The Twelve Caesars - by C. Suetonius Tranquillus

Date read: 2019-08-01
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Key ideas: The Twelve Caesars describes the life and times in Rome under the first twelve Caesars. It was a time of sex, scandal, and debauchery (think Nero, Caligula). While I left out the most graphic, some of the excerpts are disturbing to a modern reader.

Also see: Fourteen Byzantine Rullers by Psellus.

NOTES

  1. Julius Caesar
  2. Augustus
  3. Tiberius Nero Caesar
  4. Caius Caesar Caligula
  5. Tiberius Claudius Drusus Caesar
  6. Nero Claudius Caesar
  7. Sergius Sulpicius Galba
  8. A. Salvius Otho
  9. Aulus Vitellius
  10. Flavius Vespasianus Augustus
  11. Titus Flavius Vespasianus Augustus
  12. Titus Flavius Domitianus

Julius Caesar

Caesar, who started the Civil War, eventually destroyed the Roman Republic and created an Empire in place.

But in the time of Julius Caesar the barriers of public liberty were become too weak to restrain the audacious efforts of ambitious and desperate men. The veneration for the constitution, usually a powerful check to treasonable designs, had been lately violated by the usurpations of Marius and Sylla...

Finding himself now attacked on all hands with naked poniards, he wrapped the toga about his head, and at the same moment drew the skirt round his legs with his left hand, that he might fall more decently with the lower part of his body covered. He was stabbed with three and twenty wounds, uttering a groan only, but no cry, at the first wound; although some authors relate, that when Marcus Brutus fell upon him, he exclaimed, “What! art thou, too, one of them? Thou, my son!”

Augustus

Augustus considered restoring Roman Republic.

The Roman empire, in the time of Augustus, had attained to a prodigious magnitude; and, in his testament, he recommended to his successors never to exceed the limits which he had prescribed to its extent.

On the East it stretched to the Euphrates; on the South to the cataracts of the Nile, the deserts of Africa, and Mount Atlas; on the West to the Atlantic Ocean; and on the North to the Danube and the Rhine; including the best part of the then known world.

History was cultivated amongst the Romans during the present period, with uncommon success. This species of composition is calculated both for information and entertainment; but the chief design of it is to record all transactions relative to the public, for the purpose of enabling mankind to draw from past events a probable conjecture concerning the future; and, by knowing the steps which have led either to prosperity or misfortune, to ascertain the best means of promoting the former, and avoiding the latter of those objects. This useful kind of narrative was introduced about five hundred years before by Herodotus.

Tiberius Nero Caesar

Reign 18 September 14 AD -- 16 March 37 AD (22 years)

Born 16 November 42 BC - Died 16 March AD 37 (aged 77)

Tiberius was extremely cruel and depraved

His cruel and sullen temper appeared when he was still a boy; which Theodorus of Gadara, his master in rhetoric, first discovered, and expressed by a very apposite simile, calling him sometimes, when he chid him, “Mud mixed with blood."

Among various kinds of torture invented by him, one was, to induce people to drink a large quantity of wine, and then to tie up their members with harp-strings, thus tor tormenting them at once by the tightness of the ligature, and the stoppage of their urine.

Human nature recoils with horror at the cruelties of this execrable tyrant, who, having first imbrued his hands in the blood of his own relations, proceeded to exercise them upon the public with indiscriminate fury.

Neither age nor sex afforded any exemption from his insatiable thirst for blood. Innocent children were condemned to death, and butchered in the presence of their parents; virgins, without any imputed guilt, were sacrificed to a similar destiny; but there being an ancient custom of not strangling females in that situation, they were first deflowered by the executioner, and afterwards strangled, as if an atrocious addition to cruelty could sanction the exercise of it. Fathers were constrained by violence to witness the death of their own children; and even the tears of a mother, at the execution of her child, were punished as a capital offense.

