The reign of the Julio-Claudians .

Tiberius Caesar

As we noted, no Roman law gave Augustus the right to pass his powers to anyone, but, starting with Gaius, Lucius and Marcellus, Augustus had intended to create a successor. He had to settle for Tiberius. Augustus perhaps failed to see that by passing his offices to his adopted son, Tiberius, he was creating the kind of monarchical rule that he had thought often created incompetent rulers, but more probably he thought that, with the proper training, he could insure a good successor. He probably realized that, considering what had happened in Republic, there was no practical alternative to one-person rule. The public was also without major qualms about Augustus' transfer of power and even the aristocracy went out of its way to acclaim Augustus’ successor. There were examples enough about the weakness of rule by family, and these were times when history was read more than were novels. Yet the Romans seemed to believe that for a continued peace and prosperity someone should rule as Augustus had ruled.

Tiberius was not handsome. He had a slow, methodical way of speaking that seemed intended to conceal his meaning rather than make it plain. But he was diligent. He may not have known he would be emperor, but he cannot have doubted that he would be at least a general at a rather early age and thereafter he would be a high official in the government of Rome. In 27 BC, when Tiberius was 15 years old, Augustus took him and Marcellus to Gaul to inspect outposts. They experienced no fighting, but they learned a great deal about how to rule the marches, keep fortifications intact, and keep garrisons alert. When they returned, Augustus gave Marcellus his daughter Julia as wife.

Love matches were infrequent in imperial Rome, but Tiberius' marriage to Vipsania Agrippina was one. She was the daughter of Marcus Agrippa, Augustus' son-in-law and lieutenant. Besides his love for his wife, and for his brother, Drusus, Tiberius was occupied with important work. His first military command at the age of 22, resulting in the recovery of standards of some Roman legions that had been lost decades before in Parthia, brought him great acclaim. As a reward he asked for another active command and was given the assignment of pacifying the province of Pannonia on the Adriatic Sea. Tiberius not only conquered the enemy but so distinguished himself by his care for his men that he found himself popular and even loved. When he returned to Rome, he was awarded a triumph.

But darker events soon took place. . His beloved brother, Drusus, broke his leg in falling from a horse while campaigning in Germany. Tiberius personally escorted the body back to Rome, walking in front of it on foot all the way. He also had to give up his wife, Vipsania, the other person he loved, by the order of Augustus, whose . daughter Julia had become a widow for the second time. Her first husband, Marcellus, had died, and the Emperor had married her to Agrippa (who, as Vipsania's father, was Tiberius' father-in-law). When Agrippa died in 12 BC, Augustus wanted her suitably married at once and chose Tiberius as her third husband. Tiberius had no more choice than his father had had when Augustus decided to marry Livia. Tiberius was as obedient as his father. He divorced Vipsania and married Julia.

Tiberius' new wife Julia has come down in history with a reputation for licentiousness. It is not certain how much of the reputation she deserved. When Julia married Tiberius, he was 30. She was 27, twice a widow, the mother of five children (not all surviving). She was pretty and light-minded and liked the society of men. She did not get along with her mother-in-law (who was also her stepmother), Livia, and after the first few months she tired of Tiberius. It is certain that she committed adultery, and this presented Tiberius with an immense problem, not only personal but also political. A law of Augustus himself required a husband to denounce a wife who committed adultery. But Julia was the Emperor's much loved child, and, as Augustus knew nothing of her vices, to denounce her would be to hurt himself, and that was dangerous, perhaps potentially fatal.

To escape the situation, Tiberius asked for and received fighting commands away from Rome. When once in Rome between battles, he chanced to see Vipsania at the home of a friend. She had, at Augustus' orders, been remarried to a senator. Tiberius was so overcome with sorrow that he followed her through the streets, weeping. Augustus heard of it and ordered Tiberius never to see her again. Although Augustus heaped honors on Tiberius, they did not compensate for Julia's behavior. In 6 BC Tiberius was granted the powers of a tribune and shortly thereafter went into a self-imposed exile on the island of Rhodes, leaving Julia in Rome.

Tiberius was now 36 years old and at the pinnacle of his power. He was capable of ruling an empire, conducting a great war, or governing a province of barbarians. In Rhodes he had nothing to do, and all of his ability and strength appear to have turned inward, into strange and unpleasant behavior. The histories of Tiberius' reign -- written either by flatterers or by enemies -- are not wholly trustworthy. There can be no question that a change took place in Tiberius at this time. What emerged was a man who seemed interested only in his own satisfactions and the increasingly perverse ways to find them. On Rhodes Tiberius became a recluse- - unassuming and amiable at first, resentful and angry later on. He consulted astrologers. Though Tiberius had left Rome of his own free will, daring the Emperor's wrath, he could not return without Augustus' permission. Augustus withheld that permission for the better part of a decade.

