And according as
his pen had been more fluent in accusing or in defending he
brought ruin or relief by his speech, while he would also
invite the equestrian order by proclamation to come in and
hear him.

Moreover he devoted himself with much enthusiasm to arts
of other kinds and of great variety, appearing as a Thracian
gladiator, as a charioteer, and even as a singer and dancer,
fighting with the weapons of actual warfare, and driving in
circuses built in various places. He was so carried away by
his interest in singing and dancing that even at the public
performances he could not refrain from singing with the
tragic actor as he delivered his lines, or from openly imitating
his gestures by way of praise or correction. Indeed, on the
day when he was slain he seems to have ordered ah all-night
vigil for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the license
granted by the time of year to make his first appearance on
the stage. Sometimes he danced even at night, and once he
summoned three Consulars to the Palace at the dose of the

GAIUS CALIGULA 199

second watch, 1 and when they arrived in great and deathly
fear, he seated them on a stage and then on a sudden burst
out with a great din of flutes and clogs, 2 dressed in a cloak
and a tunic reaching to his heels, and after dancing a number
went off again. And yet, varied as were his accomplishments^
the man could not swim.

Toward those to whom he was devoted his partiality be-
came madness. He used to kiss Mnester, the actor of panto-
mimes, even in the theater, and if any one made even the
slightest sound while his favorite was dancing, he had him
dragged from his seat and scourged him with his own hand,
When a Roman Knight created a disturbance, he sent a
Centurion to bid him go without delay to Ostia and carry
to King Ptolemy in Mauretania a message the purport of
which was: "Do neither good nor ill to the man whom I have
sent you." He gave some Thracian gladiators command of
his German bodyguard. He reduced the amount of armor of
the murmttlones* When one Columbus had won a victory,
but had suffered a slight wound, he had the place rubbed with
a poison which he henceforth called "Columbinum." At
least it was found mentioned under that name in his list of
poisons. He was so passionately devoted to the green faction 4
that he constantly dined and spent the night in their stable,
and in one of his revels with them he gave the driver Eutychus
two million sesterces in gifts. 5 On the day before the games
he used to send his soldiers to enjoin silence in the neighbor-
hood, that the repose of his favorite horse Incitatus* might
not be disturbed. Besides a stall of marble, a manger of
ivory, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones, he
even gave this horse a house, with a retinue of slaves and
fine furniture, for the more elegant entertainment of the

1 About midnight, since the night was divided into four watches.

* The scabcllum was attached to the feet of dancers and sounded an
Accompaniment lo their movements.

8 He disliked the gladiators known as murmillones because they were
the usual opponents of his favorites, the Thracians.

*The charioteers in the Circus were divided into four parties, dis-
tinguished by their colors, which were red, white, blue, and green.

6 32,000.00; The host at a dinner party often gave guests gifts.

'-J :yer," "Go-ahead."

200 THE LI V ^ uF THE TWELVE CAESARS

guests invited in the horse's name. It is also said that he
intended to make him Consul.

During this frantic and riotous career several thought of
attempting his life. But when one or two conspiracies had
been detected and the rest were waiting for a favorable op-
portunity, two men made common cause and accomplished
their purpose, with the connivance of his most influential
freedmen and the officers of the praetorian guard. For these
last, having been named, though falsely, as concerned in one
of the former conspiracies against him, realized that Caligula
hated and feared them. In fact, he exposed them to great
odium by at once taking them aside and declaring, drawn
sword in hand, that he would kill himself, if they too tnought
he deserved death. And from that time on he never ceased
accusing them one to the other and setting them aH at odds.

When they had decided to attempt his life at the exhibition
of the Palatine games, as he went out at noon, Cassius
Chaerea, Tribune of a cohort of the praetorian guard, claimed
for himself the part of striking the first blow. For this man,
already well along in years, Gaius had the habit of taunting
In most scurrilous manner with wantonness and effeminacy.
When he asked for the watchword Gaius would give him
"Priapus" or "Venus," and when Chaerea had occasion to
thank him for anything, he would hold out his hand to kiss,
forming and moving it in an obscene fashion.

His approaching murder was foretold by many prodigies.
The statue of Jupiter at Olympia, which he had ordered to
be taken to pieces and moved to Rome, suddenly uttered such
a peal of laughter that the scaffoldings collapsed and the
workmen took to their heels. Immediately following this a
man named Cassius came up who declared that he had been
bidden in a dream to sacrifice a bull to Jupiter. The Capitol
at Capua was struck by lightning on the Ides of March, and
also the room of the doorkeeper of the Palace at Rome. Som#
inferred from the latter omen that danger was threatened to
the owner at the hands of his guards; and from the former,
the murder of a second distinguished personage, such as had
taken place long before on that same day. 1 The soothsayer

1 Referring, of course, to the murder of Julius Caesar.

GAIUS CALIGULA 201

Sulla too, when Gaius consulted him about his horoscope,
declared that inevitable death was close at hand. The lots of
Fortune at Antium warned him to beware of Cassius, and
he accordingly ordered the death of Cassius Longinus, who
was at the time proconsul of Asia, forgetting that the family
name of Chaerea was Cassius. The day before he was killed
he dreamt that he stood in heaven beside the throne of
Jupiter and that the God struck him with the toe of his
right foot and hurled him to earth. Some things which had
happened on that very day shortly before he was killed were
also regarded as- portents. As he was sacrificing, he was
sprinkled with the blood of a flamingo, and the pantomimic
actor Mnester danced a tragedy 1 which the tragedian
Neoptolemus had acted years before during the games at
which Philip King of the Macedonians was assassinated. In a
farce called "Laureolus," in which the chief actor falls as he
is making his escape and vomits blood, several understudies 2
so vied with one another in giving evidence of their proficiency
that the stage swam in blood. A nocturnal performance be-
sides was rehearsing, in which scenes from the lower world
were represented by Egyptians and Aethiopians.

On the ninth day before the Kalends of February at about
the seventh hour he hesitated whether or not to get up for
luncheon, since his stomach was still disordered from excess
of food on the day before, but at length he came out at the
persuasion of his friends. In the covered passage through
which he had to pass, some boys of good birth, who had been
summoned from Asia to appear on the stage, were rehearsing
their parts, and he stopped to watch and encourage them*
Had not the leader of the troop complained that he had a
chill, he would have returned and had the performance given
at once. From this point there are two versions of the story:
Some say that as he was talking with the boys, Chaerea
came up behind and gave him a deep cut in the neck, having
first cried, "Do your duty," 8 and that then the Tribune

1 Called Cinyras, the story of which is told by Ovid in Metamor-
phoses X.

8 Understudies in Rome entertained the spectators after a play by
imitating the actions of the star.

8 Formula of the ritual at a sacrifice. The slayer raised his ax with
the question, "Shall I not do it?" To which the priest replied, "Do it."

W THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Cornelius Sabinus, who was the other conspirator and faced
Gaius, stabbed him in the breast. Others say that Sabinus,
after getting rid of the crowd through Centurions who were
in the plot, asked for the watchword, as soldiers do, and that
when Gaius gave him "J u Pite r >" he cried "So be it," 1 and as
Gaius looked around, he split his jawbone with a blow of
his sword. As he lay upon the ground and with writhing
limbs called out that he still lived the others dispatched him
with thirty wounds, for the general signal was "Strike again."
Some even thrust their swords through his privates. At the
beginning of the disturbance his litter bearers ran to his aid
with their poles, and presently the Germans of his bodyguard,
and they slew several of his assassins, as well as some in-
offensive Senators.

He lived twenty-nine years and ruled three years, ten
months and eight days. His body was conveyed secretly to
the gardens of the Lamian family, where it was partly con-
sumed on a hastily erected pyre and buried beneath a light
covering of turf. Later his sisters on their return from exile
dug it up, cremated it, and consigned it to the tomb. Before
this was done, it is well known that the caretakers of the
gardens were disturbed by ghosts, and that in the house
where he was slain not a night passed without some fearsome
apparition, until at last the house itself was destroyed by fire,
With him died his wife Caesonia, stabbed with a sword by
a Centurion, while his daughter's brains were dashed out
against a wall.

One may form an idea of the state of those times by what
followed. Not even after the murder was made known was
't at once believed that he was dead, but it was suspected that
Gaius himself had made up and circulated the report, to find
out by that means how men felt towards him. The con-
spirators too had not agreed on a successor, and the Senate
was so unanimously in favor of reestablishing the republic
that the Consuls called the first meeting, not in the Senate
House, because it was named after Julius Caesar, but in the

1 Another formula, which may also be translated "Take the fulfill-
ment of your omen." As though Caligula having named Jupitet, God of
the thunderbolt and instant death, should take indeed what that God
dealt.

GAIUS CALIGULA 203

Capitol. Some in expressing their views proposed that the
memory of the Caesars be done away with and their temples
destroyed. Men further observed and commented on the fact
that all the Caesars whose forename was Gaius perished by
the sword, beginning with the one who was slain in the times
of China. 1

1 This was Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo, slain in 87 B.C. But the Dic-
tator's father died a natural death, as did also Gaius Caesar, grandson
of Augustus.

BOOK V
THE DEIFIED CLAUDIUS

THE DEIFIED CLAUDIUS

THE father of Claudius Caesar, Drusus, who at first had
the forename Decimus and later that of Nero, was born of
Livia within three months after her marriage to Augustus
(for she was with child at the time) and there was a suspicion
that he was begotten by his stepfather in adulterous inter-
course. Certain it is that this verse at once became current:

"On certain persons fortune's smiles attend
That they may children have at three months' end."

This Drusus, while holding the offices of Quaestor and
Praetor, was in charge of the war in Raetia and later of that in
Germany. He was the first Roman general to sail the northern
ocean, and beyond the Rhine with prodigious labor he con-
structed the huge canals which to this very day are called
by his name. Even after he had defeated the enemy in many
battles and driven them far into the wilds of the interior, he
did not cease his pursuit until the apparition of a barbarian
woman of more than human size, speaking in the Latin
tongue, forbade him to push his victory further. For these
exploits he received the honor of an ovation with the trium-
phal regalia. After his praetorship he immediately became
Consul and resumed his campaign, but died in his summer
camp, which for that reason was given the name of "Ac-
cursed." The body was carried by the leading men of the
free towns and colonies to Rome, where it was met and re-
ceived by the Decuries of the Scribes, and buried in the
Campus Martius. But the army reared a monument in his
honor, about which the soldiers on a stated day each year
thereafter were to perform certain ceremonies 1 while the

1 A decursus. The one about the funeral pyre of Augustus is described
Dy Dio, LVI, 42. After running around it in full armor, the soldiers
cast into the fire the military prizes which they had received from the
Emperor,

107

208 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

cities of Gaul were to offer prayers and sacrifices. The Senate,
in adition to many other honors, voted him a marble arch
adorned with trophies on the Appian Way, and the surname
Germanicus for himself and his descendants. It is the general
belief that he^was as eager for glory as he was democratic by
nature. For ii^Ul^^4iA^l^^MitT^"^my he greatly
desired to wiri the "noble trophies" 1 often pursuing the
f ' < tolffiial

&&fe

*ifito3* r 6f 'WWttft tiife

: -

,,.

fct'bht* fodfc hifc
tijOnsd, ratbe,^ not ; tQ pas^t by,
. eyeri ^^*lft.^pKM^^ tter
of fact, Augustus loved fiiin so aearly while he livea that he

off by poison.

ye

both lus jnind and his body was dulled, and even <whi

ulakiito: '-*"*-'

j soli

Gaius and Lucius, his grandsons through his daughter
tot

CLAUDIUS, . w

th6 proper age he wafe not thought capable of ,ariy-
or. private business. For a long time,; even after he/
BBadledlhe^gc of indepenfleiide, he. was subjfeGtlk) tbe<supcarH
TOiofutif rothers and tinder .th&direethm of a leache^of^honr
be famtelf foMii3tain$^ that he was.a-

barbatiari aBdai tomer chief of muleteerfi^put in charge ^f,
him f for 'the'lefc^essr purpose of punishing fairfi with /aft .pos*
? trifling obckstouvvlt^was Blso/Jpecause
tealttofrtijat ccmtrairyjtb All precedent hfevwore^
he: presided "at the gladiatorial games which te
his : hrttt her gave in hoaor of their :father; On ftbe day
When fie-, afefeuitted tffce ; gowil of manhood he was taketi: in
a; litter tq the. Capitol about midniglit withobt the usual
ceremony^ :> - , > r -"- . !->*'> M .r . ? -/" ; * / , */, r j

Yet hergave no slight atfeation ,to liberal /sblcKesi findni .hi
earliest youth; and even published frequent ^specimem of his^
attamments in each line. But even so he could not attain any)
putrlk positiori or inspipe more favorable hopes of his future;

/ His mother Antonia dften spoke of him as a monster of a
man^jndt'fiHishedbiit inei i ely)begun by DameNatuc^ and il
she^aocused any one -of drflnessj she ^ouldf say that ihe was a
bigger fobl than hei- son Claudius; fHis grandmother August^
always treated him with the utmost contempt, very rarely
spoke 'to him, and when she admonished hini it was in writ^
ing r 'bdeflyrbut severely, or though messengers! Wten his
sister Livilla heard that ;he would .oner day te Emperor, ^ie
opewly and Jo'icHy prayed )tha^ ;the Rtraan people might 'be
^>ared so cruel and undeserved a fortune; Einallyloiiidfce.ifc
clfeamr;wiaa^ ojiumons/ favmable and other^ite,- iris greaf
iipcle -Augustus had of him, I hive appeiaded extracts^ f ram
hi&x>wn tetters:' r- ^ Y '^ -- 1 : * ? ^" *;<'>'; -''^ ' - i

-^I' have'tatked with Tiberius y J nay*deai? liivia,^s ybu;i^
qtiested; with reg^iii to what is to be done wiUi' ; yoiar f gnintt
son Tiberius 2 at the gaihes-bf Mars. JNb# sw^re)both agreed
that/ we mfast decide 'once f <Jr - all whfct pto ?we rarest adopt
inrhis case. F6r r if <foe be souad' wid, t

. . , , ,

> That is, if he have his five semes. August*^ & tBte fetteirris'iil^
tx>: Wtorwiniv ompi6y3;a jwauber/ of Ortbk mordj, wkj^msw ;; 1 1

no THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

what reason have we for doubting that he ought to be ad-
vanced through the same grades and steps through which
his brother has been advanced? But if we realize that he is
wanting and defective in soundness of body and mind, we
must not furnish the means of ridiculing both him and us to
a public which is wont to scoff at and deride such things.
Surely we shall always be in a stew, if we deliberate about
each separate occasion and do not make up our minds iii ad-
vance whether we think he can hold public ofihcs or not.
However, as to the matters about which you ask my present
advice, I do not object to his having charge of the banquet
of the priests at the games of Mars, if he will allow himself
to be advised by his kinsman the son of Silvanus, so as not
to do anything to make himself conspicuous or ridiculous.
That he should view the games in the Circus from the Im-
perial box does not meet with my approval, for he will be
conspicuous if exposed to full view in the front of the audi-
torium. I am opposed to his going to the Alban Mount or
being in Rome on the days of the Latin festival. For, why
should he not be made Prefect of the city if he is able to at-
tend his brother to the Mount? You have my views, my dear
Livia, to wit that I desire that something be decided once for
all about the whole matter, to save us from constantly wav-
ering between hope and fear. Moreover, you may, if you
wish, give this part of my letter to our kinswoman Antonia
also to read." Again in another letter:

"I certainly shall invite the young Tiberius to dinner every
day during your absence, to keep him from dining alone with
his friends Sulpicius and Athenodorus. I do wish that he
would choose more carefully and in a less scatter-brained
fashion some one to imitate in his movements, bearing, and
gait. The poor fellow is unlucky. For in important matters,
where his mind does not wander, the nobility of his character
is apparent enough." Also in a third letter:

"Confound me, dear Livia, if I am not surprised that your
grandson Tiberius could please me with his declaiming.
How in the world any one who is so lacking in clarity in his
conversation can speak with clarity and propriety when he
declaims, is more than I can see."

There is no doubt at all what Augustus later decided, and

THE DEIFIED CLAUDIUS an

that he left him invested with no office other than the sacer-
dotal dignity of Augur, not even naming him as one of his
heirs, save in the third degree x and to a sixth part of his
estate, among those who were all but strangers. While the
legacy that he left him was not more than eight hundred
thousand sesterces. 2

His paternal uncle Tiberius gave him the consular regalia,
when he asked for office. But when he urgently requested the
actual position, Tiberius merely replied by a note in these
words: "I have sent you forty gold-pieces for the Saturnalia
and the Sigillaria." 8 Then at last Claudius abandoned all
hope of advancement and gave himself up to idleness, living
in obscurity now in his house and gardens in the suburbs,
and sometimes at a villa in Campania. Moreover from his
intimacy with the lowest of men he incurred the reproach of
drunkenness and gambling, in addition to his former reputa-
tion for dullness. Yet all this time, despite his conduct, he
never lacked attention from individuals or respect from the
public.

The equestrian order twice chose him as their patron, to
head a deputation on their behalf: once when they asked
from the Consuls the privilege of carrying the body of Augus-
tus to Rome on their shoulders, and again when they offered
them their congratulations on the downfall of Sejanus. They
even used to rise and put off their cloaks when he appeared
at the public shows. The Senate too voted that he be made
a special member of the Priests of Augustus, 4 who were
usually chosen by lot, and later, when he lost his house by
fire, that it should be rebuilt at the public expense, and that
he should have the honor of giving his opinion among the
Consulars. This second decree was however repealed, since
Tiberius urged Claudius's infirmity as a reason, and promised
that he would make the loss good through his own generosity.

1 And such had little or no prospect of receiving their inheritance.

2 $32,800.00.

8 December 21 and 22, an extension of the joyous Saturnalia. It was-
customary on these days to make presents of little images of various
sorts called sigilla.

* The order founded by Tiberius for the worship of the Deified Au-
gustus.

iti THE

Yet^whtrt Tiberius died- he -natticd Claudius ^ o
bdrfr in the third degree, to & third part of liis estate ^Ith^ugk
b gave^hlm ift addition a legacy of about two rtiHlion ses-
t^ce^, 1 arid expressly ^mtaended' him besides to the armies
find to tha Senate and people of Rdme with the f est of ' hii
kinsfolk. '.-.' - '-^ " "<*

.i'lfcjfeft?4ftly' u^tf'hi* ttrth*ifctiQ& Dates' (Migula, Who
to! the eafly part 'Of hfe feign tne4>td gaik popularity- bj^ M6ry
device;, that he at >ldst -began- his official career ^holding the
totisulship as ; his coikague for two itwiiths. And it chanced
that as he entered the Foram for the ikst time with the fasces ?
an 'e^lMfeatlwM flyidg'b lit'up<mlhi& ^boulder. -He f

fcerveral times he ptesided at; the' shows in place of aHgula ;
s 'greeted %j? the -people ttow^th 4< Sutj^s-to the' Eifi-
ttttdelt" ; and^ fldW -withf ^All-hail t6 'th^ toother 'df

if he came to dinner a little after the appointed time, he-tetik
his place *vith difficulty , and ortly after making the wund of
the dining-room/ Whenever he went to feleep after diimet-
r \tas ,a Hafcit of bisj he was pelted with the ^ton^^f
and dates, and s<imetifeifefe^'W^ awakened' 'toy the

also to put slippers on his hahSs as j h^ lay sttotmg,
^ wks stofieftty atou^d t lte'tiight' i rub '

*

!< B%it he t^as exposed Alfio ^W actual dangers, First,- lit hifc
own co^e^ulship>,'when, having ^been too remisfe m contracting
46* aaadferecftingithe-stitaies of the.EmpePdt y 3)brdtliersy/Nen4
and J)tra&uff e he: was very, near , bekig ^deprived of , JIB! ;offio&
, be. /.was , continually ilmrasscdib^ all kinds, of ad-

-by M>

own domestics. Finally, when the conspiracy of Lepidus and
GaetialifcuS wL5HieM^teda^iie w^-seiit'to Gertntoy ; asr one
of thp envoys to congratulate the Emperor, he v

dre^ lots
for the year they should serve. .*)**

w4iH^*^*

:e^ad,6pw 5 Ij^eo^^^ t^t tin^S^M
JPWvlifewi^
i^t^ r <^

ened circumstances4bat he
he tr
was

the Hermaeum. A little later, in great terror at ;thf t o

th^r<5, a cQE^mcm! sofc^e^ iwhpr^a? prpw^ng

his, feet,-,a^4" iat^ndi^g'ia [asjk ,who 'he^
^^ recognised Jnra<, T^Ji^n Claudius)

.haMj him j^s, Emperor? nf^h
.^cQBirg^ whp ^re^Sf^et.rf
tion 0f~tyn$$Ftainty^nfl |>UFp(?seless rage. "These placed : bim,
'turns ip '

tyefag,

t.^ight

hppraiof the stKoessk^ ^nd-

ttojcit^ ioliortis^T^aolvBdtoii toaaMmri^iher;t>iibfi(fc liberty
had taken possession of the Forum and the CapitofcrWfacir

1 $328,000.00.

314 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

he too was summoned to the House by the Tribunes of the
Commons, to give his advice on the situation, he sent word
that "he was detained by force and compulsion." But the
next day, since the Senate was dilatory in putting through
its plans because of the tiresome bickering of those who held
divergent views, while the populace, who stood about the
hall, called for one ruler and expressly named Claudius, he
allowed the alarmed assembly of the soldiers to swear alle-
giance to him, and promised each man fifteen thousand ses-
terces. 1 Thus was he the first of the Caesars who resorted to
bribery to secure the fidelity of the troops.

As soon as his power was firmly established, he considered
it of foremost importance to obliterate the memory of the
two days when men had thought of changing the form of
government. Accordingly he made a decree that all that had
been done and said during that period should be pardoned
and forever forgotten. He kept his word, too, save only that
a few of the Tribunes and Centurions who had conspired
against Caligula were put to death, both to make an example
of them and because he knew that they had also demanded
his own death.

Then turning to the duties of family loyalty, he adopted
as his most sacred and frequent oath "By Augustus." He
had the Senate vote divine honors to his grandmother Livia,
with a chariot to be drawn by elephants 2 in the procession
at the Circus, as had been appointed for Augustus, and pub-
lic offerings to the shades of his parents; also annual games
in the Circus on his father's birthday, and for his mother a
carriage to bear her image through the Circus and the
surname of Augusta, which she had declined during her life-
time. In memory of his brother, 8 whom he took every op-
portunity of honoring, he brought out a Greek comedy in
the contest at Naples and awarded it the crown in accordance
with the decision of the judges. He did not leave even Mark
Antony unhonored or without grateful mention, declaring
once in a proclamation that he requested the more earnestly
that the birthday of his father Drusus be celebrated because

1 $615.00.

2 For carrying her image.
* Gcrmanicus.

THE DEIFIED CLAUDIUS 315

it was the same as that of his grandfather Antony. He com-
pleted the marble arch to Tiberius near Pompey's theater,
which had been voted some time before by the Senate, but
left unfinished. Even in the case of Caligula, while he an-
nulled all his acts, yet he would not allow the day of his
death to be added to the festivals, although it was also the
beginning of his own reign.

But in adding to his own dignity he was modest and unas-
suming, refraining from taking the forename Imperator, re-
fusing excessive honors, and passing over the betrothal of
his daughter and the birthday of a grandson in silence and
with merely private ceremonies. He recalled no one from
exile except with the approval of the Senate. He obtained
from the members as a favor the privilege of bringirffe into
the House with him the Prefect of the praetorian -guard and
the Tribunes of the Soldiers, and the ratification of the ju-
dicial acts of his agents in the provinces. He likewise ob-
tained from the Consuls permission to hold fairs on his
private estates. He often appeared as one of the advisers at
cases tried before the magistrates. And when they gave
games, he also arose with the rest of the audience and showed
his respect by acclamations and applause. When the Tribunes
of the Commons appeared before him as he sat upon the
tribunal, he apologized to them because for lack of room he
could not hear them unless they stood up.

By such conduct he won so much love and devotion in a
short time, that when it was reported that he had been way-
laid and killed on a journey to Ostia the people were horror-
stricken, and witli dreadful execrations continued to assail
the soldiers as traitors, and the Senate as murderers, until
finally one or two men, and later several, were brought for-
ward upon the rostra by the magistrates and assured the
people that Claudius was safe and on his way to the city.

Yet he did not remain throughout without experience of
treachery, but he was attacked by individuals, by a con-
spiracy, and finally by a civil war. A man of the Commons
was caught near his bed-chamber in the middle of the night,
dagger in hand. And two members of the equestrian order
were found lying in wait for him in public places, one ready
to attack him with a sword-cane as he came out of the theater,

THE

in .the

put down within five days,

.g(and^M

In

ferst tW^^^Utt'fiifc^grfveiybais^ wiilenthfe
M^ed'at iiit^Mai^f Ifoiif rydrs leach, ,thd lafet
fft si!^ rt^ilt^/tte^the^ for^tw<v. IW'his'tMrd>he wife siibsfi-
dl the- 0d>rtsttte who* ha& died, &

dminis-

iri t*>e case o^ akn Em^erdi.

those efc&is
of -anoint

thfe
aio-

who lost their

lb <be'heir du* hcf ^lloiwed) atnew^trial,
the) puni^itaefiiti apt>ointed

brdreicboiribted

hbwed^^

sjrtf cwd,

2 IWtattie W theatttHWr
I^MtfUii fi!"fUf-

/**;. v/i b&A&iju. TTJ.IV rc*j yulcnlCttgCU Tnr''fH9F^9p"

on) lo fc'ndmoffi owj nriA .bnfirf ni

[&>biowa a rfjiw mid ^DUJJB <

tf A a 51 /THE ^DIElIFrEDHCL 'AWB BETS J ail T lift

pdnents^bbul aSsuil of (Ms owm, fed4ddhatutldid;ra>t ^oped>*
come- ;bef ore Gae$ar?s- tribunal J' bait the- 'C^dkiaty:^ courts^
wiiei^p|(ml<3JfHi*^ the 'ease

b^w;l^j$aylBgrtto easel afiect*

ing his lOT^n'iiltJere^tB how; gust a jilrdWihe^i^onldMbe: m tho
afifelr&rbf (dttiefcsirWheiifa foforfiani refiaisedr*o^frec<t)gnize'beE
9ctd ? Jaiid'ltflwieVidetice Qrttoth sides w^9<xmfHc ting/ teiorae^
her to admit i >the 'trtith, b}H orderiilg: her /to iriirryf tihei young
manl l^h^iievfertoiifer^arty 13o^ ^^suitTiwa5f&h3eniv.tie w?(ft ptene

iidering ithetiiet ihiss oppoMot had .failed (to -jap{>at f tbrbngft
his( dwii f at^ t! ror f nom a Aocfessary <rause/fOn a mail's b^Lrtg
tonvirtdddfiop^ery, same (hid cried. cmt r that to
tdhbaicutt^off^ (ifhemup^n' Ctatidii^t in^ted'ih^t-an eKecU-r
tk>ner bia^9ia/nrn(i>r^ at' once wi^ knife aAd WopCk; Ii^aicttae
iiirvxr>iVttig^feitiacnshipr'a ifrUiltess; dispute aroae ; ^am0^g> ttw odt
vocates aS'to whefcherthe defendant ought 4^ makfe

theiloga^orih a Gr^ek mantle,, aaitfee' Emperor ^
with .thei (idea <if l^tewmg iab$ol^te toipartd^li^Mivack^im
Change hisigarfe: se\^al tiine3, acof ding; ^s : ,hei\Mas aoeufi^d;
tfrrttefewled Ajln^one ; cas^ he- is ; cr^dit^d rfvfthxbaYing iren^er^
the^faliowing decision,! which he had i a ctyay written ( out
beforehand:, U I, decide in- favofrdf those who have ^tolcli tbel

42ttQi*oF O'*Yofq fcrntfm

3i5 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

bate: "You are both an old man and a fool." All the world
knows that a Roman Knight, who was tried for improper
conduct towards women on a false charge trumped up by un-
scrupulous enemies, seeing common strumpets called as wit-
nesses against him and their testimony admitted, hurled the
stylus and tablets which he held in his hand into the Em-
peror's face with such force as to cut his cheek badly, at the
same time loudly reviling his cruelty and stupidity.

He also assumed the office of Censor, which had long been
discontinued, ever since the term of Plancus and Paulus.
But in this office too he was variable, and both his theory and
his practice were inconsistent. In his review of the Knights
he let off a young man of evil character, whose father said
that he was perfectly satisfied with him, without any public
censure, saying "He has a censor of his own." Another who
was notorious for corruption and adultery he merely admon-
ished to be more restrained in his indulgence, or at any rate
more circumspect, adding, "For why should I know what
mistress you keep?" When he had removed the mark of cen-
sure affixed to one man's name, yielding to the entreats of
the latter's friends, he said: "But let the erasure be seen."
He not only struck from the list of jurors a man of high
birth, a leading citizen of the province of Greece, because he
did not know Latin, but even deprived him of the rights of
citizenship. Nor in this review would he permit any one to
render the account of his life by an advocate, but obliged
each man to speak for himself in the best way he could. And
he degraded many, some contrary to their expectation and
on the novel charge that they had left Italy without consult-
ing him and obtaining leave of absence. One man he so
treated merely because he had been companion to a King
in his province, citing the case of Rabirius Fostumus, who in
bygone days had been tried for treason because he had fol-
lowed Ptolemy to Alexandria, to recover a loan. When he
attempted to degrade still more, he found them :n most cases
blameless. For, owing to the great carelessness of his agents,
but to his own greater shame, those whom he accused of
celibacy, childlessness, or lack of means proved that they
were married, or fathers, or well-to-do. In fact, one man, who

THE DEIFIED CLAUDIUS 21$

was charged with having stabbed himself stripped off his
clothing and showed a body without a scar.

Other noteworthy acts of his censorship were the follow-
ing. He had a silver chariot of costly workmanship, which
was offered for sale in the Sigillaria, 1 bought and cut to pieces
in his presence. In one single day he made twenty proclama-
tions, among them two: in one of which he advised every-
body that when the yield of the vineyards is bountiful the
wine casks should be well smeared with pitch; and in the
other that nothing was so effective a cure for snake-bite as the
juice of the yew tree.

He made but one campaign and that of little importance.
When the Senate voted him the triumphal regalia, thinking
the honor beneath the imperial dignity and desiring the glory
of a legitimate triumph, he chose Britain as the best place for
gaining it, a land that had been attempted by no one since
the Deified Julius and was just at that time in a state of re-
bellion because of the refusal to return certain deserters. On
the voyage thither from Ostia he was nearly cast away
twice in furious north-westers, off Liguria and near the
Stoechades 2 islands. Therefore he made the journey from
Massilia 8 all the way to Gesoriacum 4 by land, crossed from
there, and without any battle or bloodshed received the sub-
mission of a part of the island, returned to Rome within six
months after leaving the city, and celebrated a triumph of
great splendor. To witness the sight he allowed not only the
Governors of the provinces to come to Rome, but even some
of the exiles. And among the tokens of his victory he set a
naval crown on the gable of the Palace beside the civic
crown, as a sign that he had crossed and, as it were, subdued
the Ocean. His wife Messalina followed his chariot in a car-
riage, as did also those who had won the triumphal regalia in
the same war. The rest marched on foot in purple-bordered
togas, except Marcus Crassus Frugi, who rode a caparisoned
horse and wore a tunic embroidered with palms, because he
was receiving the honor for the second time.

1 There was both a quarter and a street in Rome by this name.

2 lies d'Hyfcres, off Toulon.
8 Marseilles.