Caius Caesar Caligula

Reign: 16 March 37 - 24 January 41 (3 years and 10 months)

Born: 31 August 12 AD - Died: 24 January 41

The name was derived from Caliga, a kind of boot, studded with nails, used by the common soldiers in the Roman army

But he could not even then conceal his natural disposition to cruelty and lewdness. He delighted in witnessing the infliction of punishments, and frequented taverns and bawdy-houses in the night-time, disguised in a periwig and a long coat; and was passionately addicted to the theatrical arts of singing and dancing.

He ordered all the images of the gods, which were famous either for their beauty, or the veneration paid them, among which was that of Jupiter Olympius, to be brought from Greece, that he might take the heads off, and put on his own.

After disfiguring many persons of honourable rank, by branding them in the face with hot irons, he condemned them to the mines, to work in repairing the high-ways, or to fight with wild beasts; or tying them by the neck and heels, in the manner of beasts carried to slaughter, would shut them up in cages, or saw them asunder.

He compelled parents to be present at the execution of their sons; and to one who excused himself on account of indisposition, he sent his own litter.

He burned alive, in the centre of the arena of the amphitheatre, the writer of a farce, for some witty verse, which had a double meaning. A Roman knight, who had been exposed to the wild beasts, crying out that he was innocent, he called him back, and having had his tongue cut out, remanded him to the arena.

As often as he kissed the neck of his wife or mistress, he would say, "So beautiful a throat must be cut whenever I please;" and now and then he would threaten to put his dear Caesonia to the torture, that he might discover why he loved her so passionately.

He had thoughts too of suppressing Homer's poems: "For why," said he, “may not I do what Plato has done before me, who excluded him from his commonwealth?

.. he entered the city in ovation on his birthday. Within four months from this period he was slain, after he had perpetrated enormous crimes, and while he was meditating the execution, if possible, of still greater.

Tiberius Claudius Drusus Caesar

Reign 24 January 41 -- 13 October 54 (13 years)
Poisoned

He was a tool to others, rather than a prince

The characteristics most predominant in him were fear and distrus

It is agreed that he was taken off by poison; but where, and by whom administered, remains in uncertainty. Some authors say that it was given him as he was feasting with the priests in the Capitol, by the eunuch Halotus, his taster. Others say by Agrippina, at his own table, in mushrooms, a dish of which he was very fond.

Nero Claudius Caesar

Born - 15 December 37 AD
Died - 9 June 68 AD (aged 30)

In the eleventh year of his age, he was adopted by Claudius, and placed under the tuition of Annaeus Seneca

Petulancy, lewdness, luxury, avarice, and cruelty, he practiced at first with reserve and in private, as if prompted to them only by thevfolly of youth; but, even then, the world was of opinion that theyvwere the faults of his nature, and not of his age.

He used to beat those he met coming home from supper; and, if they made any resistance, would wound them, and throw them into the common sewer. He broke open and robbed shops; establishing an auction at home for selling his booty. In the scuffles which took place on those occasions, he often ran the hazard of losing his eyes, and even his life; being beaten almost to death by a senator, for handling his wife indecently.

He tried to kill his mother 3 times before he finally succeeded.

There was no person at all connected with him who escaped his deadly and unjust cruelty. Under pretence of her being engaged in a plot against him, he put to death Antonia, Claudius's daughter, who refused to marry him after the death of Poppaea. In the same way, he destroyed all who were allied to him either by blood or marriage; amongst whom was young Aulus Plautinus.

Meanwhile, letters being brought in by a servant belonging to Phaon, he snatched them out of his hand, and there read, "That he had been declared an enemy by the senate, and that search was making for him, that he might be punished according to the ancient custom of the Romans." He then inquired what kind of punishment that was; and being told, that the practice was to strip the criminal naked, and scourge him to death, while his neck was fastened within a forked stake, he was so terrified that he took up two daggers which he had brought with him, and after feeling the points of both, put them up again, saying, “The fatal hour is not yet come."

He couldn't kill himself.

[at last] he drove a dagger into his throat, being assisted in the act by Epaphroditus, his secretary.