Eventually, Livia his mother secured proofs of Julia's many adulteries and took them to Augustus, who was furious. Under his own law Julia should have been executed, but he did not have the heart for that; instead, he exiled her for life to the tiny island of Pandateria. But even then Tiberius was not recalled. There were three young men whom the Emperor appeared to favor as heirs, all sons of Julia. One of them, Postumus, reportedly no more than a rude and crude fellow, fell into disfavor with Augustus and was sent into exile with his mother. The other two, Lucius and Gaius, were clearly candidates to succeed. But in 2 BC Lucius died and the Emperor relented. He called Tiberius back to Rome. By AD 4 Tiberius was in possession of all his honors again, and in that year Gaius was killed in a war in Lycia. Tiberius had become the second man in Rome. Augustus did not like him, but he adopted him as his son. He had no choice, and he was growing old. Tiberius was the least objectionable successor left.

Tiberius became proud and powerful. His statues had been torn down and defaced while he was in Rhodes. Now they were rebuilt. He was given command of an army to quell Arminius, who had destroyed the three Roman legions of Varus in Germany in AD 9; he succeeded wholly. He was succeeding at everything now, and in AD 14, on August 19, when Tiberius was 56 years old, Augustus died. Tiberius, now supreme, played politics with the Senate and did not allow it to name him emperor for almost a month, forcing upon the Senators a pose of fear and flattery. But on September 17 Tiberius relented and succeeded to the principate and also became a consul and received other powers.

Like many dynastic successions to supreme power, Tiberius' succession was accompanied by murder. The victim was Agrippa Postumus, Julia's son by her previous marriage to Augustus' commander and companion, Agrippa. Augustus had adopted him as his son and had made him co-heir with Tiberius, but the boy seemed unruly and slow in thought, and Augustus disinherited him. After the death of Augustus, the boy, as a person of royal blood, was thought a possible rallying point for disaffected persons, and he was eliminated quickly and quietly. The only real threat to his power, the Roman Senate, was intimidated by the concentration of the Praetorian Guard, normally dispersed all over Italy, within marching distance of Rome.

Tiberius came into office a somewhat old, embittered man, given to suspiciousness and brooding. He could be extremely vague in giving orders, either due to a wish not to commit himself, or to trap his opponents into committing a deed or voicing an opinion that Tiberius could later deny. Nevertheless, Tiberius was bright, and he had a long history of service to Rome, including ably leading troops in Rome's frontier skirmishes. As emperor, despite his flaws, early on he was a capable administrator and had genuine concern for the empire's well-being. He let the Senate know that it was he who ruled, but he left some duties to the Senate, saving himself from being overburdened with work. He told the Senate to stop bothering him about every question that came up and to take initiative, but, to his disgust, senators cringed before him. Tiberius did not attempt great new conquests for the Roman Empire. He did not move armies about or change governors of provinces without reason. He stopped the waste of the imperial treasury, so that when he died he left behind 20 times the wealth he had inherited, and the power of Rome was never more secure. He strengthened the Roman navy. He abandoned the practice of providing extensive gladiatorial games. He forbade some of the more outlandish forms of respect to his office, such as naming a month of the calendar after him, as had been done for Julius Caesar and Augustus.

During the reign of Tiberius the Senate began responding to crises that routinely appeared -- one of which was the collapse of the poorly constructed amphitheater at Fidenae, which killed thousands. Regulating private businesses was recognized as in society's interest, and the Senate took action against frauds of various contractors, including the slackness of authorities that resulted in some roads becoming impassible. The Senate was concerned about what it saw as a new freedom among women, about extravagant living and the rise in prices of food on the black market. But Tiberius saw all this as a part of the times, and he believed it was difficult to move people into the past, at least without making them unhappy and creating new opponents to his rule. But he did suggest to the Senate that it expel from Rome dancers who had come to Rome to put on obscene shows.

Tiberius did well in appointing competent people to administrative positions, although preferences were given to candidates from "better" families, a preference that Augustus had also shown. He kept Rome along a path of economic stability, and the military remained disciplined. But the glory that had belonged to Augustus -- now considered a god -- was not his. Tiberius disliked crowds and did not appear at the gladiator contests as had Augustus. Rather than a loving father figure, Tiberius was seen as unfriendly. For the masses, which enjoyed attaching themselves to greatness, Tiberius was a disappointment.