4 Boulogne.

THE

to itiaeicaitci Sof stbe

city and the

IweHnf the JAensffiajkd^has remoioed^in ^the f Didbitoriirai ^ )for
tiro imgty^ and Men afbody tf toldiete aaidieffhhiotvnlflayei
oruldi nfcflighteJStiffW^'Mp}*^^ the! C^itanonB

from lallparts of the city IftrQii&b the^nagistilates^ taad 'placfing
b^tgB/iiil ^f. money before rthera,/ urged nh
pdyihgtteachl man > 00 the -spDti^a! isuitablfc reward i

scarcityi ofigram beq^usfe icrf

tinued droughts, he was once stopped itt>Ae Twiddle) <0friJ
Fonnritby a itob and . so [belfcedwida abuse -and! aii the

ifwith pieces <bf bread^theLt he iwks barely able ;tt) anakii
e' Palace by a) bkck door, After
eiiery possible. Jndansit9ldparmgi griin- tb
o tbeim^r(thantis i^ he]d
certainty, of tprofit < by tasfeUfirirlg' .'the ex|>eotsei bfi i^fy ibs& libdt
thdyrmigbt Buffer. from ietorirtsj To i
merchat3t^hiiis>he offered Jairg& bounties adapted to.
ditioniofi e&ch* nainpiy: to > a. citizen, ^xemptioa
Pam P0$pota;^ t ) those *wiio.:hadiHtnited
ri^hrtisiof foil .bhiie
the molhfcrs-'bf Jodrjdhikirfeii.MAniiiall tbeseipdJVisites.aire ih
force itb4dajnf'(tM ol h'j/iuij'i ^Iifijil-ii ',*j ";o }(j,u

tiil ^hefpfch^n/.EntaenbUsL 'Ihe^ were in
Icrwingr,^ ) Jt;ci ,'>mo>I <>) ',nii o) r'v>rh/nf| ' r!j io
f> An a^u^Uotvbe^h'byi CaKgida^: Aisoi; the /outlet of sEflfee
aiiiOstia^ aHhoiightfinitheitrate/xrf

dit > 6iu^d'^e;for
the >

1 A suburb of 7^,0^ r^; T

2 Dio <LV, 8) calls this the largest building ever covered hy a single
roof. Ikons ihlJthtl GunfluaiMaTtius.f Jn. ^^/

counted. .olu(/r li

After the failure of Augustus' marriage law (See
less rigorous one was passed, 9 AJ>.

a n T III

WJ-lKfy W-W^ejinje w;
^jiqteflrtae i n^ 1 bpj,,al 1 Qstai by

j/iii, j- / 1 i- i -'i\-. i --jiv 'v'' nT.rrtui -
on the right and lefjt,.,}vhjJe p&f^.jtnf; ^np^p^-

lj W u$t jfmmjEgypJ, and, $tn sMuf. it>^l^jb>%,'unoij

!. gapi^^M^jn

had ever seen or would ever see again." For some were
living who had s&irtbtSft* Befttfe, 'Snd>i0mfr*ttar8 fwhoHbad

Sflj Or yol'J fr;').T ^f,w fnrii HOI ')ii'! l"fi<;iii'l Hi; in l^"llinsil'>'llJ a

i Brought by
Peter's.

323 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

appeared at the former performance appeared at that time
as well. He often gave games in the Vatican Circus l also, at
times with a beast-baiting between every five races. But the
Great Circus he adorned with barriers of marble and gilded
goals, whereas before they had been of common seats to the
Senators, who had been in the habit of viewing the games
with the rest of the people. In addition to the chariot races
he exhibited the game called Troy and also panthers, which
were hunted down by a squadron of the praetorian cavalry
under the lead of the Tribunes and the Prefect himself. He
also exhibited Thessalian horsemen, who drive wild bulls all
over the arena, leaping upon them when they are tired out and
throwing them to the ground by the horns.

He gave many gladiatorial shows and in many places: one
in yearly celebration of his accession, in the Praetorian Camp
without wild beasts and fine equipment, and one of the
regular and usual kind in the Saepta; another in the same
place not in the regular list, short and lasting but a few days,
to which he was the first to apply the name of sportula, be-
cause before giving it for the first time he made proclamation
that he invited the people "as it were to an extempore meal,
hastily prepared." Now there was no form of entertainment
at which he was more familiar and free, even thrusting out
bis left hand, 2 as the Commons did, and counting aloud on
his fingers the gold pieces which were paid to the victors;
and ever and anon he would address the audience, and invite
and urge them to merriment, calling them "masters" from
time to time, and interspersing feeble and far-fetched jokes.
For example, when they called for Palumbus 8 he promised
that they should have him, "if he could be caught." The fol-
lowing, however, was both exceedingly timely and salutary:
when he had granted the wooden sword 4 to one of those
gladiators who fight from a light chariot, for whose discharge
four sons begged, and the act was received with loud and
general applause, he at once circulated a note, pointing out

i Built by Caligula where St. Pete* 's now stands.
* Undignified in an Emperor. The left arm was kept close to the
x>dy and covered decently in the folds of the toga,
"The Dove, nickname of a gladiator.
4 The symbol oi discharge.

THE DEIFIED CLAUDIUS aaj

to the people how greatly they ought to desire children, since
they saw that they brought favor and protection even to a
gladiator. He gave representations in the Campus Martius
of the storming and sacking of a town in the manner of real
warfare, as well as of the surrender of the Kings of the
Britons, and presided clad in a general's cloak. Even when
he was on the point of letting out the water from Lake
Fucinus he gave a sham sea-fight first. But when the com-
batants cried out, "Hail, Emperor, they who are about to
die salute thee," he replied, "Or not." l Taking this to mean
he wished to excuse them from this encounter, they all re-
fused to fight. Upon this he hesitated for some time about
destroying them all with fire and sword, but at last leaping
from his throne and running along the edge of the lake with
his ridiculous tottering gait, he induced them to fight, partly
by threats and partly by promises. At this performance a
Sicilian and a Rhodian fleet engaged, each numbering twelve
triremes, and the signal was sounded on a horn by a silver
Triton, which was raised from the middle of the lake by a
mechanical device.

Touching religious ceremonies and civil and military cus-
toms, as well as the condition of all classes at home and
abroad, he corrected various abuses, revived some old cus-
toms or even established new ones. In admitting priests into
the various colleges he never named any one until he had
first taken oath. He scrupulously observed the custom ol
having the Praetor call an assembly and proclaim a holiday,
whenever there was an earthquake within the city, as well
as that of offering up a supplication whenever a bird of ill-
omen was seen on the Capitol. This last he himself conducted
in his capacity of Chief Priest, first reciting the form of words
to the people from the rostra, after all mechanics and slaves
had been ordered to withdraw.

The season for holding court, formerly divided into a win-
ter and a summer term, he made continuous. Jurisdiction in
cases of trust, which it had been usual to assign each year
and only to magistrates in the city, he delegated for all time
and extended to the Governors of the provinces. He an*

1 About to die. One of Claudius* feeble jokes.

THE

CAESARS

addrf! 60

ftnd

wctje banwhat &Kimfe>pr^iwjbytif$ magistral
bcsddbantfd fifouf
parted upott

o iWbcri

' bendb. He t03erve(i t^
hicb ited

.th

tJbat of *nigbt| alst). fThoiigfe'to-^adfdiSGlarecl at the bgin r f

^

wbdidid ndt \

fat^dr^M g

but only on condition that he should first ^e

but fiheb Reborn: isqn^

which Senators were not allowed to do.

* The state treasury in.tW<tipHi0leblfittft)itbaM(J.(Uroi j UQ <JA

M3IT

with, theiu armies^ to pre vent, their i seeking all :febrt5 of
t texts for wa*. To; Aldus Plautiiis he alsa granted art ;o
feoingiDUt^to dieet kai&ivheii he entered the city , aodhocuOrinf
jKiri *y rwaifcing .to-his'lleft *s/they/TOttii to the,Cajpit<fl a*$
-backi Heiallowed Gabirrius Setrundus to aesufrte .the surname
icrf>CaucMua becaus^i (of'hife conquest !otf;ihti'GaUehi',) a.

f tbe command: ,of a. -cohort , they :wece promoted Uo ,head i n

Jfe, ala6i instituted a; series of j militai^ ^positions lapdi ai
f<>fictitiQiiB >ser#icfy t wbich^is; called

the Sena t-e- pass, a decree fprtoddirtg
Ihouses of ^Seriat^rS tdi,pay ;tbem respec
pcopfeijt^/ojE ithose^wdmen; who? pussed es (
tid f educed to stovety' ag^in
4mtjto their

oiuW pot sntertajflistfy wHi
their rown> I

teecati^e ,of i.tbe

if;

ril But if any

^hP^
through the towns of Italy except on foot, or in a ,

^jm- 'Jo j'/ii.'ur.M) -unvJnr^
^^rth,^

u j;i '' V4>'i "*s4 * v '->ii ; '|J. f- lj J ^' i*'-fi' (J.i^i u

onia, which Tiberius nad taken into his owji

In the Tiber at Rome, opposite the Campus MarifeftS"^ nwd hri

226 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

people of Ilium perpetual exemption from tribute, on the
ground that they were the founders of the Roman race,
reading upon the occasion an ancient letter of the Senate and
people of Rome written in Greek to King Seleucus, in which
they promised him their friendship and alliance only on con-
dition that he should keep their kinsfolk of Ilium free from
every burden. Since the Jews constantly made disturbances
at the instigation of Chrestus, 1 he expelled them from Rome.
He allowed the envoys of the Germans to sit in the orchestra,
being moved to do so by their naive self-confidence. For,
when they had been taken to the seats occupied by the com-
mon people and saw the Parthian and Armenian envoys
sitting with the Senate, they moved of their own accord to
the same part of the theater, protesting that their merits and
rank were no whit inferior. He utterly abolished the cruel and
inhuman religion of the Druids among the Gauls, which un-
der Augustus had merely been prohibited to Roman citi-
zens. On the other hand, he even attempted to transfer the
Eleusinian rites from Attica to Rome, and had the temple
of Venus Erycina in Sicily, which had fallen to ruin through
age, restored at the expense of the treasury of the Roman peo-
ple. He struck his treaties with foreign princes in the Forum,
sacrificing a pig and reciting the ancient formula of the Fetial
Priests. 2 But these and other acts, and in fact almost the
whole conduct of his reign, were dictated not so much by his
own judgment as that of his wives and freedmen, since he
nearly always acted in accordance with their interests and
desires.

He was betrothed twice at an early age: to Aemilia Lepida,
great-granddaughter of Augustus, and to Livia Medullina,
who also had the surname of Camilla and was descended
from the ancient family of Camillus the Dictator. He put
away the former before their marriage, because her parents
had offended Augustus. The latter was taken ill and died on

1 Roman and Greek form of Christus. But Jesus Christ was supposed
to have been crucified in Tiberius' reign. A good example of how hazy
the early Jewish-Christian question was in the minds of contemporary
enlightened Romans.

* They ratified treaties and formally declared war after satisfaction
had been refused.

THE DEIFIED CLAUDIUS 227

the very day which had been set for the wedding. He then
married Plautia Urgulanilla, whose father had been honored
with a triumph, and later Aelia Paetina, daughter of an ex-
consul. He divorced both these, Paetina for trivial offenses,
but Urgulanilla "because of scandalous lewdness and the sus-
picion of murder. Then he married Valeria Messalina, daugh-
ter of his cousin Messala Barbatus. But when he learned
that besides other shameful and wicked deeds she had ac-
tually married Gaius Silius, and that a formal contract had
been signed in the presence of witnesses, 1 he put her to death
and declared before the assembled praetorian guard that in-
asmuch as his marriages did not turn out well, he would re-
main a widower, and if he did not keep his word, he would
not refuse death at their hands. Yet he could not refrain from
at once planning another match, even with Paet'na, whom
he had formerly discarded, and with Lollia Paulina, who had
been the wife of Gaius Caesar. But his affections were en-
snared by the wiles of Agrippina, daughter of his brother
Germanicus, aided by the right of exchanging kisses at i the
opportunities for endearments offered by their relationship.
And at the next meeting of the Senate he induced some of the
members to propose that he be compelled to marry Agripp' ia,
on the ground that it was for the interest of the State, and
that others be allowed to contrac: similar marriages, which up
to that time had been regarded as incestuous. And he married
her with hardly a single day's delay. But none were found to
follow his example save a freedman and a Chief Centurion,
at the solemnization of whose nuptials both he and Agrip-
pina attended.

He had children by three of his wives: by Urgulanilla,
Drusus and Claudia; by Paetina, Antonia; by Messalina,
Octavia and a son, at first called Germanicus and later Bri-
tannicus* He lost Drusus just before he came to manhood, for
he was strangled by a pear which he had thrown in the air in
play and caught in his open mouth. A few days before this

1 Suetonius does not tell all. The occasion was celebrated with a mag-
nificent supper, to which Messalina invited a large company. Lest they
think the affair mere frolic, not meant to be consummated, the adulter-
ous pair ascended the nuptial couch in the presence of the astonished
guests.

218* THE L I V^Sn0FvTTIH;TnE<ir El CAESARS

to; the rdatfebtfif r6f'Sejanbs K which;

of fttetftee&hatf Bcrterv withihifivC)

tfeeiaivrfreerMaii*^^

jHfe gatfe* Aattmikii? tfiamage> toiiGaaews/

of -high iDihhi, ^an^Octkvia t, his ^epsort)Nem, after! fete-
', betrothed tto^Siiattu^ ^Britiiinits was !
bOTnJortahe'twenty^eetioii^ SdW^rof his rdigirandlih his second
ctmsulsbip.

offettitafc^ Ukn>inlii ormi and tohimtrid
goMtrsf/;ahd tathe.peoplef^ ttie
fe^^br im hiB/6uistretchd .Uatds^ andche woukl 'wish him;

he gpplaftdfng ih to?&:
adopted sNeiW), rwaile iPompeiuB.

vrij 7,1

Of his ffeetimen ^he^had'Spfedalrhegatd for .t
Posidee^n/homi'hia evfeii) pre^entBd-with! the Jheadjj^s
at life Biteishotvibmph^ miooag^withhthose

j f giving .

iBrceloJ'f udaea ; and he 'became, die li us band df;

s; to r whom lie fgrfrntedr t/be {jiiviJegje-^f abiding

foas

most of all he was devoted to his secretary

trdksuifer F&lbti, a^dihe ^gl^dly 'aHdwed!them)lt0 >be ^

in radditiM byl a; decwe /bf

giftt,

W-frtoiattfartNii

and to spare, if he were taken into partnership

Otherwise restricted to Knights.

ant. lavishing honors, the command i

or

ignorance andiblibdly; Not to^go hrtbifletbite abo4ti'

hte gjiame^rfesdnin his

and

an (uri4up^ J

^giving! theh>/W! o|>piwtaaimt^)f or 4eto^^^

. wb6 was^betrdtlbed Stb hi^ yourtgeroilft.CH these ^Pohipkity^afe
tii9'
d)
of I

' th tee i

j the idea th odfem*EXhCOTisui,'aid.ihat fai? drder^d^tcfeh .earrfefl
t, be/ r^pliled ftha4i he9'had.^eriinbl)qd0ri)fByb;rie^(^vBrthfe-
'^

-perori'widhoUtliristrudionsi
at

Bigried! it
-beirig; induced to/db sol <m/(thd(gf(Bnid

-tilrai ufidwairath^a'dan^

fpDfftentetorthnwrfen ibhejfitnfArqiliiiiilsdljorj bni; JIUOD

hirf HE '

a; jMI aikdkn dBilt wtefa

many disagreeable traits both in his lightebsthodrnfat^nndl

ftoi^

**o THE mVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

mouth and trickle at the nose. He stammered besides and his
head was very shaky at all times, but especially when he
made the least exertion.

Though previously his health was bad, it was excellent
while he was Emperor except for attacks of pain in the stom-
ach, which he said all but drove him to suicide.

He gave frequent and grand dinner parties, as a rule in
spacious places, where six hundred guests were often enter-
tained at one time. He even gave a banquet close to the outlet
of the Fucine Lake and was well-nigh drowned, when the
water was let out with a rush and deluged the place. He al-
ways invited his own children to dinner along with the sons
and daughters of distinguished men, having them sit at the
feet of the couches as they ate, after the old time custom.
When a guest was suspected of having stolen a golden bowl
the day before, he invited him again the next day, but set be-
fore him an earthenware cup. He is even said to have thought
of an edict allowing the privilege of breaking wind quietly
or noisily at table, having learned of a man who endangered
his own life by restraining himself through modesty.

He was eager for food and drink at all times and in all
places. Once when he was holding court in the forum of
Augustus and had caught the savor of a meal which was pre-
paring for the priests of Mars in the temple of that God hard
by, he left the tribunal, went up where the priests were, and
took his place at their table. He hardly ever left the dining-
room until he was stuffed and soaked. He then went to sleep
at once, lying on his back with his mouth open, and a feather
was put down his throat to relieve his stomach. He slept but
little at a time, for he was usually awake before midnight.
But he would sometimes drop off in the daytime while hold-
ing court and could hardly be roused when the advocates
raised their voices for the purpose. He was immoderate in his
passion for women, but wholly free from unnatural vice. He
was greatly devoted to gaming, even publishing a book on
the art, and he actually used to play while driving, having
the board so fitted to his carriage as to prevent his game from
being disturbed.

That he was of a cruel and bloodthisty disposition was
shown in matters great and small. He always exacted ex*

THE DEIFIED CLAUDIUS ajx

amination by torture and the punishment of parricides 1 at
once and in his presence. When he was at Tibur and wished
to see an execution in the ancient fashion, 2 no executioner
could be found after the criminals were bound to the stake.
Whereupon he sent to fetch one from the city and continued
to wait for him until nightfall. At any gladiatorial show,
either his own or another's, he gave orders that even those
who fell accidentally should be slain, in particular the net-
fighters, so that he could watch their faces as they died.
When a pair of gladiators had fallen by mutually inflicted
wounds, he at* once had some little knives made from both
their swords for his use. He took such pleasure in the com-
bats with wild beasts and of those that fought at noonday,
that, anticipating the first, he would go down to the arena
at daybreak, and, not to miss the second, he would keep his
seat after dismissing the people for luncheon at midday. In
addition to the appointed combatants, he would for trivial
and hasty reasons match others, even the carpenters, the as-
sistants, and men of that class, if any automatic device,
pageant piece, or anything else of the kind had not worked
well. He even forced one of his pages to enter the arena just
as he was, in his toga.

But there was nothing for which he was so notorious as
timidity and suspicion. Although in the early days of his
reign, as we have said, he made a display of simplicity, he
never ventured to go to a banquet without being surrounded
by guards with lances and having his soldiers wait upon him
in place of the servants. And he never visited a man who was
ill without having the patient's room examined beforehand
and his pillows and bed-clothing felt over and shaken out.
Afterwards he even subjected those who came to pay theiv
morning calls to search, sparing none the strictest examina-
tion. Indeed, it was not until late, and then reluctantly, that
he gave up having women and young boys and girls grossly
mishandled, and the cases for pens and stylii taken from
every man's attendant or scribe. When Camillus began his

1 Seneca, de dementia (I, 23), says Claudius had more parricides
sewn in leather bags and drowned in five years' time than in all former
time.

2 For a description of which see Nero.

THE

teeter*
ft

tt

mid lor ji/:v

daget wasdaueht rtear him
t m hasie by
hife lot, saying -diat [ there'

Sifius V i)iffed'>t0 'i

&kriieffi# krid cowardly ^flight td the ]
nohift& affl'^wwy fciit *Sfc 'Whftth^r wthfcwifc -'
^*f^%u{)kipn- was'-tofe ttiviaV fio^ 4 Ilie 'in^inftr M 4t tbtf IBM
gigfiffafcrft, 't& drive fcto dtt 't6>pretatt$^ T 'an(i
dn^e a f dlght^iMsinesfe eftte^ed ii^mifid; Oftek
to a suit, when he made his morning call; \

ii^ little toer pfetendin^ito fecidghlze
bef ptftikl"Wt WS'Opt^entv'^^he 'ivas* hatidittfe in
^" latter ^ts imffi^dteteV ^^d;<a^ If c6
p dri* huffied o*f lo "ca@(5iifioii.^n "tfaft'lff
, : that A^pitis

fe, they agteed dn thfcfr paftafia

come at that tipne- wa3 reported to b^ forcing his

^loll ^]JW'3lWj'^L^

immediate accusation and death were ordered. And Claudius

did not hesitate to recount t

'

j r /He-was.^onscious of bia .temitooy tfc math

excusq&botfe jn an edict; drawing a^distinddonibetwieen
an<J f^oipising that the f onxr ilvouJd -be short aadirarm-
the fatter not mthout-cai^. I Afterihaiplywfaidbiiig
peepjeiof Ostift, because, the}? had sciH no boats tolroeet
fjie Centered the Ti&er^^adijQ .such bitter terms that
ithftt Jt^ey had; reduced hifn ta the rank* of <a cbm-
suddenly forgave thertrand; all ,ht Apologized.
own hand men who, approached himin
unseasonable times. He also banished a Quaestor's
xjlefk witbout a hearing, as well as a Senator of praetorian
wet^blairielefes;;theriormer,o(r going tod
in pleading a suit against him before he became Emperor;
fe, When Aedile, -he had fined the :tenants c jdf
for violating the law forbidding the selling
victual*, aod had whipped :his 'bailiff when; be iii-
And with ther same motive he to6k ; iiuinr the
rr$gi*feltion of 4he cook-shops; ,, : ^ - r ; 4 j, i
Qpt^jw keep quiet, about hisr own stupidity ;iirt!in
tet speeehes;he xJeclaared that fae had :parjiosely
;it uode^ Caligula, because otherwise he^coultl not
escaped Alive and atta-ined ;bis present statiom. But he
-Convinced no one, and Within a short trrne a. book was pufa-
lB^d,rtl >ttte.0f whkih ^a& ^The Elevation off
its thesis that no one feigned folly.

s.meaai iavft' riiarveled fatn
: blindhessj; cto , to -use .the -Greek tetrasy hfe
' When he had put Messalinai to death,
shortly after taking his place at the table why >the
did pot come. .He .caused many of those : whom, 6e
death, ^tb Jbe 'Bunundiied the ** very ^
ham- if ^

with Agrippina. in every speecl} that he made he,
^Hed %et f - ! his ? da%lit6r : atifl ] tftirsffiEifc "Brjrn khd
ipi^gjf^, J[^ l^Qy^ ;
pad enough to adopt a s

34 THE T,IVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

of his own, he publicly declared more than once that no one
had ever been taken into the Claudian family by adoption.

In short, he often showed such heedlessness in word and
act that one would suppose that he did not know or care
to whom, with whom, when, or where he was speaking. When
a debate was going on about the butchers and vintners, he
cried out in the House: "Now, pray, who can live without
a snack," and then went on to describe the abundance of the
old taverns to which he himself used to go for wine in earlier
days. He gave as one of his reasons for supporting a candi-
date for the quaestorship, that the man's father had once
given him cold water when he was ill and needed it. Once
when a witness had been brought before the Senate, he said:
"This woman was my mother's freedwoman and tire-woman,
but she always regarded me as her patron. I mention this
because there are still some in my household now who do not
look on me as patron." When the people of Ostia made a pub-
lic petition to him, he flew into a rage on the very tribunal
and bawled out that he had no reason for obliging them;
that he was surely free if any one was. In fact every day, and
almost every hour and minute, he would make such remarks
as these; "What! do you take me for a Telegenius?" x
"Scold me, but hands off!" and many others of the same
kind which would be unbecoming even in private citizens, not
to mention a prince who lacked neither eloquence nor cul-
ture, but on the contrary constantly devoted himself to liberal
pursuits.

He began to write a history in his youth with the encour-
agement of Titus Livius 2 and the direct help of Sulpicius
Flavus. But when he gave his first reading to a large audi-
ence, he had difficulty in finishing, since he more than once
threw cold water on his own performance. For at the begin-
ginning of the reading the breaking down of several benches
by a fat man raised a laugh, and even after the disturbance
was quieted, Claudius could not keep from recalling the in-
cident and renewing his guffaws. Even while he was Emperor

1 Obviously some man proverbial for his folly. Nothing is known
about him.

* This famous historian died in A.D. 17 during the reign of Tiberius at
which time Claudius was about 27.

THE DEIFIED CLAUDIUS 235

he wrote a good deal and gave constant recitals through a
professional reader. He began his history with the death of
the Dictator Caesar, but passed to a later period and took a
fresh start at the end of the civil war, realizing that he was
not allowed to give a frank or true account of the earlier
times, since he was often taken to task both by his mother
and his grandmother. 1 He left two books of the earlier his-
tory, but forty-one of the later. He also composed an auto-
biography in eight books, lacking rather in good taste than
in style, as well as a "Defense of Cicero against the writings
of Asinius Callus," a work of no little learning. Besides this
he invented three new letters and added them to the alpha-
bet, maintaining that they were greatly needed. 2 He published
a book on their theory when he was still in private life, and
when he became Emperor had no difficulty in bringing about
their general use. These characters may still be seen in nu-
merous books, in the record of daily events, and in inscrip-
tions on public buildings.

He gave no less attention to Greek studies, taking every
occasion to declare his regard for that language and its su-
periority. To a foreigner who held forth both in Greek and in
Atin he said: "Since you are ready with both our tongues";
and in commending Achaia to Senators he declared that it
was a province dear to him through the association of kindred
studies; while in the Senate he often replied in that language
to Greek envoys. Indeed he quoted many Homeric lines from
the tribunal, and whenever he had punished an enemy or a
conspirator, he commonly gave the Tribune of the guard this
verse when he asked for the usual watchword:

"Ward off stoutly the man who first assails you." 8

At last he even wrote historical works in Greek: twenty
books of Etruscan History and eight of Carthaginian. Because
of these works there was added to the old Museum at Alex-
andria a new one called after his name, and it was provided
that in the one his Etruscan History should be read each year

1 Daughter and widow respectively of Mark Antony.

2 h to represent a sound between i and u; ? for bs or ps; t for coa-
sonantal u.

* Iliad XXIV, 369-

THE LFV-BS' 6* *fttt ^1? WKL'Vf 7LES A RS

; afttHtf tSfe Mber hfc for*hafcit*my bf
1

fo* ffis'mferrfagfc wfffr
fifta 1 of Ner6V Fptr; wfoetf his* f reMftieii e*prefce<i <t
A trialin ^wfeth life liaS the >'&txy t^f

^il f ecfeive

bis f father j in ^ate^irit >ttf ; all that ^ h^^ had- tkifeeV adding
&&&} "He wh5 1 d^atethfe Krotiitd^ai heal i
pr^ss^d his intention 6fgivkig Britannkils th6

and hrmiittirej
feSt Kave a gteuihe

' Not j long tfftervrtrrds fe>al^ AAde Its' ^fH a^fd lie^ted ft
with the seals of all the magistrates; But befo^hg tfttild-gbf
^iy ' hiFfher, ^ he 4vs,& cut^hSofrt ty' Agrij>piiia, who ^as bifag
accused twsid^s^f^ man^ bth&r ^migs -t^th' tiy het owri^COft^
^feribe and fey inform^. '"' v- i : : . /{ .vj!;.ji -.
Th^t^daitidi^s i Was ^isobe* fe the genef^belfef^tit Whfcn
ft ^r^^ddtifc anA by whdm r isr di^ptft^ai ^Sdmtr say ttet ft was
his taster, the eunuch Halotus, as he was banqtieting Oft the
with the priest. Others say th4t at a family dinner
st^^d thfe dnig to^hft wftVh^^Wtt ftand-' iri
; g'dfsh of Wbifeh hd was^Jftffevagarttl^lOfidJRe^
ports ^ited^ differ s td -tf Hat f 6Hc^w^ r Many; ay 1 that ?ar ^m*
as he swallowed the poison he? bc^arne speeches v atid after

suffering^ excrijciati^g , pam all r ni^ht^ . dje .

Some say tnaif 'he first fell iiito a'stupbr, then vomited up the
whofo ?conteit3 of his overloadfid ^toinadi r :and was>giveh a
second* dose, perhaps in a gfnie! r rader pretense that be samt!
fciod^after his^hartjsttoti;i

His death w$s Iw^^k^^^^j^r^^^gipnw^
Bde

, .
1 His own son, by Messalina ; later poisoned by NOK& liifefiQbpfctiikwi.

THE DEIFIED CLAUDIUS 437

for his safety, as if he were still ill, and the farce was kept
up by bringing in comic actors, under pretense that he had
asked to be entertained in that way. He died on the third
day before the Ides of October in the consulship of Asinius
Marcellus and Acilius Aviola, in the sixty-fourth year of his
age and the fourteenth of his reign. He was buried with regal
pomp and enrolled among the Gods, an honor neglected and
finally annulled by Nero, but later restored to him by
Vespasian.

The principal omens of his death were the following:
the rise of a long-haired star, commonly called a comet; the
striking of his father Drusus' tomb by lightning; and the
fact that many magistrates of all ranks had died that same
year. There are besides some indications that he himself was
not unaware of his approaching end, and that he made no
secret of it. For, when he was appointing the Consuls, he
made no appointment beyond the month when he died. On
his last appearance in the Senate, after earnestly exhorting
his children to harmony, he begged the members to watch
over the tender years of both. And in the last cause he heard
from the tribunal he declared more than once that he had
reached the end of a mortal career, although all who heard
him shrank at the ominous words and prayed "may God
forbid."

BOOK VI

NERO

NERO

OF the Domitian family two branches have acquired dis*
tinction, the Calvini and the Ahenobarbi. The- latter have as
the founder of their race and the origin of their surname
Lucius Domitius, to whom, as he was returning from the
country, there once appeared twin youths of more than mor-
tal majesty, so it is said, and bade him carry to the Senate
and people the news of a victory, which was as yet unknown. 1
And as a token of their divinity it is said that they stroked
his cheeks and turned his black beard to a ruddy hue, like
that of bronze. This sign was perpetuated in his descendants,
a great part of whom had red beards. After they had attained
seven Consulships, a Triumph, and two Censorships, and
were enrolled among the patricians, they all continued to use
the same surname. They confined their forenames to Gnaeus
and Lucius, and used even these with a noteworthy variation^
now conferring each one on three members of the family in
succession, and now giving them to individual members in
turn. Thus the first, second, and third of the Ahenobarbi, we
are told, were called Lucius, the next three in order Gnaeus,
while all those that followed were called in turn first Lucius
and then Gnaeus. It seems to me worth while to give an ac-
count of several members of this family, to show more clearly
that Nero so far degenerated from the noble qualities of his
ancestors that he retained only their vices, as if those alone
had been transmitted to him by natural inheritance.

To begin then somewhat far back, his great-grandfather^
grandfather, Gnaeus Domitius, when Tribune of the Com-
mons, was enraged at the Pontiffs for choosing another than
himself in his father's place among them, and transferred the
right of filling vacancies in the priesthoods from the colleges

1 Castor and Pollux were the youths, the victory that at Lake Regtttaf ,

241

242 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

themselves to the people. Then having vanquished the Allo-
broges and the Arverni * in his consulship, he rode through
the province on an elephant, attended by a throng of soldiers,
in a kind of triumphal procession. 2 He it was of whom the
orator Licinius Crassus said that it was not surprising that
he had a brazen beard, since he had a face of iron and a heart
of lead. His son, who was Praetor at the time, summoned
Gaius Ceasar to an investigation before the Senate at the dose
of his consulship, because it was thought that his administra-
tion had been in violation of the auspices and the laws. After-
wards in his own consulship he tried to deprive Caesar of the
command of the armies in Gaul, and being named Caesar's
successor by his party, was taken prisoner at Corfinium at
the beginning of the civil war. Granted his freedom, he at first
gave courage by his presence to the people of Massilia, who
were hard pressed by their besiegers, but suddenly abandoned
them and at last fell in the battle at Pharsalus. He was a
man of no great resolution, though he had a violent temper,
and when he once attempted to kill himself in a fit of despair
and terror, he so shrank from the thought of death that he
changed his mind and vomited up the poison, conferring free-
dom on his physician, since, knowing his master, he had pur-
posely given him what was not a fatal dose. When Gnaeus
Pompeius brought forward the question of the treatment of
those who were neutral and sided with neither party, he alone
was for regarding them as hostile.

He left a son, who was beyond all question better than the
rest of the family. He was condemned to death by the Pedian
law among those implicated in Caesar's death, though he was
guiltless, and accordingly joined Brutus and Cassius, who
were his near relatives. After the death of both leaders he
retained the fleet of which he had previously been made com-
mander, and even added to it, and it was not until his party
had been everywhere routed that he surrendered it to Mark
Antony, of his own free will and as though he were conferring
a great favor- He too was the only one of those condemned

1 The Allobroges were a tribe of Gauls inhabiting modern Dauphiny
and Savoy, the Arverni. the environs of modern Auvergne.

2 Suetonius 1 error. It was the father of the Tribune who defeated the
Allobroges.

NERO 243

by that same law who was allowed to return to his native
land, where he successively held all the highest offices. When
the civil strife was subsequently renewed, he was appointed
one of Antony's lieutenants and offered the chief command
by those who were ashamed of Cleopatra. But not daring, on
account of a sudden illness with which he was seized, either
to accept it or yet positively to refuse it, he went over to the
side of Augustus, and a few days later died. Even he did not
escape with an unblemished reputation, for Antony openly
declared that he had changed sides from desire for the com-
pany of his mistress, Servilia Nais.

He was the father of the Domitius who was later well
known from being named in Augustus* will as the purchaser
of his goods and chattels. 1 He was a man less famous in his
youth for his skill in driving than he was later for winning
the insignia of a triumph in the war in Germany. But he was
haughty, extravagant, and cruel, and when he was only an
Aedile, he forced the Censor Lucius Piancus to make way for
him on the street. While holding the offices of Praetor and
Consul, he brought Roman Knights and matrons on the stage
to act a farce. He gave beast-baitings both in the Circus and
in all the regions of the city, and also a gladiatorial show, but
with such inhuman cruelty that Augustus, after his private
warning was disregarded, was forced to restrain him by an
edict.

