Caligula

The Abuse of Power

Anthony A. Barrett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317533917
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The Roman Empire has always exercised a considerable fascination. Among its numerous colourful personalities, no emperor, with the possible exception of Nero, has attracted more popular attention than Caligula, who has a reputation, whether deserved or not, as the quintessential mad and dangerous ruler.

The first edition of this book established itself as the standard study of Caligula. It remains the only full length and detailed scholarly analysis in English of this emperor's reign, and has been translated into a number of languages. But the study of Classical antiquity is not a static phenomenon, and scholars are engaged in a persistent quest to upgrade our knowledge and thinking about the ancient past. In the thirty years since publication of the original Caligula there have been considerable scholarly advances in what we know about this emperor specifically, and also about the general period in which he functioned, while newly discovered inscriptions and major archaeological projects have necessitated a rethinking of many of our earlier conclusions about early imperial history. This new edition constitutes a major revision and, in places, a major rewriting, of the original text. Maintaining the reader-friendly structure and organisation of its predecessor, it embodies the latest discoveries and the latest thinking, seeking to make more lucid and comprehensible those aspects of the reign that are particularly daunting to the non-specialist. Like the original, this revised Caligula is intended to satisfy the requirements of the scholarly community while appealing to a broad and general readership.

1

FAMILY

Pinpointing the long-term causes of historical events is always a hazardous enterprise, and it might even be argued, at a rarefied and abstract level, that the conditions that prepared the ground for the accession of Caligula in AD 37 had been in continuous evolution since the earliest days of Rome’s founding, or even earlier. But few would dispute that a key event in that process, one signalling a more immediate prelude to his reign, was the Battle of Actium, in 31 BC. The victory of Caligula’s great-grandfather Octavian over the combined forces of Mark Antony, also his great-grandfather, and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, left Octavian in effective control of the Roman world. Granted the title of Augustus in 27 BC, he proceeded to reshape the way that Rome and her territorial possessions were governed. It is common to refer to him as ‘emperor’ from that point on, but he aimed to project an image of a princeps, a first citizen in a reinvigorated republic, even though his initial bid for power was based on that most monarchical of claims, heredity. He was the designated heir and (posthumously) adopted son of Julius Caesar, who, in his lifetime, had been appointed perpetual dictator and had topped even that after death, by becoming a perpetual god. The system instituted by Augustus, briefly described earlier, in the Introduction, allowed him to remain the dominant force in Roman life until his death almost half a century later and offered, as compensation for the loss of political independence, an extended period of peace and stability. That system was still in force under Caligula, born two years before Augustus died, and, despite his appalling record, it survived him.

Later Roman history was very much the product of Augustus’ political innovations. But his personal life was no less important in shaping future events. He became infatuated with Livia Drusilla, the wife of a former opponent, Tiberius Claudius, and, soon after her divorce, married her, in 38 BC, a few days after the birth of her second son Drusus. Livia was a Claudian by blood (her name, Livia, acquired through an adoption of one of her forebears into the Livian gens, is misleading). Augustus was a Julian, and it is by these two families that scholars identify the first ruling dynasty in Rome’s imperial history, the Julio-Claudians.¹ Having no surviving sons of his own Augustus promoted the careers of Livia’s two. Tiberius, the older, morose and cynical by nature, would eventually succeed him. Drusus, the younger son, as genially affable as his brother was morose, was married, in about 16 BC, to Antonia, the much-respected and ostentatiously chaste daughter of Mark Antony and Augustus’ beloved sister Octavia. Drusus and Antonia produced three children: Germanicus (born about 16 BC), handsome, charming and immensely popular, and the father of Caligula; Livilla (born 13 BC), whose one recorded moral lapse earned her the opprobrium of history and a horrible death; and Claudius (born 10 BC), who throughout childhood and youth was plagued by physical, and what were seen as mental, disorders, but was destined in middle age to become a largely successful emperor.² Through his paternal great-grandmother, the worthy Octavia, Caligula could claim one of his two blood-links to Augustus. But the more direct one came through his maternal grandmother, Julia. A woman with a mind of her own, and a strongly independent mind at that (she shocked her old-fashioned father by plucking out her grey hairs), along with a sharp and cutting tongue, and reputedly a healthy taste for promiscuous sex. She was the only surviving child of Augustus from his previous wife, and, in accordance with traditional Roman practice, became a pawn in the political schemes of her father. Married first to her cousin Marcellus, who died not long after, Julia was then passed on to the solid and stolid Marcus Agrippa, Augustus’ comrade in arms and the architect of the victory at Actium, and did her wifely, and her filial, duty by bearing five children; significantly for the topic of Caligula, one of those children was his mother, the formidably ambitious Agrippina the Elder.