Tiberius' adopted son, Germanicus, was the husband of Augustus' granddaughter, Agrippina -- and unlike Tiberius he was popular. Germanicus was handsome, charming and a man of dash and informality. Tiberius sent him as military leader against a rebellion by German tribes, and he sent him about the empire as a troubleshooter. On a visit to Syria in CE 17, Germanicus fell ill and died, which shocked the Romans. The Roman governor of Syria, a man named Piso, was tried by the Senate for having poisoned Germanicus. The charge was not proven, but Piso died anyway. He was found with his throat cut -- possibly a suicide. It was widely believed that that Tiberius had ordered Piso to poison Germanicus

Then in the year 23 came the death of Tiberius' son and designated heir, Drusus, after a long illness. Later Drusus' death would be attributed to the emperor's ambitious aide, Sejanus, who headed the Praetorian Guard -- the army that was the emperor's body guard. Sejanus was ambitious. He wished to marry Drusus' widow Livilla -- which would have made him a member of the royal family. But Sejanus was a commoner, and Germanicus' widow, Agrippina, was instrumental in Tiberius' decision against the marriage. As Rome's top policeman, Sejanus created a reign of terror in Rome. Opportunists went about looking for crimes such as adultery and words of treason against the emperor, knowing they would be rewarded with the property of those they helped convict. And among those charged with treason and adultery were friends of Agrippina. Sejanus had wanted to get her and her son Nero out of the way show that he, once married to Livilla, would be a natural candidate to succeed Tiberius. But, considering how influential her husband had been among the troops, Tiberius himself could easily suspect her of a conspiracy against him. Eventually, after his mother Livia died, who had kept Tiberius from acting too harshly against Agrippa, he sent her and her son Nero into exile, and soon afterward the other son Drusus.

Sejanus also controlled who could see Tiberius, and Tiberius called Sejanus his "partner in labors." Ironically, the death of Drusus, the event that brought Sejanus to power, may have been Sejanus' own doing. As noted above, Sejanus had seduced the wife of the younger Drusus, Livilla, and induced her to become his accomplice in murdering her husband. The evidence is not absolute and has been questioned by many historians, but it was not questioned later by by Tiberius. In AD 27, at the age of 67, Tiberius left Rome to visit some of the southern parts of Italy. En route he paused to go to the island of Capri. His intention appears to have been only to stay for a time, but he never returned to Rome. It is the remaining decade or so of Tiberius' life that has given rise to the legend of Tiberius the monster. It seems probable, to begin with, that Tiberius, never handsome, had become repulsively ugly. First his skin broke out in blotches, and then his complexion became covered with pus-filled eruptions, exuding a bad smell and causing a good deal of pain. He built himself a dozen villas ringing Capri, with prisons, underground dungeons, torture chambers and places of execution. He filled his villas with treasure and art objects of every kind and with the enormous retinue appropriate to a Caesar: servants, guards, entertainers, philosophers, astrologers, musicians, and seekers after favor. If the near-contemporary historians are to be believed, his favorite entertainments were cruel and obscene. We hear of him bathing with young boys called his ‘minnows’. Even under the most favorable interpretation, he killed ferociously and almost at random. It is probable that by then his mind was disordered.

Tiberius could still fight back.  In the year 31, Tiberius came to believe that Sejanus had arranged the death of his son Drusus by having a servant administer occasional doses of poison to him. He came to realize just how strong he had made Sejanus and how weak he had left himself. By now Sejanus had placed all the Praetorian cohorts in one camp, instead of letting them remain scattered in various places, and he was encouraging Tiberius to remain at Capri, while he had near total power in Rome. But Tiberius soon struck back, In AD 31 Tiberius had allowed himself to be elected consul of Rome for a fifth time and had chosen as his co-consul Sejanus. He gave Sejanus permission to marry Livilla, the widow of Tiberius' son. Now Sejanus not only had the substance of power but its forms as well. Golden statues were erected to him and his birthday was declared a holiday. But Tiberius had come to fear and mistrust him, and he probably had promised Sejanus more and more powers to bide time while he hatched his plot. With the aid of Sertorius Macro, Sejanus' successor as commander of the Praetorians, Tiberius smuggled a long-winded letter to the Senate, which at its end denounced Sejanus and called for his execution. The Senate was shocked and taken aback by the swift change, but it complied instantly -- perhaps moved by the justice of Tiberius' charges or by the strength of the Praetorian Guard.