He had by the elder Antonia a son Domitius who became
the father of Nero, a man hateful in every walk of life. For,
when he had gone to the East on the staff of the young Gaius
Caesar, he slew one of his own freedmen for refusing to drink
as much as he was ordered, and when he was in consequence
dismissed from the number of Gaius' friends, he lived not a
whit less lawlessly. On the contrary, in a villag
Way, suddenly whipping up his team,
and killed a boy. And at Rome, right in
out the eye 2 of a Roman Knight
chiding him. He was moreover so <
cheated some bankers of the pric

l Thabis, his executor, who syxnboli<

fcamed in the will before he made the desi

2 A favorite mode of attack among the

244 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

bought, but in his praetor ship he even defrauded the victors
in the chariot races of the amount of their prizes. When for
this reason he was held up to scorn by the jests of his own
sister, and the managers of the troupes made complaint, he
issued an edict * that the prizes should thereafter be paid on
the spot Just before the death of Tiberius he was also charged
with treason, as well as with acts of adultery and with incest
with his sister Lepida, but escaped owing to the change of
rulers and died of dropsy at Pyrgi, after acknowledging Nero
son of Agrippina, the daughter of Germanicus.

Nero was born at Antium nine months after the death of
Tiberius, on the eighteenth day before the Kalends of Janu-
ary, just as the sun rose, so that he was touched by its rays
almost before he could be laid upon the ground. Many people
at once made many direful predictions from his horoscope,
and a remark of his father Domitius was also regarded as
an omen. For, while receiving the congratulations of his
friends, he said that nothing that was not abominable and a
public bane could be born of Agrippina and himself. Another
manifest indication of Nero's future unhappiness occurred
on his naming day. 2 For, when Gaius Caesar was asked by
his sister to give the child whatever name he liked, he looked
at his uncle Claudius, who later became Emperor and adopted
Nero, aud said that he gave him his name. This he did, not
seriously, but in jest, and Agrippina scorned the proposal,
because at that time Claudius was one of the laughing-stocks
of Xhe court.

At the age of three he lost his father, being left heir to a
third of his estate. But even this he did not receive in fufl,
since his fellow heir Gaius * seized f all the property. Then his
mother was banished too, and he was brought up at the house
of Jus aunt Lepida almost in actual want, under two tutors,
a dancer and a barber. But when Claudius became emperor,
Nero not only recovered his father's property, but was also
enriched by an inheritance from his stepfather, Passienus
Crispus. When his mother was recalled from banishment and
reinstated, he became so prominent through her influence

* In hfe capacity of Praetor,
:* For *w &* #k
Caligula.

that it leaked out that Messalina, wife of Claudius, had sent
emissaries to strangle him as he was taking his noonday nap,
regarding him as a rival of Britannicus. An addition to this
-bit of gossip is, ?that the would-be assassins were* frightened
away by a snake which darted out from under his pillow.
The only foundation for this tale was, that there was found
in his bed near the pillow the slough <rf a serpent. All the
same, at his mother's desire he had the skin enclosed in a
golden bracelet, and wore it for a long-time on his right arm.
But when at last the memory of his mother grew hateful to
him, he threw it away, and afterwards in the time of his ex-
tremity sought it again in Vain.

While he was still a young, half -grown boy he took part in
the game of Troy at a performance in the Circus with great
self-possession and success. In the eleventh year of his age
he was adopted by Claudius and consigned to the training of
Annaeus Seneca, 1 who was then already a Senator. They say
that on the following night Seneca dreamed that he was teach-
ing Gaius Caligula, and Nero soon proved the dream pro-
phetic by revealing the cruelty of his disposition at the earli-
est possible opportunity. For merely because his brother
Britannicus had, after his adoption, greeted him as usual as
Ahenobarbus, he tried to convince his father 2 that Britan-
nicus was a changeling. Also when his aunt Lepida was ac-
cused, he publicly gave testimony against her, to gratify his
mother, who was using every effort to ruin Lepida.

At his formal introduction into public life he announced
a largess to the people and a gift of money to the soldiers, or-
dered a parade of the praetorian guard and headed them
shield in hand. After this he returned thanks to his father in
ihe Senate. In the latter's consulship he pleaded before him
the cause of the people of Bononia in Latin, and of those of
Rhodes and Ilium in Greek. His first appearance as judge
was when he was Prefect of the City during the Latin Festi-
val, when the most celebrated pleaders vied with one another
.in bringing before him, not trifling and brief cases according

1 this" famous stoic and philosophical writer had; shortly before ,ihe
;d*at& of Tiberius, been released from an eight-year exile in Corsica. He
afterwards fell a victim to the jealousy and cruelty of Nero.

* His adoptive father, Claudius.

346 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

to the usual custom, but many of the highest importance,
though this had been forbidden by Claudius. Shortly after-
wards he took Octavia to wife and gave games and a beast-
baiting in the Circus, that health might be vouchsafed
Claudius.

When the death of Claudius was made public, Nero, who
was seventeen years old, went forth to the watch between the
sixth and seventh hour, since no earlier time for the formal
beginning of his reign seemed suitable because of bad omens
throughout the day. Hailed Emperor on the steps of the
Palace, he was carried in a litter to the praetorian camp,
and after a brief address to the scfldiers was taken from there
to the House. He did not leave there until evening, and, of
the unbounded honors that were heaped upon him, he re-
fused but one, the title of Father of his Country, and that
because of his youth.

Then beginning with a display of filial piety, he gave Clau-
dius a magnificent funeral, spoke his eulogy, and deified him.
He paid the highest honors to the memory of his father Do-
mitius. He left to his mother the management of all public
and private business. Indeed, on the first day of his rule he
gave to the Tribune on guard the watchword "The Best of
Mothers," and afterwards he often rode with her through
the streets in her litter. He established a colony at Antium,
where he settled the veterans of the praetorian guard to-
gether with the richest Chief Centurions, whom he compelled
to change their residence. And he also made a harbor there
at great expense.

To make his good intentions still more evident, he declared
that he would rule according to the principles of Augustus,
and he let slip no opportunity for acts of generosity and
mercy, or even for displaying his affability. The more oppres-
sive sources of revenue he either abolished or moderated. He
reduced the rewards paid to informers against violators of
the Papia-Poppaean law to one-fourth of the former amount.
He distributed four hundred sesterces * to each man of the
people, and granted to the most distinguished of the Senators
who were without means an annual salary, to some as much

* $1640.

NERO 247

as five hundred thousand sesterces* 1 To the praetorian co-
horts he gave a monthly allowance of grain free of cost*
When he was asked according to custom to sign the warrant
for the execution of a man who had been condemned to
death, he said: "How I wish I had never learned to write!"
He greeted men of all orders off-hand and from memory.
When the Senate returned thanks to him, he replied, "When
I shall have deserved them." He admitted even the Commons
to witness his exercises in the Campus, and often declaimed
in public. He read his poems too, not only at home but in
the theater as well, so greatly to the delight of all that a
thanksgiving 2 was voted because of his recital, while those
publicly read were inscribed in letters of gold and dedicated
to Jupiter of the Capitol.

He gave many entertainments of different kinds: the
Juvenales, 8 chariot races in the Circus, stage-plays, and a
gladiatorial show. At the first mentioned he had even old men
of consular rank and aged matrons take part. For the games
in the Circus he assigned places to the Knights apart from
the rest, 4 and even matched chariots drawn by four camels.
At the plays which he gave for the "Eternity of the Em-
pire," which by his order were called the Ludi Maximi, parts
were taken by several men and women of both the senatorial
order and that of the Knights. A well-known Knight mounted
an elephant apd slid down a rope. A Roman play of Afranius,
too, was staged, entitled "The Fire," and the actors were al-
lowed to carry off the furniture of the burning house and
keep it. Every day all kinds of presents were thrown to the
people. These included a thousand birds of every kind each
day, various kinds of food, tickets for grain, clothing, gold,
silver, precious stones, pearls, paintings, slaves, beasts of bur-
den, even trained wild animals, and finally, ships, blocks of
bouses, and farms.

These plays he viewed from the top. of the proscenium. At
the gladiatorial show, which he gave in a wooden amphi

* An honor previously conferred only on generals after a great victory.

* In commemoration of the first shaving of his beard.

4 Formerly done only at the theater, though Augustus had given the
Senators special seats at other public spectacle*.

i*ft THE LIVES OF TH-E TWELVE CAESARS

theater, ejected in the district of the C^uttpos^ Mar tiufe withitf
the ^pace of a single year, he had no &ne put to death, not
even criminals. But he compelled four hundred Senators and
six hundred Roman Knights, some of whom were well to do
and of unblemished reputation, to fight in the arena. Even-
those who fought with the wild beasts and performed the
various services in the arena were of the samfe orders. He also
exhibited a naval battle in salt water with sa monsters swim-
ming about in it. He also presented pyrrhic dances by same
Greek youths, handing each of them certificates of Roman
citizenship at the close of his performance. The pyrrhic
dances represented various scenes. In One a bull mounted
Pasiphae, who was concealed in a wooden statue of a cow, or
at least many of the spectators thought so. Icarus at his very
first attempt to fly fell dose by the imperial couch and be-
spattered the Emperor with his blood. For Nero very sel-
dom presided at the games, but used to view them while re-
clining cm a couch, at first through small openings, though
later with his entire box uncovered.

He was likewise the first to establish at Rome a quinquen-
nial contest in three parts, in the Greek manner, that is in
musk, gymnastics, and horse-racing, which he called the
Neronia, dedicating at the same time his baths and gym-
nasium 1 where he supplied every member of the senatorial
and equestrian orders with rubbing oil. To preside as judges
over the whole contest he appointed ex-consuls, chosen by
lot, who occupied the seats of the Praetors. Then he went
down into the orchestra among the Senators and accepted
die prize lor Latin oratory and vetse, for which all the most
eminent men had contended but which was given to him with
their unanimous consent. But when that for lyre-playing
Was also offered him by the judges, he knelt before it and or-
dered that it be laid at the feet of. Augustus 1 stattte. At the
gymnastic contest, which he gave in the Saepta, he shaved
his first bete3 to the accompaniment of a splendid sacrifice of
bullocks, put it in a golden box adorned with pearls of great

Martiut, near tte Pantheon.
No trace of them remaj**

NERO 249

Virgins also to witness the contests of the athletes, 1 becausfe
at Olympia the priestesses of Ceres were allowed the same
privilege.

I may fairly include among his shows the entrance of
Tiridates into the city. He was a King of Armenia, whom
Nero induced by great promises to come to Rome. Since he
was prevented by bad weather from exhibiting him to the
people on the day appointed by proclamation, he produced
him at the first favorable opportunity, with the praetorian
cohorts drawn up in full armor about the temples in the
Forum, while he himself sat in a curule chair on the rostra
in the attire of a triumphing general, surrounded by military
ensigns and standards. As the King approached along a slop-
ing platform, the Emperor at first let him fall at his feet,
but raised him with his right hand and kissed him. Then,
while the King made supplication, Nero took the turban
from his head and replaced it with a diadem, while a man of
praetorian rank translated the words of the suppliant and
proclaimed them to the throng. From there the King was
taken to the theater, and when he had again done obeisance,
Nero gave him a seat at his right hand. Because of all this
Nero was hailed as Imperator, and after depositing a laurel
wreath in the Capitol, 2 he closed the two doors of the temple
of Janus, as a sign that no war was left anywhere.

He held four consulships, the first for two months, the sec-
ond and the last for six months each, the third for four
months. The second and third were in successive years, while
a year intervened between these and each of the others.

In the administration of justice he was reluctant to render
a decision to those who presented cases, except on the follow-
ing day and in writing. His procedure was, instead of con-
tinuous pleadings, to have each point presented separately
by the parties in turn. Furthermore, whenever he withdrew
for consultation, he did not discuss any matter with all his
advisers in a body, but had each of them give his opinion in
written form. These he read silently and in private and then

1 Augustus had prohibited all women from the gladiatorial fights and
the athletic contests.
* Which was usual only after a triumph. :

250 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

gave a verdict according to his own inclination, as if it were
the view of the majority.

For a long time he would not admit the sons of freedmen
to the Senate and he refused office to those who had been
admitted by his predecessors. Candidates who were in excess
of the number of vacancies received the command of a legion
as compensation for the postponement and delay. He com-
monly appointed Consuls for a period of six months. When
one of them died just before the Kalends of January, he ap-
pointed no one in his place, expressing his disapproval of the
old precedent of Caninus Rebilus, who was Consul but one
day. He conferred the triumphal regalia even on men of the
rank of Quaestor, as well as on some of the Knights, and some-
times for other than military services. As regards the speeches
which he sent to the Senate on various matters, he passed
over the Quaestors, whose duty it was to read them, and
usually had them presented by one of the Consuls.

He devised a new form for the buildings of the city and in
front of the houses and apartments he erected porches, from
*he flat roofs of which fires could be fought. 1 These he put up
at his own cost. He had also planned to extend the walls as
far as Ostia and to bring the sea from there to Rome by a
canal.

During his reign many abuses were severely punished and
put down, and not a few new laws were made: a limit was
set to expenditures; the public banquets were confined to a
distribution of food; the sale of any kind of cooked viands
in the taverns was forbidden, with the exception of pulse
and vegetables, whereas before every sort of dainty was ex-
posed for sale. Punishment was inflicted on the Christians,
a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition. 2
He put an end to the diversions of the chariot drivers, who
from immunity of long standing claimed the right of ranging
at large and amusing themselves by cheating and robbing the

1 This was undoubtedly after the great fire.

, * Tacitus, in Annals XIII, 33, calls the Christian religion "a foreign
and deadly superstition." Pliny in Letter 97 of Book X tails it "a de-
praved, wicked, and outrageous superstition."

NERO 351

people. The pantomimic actors and their partisans were ban-
ished from the city. 1

It was in his reign that a protection against forgers was
first devised, by having no tablets signed that were not bored
with holes through which a cord was thrice passed. 2 In the
case of wills it was provided that the first two leaves should
be presented to the signatories with only the name of the tes-
tator written upon them, and that no one who wrote a will
for another should put down a legacy for himself; further,
that clients should pay a fixed and reasonable fee for the serv-
ices of their lawyers, but nothing at all for the court, which
was to be gratuitous, the charges for it to be paid by the
public treasury. It was also ordained that the pleading of
cases connected with the treasury should be transferred to
the Forum and a board of arbiters, and that all appeals from
the juries should be made to the Senate.

So far from being actuated by any wish or hope of increas-
ing or extending the empire, he even thought of withdrawing
the army from Britain and changed his purpose only because
he was ashamed to seem to belittle the glory of his father. 8
He increased the provinces only by the realm of Pontus, when
it was given up by Polemon, and that of Cottius in the Alps
on the latter's death.

He planned but two foreign tours, to Alexandria and
Achaia. The former he gave up on the very day when he
was to have started, disturbed by a threatening portent. For
as he was making the round of the temples and had sat down
in the shrine of Vesta, first the fringe of his garment caught
when he attempted to get up, and then such darkness over-
spread his eyes that he could see nothing. In Achaia he at-
tempted to cut through the Isthmus 4 and called together
the praetorians and urged them to begin the work. Then,
at a signal given on a trumpet, he was first to break ground

i Because of their disorderly conduct. But his was worse.

* The tablets consisted of three leaves, two of which were bound to-
gether and sealed. The contract was written twice, on the open leaf and
on the closed ones. In cases of dispute the seals were broken and the two
versions compared.

* Claudius, his adoptive father.
< Of Corinth.

253 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

with a mattock and to carry off a basketful of earth upon
his shoulders. He also prepared for an expedition to the Pass
of the Caspian Mountains, after enrolling a new legion of raw
recruits of Italian birth, each six feet tall, 1 which he called
the "phalanx of Alexander the Great."

I have brought together these acts of his, some of which
are beyond criticism, while others are even deserving of no
slight praise, to separate them from his shameful and crimi-
nal deeds, of which I shall proceed now to give an account.

Having gained some knowledge of music in addition to the
rest of his early education, as soon as he became Emperor
he sent for Terpnus, the greatest master of the lyre in those
days, and after listening to him sing after dinner for many
successive days until late at night, he little by little began
to practice himself, neglecting none of the exercises which
artists of that kind are in the habit of following, to preserve
or strengthen their voices. For he used to lie upon his back
and hold a leaden plate on his chest, purge himself by the
syringe and by vomiting, and deny himself fruits. and all
foods injurious to the voice. Finally encouraged by his prog-
ress, although his voice was weak and husky, he began to
loag to appear on the stage, and every now and then in the
presence of his intimate friends he would quote a Greek prov-
erb meaning "Hidden music counts for nothing." And he
made his debut at Naples, where he did not cease singing
uatil he had finished the number which he had begun, even
though the theater was shaken by a sudden earthquake
shock. 2 In the same city he sang frequently and foi several
successive days. Even when he took a short time to rest his
voke, he could not keep out of sight but went to the theater
after bathing and dined in the orchestra with the people all
about him, promising them in Greek, that when he had
wetted his whistle a bit, he would ring out something good
and loud. He was greatly taken too with the rhythmic ap-,
plause of some Alexandrians, who had flocked to Naples from
a fleet that had lately arrived, and summoned more men from

* Roman measure. A little under 5 ft. 10 in. English.
* It collapsed in consequence, but not tin the audience bad dispersed.
Tacitus says nothing about the quake, but- corroborates the f aH of the
building immediately after the performance. *

' ' NERO *S3

-Alexandria. Not content -tfith that, he selected some young
jfoen of tfce order of Knights and more than five tturasatMl
stedy young commoners, to be divided into groups and learn
the Alexandrian styles of applause, which they called "the
.bees," "the roof-tiles," and "the bricks." * These men were
noticeable for their thick hair and fine apparel. Their left
haijds were bare and without rings, and they played thin
"claques" vigorously whenever Nero sang. Us leaders of
these bands were paid four hundred thousand sesterces each. 2
Considering it of great importance to appear in Rome as
well, he repeated the contest of the Neronia before the ap-
pointed time, and when there was a general call for his "divine
voice," he replied that if any wished to hear him, he would
favor them in the gardens. But when the guard of the sol-
diers which was then on duty seconded the entreaties of the
people, he gladly agreed to appear at once. So without delay
he had his name added to the list of the lyre-players who en-
tered the contest, and casting his own lot into the urn with
the rest, he came forward in his turn, attended by the Pre-
fects of the Guard carrying his lyre, and followed by the
Tribunes of the soldiers and his intimate friends. Having
taken his place and finished his preliminary speech, he an-
nounced through the ex-consul Cluvius Rufus that "he would
sing Niobe." And he kept at it until late in the afternoon,
putting off the award of the prize for that event and post-
poning the rest of the contest to the next year, to have an
-excuse for singing oftener. But since even that seemed too
long to wait, he did not cease to appear in public from time
to time. He even thought of taking part in private perform-
ances among the professional actors, and a Praetor offered
a million sesterces 8 for his services. He also put on the mask
and sang tragedies representing Gods and heroes and even
heroines and Goddesses, having the masks fashioned in the
likeness of his own features or those of the women of whom
he chanced to be enamored. Among other themes he sang

i The first seems to have derived its name from the sound, which was
like the humming of bees, the second and third from clapping the hands,
&dd rounded or hollowed like roof-tiles, or held fiat like bricks.

* $16400.0(0

* $41,000.00

254 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

"Canace in Labor," 1 "Orestes the Matricide/ 1 "The Blind-
ing of Oedipus" and the "Frenzy of Hercules." At the last
named performance they say that a young recruit, posted at
the entrance of the stage, seeing him in rags and bound with
chains, as the argument of the play required, rushed for-
ward to lend him aid.

From his earliest years he had a special passion for horses
and talked constantly about the games in the Circus, though
he was forbidden to do so. Once when he was lamenting with
his fellow pupils the fate of a charioteer of the "Greens," who
was dragged by his horses, and his preceptor scolded him, he
told a lie and pretended that he was talking of Hector. At
the beginning of his reign he used to play every day with
ivory chariots on a board, and he came from the country to
all the games, even the most insignificant, at first secretly,
and then so openly that no one doubted that he would be in
Rome on that particular day. He made no secret of his wish
to have the number of prizes increased, and in consequence
more races were added and the performance was continued
to a late hour, while the managers of the troupes no longer
thought it worth while to produce their drivers at all except
for a full day's racing. He soon longed to drive a chariot
himself and even to show himself frequently in public. So
after a trial exhibition in his gardens before his slaves and
the dregs of the populace, he gave all an opportunity of
seeing him in the Circus Maximus, one of his f reedmen drop-
ping the napkin * from the place usually occupied by the
magistrates.

Not content with showing his proficiency in these arts at
Rome > he went to Achaia, as I have said, influenced especially
by the following consideration. The cities in which it was
the custom to hold contests in music had adopted the rule of
sending all the lyric prizes to him. These he received with
the greatest delight, not only giving audience before all others

1 Canace, daughter of an Etrurian King, whose incestuous intercourse
with her brother was detected in consequence of the cries of an infant
she had delivered. Whereupon she killed herself with a sword her father
had sent her for the purpose. It was a joke in Rome that when Nero
was performing this piece "he was laboring in child-birth."

* The signal for the start.

NERO ass

>- the envoys who brought them, but even inviting them to
is private table. When some of them begged him to sing
tiring dinner and greeted his performance with extravagant
Dplause, he declared that '"the Greeks were the only ones
ho had an ear for music and that they alone were worthy of
Is efforts." So he took ship without delay and immediately
a arriving at Cassiope x made a preliminary appearance as
singer at the altar of Jupiter Cassius, and then went the
)und of all the contests.

To make this possible, he gave orders that even those which
ame in different years should be brought in the compass of
ne, so that some had even to be given twice. At Olympia, like-
ise, he introduced a musical competition, contrary to custom,
'o avoid being distracted or hindered in any way while busy
rith these contests, he replied to his freedman Helius, whc
eminded him that the affairs of the city required his pra-
nce, in these words: "However much it may be your advice
nd your wish that I should return speedily, yet you ought
ather to counsel me and to hope that I may return worthy of
Jero."

While he was singing no one was allowed to leave the the-
,ter even for the most urgent reasons. And so it is said that
ome women gave birth to children there, while many who
?ere worn out with listening and applauding, secretly leaped
rom the side of the theater, since the gates at the entrance
vere closed, or feigned death and were carried out as if for
mrial. The trepidation and anxiety with which he took part
n the contests, his keen rivalry of his opponents and his
iwe of the judges, can hardly be credited. As if his rivals
vere of quite the same station as himself, he used to show
espect to them and try to gain their favor, while he slan-
iered them behind their backs, sometimes assailed them with
ibuse when he met them, and even bribed those who were
especially proficient.

Before beginning, he would address the judges in the most
leferential terms, saying that he had done all that could be
lone, but the issue was in the hands of Fortune, though
they, being men of wisdom and experience, ought to exclude

1 Now Corfu.

*5 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

from their judgment what was merely accidental, When they
bade him take heart, he withdrew with greater confidence,
but not even then without anxtety, interpreting the silence
and modesty of some as sullenhess and ill -nature, and de-
claring that lie had his suspicions of them.

In competition he observed the rules most scrupulously,
never daring to clear his throat and even wiping the sweat
from hfe brow with his arm. 1 Once indeed, during the per-
formance of a tragedy, when he had dropped his scepter but
quickly recovered it, he was terribly afraid that he might be
excluded from the competition because of his slip, and his
confidence was restored only when his accompanist swore
that it had passed unnoticed amid the delight and applause
of the people. When the victory was won, he made the an-
nouncement himself. It was for that reason he always took
part in the Contests of the heralds. 2 To obliterate the memory
of all other victors in these sacred contests and kave no trace
of them, their statues and busts were all thrown down by
his order, dragged off with hooks, and cast into privies.

He also drove a chariot in many places, at Olympia even
a ten-horse team, although in one of his own poems he had
criticized Mithridates for just that thing. But after he had
been thrown from the car and put back in it, he was unable
to hold out and gave up before the end of the course. But
he received the crown just the same. On his departure he pre-
sented the entire province with freedom and at the same time
gave the judges Roman citizenship and a large sum of money.
These favors he announced in person on the day of the Isth-
mian Games, standing in the middle of the stadium.

On his Way back from Greece, he entered Naples through
& breach made in the city wall, as is customary with victors
to the sacred games, since it was at that city he had made
his dbiit as an artist. In like manner he entered Antium,
then Albanum, and finally Rome. But at Rome he rode in
the chariot which Augustus had used in his triumphs in days
gone by, and wore a purple robe and a Greek cloak adorned
with stats of gold, bearing on his head the Olympic crown

* Hie rules forbade the use of a handkerchief.

* Heralds for the great festivals were selected by competition.

NERO isT

and holding the Pythian crown in his right hand, v.hile the
rest were carried before him with inscriptions telling where
he had won them and against what competitors, and giving
the titles of the songs or the subject of the plays. His chariot
was followed by his claque as by the escort of a triumphal
procession, who shouted that they were the attendants of
Augustus and the soldiers of his triumph. Having had the
arch of the Circus Maximus taken down, he made his way
through it across the Velabrum and the Forum to the Pala-
tine and the temple of Apollo. All along the route victims
were slain, the streets were sprinkled from time to time with
perfume, while birds., ribbons, and sweetmeats were showered
upon him. He placed the sacred crowns in his bed-chambers
around his couches, as well as statues representing him in
the guise of a lyre-player, which was the device he had
stamped on a coin. So far from neglecting or relaxing his
practice of the art after this, he never addressed the soldiers
except by letter or in a speech delivered by another, to save
his voice. He never did anything for amusement or in earnest
without a teacher of voice at his side to warn him to spare
his vocal organs and hold a handkerchief to his mouth. To
many men he offered his friendship or announced his hostility,
according as they had applauded him lavishly or grudgingly.
Although at first his acts of wantonness, lust, extravagance,
avarice and cruelty were gradual and secret, and might be
condoned as follies of youth, yet even then their nature was
such that no one doubted that they were defects of his char-
acter and not due to his time of life. No sooner was twilight
over than he would slip on the disguise of a cap or a wig and
go to the taverns or range about the streets playing pranks,
which however were very far from harmless. For he used to
beat men as they came home from dinner, stabbing any who
resisted him and throwing them into the sewers. He would
even break into shops and rob them, setting up a market in
the Palace, where he divided the booty which he took, sold it
at auction, and then squandered the proceeds. In the scuffles
which took place on such occasions he often ran the risk of,
losing his eyes or even his life, for he was beaten almost to
death by a man of the senatorial order whose wife he had
handled indecently. Warned by this, he never afterward*

a S S THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

ventured to appear in public at that hour without having
Tribunes follow him at a distance and unobserved. Even in
the daytime he would be carried privately to the theater in
a sedan, where he would take a place in the upper part of the
proscenium from which he not only witnessed the brawls of
the pantomimic actors but also egged them on. When they
came to blows and stones and pieces of broken benches be-
gan to fly about he himself threw many missiles at the people
and even broke a Praetor's head.

Little by little, however, as his vices grew stronger, he
dropped jesting and secrecy and with no attempt at disguise
openly broke out into worse crime.

He prolonged his revels from midday to midnight, often
livening himself by a warm plunge, or, if it were summer,
into water cooled with snow. Sometimes too he closed the in-
lets of the Naumachia 1 and banqueted there in public, or in
the Campus Martius, or in the Circus Maximus, waited on
by harlots and dancing girls from all over the city. Whenever
he drifted down the Tiber to Ostia, or sailed about the Gulf
of Baiae, booths were set up at intervals along the banks
and shores, fitted out as brothels and eating-houses, before
which were matrons who played the part of bawds and host-
esses, soliciting him from every side to come ashore. He also
coerced his friends to give him banquets, one of whom spent
four million sesterces 2 on a dinner at which turbans were
the favor, and another a considerably larger sum on one at
which roses were distributed.

Besides abusing freeborn boys and seducing married wo-
men, he debauched the Vestal Virgin Rubria. The freed-
woman Acte he all but made his lawful wife, after bribing
some ex-consuls to perjure themselves by swearing that she
was of royal birth. He castrated the boy Sporus and actually
tried to make a woman of him. He married him with all the
usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took
him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him
as his wife. And the witty jest that some one made is still
current, that it would have been well for the world if Nero's

1 The great basin made for sea-fights.
* $164,00000.

NERO 25*

father Domitius had had that kind of wife. This Sporus,
decked out with the finery of the Empresses and riding in a
litter, he took with him to the assizes and marts of Greece,
and later at Rome through the Street of the Images, fondly
kissing him from time to time. That he even desired illicit
relations with his own mother, 1 and was kept from it by her
enemies, who feared that such a relationship might give the
reckless and insolent woman too great influence, was notori-
ous, especially after he added to his concubines a courtesan
who was said to look very like Agrippina. Even before that,
so they say, whenever he r6de in a litter with his mother, he
had incestuous relations with her, which were betrayed by
the stains on his clothing.

He so prostituted his own chastity that after defiling al-
most every part of his body, he at last devised a kind of
game, in which, covered with the skin of some wild animal,
he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts
of men and women, who were bound to stakes, and when he
had sated his mad lust, was dispatched by his freedman
Doryphorus. For he was even married to this man in the same
Way that he himself had married Sporus, going so far as to
imitate the cries and lamentations of a maiden being de-
flowered. I have heard from some men that it was his un-
shaken conviction that no man was chaste or pure in any
part of his body, but that most of them concealed their vices
and cleverly drew a veil over them; and that therefore he
pardoned all other faults in those who confessed to him their
lewdness.

He thought that there was no other way of enjoying riches
and money than by riotous extravagance, declaring that only
stingy and niggardly fellows kept a correct account of what
they spent, while fine and genuinely magnificent gentlemen
wasted and squandered. Nothing in his uncle Gaius so ex-
cited his envy and admiration as the fact that he had in so
short a time run through the vast wealth which Tiberius
had left him. Accordingly he made presents and wasted

1 It is said the advances were made by Agrippina, with flagrant
indecency, to secure her power over him. See Tacitus Annals XIV, a.

*6o THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

money without stint. On Tiridates, 1 though it would seem
hardly within belief, he spent eight hundred thousand ses-
terces * a day, and on his departure presented him with more
than a hundred millions. 8 He gave the lyre-player Mene-
crates and the gladiator Spiculus properties and residences
equal to those of men who had celebrated triumphs. He en-
riched the monkey-faced usurer Paneros with estates in the
country and in the city and had him buried with almost regal
splendor. He never wore the same garment twice. He played
at dice for four hundred thousand sesterces a point. 4 He
fished with a golden net drawn by cords woven of purple
and scarlet threads. It is said that he never made a journey
with less than a thousand carriages, his mules shod with silver
and their drivers clad in wool of Canusium, attended by a
train of Mazaces 9 and couriers with bracelets and trappings.
There was nothing however in which he was more ruinously
prodigal than in building. He made a palace extending all
the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he
called the House of Passage, but when it was burned shortly
after its completion and rebuilt, the Golden House. Its size
and splendor will be sufficiently indicated by the following
details. Its vestibule was high enough to contain a colossal
statue of the Emperor a hundred and twenty feet high. So
large was this house that it had a triple colonnade a mile
long. There was a lake in it too, like a sea, surrounded with
buildings to represent cities, besides tracts of country,
varied by tilled fields, vineyards, pastures and woods, with
great numbers of wild and domestic animals. In the rest of
the house all parts were overlaid with gold and adorned with
jewels and mother-of-pearl. There were dining-rooms with
fretted ceilings of ivory, whose panels could turn and shower
down flowers and were fitted with pipes for sprinkling the
guests with perfumes. The main banquet hall was circular
and constantly revolved day and night, like the heavens.
He had baths supplied with sea water and sulphur water.

1 The same whom Nero exhibited to the people as told earlier.

- 2 $32,800.00.

* $4,100,000.00.
, 4 $16400.00.
8 Celebrated horsemen from Mauretania (North Africa).

: , NERO ; *6t

When the edifice was finished in this style and he dedicated
it, he deigned to say nothing pore in the way of approval
than that he was at last beginning to be housed like a human
being.

He also began a pool, extending from Misenum to the
lake of Avernus, roofed over and enclosed in colonnades,
into which he planned to turn all the hot springs in every
part of Baiae. He likewise projected a canal to extend from
Avernus all the way to Ostia, to enable the journey to be
made by ship yet not by sea: its length was to be a hundred
and sixty miles and its breadth sufficient to allow ships with
five banks of oars to pass each other. For the execution of
these projects he had given orders that the prisoners all over
the empire should be transported to Italy, and that those
who were convicted even of capital crimes should be pun-
ished in no other way than by sentence to this work.

He was led to such mad extravagance, in addition to his
confidence in the resources of the empire, by the hope of a
vast hidden treasure, suddenly inspired by the assurance of
a Roman Knight, who declared positively that the enormous
wealth which Queen Dido had taken with her of old in her
flight from Tyre was hidden away in huge caves in Africa
and could be recovered with but trifling labor.

When this hope proved false, he resorted to false accusa-
tions and robbery, being at the end of his resources and so
utterly -Impoverished that he was obliged to postpone and
defer even the pay of the soldiers and the rewards due to the
veterans.