For Romans, family background was deemed a powerful element in an individual’s character, and this belief could influence how those individuals would conduct themselves. Hence when Caligula succeeded as emperor he saw it as part of his imperial mission to defeat the hostile German tribes along the Rhine frontier, and carry these conquests further, to Britain. He inherited this vision from his grandfather Drusus, who in a series of brilliant campaigns between 12 and 9 BC carried Roman arms as far as the Elbe. There, we are told, Drusus was confronted by the spectre of a giant (and, conveniently, Latin speaking) Germania, who told him not to advance further, whereupon he fell from his horse and injured himself so seriously that he fell ill and died thirty days later.³ Drusus had been widely loved, and it was generally, though surely erroneously, believed, that he had been committed to the restoration of the republican system. He was honoured with the posthumous title of Germanicus. This he passed to his descendants, and also bequeathed to them the implications of the name: the northern frontier was for their family the destined field of honour, an arena where they would establish their place in military history.

Roman operations in Germany continued after Drusus’ death, but suffered an enormous setback in AD 9 when three legions were famously destroyed at Kalkriese in the Teutoburg forest, and their commander Varus committed suicide. Livia’s older son, Tiberius, who had similarly shown considerable talent as a military commander, rushed to Germany and established order there, before moving on to suppress a major rebellion in the Danube area. Eight legions were established on the Rhine frontier, divided between the two command districts of Lower (the more northerly) and Upper Germany. Tiberius returned to Rome in AD 11, and was replaced in Germany by his nephew, Germanicus, whose personal affability was apparently not matched by an equal share of genuine talent, but whose popularity would outstrip even his father’s.

Germanicus, the father of Caligula, was born on May 24, in either 16 or 15 BC.⁴ Little is known of his early life, before his adoption, in AD 4, by Tiberius. That adoption was one of a number of attempts by Augustus to solve what was possibly the most intractable problem of his principate, the issue of the succession, a problem complicated by Augustus’ anomalous and very personal role within the Roman state. There was no theoretical mechanism by which his authority could be handed on to a successor. But of course Augustus had initially presented himself to the world as the son of the deified Caesar, and for all his revolutionary vision he was driven by the eternal human desire to pass on his power to someone of his own blood, which meant to someone within the Julian family. In 21 BC he took an important step in this process when his old comrade in arms Marcus Agrippa divorced his wife and married Augustus’ daughter Julia. Wild at heart she may have been, but Julia played an appropriate and responsible role as a productive mother. Their two sons Gaius (born 20 BC) and Lucius (17 BC) were both adopted by Augustus, clearly with the intention that one of them would eventually succeed him. When Agrippa died in 12 BC, Livia’s son, Tiberius, was called upon in the following year to fill the gap and marry Julia, as her third political husband. Forced to divorce his wife Vipsania, of whom he seems to have been genuinely fond, he would come to regret bitterly his union with the wayward and headstrong Julia, and may well have felt a considerable if secret relief when in 2 BC she was caught up in a notorious sexual scandal and banished permanently from Rome (she died in AD 14). By nature austere and sober (or, to his detracters, dour and taciturn), Tiberius was in his true element when on campaign, sharing the hardships of military life with his soldiers. He felt, probably correctly, that Augustus had little personal affection for him and that he was seen, at best, as the successor of last resort. For a time he withdrew himself from Rome into self-imposed exile on the island of Rhodes. The death of Lucius on his way to Spain, and of Gaius two years later on an eastern mission, transformed Tiberius’ standing; he now stood at the head of the queue, and was finally adopted, on June 26, AD 4, as Augustus’ son, and granted tribunician potestas, probably for a period of ten years, powerful indicators that he was, indeed, Augustus’ choice as successor.

Tiberius’ possible satisfaction on this occasion must have been tempered by having been obliged to adopt his nephew Germanicus, the son of his late brother Drusus, even though Tiberius had a natural son, similarly, and confusingly, also called Drusus. Germanicus is a key figure in the historical process that prepared the way for the accession of his son Caligula, and he merits attention. The attitude of the literary sources towards his character and personal qualities is one of flattering adulation. Suetonius, who devotes a large section of the Life of Caligula to him, claims that he surpassed his contemporaries both in physical and moral qualities, and was a gifted man of letters into the bargain. Despite his supposed achievements he nonetheless remained modest and considerate, and was immensely popular, partly because it was felt that he had inherited his father’s supposed republican leanings. The only negative quality that Suetonius can come up with is his skinny legs, which he built up by strenuous horse riding. Tacitus reports that some compared him to Alexander the Great, and observed that if he had lived to rule he would have outdone him in military achievements, just as he surpassed him in personal qualities.⁵ These impressions clearly represent a highly romanticised view of Caligula’s father, one that was no doubt fostered by anti-Tiberian elements after Germanicus’ early death. A careful inspection of his career exposes quite serious errors of judgement and even a degree of emotional instability.⁶ But reality would prove less important than image in moulding the prospects of his son Caligula for the principate.

