A Brief History of the Private Lives of the Roman Emperors (21 page)

Four legions, from the Rhine and Pannonia, were assembled, topped up with auxiliaries and stiffened with a cohort from the Praetorian Guard. To impress the barbarians a few
elephants were added to this force of 40,000 men which nevertheless, giving the usual reasons
(vide
Caligula), refused to embark. (Roman troops, we must remind ourselves, had to be
convinced, as well as inspired, to go into action.) Claudius summoned Narcissus, the first freedman to address an army, who made them laugh, making unnecessary the exemplary executions planned by
the generals.

Within a month, with Plautius as Commander-in-Chief, they had landed at Richborough and, after some fierce fighting in the Medway, had captured London and were able to send for Claudius, waiting
in Boulogne. The Emperor, accompanied by a glittering entourage of powerful patricians he thought unsafe to leave in Rome – the Frugi, Silanus, Asiaticus and Vinicius, who all later became
victims of Messalina – crossed the Channel and headed for Camulod-unum, where he held a sort of ‘durbar’. There he received the submission of the local chiefs (including a queen,
Cartimandua, who controlled twelve tribes in the north). It was a long time before the inhabitants of Colchester saw another elephant.

Claudius only spent sixteen days in Britain, but he had been away from Rome, where the trusty Vitellius had been keeping watch, for five months and was determined on his return that the Roman
world should know of his success. It did. Plautius was given a (rare) Triumph and in every city and town of the Empire peasants coming to market would see some sort of representation of Britannia,
who became the symbol of that hitherto remote and unknown island. A marble relief has been recently discovered in Aphrodisias showing Claudius subduing her, and coins were struck with his new
cognomen, ‘Britannicus’. As Barbara Levick writes:
‘The impact of the conquest throughout the Empire was considerable . . . a stroke of elegance and power
for a new and underestimated Emperor, and its effects on the minds of his subjects, as its fame washed through the Empire and rippled even into its remotest provinces, incalculable.’

In fact the victory was celebrated ahead of the conquest, because that required the military talent of Vespasian, who had particular difficulty in netting Caratacus (finally betrayed by his
fellow monarch, the queen in the north). Claudius kept Caratacus for another celebration of the conquest of Britain in Rome in
AD
51 when he made a splendid speech which
earned him and Claudius, who pardoned him, much applause and which Tacitus records: ‘Had my lineage and rank been accompanied by only moderate success, I should have come to this city as a
friend rather than as a prisoner . . . As it is, humiliation is my lot, glory yours. I had horses, men, arms, wealth. Are you surprised I am sorry to lose them? If you want to rule the world does
it follow that everyone welcomes enslavement?’ Caratacus was as famous an enemy to the Romans as Vercingetorix, and just as eloquent, but thanks to Claudius he kept his life.

Claudius declared St Albans the capital of the new province – a province that later became a place to retire to, because of the low land-values and the amiability of the local servants.
The Romans built roads – stretches of Watling Street and Ermine Street still survive – and thus enabled King Harold, 1,000 years later, to make his dash from Stamford Bridge in
Yorkshire to Hastings. The Romans mined lead in the Mendips and later pearls, hunting dogs were exported, and 40,000 British prisoners-of-war were used to build the network of roads in Gaul, but
finally the cost of monitoring the island was greater than the benefit to the Empire. Nero even considered withdrawal.

A Roman Emperor, like a President of the United States, was both commander-in-chief of the armies and in charge of foreign policy. Apart from the British expedition,
Claudius did not visit his Empire, preferring to pad around Italy, but he was a passionate builder of roads (notably the 525-kilometre route over the Brenner Pass), and his vision of himself as
ruler and pacifier of a world he wanted to be Roman – everyone should wear a toga, he said – was near to the truth.

He was less successful on the home front. Agrippina now had Nero’s aunt, Domitia Lepida, in her sights. Once beautiful, always rich, now ancient and depraved, she had had Nero to stay with
her for two years while his mother, Agrippina, was in exile. She might therefore exert a rival influence, if and when
(when?)
Nero became Emperor. Domitia was charged with magic and letting
her shepherd slaves run amok in Calabria, where she had huge estates. Nero had been persuaded that she favoured his cousin Britannicus, her grandson, and he actually appeared as a prosecution
witness against his doting aunt. The Emperor sentenced her to death, despite the contrary advice of Narcissus.

All Roman historians describe the death of Claudius and accuse his wife of murder. (A modern historian has diagnosed a heart attack.) Here is a précis of Tacitus’ version, the most
lively and likely. Agrippina employed an expert, one Locusta, ‘recently sentenced for poisoning but with a long career of imperial service ahead of her’. The Emperor’s taster, the
eunuch Halotus, and his doctor Xenophon were also brought into the act. The poison was sprinkled on some mushrooms Claudius particularly liked and he consumed them happily. At first nothing
happened – Claudius was either torpid or drunk – then he evacuated his bowels. Agrippina was aghast, but under the pretence of making him vomit, the doctor tickled his patient’s
throat with a feather
dipped in a quick-acting poison. (‘Xenophon knew that major crimes, though hazardous to undertake, are profitable to achieve.’) The Empress
clung on to Britannicus, ostensibly for comfort but actually to prevent his leaving the room. She also detained the sisters. No announcement was made. The dead man was put under wraps and it was
pretended the Emperor was very ill. Then at midday on 13 October, the propitious moment according to the astrologers, the palace gates were opened and there was Burrus, commander of the Praetorian
Guard, well-primed ally of Agrippina, with a battalion, ready to acclaim Nero the new Emperor. A few Praetorians were heard to wonder where Britannicus might be, but Agrippina’s operation was
too well oiled to be halted now, and Nero was conveyed to the Praetorian camp in a litter where he promised the usual donatives and was hailed Emperor; the Senate and the provinces followed suit.
Agrippina had achieved her ambition, to secure the imperial throne for her son and have him accept her advisers, Burrus her strong man and Seneca her think-tank, as his own. Through him and them
she would be able to rule the world for a time. When Nero was born, the astrologer had said: ‘He will be king and he will kill his mother.’ The first part of the prediction had come
true.