First of all he made a law, that instead of one-half, five*
sixths of the property of deceased freedmen should be made
over to him, if without good and sufficient reason they tore
t&e ilatne of any famfly with which he himself was connected.
Furt&er, ttot th States of those who were ungrateful to
their JEmpfcror * should belong to the privy pttrse, and that
the lawyers who had written or dictated such wills should
a$ ..go *mpunist)ed. Finally, that any word or deed on wKob
am informer could base ian action should come under .the law

tiial fs, s wfeo Bad feft'Kim nofhlnfc in their wffl*, of urittfc lie
considered less ths^Tubl^QiM^^

2*9 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

against treason. He demanded the return of the rewards
which he had given in recognition of the prizes conferred on
him by any city in any competition. Having forbidden the
use of amethystine or Tyrian purple dyes, he secretly sent a
man to sell a few ounces on a market day and then dosed
the shops of all the dealers. 1 It is even said that when he saw
a matron in the audience at one of his recitals clad in the
forbidden color he pointed her out to his agents, who dragged
her out and stripped her on the spot, not only of her gar*
ment, but also of her property. He never appointed any one
to an office without adding: "You know what my needs
are," and "Let us see to it that no one possess anything." At
last he stripped many temples of their gifts and melted
down the images of gold and silver, including those of the
guardian Gods of Rome 2 which, however, Galba soon after-
wards restored.

He began his career of parricide and murder with Claudius,
for even if he was not the instigator of the Emperor's death,
he was at least privy to it, as he openly admitted. For he
used afterwards to laud mushrooms, the vehicle in which
the poison was administered to Claudius, as "the food of
the Gods," as the Greek proverb has it. At any rate, after
Claudius' death he vented on him every kind of insult, in
act and word, 8 charging him now with folly and now with
cruelty. For it was a favorite joke of his to say that Claudius
had ceased "to play the fool" among mortals, lengthening
the first syllable of the word morari* And he disregarded
many of his decrees and acts as the work of a madman and
a dotard. Finally, he neglected to enclose the place where his
body was burned except with a low and mean wall.

He attempted the life of Britannicus by poison, not less
from jealousy of his voice (for it was more agreeable than
his own) than from fear that he might sometime win a higher
place than himself in the people's regard because of the

1 As an excuse to confiscate their property.

* Called Penates. They were Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, Minerva, Neptune.

4 Suetonius says that Nero began by honoring the memory of
Claudius.

4 By whkh pronunciation he changed the sense of the phrase from
"linger among mortals" to "play the fool among mortals."

NERO 263

memory of his father. He procured the potion from an arch-
poisoner, one Locusta, and when the effect was slower than
he anticipated, merely physicking Britannicus, he called the
woman to him and flogged her with his own hand, charging
that she had administered a medicine instead of a poison.
When she said in excuse that she had given a smaller dose
to shield him from the odium of the crime, he replied: "It's
likely that I am afraid of the Julian law." So he forced her
to mix as swift and instant a potion as she knew how in hit
own room before his very eyes. Then he tried it on a kid, and
as the animal lingered for five hours, had the mixture steeped
again and again and threw some of it before a pig. The beast
instantly fell dead, whereupon he ordered that the poison
be taken to the dining-room and given to Britannicus. The
boy dropped dead at the very first taste, but Nero lied to his
guests and declared that he was seized with the falling sick-
ness, to which he was subject, and the next day had him
hastily and unceremoniously buried in a pouring rain. He
rewarded Locusta for her eminent services with a full par-
don and large estates in the country, and actually sent heh
pupils.

His mother offended him by too strict surveillance and
criticism of his words and acts, but at first he confined his
resentment to frequent endeavors to bring upon her a burden
of unpopularity by pretending that he would abdicate the
throne and go off to Rhodes. Then depriving her of all her
honors and of her guard of Roman and German soldiers, he
even forbade her to live with him and drove her from the
Palace. After that he passed all bounds in harrying her,
bribing men to annoy her with lawsuits while she remained
in the city, and after she had retired to the country, to pass
her house by land and sea and break her rest with abuse and
mockery. At last terrified by her violence and threats, he de*
termined to have her life, and after thrice attempting it by
poison and finding that she had made herself immune by
antidotes, he tampered with the ceiling of her bedroom, con-
triving a mechanical device for loosening its panels and drop-
ping them upon her while she slept. When this leaked out
through some of those connected with the plot, he devised

2*4 THE LIVES OF fH3 TWELVE CAESARS

m* collapsible boat * to destroy her by $Mwreek tr by the
felling in 'of its cabiti. Then he pretended a t ^conciliation
nnd invited her hi a tabst Cordial letter to come to Baiae
ftfcd celebrate the fea$r : 6f Minerva with him. r <0fc her ar-
rival, instructing his captains to wteck th gatley in which
she had come, by running into it as if by accideht, he de-
tained her at a banquet, and when she wotrid returh to Baiflf,
Offered her his contrivance in place of the craft which had
been damaged, escorting her to it in high spirits and even
kissing her breasts ks they parted. The rest of the night he
passed sleepless in intense anxiety, awaitiftc the outcome of
hfe desigti. On learning that everything had gone wrong and
that she had escaped by swimming, driven to desperation he
secretly had a dagger thrown down beside her freedman
Lucius Agermus, when he joyf ully brought word that she was
safe and sound. He then ordered that the freedman be seized
and bound, on the charge of having been hired by her to kill
the Emperor, and that his mother be put to death, giving
out that she had committed suicide to escape the conse-
quences of her detected guilt. Trustworthy authorities add
still more gruesome details: that he hurried off to view the
corpse, handled her limbs, criticizing some and commending
others, 2 and that becoming thirsty meanwhile, he took a
drink. Yet he could not either then or ever afterwards endure
the stings of conscience, though soldiers, Senate and people
tried to hearten him with their congratulations. For he often
owned that he was hounded by his mother's ghost and by
the whips and blazing torches of the Furies. He even had
rites performed by the Magi, in the effort to summon her
shade and entreat it for forgiveness. Moreover, in his jour-
ney through Greece he did not venture to take part in the
Eleusinian mysteries, since at the beginning the godless and
wicked are warned by the herald's proclamation to go henci^
To matricide he added the murder of his aunt. When he
once visited her as she was confined to her bed from costive*
ness, and she, as old ladies will, stroking his downy beard
(for he was already well grown) happened to say fondly:

* Invented by Ms fo&pdnuui Anicetus*

Tacitus in Annals XIV, 9, &ya that some d:nied this.

NERO 165

"As soon as I receive this, 1 1 shall gladly die," he turned to
those with him and said as if in jest: 'Til take it off at
once," Then he bade the doctors give the sick woman ah over-
dose of physic and seized her property before she was cold,
suppressing her will, that nothing might escape him.

Besides Octavia 2 he later took two wives, Poppaea Sabina,
daughter of an ex-quaestor and previously married to a
Roman Knight, and then Statilia Messalina, daughter of the
great-granddaughter of Taurus, who had been twice Consul
and awarded a Triumph. To possess the latter he slew her
husband Atticus Vestinus while he held the office of Consul.
He soon grew tired of living with Octavia, and when his
friends took him to task, replied that "she ought to be con-
tent with the insignia of wifehood." Presently after several
vain attempts to strangle her, he divorced her on the ground
of barrenness, and when the people took it ill and openly re-
proached him, he banished her besides. Finally he had her
put to death on a charge of adultery that was so shameless
and unfounded, that when all who were put to the torture-
maintained her innocence, he bribed his former preceptor
Anicetus to make a pretended confession that he had tricked
her out of her chastity. He clearly loved Poppaea, whom he
married twelve days after his divorce from Octavia, yet he
caused her death too by kicking her when she was pregnant
and ill, because she had scolded him for coming home late
from the races. By her he had a daughter, Claudia Augusta,
but lost her when she was still an infant.

Indeed there is no kind of relationship that he did not vio-
late in his career of crime. He put to death Antonia, daughter
of Claudius, for refusing to marry him after Poppaea's
death, charging her with an attempt at revolution. And he
treated in the same way all others who were in any way con*
nected with him by blood or by marriage. Among these was
the young Aulus Plautius, whom he forcibly defiled before his^
death, saying "Let my mother come now and kiss my suc-
cessor," openly charging that Agrippina had loved Plautius
and that this had roused him to hopes of the throne. Rufrius

1 That is, "as soon is I see you a man." What Nero did with the to;*'
hali? irbm hfo chin -Suetonius has 'already told.
- a Hatigbtft of daiftdifls fry MftftHTii

i<56 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Crispinus, a mere boy, his stepson and the child of Poppaea,
he ordered to be drowned by the child's own slaves while he
was fishing, because it was said that he used to play at being
a general and an emperor. He banished his nurse's son
Tuscus, because when Procurator in Egypt, he had bathed
in some baths which were built for a visit of Nero's. He
drove his tutor Seneca to suicide, although when the old man
often pleaded to be allowed to retire and offered to give up
k his estates, he had sworn most solemnly that he did wrong
to suspect him and that he would rather die than harm him.
He sent poison to Burrus, Prefect of the Guard, in place of
a throat medicine which he had promised him. The old and
wealthy freedmen who had helped him first to his adoption
and later to the throne, and aided him by their advice, he
killed by poison, administered partly in their food and partly
in their drink.

Those outside his family he assailed with no less cruelty.
It chanced that a comet had begun to appear on several suc-
cessive nights, a thing which is commonly believed to por-
tend the death of great rulers. Worried by this, and learning
from the astrologer Balbillus that Kings usually averted
such omens by the sacrifice of some illustrious person, thus
bringing the danger foreboded to their own persons onto the
heads of their chief men, he resolved on the death of all the
eminent men of the State. Indeed, all the more firmly, and
with some semblance of justice, after the discovery of two
conspiracies. The earlier and more dangerous of these was
that of Piso at Rome; the other was set on foot by Vinicius
at Beneventum and detected there. The conspirators made
their defense in triple sets of fetters, some voluntarily ad-
mitting their guilt, some even maintaining they were trying
to do him a favor, saying that there was no way except by
death that they could help a man disgraced by every kind
of wickedness. The children of those who were condemned
were banished or put to death by poison or starvation. A
number are known to have been slain all together at a single
meal along with their preceptors and attendants, while others
were prevented from earning their daily bread.

After this he showed neither discrimination nor modera-
tion in putting to death whomsoever he pleased on any pre-

NERO 267

text whatever. To mention but a few instances: Salvidienus
Orfitus was charged with having rented three shops which
formed part of his house near the Forum to certain states
as their headquarters in Rome; Cassius Longinus, a blind
jurist, with retaining in the old family tree of his house the
mask of Gaius Cassius, the assassin of Julius Caesar; Paetus
Thrasea with having a sullen mien, like that of a preceptor.
To those who were bidden to die he never granted more than
an hour's respite, and to avoid any delay, he brought phy-
sicians who were at once to "attend to" such as lingered, for
that was the term he used for killing them by opening their
veins. It is even believed that it was his wish to throw living
men to be torn to pieces and devoured by a monster of Egyp-
tian birth, who would gnaw raw flesh and anything else thar
was given him. Transported and puffed up with such suc-
cesses, as he considered them, he boasted that no prince had
ever known what power he really had, and he often threw
out unmistakable hints that he would not spare even those
of the Senate who survived, but would one day blot out the
whole order from the State and hand over the rule of the
provinces and the command of the armies to the Roman
Knights and to his freedmen. Certain it is that neither on be-
ginning a journey nor on returning did he ever kiss any mem-
ber of it, or even return his greeting. And at the formal
opening of the work at the Isthmus the prayer which he ut-
tered in a loud voice before a great throng was, that the
event might result favorably "for himself and the people of
Rome," thus suppressing any mention of the Senate.

But he showed no greater mercy to the people or the walls
of his capital. When some one in a general conversation said:

"When I am dead, be earth consumed by fire/' 1

He rejoined "Nay, rather while I live," and his action was
wholly in accord. For under cover of displeasure at the ugli-
ness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets,
he set fire to the city 2 so openly that several ex-consuls did

* But see Tacitus (Annals, XV, 38) , whose report of this event, as also
Dio's (LXII, 18), differs from Suetonius'.

2 A line believed to be from BeUerophon, a lost play of Euripides. Dio,
LVHI, 33, reports Tiberius as quoting it.

it* THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

not venture to lay hands on his household servants although
they caught them on their estates with tow and firebrands,
while some granaries near the Golden House, on a plot oi
ground he particularly desired, were demolished by engines
of war and then set on fire, because their walls were of stone.
For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the
people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs.
At that time, besides an immense number of apartment
houses, the private houses of leaders of old were burned, still
adorned with trophies of victory, and the temples of the
Gods vowed and dedicated by the Kings and later in the
Punic and Gallic wars, and whatever else interesting and
noteworthy had survived from antiquity. Viewing the con-
flagration from the tower of Maecenas and exulting, as he
said, in "the beauty of the flames," he sang the whole of the
"Sack of Troy," x dressed up in his regular stage costume.
Furthermore, to gain from this calamity too all the spoil and
Dooty possible, while promising the removal of the debris
and dead bodies free of cost he allowed no one to approach
the ruins of his own property. And from the contributions
which he not only received, but even demanded, he nearly
bankrupted the provinces and exhausted the resources of
individuals.

To all the disasters and abuses thus caused by the prince
there were added certain accidents of fortune: a plague
which in a single autumn entered thirty thousand deaths in
the registers of Venus Libitina; a disaster in Britain, where
two important towns were sacked and great numbers of citi-
zens and allies were butchered; a shameful defeat in the
Orient, in consequence of which the legions in Armenia were
sent under the yoke and Syria was all but lost. It is surprising
and of special note that all this time he bore nothing with
mare patience than the curses and abuse of the people, and
was particularly lenient towards those who assailed him with
gibes and lampoons. Of these many were posted or circulated
both in Greek and Latin, for example the following:

"Orestes and Alcmeon, both, their mothers slew.
What Nero does i$ therefore nothing new."

* In whose temple funeral outfits and a register of deaths were kept

NERO *

''Spriro&.frQm AeaSas, pfous, wise, .and great,
Who says dur Nero is degenerate?
Safe through the 3ame3 one borekis sire. The other,
To save himself, took off his loving mother."

"While Nero sweetly struck his lyre

Apollo strung his bow. .
Our prince is now the God of fire
The other God, our foe."

"All Rome's become one house. To Veii fly,
Unless it stretch to Veii, bye and bye." x

But he made no effort to find the authors, and when some
of them were reported to the Senate by an informer, he for-
bade their being very severely punished. As he was passing
along a public street, the Cynic Isidorus loudly taunted him,
"because he was a good singer of the ills of Nauplius, but
made ill use of his own goods." Datus also, an actor of Atellan
farces, in a song beginning:

"Good-by, papa, good-by, mamma,"

represented drinking and swimming in pantomime, referring
of course to the death of Claudius and Agrippina; and in the
final tag,

"Now Orcus guides your steps,"

be indicated the Senate by a gesture. 2 Nero contented him-
self with banishing the actor arid the philosopher from the
city, either because he was impervious to all insults, or to
avoid sharpening men's wits by showing his vexation.

After the world had put up with such a ruler for nearly
fourteen years, it at last cast him off, and the Gauls took the
first step under th$ lead of Julius VUujtax, who at that time
governed thw; province as Erqpraetpr, ,

tlfny remkiWtn^t the "Golden Hottee'* of $fod was swallowing tip
Itotoe < Te& was ofee of the most artdcnt Etriiscan cities, long a power-
ful rival of Rome, and but twelve miles north. The Romans alrao*t
abandoned their own <dty alter its sack by th Gauls in 300 *& and re*
moved there. Hardly a vestige of it remains'.

? ABtiding to NeroVpto to^end^all the Senators to the Underwork
whtire Orcus, or Pluto, would lead them.

t?o THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Astrologers had predicted to Nero that he would one day
be repudiated, which was the occasion of that well-known
saying of his: "A humble art affords us daily bread/ 11
doubtless uttered to justify him in practicing the art of lyre-
playing, as an amusement while Emperor, but a necessity for
a private citizen. Some of them, however, had promised him
the rule of the East, when he was cast off, a few expressly
naming the sovereignty of Jerusalem, and several of the
restitution of all his former fortunes. Inclining rather to this
last hope, after losing Armenia and Britain and recovering
both, he began to think that he had suffered the misfortunes
which fate had in store. And after consulting the oracle at
Delphi and being told that he must look out for the seventy-
third year, assuming that he would die only at that period,
and taking no account of Galba's years, he felt so confident
not only of old age, but also of unbroken and unusual good
fortune, that when he had lost some articles of great value by
shipwreck, he did not hesitate to say among his intimate
friends that the fish would bring them back to him.

He was at Naples when he learned of the uprising of the
Gallic provinces, on the anniversary of his mother's murder,
and received the news with such calmness and indifference
that he incurred the suspicion of actually rejoicing in it, be-
cause it gave him an excuse for pillaging those wealthy prov-
inces according to the laws of war. And he at once proceeded
to the gymnasium, where he watched the contests of the
athletes with rapt interest. At dinner too when interrupted
by a more disturbing letter, he fired up only so far as to
threaten vengeance on the rebels. In short for eight whole
days he made no attempt to write a reply to any one and
gave no commission or command, but blotted out the affair
with silence.

At last he was driven by numerous insulting edicts of
Vindex, to urge the Senate in a letter to avenge him and th
state, alleging a throat trouble as his excuse for not appear
ing in person. Yet there was nothing which he so much re-

i Dio (LXUI, 27) writes that Nero when planning to kill the Sena-
tors, burn Rome, and sail to Alexandria, said: "Even though we be
dtiven from our empire, yet this little artistic gift of ours will support
us there."

NERO *7

seated as the taunt that he was a wretched lyre-player and
that he was addressed as Ahenobarbus instead of Nero. 1
With regard to his family name, which was cast in his teeth
as an insult, he declared that he would resume it and give up
that of his adoption. He used no other arguments to show the
falsity of the rest of the reproaches than that he was actually
taunted with being unskilled in an art to which he had de-
voted so much attention and in which he had so perfected
himself, and he asked various individuals from time to time
whether they knew of any artist who was his superior.

Finally, beset by message after message, he returned to
Rome in a panic. But on the way, when but slightly encour-
aged by an insignificant omen, for he noticed a monument on
which was sculptured the overthrow of a Gallic soldier by a
Roman horseman, who was dragging him along by the hair,
he leaped for joy at the sight and lifted up his hands to
heaven. But not even then did he personally address the
Senate or the people, but only called some of the leading men
to his house and after a hasty consultation spent the rest of
the day in exhibiting some water-organs 2 of a new and hith-
erto unknown form, explaining their several features and
lecturing on the theory and complexity of each of them and
he even declared that he would presently produce them all in
the theater "with the kind permission of Vindex."

Thereafter, having learned that Galba also and the Span-
ish provinces had revolted, he fainted and lay for a long
time insensible, without a word and all but dead. When he
came to himself, he rent his robe and beat his brow, declar-
ing that it was all over with him. And when his old nurse tried
to comfort him by reminding him that similar evils had be-
fallen other princes before him, he declared that unlike all
others he was suffering the unheard of and unparalleled fate
of losing the supreme power while he still lived. Nevertheless
he did not abandon or amend his slothful and luxurious

1 Lucius Domitius Ahenofcsrbus was Nero's original name, being the
son of Cn, Domitris AHwiobarbus and Agrippina, one of Gerxnanicus'
daughter*, But after Agrippina married her uncle, the Emperor Clau-
dius* the>stepson/s name was changed to Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus
Gerttianicus. ' '*

* The prototype of our pipe-organs. Water was the inflating power
Vitruvius CIV, IX) attributes ita.inVention toCtesibusbf Alexandria.

27* THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

habits. On the contrary, whenever any good news came from
the provinces, he not only gave lavish feasts, but even ridi-
culed the leaders of the revolt in verses set to wanton music,
which have since become public, and accompanied them with
gestures. In the theater, where he had been secretly carried
as usual, he sent word to an actor who was making a hit that
he was taking advantage of the Emperor's busy days.

At the very beginning of the revolt it is believed that he
formed many plans of monstrous wickedness, but in no way
i iconsistent with his character: to depose and assassinate the
commanders of the armies and the governors of the provinces,
on the ground that they were all united in a conspiracy against
him; to massacre all the exiles everywhere and all men of
Gallic birth in the city: the former, to prevent them from
joining the rebels; the latter, as sharing and abetting the
designs of their countrymen; to turn over the Gallic provinces
to his armies to ravage; to poison the entire Senate at ban-
quets; to set fire to the city, first letting the wild beasts loose,
that it might be harder for the people to protect hemselves.
But he was deterred from these designs, not so much by any
compunction, as because he despaired of being able to carry
them out, and feeling obliged to take the field, he deposed
the Consuls before the end of their term and assumed the
office alone in place of both of them, alleging that it was fated
that the Gallic provinces could not be subdued except by a
Consul. Having assumed the fasces, 1 he declared as he was
leaving the dining-room after a banquet, leaning on the
shoulders of his comrades, that immediately on setting foot
in the province he would go before the soldiers unarmed
and do nothing but weep; and having thus led the rebels to
change their purpose, he would next day rejoice among his
rejoicing subjects and sing paeans of victory, which he ought
at that very moment to be composing.

In preparing for his campaign his first care was to select
wagons to carry his theatrical instruments, to have the hair
of his concubines, whom he planned to take with him,
trimmed man-fashion, and to equip them with Amazonian
axes and shields. Next he summoned the city tribes to enlist,

* The symbol of consular authority.

NERO 27;<

and when no eligible person responded, he ordered all masten
to send a certain number of slaves, accepting only the choio
est from each household and not even exempting paymasters
and secretaries. He also required all classes to contribute a
part of their incomes, and all tenants of private houses and
apartments to pay a year's rent at once to the privy purse.
With great fastidiousness and strictness he demanded newly
minted coin, refined silver, and pure gold, so that many
openly refused to make any contribution at all, unanimously
demanding that he should rather compel the informers to
give up whatever rewards had been paid them.

The bitter feeling against him was increased because he
also turned the high cost of grain to his profit. For, as it
happened just at that time of famine, a ship was reported
arrived from Alexandria but freighted with sand for the
court wrestlers.

When he had thus aroused the hatred of all, there was no
form of insult to which he was not subjected. A lock of hair
was placed on the head of his statue with the inscription in
Greek: "Now there is a real contest and you must at last
surrender." To the neck of another statue a sack was tied
and with it the words: "I have done what I could, but you
have earned the sack. 1 People wrote on the columns that by
his singing he had stirred up even the Gauls. 2 When night
came on, many men pretended to be wrangling with their
slaves and kept calling out for a vindicator. 8

In addition he was frightened by manifest portents from
dreams, auspices and omens, both old and new. He had never
been in the habit of dreaming before he killed his mother.
But after that he had such nightmares as: that he was steer-
ing a ship and the helm was wrenched from his hands ; that he
was dragged by his wife Octavia into thickest darkness; that
now he was covered 'with a swarm of winged ants; or again,
that the statues of all the heroes dedicated in Pompey's
theater had surrounded him and blocked his way; that a

1 The one in which parricides were sewn up.

2 A double pun. Galli means both "cocks" and "Gauls"; cantarc "to
crow" as well as "to sing."

* Another pun. V index signifying both the leader "f the revolt in Gaul
and one who punishes unruly servants.

374 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Spanish steed of which he was very fond was changed into the
form of an ape in the hinder parts of its body, and its head,
which alone remained unaltered, gave forth tuneful neighs.
The doors of the Mausoleum flew open of their own accord,
and a voice was heard from within summoning him by name.
After his domestic Gods had been adorned on the Kalends
of January, they fell to the ground in the midst of the prepa-
rations for the sacrifice. As he was taking the auspices,
Sporus made him a present of a ring with a stone on which
was engraved the rape of Proserpina. When the vows were
to be taken x and a great throng of classes had assembled, the
keys of the Capitol could not be found for a long time. When
a speech of his in which he assailed Vindex was being read
in the Senate, at the words "the wretches will suffer punish-
ment and a fitting end will soon be made of them," all who
were present cried out with one voice: "You will make it,
Augustus." Men had also not failed to notice that the last
piece which he sang in public was "Oedipus in Exile," and
that he ended with the line:

"Wife, father, mother drive me to my death."

In the meanwhile, when word came that the other armies
had revolted, he tore to pieces the dispatches which were
handed to him as he was dining, tipped over the table, and
dashed to the ground two favorite drinking cups, which he
called "Homeric," because they were carved with scenes from
Homer's poems. Then taking some poison from Locusta and
putting in into a golden box, he crossed over into the Servilian
gardens, where he tried to induce the Tribunes and Cen-
turions of the Guard to accompany him in his flight, first
sending his most trustworthy freedmen to Ostia, to get a
fleet ready. But when some gave evasive answers and some
openly refused, one even cried:

"Is it, then, such a dreadful thing, to die?" 2
Whereupon he turned over various plans in his mind, whether

- On ine ist oi January, for the prosperity oi the Emperor and the
State.
2 Vergil, Aeneid, XII, 646.

NERO 275

to go as a suppliant to the Parthians or to Galba, or to ap-
pear to the people on the rostra, dressed in black, and beg
as pathetically as he could for pardon for his past offenses;
and if he could not soften their hearts, to entreat them at
least to allow him the prefecture of Egypt. Afterwards a
speech composed for this purpose was found in his writing
desk. But it is thought that he did not dare to deliver it for
fear of being torn to pieces before he could reach the Forum.

Having therefore put off further consideration to the fol-
lowing day, he awoke about midnight and finding that the
guard of soldiers had left, he sprang from his bed and sent for
all his friends. Since no reply came back from any one, he
went himself to their rooms with a few followers. But finding
that all the doors were closed and that no one replied to him
he returned to his own chamber, from which now the very
caretakers had fled, taking with them even the bed-clothing
and the box of poison. Then he at once called for the gladi-
ator Spiculus or any other skillful killer at whose hand he
might find death, and when no one appeared, he cried "Have
I then neither friend nor foe?" and ran out as if to throw him-
self into the Tiber.

Changing his purpose again, he sought for some retired
place, where he could hide and collect his thoughts. And
when his freedman Phaon offered his villa in the suburbs be-
tween the Via Nomentana and the Via Salaria near the fourth
milestone, just as he was, barefooted and in his tunic, he put
on a faded cloak, covered his head, and holding a handker-
chief before his face, mounted a horse with only four at-
tendants, one of whom was Sporus. At once he was startled
by a shock of earthquake and a flash of lightning full in his
face, and he heard the shouts of the soldiers from the camp
hard by, as they prophesied destruction for him and success
for Galba. He also heard one of the wayfarers whom he met
say: "These men are after Nero," and another ask: "Is there
anything new in the city about Nero?" Then his horse took
fright at the smell of a corpse which had been thrown out
into the road, his face was exposed, and a retired soldier of
the Guard recognized him and saluted him. When they came
to a by-path leading to the villa, they turned the horses loose
and he made his way amid bushes and brambles and along

276 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

a path through a thicket of reeds to the back wall of the
house, with great difficulty and only when a robe was thrown
down for him to walk on. Here the aforesaid Phaon urged him
to hide for a time in a pit, from which sand had been dug, but
he declared that he would not go under ground while still
alive, and after waiting for a while until a secret entrance into
the villa could be made, he scooped up in his hand some water
to drink from a pool close by, saying: "This is Nero's dis-
tilled water." * Then, as his cloak had been torn by the thorns,
he pulled out the twigs which had pierced it, and crawling on
all fours through a narrow passage that had been dug, he
entered the villa and lay down in the first room he came to,
on a couch with a common mattress, over which an old cloak
had been thrown. Though suffering from hunger and renewed
thirst, he refused some coarse bread which was offered him,
but drank a little lukewarm water.

At last, while his companions one and all urged him to
save himself as soon as possible from the indignities that
threatened him, he bade them dig a grave in his presence,
proportioned to the size of his own person, collect any bits
of marble that could be found, and at the same time bring
water and wood for presently disposing of his body. 2 As each
of these things was done, he wept and said again and again:
"What an artist the world is losing! "

While he hesitated, a letter was brought to Phaon by one
of his couriers. Nero snatching it from his hand read that he
had been pronounced a public enemy by the Senate, and that
they were seeking him to punish him in the ancient fashion.
And he asked what manner of punishment that was. When
he learned that the criminal was stripped naked, fastened by
the neck in a forked stake and then beaten to death with rods,
in mortal terror he seized two daggers which he had brought
with him, and then, after trying the point of each, put them
up again, pleading that the fated hour had not yet come. Now
he would beg Sporus to begin to lament and wail, and now
entreat some one to help him take his life by setting him the
example. Anon he reproached himself for his cowardice in

* Pliny tells us in Natural History (XXXIII, 3) that Nero had his
drinking water boiled, to clear it from impurities, then cooled with ice.

* Water for washing the corpse, fire for burning it.

NERO 27;

such words as these: "To live despoiled, disgraced this does
not become Nero, does not become him one should be reso-
lute at such times come, rouse thyself! " And now the horse-
men were at hand who had orders to take him off alive. When
he heard them, he quavered:

"The trampling of swift-footed studs is in my ear," 1

and drove a dagger into his throat, aided by Epaphroditus
his private secretary. 2 He was all but dead when a Centurion
rushed in, and as he placed a cloak to the wound, pretending
that he had come to aid him, Nero merely gasped: "Too late! n
and "This is fidelity! " With these words he was gone, his eyes
so set and starting from their sockets that all who saw him
shuddered with horror. First and beyond all else he had
forced from his companions a promise to let no one have his
head, but to contrive in some way that he be buried un-
mutilated. And this was granted by Icelus, Galba's freed-
man, who had shortly before been released from the bondage
to which he was consigned at the beginning of the revolt.

He was buried at a cost of two hundred thousand sesterces *
and laid out in white robes embroidered with gold, which he
had worn on the Kalends of January. His ashes were deposited
by his nurses, Egloge and Alexandria, accompanied by his
mistress Acte, in the family tomb of the Domitii on the sum-
mit of the Hill of Gardens, 4 which is visible from the Campus
Martius. In that monument his sarcophagus of porphyry, with
an altar of marble from Luna standing above it, is enclosed
by a balustrade of Thasian stone.

He was about the average height, his body marked witJ>
spots and malodorous, his hair light blond, his features regu-
lar rather than attractive, his eyes blue and somewhat weak,
his neck overthick, his belly prominent, and his legs very
slender. His health was good, for though indulging in every
kind of riotous excess, he was ill but three times in all during
the fourteen years of his reign, and even then not enough to

1 Iliad, X, 535-

* For his death see Domitian.
8 $8,200.00.

* The Pincian Hill, where the statue, "The Dying Gladiator," wa
discovered.

a8o THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

honor be paid to the memory of Nero. In fact, twenty years
later, when I was a young man, a person of obscure origin
appeared, who gave out that he was Nero, and the name was
still in such favor with the Parthians that they supported him
rigorously and surrendered him with great reluctance.

BOOK VII
GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS

a8o THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

honor be paid to the memory of Nero. In fact, twenty years
later, when I was a young man, a person of obscure origin
appeared, who gave out that he was Nero, and the name was
still in such favor with the Parthians that they supported him
rigorously and surrendered him with great reluctance.

BOOK VII
GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS

GALBA

THE race of the Caesars ended with Nero. That this would
be so was shown by many portents and especially by two
very significant ones. Years before, as Livia was returning to
her estate near Veii, immediately after her marriage with
Augustus, an eagle which flew by dropped into her lap a white
hen, holding in its beak a sprig of laurel, just as the eagle
had carried it off. Livia resolved to rear the fowl and plant
the sprig, whereupon such a great brood of chickens was
hatched that to this day the villa is called The Hen Roost,
and such a grove of laurel sprang up, that the Caesars gath-
ered their laurels from it when they were going to celebrate
triumphs. Moreover it was the habit of those who triumphed
to plant other branches at once in that same place, and it
was observed that just before the death of each of them the
tree which he had planted withered. Now in Nero's last year
the whole grove died from the root up, as well as all the
hens. Furthermore, when shortly afterwards the temple of
the Caesars was struck by lightning, the heads fell from all
the statues at the same time, and Augustus' scepter was
dashed from his hand.

Nero was succeeded by Galba, who was related in no de-
gree to the house of the Caesars, although unquestionably
of noble origin and of an old and powerful family. For he
always added to the inscriptions on his statues that he was
the great-grandson of Quintus Catulus Capitolinus, and when
he became Emperor he even displayed a family tree in his
hall in which he carried back his ancestry on his father's side
to Jupiter and on his mother's to Pasiphae, the wife of Minos.

It would be a long story to give in detail his illustrious
ancestors and the honorary inscriptions of the entire race, but
I shall give a brief account of his immediate family. It is un-
certain why the first of the Sulpicii who bore the surname
Galba assumed the name, and whence it was derived. Some

283

*84 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

think that it was because after having for a long time unsuc-
cessfully besieged a town in Spain, he at last set fire to it by
torches smeared with galbanum; * others because during a
long illness he made constant use of galbeum, that is to say
of remedies wrapped in wool; still others, because he was a
very fat man, such as the Gauls term galba, or because he
was, on the contrary, as slender as the insects called galbae,
which breed in oak trees.