In his compulsive determination to be succeeded from within his own line, Augustus required Germanicus, shortly after his adoption by Tiberius, to marry the emperor’s granddaughter, Agrippina. Germanicus’ wife would manifest the headstrong independence of her mother Julia, and suffered a not dissimilar fate. Tacitus is sympathetic to her, since in the end she became a victim of the imperial establishment, but his generally positive portrayal is peppered by expressions like ‘excitable’, ‘arrogant’, ‘proud’, ‘fierce’, ‘obstinate’, ‘ambitious’. Tacitus’ comments are echoed in other sources. Suetonius records that her grandfather, Augustus, who had fixed views on moderation and propriety in speech, cautioned Agrippina not to speak moleste (‘offensively’). As Dio expressed it, she had ambitions to match her pedigree.⁷

Agrippina was fully aware that in Imperial Rome a woman could not hope to exercise power in her own right. But she could have found an ideal role model in Augustus’ wife, Livia, who demonstrated the crucial role that the wife of the emperor could play if she ensured that her private conduct was beyond reproach. Like Livia, she would be fanatically devoted to advancing the careers of her offspring. She bore, in all, nine children to Germanicus, six of whom survived early childhood, and one of whom, Caligula, would become emperor, albeit after her own death. Caligula had two older brothers, Nero (born about AD 6 and not to be confused with the later emperor Nero), and Drusus (born about AD 7/8 and also not to be confused with his numerous namesakes). He had three sisters, all of whom will play an important role during his reign; the most famous was Agrippina the Younger (born AD 15), no less ambitious than her mother but far more skilled at advancing her ambitions, herself the mother of the emperor Nero. Agrippina and another sister, Livilla (born 17 or 18), would go on to intrigue against their brother two years after he became emperor. Caligula’s favourite was Drusilla (born 16) whose untimely death in 38 would shatter him.⁸ The children of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder thus included both a future emperor and a future mother of another emperor.

Germanicus first achieved military distinction while serving with Tiberius in suppressing the rebellion that broke out on the Danube in AD 6. In AD 11, two years after the disaster in the Teutoburg forest, he served again under Tiberius, this time in Germany. No major successes are recorded, and he returned to Rome by no later than the autumn of AD 11, to celebrate a consulship in the following year.⁹ We know little of his activities as consul, except the detail that he reputedly slaughtered two hundred lions during the Ludi Martiales, games held on August 1, the anniversary of the date when Augustus dedicated the temple of Mars Ultor in the Forum Augusti.¹⁰

It was during the year of Germanicus’ consulship, AD 12, that his son Gaius (Caligula) was born. The date of August 31 is well established; it is provided both by Suetonius and by the surviving official calendars, the Fasti, of two different towns.¹¹ The place of birth is not nearly so cut and dried. There was clearly a difference of opinion in antiquity, and the remarkable discussion of the question that appears in Suetonius’ Caligula is one of the most thorough of its kind found in any ancient historical source, and one much admired by modern scholars.¹² Suetonius admits that there are conflicting views on the question, and then proceeds to give us a rare glimpse of an ancient authority taking issue with his peers and setting out his arguments in detail. Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus, the military commander in Upper Germany during the reigns of Tiberius and then, initially, of Caligula, as well as a poet and future victim of Caligula (see Chapter 6), wrote that the birthplace was Tibur (Tivoli), hence in Italy. Pliny the Elder, on the other hand, placed it in Germany, at a place called Ambitarvium (or Ambitarvius) among the tribe of the Treveri supra confluentes, where altars were pointed out to him (Pliny) with inscriptions honouring Agrippina’s delivery (possibly during Pliny’s military service in the area).¹³ Moreover, an anonymous epigram that circulated much later than the event claimed ‘a baby in the camp, a son in the line, he was sure to be emperor, a very clear sign’ (castris natus, patriis nutritus in armis/iam designati principis omen erat).¹⁴

Suetonius is not impressed by any of this. He dismisses Gaetulicus as a flattering liar, then proceeds to dem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Credits
• Preface to the second edition
• Simplified family tree of the Julio-Claudians
• Outline of significant events
• Named victims of Caligula
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Family
• 2 Succession
• 3 Private pursuits
• 4 The new emperor
• 5 Signs of strain
• 6 Conspiracy
• 7 North Africa
• 8 Britain and Germany
• 9 Divine honours
• 10 Caligula and the Jews
• 11 Caligula the builder
• 12 Assassination
• 13 Aftermath
• 14 Fit to rule?
• 15 Coins, inscriptions and sculpture
• Bibliography
• Index