Tiberius had launched large scale purge which soon reached a peak of denunciation and torture and execution that lasted for the remaining six years of Tiberius’ life. In the course of this reign of terror his delatores and torturers found evidence for him of the murder of his son, Drusus, by Livilla and Sejanus. Many great Roman names were implicated, falsely or not, and while that inquisition lasted no one on Capri was safe. Tiberius' chief remaining concern for the empire was who would rule it when he was gone. There were few living successors with any real claim to the imperial purple, and Tiberius settled, as Augustus had done before him, on the least offensive of an undesirable lot. His choice was Gaius Caesar, still a young boy and known by the nickname the Roman legions had given him when he was a camp mascot, Caligula, or Little Boots. Caligula, a great-grandson of Augustus through Julia and her daughter, had a claim to the throne as good as any. If his morals and habits were less than attractive, Tiberius did not seem to mind. "I am nursing a viper in Rome's bosom," Tiberius observed, and named Caligula his adopted son and successor. Some thought that he had picked Caligula because, compared to him, Tiberius’ rule would look good.

In the spring of AD 37, Tiberius took part in a ceremonial game that required him to throw a javelin. He wrenched his shoulder, took to his bed, became ill, and lapsed into a coma. His physicians, who had not been allowed to examine him for nearly half a century, now studied his emaciated body and declared that he would die within the day. The successor, Caligula, was sent for. The Praetorian Guard declared their support for the new emperor. The news of the succession was proclaimed to the world. Then Tiberius recovered consciousness, sat up, and asked for something to eat. The notables of Rome were thrown into confusion. Only the Praetorian commander, Macro, kept his head, and supposedly on the next day he hurried to Tiberius' bed, caught up a heap of blankets, and smothered Tiberius with them. There was general rejoicing in Rome at the death of Tiberius, and the cry could be heard "Tiberius to the Tiber!".
 

Gaius Caesar ( Caligula)

Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (b. A.D. 12, d. A.D. 41, emperor A.D. 37-41) represents a turning point in the early history of the Principate. Unfortunately, his is the most poorly documented reign of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The literary sources for these four years are meager, frequently anecdotal, and universally hostile. As a result, not only are many of the events of the reign unclear, but Caligula himself appears more as a caricature than a real person, a crazed megalomaniac given to capricious cruelty and harebrained schemes. Although some headway can be made in disentangling truth from embellishment, the true character of the youthful emperor will forever elude us.

Caligula was born on 31 August, A.D. 12, probably at the Julio-Claudian resort of Antium (modern Anzio), the third of six children born to Augustus's adopted grandson, Germanicus, and Augustus's granddaughter, Agrippina. As a baby he accompanied his parents on military campaigns in the north and was shown to the troops wearing a miniature soldier's outfit, including the hob-nailed sandal called caliga, whence the nickname by which posterity remembers him His childhood was not a happy one, spent amid an atmosphere of paranoia, suspicion, and murder, as was described above. Shortly before the fall of Tiberius's Praetorian Prefect, Sejanus, in A.D. 31 Caligula was summoned to join Tiberius at his villa on Capri, where he remained until his accession in A.D. 37. In the interim, his two brothers and his mother suffered demotion and, eventually, violent death. Throughout these years, the only position of administrative responsibility Caligula held was an honorary quaestorship in A.D. 33.

As expected, the Senate rubber-stamped its recognition of Caligula as Tiberius' successor. And being the son of the well remembered and popular Germanicus, the Romans welcomed Caligula as their new emperor. Caligula wanted to be popular, and he attempted to demonstrate his affection for his subjects by providing them with elaborate shows. Unlike Tiberius, he attended the circus, gladiator shows and chariot races. And, to the amusement and delight of his subjects, he participated in the races himself. He honored his father and other dead relatives and publicly destroyed Tiberius's personal papers, which no doubt implicated many of the Roman elite in the destruction of Caligula's immediate family. Finally, he recalled exiles and reimbursed those wronged by the imperial tax system. Caligula returned to the courts the power to make independent decisions in sentencing people, and he increased the number of jurors in order to speed proceedings. He began publishing a budget, and he began more building. But along with good intentions, Caligula suffered from vanity, inexperience, if not madness. Because, unlike Tiberius, he had never held any serious administrative positions, he began a reckless program of building and public entertainments, which even Rome could not afford. He not only went though all the funds Tiberius had saved, but was compelled to raise taxes. To procure the revenues needed to finance his extravagances, he also resorted to the extortion of prominent Roman citizens and the confiscation of their estates. He also soon made sure that all possible rivals were killed, including Macro, who had helped him become Caesar, and other relatives, such as Gemellus, grandson of Tiberius and two sisters of the emperor, Agrippina II and Julia.