The family acquired distinction from Servius Galba, who
became Consul and was decidedly the most eloquent speaker
of his time. This man, they say, was the cause of the war
with Viriathus, because while governing Spain as Propraetor,
he treacherously massacred thirty thousand of the Lusitani-
ans. His grandson had been one of Caesar's lieutenants in
Gaul, but angered because his commander caused his defeat
for the consulship, he joined the conspiracy with Brutus and
Cassius, and was consequently condemned to death by the
Pedian law. From him were descended the grandfather and
the father of the Emperor Galba. The former, who was more
eminent for his learning than for his rank for he did not
advance beyond the grade of Praetor published a volumi-
nous and painstaking history. The father attained the con-
sulship, and although he was short of stature and even hunch-
backed, besides being only an indifferent speaker, was an
industrious pleader at the bar. He married Mummia Achaica,
the granddaughter of Catulus and great-granddaughter of
Lucius Mummius who destroyed Corinth; and later Livia
Ocellina, a very rich and beautiful woman, who however is
thought to have sought marriage with him because of his
high rank, and the more eagerly when, in response to her
frequent advances, he took off his robe in A nvate and showed
her his deformity, so as not to seem to dr ,eive her by con-
cealing it. By Achaica he had two sons, Gaius and Servius,
Gaius, who was the elder, left Rome after squandering the
greater part of his estate, and committed suicide because
Tiberius would not allow him to take part in the allotment
of the provinces in his year.

1 The gum resin from a species of Tertda growing on deserts in
Persia.

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS *8s

The Emperor Servius Galba was born in the consulship of
Marcus Valerius Messala and Gnaeus Lentulus, on the ninth
day before the Kalends of January, in a country house situ-
ated on a hill near Tarracina, on the left as you go towards
Fundi. Adopted by his stepmother Livia, he took her name
and the surname Ocella, and also changed his forename; for
he used Lucius, instead of Servius, from that time until he
became Emperor. It is well known that when he was still a
boy and called to pay his respects to Augustus with others
of his age, the Emperor pinched his cheek and said in Greek:
"Thou too, child, wilt have a nibble at this power of mine."
Tiberius too, when he heard that Galba was destined to be
Emperor, but in his old age, said: "Well, let him live then,
since that does not concern me." Again, when Galba's grand-
father was busy with a sacrifice to avert a stroke of lightning,
and an eagle snatched the intestines from his hand and car*
tied them to an oak full of acorns, the prediction was made
that the highest dignity would come to the family, but late;
whereupon he said with a laugh: "Very likely, when a mule
has a foal! " Afterwards when Galba was beginning his revolt,
nothing gave him so much encouragement as the foaling of
a mule, and while the rest were horrified and looked on it asj
an unfavorable omen, he alone regarded it as most propitious^
remembering the sacrifice and his grandfather's saying.

When he assumed the gown of manhood, he dreamt that
Fortune said that she was tired of standing before his door,
and that unless she were quickly admitted, she would fall a
prey to the first comer. When he awoke, opening the door
of the hall, he found close by the threshold a bronze statue
of Fortune more than a cubit high. This he carried in his arms
to Tusculum, where he usually spent the summer, and con-
secrated it in a room of his house. And from that time on he
honored it with sacrifices every month and with an all-night
vigil once a year.

Even before he reached middle life, he persisted in keeping
up an old and forgotten custom of his country, which sur-
vived only in his own household, of having his freedmen and
slaves appear before him twice a day in a body, greeting him
in th* morning and bidding him farewell at evening, one by

286 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Among other liberal studies he applied himself to the law.
He also assumed a husband's duties, but after losing his wife
Lepida and two sons whom he had by her, he remained a
widower. And he could not be tempted afterwards by any
match, not even with Agrippina, who no sooner lost Domitius
by death than she set her cap for Galba so obviously, even
before the death of his wife, that Lepida's mother scolded
her roundly before a company of matrons and went so far
as to slap her.

He showed marked respect to Livia Augusta, 1 to whose
favor he owed great influence during her lifetime and by
whose last will he almost became a rich man, for he had the
largest bequest among her legatees, one of fifty million sester-
ces. 2 But because the sum was designated in figures and not
written out in words, Tiberius, who was her heir, reduced the
;bequest to five hundred thousand, 8 and Galba never received
ven that amount.

He began his career of office before the legal age, and in
celebrating the games of the Floralia in his praetorship he
gave a new kind of exhibition, namely of elephants walking
the rope. Then he governed the province of Aquitania for
nearly a year and soon afterwards held a regular consulship
for six months. It chanced that in this office he succeeded
Lucius * Domitius, the father of Nero, and was succeeded by
Salvius Otho, the father of the Emperor Otho, a kind of
omen of what happened later, when he became Emperor
between the reigns of the sons of these two men.

Appointed by Gaius Caesar to supersede Gaetulicus as
Governor of Upper Germany, the day after he appeared be-
fore the legions he put a stop to their applause at a festival
which chanced to fall at that time, by issuing a written order
to keep their hands under their cloaks; and immediately, this
verse was bandied about the camp:

"Learn, soldier, how in arms to use your hands,
Galba now, not Gaetulicus, commands."

* Widow of Augustus.
^$2,050,000.00.

* $20,500.00.

* Either Suetonius is in error or the manuscripts; the nanx should
be Gnaeus.

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS 2*7

With equal strictness he put a stop to the requests for
furloughs. He got both the veterans and the new recruits into
condition by plenty of hard work, speedily checked the bar-
barians, who had already made inroads even into Gaul, and
when Gaius x arrived, Galba and his army made such a good
impression, that out of the great body of troops assembled
from all the provinces none received greater commendation
or richer rewards. Galba particularly distinguished himself,
while directing the military maneuvers shield in hand, by
actually running for twenty miles close beside the Emperor's
chariot.

When the murder of Gaius was announced, although many
urged Galba to take advantage of the opportunity, he pre-
ferred quiet. Hence he was in high favor with Claudius, be*
came one of his staff of intimate friends, and was treated
with such consideration that the departure of the expedition
to Britain was put off because Galba was taken with a sudden
illness, of no great severity. He governed Africa for two >ears
with th6 rank of Proconsul, being specially chosen 2 to restore
order in the province, which was disturbed both by internal
strife and by a revolt of the barbarians. And he was success-
ful, owing to his insistence on strict discipline and his ob-
servance of justice even in trifling matters. When provisions
were scarce during some expedition, a soldier was accused of
having sold wheat left from his rations at a hundred denarii
a peck. Galba gave orders that when the man began to lack
food, he should receive aid from no one, and he starved to
death. On another occasion when he was holding court and
the question of the ownership of a beast of burden was laid
before him, as the evidence on both sides was slight and the
witnesses unreliable, so that it was difficult to get at the
truth, he ruled that the beast should be led with its hsad
muffled up to the pool where it was usually watered, that it
should then be unmuffied, and should belong to the man to
whom it returned to its own accord after drinking.

His services in Africa at that time, and previously in Get*
many, were recognized by the triumphal regalia and three

1 For whose German exploits see Caligula.

2 Except in special cases, like this, Governors were appointed br
lot from among those eligible.

*S8 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

priesthoods, for he was chosen a member of the Fifteen, 1
made one of the Brotherhood of Titius 2 and priest of
Augustus. 8 After that he lived for the most part in retirement
until about the middle of Nero's reign, never going out even
for recreation without taking a million sesterces in gold with
him in a second carriage, 4 until at last, while he was staying
in the town of Fundi, Hispania Tarraconensis was offered
him. And it fell out that as he was offering sacrifice in a public
temple after his arrival in the province, the hair of a young
attendant who was carrying an incense-box suddenly turned
white all over his head, and there were some who did not hesi-
tate to interpret this as a sign of a change of rulers and of
the succession of an old man to a young one ; that is to say,
of Galba to Nero. Not long after this lightning struck a lake
of Cantabria and twelve axes were found there, an unmistak-
able token of supreme power.

For eight years he governed the province in a variable and
inconsistent manner. At first he was vigorous and energetic
and even over-severe in punishing offenses. For he cut off the
hands of a money-lender who carried on his business dis-
honestly and nailed them to his counter and he crucified a
man for poisoning his ward, whose property he was to inherit
in case of his death. When the man invoked the law and de-
clared that he was a Roman citizen, Galba, pretending to
lighten his punishment by some consolation and honor, or-
dered that a cross much higher than the rest and painted
white be set up, and the man transferred to it. But he gradu-
ally changed to sloth and inaction, so as to give Nero no
cause for jealousy because, as he used to say himself, no
one could be forced to render an account for doing nothing.

As he was holding the assizes at New Carthage, he learned
of the rebellion of the Gallic provinces through an urgent
appeal for help from the Governor of Aquitania. Then came
letters from Vindex, calling upon him to make himself the
liberator and leader of mankind. So without much hesitation
he accepted the proposal, led by fear as well as by hope. For

1 Supervisors of Sacrifices and the Sibylline Books.

2 A priesthood which perpetuated certain ancient Sabine rites.
8 Tiberius instituted the worship of Augustus.

4 $4 1 ,000 .00; so, if need be, he could leave the country at once.

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS 289

he had intercepted dispatches ordering his own death, which
had been secretly sent by Nero to his agents. He was en-
couraged too, in addition to most favorable auspices and
omens, by the prediction of a young girl of high birth, and
the more so because the priest of Jupiter at Clunia, directed
by a dream, had found in the inner shrine of his temple the
very same prediction, likewise spoken by an inspired girl
two hundred years before. And the purport of the verses was
that one day there would come forth from Spain the ruler
and lord of the world.

Accordingly, pretending that he was going to attend to the
manumitting of slaves, he mounted the tribunal. On the front
of it he had set up as many images as he could find of those
who had been condemned and put to death by Nero, having
by his side a boy of noble family, whom he had summoned
for that very purpose from his place of exile hard by in the
Balearic Isles. But instead he began to deplore the state of
the times. When he was forthwith hailed as Emperor, he
declared that he was their Governor, representing the Senate
and people of Rome. Then proclaiming a holiday, he en^
rolled from the people of the province legions and auxiliaries
in addition to his former force of one legion, two divisions of
cavalry, and three cohorts. Eut from the oldest and most
experienced of the nobles he chose a Kind of Senate, to whom
he might refer matters of special importance whenever it
was necessary. He also chose young men of the order of
Knights, who were to have the title of Volunteers and keep
guard before his bedchamber in place of the regular soldiers,
without losing their right to wear the gold ring. He also sent
proclamations broadcast throughout the province, urging all
men individually and collectively to join the revolution and
aid the common cause in every possible way.

At about this same time, during the fortification of a town
which he had chosen as the seat of war, a ring of ancient
workmanship was found, containing a precious stone en-
graved with a Victory and a trophy. Immediately afterwards
a ship from Alexandria loaded with arms arrived at Dertosa *
without a pilot, without a single sailor or passenger, removing

1 Now Corunna.

290 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

all doubt in any one's mind that the war was just and holy
and undertaken with the approval of the Gods. Then sud-
denly and unexpectedly the whole plan was almost brought
to naught. One of the two divisions of cavalry, repenting of
its change of allegiance, attempted to desert Galba as he was
approaching his camp and was with difficulty prevented.
Some slaves too, whom one of Nero's freedmen had given
Galba with treachery in view, all but slew him as he was
going to the bath through a narrow passage-way. In fact
they would have succeeded, had they not conjured one an-
other not to miss the opportunity and so been questioned as
to what the opportunity was to which they referred. For
when they were put to the torture, a confession was wrung
from them.

To these great perils was added the death of Vindex, by
which he was especially panic-stricken and came near taking
his own life, in the belief that all was lost. But when some
messengers came from the city, reporting that Nero was
dead and that all the people had sworn allegiance to him, he
laid aside the title of Governor and assumed that of Caesar.
He then began his march to Rome in a general's cloak with a
dagger hanging from his neck in front of his breast; and he
did not resume the toga until he had overthrown those who
Were plotting against him, Nymphidius Sabinus, Prefect of
the praetorian guard at Rome, and the Governors of Ger-
many and Africa, Fonteius Capito and Clodius Macer.

His double reputation for cruelty and avarice had gone
before him. Men said that he had punished the cities of the
Spanish and Gallic provinces which had hesitated about tak-
ing sides with him by heavier taxes and some even by the
razing of their walls, putting to death the Governors and
imperial deputies along with their wives and children. Fur-
ther, that he had melted down a golden crown of fifteen
pounds' weight, which the people of Tarraco had taken from
their ancient temple of Jupiter and presented to him, with
orders that the three ounces which were found lacking be
exacted from them. This reputation was confirmed and even
augmented immediately on his arrival in the city. For having
compelled some marines whom Nero had made regular
soldiers to return to their former positions as rowers, upon

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS 291

their refusing and obstinately insisting they remain under
the eagle and standards, he not only dispersed them by a
cavalry charge, but even decimated them. He also disbanded
a cohort of Germans, whom the previous Caesars had made
their bodyguard and had found absolutely faithful in many
emergencies, and sent them back to their native country
without any rewards, alleging that they were more favorably
inclined toward Gnaeus Dolabella, near whose gardens they
had their camp. The following tales too were told in mockery
of him, whether truly or falsely: that when an unusually
elegant dinner was set before him, he groaned aloud; and
when his duly appointed steward presented his expense ac-
count, he handed him a dish of beans in return for his in-*
dustry and carefulness ; and that when the flute player Canus
greatly pleased him, he presented him with five denarii, 1
which he took from his own purse with his own hand. 2

Accordingly his coming was not so welcome as it might
have been, and this was apparent at the first performance
in the theater. For when the actors of an Atellan farce began
the familiar lines

"Here comes Reuben from his farm"

all the spectators at once finished the song in chorus and
repeated it several times with appropriate gestures, beginning
with that verse.

Thus his popularity and prestige were greater when he
won, than while he ruled the empire, though he gave many
proofs of being an excellent prince. But he was by no means
so much loved for those qualities as he was hated for his
acts of the opposite character.

He was wholly under the control of three men, who were
commonly known as his tutors because they lived with him
in the palace and never left his side. They were Titus Vinius,
one of his generals in Spain, a man of unbounded covetous-
ness; Cornelius Laco, advanced from the position of judge's

* Plutarch (Galba, XVI) says the gift was of gold pieces and that
Galba said it came from his own and not the public purse. Galba'i
frugality was regarded as stinginess by a people accustomed to Nero**
extravagance.

192 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

assistant to that of Prefect of the Guard and intolerably
haughty and indolent; and his own freedman Icelus, who
had only just before received the honor of the gold ring and
the surname of Marcianus, yet already aspired to the highest
office open to the equestrian order. 1 To these brigands, each
with his different vice, he so entrusted and handed himself
over as their tool, that his conduct was far from consistent.
For at one time he was more exacting and niggardly, and at
another more extravagant and reckless than became a prince
chosen by the people and of his time of life.

He condemned to death divers distinguished men of both
orders on trivial suspicions without a trial. He rarely granted
Roman citizenship, and the privileges due those who had
three children to only one or two at most, and even to those
only for a fixed and limited time. When the jurors petitioned
that a sixth division be added to their number, he not only
refused, but even deprived them of the privilege granted by
Claudius, of not being summoned for court duty in winter
and at the beginning of the year.

It was thought too that he intended to limit the offices
open to Senators and Knights to a period of two years, and
to give them only to such as did not wish them and declined
them. He had all the grants of Nero revoked, 2 allowing only
a tenth part to be retained. He exacted repayment of these
with the help of fifty Roman Knights, stipulating that even
if the actors and athletes had sold anything that had formerly
been given them, it should be taken away from the purchasers,
in case the recipient had spent the money and could not
repay it. On the other hand, there was nothing that he did
not allow his friends and freedmen to sell at a price or
bestow as a favor, taxes and freedom from taxation, the
punishment of the guiltless and impunity for the guilty. Nay
more, when the Roman people called for the punishment of
Halotus and Tigellinus, the most utterly abandoned of all
Nero's creatures, not content with saving their lives, he
honored Halotus with a very important stewardship and in

1 Prefect of the praetorian guard.

3 Which, according to Tacitus (Histories, I, 20) amounted to over
$00,200,000.00.

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS 293

the case of Tigellinus even issued an edict rebuking the
people for their cruelty.

Having thus incurred the hatred of almost all men of every
class, he was especially detested by the soldiers. For although
their officers * had promised them a larger gift than common
when they swore allegiance to Galba in his absence, so far
from keeping the promise, he declared more than once that
it was his habit to levy troops, not buy them. Because of this
he embittered the soldiers all over the empire. The praetorians
he filled besides with both fear and indignation by discharging
many of them from time to time as under suspicion of being
partisans of Nymphidius. But loudest of all was the grum-
bling of the army in Upper Germany, because it was de-
frauded of the reward for its services against the Gauls and
Vindex. Hence they were the. first to venture on mutiny, re-
fusing on the Kalends of January to swear allegiance to any
one save the Senate, and at once resolving to send a deputa*
tion to the praetorians with the following message: that the
Emperor created in Spain did not suit them and the Guard
must choose one who would be acceptable to all the armies.

When this was reported to Galba, thinking that it was not
so much his age as his lack of children that was criticized, he
picked out Piso Frugi Licianus from the midst of the throng
at one of his morning receptions, a young man of noble birth
and high character, who had long been one of his special
favorites and always named in his will as heir to his property
and his name. Calling him son, he led him to the praetorian
camp and adopted him before the assembled soldiers. But
even then he made no mention of largess, thus making it
easier for Marcus Salvius Otho to accomplish his purpose
within six days after the adoption.

Many prodigies in rapid succession from the very begin*
ning of his reign had foretold Galba 's end exactly as it hap-
pened. When victims were being slain to right and left in

1 According to Plutarch (Galba, 2) it was Nymphidius Sabinus,
Prefect of the praetorian guard, who made this promise. Other officers
doubtless followed his example. This failure to give the soldiers the
donative to which they had become accustomed contributed more to
Galba's ruin than even the odium he incurred by the rapatiousness of
his favorites.

*34 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

every town along his way, 1 an ox, maddened by the stroke
of an ax, broke its bonds and charged the Emperor's chariot,
and as it raised its feet, deluged him with blood. And as
Galba dismounted, one of his guards, pushed forward by the
crowd, almost wounded him with his lance. Again, as he en-
tered the city, and later the Palace, he was met by a shock
of earthquake and a sound like the lowing of kine. There
followed even clearer signs. He had set apart from all the
treasure a necklace fashioned of pearls and precious stones,
for the adornment of his statue of Fortune at Tusculum.
This on a sudden impulse he consecrated to the Capitoline
Venus, thinking it worthy of a more august position. The
next night Fortune appeared to him in his dreams, complain-
ing of being robbed of the gift intended for her and threaten-
ing in her turn to take away what she had bestowed. When
Galba hastened in terror to Tusculum at daybreak, to offer
expiatory sacrifices because of the dream, and sent on men
to make preparations for the ceremony, he found on the altaf
nothing but warm ashes and beside it an old man dressed in
black, holding the incense in a glass dish and the wine in an
earthen cup. 2 It was also remarked that as he was sacrificing
on the Kalends of January, the garland fell from his head,
and that as he took the auspices, the sacred chickens flew
away. As he was on the point of addressing the soldiers on
the day of the adoption, his camp chair, through the forget-
fulness of his attendants, was not placed on the tribunal, as
is customary, and in the Senate his curule chair was set
wrong side foremost.

As he was offering sacrifice on the morning before he was
killed, a soothsayer warned him again and again to look out
for danger, since assassins were not far off.

Not long after this he learned that Otho held possession
bf the camp of the praetorian guard. When several advised
him to proceed thither as soon as possible, saying that he
could win the day by his presence and prestige, he decided to
do no more than hold his present position and strengthen it

1 From Spain to Rome.

2 The fire should have been blazing brightly and a youth dad in
white should have carried the incense and wine in more costly it.
ceptacles.

GALBA, OTHO, A,ND VITELLIUS 19$

by getting together a guard of the legionaries, who were en-
camped in many different quarters of the city. He did how*
ever put on a linen cuirass, though he openly declared that
it would afford little protection against so many swords. But
he was lured out by false reports, circulated by the conspira-
tors to induce him to appear in public. For when a fevt
rashly assured him that the trouble was over, that the rebels
had been overthrown, and that the rest were coming in a
body to offer their congratulations, ready to submit to all hi?
orders, he went out to meet them with so much confidence,
that when one of the soldiers boasted that he had slain Otho,
he asked him, "On whose authority?" and then he went oi\
as far as the Forum. There the horsemen who had been bidden
to slay him, spurring their horses through the streets and
dispersing the crowd of civilians, caught sight of him from a
distance and halted for a moment. Then they rushed upon
him and butchered him, abandoned by his followers.

Some say that at the beginning of the disturbance he cried
out, "What mean you, fellow soldiers? I am yours and you
are mine," and that he even promised them the largess. But
the more general account is, that he offered them his neck
without resistance, urging them to do their duty and strike,
since it was their will. It might seem very surprising that
none of those present tried to lend aid to their Emperor, and
that all who were sent for treated the summons with con-
tempt except a company of German troops. These, because
of his recent kindness in showing them great indulgence when
they were weakened by illness, flew to his help, but through
their unfamiliarity with the city took a roundabout way and
arrived too late.

He was killed beside the Lake of Curtius * and was left
lying just as he was, until a common soldier, returning from
a distribution of grain, threw down his load and cut off the
head. Then, since there was no hair by which to grasp it,
he put it under his robe, but later thrust his thumb into the
mouth and so carried it to Otho. He handed it over to his
servants and camp-followers, who set it on a lance and
paraded it about the camp with jeers, crying out from time

1 In the Forum.

t 9 6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

to time, "Galba, thou Cupid, take joy in thy vigor!" The
special reason for this saucy jest was, that the report had
gone abroad a few days before, that when some one had
congratulated him on still looking young and vigorous, he
replied:

"As yet my strength is unimpaired." *

From these it was brought by a freedman of Patrobius
Neronianus for a hundred pieces of gold 2 and thrown aside
in the place where his patron had been executed by Galba 's
order. At last, however, his steward Argivus consigned it to
the tomb with the rest of the body in Galba 's private gardens
on the Aurelian Road.

He was of average height, very bald, with blue eyes and a
hooked nose. His hands and feet were so distorted by gout
that he could not endure a shoe for long, unroll a book, or
even hold one. The flesh on his right side too had grown out
and hung down to such an extent, that it could with difficulty
be held in place by a bandage.

It is said that he was a heavy eater and in winter time
was in the habit of taking food even before daylight, while
at dinner he helped himself so lavishly that he would have
the leavings which remained in a heap before him passed
along and distributed among the attendants who waited on
him. 8 He was much inclined to unnatural desire, and in
gratifying it preferred full-grown, strong men. They say that
when Icelus, one of his old-time favorites, brought him news
in Spain of Nero's death, he not only received him openly
with the fondest kisses, but begged him to prepare himself
without delay and took him privately aside.

He met his end in the seventy-third year of his age and
the seventh month of his reign. The Senate, as soon as it was
allowed to do so, voted him a statue standing upon a column
adorned with the beaks of ships, in the part of the Forum
where he was slain. But Vespasian annulled this decree, be*
lieving that Galba had sent assassins from Spain to Judaea,
to take his life.

1 Iliad, Si *54J Odyssey, ax, 426.

3 These pieces, aurei, were equivalent to about $4.00 each.
8 He ate so much that the remains were enough to feed the at-
tendants.

OTHO

THE ancestors of Otho came from an old and illustrious
family in the town of Ferentium and were descended from the
princes of Etruria. His grandfather Marcus Salvius Otho r
whose father was a Roman Knight but whose mother was
of lowly origin and perhaps not even free-born, became a
Senator through the influence of Livia Augusta, in whose
house he was reared, but did not advance beyond the grade
of Praetor.

His father Lucius Otho was of a distinguished family on
his mother's side, with many powerful connections, and was
so beloved by Tiberius and so like him in appearance, that
he was believed by many to be the Emperor's son. In the
regular offices at Rome, the Proconsulate of Africa, and sev-
eral special military commands he conducted himself with
extreme severity. In Illyricum he even had the courage to
punish some soldiers with death, because in the rebellion of
Camillus, 1 repenting of their defection, they had killed their
officers on the ground that they were the ringleaders in the
revolt against Claudius. And they were executed in his pres-
ence before his headquarters, although he knew that they
had been promoted to higher positions by Claudius because
of that very act. By this deed, while he increased his repu-
tation, he lost favor at court. But he speedily regained it by
detecting the treachery of a Roman Knight, whose slaves
betrayed their master's design of killing the Emperor. For in
consequence of this, the Senate conferred a very unusual
honor on him by setting up his statue in the Palace, and
Claudius also enrolled him among the patricians, and after
praising him in the highest terms, added these words: "Such
a man I do not wish my children may surpass." By Albia
Terentia, a woman of an illustrious line, he had two sons,
Lucius Titianus and a younger called Marcus, who had tb*

1 Mentioned in Claudius.

397

29 8 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

same surname as himself ; also a daughter, whom he betrothed
to Drusus, son of Germanicus, almost before she was of mar-
riageable age.

The Emperor Otho was born on the fourth day before the
Kalends of May in the consulate of Camillus Arruntius and
Domitius Ahenobarbus. From earliest youth he was so ex-
travagant and wild that his father often flogged him. And
they say that he used to rove about at night and lay hands
on any one whom he met who was feeble or drunk and toss
him in a blanket.

After his father's death he pretended love for an influential
freedwoman of the court, although she was an old woman and
almost decrepit, that he might more effectually win her favor.
Having through her wormed his way into Nero's good graces,
he easily held the first place among the Emperor's friends be-
cause of the similarity of their characters, but according to
some, also through immoral relations. At any rate his influ-
ence was such, that when he had bargained for a huge sum
of money to procure the pardon of an ex-consul who had been
condemned for extortion, he had no hesitation in bringing
him into the Senate to give thanks, before he had fully se-
cured his restoration.

He was privy to all the Emperor's plans and secrets, and on
the day which Nero had chosen for the murder of his mother
he gave both of them a most elaborate banquet, in order to
avert suspicion. Also when Poppaea Sabina, who up to that
time had been Nero's mistress, was separated from her husband
and turned over for the time being to Otho, he pretended
marriage with her. 1 But not content with seducing her he be-
came so devoted that he could not endure the thought of hav-
ing Nero even as a rival. At all events it is believed that he not
only would not admit those whom Nero sent to fetch her, but
that on one occasion he even shut out the Emperor himself,
who stood before his door, vainly mingling threats and en-
treaties and demanding the return of his trust. Therefore Nero
annulled the marriage and tinder color of an appointment
as Governor banished Otho to Lusitania, contenting himself

1 Tacitus writes, Annals XIII, 45, the marriage was real, which may
also be inferred from below.

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS 299

with this through fear that by inflicting a severer punishment
he would make the whole farce public. But even as it was, it
was published abroad in this couplet:

"You ask why Otho's banished? Know the cause
Comes not within the scope of vulgar laws.
Against all rules of fashionable life
The rogue had dared to sleep with his own wife."

With the rank of Quaestor * Otho governed the province for
ten years with remarkable moderation and integrity.

When at last an opportunity for revenge was given him,
Otho was the first to espouse Galba's cause, at the same time
conceiving on his own account high hopes of imperial power,
because of the state of the times, but still more because of a
declaration of the astrologer Seleucus. 2 For he had not only
promised Otho some time before that he would survive Nero,
but had at this time unexpectedly appeared unsought and
made the further promise, that he would soon become Em-
peror as well.

Accordingly Otho let slip no opportunity for flattery or
attention to any one. Whenever he entertained Galba at din-
ner, he gave a gold piece to each man of the cohort on guard,
and put all the soldiers under obligation in one form or an-
other. Chosen arbiter by a man who was at law with his
neighbor about a part of his estate, he bought the whole prop-
erty and presented it to him. As a result there was hardly
any one who did not both think and openly declare that he
alone was worthy to succeed to the empire.

Now he had hoped to be adopted by Galba, and looked for-
ward to it from day to day. But when Piso was preferred
and he at last lost that hope, he resorted to force, spurred on
not merely by feelings of resentment, but also by the great-
ness of his debts. For he flatly declared that he could not keep
on his feet unless he became Emperor, and that it made no
difference whether he fell at the hands of the enemy in battle
or at those of his creditors in the Forum.

iAs a rule only those who had been Consuls or Praetors wen
appointed provincial governors.
2 Ptolemaeus, according to Tacitus and Plutarch.

300 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

He had extorted a million sesterces l from one of the Em-
peror's slaves a few days before for getting him a steward-
ship. This was the entire capital for his great undertaking. At
first the enterprise was entrusted to five of his body-guard,
then to ten others, two being chosen by each of the first five.
To all of them ten thousand sesterces 2 were paid at once and
they were promised fifty thousand 8 more. Through these
others were won over, but not so very many, since he had full
confidence more would join him when the business was afoot.

He had been inclined to seize the camp immediately after
the adoption, and set upon Galba as he was dining in the
palace, but had been prevented by consideration for the co-
hort which was on guard at the time, and a reluctance to in-
crease its ill repute. For it was while that same cohort was at
its post that both Gaius had been slain and Nero had
been forsaken. The intervening time 4 was lost owing to bad
Dmens and the warnings of Seleucus.

Accordingly, when the day was set, after admonishing his
confederates to await him at the golden mile-post 6 under the
temple of Saturn in the Forum, he called upon Galba in the
morning and was welcomed as usual with a kiss. He also at-
tended the Emperor as he was offering sacrifice, and heard
the predictions of the soothsayer. Then a f reedman announced
that the architects had come, which was the signal agreed on,
and going off as if to inspect a house which was for sale, he
rushed from the palace by a back door and hastened to the
appointed place. Others say that he feigned an attack of
fever and asked those who stood near him to give that ex-
cuse, in case he should be missed. Then hurriedly entering a
closed sedan, such as women use, he hurried to the camp, but
got out when the bearers' strength flagged, and started to
run. His shoe came untied and he stopped, whereupon with-
out delay he was at once taken up on the shoulders of his

1 $41,000.00.

2 $410.00.

8 $2,050.00.

4 Between the adoption and the death of Galba, a space of five days.

8 The gilded pillar at which all the great military roads of Italy
converged. On it were marked the distances to the principal towns. It
was erected by Augustus in 20 B.C.

GALBA, OTIIO, AND VITELLIUS 301

companions and hailed as Emperor. In this way he arrived
at headquarters, amid acclamations and drawn swords, while
every one whom he met fell in, just as though he were an
accomplice and a participator in the plot. He then sent emis-
saries to kill Galba and Piso, and made no further promises
in the assembly to win the loyalty of the soldiers than to de-
clare that he would have that, and only that, which they
should leave to him.

Next, as the day was drawing to its close, he entered the
Senate and after giving a brief account of himself, alleging
that he had been carried off in the streets and forced to under-
take the rule, which he would exercise in accordance with the
general will, he went to the palace. When in the midst of the
other adulations of those who congratulated and flattered
him, he was hailed by the common herd as Nero, he made
no sign of dissent. On the contrary, according to some writers,
he even made use of that surname in his commissions and his
first letters to some of the Governors of the provinces. Cer-
tain it is that he suffered Nero's busts and statues to be set
up again, and reinstated his procurators and freedmen in
their former posts, while the first grant that he signed as
Emperor was one of fifty million sesterces x for finishing the
Golden House.

It is said that he had a fearful dream that night, uttered
loud groans, and was found by those who ran to his aid ly-
ing on the bare floor beside his couch ; that he tried by every
kind of expiatory rite to propitiate the shade of Galba, by
whom he dreamt that he was ousted and thrown out; and that
next day, as he was taking the auspices, a great storm arose
and he had a bad fall, whereat he muttered from time to time:

With long pipes what concern have I? 2

Now at about this same time the armies in Germany swore
allegiance to Vitellius. When Otho learned of this, he per-
suaded the Senate to send a deputation, to say that an Em-
peror had already been chosen and to counsel peace and har-
mony. In spite of this he offered Vitellius by messengers and

1 $2,050,000.00.

2 A proverbial expression meaning to undertake something beyond
one's powers.

5*2 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

letters a share in the imperial dignity and proposed to become
his son-in-law. But when it became clear that war was inevi-
table, and the generals and troops which Vitellius had sent in
advance were already drawing near, he was given a proof of
the affection and loyalty of the praetorians towards himself
which almost resulted in the destruction of the Senate. It had
been resolved that some arms should be removed and carried
back 1 on shipboard by the marines. But as these were being
taken out of the camp armory towards nightfall, some sus-
pected treachery and started a riot. Then on a sudden all the
uoldiers hastened to the palace without any particular leader,
demanding the death of the Senators. After putting to flight
some of the Tribunes who attempted to stop them, and killing
others, just as they were, all blood-stained, they burst right
into the dining-room, demanding to know where the Emperor
was. And they could not be quieted until they had seen him.

He began his expedition with energy and in fact too hast-
ily, without any regard even for the omens, and in spite of
the fact that the sacred shields had been taken out, 2 but not
yeft put back, which for ages has been considered unlucky.
This was on the very day, too, when the worshipers of the
Mother of the Gods 8 begin their wailing and lamentation,
and also with most unfavorable auspices. For having offered
up a victim to father Dis, he had good omens, whereas in such
a sacrifice adverse indications are more favorable. And when
he first left the city, he was delayed by floods of the Tiber,
while at the twentieth milestone he found the road blocked by
fallen buildings.