The several reigns from the death of Augustus present us with uncommon scenes of cruelty and horror; but it was reserved for that of Nero to exhibit to the world the atrocious act of an emperor deliberately procuring the death of his mother.

[His]life was one continued scene of lewdness, sensuality, rapine, cruelty, and folly. It is emphatically observed by Tacitus, “that Nero, after the murder of many illustrious personages, manifested a desire of extirpating virtue itself.

Nero ordered Seneca to commit suicide

The emotions of his wife he endeavored to allay with philosophical consolation; and when she expressed a resolution to die with him, he said, that he was glad to find his example imitated with so much fortitude.

The veins of both were opened at the same time; but Nero's command extending only to Seneca, the life of Paulina was preserved; and, according to some authors, she was not displeased at being prevented from carrying her precipitate resolution into effect.

Seneca's veins bleeding but slowly.

To accelerate his lingering fate, he drank a dose of poison; but this producing no effect, he ordered his attendants to carry him into a warm bath, for the purpose of rendering the haemorrhage from his veins more copious.

This expedient proving likewise ineffectual, and the soldiers who witnessed the execution of the emperor's order being clamorous for its accomplishment, he was removed into a stove, and suffocated by the steam.

He underwent his fate on the 12th of April, in the sixty-fifth year of the Christian aera, and the fifty-third year of his age.

Sergius Sulpicius Galba

Born: 24 December 3 BC - Died: 15 January 69
Reign: 8 June 68 -- 15 January 69 (7 months)

At first he was active, vigorous, and indeed excessively severe, in the punishment of offenders. For, a money-dealer having committed some fraud in the way of his business, he cut off his hands, and nailed them to his counter. Another, who had poisoned an orphan, to whom he was guardian, and next heir to the estate, he crucified.

By this conduct, he incurred the hatred of all orders of the people, but especially of the soldiery. For their commanders having promised them in his name a donative larger than usual, upon their taking the oath to him before his arrival at Rome; he refused to make it good, frequently bragging, "that it was his custom to choose his soldiers, not buy them." Thus the troops became exasperated against him in all quarters

... proceeded as far as the Forum. There the knights, appointed to dispatch him, making their way through the crowd of citizens, upon seeing him at a distance, halted a while; after which, galloping up to him, now abandoned by all his attendants, they put him to death.

It is remarkable, that not one of those who were at hand, ever made any attempt to assist the emperor.

8. A. Salvius Otho

Reign 15 January 69 - 16 April 69 (3 months)

At last, after quenching his thirst with a draught of cold water, he took up two poniards, and having examined the points of both, put one of them under his pillow, and shutting his chamber-door, slept very soundly, until, awaking about break of day, he stabbed himself under the left pap. Some persons bursting into the room upon his first groan, he at one time covered, and at another exposed his wound to the view of the bystanders, and thus life soon ebbed away.

Aulus Vitellius

Reign 16 April 69 - 22 December 69 (8 months)

After such a commencement of his career, he conducted his affairs, during the greater part of his reign, entirely by the advice and direction of the vilest amongst the players and charioteers, and especially his freedman Asiaticus.

... dish which had been made for him, and which, for its extraordinary size, he called “The Shield of Minerva."

By this time the forerunners of the enemy's army had broken into the palace, and meeting with nobody, searched, as was natural, every corner. Being dragged by them out of his cell, and asked “who he was?" (for they did not recognize him), "and if he knew where Vitellius was?" he deceived them by a falsehood. But at last being discovered, he begged hard to be detained in custody, even were it in a prison; pretending to have something to say which concerned Vespasian'ssecurity.

Nevertheless, he was dragged half-naked into the Forum, with his hands tied behind him, a rope about his neck, and his clothes torn, amidst the most contemptuous abuse, both by word and deed, along the Via Sacra; his head being held back by the hair, in the manner of condemned criminals, and the point of a sword put under his chin, that he might hold up his face to public view; some of the mob, meanwhile, pelting him with dung and mud, whilst others called him “an incendiary and glutton.