NERO

When Nero’s father, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, was congratulated on the birth of a son, he replied that the fruit of any union between his family and Agrippina could
only be a disaster.

The
gens Domitia
had furnished Rome for 200 years with consuls and generals, famous for their brutality. They were rich men, partly because they never had daughters to dower, and
Nero’s great-great-grandfather had raised money for Pompey’s army through pledging lands. Despite being on the wrong side, there was still plenty left.

Nero’s father was a violent man. He tore out an equestrian’s eye in the Forum and once ran over a child on the Appian Way for fun. He had been rebuked by Augustus for the cruelty of
his Games and he was even prosecuted. He would have been a terrible father to have around but he obliged Nero by dying of dropsy when the child was three. His mother, Agrippina, was ruthless and
murderous, as we have seen; her behaviour was explained, as in the case of Caligula, but not excused, by a traumatic childhood. Her grandmother had been the dissolute Julia, Augustus’ only
child, and her mother, Agrippina the elder, had been beaten up by a centurion before her eyes and then starved to death – as had her two elder brothers – on the orders of Tiberius. (One
of
them tried to survive by eating the stuffing of his mattress.) When Agrippina’s (mad?) brother Caligula became Emperor she had to watch his excesses and was then
exiled, leaving her little boy in the care of a barber and a dancer. She survived Messalina’s regime and, marrying her uncle the Emperor, successfully promoted her son, whom she later,
possibly, seduced. With such an upbringing Nero’s sexual behaviour – rating a chapter of its own in Hirschfeld’s catalogue of anomalies and perversions – as a sodomite,
catamite, sadist, masochist and bestialist can be understood.

He inherited the defects of both sides of the family and a geneticist would be hard put to it to find an ancestral gene for the visionary, romantic streak in Nero, dominant in this most
misunderstood man ever, whom history has damned and caricatured for his almost accidental persecution of the Christians. His infamy deepened as their influence increased, yet, to contemporaries,
his decision to harass this tiny Jewish sect was both understandable and insignificant. The first five years of his reign constituted, by common accord, a mini golden age. (His abdication to the
Senate of powers held by his predecessors is illustrated on coinage from
AD
55 to 64, which refers to Nero simply as Emperor, without indicating other offices of state.
Later he became an enthusiastic and bossy numismatologist.) Under the tutelage of Burrus and Seneca, with his mother nagging but tactfully sidestepped, Nero showed generosity, kindness and
accessibility –
liberalitas, clementia et civilitas
– by – words designed by Seneca for his accession speech to the Senate in the autumn of
AD
54.

Both his predecessors had made the same promises in the same speech, but Nero was true to his, for nearly eight years. An immediate bonus was a return to the old Roman ideal that advocates
should not receive fees, based on the notion
that the right of justice, free of bribery and influence, should be the duty and concern of every Roman gentleman. Two of
Nero’s better
dicta
date from these halcyon days – on signing a death warrant, ‘Oh how I wish I had never learned to write!’ and in reply to a vote of thanks from the
Senate, ‘I will accept when I deserve it.’

His mentors complemented each other. Burrus, originally an accountant, had been made, through Agrippina’s influence, sole commander of the Praetorian Guard and had master-minded the
accession. He was a straightforward brusque fellow and, though not a soldier, bristled with officer-like qualities, firm, fair but not familiar, and was respected by his men. He was also loyal,
first to Agrippina and then, when Nero had her murdered, to her son.

Seneca was an altogether more devious figure, multi faceted and complex. Born into a rich and educated family of Italians who had emigrated to Andalucia at the turn of the century, 1
AD
, he was brought up in Rome by his doting daddy, the elder Seneca, who lived to be ninety. His two elder brothers were both in the
cursus honorum
–
la
grande carrière.
The brothers were all bronchial, which saved Seneca’s life because Caligula, irritated by his suave oratory, wanted to frame him for alleged involvement in a
conspiracy, but banished him to Corsica instead, because one of his mistresses persuaded him that he had not long to live. He was a protégé of Agrippina, who was eventually able to
recall him after eight humiliating years in Corsica and fixed him up with a praetorship. During his exile, Seneca had been writing – treatises ‘On Natural Science’ (including
earthquakes), ‘On Sympathy’, ‘On Anger’, On Anything, for he was a polymath and
encyclopédiste,
like Voltaire. On paper Seneca was exemplary, the darling of
Classics masters down the ages, for his sweet reasonableness and for the
dignified manner of his suicide. His Stoicism, imbued with gloom and a sense of duty, also appealed to
nineteenth-century moralists and he was so well regarded by the early Christian Church that a correspondence was invented between him and St Paul in the fifth century
AD
. In
fact Seneca was a hypocrite.