With like rashness, although no one doubted that the
proper course was to protract the war, since the enemy were
hard pressed by hunger and by the narrowness of their quar*
ters, he decided to fight a decisive battle as soon as possible,
either because he could not endure the continued worry and
hoped that the war could be ended before the arrival of
Vitellius, or from inability to resist the impetuosity of his

1 To Ostia.

2 Of the temple of Mars to be carried through the streets in the
sacred procession customary before leaving for military operations.

'Cybele, whose festival was from March 24 to 50. Her priests were
castrates, and in her rites sexual elements predominated.

GALBA, OTHO. AND VITELLIUS 301

soldiers, who clamored for the fight. He himself did not taut
part in any of the battles, but remained behind at Brixellum. 1

He was victorious in three contests, but they were of little
moment: in the Alps, near Placentia, and "at Castor's," as the
place is called. In the final and decisive struggle at Betri-
acum he was defeated, but through treachery. For hope of $
conference was offered, and when his soldiers were led out ii
the belief that they were to discuss terms of peace, a battle
Was forced upon them unexpectedly, just as they were exchange
ing greetings with the foe. After the defeat, Otho at once re-
solved to take his own life, rather from a feeling of shame, as
many have thought with good reason, and an unwillingness
to persist in a struggle for imperial power at the expense of
such danger to life and property, than from any despair of
success or distrust of his troops. For even then he had a fresh
and strong force which he had held in reserve for a second at-
tempt, while others were on their way from Dalmalia, Pan-
nonia, and Moesia. Even the defeated troops were not so
crushed as not to be ready to undergo any danger, and even
without support undertake to avenge their disgrace.

My father Suetonius Laetus took part in that war, as a
Tribune of the equestrian order in the thirteenth legion. He
used often to declare afterwards that Otho, even when he was
a private citizen, so loathed civil strife, that at the mere
mention of the fate of Brutus and Cassius at a bannuet he
shuddered; that he would not have engaged with Ga^ba. if he
had not felt confident that the affair could be settled peace-
fully; further, that he was led to hold his life cheap at that
time by the example of a common soldier. This man on
bringing news of the defeat of the army was believed by no
one, but was charged by the soldiers now with falsehood and
now with cowardice, and accused of running away. Where-
upon he fell on his sword at the Emperor's feet. My father
used to say that at this sight Otho cried out that he would
no longer endanger the lives of such brave men, who had
deserved so well.

Having therefore advised his brother, his nephew, and his
friends one by one to look out each for his own safety as best

1 Between Mantua and Cremona.

304 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

they could, he embraced and kissed them all and sent them
off. Then going to a retired place he wrote two notes, one of
consolation to his sister, and one to Nero's widow Messalina,
whom he had intended to marry, commending to her his
corpse and his memory. Then he burned all his letters, to
prevent them from bringing danger or harm to any one at the
hands of the victor. He also distributed what money he had
with him among his servants.

When he had thus made his preparations and was now
resolved upon death, learning from a disturbance which mean-
time arose that those who were beginning to depart and leave
the camp were being seized and detained as deserters, he said
"Let us add this one more night to our life" (these were his
very words), and he forbade the offering of violence to any
one. Leaving the door of his bedroom open until a late hour,
he gave the privilege of speaking with him to all who wished
to come in. After that quenching his thirst with a draught of
cold water, he took up two daggers, and having tried the
point of both of them, put one under his pillow. Then closing
the doors, he slept very soundly. When he at last woke up at
about daylight, he stabbed himself with a single stroke undei
the left breast. Alternately concealing the wound and exposing
it to those who rushed in at his first groan, he breathed his last
and was hastily buried (for such were his orders) in the thirty-
eighth year of his age and on the ninety-fifth day of his reign.

Neither Otho's person nor his bearing suggested such great
courage. He is said to have been of moderate height, splay-
footed and bandy-legged, but almost feminine in his care of
his person. He had the hair of his body plucked out, and be-
cause of the thinness of his locks wore a wig so carefully
fashioned and fitted to his head, that no one suspected it
Moreover, they say that he used to shave every day and
smear his face with moist bread, beginning the practice with
the appearance of the first down, so as never to have a beard;
also that he used to celebrate the rites of Isis publicly in the
linen garment prescribed by the cult. I am inclined to think
that it was because of these habits that a death so little in
harmony with his life excited the greater marvel. 1 Many of

1 A saying persisted for many years that "*one ever died like Otho."

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS 305

the soldiers who were present Kissed his hands and feet as he
lay dead, weeping bitterly and calling him the bravest of men
and an incomparable Emperor, and then at once slew them*
selves beside his bier. Many of those who were absent too, on
receiving the news attacked and killed one another from
sheer grief. In short the greater part of those who had hated
him most bitterly while he lived lauded him to the skies when
he was dead. It was even commonly declared that he had put
an end to Galba, not so much for the sake of ruling, as of
restoring the republic and liberty.

VITELLIUS

OF the origin of the Vitellian family different and widely
varying accounts are given, some saying that the family
was ancient and noble, others that it was new and obscure,
if not of mean extraction. I should believe that these came
respectively from the flatterers and detractors of the Em-
peror, were it not for a difference of opinion about the
standing of the family at a considerably earlier date.

We have a book of Quintus Elogius addressed to Quintus
Vitellius, Quaestor of the Deified Augustus, in which it is
written that the Vitellii were sprung from Faunus, 1 King
of the Aborigines, and Vitellia, who was worshiped as a
Goddess in many places; and that they ruled in all Latium.
That the surviving members of the 'family moved from the
Sabine district to Rome and were enrolled among the
patricians. That traces of this stock endured long afterwards
in the Vitellian Road, running from the Janiculum all the
way to the sea, as well as in a colony of the same name, which
in ancient days the family had asked the privilege of defend-
ing against the Aequicoli with troops raised from their own
family. That when afterwards a force was sent into Apulia
at the time of the Samnite war, some of the Vitellii settled at
Nuceria, and that after a long time their descendants returned
to the city and resumed their place in the senatorial order.

On the other hand several have written that the founder of
the family was a freedman, while Cassius Severus and others
as well say further that he was a cobbler, and that his son,
after making a considerable fortune from the sale of con-
fiscated estates and the profession of informer, married a
common strumpet, daughter of one Antiochus who kept a
bakery, and became the father of a Roman Knight. But this
difference of opinion may be left unsettled.

* Third legendary King of Italy, identified with the Greek Pan.

306

GALBA, OTHO, ANDVITELLIUS 307

In any event Publius Vitellius of Nuceria, 1 whether of
ancient stock or of parents and forefathers in whom he could
take ho pride, was unquestionably a Roman Knight and a
steward of Augustus' property. He left four sons of high
rank with the same name and differing only in their fore-
names: Aulus, Quintus, Publius and Lucius. Aulus, who was
given to luxury and especially notorious for the magnificence
of his feasts, died a Consul, appointed to the office with
Domitius, father of the Emperor Nero. Quintus lost his
rank at the time when it was resolved, at the suggestion of
Tiberius, to depose and get rid of undesirable Senators.
Publius, a member of Germanicus* staff, arraigned Gnaeus
Piso, the enemy and murderer of his commander, and secured
his condemnation. Arrested among the accomplices of Sejanus,
after holding the praetorship, and handed over to his own
brother to be kept in confinement, he opened his veins with
a penknife, but allowed himself to be bandaged and restored,
not so much from unwillingness to die, as because of the
entreaties of his friends; and he met a natural death while
still in confinement. Lucius attained the consulate and then
was made Governor of Syria, 2 where with supreme diplomacy
he not only induced Artabanus, King of the Parthians, to
hold a conference with him, but even to do obeisance to the
standards of the legion. Later he held, with the Emperor
Claudius, two more regular consulships and the censorship.
He also bore the charge of the empire while Claudius was
away on his expedition to Britain. He was an honest and
active man, but of very ill repute because of his passion for
a freedwoman, which went so far that he used her spittle
mixed with honey to rub on his throat and jaws as a medi-
cine, not secretly nor seldom, but openly and every day. He
had also a wonderful gift for flattery and was the first to
begin to worship Gaius Caesar 8 as a God. For on his return
from Syria he did not presume to approach the Emperor
except with veiled head, turning himself about and then
prostrating himself. To neglect no means of gaining the
favor of Claudius, who was a slave to his wives and freed*

1 Modern Nocera, near Salerno.

2 Josephus frequently commends him for his kindness to the Jews.
8 Caligula.

SOS THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

men, he begged of Messalina as the highest possible favor
that she would allow him to take off her shoes. When he
had done this he took her right slipper and constantly car-
ried it about between his toga and his tunic, and sometimes
kissed it. Narcissus also and Pallas he honored by cherish-
ing their images among his household Gods. It was he who
made the famous remark, "May you often do it," when he
was congratulating Claudius at the celebration of the Secular
games. 1

He died of a paralytic stroke on the second day after he
was seized, leaving two sons, begotten of Sestilia, a most
worthy woman and of no mean family, and having lived to
see them Consuls both in the same year, and for the whole
year, since the younger succeeded the elder for six months.
On his decease the Senate honored him with a public funeral
and with a statue on the rostra with this inscription: "Of
unwavering loyalty to his Emperor."

The Emperor Aulus Vitellius, son of Lucius, was born on
the eighth day before the Kalends of October, or according
to some, on the seventh day before the Ides of September,
in the consulship of Drusus Caesar and Norbanus Flaccus. 2
His parents were so aghast at his horoscope as announced by
the astrologers, that his father tried his utmost, while he
lived, to prevent the assignment of any province to his son,
and when he was sent to the legions and hailed as Emperor,
his mother immediately mourned over him as lost. He spent
his boyhood and early youth at Capri among the pathics
of Tiberius, being branded for all time with the nickname
Spintria 8 and suspected of having been the means of his
father's first advancement at the expense of his own chastity.

Stained by every sort of baseness as he advanced in years,
he held a prominent place at court, winning the intimacy of
Gaius 4 by his devotion to chariot-driving and of Claudius

1 Everybody else was amused on this occasion (related in Claudius,)
because Claudius announced a new series of entertainments whereas
people remembered Augustus had given the same sort before.

2 The year after Augustus' death. Vitellius was thus seventeen years
older than Otho.

8 Concerning whom see Tiberius.
* Caligula.

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS 309

by his passion for dice. But he was still dearer to Nero, not
only because of these same qualities, but because of a special
service besides. For when he was presiding at the contests
of the Neronia and Nero wished to compete among the lyre-
players, but did not venture to do so although there was a
general demand for him and accordingly left the theater,
Vitellius called him back, alleging that he came as an envoy
from the insistent people, and thus gave Nero a chance to
yield to their entreaties.

Having in this way through the favor of three Emperors
been honored not only with political positions but with dis-
tinguished priesthoods as well, he afterwards governed Africa
as Proconsul and served as curator of public works, but with
varying purpose and reputation. In his province he showed
exceptional integrity for two successive years, for he served
as deputy to his brother, who succeeded him. But in his city
offices he was said to have stolen some of the offerings and
ornaments from the temples and changed others, substituting
tin and brass for gold and silver.

He had to wife Petronia, daughter of an ex-consul, and by
her a son Petronianus, who was blind in one eye. Since this
son was named as his mother's heir on condition of being
freed from his father's authority, he manumitted him, but
shortly afterwards killed him, according to the general be-
lief, charging him besides with attempted parricide, and
alleging that he had, from consciousness of his guilt, drunk
the poison which he had mixed for his father. Soon after-
wards he married Galeria Fundana, daughter of an ex-
praetor, and from her too he had a son and a daughter, but
the former stammered so, that he was all but dumb and
tongue-tied.

Galba surprised every one by sending him to Lower Ger-
many. Some think that it was due to Titus Vinius, who had
great influence at the time, and whose friendship Vitellius
had long since won through their common support of the
Blues. 1 But since Galba openly declared that no men were
less to be feared than those who thought of nothing but
eating, and that Vitellius's bottomless gullet might be filled

1 A faction in the Circus.

$io THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

from the resources of the province, it is clear to any one that
he was chosen rather through contempt than favor. It is
aotorious that when he was about to start, he lacked means
for his traveling expenses, and that his need of funds was
such, that after consigning his wife and children, whom he
left in Rome, to a hired garret, he let his house for the rest of
the year ; and that he took a valuable pearl from his mother's
ear and pawned it, to defray the expenses of his journey. He
had to resort to false accusation to get rid of the throng
of creditors that lay in wait for him and tried to detain him.
Among them were the people of Sinuessa and of Formiae,
whose public revenues he had embezzled. These he terrified
with false accusations. Against one of them, a freedman who
was somewhat persistent in demanding what was due to him,
he brought an action for damages, alleging that he had been
kicked by him, and would not let him off until he had squeezed
him to the tune of fifty thousand sesterces. 1

On his arrival the army, which was disaffected towards the
Emperor and inclined to mutiny, received him gladly with
open arms, as if he had come to them as a gift from the
Gods; since he was the son of a man who had thrice been
Consul, in the prime of life, and of an easy-going and lavish
disposition. This earlier good opinion Vitellius had also
strengthened by recent acts, for throughout the march he
kissed even the common soldiers whom he met, and at the
posthouses and inns he was unusually affable to the mule
drivers and travelers, asking each of them in the morning
whether they had breakfasted and even showing by belching
that he had done so.

As soon as he entered the camp, he granted every request
that any one made and even of his own accord freed those in
disgrace from their penalties, defendants of suits from their
mourning, 2 and the convicted from punishment. Therefore
hardly a month had passed, when the soldiers, regardless of
the hour, for it was already evening, hastily took him from
his bedroom, just as he was, in his common houseclothes, and
hailed him as Emperor. Then he was carried about the most

1 $2,050.00.

2 Defendants in law suits had to wear mourning in public.

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS 3

populous villages, holding a drawn sword of the Deified
Julius, which some one had taken from a shrine of Mars and
handed him during the first congratulations. He did not
return to headquarters until the dining-room caught fire from
the stove and was ablaze. And then, when all were shocked
and troubled at what seemed a bad omen, he said: "Be of
good cheer; to us light is given." This was his only address
to the soldiers. When he presently received the support of
the army of the upper province too, which had previously
transferred its allegiance from Galba to the Senate, he eagerly
accepted the surname of Germanicus, which was unanimously
offered him, put off accepting the title of Augustus, and for-
ever refused that of Caesar.

Then hearing of the murder of Galba, he settled affairs in
Germany and made two divisions of his forces, one to send
on against Otho, and the other to lead in person. The former
was greeted with a lucky omen at the start, for an eagle sud-
denly flew towards them from the right and after hovering
about the standards, slowly preceded their line of march.
But, on the contrary, when he himself began his advance, the
equestrian statues which were being set up everywhere in his
honor on a sudden all collapsed with broken legs, and the
laurel crown which he had put on with due ceremony fell
into a running stream. Later, as he was sitting in judgment
on the tribunal at Vienna, 1 a cock perched on his shoulder
and then on his head. And the outcome corresponded with
these omens, for he was not by his own efforts able to retain
the power which his lieutenants secured for him.

He heard of the victory at Betriacum and of the death of
Otho when he was s*iU in Gaul, and without delay by a single
edict he disbanded aU the praetorian cohorts, as having set
a pernicious example, 2 and bade them hand over their arms
to their Tribunes. Furthermore, he gave orders that one
hundred and twenty of them should be hunted up and pun-
ished, having found petitions which they had written to Otho,
asking for a reward for services rendered in connection with
Galba's murder. These acts were altogether admirable and

1 Modern Vienne, near Lyons, in France,

2 In deserting Galba for Otho.

312 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

noble, and such as to give hope that he would be a great
prince, had it not been that the rest of his conduct was more
in harmony with his natural disposition and his former habits
of life than with imperial dignity. For when he had begun his
march, he rode through the middle of the cities like a triumph-
ing general, and on the rivers he sailed in most exquisite
craft wreathed with various kinds of garlands, amid lavish
entertainments, with no discipline among his household or
the soldiers, making a jest of the pillage and wantonness of
all his followers. For not content with the banquets which
were furnished them everywhere at public expense, they set
free whatever slaves they pleased, promptly paying those
who remonstrated with blows and stripes, often with wounds,
and sometimes with death. When he came to the plains where
the battle was fought and some shuddered with horror at the
moldering corpses, he had the audacity to encourage them
by the abominable saying, that the odor of a dead enemy
was sweet and that of a fellow-citizen sweeter still. But
nevertheless, the better to bear the awful stench, he openly
drained a great draught of unmixed wine and distributed
some among the troops. With equal bad taste and arrogance,
gazing upon the stone inscribed to the memory of Otho, he
declared that he deserved such a Mausoleum, and sent the
dagger with which his rival had killed himself to the Colony
of Agrippina, 1 to be dedicated to Mars. He also held an all-
night festival on the heights of the Apennines.

Finally he entered the city to the sound of the trumpet,
wearing a general's mantle and a sword at his side, amid
standards and banners, with his staff in military cloaks and
his troops with drawn swords.

Then showing greater and greater disregard for the laws
of Gods and r^n, he assumed the office of high priest on the
day of Allia,- held elections for ten years to come, and made
himself Consul for life. And to leave no doubt in any one's
mind what model he chose for the government of the State,

1 Modern Cologne, birthplace of Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus,
wife of Nero.

1 July 17, an especially unlucky day because it was the annivarsary
of the great victory of the Gauls near the river Allia in 390 B.C., after
which they sacked Rome.

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS 313

he made funerary offerings to Nero in the middle of the
Campus Martius, attended by a great throng of the official
priests. When at the accompanying banquet a flute-player
was received with applause, he openly urged him "to render
something from the Master's Book * as well." And when he
began the songs of Nero, Vitellius was the first to applaud
him and even jumped for joy.

Beginning in this way, he regulated the greater part of his
rule wholly according to the advice and whims of the com-
monest of actors and chariot-drivers, and in particular of
his freedman Asiaticus. This fellow had immoral relations with
Vitellius in his youth, but later grew weary of him and ran
away. When Vitellius came upon him selling posca 2 at
Puteoli, he put him in irons, but at once freed him again
and made him his favorite. His vexation was renewed by the
man's excessive insolence and thievishness, and he sold him
to an itinerant keeper of gladiators. When, however, he was
once reserved for the end of a gladiatorial show, Vitellius
suddenly spirited him away, and finally, when the man had
reached his province, set him free. On the first day of his
reign he presented him with the golden ring at a banquet,
although in the morning, when there was a general demand
that Asiaticus be given that honor, he had deprecated in the
strongest terms such a blot on the equestrian order.

But his besetting sins were luxury and cruelty. He divided
his feasts into three, sometimes into four a day, breakfast, 8
luncheon, dinner, and a drinking bout. And he was readily
able to do justice to all of them through his habit of taking
emetics. Moreover, he had himself invited to each of these
meals by different men on the same day, and the materials
for any one of them never cost less than four hundred thousand
sesterces. 4 Most notorious of all was the dinner given by his
brother to celebrate the Emperor's arrival in Rome, at which
two thousand of the choicest fishes and seven thousand birds
are said to have been served. He himself eclipsed even this

1 Hie name applied to a collection of Nero's compositions.

2 Sour wine or vinegar mixed with water. The common drink of the
Roman soldier.

8 Ordinarily a very light meal.
4 $16400.00.

314 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

at the dedication of a platter, which on account of its enor-
mous size he called the "Shield of Minerva, Defender of the
City." In this he mingled the livers of pike, the brains of
pheasants and peacocks, the tongues of flamingoes and the
milt of lampreys, brought by his captains and triremes from
the whole empire, from Parthia to the Spanish Strait. Being
besides a man of an appetite that was not only boundless,
but also regardless of time or decency, he could never refrain,
even when he was sacrificing or making a journey, from
snatching bits of meat and cakes amid the altars, almost from
the very fire, and devouring them on the spot; and in the
cookshops along the road, viands smoking hot or even those
left over from the day before and partly consumed.

He delighted in inflicting death and torture on any one
whatsoever and for any cause whatever, putting to death
several men of rank, fellow students and comrades of his,
whom he had solicited to come to court by every kind of
deception, all but offering them a share in the rule. This he
did in various treacherous ways, even giving poison to one
of them with his own hand in a glass of cold water, for which
the man had called when ill of a fever. Besides he spared
hardly one of the money-lenders, contractors, and tax-gath-
erers who had ever demanded of him the payment of a debt
at Rome or of a toll on a journey. One of these, while in the
very act of saluting him, he sent off to be executed, but im-
mediately recalled, and, as all were praising his mercy, gave
orders to have him killed in his presence, saying that he
wished to feast his eyes. In another case he had two sons
who attempted to intercede for their father put to death with
him. A Roman Knight also, who cried as he was being taken
off to execution, "You are my heir," he compelled to show
his will. Reading that one of the man's freedmen was put
down as joint-heir with himself, he ordered the death both
of the Knight and the freedman. He even killed some of the
common people, merely because they had openly spoken ill
of the Blue faction, thinking that they had ventured to do
this from contempt of himself and in anticipation of a change
of rulers. But he was especially hostile to writers of lampoons
and to astrologers, and whenever any one of them was accused,
he put him to death without trial, particularly incensed be-

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLICTS 315

cause after a proclamation of his in which he ordered the
astrologers to leave the city and Italy before the Kalends of
October, a placard was at once posted, reading: "By procla-
mation of the Chaldeans, God bless the State! Before the same
day and date Vitellius Germanicus shall not be living any-
where." Moreover, when his mother died, he was suspected
of having forbidden her being given food when she was ill,
because a woman of the Chatti, 1 in whom he believed as he
would in an oracle, prophesied that he would rule securely
and for a long time, but only if he should survive his parent.
Others say that through weariness of present evils and fear
of those which threatened, she asked poison of her son, and
obtained it with no great difficulty.

In the eighth month of his reign the armies of the Moesian
provinces and Pannonia revolted from him, and also in the
provinces beyond the seas those of Judaea and Syria, the
former swearing allegiance to Vespasian in his absence and
the latter in his presence. Therefore, to retain the devotion
and favor of the rest of the people, there was nothing that
he did not lavish publicly and privately, without any limit
whatever. He also held a levy in the city, promising those
who volunteered not only their discharge upon his victory
but also the rewards and privileges given to veterans after
their regular term of service. Later, when his enemies were
pressing him hard by land and sea, he opposed to them in
one quarter his brother with a fleet manned by raw recruits
and a band of gladiators, and in another the forces and leaders
who had fought at Betriacum. And after he was everywhere
either worsted or betrayed, he made a bargain with Flavius
Sabinus, the brother of Vespasian, that he should have his
own life and a hundred million sesterces. 1 Thereupon he im-
mediately declared from the steps of the palace before his
assembled soldiers, that he withdrew from the rule which had
been given him against his will. But when all cried out against
this, he postponed the matter, and after a night had passed,
went at daybreak to the rostra in mourning garb and with

1 The Chatti were a German tribe inhabiting what is now Hesse. The
Germans had great confidence in the prophetical utterances of the
women of this tribe.

1 $4,100,000.00.

3i6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

many tears made the same declaration, but from a written
document. When the people and soldiers again interrupted
him and besought him not to lose heart, vying with one an-
other in promising him all their efforts in his behalf, he again
took courage and by a sudden onslaught drove Sabinus and
the rest of the Flavians, who no longer feared an attack, into
the Capitol. Then he set fire to the temple of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus and destroyed them, viewing the battle and the fire
from the house of Tiberius, where he was feasting. Not long
afterwards he repented of his action and, throwing the blame
upon others, called an assembly and took oath, compelling
the rest to do the same, that there was nothing for which
he would strive more earnestly than for the public peace
Then he took a dagger from his side and offered it first to the
Consul, and when he refused it, to the magistrates, and then
to the Senators, one by one. 1 When no one would take it,
he went off as if he would place it in the temple of Concord
but when some cried out that he himself was Concord, he re-
turned and declared that he would not only retain the steel but
would also adopt the surname Concordia.

He also persuaded the Senate to send envoys with the
Vestal Virgins, to sue for peace or at least to gain time for
conference.

The following day, as he was waiting for a reply, word was
brought by a scout that the enemy was drawing near. Then
he was at once hurried into a sedan with only two com-
panions, a baker and a cook, and secretly went to his father's
house on the Aventine, intending to flee from there to Cam-
pania. Presently, on a slight and dubious rumor that peace
had been granted, he allowed himself to be taken back to the
palace. Finding everything abandoned there, and that even
those who were with him were stealing away, he put on a
girdle filled wtih gold pieces and took refuge in the lodge
of the door-keeper, tying a dog before the door and putting
a couch and a mattress against it.

The foremost of the army had now forced their way in, and
since no one opposed them, were ransacking everything in

1 As though he were willing to renounce the power of life and death
over the people.

GALBA, OTHO, AND VITELLIUS 317

the usual way. They dragged Vitellius from his hiding-place
and when they asked him his name (for they did not know
him) and if he knew where Vitellius was, he attempted to
escape them by a lie. Being soon recognized, he did not cease
to beg that he be confined for a time, even in the prison,
alleging that he had something to say of importance to the
safety of Vespasian. But they bound his arms behind his
back, put a noose about his neck, and dragged him with
rent garments and half-naked to the Forum. All along the
Sacred Way he was greeted with mockery and abuse, his
head held back by the hair, as is common with criminals,
and even the point of a sword placed under his chin, so that
he could not look down but must let his face be seen. Some
pelted him with dung and ordure, others called him in-
cendiary and glutton, and some of the mob even taunted him
with his bodily defects. He was in fact abnormally tall, with
a face usually flushed from hard drinking, a huge belly, and
one -thigh crippled from being struck once upon a time by a
four-horse chariot, when he was in attendance on Gaius *
as he was driving. At last on the Stairs of Wailing he was
tortured for a long time and then dispatched and dragged
off with a hook to the Tiber.

He met his death, along with his brother and his son, 2 in
the fifty-seventh year of his age, fulfilling the prediction of
those who had declared from an omen which befell him at
Vienna, as we have stated, 8 that he was destined to fall into
the power of some man of Gaul. For he was slain by Antonius
Primus, a leader of the opposing faction, who was born at
Tolosa and in his youth bore the surname Becco, which
means a rooster's beak.

1 Caligula.

2 Lucius and Germanicus were slain near Terracina. Lucius was
marching to his brother's relief.

* Suetonius earlier told of the cock, gaUus in Latin, which perched
on his head.

BOOK VIII

THE DEIFIED VESPASIAN, THE DEIFIED
TITUS, DOMITIAN

THE DEIFIED VESPASIAN

THE empire, which for a long time had been unsettled and ?
as it were, drifting, through the usurpation and violent death
of three Emperors, was at last taken in hand and given
stability by the Flavian family. This house was, ft is true,
obscure and without family portraits, yet it was one of
which our country had no reason whatever to be ashamed,
ever* though it is the general opinion that the penalty which
Domitian paid for his avarice and cruelty was fully merited.

Titus Flavius Petro, a burgher of Reate and during the
civil war a Centurion or a volunteer veteran on Pompey's side,
fled from the field of Pharsalus and went home, where after at
last obtaining pardon and an honorable discharge, he carried
on the business of a collector of moneys. His son, surnamed
Sabinus (although some say that he was an ex-centurion of
the first grade, others that while still in command of a cohort
he was retired because of ill-health), took no part in military
life, but was a common collector in Asia of the two and a
half per cent tax on imports and exports. And there existed
for some time statues erected in his honor by the cities of
Asia, inscribed "To an honest tax-gatherer." Later he car-
ried on a banking business in the Helvetian country and
there he died, survived by his wife, Vespasia Polla, and by
two of her children, of whom the elder, Sabinus, rose to the
rank of Prefect of Rome and the younger, Vespasian, even
to that of Emperor. Polla, who was born of an honorable
family at Nursia, had for father Vespasius Pollio, thrice
Tribune of the soldiers and- Prefect of the camp, while her
brother became a Senator with the rank of Praetor. There is
moreover on the top of a mountain, near the sixth milestone
on the road from Nursia to Spoletium, a place called Ves-
pasiae, where many monuments of the Vespasii are to be
seen, affording strong proof of the renown and antiquity of

321

822 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

the house. I ought to add that some have bandied about the
report, that Petro's father came from the region beyond the
Po and was a contractor for the day -laborers who come regu-
larly every year from Umbria to the Sabine district, to till the
fields; but that he settled in the town of Reate and there
married. Personally I have found no evidence whatever of
this, in spite of rather careful investigation.

Vespasian was born in the Sabine country, in a small vil-
lage beyond Reate, called Falacrina, on the evening of the
fifteenth day before the Kalends of December, in the con-
sulate of Quintus Sulpicius Camerinus and Gaius Poppaeus
Sabinus, five years before the death of Augustus. He was
brought up under the care of his paternal grandmother Ter-
tulla on her estates at Cosa. Therefore even after he became
Emperor he used constantly to visit the home of his infancy,
where the manor house was kept in its original condition,
since he did not wish to miss anything which he was wont to
see there. And he was so devoted to his grandmother's mem-
ory, that on religious and festival days he always drank from
a little silver cup that had belonged to her.

After assuming the garb of manhood he for a long time
made no attempt to win the broad stripe of Senator, though
his brother had gained it, and only his mother could finally
induce him to sue for it. She at length drove him to it, but
rather by sarcasm than by entreaties or parental authority,
since she constantly taunted him with being his brother's
footman.

He served in Thrace as Tribune of the soldiers. As Quaestor
he was assigned by lot the province of Crete and Cyrene. He
became a candidate for the aedileship and then for the
praetorship, attaining the former only after one defeat and
then barely landing in the sixth place, but the latter on his
first canvass and among the foremost. In his praetorship, to
lose no opportunity of winning t the favor of Caligula, whc
was at odds with the Senate, he asked for special games be-
cause of the Emperor's victory in Germany and recom-
mended as an additional punishment of the conspirators 1 that
they be cast out unburied. He also thanked the Emperor be*

1 Lepidus and Gaetulicus.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 323

fore that illustrious body because he had deigned to honor
him with an invitation to dinner.

Meanwhile he took to wife Flavia Domitilla, formerly the
mistress of Statilius Capella, a Roman Knight of Sabrata in
Africa, a woman who at first had only partial citizenship but
was afterwards declared a freeborn citizen of Rome in a suit
before arbiters, brought by her father Flavius Liberalis, a
native of Ferentum and merely a Quaestor's clerk. By her he
had three children, Titus, Domitian, and Domitilla. He out-
lived his wife and daughter; in fact lost them both before he
became Emperor. After the death of his wife he resumed his
relations with Caenis, freedwoman and amanuensis of An-
tonia, and formerly his mistress; and even after he became
Emperor he treated her almost as a lawful wife.

In the reign of Claudius he was sent in command of a
legion to Germany, through the influence of Narcissus. From
there he was transferred to Britain, where he fought thirty
battles with the enemy. He reduced to subjection two power-
ful nations, more than twenty towns, and the island of Vec-
tis, 1 near Britain, partly under the leadership of Aulus Plau-
tius, the Consular Governor, and partly under that of Claudius
himself. For this he received the triumphal regalia, and
shortly after two priesthoods, besides the consulship, which
he held for the last two months of the year. The rest of the
time up to his proconsulate he spent in rest and retirement,
through fear of Agrippina, who still had a strong influence over
her son and hated any friend of Narcissus, even after the
latter's death.

The chance of the lot then gave him Africa, which he gov-
erned with great justice and high honor, save that in a riot
at Hadrumetum he was pelted with turnips. Certain it is that
he came back none the richer, for his credit was so nearly
gone that he mortgaged all his estates to his brother, and had
to resort to trading in mules to keep up his position ; whence
he was commonly known as "the Muleteer." He is also said
to have been found guilty of squeezing two hundred thousand
sesterces 2 out of a young man for whom he obtained the

i The Isle of Wight.

* $8)200.00.

324 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

broad stripe 1 against his father's wish, and to have been
severely rebuked in consequence.

On the tour through Greece, among the companions of
Nero, he bitterly offended the Emperor by either going out
often while Nero was singing, or falling asleep, if he re-
mained. Being in consequence banished, not only from in-
timacy with the Emperor but even from his public receptions,
he withdrew to a little out-of-the-way town, hiding in fear of
his life till a province and an army were offered him.

There had spread over all the Orient an old and established
belief, that it was fated at that time for men coming from
Judaea to rule the world. 2 This prediction, referring to the
Emperor of Rome, as afterwards appeared from the event,
the people of Judaea took to themselves. Accordingly, they
revolted, and, after killing their Governor, they routed the
consular ruler of Syria as well, when he came to the rescue,
and took one of his eagles. Since to put down this rebellion
required a considerable army with a leader of no little enter-
prise, yet one to whom so great power could be entrusted
without risk, Vespasian was choseli for the task, both as a
man of tried energy and as one in no wise to be feared be-
cause of the obscurity of his family and name. Therefore
there were added to the forces in Judaea two legions with
eight divisions of cavalry and ten cohorts. He took his elder
son as one of his lieutenants, and as soon as he reached his
province he attracted the attention of the neighboring prov-
inces also. For he at once reformed the discipline of the
army and fought one or two battles with such daring, that in
the storming of a fortress he was wounded in the knee with
a stone and received several arrows in his shield.