They also upbraided him with the defects of his person, for he was monstrously tall, and had a face usually very red with hard-drinking, a large belly, and one thigh weak, occasioned by a chariot running against him, as he was attending upon Caius, while he was driving.

At length, upon the Scalae Gemoniae, he was tormented and put to death in lingering tortures, and then dragged by a hookinto the Tiber.

The pusillanimity discovered by this emperor at his death, forms a striking contrast to the heroic behaviour of Otho.

Flavius Vespasianus Augustus

Reign 1 July 69 -- 24 June 79

The only thing deservedly blamable in his character was his love of money. For not satisfied with reviving the imposts which had been repealed in the time of Galba, he imposed new and onerous taxes, augmented the tribute of the provinces, and doubled that of some of them. He likewise openly engaged in a traffic, which is discreditable even to a private individual, buying great quantities of goods, for the purpose of retailing them again to advantage.

It is believed, that he advanced all the most rapacious amongst the procurators to higher offices, with the view of squeezing them after they had acquired great wealth. He was commonly said, "to have used them as sponges," because it was his practice, as we may say, to wet them when dry, and squeeze them when wet.

He was a great encourager of learning and the liberal arts. He first granted to the Latin and Greek professors of rhetoric the yearly stipend of a hundred thousand sesterces each out of the exchequer

When his son Titus blamed him for even laying a tax upon urine, he applied to his nose a piece of the money he received in the first instalment, and asked him, "if it stunk?" And he replying no, "And yet," said he, "it is derived from urine."

His disorder much increased, and he injured his bowels by too free use of the cold waters, he nevertheless attended to the dispatch of business, and even gave audience to ambassadors in bed.

At last, being taken ill of a diarrhea, to such a degree that he was ready to faint, he cried out, "An emperor ought to die standing upright." In end eavouring to rise, he died in the hands of those who were helping him up.

Titus Flavius Vespasianus Augustus

Reign 23 June 79 -- 13 September 81

Titus [he] is credited with building the Coliseum.

He had a fine person, combining an equal mixture of majesty and grace; was very strong, though not tall, and somewhat corpulent. Gifted with an excellent memory, and a capacity for all the arts of peace and war; he was a perfect master of the use of arms and riding; very ready in the Latin and Greek tongues, both in verse and prose; and such was the facility he possessed in both, that he would harangue and versify extempore.

Of all who petitioned for any favour, he sent none away without hopes. And when his ministers represented to him that he promised more than he could perform, he replied, “No one ought to go away downcast from an audience with his prince." Once at supper, reflecting that he had done nothing for any that day, he broke out into that memorable and justly-admired saying, “My friends, I have lost a day."

Amidst all these favourable circumstances, he was cut off by an untimely death, more to the loss of mankind than himself. He died in the same villa where his father had died before him, upon the Ides of September

But, with a degree of virtuous resolution unexampled in history, he had no sooner taken into his hands the entire reins of government, than he renounced every vicious attachment. Instead of wallowing in luxury, as before, he became a model of temperance; instead of cruelty, he displayed the strongest proofs of humanity and benevolence; and in the room of lewdness, he exhibited a transition to the most unblemished chastity and virtue.

Titus Flavius Domitianus

Reign 14 September 81 - 18 September 96

In the beginning of his reign, he used to spend daily an hour by himself in private, during which time he did nothing else but catch flies,. and stick them through the body with a sharp pin. When some one therefore inquired, "whether any one was with the emperor," it was significantly answered by Vibius Crispus, “Not so much as a fly."

During some time, there was in his administration a strange mixture of virtue and vice, until at last his virtues themselves degenerated into vices; being, as we may reasonably conjecture concerning his character, inclined to avarice through want, and to cruelty through fear.

He banished all the philosophers from the city and Italy

Becoming by these means universally feared and odious, he was at last taken off by a conspiracy of his friends and favourite freedmen, in concert with his wife.

...he retired into his chamber, and was there slain.