Caligula appeared unexpectedly on the Upper Rhine in October 39 and suppressed an incipient revolt, executing Drusilla's widower M. Aemilius Lepidus and Gnaeus Lentulus Gaetulicus, commander of the Upper Rhine armies. Early in 40 Caligula marched with an army into Gaul, whose inhabitants he plundered thoroughly. He marched his troops to the northern shoreline of Gaul as a prelude to the invasion of Britain but then ordered them to collect seashells there, which he called the spoils of the conquered ocean.

The godliness that was attributed to his great-grandfather Augustus and Julius Caesar may have led him to believe not that he was a god but that he should be worshiped as a god. He planned for the distribution of statues of himself for worship, including an image of himself placed at the temple in Jerusalem. This was before almost thirty years before Masada and the end of Judaea. And Jews came from Jerusalem and asked that they, the Jews be excused from having to worship him. But the request was refused.

Caligula believed that Jews disrespected the office of emperor. He ordered the new governor of Syria and Palestine, Petronius, to put in Jerusalem's temple statues of himself as God incarnate, and he sent two legions, with Petronius, into Judaea to meet Jewish resistance. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, "many tens of thousands of Jews" including women and children, went to Petronius and told him they were ready to die rather than submit to Caligula's statues profaning Jerusalem's temple. They were unarmed and announced that they would not fight, and they lay on the ground baring their throats for cutting. Jews left their fields, ready for harvest, unattended. The crops of the Jews were important to Rome, as Rome drew a portion of the crops in taxes. Petronius returned to Antioch and wrote to Caligula. Caligula ordered him to commit suicide for disobeying an imperial command, but events were in motion that would save Petronius.

The ancient sources are practically unanimous as to the cause of Caligula's downfall: he was insane. The writers differ as to how this condition came about, but all agree that after his good start Gaius began to behave in an openly autocratic manner, even a crazed one. Outlandish stories cluster about the raving emperor, illustrating his excessive cruelty, immoral sexual escapades (he was said to have had many homosexual and heterosexual affairs, including using his authority to obtain sexual pleasures from other men's wives. And, it is rumored, he had sexual intercourse with his three sisters.) or disrespect toward tradition and the Senate. The sources describe his incestuous relations with his sisters, laughable military campaigns in the north (see above), the building of a pontoon bridge across the Bay at Baiae in response to a comment, and the plan to make his horse a consul. Modern scholars have pored over these incidents and come up with a variety of explanations: Caligula suffered from an illness; he was misunderstood; he was corrupted by power; or, accepting the ancient evidence, they conclude that he was mad. However, appreciating the nature of the ancient sources is crucial when approaching this issue. Their unanimous hostility renders their testimony suspect, especially since Caligula's reported behavior fits remarkably well with that of the ancient tyrant, a literary type enshrined in Greco-Roman tradition centuries before his reign. Further, the only eye-witness account of Caligula's behavior, Philo's Embassy to Caligula, offers little evidence of outright insanity, despite the antagonism of the author, whom Caligula treated with the utmost disrespect. Rather, he comes across as aloof, arrogant, egotistical, and cuttingly witty -- but not insane. The best explanation both for Caligula's behavior and the subsequent hostility of the sources is that he was an inexperienced young man thrust into a position of unlimited power, the true nature of which had been carefully disguised by its founder, Augustus. Caligula however, saw through the disguise and began to act accordingly. This, coupled with his troubled upbringing and almost complete lack of tact led to behavior that struck his contemporaries as extreme, even insane.

It was not Caligula's sexual activities that resulted in his demise, it was the fear that he put into people around him who had considerable power of their own. Caligula made enemies, and he used the power that he believed was justly his to have those he saw as enemies executed. That the power of no one man was absolute was again to be demonstrated. The Roman populace had by now grown weary of this mad and unpredictable tyrant, and several conspiracies were formed against him. In January 41, four months after his return to Rome from Gaul, Caligula was murdered at the Palatine Games by Cassius Chaerea, tribune of the Praetorian guard, A conspiracy against him arose among those who felt their lives endangered, including officers in the Praetorian Guard. Caligula was twenty-nine and had been in power only three years and ten months. Caligula's wife Caesonia and his daughter were also put to death.
 
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