While Otho and Vitellius were fighting for the throne after
the death of Nero and Galba, he began to cherish the hope
of imperial dignity, which he had long since conceived be-
cause of the following portents:

On the suburban estate of the Flavii an old oak tree,
which was sacred to Mars, on each of the three occasions
when Vespasia was delivered suddenly put forth a branch

1 Symbol of the senatorial order.

'Tacitus (Histories V, 13) mentions this prediction in nearly the
tame terms, referring also in the plural number to the coming power.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 3*5

from its trunk, obvious indications of the destiny of each
child. The first was slender and quickly withered, and so too
the girl that was born died within the year. The second was
very strong and long and portended great success. But the
third was the image of a tree. Therefore their father, Sabinus,
so they say, being further encouraged by an inspection of
victims, announced to his mother that a grandson had been
born to her who would be a Caesar. But she only laughed,
marveling that her son should already be in his dotage, while
she was still of strong mind.

Later, when Vespasian was Aedile, Gaius Caesar, incensed
at his neglect of his duty of cleaning the streets, ordered that
he be covered with mud, which the soldiers accordingly heaped
into the bosom of his purple-bordered toga. This some inter-
preted as an omen that one day in some civil commotion his
country, trampled under foot and forsaken, would come under
his protection and as it were into his embrace.

Once when he was taking breakfast, a stray dog brought in
a human hand from the cross-roads and dropped it under the
table. Again, when he wie dining, an ox that was plowing
shook off its yoke, burst into the dining-room, and after scat-
tering the servants, fell at the very feet of Vespasian as he re-
clined at table, and bowed its neck as if suddenly tired out.
A cypress tree, also, on his grandfather's farm was torn up by
the roots, without the agency of any violent storm, and thrown
down, and on the following day rose again greener and stronger
than before.

He dreamed in Greece that the beginning of good fortune
for himself and his family would come as soon as Nero had a
tooth extracted. And on the next day it came to pass that a
physician walked into the hall and showed him a tooth which
he had just then taken out.

When he consulted the oracle of the God of Carmel in
Judaea, the lots were highly encouraging, promising that what-
ever he planned or wished, however great it might be, would
come to pass. And one of his high-born prisoners, Josephus *

1 The famous Pharisean historian who was an important and romantic
figure in Vespasian's and Titus's struggles with the Jews. He describes
Jesus as "a wise man, if indeed one should call him a man/ 1 asserting
"This was the Christ." This is the most definite reference we have to the
founder of Christianity.

326 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

by name, as he was being put in chains, declared most con-
fidently that he would soon be released by the same man, who
would then, however, be Emperor. Omens were also reported
from Rome: Nero in his latter days was admonished in a
dream to take the sacred chariot of Jupiter Optimus Maximus
from its shrine to the house of Vespasian and from there to
the Circus. Not long after this, too, when Galba was on his
way to the elections which gave him his second consulship, a
statue of the Deified Julius of its own accord turned towards
the East. And on the field of Betriacum, before the battle
began, two eagles fought in the sight of all, and when one was
vanquished, a third came from the direction of the rising sun
and drove off the victor.

Yet he made no move, although his followers were quite
ready and even urgent, until he was roused to it by the acci-
dental support of men unknown to him and at a distance. Two
thousand soldiers of the three legions that made up the army
in Moesia had been sent to help Otho. When word came to
them after they had begun their march that he had been de-
feated and had taken his own life,%hey none the less kept on
as far as Aquileia, because they did not believe the report.
There, taking advantage of the lawless state of the times, they
indulged in every kind of pillage. Then, fearing that if they
went back, they would have to give an account and suffer pun-
ishment, they took it into their heads to select and appoint an
Emperor, saying that they were just as good as the Spanish
army which had appointed Galba, or the praetorian guard
which had elected Otho, or the German army which had chosen
Vitellius. Accordingly the names of all the Consular Governors
who were serving anywhere were taken up, and since objection
was made to the rest for one reason or another, while some
members of the third legion, which had been transferred from
Syria to Moesia just before the death of Nero, highly com-
mended Vespasian, they unanimously agreed on him and
forthwith inscribed his name on all their banners. At the time,
however, the movement was checked and the soldiers re-
called to their allegiance for a season. But when their action
became known, Tiberius Alexander, Prefect of Egypt, was the
first to compel his legions to take the oath for Vespasian on the
Kalends of July, the day which was afterwards celebrated as

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 327

that of his accession. Then the army in Judaea swore allegiance
to him personally on the fifth day before the Ides of July.

The enterprise was greatly forwarded by the circulation of
a copy of a letter of the late Emperor Otho to Vespasian,
whether genuine or forged, urging him with the utmost earnest-
ness to vengeance and expressing the hope that he would come
to the aid of his country ; further, by a rumor which spread
abroad that Vitellius had planned, after his victory, to change
the winter quarters of the legions and to transfer those in Ger-
many to the Orient, to a safer and milder service; and finally,
by the support of Licinius Mucianus, 1 among the Governors
of the provinces, and among the Kings, by that of Vologaesus,
the Parthian. The former, laying aside the hostility with which
up to that time jealousy had obviously inspired him, promised
the Syrian army, and the latter forty thousand bowmen.

Therefore beginning a civil war and sending ahead general?
with troops to Italy, he crossed meanwhile to Alexandria, to
take possession of the key to Egypt. There he dismissed all hi?
attendants and entered the temple of Serapis alone, to consult
the auspices as to the duration of his power. And when after
many propitiatory offerings to the God he at length turned
about, it seemed to him that his freedman Basilides offered him
sacred boughs, garlands and loaves, as is the custom there.
And yet he knew well that no one had let him in, and that for
some time he had been hardly able to walk by reason of rheu-
matism, and was besides far away. And immediately letters
came with the news that Vitellius had been routed at Cremona
and the Emperor himself slain at Rome.

Vespasian as yet lacked prestige and a certain divinity, so
to speak, since he was an unexpected and still new-made Em-
peror. But these also were given him. A man of the people
who was blind, and another who was lame, came to him to-
gether as he sat on the tribunal, begging for the help for their
disorders which Serapis had promised in a dream. For the
God declared that Vespasian would restore the eyes, if he
would spit upon them, and give strength to the leg, if he would
deign to touch it with his heel. Though he had hardly any
faith that this could possibly succeed, and therefore shrank

* Governor of the neighboring province of Syria.

328 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

even from making the attempt, he was at last prevailed upon
by his friends and tried both things in public before a large
crowd; and with success. At this same time, by the direction
of certain soothsayers, some vases of antique workmanship
were dug up in a consecrated spot at Tegea in Arcadia and
among them was an image very like Vespasian.

Returning to Rome under such auspices and attended by
so great renown, after celebrating a triumph over the Jews,
he added eight consulships to his former one, and also as-
sumed the censorship. During the whole period of his rule
he considered nothing more essential than first to strengthen
the State, which was tottering and almost overthrown, and
then to embellish it as well.

The soldiery, some emboldened by their victory and some
resenting their humiliating defeat, had abandoned themselves
to every form of license and recklessness. The provinces, too,
and the free cities, as well as some of the kingdoms, were in a
state of internal dissension. Therefore he discharged many
of the soldiers of Vitellius and punished many. But so far
from showing any special indulgence to those who had shared
in his victory, he was even tardy in paying them their lawful
rewards. To let slip no opportunity of improving military dis-
cipline, when a young man reeking with perfumes came to
thank him for a commission which had been given him, Ves-
pasian drew back his head in disgust, adding the stern repri-
mand: "I would rather you had smelt of garlic"; and he
revoked the appointment. When the marines who march on
foot by turns from Ostia and Puteoli to Rome, asked that an
allowance be made them under the head of shoe money, not
content with sending them away without a reply, he ordered
that in future they should make the run barefooted. And they
have done so ever since.

He made provinces of Achaia, Lycia, Rhodes, Byzantium
and Samos, taking away their freedom, and likewise of
Trachian Cilicia and Commagene, which up to that time had
been ruled by Kings. He sent legions to Cappadocia because
of the constant inroads of the barbarians, and gave it a con*
sular Governor in place of a Roman Knight.

As the city was unsightly from former fires and fallen build-
ings, he allowed any one to take possession of vacant sites

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 329

and build upon them, in case the owners failed to do so. He be-
gan the restoration of the Capitol in person, was the first to
lend a hand in clearing away the debris, and carried some of
it off on his own head. He undertook to restore the three thou-
sand bronze tablets which were destroyed with the temple,
making a thorough search for copies: priceless and most
ancient records of the empire, containing the decrees of the
Senate and the acts of the commons almost from the founda-
tion of the city, regarding alliances, treaties, and special privi-
leges granted to individuals.

He also undertook new works, the temple of Peace hard by
the Forum and one to the Deified Claudius on the Caelian
mount, which was begun by Agrippina, but almost utterly de-
stroyed by Nero; also an amphitheater 1 in the heart of the
city, a plan which he learned that Augustus had cherished.

He reorganized, augmented and reviewed, the great orders
of Senators and Knights, which had been reduced by a series
of murders and fallen into disrepute by long neglect. He ex-
pelled those who least deserved the honor and enrolled the
most distinguished of the Italians and provincials. Further-
more, to let it be known that the two orders differed from
each other not so much in their privileges as in their rank, in
the case of an altercation between a Senator and a Roman
Knight, he rendered the decision that "unseemly language
should not be used toward Senators, but if they were the ag-
gressors, it was proper and lawful to return their insults in
kind."

Lawsuit upon lawsuit had accumulated in all the courts to
an excessive degree, since those of long standing were left un-
settled though the interruption of court business and new ones
had arisen through the disorder of the times. He therefore
chose commissioners by lot to restore what had been seized in
time of war, and to make special decisions in the court of the
Hundred, reducing the cases to the smallest possible number,
since it was clear that the lifetime of the litigants would not
suffice for the regular proceedings.

Licentiousness and extravagance had flourished without

1 The Coliseum, known until the Middle Ages as the Flavian
amphitheater.

330 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

restraint. He therefore induced the Senate to vote that any
woman who formed a connection with the slave of another
person should herself be treated as a bond-woman; and that
those who lend money to young men still under the control
of their father should never have a legal right to enforce pay-
ment, that is to say, not even after the death of the fathers.

In other matters he was unassuming and lenient from the
very beginning of his reign until its end, never trying to con-
ceal his former lowly condition, but often even parading it.
Indeed, when certain men tried to trace the origin of the
Flavian family to the founders of Reate and a companion of
Hercules whose tomb still stands on the Salarian Road, he
laughed at them for their pains. So far was he from a desire
for pomp and show, that on the day of his triumph, 1 ex-
hausted by the slow and tiresome procession, he did not hesi-
tate to say: "It serves me right for being such a fool as to
want a triumph in my old age, as if it were due to my ances-
tors or had ever been among my own ambitions." He did not
wen assume the tribunicial power at once nor the title of
Father of his Country until late. As for the custom of search-
ing 2 for those who came to pay their morning calls, he gave
that up before the civil war was over.

He bore the frank language of his friends, the quips of
pleaders, and the impudence of the philosophers with the
greatest patisnce. Though Licinius Mucianus, a notorious
pathic, presumed upon his services to treat Vespasian with
scant respect, 8 he never had the heart to criticize him except
privately and then only to the extent of adding to a complaint
made to a common friend, the significant words: "I at least
am a man." When Salvius Liberalis ventured to say while
defending a rich client, "What is it to Caesar if Hipparchus
has a hundred millions," he personally commended him. When
the Cynic Demetrius met him abroad after being condemned
to banishment, and without deigning to rise in his presence or

1 Vespasian and his son Titus had a joint triumph for the conquest
if Judaea.

2 For murderous weapons.

8 He boasted that the rule had been at his disposal and that he had
given it to Vespasian.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 331

to salute him, even snarled out some insult, he merely called
him "cur."

He was not inclined to remember or to avenge affronts or
enmities, but made a brilliant match for the daughter of his
enemy Vitellius, and even provided her with a dowry and a
house-keeping outfit. When he was in terror at being forbid-
den Nero's court, and asked what on earth he was to do or
where he was to go, one of the ushers put him out and told
him to "go to hell." Yet when the man later begged for for-
giveness, Vespasian confined his resentment to words, and
those of about the same number and purport. Indeed, so far
was he from being led by any suspicion or fear to cause any
one's death, that when his friends warned him that he must
keep an eye on Mettius Pompusianus, since it was commonly
believed that he had an imperial horoscope, he even made
him Consul, guaranteeing that he would one day be mindful
of the favor.

It cannot readily be shown that any innocent person was
punished save in Vespasian's absence and without his knowl-
edge, or at any rate against his will and by misrepresentation.
Although Helvidius Priscus was the only one who greeted him
on his return from Syria by his private name of "Vespasian,"
and moreover in his praetorship left the Emperor unhonored
and unmentioned in all his edicts, he did not show anger until
by the extravagance of his railing Helvidius had made him
out as little better than an ordinary person. But even in his
case, though he did banish him and later order his death, he
was most anxious for any means of saving him, and sent mes-
sengers to recall those who were to slay him. And he would
have saved him, but for a false report that Helvidius had al-
ready been done to death. Certainly he never took pleasure in
the death of any one, but even wept and sighed over those who
suffered merited punishment.

The only thing for which he can fairly be censured was
his love of money. For not content with reviving the imposts
which had been repealed under Galba, he added new and
heavy burdens, increasing the amount of tribute paid by the
provinces, in some cases actually doubling it, and quite openly
carrying on traffic which would be shameful even for a man
in private life. For he would buy up certain commodities

33* THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

merely in order to distribute them at a profit. He did not
scruple to sell offices to candidates and acquittals to men un-
der prosecution, whether innocent or guilty. He is even be-
lieved to have had the habit of designedly advancing the most
rapacious of his procurators to higher posts, that they might
be the richer when he later condemned them. In fact, it was
common talk that he used these men as sponges, because he,
so to speak, soaked them when they were dry and squeezed
them when they were wet.

Some say that he was naturally covetous and was taunted
with it by an old herdsman of his, who on being forced to pay
for the freedom for which he earnestly begged Vespasian when
he became Emperor, cried: "The fox changes his fur, but not
his nature." Others on the contrary believe that he was
driven by necessity to raise money by spoliation and robbery
because of the desperate state of the treasury and the privy
purse, to which he bore witness at the very beginning of his
reign by declaring that forty thousand millions x were needed
to set the State upright. This latter view seems the more
probable, since he made the best use of his gains, ill-gotten
though they were.

He was most generous to all classes, making up the requi-
site estate for Senators, 2 giving needy ex-consuls an annual
stipend of five hundred thousand sesterces, 8 restoring to a
better condition many cities throughout the empire which
had suffered from earthquakes or fires, and in particular en-
couraging men of talent and the arts.

He was the first to establish a regular salary of a hundred
thousand sesterces 4 for Latin and Greek teachers of rhetoric,
paid from the privy purse. He also presented eminent poets
with princely largess and great rewards, and artists, too, such
as the restorer of the Venus of Cos and of the Colossus. 6 To
a mechanical engineer, who promised to transport some heavy
columns to the Capitol at small expense, he gave no mean
reward for his invention, but refused to make use of it, saying

1 $1,640,000,000.00.

* Increased to $49,200.00 by Augustus.
8 $20,500.00.

4 $4,100.00.

A statue of Nero.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 333

that he should not be forced to take from the poor commons
the work that fed them.

At the plays with which he dedicated the new stage of the
theater of Marcellus he revived the old musical entertain-
ments. To Apelles, the tragic actor, he gave four hundred
thousand sesterces 1 ; to Terpnus and Diodorus, the lyre-
players, two hundred thousand each; to several a hundred
thousand; while those who received least were paid forty
thousand, and numerous golden crowns were awarded besides.
He gave constant dinner-parties, too, usually with many sump-
tuous courses, to help the marketmen. He gave dinner gifts
to women on the first of March, 2 as he did to the men on
the Saturnalia.

Yet even so he could not be rid of his former ill-repute for
covetousness. The Alexandrians persisted in calling him
Cybiosactes, 3 the surname of one of their Kings who was scan-
dalously stingy. Even at his funeral, Favor, a leading actor
of mimes, who wore his mask and, according to the usual cus-
tom, imitated the actions and words of the deceased during
his lifetime, having asked the procurators in a loud voice how
much his funeral procession would cost, and hearing the reply
"Ten million sesterces," cried out: "Give me a hundred thou-
sand and fling me even into the Tiber."

He was well built, with strong, sturdy limbs, and the expres-
sion of one who was straining at stool. Apropos of which a
witty fellow, when Vespasian asked him to make a joke on him
also, replied rather cleverly: "I will, when you have finished
relieving your bowels." He enjoyed excellent health, though
he did nothing to preserve it except to rub his throat and
the other parts of his body a certain number of times in the
exercise grounds attached to the baths, and to fast one day
in every month.

This was in general his manner of life. While Emperor, he
always rose very early, in fact before daylight. After reading

1 $16400.00.

2 The Matronalia or feast of married women. At this the matrons
served their female attendants, as at the feast of the men's Saturnalia
in December the masters served their slaves.

* A transliterated Greek word meaning "a dealer in square pieces
of salt fish."

134 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

his letters and the reports of all the officials, he admitted his
friends, and while he was receiving their greetings, he put
on his own shoes and dressed himself. After dispatching any
business that came up, he took time for a drive and then for
a nap, lying with one of his mistresses, of whom he had taken
several after the death of Caenis. After his siesta he went to
the bath and the dining-room. And it is said that at no time
was he more good-natured or indulgent, so that the members
of his household eagerly watched for these opportunities of
making requests.

Not only at dinner but on all other occasions he was most
affable, and he turned off many matters with a jest. For he was
very ready with sharp sayings, albeit of a low and buffoonish
kind, so that he did not even refrain from ribald expressions.
Yet many of his remarks are still remembered which are full
of fine wit, and among them the following. When an ex-consul
called Mestrius Florus called his attention to the fact that
the proper pronunciation was plaustra rather than plostra, he
greeted him next day as "Flaurus." 1 When he was importuned
by a woman, who said that she was dying with love for him,
he took her to his bed and, after he had gratified her desires,
gave her four hundred thousand sesterces. 2 Being asked by his
steward how he would have the sum entered in his accounts,
he replied: "To a passion for Vespasian."

He also quoted Greek verses with great timeliness, saying
of a man of tall stature and monstrous members:

"Striding along and waving a lance that casts a long shad-
ow," 8

and of the freedman Cerylus, who was very rich, and, to
cheat the privy purse of its dues at his death had begun to
give himself out as freeborn, changing his name to Laches:

"Laches, O Laches, once you are dead
Back to Cerylus you'll have it instead." 4

1 Plaustra was the urban form for "wagons." Rustics pronounced
it plostra. Vespasian had either never entirely discarded the dialect of
his Sabine countrymen or he still affected it. His retort was happy, since
Flaurus was derived from a Greek word meaning "worthless."

2 $16400.00.

8 Iliad, VII, 213.

4 From Menander's 0eo<j>opovfUnr,

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 335

But he particularly resorted to witticisms about his unseemly
means of gain, seeking to diminish their odium by some jo-
cose saying and to turn them into a jest.

Having put off one of his favorite attendants, who asked
for a stewardship for a pretended brother, he summoned the
candidate himself, and after compelling him to pay him as
much money as he had agreed to give his lawyer, appointed
him to the position without delay. On his attendant's taking
up the matter again, he said: "Find yourself another brother;
the man that you thought was yours is mine." On a journey,
suspecting that his muleteer had got down to shoe the mules
merely to make delay and give time for a man with a lawsuit
to approach the Emperor, he asked how much he was paid
for shoeing the mules and insisted on a share of the money.
When Titus found fault with him for contriving a tax upon
public toilets, he held a piece of money from the first payment
to his son's nose, asking whether its odor was offensive to him.
When Titus said "No," he replied, "Yet it comes from urine."
On the report of a deputation that a colossal statue of great
cost had been voted him at public expense, he demanded to
have it set up at once, and holding out his open hand, said
that the base was ready. He did not cease his jokes even when
in apprehension of death and in extreme danger. For when,
among other portents, the Mausoleum opened on a sudden
and a comet appeared in the heavens, he declared that the
former applied to Junia Calvina of the family of Augustus, 1
and the latter to the King of the Parthians, who wore his hair
long. And as death drew near, he said: "Woe's me. Methinks
I'm turning into a God."

In his ninth consulship he had a slight illness in Campania,
and returning at once to the city, he left for Cutilae and the
country about Reate, where he spent the summer every year.
There, in addition to an increase in his illness, having con-
tracted a bowel complaint by too free use of the cold waters,
he nevertheless continued to perform his duties as Emperor,
even receiving embassies as he lay in bed. Taken on a sudden
with such an attack of diarrhoea that he all but swooned, he

1( The Flavian family had their own tomb. Therefore it did not
concern him if the Mausoleum, the tomb of Augustus and his de-
scendants, flew open.

3*6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

said: "An Emperor ought to die standing," and while he was
struggling to get on his feet, he died in the arms of those who
tried to help him, on the ninth day before the Kalends of
July^ at the age of sixty-nine years, one month and seven
days.

All agree that he had so much faith in his own horoscope
and those of his family, that even after constant conspiracies
were made against him he had the assurance to say to the
Senate that either his sons would succeed him or he would
have no successor. It is also said that he once dreamed that
he saw a balance with its beam on a level placed in the middle
of the vestibule of the palace, in one pan of which stood Clau-
dius and Nero and in the other himself and his sons. And the
dream came true, since both houses reigned for the same space
of time and the same term of years.

THE DEIFIED TITUS

TITUS, of the same surname as his father, was the delight
and darling of the human race; such surpassing ability had
he, by nature, art, or good fortune, to win the affections of all
men, and that, too, which is no easy task, while he was Em-
peror. For as a private citizen and even during his father's
rule, he did not escape hatred, much less public criticism.

He was born on the third day before the Kalends of Janu-
ary, in the year memorable for the death of Caligula in a
mean house near the Septizonium and in a very small dark
room besides; for it still remains and is shown to the curious.

He was brought up at court in company with Britannicus
and taught the same subjects by the same masters. At that
time, so they say, a physiognomist was brought in by Narcis-
sus, the freedman of Claudius, to examine Britannicus and
declared most positively that he would never become Em-
peror, but that Titus, who was standing near by at the time,
would surely rule. The boys were so intimate too, that it is
believed that when Britannicus drained the fatal draught,
Titus, who was reclining at his side, also tasted of the potion
and for a long time suffered from an obstinate disorder. Titus
did not forget all this, but later set up a golden statue of his
friend in the palace, and dedicated another equestrian statue
of ivory, which is to this day carried in the procession in the
Circus, and attended it on its first appearance.

Even in boyhood his bodily and mental gifts were conspicu-
ous and they became more and more so as he advanced in
years. He had a handsome person, in which there was no less
dignity than grace, and was uncommonly strong, although he
was not tall of stature and had a rather orotruding belly. His
/nernory was extraordinary and he had an aptitude for almost
all the arts, both of war and of peace, Skillful in arms and
horsemanship, he made speeches and wrote verses in Latin
and Greek with ease and readiness, and even off-hand. He was

337

338 THE LIVES OP THE TWELVE CAESARS

besides not unacquainted with music, but sang and played the
harp agreeably and skillfully. I have heard from many sources
that he used also to write shorthand with great speed and
would amuse himself by playful contests with his secretaries;
also that he could imitate any handwriting that he had ever
seen and often declared that he might have been the prince
of forgers.

He served as military Tribune both in Germany and in Brit-
ain, winning a high reputation for energy and no less for
integrity, as is evident from the great number of his statues
and busts in both those provinces and from the inscriptions
they bear.

After his military service he pleaded in the Forum, rather
or glory than as a profession, and at the same time took to
wife Arrecina Tertulla, whose father, though only a Roman
Knight, had once been Prefect of the praetorian cohorts. On
her death he replaced her by Marcia Furnilla, a lady of a
very distinguished family, but divorced her after he had ac-
knowledged a daughter which she bore him.

Then, after holding the office of Quaestor, as commander
of a legion he subjugated the two strong cities of Tarichaeae
and Gamala in Judaea, having his horse killed under him in
one battle and mounting another, whose rider had fallen fight-
ing by his side.

Presently he was sent to congratulate Galba on becoming
ruler of the state, and attracted attention wherever he went,
through the belief that he had been sent for to be adopted.
But observing that everything was once more in a state of
turmoil, he turned back, and visiting the oracle of the Paphian
Venus, to consult it about his voyage, he was also encouraged
to hope for imperial power. Soon realizing his hope l and left
behind to complete the conquest of Judaea, in the final attack
on Jerusalem he slew twelve of the defenders with as many
arrows. He took the city on his daughter's birthday, 2 so de~
lighting the soldiers and winning their devotion that they

1 By the elevation of his father to the throne.

2 Jerusalem was taken, sacked, and burned, by Titus, after a two
years' siege, September 8, 70, in the second year of Vespasian's reign,
Vespasian was 60, Titus 30. Pompey had taken it in 65 B.C. after 4
three mouths' siege.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 33$

bailed him as Imperator and detained him from time to time
when he would leave the province, urging him with prayers
and even with threats either to stay or to take them all with
him. This aroused the suspicion that he had tried to revolt
from his father and make himself King of the East. He
strengthened this suspicion on his way to Alexandria by wear-
ing a diadem at the consecration of the bull Apis in Memphis,
an act quite in accord with the usual ceremonial of that an-
cient religion, but unfavorably interpreted by some. Because
of this he hastened to Italy, and putting in at Regium and
then at Puteoli in a transport ship, he went with all speed
from there to Rome, where, as if to show that the reports
about him were groundless, he surprised his father with the
greeting, "I am here, father; I am here."

From that time on he never ceased to act as the Emperor's
partner and even as his protector. He took part in his father's
triumph x and was Censor with him. He was also his colleague
in the tribunicial power and in seven consulships. He took
upon himself the discharge of almost all duties, personally
dictated letters and wrote edicts in his father's name, and even
read his speeches in the Senate in lieu of a Quaestor. He also
assumed the command of the praetorian guard, which before
that time had never been held except by a Roman Knight,
and in this office conducted himself in a somewhat arrogant
and tyrannical fashion. For whenever he himself regarded any
one with suspicion, he would secretly send some of the guard
to the various theaters and camps, to demand their punish*
ment, as if by consent of all who were present. He would then
put them out of the way without delay. Among these was
Aulus Caecina. an ex-consul, whom he invited to dinner and
then ordered to be stabbed almost before he left the dining-
room. But in this case he was led by a pressing danger, having
got possession of an autograph copy of an harangue which
Caecina had prepared to deliver to the soldiers. Although by
such conduct he provided for his safety in the future, he in-
curred such odium at the time that hardly any one ever came

1 Commemorated by the triumphal monument called the Arch of
Titus, erected by the Senate and people of Rome after his death. It is
still standing, and is one of the most beautiful and interesting models
of Roman architecture.

340 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

to the throne with so evil a reputation or so much against the
desires of all.

Besides cruelty, he was also suspected of riotous living,
since he protracted his revels until the middle of the night with
the most prodigal of his friends; likewise of unchastity be-
cause of his troops of catamites and eunuchs, and his notorious
passion for Queen Berenice, to whom it was even said that he
promised marriage. He was suspected of greed as well, for it
was well known that in cases which came before his father he
put a price on his influence and accepted bribes. In short,
people not only thought, but openly declared, that he would
be a second Nero. But this reputation turned out to his ad-
vantage and gave place to the highest praise, when no fault
was discovered in him, but on the contrary the highest virtues.

His banquets were pleasant rather than extravagant. He
chose as his friends men whom succeeding Emperors also re-
tained as indispensable alike to themselves and to the State,
and of whose services they made special use. Berenice he sent
from Rome at once, against her will and against his own.
Some of his most beloved paramours, although they were such
skillful dancers that they later became stage favorites, he not
only ceased to cherish any longer, but even to witness their
public performances.

He took away nothing from any citizen. He respected
others' property, if any one ever did. In fact, he would not
accept even proper and customary presents. And yet he was
second to none of his predecessors in munificence. At the dedi~
cation of the amphitheater 1 and of the baths which were
hastily built near it he gave a most magnificent and costly
gladiatorial show. He presented a sham sea-fight too in the old
Naumachia, and in the same place a combat of gladiators, 3
exhibiting in one day five thousand wild beasts of every kind.

He was most kindly by nature, and whereas in accordance
with a custom established by Tiberius, all the Caesars who
followed him refused to regard favors granted by previous
Emperors as valid, unless they had themselves conferred the
same ones on the same individuals, Titus was the first to

1 The Coliseum, which had been in construction for four yean.
* After the water had been let out.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 341

ratify them all in a single edict, without allowing himself to
be asked. Moreover, in the case of other requests made of
him, it was his fixed rule not to let any one go away without
hope. Even when his household officials warned him that he
was promising more than he could perform, he said that it
was not right for any one to go away sorrowful from an inter-
view with his Emperor. On another occasion, remembering at
dinner that he had done nothing for anybody all that day, he
gave utterance to that memorable and praiseworthy remark:
"Friends, I have lost a day."

The whole body of the people in particular he treated with
such indulgence on all occasions, that once at a gladiatorial
show he declared that he would give it, "not after his own in-
clinations, but those of the spectators"; and what is more, he
kept his word. For he refused nothing which any one asked,
and even urged them to ask for what they wished. Further-
more, he openly displayed his partiality for Thracian gladi-
ators and bantered the people about it by words and gestures,
always, however, preserving his dignity, as well as observing
justice. Not to omit any act of condescension, he sometimes
bathed in the baths which he had built, in company with the
common people.

There were some dreadful disasters during his reign, such
as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Campania, a fire at
Rome which continued three days and as many nights, and a
plague the like of which had hardly ever been known before. 1
In these many great calamities he showed not merely the con-
cern of an Emperor, but even a father's surpassing love, now
offering consolation in edicts, and now lending aid so far as
his means allowed. He chose commissioners by lot from among
the ex-consuls for the relief of Campania, and the property
of those who lost their lives by Vesuvius and had no heirs left
alive he applied to the rebuilding of the buried cities. During
the fire in Rome he made no remark except "I am ruined," 2
and he set aside all the ornaments of his villas for the public
buildings and temples, and put several men of the equestrian
order in charge of the work, that everything might be done

1 Eusebius (Chronicon II) says the dead numbered as high as ten
thousand a day.

2 Implying that it was his personal loss, which he world make good.

342 TH LIVES OF THE TWELVE CASSARS

with the greater dispatch. For curing the plague and diminish*
ing the force of the epidemic there was no aid, human or
divine, which he did not employ, searching for every kind of
sacrifice and all kinds of medicines.

Among the evils of the times were the informers and their
instigators, who had enjoyed a long standing license. After
these had been soundly beaten in the Forum with scourges
and cudgels, and finally led in procession across the arena of
the amphitheater, he had some of them put up and sold, and
others deported to the wildest of the islands. Further to dis-
courage for all time any who might think of venturing on
similar practices, among other precautions he made it unlaw-
ful for any one to be tried under several laws for the same of-
fense, or for any inquiry to be made as to the legal status of
any deceased person after a stated number of years.

Having declared that he would accept the office of Pontifex
Maximus for the purpose of keeping his hands unstained, he
was true to his promise. For, after that he neither caused nor
connived at the death of any man, although he sometimes had
no lack of reasons for taking vengeance; but he swore that he
would gather be killed than kill. When two men of patrician
family were found guilty of aspiring to the throne, he satisfied
himself with warning them to abandon their attempt, saying
that imperial power was the gift of fate, and promising that if
there was anything else they desired, he himself would bestow
it. Then he sent his couriers with all speed to the mother of
one of them, for she was some distance off, to relieve her
anxiety by reporting that her son was safe. And he not only
invited the men themselves to dinner among his friends, but
on the following day at a gladiatorial show he purposely placed
them near him, and when the swords of the contestants were
offered him, 1 handed them over for their inspection. It is even
said that he inquired into the horoscope of each of them, and
declared that danger threatened them both, but at some future
time and from another, as turned out to be the case.

Although his brother 2 never ceased plotting against him,
but almost openly stirred up the armies to revolt and meditated

1 The weapons of gladiators were regularly examined by the give*
of the games to see if they were sharp enough.
* 2 Domitian. , , ,

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 343

flight to them, he had not the heart to put him to death or
banish him from the court, or even to hold him in less honor
than before. On the contrary, as he had done from the very
first day of his rule, he continued to declare that he was his
partner and successor, and sometimes he privately begged him
with tears and prayers to be willing at least to return his
affection.

In the meantime he was cut off by death, to the loss of
mankind rather than to his own. After finishing the public
games, at the close of which he wept bitterly in the presence
of the people, he went to the Sabine territory, somewhat cast
down because a victim had escaped as he was sacrificing and
because it had thundered from a clear sky. Then at the very
first stopping place he was seized with a fever, and as he was
being carried on from there in a litter, it is said that he pushed
bade the curtains, looked up to heaven, and lamented bitterly
that his life was being taken from him contrary to his deserts.
For he said that there was no act of his life of which he had
cause to repent, save one only. What this was he did not him-
self disclose at the time, nor could any one easily divine. 1
Some think that he recalled the intimacy which he had with
his brother's wife. But Domitia swore most solemnly that this
did not exist, although she would not have denied it if it had
been in the least true, but on the contrary would have boasted
of it, as she was most ready to do of all her scandalous actions.

He died in the same farmhouse as his father, on the Ides of
September, two years two months and twenty days after suc-
ceeding Vespasian, in the forty-second year of his age. When
his death was made known, the whole populace mourned as
they would for a loss in their own families, the Senate
hastened to the House before it was summoned by proclama-
tion, and with the doors still shut, and then with them open,
rendered such thanks to him and heaped such praise on him
after death as they had never done even when he was alive
and preserit.

1 Perhaps Domitian's charge that Titus had tampered with . Ves-
pasian's will was' true. See Domitian. '

DOMITIAN

DOMITIAN was born on the ninth day before the Kalends
of November of the year when his father was Consul-elect
and was about to enter on the office in the following month,
in a street of the sixth region called "the Pomegranate/' in a
house which he afterwards converted into a temple of the
Flavian family. He is said to have passed the period of his
boyhood and his early youth in great poverty and infamy.
For he did not possess a single piece of plate and it is a well
known fact that Claudius Pollio, a man of praetorian rank,
against whom Nero's poem entitled "The One-eyed Man"
is directed, preserved a letter in Domitian's handwriting and
sometimes exhibited it, in which the future Emperor promised
him an assignation; and there have not been wanting those
who declared that Domitian was also debauched by Nerva,
who succeeded him. In the war with Vitellius he took refuge in
the Capitol with his paternal uncle Sabinus and a part of the
forces under him. When the enemy forced an entrance and the
temple was fired, he hid during the night with the guardian of
the shrine, and in the morning, disguised in the garb of a fol-
lower of Isis and mingling with the priests of that fickle super-
stition, he went across the Tiber with a single companion to
the mother of one of his school-fellows. There he was so ef-
fectually concealed, that though he was closely followed, he
could not be found, in spite of a thorough search. It was only
after the victory that he ventured forth and after being hailed
as Caesar, 1 he assumed the office of City Praetor with con-
sular powers, but only in name, turning over all the judicial
business to his next colleague. But he exercised all the tyranny
of his high position so lawlessly, that it was even then apparent
what sort of a man he was going to be. Not to mention all
details, after making free with the wives of many men, he

* He governed the city till his father arrived

344

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 345

went so far as to marry Domitia Longina, who was the wife
of Aelius Lamia, and in a single day he assigned more than
twenty positions in the city and abroad, which led Vespasian
to say more than once that he was surprised that he did not
appoint the Emperor's successors with the rest.

He began an expedition against Gaul and the Germanics,
which was uncalled for and from which his father's friends
dissuaded him, merely that he might make himself equal to
his brother in power and rank. For this he was reprimanded,
and to give him a better realization of his youth x and posi-
tion, he had to live with his father, and when they appeared
in public he followed the Emperor's chair and that of his
brother in a litter, while he also attended their triumph over
Judaea riding on a white horse. 2 Moreover, of his six consul
ships only one was a regular one, and he obtained that only
because his brother gave place to him and recommended his
appointment.

He himself too made a remarkable pretense of modesty
and especially of an interest in poetry, an art which had previ-
ously been as unfamiliar to him as it was later despised and
rejected, and he even gave readings in public. Yet in spite
of all this, when Vologaesus, King of the Parthians, had
asked for auxiliaries against the Alani and for one of Ves-
pasian's sons as their leader, Domitian used every effort to
have himself sent rather than Titus. And because the affair
came to nothing, he tried by gifts and promises to induce
other eastern kings to make the same request.

On the death of his father he hesitated for some time
whether to offer a double largess 8 to the soldiers, and he
never had any compunction about saying that he had been
left a partner in the imperial power, but that the will had
been tampered with. And from that time on he never ceased
to plot against his brother secretly and openly, until Titus
was seized with a dangerous illness, when Domitian ordered
that he be left for dead, before he had actually drawn his
last breath. And after his death he bestowed no honor upon
him, save that of deification, and he often assailed his memory

1 He was eighteen at the time.

3 The usual procedure for a youthful prince.

8 Double his brother's in order to sway them to support him.

* 4 6 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

in ambiguous phrases, both in his speeches and in his edicts.

At the beginning of his reign he used to spend hours in
seclusion every day, doing nothing but catch flies and stab
them with a keenly-sharpened stylus. Consequently when
some one once asked whether any one was in there with
Caesar, Vibius Crispus made the witty reply: "Not even a
fly."

Soon after his advancement he bestowed the name of
Augusta on his wife Domitia. He had had a son by her in his
second consulship, and in the following year a daughter. He
divorced her because of her love for the actor Paris, but could
not bear the separation and soon took her back, alleging that
the people demanded it.

In his administration of the government he for some time
showed himself inconsistent, with about an equal number of
virtues and vices, but finally he turned the virtues also into
vices. For, so far as one may guess, it was contrary to his
natural disposition that he was made rapacious through
need and cruel through fear.

He constantly gave grand and costly entertainments, both
in the amphitheater and in the Circus, where in addition to
the usual races between two-horse and four-horse chariots,
he also exhibited two battles, one between forces of infantry
and the other by horsemen. And he even gave a naval battle
in the amphitheater. Besides he gave hunts of wild beasts,
gladiatorial shows at night by the light of torches, and not
only combats between men but between women as well. He
was always present too at the games given by the Quaestors,
which he revived after they had been abandoned for some
time, and invariably granted the people the privilege of call-
ing for two pairs of gladiators from his own school, and
brought them in last in all the splendor of the court. During
the whole of every gladiatorial show there always stood at
his feet a small boy clad in scarlet, with an abnormally small
head, with whom he used to talk a great deal, and sometimes
seriously. At any rate, he was overheard to ask him if he
knew why he had decided at the last appointment day to
make Mettius Rufus Prefect of Egypt. He often gave sea-
fights almost with regular fleets, having dug a pool near the

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 347

Tiber and surrounded it with seats; and he continued to wit-
ness the contests amid heavy rains.

He also celebrated Secular games, reckoning the time, not
according to the year when Claudius had last given them,
but by the previous calculation of Augustus. In the course of
these, to make it possible to finish a hundred races on the
day of the contests in the Circus, he diminished the number
of laps from seven to five.

He also established a quinquennial contest in honor of
Jupiter Capitolinus of a threefold character, comprising mu-
sic, riding, and gymnastics, and with considerably more
prizes than are awarded nowadays. For there were competi-
tions in prose declamation 1 both in Greek and in Latin. And
in addition to contests of the lyre-players, there were others
of several playing together as well as singly but without sing-
ing, while in the stadium there were races even between
maidens. He presided at the competitions in half-boots, clad
in a purple toga in the Greek fashion, and wearing upon
his head a golden crown with figures of Jupiter, Juno, and
Minerva, while by his side sat the Priest of Jupiter and the
college of the Flaviales, 2 similarly dressed, except that their
crowns bore his image as well. He celebrated the Quinquatria
too every year in honor of Minerva at his Alban villa, and
established for her a college of priests, from which men were
chosen by lot to act as officers and give splendid shows of
wild beasts and stage plays, besides holding contests in ora-
tory and poetry.

He made a piesent to the people of three hundred ses-
terces 8 each on three occasions, and in the course of one of
his shows in celebration of the feast of the Seven Hills gave
a plentiful banquet, distributing large baskets of victuals to
the Senate and Knights, and smaller ones to the Commons.
And he himself was the first to begin to eat. On the following
day he scattered gifts of all sorts of things to be scrambled
for, anc} since the greater part of these fell where the people

1 As well as in poetry.

2 Established for the worship of the deified Emperors of the Flavian
line after the manner of the Augustan.

8 $12.30.

348 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

sat, he had five hundred tickets thrown into each section
occupied by the senatorial and equestrian orders.

He restored many splendid buildings which had been de-
stroyed by fire, among them the Capitolium, which had again
been burned, 1 but in all cases with the inscription of his own
name only, and with no mention of the original builder. Fur-
thermore, he built a new temple on the Capitoline hill in
honor of Jupiter Gustos and the Forum which now bears the
name of Nerva; 2 likewise a temple to the Flavian family, a
stadium, an Odeum, 8 and a pool for sea-fights. From the stone
used in this last the Circus Maximus was afterwards rebuilt,
when both sides of it had been destroyed by fire.

His campaigns he undertook partly without provocation
and partly of necessity. That against the Chatti was uncalled
for, while the one against the Sarmatians was justified by the
destruction of a legion with its commander. He made two
against the Dacians, the first when Oppius Sabinus an ex-
consul was defeated, and the second on the overthrow of
Cornelius Fuscus, Prefect of the praetorian guard, to whom
he had entrusted the conduct of the war. After several bat-
tles of varying success he celebrated a double triumph
over the Chatti and the Dacians. 4 His victories over the Sar-
matians he commemorated merely by the offering of a laurel
crown to Jupiter of the Capitol,

A civil war which was set on foot by Lucius Antonius,
Governor of Upper Germany, was put down in the Emperor's
absence by a remarkable stroke of good fortune, for at the
very hour of the battle the Rhine suddenly thawed and pre-
vented his barbarian allies from crossing over to Antonius.
Domitian learned of this victory through omens before he
actually had news of it, for on the very day when the decisive
battle was fought a magnificent eagle enfolded his statue at
Rome with its wings, uttering exultant shrieks, and soon
afterwards a report of the death of Antonius became so cur-

1 For the third time: first in the Marian war, and rebuilt by Pompey ;
second in 69, during the reign of Vitellius; third in 80 in the fire
mentioned in Titus.

* Who finished and dedicated it.

8 The first Music Hall in Rome.

This triumph Tacitus in A^ncola XXXIX calls a farce.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 349

rent, that several went so far as to assert positively that they
had seen his head brought to Rome.

He made many innovations also in common customs. He
did away with the dole of food distributed in baskets to the
people and revived the old custom of regular public dinners.
He added two factions of drivers in the Circus, with gold and
purple as their colors, to the four former ones. He forbade
the appearance of actors on the stage, but allowed the prac-
tice of their art in private houses. He prohibited the castra-
tion of males, and kept down the price of the eunuchs that
remained in the hands of the slave dealers. Once upon the
occasion of a plentiful wine crop, attended with a scarcity
of grain, thinking that the fields were neglected through too
much attention to the vineyards, he made an edict forbidding
any one to plant more vines in Italy and ordering that the
vineyards in the provinces he cut down, or but half of them
at most be left standing. But he did not persist in carrying
out the measure. He divided some of the most important
offices of the court 1 between the freedmen and Roman
Knights. He prohibited the uniting of two legions in one
camp and the deposit of more than a thousand sesterces 2 by
any one soldier at headquarters, 8 because it was clear that
Lucius Antonius had been especially led to attempt a revolu-
tion by the amount of such deposits in the combined winter
quarters of two legions. He increased the pay of the soldiers
one-fourth, by the addition of three gold pieces each year. 4

He administered justice scrupulously and conscientiously,
frequently holding special sittings on the tribunal in the
Forum. He rescinded such decisions of the Hundred Judges
as had been made through favor or interest. He often warned
the arbiters not to grant claims for freedom made under false
pretenses. He degraded jurors who accepted bribes, together
with all their associates. He also induced the Tribunes of the
Commons to prosecute a corrupt Aedile for extortion, and to

1 Formerly held by freedmen. Hadrian restricted them to Knights.

2 $41.00.

8 Soldiers had been encouraged to deposit all they could save with
the general in command. They would then have ready money at the end
of the term of their service. In the meantime they would fight better.

* That is, he raised the amount from $36.90 to $41.20.

350 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

ask the Senate to appoint jurors in the case. He took such
care to exercise restraint over the city officials and the Gov*
ernors of the provinces, that at no time were they more honest
or just, whereas after his time we have seen many of them
charged with all manner of offenses.

Having undertaken the correction of public morals, he put
an end to the license at the theaters, where the general pub-
lic occupied the seats reserved for the Knights. He did away
with the prevailing publication of scurrilous lampoons, in
which distinguished men and women were attacked, and im-
posed ignominious penalties on their authors. He expelled
in ex-quaestor from the Senate, because he was given to act-
ing and dancing. He deprived notorious women of the use of
litters, as well as of the right to receive inheritances and
legacies. He struck the name of a Roman Knight from the
list of jurors, because he had taken back his wife after divorc-
ing her and charging her with adultery. He condemned sev-
eral men of both orders, offenders against the Scantinian
law. 1 And the incest of Vestal Virgins, condoned even by his
father and his brother, he punished severely in divers ways,
at first by capital punishment, and afterwards in the ancient
fashion. For while he allowed the sisters Oculata and also
Varronilla free choice of the manner of their deaths, and ban-
ished their paramours, he later ordered that Cornelia, a chief-
Vestal who had been acquitted once but after a long interval
again arraigned and found guilty, be buried alive; and her
lovers were beaten to death with rods in the Comitium, with
the exception of an ex-praetor, whom he allowed to go into
exile, because he admitted his guilt while the case was still
unsettled and the examination and torture of the witnesses
had led to no result. To protect the Gods from being dis-
honored with impunity by any sacrilege, he caused a tomb
which one of his freedmen had built for his son from stones
intended for the temple of Jupiter of the Capitol to be de-
stroyed by the soldiers and the bones and ashes contained in
it thrown into the sea.

In the earlier part of his reign he so shrank from any form
of bloodshed, that while his father was still absent from the

1 Against sodomy.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 351

city, he planned to issue an edict that no oxen should be of-
fered in sacrifice, recalling the line of Vergil,

"Ere godless men, restrained from blood in vain,
Began to feast on flesh of bullocks slain." *

He was equally free from any suspicion of love of gain or
[)f avarice, both in private life and for some time after becom-
ing Emperor. On the contrary, he often gave strong proofs
not merely of integrity, but even of liberality. He treated all
his intimates most generously, and there was nothing which
tie urged them more frequently, or with greater insistence,
than that they should not be niggardly in any of their acts.
He would not accept inheritances left him by those who had
children. He even annulled a legacy in the will of Rustus
Caepio, who had provided that his heir should yearly pay a
specified sum to each of the Senators on his entrance into the
House. 2 He canceled the suits against those who hnd been
posted as debtors to the public treasury for more than five
years, and would not allow a renewal except within a year
and on the condition that an accuser who did not win his suit
should be punished with exile. Scribes of the Quaestors who
carried on business, which had become usual although con*
trary to the Clodian law, he pardoned for past offenses. Par-
:els of land which were left unoccupied here and there after
the assignment of lands to the veterans he granted to thei*
Dld-time owners as by right of possession. He checked false
accusations designed for the profit of the privy purse and in-
flicted severe penalties on offenders. And a saying of his was
:urrent, that an Emperor who does not punish informers
tiounds them on.

But he did not continue this course of mercy or integrity,
although he turned to cruelty somewhat more speedily than
to avarice. He put to death a pupil of the pantomimic actor
Paris, who was still a beardless boy and ill at the time, be-
cause in his skill and his appearance he seemed not unlike
bis master; also Hermogenes of Tarsus because of some al-
lusions in his History, besides crucifying even the slaves who

1 Georgics II, S3 7-

a On his first entrance, Suetonius probably meant

35* THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

bad written it out. A householder who said that a Thracian
gladiator was a match for the murmillo, but not for the giver
of the games, he caused to be dragged from his seat and
thrown into the arena to dogs, with this placard: "A favorer
of the Thracians who spoke impiously." x

He put to death many Senators, among them several ex-
consuls, including Civica Cerealis, at the very time when he
was Proconsul in Asia, Salvidienus Orfitus, and Acilius
Glabrio while he was in exile, under the pretense they were
plotting revolution. For the rest, any charge served, no matter
how trivial. He slew Aelius Lamia for joking remarks, which
were reflections on him, it is true, but made long before and
harmless. For when Domitian had taken away Lamia's wife,
the latter replied to some one who praised his voice: "I prac-
tice continence"; 2 and when Titus urged him to marry again,
he replied: "Are you too looking for a wife?" He put to death
Salvius Cocceianus, because he had kept the birthday of the
Emperor Otho, his paternal uncle; Mettius Pompusianus,
because it was commonly reported that he had an imperial
nativity and carried about a map of the world on parchment
and speeches of the Kings and Generals from Titus Livius,
besides giving two of his slaves the names of Mago and Han-
nibal. He put Sallustius Lucullus, Governor of Britain, to
death for allowing some lances of a new pattern to be called
"Lucullean," after his own name; Junius Rusticus, because
he had published eulogies of Paetus Thrasea and Helvidius
Priscus and called them the most upright of men, banishing,
on the occasion of this charge, all the philosophers from the
city and from Italy. He executed the younger Helvidius, al-
leging that in a farce composed for the stage he had under the
characters of Paris and Oenone censured Domitian 's divorce
from his wife; also Flavius Sabinus, one of his cousins, be-
cause on the day of the consular elections the crier had in-
advertently announced him to the people as Emperor-elect,
instead of Consul.

1 Domitian favored the murmillo s, the gladiators who fought with
Gallic arms. The spirit of partisanship ran so high at the gladiatorial
combats that it was almost treason to speak against the Emperor's
favorites.

* Part of the method of voice training then practiced.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 35$

After his victory in the civil war he became even more
cruel, and to discover any conspirators who were in hiding,
tortured many of the opposite party by a new form of in-
quisition, inserting fire in their privates; and he cut off the
hands of some of them. It is certain that of the more con-
spicuous only two were pardoned, a Tribune of senatorial
rank and a Centurion, who the more clearly to prove their
freedom from guilt, showed that they were of shameless un-
chastity and could therefore have had no influence with the
general or with the soldiers.

His savage cruelty was not only excessive, but also cun-
ning and sudden. He invited one of his stewards to his bed-
chamber the day before crucifying him, made him sit beside
him on his couch, and dismissed him in a secure and gay
frame of mind, even deigning to send him a share of his din-
ner. When he was on the point of condemning the ex-consul
Arrecinius Clemens, one of his intimates and tools, he treated
him with as great favor as before, if not greater, and finally,
as he was taking a drive with him, catching sight of his ac-
cuser he said: "Pray, shall we hear this base slave to
morrow?"

To abuse men's patience the more insolently, he never pro-
nounced an unusually dreadful sentence without a prelimi-
nary declaration of clemency, so that there came to be no
more certain indication of a cruel death than the leniency of
his preamble. He had brought some men charged with treason
into the Senate, and when he had introduced the matter by
saying that he would find out that day how dear he was to
the members, he had no difficulty in causing them to be con-
demned to suffer the ancient method of punishment. 1 Then
appalled at the cruelty of the penalty, he interposed a veto,
to lessen the odium, in these words (for it will be of interest
to know his exact language) : "Allow me,
ate, to prevail on you by your love
which I know I shall obtain with dif
allow the condemned free choice
death; for thus you will spare you
will know that I was present at the ]'

1 Necks locked in a pillory, then bea

354 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

Reduced to financial straits by the cost of his buildings
and shows, as well as by the additions which he had made to
the pay of the soldiers, he tried to lighten the military ex-
penses by diminishing the number of his troops. But perceiv-
ing that in this way he exposed himself to the attacks of the
barbarians, and nevertheless had difficulty in easing his bur-
dens, he had no hesitation in resorting to every sort of rob-
bery. The property of the living and the dead was seized
everywhere on any charge brought by any accuser. It was
enough to allege any action or word derogatory to the majesty
of the prince. Estates of those in no way connected with him
were confiscated, if but one man came forward to declare
that he had heard from the deceased during his lifetime that
Caesar was his heir. Besides other taxes, that on the Jews 1
was levied with the utmost rigor, and those were prosecuted
who without publicly acknowledging that faith yet lived as
Jews, as well as those who concealed their nationality and
did not pay the tribute levied upon their people. 2 1 recall be-
ing present in my youth when the person of a man ninety
years old was examined before the Procurator and a very
crowded court, to see whether he was circumcised.

From his youth he was far from being of an affable disposi-
tion, but was on the contrary presumptuous and unbridled
both in act and in word. When his father's concubine Caenis
returned from Histria and offered to kiss him as usual, he held
out his hand to her. He was vexed that his brother's son-in-
law had attendants clad in white, as well as he, and uttered
the words

"Not good is a number of rulers." 8

When he became Emperor, he did not hesitate to boast in
the Senate that he had conferred their power on both his
father and his brother, and that they had but returned him
bis own ; nor on taking back his wife after their divorce, that

1 A tax of $0.38 per head, imposed by Titus, in return for permission
to practice their religion.

2 Christians doubtless, whom the Romans commonly confounded
with the Jews.

8 Iliad, II, 204.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 355

he had "recalled her to his divine couch," * He delighted to
hear the people in the amphitheater shout on his feast day:
"Good Fortune attend our Lord 2 and Mistress." Even more,
in the Capitoline competition when Palfurius Sura received
the prize for oratory and all the people begged with concerted
unanimity that he be restored to his place in the Senate from
which he had been banished some time before, Domitian
deigned no reply, but merely had a crier bid them be silent.
With no less arrogance he began as follows in issuing a cir-
cular letter in the name of his procurators, "Our Master and
our God bids that this be done." And so the custom arose of
henceforth addressing him in no other way even in writing or
in conversation. He suffered no statues to be set up in his
honor in the Capitol, except of gold and silver and of a fixed
weight. He erected so many and such huge vaulted passage-
ways and arches in the various regions of the city, adorned
frith chariots and triumphal emblems, that on one of them
>ome one wrote in Greek: "It is enough." 3

He held the consulship seventeen times, more often than
any of his predecessors. Of these the seven middle ones were
in successive years, but all of them he filled in name only,
continuing none beyond the first -of May and few after the
Ides of January. Having assumed the surname Germanicus
after his two triumphs, he renamed the months of September
and October from his own names, calling them "Germanicus"
and "Domitianus," because in the former he had come to the
throne and was born in the latter.

In this way he became an object of terror and hatred to
all, but he was overthrown at last by a conspiracy of his
friends and favorite freedmen, to which his wife was also
privy. He had long since had a premonition of the last year
and day of his life, and even of the very hour and manner of
his death. In his youth astrologers had predicted all this to
him, and his father once even openly ridiculed him at dinnei

* As if he were God, for the word here translated as couch mean*
specifically the dais on which the images of the gods rested.

2 Augustus shrank from the salutation of do minus, lord, as implying
a slave master.

8 The pun turns on the similar sound of the Greek word for "enongh"
and the Latin for "arch."

356 THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

for refusing mushrooms, saying that he showed himself un-
Eware of his destiny in not rather fearing the sword. There-
fore he was at all times timorous and worried, and was
disquieted beyond measure by even the slightest suspicions.
It is thought that nothing had more effect in inducing him to
ignore his proclamation about cutting down the vineyards
than the circulation of notes containing the following lines:

"Gnaw me to my root, O goat, yet shall my juice suffice
To wet your head when you are led to sacrifice." l

It was because of this same timorousness that although
he was most eager for all such honors, he refused a new
one which the Senate had devised and offered to him, a de-
cree, namely, that whenever he held the consulship Roman
Knights selected by lot should precede him among his Lictors
and attendants, clad in the trabea 2 and bearing lances.

As the time when he anticipated danger drew near, be-
coming still more anxious every day, he lined the walls of
the colonnades in which he used to walk with phengite stone,
to be able to see in its brilliant surface the reflection of all
that went on behind his back. And he did not give a hearing
to any prisoners except in private and alone, even holding
their chains in his hands. Further, to convince his household
that one must not venture to kill a patron even on good
grounds, he condemned Epaphroditus, his confidential secre-
tary, to death, because it was believed that after Nero was
abandoned the freedman's hand had aided him in taking his
life.

Finally he put to death his own cousin Flavius Clemens,
suddenly and on a very slight suspicion, almost before the
end of his consulship. And yet Flavius was a man of most
contemptible laziness and Domitian had besides openly
named his sons, who were then very young, as his successors,
changing their former names and calling the one Vespasian
and the other Domitian. And it was by this deed in particu-
lar that he hastened his own destruction.

1 From the Greek poet Evenus. Some of the Suetonius texts read
"Caesar" instead of "goat."

2 A toga ornamented with horizontal purple stripes worn by the
Knights on public occasions, as well as by the early Kings and Consuls.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 3ST

For eight successive months so many strokes of lightning
occurred and were reported, that at last he cried: "Well, let
him now strike whom he will." The temple of Jupiter of the
Capitol was struck and that of the Flavian family, as well as
the palace and the Emperor's own bedroom. The inscription
too on the base of a triumphal statue of his was torn of! in a
violent tempest and fell upon a neighboring tomb. The tree
which had been overthrown when Vespasian was still a pri-
vate citizen but had sprung up anew, then on a sudden fell
down again. Fortune of Praeneste had throughout his whole
reign, when he commended the new year to her protection,
given him a favorable omen and always in the same words.
Now at last she returned a most direful one, not without the
mention of bloodshed.

He dreamed that Minerva, whom he worshiped with super-
stitious veneration, came forth from her shrine and declared
that she could no longer protect him, since she had been dis-
armed by Jupiter. Yet there was nothing by which he was so
much disturbed as a prediction of the astrologer Ascletarion
and what befell him. When this man was accused before the
Emperor and did not deny that he had spoken of certain
things which he had foreseen through his art, he was asked
what his own end would be. When he replied that he would
shortly be rent by dogs, Domitian ordered him killed at once,
but to prove the fallibility of his art, he ordered besides that
his funeral be attended to with the greatest care. While this
was being done, it chanced that the pyre was overset by a
sudden storm and dogs mangled the corpse, which was only
partly consumed, and that an actor of farces called Latinus,
who happened to pass by and see the incident, told it to
Domitian at the dinner table, with the rest of the day's gossip.

The day before he was killed he gave orders to have some
apples which were offered him kept until the following day,
and added: "If only I am spared to eat them." Then turning
to his companions, he declared that on the following day the
moon would be stained with blood in Aquarius, and that a
deed would be done of which men would talk all over the
world. At about midnight he was so terrified that he leaped
from his bed. The next morning he conducted the trial of a
soothsayer sent from Germany, who when consulted about

$5* THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

the lightning strokes had foretold a change of rulers, and
condemned him to death. .While he was vigorously scratch-
ing a festered wart on his forehead, and had drawn blood, be
said: "May this be all." Then he asked the time, and by pre-
arr^ngement the sixth hour was announced to him, instead
of the fifth, which he feared. Filled with joy at this, and be-
lieving all danger now past, he was hastening to the bath,
when his head chamberlain Parthenius changed his purpose
by announcing that some one had called about a matter of
great moment and would not be put off. Then he dismissed
all his attendants and went to his bedroom, where he was
slain.

Concerning the nature of the plot and the manner of his
death, this is about all that became known. As the conspira-
tors were deliberating when and how to attack him, whether
at the bath or at dinner, Stephanus, Domitilla's * steward,
at the time under accusation for embezzlement, offered his
aid and counsel. To avoid suspicion, he wrapped up his left
arm in woollen bandages for some days, pretending that he
had injured it, and concealed in them a dagger. Then pre-
tending to betray a conspiracy and for that reason being
given an audience, he stabbed the Emperor in the groin as
he was reading a paper which the assassin handed him,
and stood in a state of amazement. As the wounded prince
attempted to resist, he was slain with seven wounds by
Clodianus, a subaltern, Maximus, a freedman of Parthenius,
Satur, head chamberlain, and a gladiator from the imperial
school. A boy who was engaged in his usual duty of attend-
ing to the images of the household Gods in the bedroom, and
so was a witness of the murder, gave this additional informa-
tion. He was bidden by Domitian, immediately after he was
dealt the first blow, to hand him the dagger hidden under his
pillow and to call the servants. But he found nothing at the
head of the bed save the hilt, and besides all the doors were
closed. Meanwhile the Emperor grappled with Stephanus and
bore him to the ground, where they struggled for a longtime,
Domitian trying now to wrest the dagger from

yDoxiiiti&n!& niece *

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 557

hands and now to gouge out his eyes with his lacerated
fingers.

He was slain on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of
October in the forty-fifth year of his age and the fifteenth of
his reign. His corpse was carried out on a common bier by
those who bury the poor, and his nurse Phyllis cremated it at
her suburban estate on the Via Latina. But his ashes she
secretly carried to the temple of the Flavian family and
mingled them with those of Julia, daughter of Titus, whom
she had also reared.

He was tall of stature, with a modest expression and a
high color. His eyes were large, but his sight was somewhat
weak. He was handsome and graceful too, especially when a
young man, and indeed in his whole body with the exception
of his feet, the toes of which were somewhat cramped. In
later life he had the further disfigurement of baldness, a pro-
truding belly, and spindle legs, though the latter had become
thin from a long illness. He was so conscious that the modesty
of his expression was in his favor, that he once made this
boast in the Senate: "So far, at any rate, you have approved
my heart and my countenance." He was so sensitive about
his baldness, that he regarded it as a personal insult if any
one else was twitted with that defect in jest or in earnest,
though in a book "On the Care of the Hair," which he pub-
lished and dedicated to a friend, he wrote the following by
way of consolation to the man and himself:

" 'Do you not see that I am comely, too, and tall?' *

And yet the same fate awaits my hair, and I bear with resig-
nation the aging of my locks in youth. Be assured that noth-
ing is more pleasing than beauty, but nothing shorter-lived,"
He was incapable of exertion and seldom went about the
city on foot, while on his campaigns and journeys he rarely
rode on horseback, but was regularly carried in a litter. He
took no interest in arms, but was particularly devoted to
archery. There are many who have more than once seen him
day a hundred wild beasts of different kinds on his Alban
estate, and purposely kill some of them with two successive

* Iliad, XXI, 108.

j6o THE LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

shots in such a way that the arrows gave the effect of horns.
Sometimes he would have a slave stand at a distance and
hold out the palm of his right hand for a mark, with the fin-
gers spread. Then he directed his arrows with such accuracy
that they passed harmlessly between the fingers.

At the beginning of his rule he neglected liberal studies,
although he provided for having the libraries, which were
destroyed by fire, renewed at very great expense, seeking
everywhere for copies of the lost works, and sending scribes
to Alexandria to transcribe and correct them. Yet he never
took any pains to become acquainted with history or poetry,
or even to acquiring an ordinarily good style. He read nothing
except the memoirs and transactions of Tiberius Caesar. For
his letters, speeches and proclamations he relied on others'
talents. Yet his conversation was not inelegant, and some of
his sayings were even noteworthy. "How I wish," said he, "that
I were as fine looking as Maecius thinks he is." He declared
too that the head of a certain man, whose hair had changed
color in such a way that it was partly reddish and partly
gray, was like "snow on which mead had been poured."

He used to say that the lot of princes was most unhappy,
since when they discovered a conspiracy, no one believed
them unless they had been killed.

Whenever he had leisure he amused himself with playing
at dice, even on working days and in the morning hours. He
went to the bath before the end of the forenoon and lunched
to the point of satiety, so that at dinner he rarely took any-
thing except a Matian apple 1 and a moderate amount of
wine from a jug. He gave numerous and generous banquets,
but usually ended them early. In no case did he protract
them beyond sunset, or follow them by a drinking bout. In
fact, he did nothing until the hour for retiring except walk
alone in a retired place.

He was excessively lustful. His constant sexual intercourse
'he called bed-wrestling, as if it were a kind of exercise. It
was reported that he depilated his concubines with his own
hand and swam with common prostitutes. After persistently

1 A famous variety named after C. Matius, friend of Augustus and
writer on cookery and gardening.

VESPASIAN, TITUS, DOMITIAN 361

refusing his niece, 1 who was offered him in marriage when
she was still a maid, because he was entangled in an intrigue
with Domitia, he seduced her shortly afterwards when she
became the wife of another, and that too during the lifetime
of Titus. Later, when she was bereft of father and husband,
he loved her ardently and without disguise, and even became
the cause of her death by compelling her to get rid of a child
of his by abortion.

The people received the news of his death with indifference,
but the soldiers were greatly grieved and at once attempted
to call him the Deified Domitian, while they were prepared
also to avenge him, had they not lacked leaders. This, how-
ever, they did accomplish a little later by most insistently
demanding the execution of his murderers. The Senators on
the contrary were so overjoyed, that they raced to fill the
House, where they did not refrain from assailing the dead
Emperor with the most insulting and stinging kind of out-
cries. They even had ladders brought and his shields and
images torn down before their eyes and dashed upon the
ground. Finally they passed a decree that his inscriptions
should everywhere be erased, and all record of him ob-
literated.

A few months before he was killed, a raven perched on the
Capitolium 2 and cried "All will be well," an omen which
some interpreted as follows:

"Late croaked a raven from Tarpeia's height,
'All is not yet, but shortly will be, right.' "

Domitian himself, it is said, dreamed that a golden hump
grew out on his back, and he regarded this as an infallible
sign that the condition of the empire would be happier and
more prosperous after his time. And this was shortly shown
to be true through the uprightness and moderate rule of the
succeeding Emperors.

1 Julia, daughter of Titus.

2 Sometimes called the Tarpeian Hill from the Tarpeian Rock at
its southwest corner.